Sexual images

There is nothing strange about this at all. I imagine most of us suffered with this during our first attempts at going PMO. I cannot speak for you of course, but it is highly likely that once you are without PMO in your life for a substantial time, that such occurrences will become less frequent as the connections between PM and your pleasure centre weaken.

Stopping the thoughts is not something that can be done intentionally. Thoughts are thoughts, they will surface whenever they do and there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop that thought from entering your mind in the first place. However, what you choose to do with that thought is within your power and this can either help or hinder your recovery.

Maybe this will help:

- try picturing a big red cross over any vivid images which come into your mind and let the image fade away
- try not to become angry, upset, or to associate any particular emotion with the images (positive or negative). If you do associate emotion to the thoughts, your resistance to or desire for that emotion will become fuel for such thoughts
- the best thing you can do is to accept that the thoughts are here for now, that they are a sign that you are suffering from a problem, but that they do not control you. Let them go without interacting with them and they will have less power each time.
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Good luck friend! This journey will never cease being difficult and new challenges will always present themselves; you must simply remember why you are doing this and the dark places from which you began this journey.

 

No doubt. Remember, though, that your brain doesn't really know what "porn" is. Our brains didn't evolve to have this level of stimulus available to us so easily and in such great quantity, so it is just trying to capitalise on what it has come to associate with "reproduction". This is why it can feel so scarily intense sometimes; ultimately, it is our desire to reproduce that feeds the cycle. The longer you go without associating P with M and O, the less your brain will crave P.

Keep up the amazing work.