40 days free, realized what held me back

Fabian7 · Dec 2, 2018

Nalex25p said: ↑

Been struggling with p for 7 years, pmo for 3 years. Developed severe social anxiety and almost total anhedonia (loss of feeling pleasure, emotional numbness). I’ve been trying to stop ever since I first started these habits. Always had low motivation which I believe had do to with p and excessive internet/video game use, which makes normal less stimulating pleasures in life boring. It wasn’t till adding mo at 17 that I developed severe anhedonia and lossed all passion for everything in life.

I could never make it passed 30 days on my own willpower without falling back into the addictive pattern. But recently I realized what held me back and was a major cause of my problem: instead of dealing with my negative emotions in a healthy way, I would escape or numb them out binging on food and literally being on my iPad/video games all day. Our emotions are meant to be processed and felt, whether good or bad.

Within the last 2 months I’ve been incorporating a lot of healthy habits in my life: intermittent fasting, cold showers, exercising, no music or excessive piano playing (always thought it was healthy, didn’t realize personally how much dopamine was being released), zero video games, zero tv except sports, and limitting internet/tv use till after 7pm. I believe the biggest help was cold showers. After developing a habit of cold showers, I made it to my longest streak in three years; 49 days with pretty much zero urges. On day 46 I went back to warm showers, 3 days later relapsed. I’m now on my second highest streak of 40 days taking only cold showers (though I don’t turn it all the way to freezing cold since it’s winter) with zero urges.

The last week I’ve had the most confidence and energy in my life. Went to the gym yesterday and workout for 3 hours non stop without getting tired. Never happened in my life. Severe social anxiety improved a lot. I’ve not had ANY junk food in two months, only natural healthy foods. Though I’m still struggling with anhedonia I can sense it slowly getting better. In fact on my last streak around day 45, I genuinely cried for the first time in many years (while worshipping God on my piano).

I know it will take a while to fully heal, but now I feel like recovery is more possible. I’ve realized that God doesn’t give us these restrictions against sin just for no reason, there put there for our benefit, because he knows what’s best for us, and continuing on a sinful destructive path will only lead to death. I hope I can stick to this discipline and that these benefits continue. It has not been a smooth ride, some days are better than others, some are pretty terrible. Now I feel like I’m breaking free from not only the addiction to pmo, but pretty much every bad habit in my daily life.
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Awesome! But remember we are dead to sin and alive in Christ Romans 6:6-7! he did it all praise God

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40 days free, realized what held me back

Fabian7 Fapstronaut

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