I have been meditating for about 3 months and have been learning to pay closer attention to my body for about a month. What I noticed several days ago is that I'm feeling stressed very often. I can't relax properly. In fact, I don't remember the last time I have fully relaxed. I feel this constant tension in me that I can't release. Do you have any ideas how to tackle this and release that tension? I have tried breathing, which gives some relief, but not a full-blown katharsis, if you know what I mean.
I have been experiencing this too. I have had anxiety issues for a while. I had made lots of progress but when I got serious about beating PMO the anxiety got worse. What I have particularly noticed this last month is an increased level of stress. It feels different from my anxiety and more like a general whole body stress that I remember feeling in the past. I most definitely used PMO as a stress reliever. I haven't used that for a three weeks now. But more importantly I think the enemy knows that I'm serious about giving it up forever. He is doing what he can to lure me back. There is also brain chemistry working against me as a result of no more PMO rush. I have relaxation techniques that haven't worked as well as they do usually. So I kinda feel like I have to ride this out. I think the stress is maybe just me finally feeling again what I've covered up with PMO. One technique that may help is Progeessive Muscular Relaxation. If you've never done it it involves systematically tensing and relaxing muscles throughout your whole body. The key is to pay attention to the tension and relaxation.
Most people get it wrong When it comes to breaking habits most people think about will power or persistence then try to use those two forces to get over the habit only to find themselves failing. Yes both will power and persistence are great but they should only be a small part in your bigger strategy. I said earlier that will power fluctuats wildly and that you will hardly have the same level of self control everyday or even throughout the day. In addition to that fact there is also another one that makes porn addiction harder to break. In the ultimate guide to breaking porn and masturbation addiction i said that getting exposed to certain triggers can be the main reason you keep doing a bad habit. If for example you are on diet then you smelled a Pizza in the room next to you then there is a big chance you will give in especially if your will power wasn't at its best in that specific moment. This is why in my book The ultimate guide to breaking bad habits i said that avoiding the triggers is an extremely important step to breaking any habit. In other words if you don't want to eat wrong food then simply don't allow it in your home. Now when it comes to Porn addiction the problem that most people face is that they are connected 24/7 to the internet and so it's easy for them to relapse as soon as they encounter a trigger. So what's the soloution to that problem? It's all about the environment and your availability Does your envrioment promote watching porn? Do you stay alone a lot? Do you rarely hangout with friends? Do you have problems with your social life? One of the best ways to end porn addiction is to make changes to your environment so that it becomes harder to watch porn. If for example you prevented internet access inside your room and only made it possible to access the internet in a more exposed place you will be reducing the chance of watching porn. Of course this is a minor action but when you add more of those minor actions , so that it becomes harder for you to watch porn, you will increase your chance of quitting. The biggest problem with porn is the ease of access and so if you made some changes that made access to porn harder your chance of quitting will become much higher. Next you need to keep yourself busy. In my previous articles i said that keeping yourself busy never works with breakups or emotional problems but when it comes to addiction it works very well. By simply having a busy and interesting social life there will be less time for porn and so quitting this habit will become much easier. More leads to more So many people mistakenly think that when they watch porn they release their sexual desire but what really happens is that those people actually increase their sexual frustration by doing so. When you watch porn you become sexually frustrated, even if you masturbate. The visual images you have seen will lie at the back of your mind then sooner or later those visual images might become triggers on their own and force you to crave pron. In other words each time you watch porn you make the matter worse as you reinforce the habit.
