Hey Fallior, I'm pasting a passage about mindfulness meditation from my journal. I hope you find it helpful. Cheers! Mindfulness Different wise people in different times had an insight. Every thought is associated with an emotion. Every emotion is itself associated with a complex of sensations in the body. So, here's how this translates into your everyday experience. You feel a sensation or complex of sensations in your body. If you're someone who isn't alert when such a thing happens, an emotion immediately shows along with the sensations in your body. The emotion is linked through the history of your thought patterns to some thoughts, and they enter your mind. So, in sequence: 1. Sensations enter your body 2. Emotion enters your body and mind 3. Thoughts enter your mind All of this happens rapidly for someone who hasn't practiced being alert for such a sequence of events, and very often these three events appear to be one large event of the sensation-emotion-thought just flooding you, and your reaction to it. When the Buddha had this insight in his own life, he developed a method called Vipassana. Here, you simply sit and witness the sensation in the body as it arises. If the attendant emotion arises, you witness that too. If thought arises, you witness that too. The key though is simply witnessing these events without participating in them. I find this one technique particularly helpful, and when I refer to mindfulness, I mean simply being an alert witness of the sensations, emotions and thoughts in your body-mind as they show up. As you practice this, you will learn to very soon play witness to the bodily sensation arising even before the associated emotion and thought have a chance to arise. In PMO addiction and in dealing with anger this is very, very helpful. The sensation to PMO arises in the body as a spread out sensation, due to different triggers. Pay attention to how it feels in your body to want to PMO. Just be still and alert as the sensation floods your entire body. If emotions flood your body and mind, simply be aware of them. If thoughts show up in your mind, simply be aware of them. Just one session of doing this, and the hold that this sensation of wanting to PMO has on you will be greatly attenuated. The same holds for anger flooding your body and then consuming your mind. Witness it early on, and you'll find it doesn't arise as much later.
1. do sports (and long walks) 2. find a porn-substitute (learn guitar, learn a language, make pottery, skydiving...) 3. do meditation (learn breathing)
Hey that was indeed a phenomenal thread. I enjoyed reading it. Thanks everyone for his contribution! For me having a vision and a motivation is very important. When I think there is no reward if I train my abstinence I relapse easily. But if I stay focused remembering how important and good it is for my character to learn discipline it motivates me. It is a challenging adventure and I love adventures... Also having friendship and accountability, friends who remind you and ask you about your progress. That is helpful. And finally for me Jesus Christ is a motivation. I find it just an insult to the divinity if I treat myself in such an unworthy way. I am supposed to behave as a child of a king and not to eat trash from the rubbish dump.
http://www.yourbrainrebalanced.com/index.php?topic=15558.0 Abstinence is NOT Recovery What people usually try to do is go as many days clean as they can. That's all they do. That's all their goal. They achieve a certain amount of days, then for whatever reason they relapse, so they start over and repeat. That is abstaining. That is not recovering. It is extremely common for people to achieve a certain milestone, such as 30, 90, or 100 days, relapse a few days later, and then find themselves unable to get momentum again. They go back to the beginning and they feel like they lost all their progress from their run. There is a constant frustration for lack of progress. People are feeling overwhelmed and discouraged, trying the same thing over and over again without success. This is because very few are addressing the real roots of their problems. Very few. Everyone is focused on how many days they have managed and if their symptoms are either present or gone. They judge their progress by measuring dick hardness, spontaneous erections and morning woods. They are "trying to quit porn" so that they can "get rid of their ED". So they abstain for as long as they can, hoping that this can cure their symptoms. Completely wrong approach. If they don't see ED improvements, they get discouraged. If they see ED improvements, then maybe a porn session or two won't hurt, right? If there is no woman around, they justify watching a couple of times. After all, they are not having sex anytime soon, so whats the point? They delay dating until their ED is cured or they have managed to go 100 days. But they never achieve this in the first place precisely because of this incorrect mentality. The same applies to other symptoms such as social anxiety, energy levels, motivation, etc. They try to quit porn, so that the symptoms can go away, and so they can finally live life. People are focusing on the wrong things. They are not changing the way they think. They are not changing the way they live. They are not changing the way they view sex and women. They are just trying not to masturbate, while everything else remains the same. That, my friends, is abstinence, not recovery.
If you are going to criticise what most people are doing as "Completely wrong approach", it be better to set out a more effective approach (in paragraphs please).
That is why I provided that link, I'm not the one who wrote that, but he explained exactly what to do instead. It's a bit of a long approach to it, but eventually it should help by the looks of it. The link I'm referring to is here: http://www.yourbrainrebalanced.com/index.php?topic=15558.0 It for sure explains why I started and what I need to do to stop my addiction.
