90 days to 2017!

Hey Jodo Kus,
No need to feel any guilt for letting anybody down, and especially towards yourself. It's by no means an easy thing. Be absolutely proud of your intentions to stop and for trying to hold on.

Time to pick up the ball from the ground and serve again.

 

A pity that it can't be the 1th day of 2017 for me anymore. But then I can just forget about porn and reboot on Newyears Eve and continue my 90-day-streak in the New Year.
Anyways, it's still one day at a time for me, as I said before. It's all good. Thanks for your support!

 

Arfff... Don't feel guilty @Jodo Kus that would be the worst. Try just to understand what happened and why you relapsed. don't judge yourself.

 

You're right @StraightEdge. What happened was that I got used to disable my porn blocker at various situations. Plus I didn't care well of myself, I used to stay in the living room after my gf went to sleep (on the weekend) without something productive to do. Now I will change my patterns, I will go to bed earlier and I will give away the password of my porn blocker.

When I manage to stay clean at least for 2 weeks this time I will celebrate it.

A good and sustaining reboot to everyone!

 

Today I decided to join this challenge, for 75 days untill 1 januari 2017! I am new here (just opened an intriduction topic). I will succeed!!

 

I hope you do mate!

 

This is exactly what I need to hear at this point in my life. Thank you for this great post.

I too am very judgmental toward others and, as part of this, judgmental toward myself also. That attitude comes from the nature of my work, which sets illusory and unrealistic expectations for everyone. The academic world is viciously critical. Research and theories are criticized by default and are rejected offhand without further consideration. When the professor grades exams and papers, his objective is to find things wrong with them and to deduct points. There always are wrong answers, but I still feel cruel when giving scores and grades. I fear that the students are, in turn, judging me as well. Days before every lecture, my anxiety level is frequently high. Two hundred students in my one lecture will be watching me, and one hundred and thirteen in my other one may see that I don't really know my subject matter and judge me a fraud. This will be exposed on my teaching evaluations at the end of the semester and on ratemyprofessors.com for all the world to see. My anxiety is caused by knowing that I am not truly an expert in my field, and I turn all of the judgement of the academic world against myself. Even what I say in casual conversations may not sound intelligent enough; I may seem dumb. People will then walk away neither respecting nor liking me. I also am a kind of perfectionist, and when my performance is so far from perfect, there is additional reason for me to judge myself. This feeling of inadequacy heightens my anxiety and deepens my depression. My instinct is often to quit and run away, but after reading your post several times, I can see a better way out.

I do not know for sure how students see me, or what colleagues think of me. The condemning judgment comes from me myself. I suspect colleagues are even bigger frauds who don't deserve their success, and that is only another expression of how I judge myself. (It is also a way of venting my frustrations over real failures through resentment.) The judgment we direct outward only gets turned inward. This is a formula for paranoia and anxiety. Most of the time, I would guess, other people don't think anything about us, and we only assume others are criticizing us as much as we are constantly damning ourselves. Students are probably too distracted by their cell phones and parties to critique this one professor, and colleagues are too busy with their own stuff. You had discovered such truths when you wrote, "I care too much of what others think of me simply because I'm usually the one judging others actions or my actions." Students and others may certainly see my deficiencies. Their criticisms, if any, feel harsh because my judgments of others are even harsher, and I assume they are just as vicious as I am. Only my self-criticism, however, allows others' unfavorable judgments, whether real or imagined, to negatively affect me. What you are showing is that judgment and its consequences are a vicious cycle. That cycle, as you've discovered, will be broken when we stop judging ourselves and stop judging others as well. The end begins with me. We are only vulnerable to criticism when we are already criticizing ourselves. When we stop judging ourselves, they no longer have a license to judge us, and when they do judge, they will have no power to affect us. The only evaluation of my daily performance that need truly count is my own, and that can be a positive one. This is a truth for all of life.

Many guys, including myself, have relapsed over and over again, and there are many expressions of shame for disappointing fellow fapstronauts on these forums. This only leads to despair and hopelessness with no reason not to indulge in anything. All that matters is each person's awareness of his own struggle and whatever progress, however halting, he is making on his journey. That is the only "judgment" that is in order. Not judging self or others allows for a higher level of wellness which will support success in this struggle with PMO. There is nothing at all noble or even justifiable about pornography. Pornography is pollution, and only the person with no self-esteem will subject himself to its degradation. The self-esteem needed to stay high above the debasement of pornography is eroded when we judge and experience the negative feedback of our judgments. Anxiety suffered in judgments of ourselves and others is tormenting and dangerous. One of my last PMO sessions in September was triggered by what I felt was a day of substandard performance in class. I felt inadequate, and I berated myself for being not-good-enough. Pornography was a readily available escape for several hours that evening and a relief from my self-criticism. Addressing the root of the problem would eliminate judgments in all directions and, in the end, prevent anxiety at the start. There will be no need for easy escape.

Your post is profound, and I'm writing this to unpack it and think through it more thoroughly. I see your insight as a path to freedom, peace, and ease in life.

 

Hey All!

Relapsed. A conversation with my ex-fiance put me in an emotionally vulnerable place. So I relapsed, but without resorting to my old habits (no porn).

I am starting to break the pattern. It's still a win. Brushing it off and starting again.

Come at me with all you got!

 

It is great that you can see progress in even this setback. Porn is an escape from this world; that is why I've used it. Porn is a drug which dulls anxiety and pain. After my worst days, I'd use it to get out of all my disappointment and frustration, even though I wasn't having any natural urges. You must have suffered a lot of pain in that conversation with your ex-. A woman to whom you've been attached has that ability to affect you, even after the relationship ended. There will always be jealousy and other feelings about that person. If someone doesn't still have those emotions after a break, he may not have cared all that much for his ex- when he was with her. Your vulnerability is understandable, and what you did to deal with that is understandable too. Nonetheless, you didn't resort to the high-octane narcotic of porn. You were strong enough to not need it. That was the strength you built up over your time here in NoFap. Just keep building on this.

 

Just checking in.

 

Thank you. It hasn't been easy in the last week. Indeed my ex has a insane ability to affect me and it is because I still very deeply care. To deal with such built emotion I am about start a Nofap journal. I still haven't resorted to high octane porn but have had to deal with a tremendous amount of pain in the last days. Thank you so much for caring. It really make a difference for me. Thank you.

 

Just checking in again, in a bit of a trigger situation atm opportunity wise and just coming here to be reminded by myself and other it's not what i want to do. @Persevere, I'm sorry your in a painful situation atm and im impressed that you sound like your learning to deal and grieve it rather than push it away.

 

Many guys here have more days by far, but I still must count my 31st day PMO-free as a major milestone.

This is the longest I've gone in over 20 years, and that is all because of NoFap and the community here.

Thirty days was my longest success streak since my weak, uninformed, and solitary Christmas commitment last year.

The month of May was when I reached 30 days and relapsed again, and I am not going to look at my personal record to see how long the binge lasted.

I deceived myself thinking 30 days was long enough.

It was like I was rewarding myself with the same awful thing I had been successfully trying to avoid.

Reading and posting on NoFap is keeping me focused on my goal of 98 days for a Jan. 1, 2017 full reboot.

Being deceptively satisfied with this small 31 day success and falling back into PMO is a temptation.

Yesterday on Day 31, many triggers hit me.

I shouldn't have told a bad joke about Bill Clinton, and I needed to Google "fel__io" because I couldn't spell it for a journal entry.

That would have only led to a dangerous place; flipping the spelling results to an image search would have been too easy.

I am planning to write a post addressing the issue of hiring escorts, which is a bad idea in my opinion.

Thinking about what I would write there allowed my mind to wander in bad directions.

I will not indulge myself by recalling some of the bodies I saw around the university today.

Then, last evening, images of my favorite porn star flashed in my mind.

In spite of all that, I turned at night to NoFap, and this gave me psychological release and freedom.

The urges get stronger with time, but so do the rewards. I feel so much better after even this short time, and I look forward to greater superpowers.

Ninety-eight days on Jan. 1 still seems like forever away. I've already made it through 31, which has seemed like forever.

@maske counts 67 days until Jan. 1. That is really not a long time.

If I feel this good now, I can't imagine how great everything will be on Jan. 1.

I must complete the remaining days of this reboot just as I've gone through these first ones.

There is now too much time behind me to lose.

Thanks for reading this little pep talk to myself, and I hope you all rally with me for the rest of this year.

 

Congratulations on that achievement. Even though you reached 31 days, it seems like forever as I can relate as when I reached 31 days I felt it was such a long time.

Well keep up the good work. For me I now 131 days free of PMO. It not been easy but it is so worth it. At times I feel tempted but a few minutes of pleasure stuffs up everything and not worth it.

 

Well done so far and thank you for creating this thread

Only 67 days to go and for me it is 131 days free of PMO. If I keep it up, by Jan 1 I will be 198 days free of PMO.

Let us all keep the rest of the year free of PMO.

 

@maske set a great goal for us with this thread.

The possibility of 98 days for the remainder of the year inspired me.

Thirty-one days was just slightly longer than my best streak this year, before NoFap.

I became overconfident in my small success, lost sight of my goal, and wasn't vigilant.

My counter tells the story.

That first relapse Wednesday made me think there was no reason not to do it again.

There was nothing left to lose; I didn't have days anymore.

I am very discouraged. I dread the first dull, grinding days and weeks of a restart.

Only 64 days remain in 2016. My grand 98 day reboot is now impossible for 2016.

When I do reach Jan. 1 with success, the sixty-four days will have been my longest streak ever.

Still, I will remember how I twice failed this challenge, and the goal will not be something of which to be so proud.

For a while now, I'll be hanging out in the "Relapse" section.

 

checking in after resetting, when I think I'm far enough away I slip, I need to keep vigilant.
Hope you are all doing well.