Made it to 90 days! When I started this journey, I did not know if I would be able to no longer use PMO as my emotional outlet to deal with my anxiety, fears, and overall suck in life.
Looking back at my earlier journal entries, I was really surprised about the physical withdrawal of stopping PMO cold turkey. The headaches, low energy and inability to sleep the first two weeks of my reboot was the most challenging part since PMO has been my go-to “drug” to relieve my pain (physical or emotional) for the most of my life. After getting through the physical withdrawal, it became a mental and emotional battle.
I believe what has helped get to this stage in my porn addiction recovery is the following:
- Joining a men’s group to be able to open up and be transparent to other men about my porn addiction as well as other challenges in my day-to-day life. Being a porn addict, there is a lot of shame and guilt that you hide from others. This forum was my initial step in revealing myself and being open about my porn addiction and feeling accepted. It was great to be able to move forward and be able to talk about it in person and also feel the same acceptance. I felt a heavy weight was lifted off of me from carrying this deep dark secret of mine and not be judged. Although I was very nervous about it, I believe talking about my porn addiction openly with safe people has really helped reduce my anxiety (which I believe is a root cause for where my addiction began).
- Focusing on meditation and other self-soothing techniques has greatly helped me use more productive, healthy ways of dealing with anxiety and daily challenges than turning to PMO to avoid my problems and to null my emotional pain. I’ve meditating at least 30 minutes a day. Also, every time I got the urge to PMO, I would stop, breath, focus on just observing my thoughts and emotions but not acting on my impulse.
- Getting back on a rigorous physical fitness program has really helped with redirecting my attention and rechanneling any urge to PMO. When meditation and deep breathing doesn’t work (which does happen for me from time to time) and want to PMO to deal with my anxiety and emotions, I do some sort of exercise (push ups, hitting the punching bag, going out for a walk/run).
- Spending more time with family, friends, and being out in public rather than staying isolated at home on a computer has also helped me keep my PMO urges in check. With COVID restrictions starting to ease up in my area, I’ve been meeting up with people to do outdoor activities like golfing or shooting guns at the gun range.
Along with these things, my biggest takeaway from this reboot is really developing the ability to become a non-judgmental observer of your thoughts and emotions – which is a really hard thing to do as an addict. I found meditation really helps develop this ability to pause when you experiencing an emotion or thought that triggers your inclination to PMO. Willpower is needed here but is only available in limited quantities. This is where getting involved in activities like working out, spending time with people or throwing yourself into work or hobby so you have no time to PMO.
More importantly I believe opening up and talking with safe people or forums like NoFap where you feel you won’t be judged and get motivation from others taking the same reboot journey.
Now that I have made it to 90 days, my goal is to continue no PMO for another 90 days and make it to 180 days. Some things I will focusing on:
- Continued work on porn alternatives – Along with continued vigilance on hardcore/softcore porn viewing, I did catch myself unconsciously clicking on female celebrity nude sites (like Mr. Skin) and Wikifeet (still have a foot fetish) when I see someone on TV or movies I am attracted to. I was able to catch myself and change modes every time before I had a full relapse. Still it appears to be hardwired in my brain and it is something I want to have more consciousness and control over.
- Replacement of food for porn – Giving up porn and no longer having an emotional outlet, I started noticing I started overindulging in junk foods. Although I workout six days a week, my gains have been more in weight rather than in lean muscle. I will focus on the next 90 days to observe my feelings and thoughts when I have the urge to snack and not immediately act on my impulse. Since it worked with my PMO, I should have success in this endeavor (fingers crossed).
I wish everyone continued success on their NoFap journey!
LINK – Made It to 90 Days!
By roninxgen [account no longer visible to public]
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