WHY YOU RELAPSED?

It is great to have goals. It is honestly almost required. But is NEVER a good idea too plan your PMO into your goals. Plan to go as long as you can. Recognize milestone like 10, 20, 30 50, 100, years etc. Yes. It is ok to know you will have relapses and lapse throughout your recovery. What you do when they happen is what will determine your overall success. Plan for what to do for each type of trigger. Do you get excited when watching women on tv/movies? Cant control yourself? The don't watch tv or only watch tv around someone who knows you are going through this struggle so they can call you out when you are starting to act out.

INDENTIFY YOUR TRIGGERS

Can't stress this enough. So many times in the last two years I have told my wife that I was being good and trying. There were times where in the moment I truly believed. But realistically I fantasized about every girl I saw, thought about P on occasion, and even gave in everytime eventually until just a few months ago. So I cycled through a week maybe two feeling good but didn't need p in the literal definition. Sex was great because my wife loves it. Yes I was having more sex than during the first 13 years of my marriage but there was not intimacy. I didn't give her the same emotional I gave every other girl. I mean of you knew how bad my brain got a times I would take the term "blue squirl" to a whole another universe. Thinking about one after number like they were just options at a buffet line. The whole time my wife was throwing herself at me and I didn't notice because I would keep giving every week or two, sometimes less. But Why?

Not because I watched p specifically that was just the icing on the cake. My triggers started from everything else. You may not even realize you are being triggered until your mood changes all of sudden.

Now I am hyper vigilant but in a good way. I am proactive when I go.out to determine if their are women or situations that might trigger me. I analyze if I need to put myself into those situations or be around them. If I get triggered I try to learn from it so I can reduce how it impacts me moving forward.

So back to where I started goals are great, your goal should be be porn free as soon as possible. Your subgoals: identify triggers, eliminate opportunities to fail, create plans to succeed etc. Days between PMO are just milestone along the way.

Just my thoughts. I hope thus doesn't come off the wrong way and hope it helps. Because without help none of us will succeed. WE CAN NOT DO THIS ON OUR OWN.

I can't stress this enough so I will say it again.

WE CAN NOT DO THIS ON OUR OWN.

Ps. Yes I copied and pasted the second time

 

oh shit in hurry of writing i have not seen that you have planned pmo sessions gap
If you ask to me i had done the same thing recently and get nothing just try to live yourself take time and if you are criticizing yourself or making yourself always count your mistakes and weaknesses then just stop doing
Take at least 2 days break and do what makes you feel freedom from the guilt and fill yourself with positivity within these two days
Then just come back with more positivity and use the tips that i mentioned before that is taken from jim kwik podcasts-the brain coach of elon musk
And again sorry for the silly mistake

 

Great.

Not great that you relapsed but great you realized and based on your post you identified it is a problem.

Now it is time to do the work.

Let's put in terms of school. You fail a test. You have two options. Realistically you could say there are 8 million options of different variations but let's keep this simple.

Option 1: Do you let this one failure define you?

NO. NEVER.

OPTION 2: Get to work. Analyze the test? What did you do right? What did you do wrong? What can you do change to improve on what you did right? What can you do to change what you did wrong?

So now relate this to your situation. It is time to do the research.

• Analyze what happened
• What was the TRIGGER?
• Can you avoid it.
• Find a podcast, book or something else that can give you guidance. Personally I listen to a few different podcasts about P recovery specifically

Here is the most important part that I only learned recently.

Create a consequence.

It doesn't have to be anything crazy like I will divorce/break up with someone or even put myself into physc ward. You aren't crazy. You need help.

Take away coffee for a week a month whatever. It was soda for me. I have a fantasy two days ago just by looking at someone through group chat for work. Now I can't drink any soda for a week. For me this is crazy. I literally drink soda like healthy people drink water. Now everytime I goto reach for the soda that is next to work computer. I have to walk down stairs and make coffee, tea or drink water.

Here is the key you have to hold yourself accountability and do it. If you can't hold yourself accountability to something as simple as not drinking soda or what not you WILL NOT hold yourself accountable from being porn free.

To summarize:
Relapse?

Sucks but great learn from it. Use it as fuel to make your stronger and tell yourself I know what not to do next time.

Everyone fails, it is what you learn from it that will determine your success.

 

By the way sorry my grammar stinks at times I get carried away and forget to proofread

But good luck with reading my ramblings and good luck with your journey.

 

Good job.

Take a few minutes each day and think about the prior day, even good days. Write down a few notes of what you did. How did you sleep? How was wakeup? What activities did you do and for how long? Did you relapse/lapse? Did you steuggle? Etc.

This does two things. It let's you see any patterns that give both success and failure as well will allow you to see olif you are in cycle of habits. I am notoriously bad after day 3, then I act out then I am distant by day 7 I fight with my wife. Then I start day 1 in full "fix it mode as she calls."

So now I know that since today is day 4 since last fight. I have to be hyper vigilant about my thoughts and actions to start to break the cycle.

I resisted Journaling for so long but between this site and these daily analysis I find it soothing and gives me something to look forward to in all the struggle.

The daily analysis shouldn't be about what emotion you were feeling the previous day it should be about the facts that. The reason I do it at the beginning of the next day is to remind myself each morning what I am working towards and not let myself forget by getting into routine of not it. The mornings also allow you to feel like you started the day on a positive not regardless of the day prior by taking action towards your recovery.

 

speed up your breathing for at least 2min before sleep inhale with nose and exhale with mouth
Also you have to take deep breaths during this process just do it for 2min
It releases tension and anxiety
Also some people called this stress reduction exercise or the wim hof method
Hope this would be helpful

 

Nicely explained. Feeling exactly the same way. That's exactly what I went through.

 

Can anyone please answer this question , if porn is so bad and causing damage at several parts of the life of every consumer then why it's not banned yet?

 

Because neither laws nor the state are any measure of good. If you wanna have morals that are of any good you can't rely on the state or its system to tell you what's good or not. Maybe one day you'll figure out the state is an evil in itself, but that's for a longer debate I don't have the time for. Also: money. Not just for the producers, but tax money for the state. As long as there is no serious pressure to ban it, it's against their interests to do so because of the profit. And one last thing to note is that effectively banning internet content is basically impossible, the most you can do is make it harder to find by forcing it off into darknets or similar underground places. And especially with how erotic scenes are widespread in normal movies there would surely be people tempted to see more, and then getting Tor Browser and accessing an onion site is a piece of cake once somebody told you that's where you find it.

TL;DR: banning porn wouldn't solve that much and nobody has the incentive to do it

 

yes ,you are right that banning porn will not give a solution but i sometimes think that if they can't give the solution then at least they should stop giving problems.Giving free acess to pornography at any device or form can give a lot of depression to the youth of the country also to the children
When i was just at 10 i got trapped by this pmo my friends introduced me to this evil world of pmo the worst moment of my life after that today i have no friends at all and i am truly happy with this decision of not making friends

 

My point is they would have to stop normalizing sexualization of things and sexual content in general, because as long as it's available through other means banning of porn won't save anyone (just make the way to addiction a bit longer perhaps). That's not to mention how prevalent sexting is today, especially among teens... in the end I think it doesn't matter really, the technology is there to give you whatever imagery you want and when you're young, not that clever and horny, you know what that's gonna eventually be... that's why I think it's important to focus also on the positive side of the overcoming of addiction, which is better self-control, better understanding of one's emotions, of compulsions, escapism, emptiness of quick pleasures. It's useless to regret past actions, just make the best use of what you got and make sure you don't repeat them.

 

One last thing, there's so many things in today's world that fuck people up, no wonder numbers of mental illnesses are going up all the time... it's not just porn, it's social media, television, video games, most of contemporary "culture" in general... but you aren't gonna solve that by begging the people in power to stop hurting us. We have to take our lives back into our own hands, regain control over our minds, then we can get rid of it for ourselves without depending on them. That's the way to freedom. No bans will solve a fucked up world full of fucked up people but we don't have to be a part of that.

 

@walkingtree thanks for this eye opener actullay i had a relapse today so in frustration of that i think i have over reacted towards porn but still i hate myself that why i believe on the fucking friends at that time
By the way if you talk about social media this is designed for grabbing the minds of consumer make them addictive and whatever the influencers post in that platform becomes the fact or normal for the consumer nudity and self harm content are the best examples that's why i just hate zuckerberg who has ruined the life's of billions because he has designed the platforms in such way that you just keep getting a better and higher dose of dopamine rush every seconds same imply for gaming platforms also

 

Well ever you felt during watching pornography that it is making you bored now because i have realised that i am feeling bore while i seek porn during my recent relapses
It's like now it is not able to make me amaze any kind of genre
Is it a negative sign or positive sign
Please let me know

 

Lots of stuff today are made to mess with your mind, word is they do that with some sweets as well... there's apparently some scientific evidence that white sugar can have similar effects on the brain as cocaine in some people, so it would make sense. Also lots of manipulation in the media from all sides, etc. It all starts making a (somewhat perverse) sense once you realize we're just potential sources of money for them, so they exploit us as much as they can get away with without us noticing.

I had that when I was really deep into addiction, I couldn't last a day without porn, but at the same time it wasn't even very enjoyable anymore, sometimes I couldn't even get hard properly... I hear that's how people eventually end up with erectile dysfunction. So to answer your question, it's part of the process. Whether it's good or bad depends on your perspective.. I am quite happy that I went through that and now finally understand the emptiness and pointlessness of porn, but to an addict his drug becoming boring is surely the worst thing that could happen.

 

so what can be the reason that i relapse a lot of times in my journey of absistence means what should i ingnore
The previously mentioned points i had followed but then also i can't stop please tell me i need mentorship and nobody is there in the world to whom i can share about my problems please help

 

I have already shared what worked for me in my first post in this thread (it's like the 3rd post after OP). Besides that I feel it's worth stressing how important it is to change one's attitude to life - it's not just about stopping porn use, porn use is a symptom of an unhealthy approach to life. For me the changes were sort of unrelated to NoFap as they simply made sense to me: I no longer use any social media, I don't play video games, I try to avoid binge-watching TV, I spend time outside at least every other day when I have days off. In the beginning these won't save you, you're gonna need strong motivation and perhaps even some temporary replacement for quick pleasure to make it through (see the first post), but it helps in the long-term. Obviously the ones I listed work for me - don't force yourself into them if they don't align with your view of the world.

In general you need an approach to life that can satisfy you without you needing to run to porn, and to get there you need to find a way to stop sexualizing things and to seek for something deeper, more meaningful. It's also useful to remind yourself that porn won't help you: With porn you're literally just chasing pleasant feelings, but feelings are only temporary and sooner or later they go away, then after that you'll feel worse than before, sooner or later you're gonna feel bad anyway, so it's no solution, it actually makes it worse. This understanding is important in avoiding the illusion we get that porn will make us feel nice and "happy" - it's only half of the truth, the second half is you'll feel bad later (at least not better than before) and you'll lose lots of time.

Hope some of this helps, and don't forget that it takes some failures before you really understand the truth about porn, you're on good way since you said porn is no longer enjoyable for you, so try again and again, stay determined and you'll eventually figure out ways to overcome it. Good luck!