A different approach towards PIED

Here's something I've been thinking about for a while.

Generally speaking, don't you agree that this whole site promotes a one size fits all solution - stop porn and masturbating. Whatever issue you have, you're pointed towards the negatives of PMOing and how stopping that should solve them.

Now, I definitely agree that they are the root cause of the problem in most cases. But, I also do think it's very important for a person to sit down and pinpoint exactly what he was doing that was wrong that caused him to be in the state that he is. This is something that greatly differs between all of us. That's why you see people 2 weeks in, that say they're experiencing such improvement, and people that have been going for months without feeling anything too noticeable.

We're all different people, that's one thing. But also, we've all been affected in a different way. There's so many different scenarios that it's crucial to know exactly which category you fall in and what you have to do to get out of there. Here's some examples:

- Excessive porn use/masturbation. Here, obviously doing a reboot will give you immense progress. But a lot of people (myself included) have PIED and don't do too much porn/masturbation.

- Going too deep into porn, always looking for that next video that's even more shocking than the last one, may end up edging for hours, eventually ruining your brain's dopamine/reward system. Here, again, stopping porn is vital, but it' also super important to put in a lot of conscious work into rewiring your brain to enjoy real life scenarios and partners, instead of those bizarre videos that you're used to watching on your laptop. Without that, the reboot itself might not have enough impact.

- Bad masturbation practises like death grip etc. Here, imo, stopping masturbation might not necessarily be a good thing. If you just blindly follow what NoFap or YourBrainOnPorn suggest, you might end up very frustrated after some time, if you don't see any results. Now, for some people the reboot might bring their sensitivity back, but for many it doesn't work like that. It makes much more sense for me personally, to try to masturbate in a manner that's similar to real life sex and what your partner will do to you when you get to it. Replicating that, and teaching yourself to be turned on by that, and not your old way of jerking off, should solve your desensitisation problem.

I personally, just now realised I fall in the last category. After more than 2 months of hard mode, I see that I could have followed a more different approach. And that's why I'm making this thread - maybe others are going into this blindly without thinking about their specifics.

TLDR; There's different causes and different solutions for PIED. Make sure to build your plan to fix YOUR issue, because the reboot by itself doesn't magically fix everything.

Let me know if you agree/disagree, also it'd be great if people who have felt the same thing and when through it could share their experience.

 

Thanks, that feels empowering to know.

My current plan is to reach 90 days of hard mode and then I'll start working on proper masturbation practises. Considering it's both a physical and psychological problem, I'm sure that the 90 days of doing hard mode can only help. On one end, it's retraining your muscle memory, on the other - readjusting your thoughts to expect (and be aroused from) different experiences.