Finding the pain

Dear brothers,

I haven't posted here in a long time. I've already been through it all and wanted to come back to this forum to share some thoughts and things that I've learnt in the past years.

This post is all about the pain behind addiction and it being the source of it all. For those that are unfamiliar with the literature behind addiction, it basically states the following:

Addiction is very often a soothing reaction to a certain (emotional) pain or trauma. The addiction is meant as an escape and means of numbing the pain behind whatever (emotional) trauma is going on inside you.

This means that a lot of times the specific substance, method or object of addiction (i.e. drug substances, chemical substances, activity based like PMO) is not necessarily something the addict really enjoys or wants, but needs to numb the pain.

This is why you often hear people talking about wanting to quit and sometimes even hating their addiction (like we PMO-addicts do). These people already understand that their addiction is not out of true desire, but these people often don't yet realise that the addiction exists for a good reason.

The addiction is funnily enouhg trying to save you. And this is where things become really hard and tough. Because the brain is trying to protect you and itself, but it has a really hard time breaking habits and thus would rather keep to the things it knows, than to break homeostasis and recover.

This, also combined with the harshness and pain of withdrawals, make it so that addiction will become a co-dependency.

So the question becomes: why are you addicted?
I myself become truly addicted to PMO because I was afraid that I could not get a girlfriend on my own and the thought of not being good enough led me to numbing that emotional pain and insecurity with PMO addiction.

So what is your pain and how is it holding you back?

 

I am very impressed. I had the exact same fear and emotional pain that became the true reason for my addiction in the past. I learnt very early on that PMO addiction uses these thoughts to hook us. It makes us believe that PMO can fill that void, but once you break free from PMO, you will find peace.

Doing NoFap does not guarantee a girlfriend, but I've found that doing NoFap is the single best thing to increase your odds tremendously as it is the biggest positive catalyst I've ever experienced in my whole life.

 

Thank you for the kind words

 

Sounds unfortunate man. It really is fascinating and also sad to think that our childhood can mess with us so badly and makes it so that we need many hours doing hard work to undo the trauma

 

I am happy that you realized all of this. Many people walk around with pain in their hearts without knowing where it comes from