Rat Race

Takes way longer than 100 days to recover for many of us on here.

 

I believe our mindsets enslave us more than the actual addiction. We are overly hard on ourselves and expect perfection; we must ground ourselves in reality and keep realistic expectations if we are to succeed.

 

I journal even after 100 days because I like to keep a journal for myself.

 

Why is documenting the process weird? We're all on this journey together. There is not necessarily a one-size fits all solution so it's important for folks to document their process for a few reasons:

• It is cathartic. We are all anonymous here. Journals for some folks are like a personal diary, but one that others can read - because we want to know we aren't alone while not jeopardizing our own privacy.
• It's a learning opportunity. We can learn from our own mistakes, and others can learn from our successes. Why keep reinventing the wheel when there are success stories and mistakes out there we can learn from? Learning from each other is part of the human experience.
• If you find it "weird" - just don't read the posts? Nobody is forcing you to read other people's processes. If you don't care, then don't look. It's as simple as that.

I agree with your statement here. Masturbation is normal, and in some cases it can be healthy. But a lot of people masturbate in a very unhealthy way that does more harm than good, and part of undoing this learned behavior involves re-establishing a connection with our own sexual identity. I made a brief post about this replying to someone else here if anyone is curious:
https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?t...e-best-version-of-myself.353189/#post-3672184

 

I totally agree with this. And I hear Unica Semper Avis' logic as well. Everyone has their own path and we shouldn't put everyone's path in the same bucket. For some people I can imagine masturbation being triggering but I think the fact that M is triggering for some people is a problem. Whatever the root of that problem can be different for everyone, but to morp's point, which I also agree with, the solution shouldn't be to abolish masturbation forever because that is also unhealthy and totally disconnects us from our own sexuality.

I used to be someone who chronically masturbated all the time - a lot of the time just because I was bored. This is absolutely unhealthy and I was not in tune with my own body or sexuality at all when I was doing this, and often felt like an empty shell of myself afterwards. I completely agree with morp that we should at least be on the path towards recovery and beginning to feel good about our own sexuality before we should date, because unloading all that baggage onto a future partner is unfair for them. We are responsible for our own healing.

Getting to a place where you are comfortable masturbating WITHOUT porn or WITHOUT THOUGHTS of porn and doing it in MODERATION is completely normal, because it forces us to be more in tune with our bodies and mind.

Again I totally understand where y'all are coming from and you both are right. It's just dependent on wherever the person is in this journey to determine if this is okay or not. We shouldn't be trying to recover from a completely natural and normal thing to do. It's the addiction and unhealthy habits and coping behaviors that are the root of the problem, not the act of masturbation itself.

Remember: to each their own. This site often has a big stigma around masturbation for good reasons, because it's often tied to our addictions. Just like phones aren't inherently bad, they are actually very useful and can be used to improve our quality of life and health, but many of us use it for unhealthy reasons and negatively impact our life. Just remember that masturbation is not the culprit, it's a much deeper underlying issue and that masturbation is not inherently bad and there are proven cases where it can be beneficial to your health. However you choose get there or not is up to you.

 

It's not weird to journal anonymously, and continuing to abstain after 100+ days usually will not make things worse. Quitting M forever is actually an amazing thing to do, just incredibly hard. You can get the desired "M" sensations from a loving spouse, if you desire.

 

I do both because it helps my mental health and overall success in life.

 

Is this a psyop to get people to relapse or what

 

I don't think masturbation is an expression of health. Chimp in the state of nature never jerks off, only in captivity.

 

Both issue, there is a specific forum for masturbation that caused people harm, they never watched porn.