Are you ready to change?

FIND YOUR ROOT, HEAL IT, OVERCOME YOUR ADDICTION!

(I have posted this in another community, but I found too important to not post here, these are basics of everything that I try to explain to you. Enjoy!)

Everyone in the nofap/nopmo community is talking about dating girls, doing pickup, exposure therapy, rewiring, triggers, reframing, being busy, finding your purpose...

But almost EVERYONE forgets to heal the root of their addiction. And what you are doing is not wrong, but believe me, you will save 2,5 years of batteling this addiction by finding your root. And healing it. You see, you didn't get addicted just because you started fapping. You got addicted because you used porn to run away from something.

And this is not for everyone, only 99% of everyone here.

So here are 2 questions you need to ask yourself before reading the rest of this post:

► 1. Am I really read to give up my addiction?
► 2. Am I ready to dig deep inside myself? And cure myself?

If the answer to one of those is yes, good but not good enough. Do you really want to get rid of your addiction? If yes ask the question to yourself again. If not, go and do pickup and exposure therapy.

But if you are really ready to change and you answerd to both of the questions yes. Good, time break free of the prison made by yourself.

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YOUR FIRST STEPS TO FREEDOM.

1. Rethinking the willpower strategy (Theory):
Most think that quitting on willpower will sometime cure them. They are always relapsing, and saying to themselves "This is the fucking last time, I will never fap again." 30 days later: "Yes I broke my streak! Fuck yes, I'm doing better."

Awesome brother! But your strategy is not working, is it really awesome to get to day 60 after 2 years and then relapsing? There is something that isn't working right?

This is because you are quitting on willpower. If you read the book "Willpower - Francis Eppes" you will see that will power is not infinite, it is finite.

This means that if you had a hard day at school or work, and you used all your willpower to listen to your angry teacher of boss then you will have little willpower left to do the necessary things. An example of a hard thing: Quitting PORN ADDICTION!

So what you are doing is sitting in a sinking ship, and trying to get the water out with a bucket. But not fixing the hole where the water comes trough. You will be able to survive, but once you get tired your ship will sink. SHARKS WILL EAT YOU!! DEAD! RELAPSED. Restarting your counter, game over, back to square one.

What do you need to do? Fix the hole, done. Will this be easy? No. This will take some hard work and maybe a few months of healing. But the result will be satisfying. You will have almost no fight with porn addiction. (Or whatever your addiction was) This will be curing yourself.

2. Understanding the negative blief (Theory):
You have a negative belief (a hole inside yourself) about yourself, and you need your addiction to get rid of the feeling. But the thing is, everytime you use the substance to get rid of your negative feeling it will get worse. The negative belief will become stronger.

For exmaple: If you go to a party and you need alcohol to get feel confident then you say unconciously to yourself "I'm not confident, I'm a loser." and everytime you will increase that feeling.

If do this with porn for example and you are for example religious then every time you fap you will say "I'm a sinner, I'm bad." which will increase that feeling of the negative belief of being bad.

This negative belief is created by yourself at the age of 1-1,5. This is because of the your parents rejected you, they may have said "You are a bad boy!" I know, you may love your parents and they are the best people in the world. But these rejections will create a negative belief / identity.

If they said "You are a bad boy." then you may created the belief for yourself "I'm good when, I'm nice and don't ask for attention." this may cause you to become the quiet nice guy.
At this point may start to become angry at your parents. You may say "They fucking got me this addiction!!!"

Every parent is this way, even the nicest parents, you will always create a negative belief. Even the Buddha who was a prince and got everything was still not happy.

3. Identity to cover up your negative belief (Theory):
In life you create your identity to cover up your negative belief. If they said at school that you were dumb then you may have become the guy who loves reading books and knowing everyone. Like I did with self - development books.

If you have a negative belief that you are weak then you may become the Gym addict to cover this up.

Everytime you use the substance there will get a little hole inside your identity and you will try to fix it.

It is also possible that you have different negative beliefs. But don't worry you are able to heal this and see through this illussion.

4. Finding your negative belief (practical):
This may be the hardest part because you will have to do some think work and healing.

On this forum when someone relapsed I always ask the following questions, and these questions will bring you closer to your negative belief. It is better to ask them before you are about to relapse:

4.1: What are you running away from?
4.2: How did you feel before you relapsed?
4.3: What caused you to want to fap?
4.4: What are you covering up with fapping?
4:5: What are you rejecting in yourself?
4:6: What do your parents say when then reject(ed) you?
4:7: What do preceive as negative about yourself?

If you really don't know what you negative belief is, here is cheat sheet, write is down and scratch what doesn't fit you:

"I'm stupid" - "I'm Weak" - "I'm Bad" - "I'm Worthless" - "I'm not good enough" - "I don't belong here" - "I'm not allowed to be here." - "I'm a failure" - "I'm selfish" - "I'm mediocre" - "I'm cowardly" - "I'm lazy" - "I'm weird" - "I'm ugly" - "I'm limp" - "I'm a loser"

This is just a little cheat sheet. I had the negative beliefs:
"I'm weird, weak, stupid, selfish, a failure."

5. Seeing the illusion of your negative belief (Theory + exercise):

The thing about your negative belief is that is just a BIG illusion. If you really were selfish then this would be your normal state. Nothing to change about that, because it would be your born state, the only thing you would be able to do is accept it.

To realize this there is the mirror exercise:

Say your negative belief to yourself out loud in the mirror. This not to strengthen your negative belief but just to see the illussion. Brother don't just sit here, you found your negative belief, go and say it in the mirror.

Important is that you don't say it with judgement, or bad feelings. Just very subjective, and without any feeling. Something strange will happen when you do it. Do it now!

Hey, you are still sitting for your computer do it now.

6. Attempt or decision? (Theory + Practical)

An attempt is never the end of addiction. It is when you still see benefits of your addiction. It is a trick to not have to quit your addiction. Because if you are attempting to stop you get the feeling that you are trying to quit and working on yourself. But at the same time you are still able to get the "benefits" of the substance.

It is a win-win, or not?

You lose more then you win, you will lose the time that you need for your substance, you will strengthen you negative belief, you will always feel like a prisoner.

LInking pain to addiction and pleasure to getting free:

6.1: Linking pain to the subtance:
You have to link pain to your addiction, by writing all the negative concequences of your addiction down. By making concequences for yourself. And seeing that your "benefits" are not more than illusion. It is like the troyan horse. You let it inside and think it is a gift from the gods, but once you let it inside, it will kill you.

(You can also find your own ways for this)

6.2: Linking pleasure to being clean:

Reward yourself for your small victories:
Every day you get clean, reward yourself, with positive things. Like being allowed to watch a movie. Or just saying to yourself "Good job (your name)"

7. You are not your thoughts (theory):

You have to learn to see that you are more than your thoughts. Your thoughts may say ''I'm a loser" but this is not you that says it, but your inner critic (more on that in the next point)

You can do this by mediation or taking control of your inner critic. Meditation, this topic you will find online. The inner critic is for the next point.

8. Dealing with the inner critic (theory + exercise)

The Pathological critic (Decribed by psychologist Eugene Sagan)

What is it?

It is the negative inner voice that attacks and judges you. Everyone has a critical inner voice. People with low self-esteem have a more and vicious and vocal critic.

What does the PC do?

The critic blames you for the things that go wrong. The critic compares you to others – to their achievements and abilities. The critic sets impossible standards of perfection and then beats you up for the smallest mistake. The critic keeps and album of your failures, but never reminds you of your strengths or accomplishments.

The critic tells you to be the best – and if you’re not the best, you’re nothing. The critic reads your friends’ minds and convinces you that they are bored, turned off, disappointed or disgusted by you. The critic exaggerates your weaknesses by insisting that you ”always say stupid things”.

The PC is busy undermining yourself-worth every day of your life.

It's origin:

The critic is born during your earliest experience of socialization by your parents. All through childhood your parents are teaching you which behaviours are acceptable, which are dangerous, which are morally wrong.

A child knows that his or her parents are the source of all physical and emotional nourishment. If he or she were to be rejected, cast out by the family, he or she would die. So the parental approval is a matter of life and death to a child.

This experience is also where the critic gets his start, feeding on these early “not-OK” feelings.

Five main factors that determine the strength of your early no-OK feelings:
i. The degree to which issues of taste, personal needs, safety, or good judgment were mislabelled as moral imperatives.

ii. The degree to which parents failed to differentiate between behaviour and identity.

iii. The frequency of forbidding gestures

iv. The consistency of the forbidden gestures.

v. The frequency with which forbidden gestures were tied to parental anger or withdrawal.

Why you listen to him:

You listen to the critic because it is very rewarding to do so, incredible as it seems, the critic helps you to meet certain basic needs, and listening to the critic can be reinforcing.

Everyone needs to feel:
a. Secure and unafraid.
b. Effective and competent in the world.
c. Accepted by parents an significant others.
d. A sense of worth and OK-ness in most situations.

If you have adequate self-esteem, you keep yourself secure by confronting or eliminating things that frighten you. People with low self-esteem of rely on the critic to help them cope with feelings of anxiety, helplessness, rejection, and inadequacy. Paradoxically the critic is beating you up, he is also making you feel better.

That is why it is so hard to get rid of the critic. He can play a crucial role in making you more safe and comfortable in the world. Unfortunately, the price you pay, for the critic’s support is very high and further undermines your sense of worth.

I will not go too deep into this topic otherwise this post will get too long. I still need to cover some other stuff. So if you want to get deeper into this I recommend the following books:

"Hal Stone - Inner Critic"
"Self-Esteem - Matthew McKay"

How to deal with your inner cirtic, how to take control again?

You take control by listening to the inner critic and understanding him. He has a good intent but helps you in a bad way. You see the inner critic wants to help you, it want to you to achieve goals and become the person you desire most.

You can do this by having an inner critic journal; talking to him, yes this sounds strange. But for exmaple when the inner critic says you have to get to the gym or run 10 km instead of 5. He says this to help you. Or tries to read other persons: for exmaple" She is bored say something cool"

He will always give you new goals, will say that you are not good enough unless you do the things he says.

What you have to do is this:

When he says the other person is bored you can say "Thank you for helping me coping with this uncertain situation. But I can do it myself, thank you anyway."

It is important that you treat him with love, because if you would become angry or start fighting with the voice then he becomes stronger. Treat him with love and he will become a coach instead of bully.

9. Stop fighting & start accepting (theory):

This one is key, when we feel sad or unhappy we always try to get rid of the feeling as fast as possible. We try to fight against it. We repress it. But what we have to do is not surrendering nor fighting. Accepting.

We do this by allowing the emotion to be and letting it pass on it's own time. Do you feel worthless at the moment? No worries, just let it be and it will pass on it's own time.

If you supress however it will start to lead a life in the shadows (as carl jung said) of yourself. It will always be there.

You have to make it concious and let it heal.

10. Healing (theory + exercise):

I got to be honest I'm still studying this subject more, because there are so many ways to heal yourself. And I'm not shure what works best yet.

What I would suggest is starting with meditation this will help you become concious of the feelings and will help you to bring repressed feeling to your surface.

What also works is digging in your past, and seeing where your moments where that changed your life. Once you will see these things, it is like light that shines on darkness. You will see a lot of monsters. But don't worry, the light will heal and transform them.

You just got to accept like them in point 9. And let the feelings pass.

I had too this 1 week ago. A girl-friend of mine found something reocurring in my personal growth notebook. And it helped me see a lot anger and sadness that was still stored inside myself.

I did spend that day crying because all of the sad emotions. But after that passed I felt a lot lighter. It is important that when you let go of all the barries of your repressed emotions that you let them come and go. Don't see youself as weak because of these.

11. Stop covering up (theory):

We cover up our negative belief by doing all sorts of things. I did it with reading books, you can do it by going to the gym. You see all of these things are great, but if you do these out of hurt instead of joy then you will strengthen your negative belief.

What I would suggets is trying to see what you are holding on to be secure.

Btw it is not bad to do those things, but don't do them because of fear.

I also see a lot of people saying that relatonships and sex has helped them. But you just replaced your addiction with another addiction. I don't want to say that you shouldn't have both. But remember you have to heal yourself before your cover it up. Relationships can help you feel less worthless, feel less alone.

And if you go into a relationship incomplet of broken it will be a bad relationship.

12. The relationship with yourself:
This will be the last point, because this post is fucking huggeee!

It is important that your relationship with yourself is good. Don't be hard on yourself, always be kind and understanding of your needs. You see love makes more change on the long term than hate. Love yourself and do things because you love them not because you are afraid that you will never get .... (whatever you want)

Give yourself the space for your emotions and expressing them.
Give yourself to space to be yourself. Or who you want to be.
Give yourself the space to communicate yourslef authenticly.

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The END

There is a lot more that I would love to cover, everything from covering up to values and belief and meditation. But these will be the workpoints where I will leave you. If you want to know more just feel free to send me a message.

Keep up the good work everyone!

 

Awesome brother! See you at day 70 soon

 

Awesome brother! Let me know if anything helped.

 

One thing that I learnt from your post is that, our addiction is because of a root cause. After much thought, I think my root cause is a very low self esteem. I'll work on that and hopefully I'll be free. Thank you

 

There is a reason for your low self-esteem. Figure out the root of this, and then you will have the root of your addiction.

Good luck brother

 

"Because most of the time It won't feel right, even when we want to do it. "
Very true, I have the same experience.

What I would suggest however is not trying to overwrite them, just accepting them and doing what your intuïtion says. Nice observation Vibe!

 

Thanks for the input I will check those books out.
You too S&L may growth come onto your path!

 

I love your dedication!
Good luck brother!

 

Awesome brother!

 

Thank you Phoenix! Congrats on your 120 days!