I’m almost 29. My first exposure to porn was when I was 8 years old. The internet had just come out, and I kept returning to the same websites. It was both exciting and confusing as a little boy seeing images like that. It became a full-blown problem in high school. I kept telling myself “Tomorrow, I’ll quit”. Then it was “Next year, I’ll quit”. Then, “After college, I’ll quit.” Finally, with lots of help and support, I’ve made it to one year porn-free.
- Talking to people about porn addiction. This took me 14 years to muster up the courage to do. I was terrified of what people would think of me if I admitted my problem. You don’t have to wait that long. For me, my girlfriend, my therapist, my close friends, and especially starting out, 1-on-1 chats in NoFap were extremely helpful. Having an accountability buddy on this website was very helpful. Stick to people who will validate how difficult this is, who won’t shame you, and who genuinely support and care about you even if you slip up.
- Therapy. Can’t say enough about this. Find a therapist who is genuinely interested in helping you understand yourself. I didn’t focus on porn addiction in my therapy, as we both understood it as resulting from something much larger. But therapy was instrumental in helping me quit.
- Related to #2: Understanding that PMO is secondary to something much larger. This doesn’t mean that you have to figure out what that something is in order to quit, but recognizing that it’s a sign that something is “off” was helpful for me. For me, it was my sense of self – which resulted in my very unhealthy and longstanding reflex to constantly compare myself with others, which fed into many many other problems. I still do this and I’m still working on this, it is all a work in progress.
- Understanding that all urges are secondary to strong emotions. This can be unconscious and takes a lot of practice to catch. It is usually anxiety that comes up. For me, it might be writing a paper, and I couldn’t come up with a word, so I’d turn over to PMO. We all know this process happens so quickly. Slowing it down to say “OK, I have this urge, which means I must be feeling something right now” is helpful. Understanding that all emotions will subside if you give them space and time. Because urges are emotions, turning to porn is emotion-regulation. For me, even Googling images was emotion regulation, so that’s been the focus for my streak – no googling, no seeking out any suggestive content.
- Cleaning house. This means sticking to Safe Search on all search engines, removing Incognito Mode in Chrome, unsubscribing from all risky or even somewhat-risky subreddits and internet content. My goal was to not even type in anything that would be suggestive on Google. If I did, I’d reset my streak.
- Find healthier habits and things to get into. For me, I discovered cooking and exercising. I was forced to cook and not eat out because I moved to an expensive city. Cooking is actually cheaper than ordering take-out and much healthier.
I hope this is helpful to some of you. Honestly, just being on this website is a step in the right direction. I wish you the best on this journey.
by sagaly90
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