What’s going on with you? What are you struggling with?
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I was thinking about this in my own situation because I want to keep my marriage sacred, but then I’d do something inappropriate like this and wonder why I’m not living up to the standard we set. I started to wonder “What does it mean, exactly, to keep something sacred?” and it hit me a little later that whatever it is, it’s the opposite of disgust, which is probably why the confession is so difficult - it’s disgusting in nature. And finally after months of thinking about this question, I think I figured it out - if you want to keep something sacred, make it beautiful. That will narrow your focus, recalibrate your values (hopefully properly), and intimidate you because you work to eliminate even little specks of impurities/blemishes/errors. I hope that helps, it’s not like we can very easily control ourselves by thinking but if you actually build something well it’s a lot easier to maintain that necessary discipline, reverence, awe. And start small, really small if you have to. I literally started with making the bed because just once I heard her say it was actually a huge relief that it was ready when she needed to go to sleep.
And this is sort of the imagery I’ve had in my head as I hobble along trying to figure out how to do this exactly, because you start with a dirty shirt and pants, a lunch pale, and you just get out there and start rolling the rocks where they need to go.
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This is BEAUTIFUL. SAY IT LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE AT THE BACK! 
As a woman, I would respect this kind of act of service very highly. It shows your care and appreciation. That analogy was quite insightful too. I’ll be thinking about it.
I used to make it compulsively for discipline and it drove her nuts but yeah once it clicked it became a non-chore and was actually good to do, so the relationship transformed over how we both looked at something relatively small with respect to the other person
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By the by, the reason I relapsed was I stopped sleeping, lost my routines, and let my imagination run completely out of control. If anyone reads Crime and Punishment, it was like I was the main character in that book except I’m not a loner. It’s taken about a year, but I have a good routine now that is working despite a wild sleep schedule that is necessitated by our family living situation (we have a 2 year old). I get a 2-3hr nap in the afternoon, then another 3-4hr hour nap hopefully before work, then work all night and do it again. I didn’t think it was possible to get used to it but it’s not bad anymore. In the beginning I was losing my temper, binge eating, all the base, lower brain motivations were red hot. The weeks I have had where I live like a normal person are trivially easy to stay on track, I don’t even think of it as “staying sober” then, it’s just normal life. I do think PMO impulse is trying to calibrate/equilibrate/stabilize something physiological or else the impulse wouldn’t be trying to activate. After a while I finally found ways to keep basically everything in check. During those normal weeks it doesn’t activate because everything is strongly in a good range.
So if anyone does read this who’s starting out I’d say work on everything around you first - clean your room, learn to eat and sleep properly, ditch any unbelievably toxic people even if they’re your so-called friends or family, get some real friends that actually want the best for you, and work on something as hard as you possible can. One thing I learned is you can’t just sit still and hope to resist temptation, you actually need something better to do. Find something, go really hard on it, and if you find something else that’s even better than that then good. Don’t try to do 12 things as hard as possible though because you have too many interests (this has been my problem forever, so I had to stop), you’ll probably only half-ass all of them, but if you’re forced to for some reason then good luck, that could just be the adventure of your life. So that’s the fuller update of why I have returned and what I have learned. I had months of success in between but it’s time to be all in.
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People usually ignore these signs and others that show the mind isn’t really at its best and is shifting towards coping
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Today’s day 16 of my recovery and healing from PMO
and day 5 no social media binging. I bless God
. I must admit I’m actually entering into a period i need to be careful in, in terms of structure so I don’t end up stressed and trying to cope. I’m sorta noting to myself. I’ll try to give an update as soon as possible. I know this, I’ve seen it before, I’m not naive, I’m very aware of my former patterns, I at least won’t pretend I don’t know.
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I think of those and intrusive thoughts as the canaries in the coal mine. When I’m engrossed in a meaningful activity like I am now outside of this, nothing like that ever, ever, ever, ever comes to mind. I can delay eating, drinking, going to the bathroom, almost anything in an intense goal pursuit. Kind of like taking a 3 hour final exam for something you really studied for and want to hit right on the head to see what kind of feedback you get for your efforts and sacrifices. Maybe it turns out to be an F because you’re completely foolish and really need that reality check, or maybe it’s pretty good and fuel to go harder and harder. That’s what I’m mining, the reward from (hopefully) properly oriented goal pursuits.
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I marvel at people who completely trust their, mind, motives, emotions and perception without feeling the need to be introspective or recognise that there just could be error in judgement or perception.
And at the same time to being too doubtful of these things can be dangerous because the people in the first category
can come and fill in the blanks terribly for you.
I say this because I respect that you acknowledge that you can only be as accurate about the direction you’re heading as much as you can see in front of you and still have to be careful about and watchful for signs that you’re not.
I’d also love to say that if you’ve been struggling, or acted out but are waiting, hoping to get a couple of days in so you’d feel more confident mentioning but can’t, we care about you
The shame feeds the loop, we all know too well what “down bad” and “rock bottom” feels like. So If we feel anything, it’s sympathy.
I figure the app isn’t just for people doing well in their recovery, but we who genuinely aren’t too.
Day 21 in my recovery from PMO addiction.
And 10 days free from scrolling media binging.
I did have a small lapse after a very difficult confrontation with a friend 3 days ago.
I realized scrolling is actually the new low for me, a better low(should still be avoided though) as it didn’t take too long for me to run into content that I’m not supposed to, even with how much I tried to scrub my feed of suggestive stuff, editing preferences and all. It was at that point I snapped out of it.
It’s also nore like a canary in the coal mine among others to borrow @Buntz term, that I need to be watchful and more intentional about certain things.
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Day 6 clean of no pornography, no masturbation, no dating apps, no form of sexting, no social media
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Thats a really good point about scrolling. I tend to be at my worst when I am tired (like today), the scrolling goes up and inevitably that leads to more risk of relapse.
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I truly believe scrolling parasitizes the structures you’re trying to build to keep you on the right track because the scrolling technology is designed by addiction psychologists to keep your attention.
This is also why I don’t think it’s helpful if you’re trying to stay on track to just go off on the wrong track in some other thing you don’t care about (or don’t realize is actually detrimental), whether it’s social media, video games, whatever. Staying on the right track probably got harder when I got off social media/daily news/other things because I was letting that regulate me instead of PMO, so just an old bait and switch. Once I really got down to the wire with trying not to waste any time was when I realized how much I was outsourcing my sanity/stability to stupid things that are a giant waste of time, but however not as obviously nefarious as P&M.
It’s important to have hobbies and everything, but just be careful what’s a hobby. I was really into bigfoot, aliens, started believing in gnomes and fairies, leprechauns, little indian people (not joking), and it just hit me one like “Oh wow I’m addicted to the novelty of this the way I was addicted to the novelty of P categories and I have to find more and more weird stuff to keep me on the edge of enjoying it…but at what cost!”. So realizing I could believe anything actually scared me.
Now it seems like those other adjacent things that seem like they’re unrelated to PMO, that you’re trying to quit simultaneously, are actually very important to be on top of. It’s not like there’s no use in using social media, youtube and such, but I’d say solve the deeper, macro problem first then once that’s tightly tied down you can probably use normal things like a normal person again. Me, though, I’d probably get sucked into X or bigfoot like it’s nobodies business if I went there, and I’d be safe from PMO but not safe from wasting my time and going half crazy with the news I’d see and not be able to discern properly. I had 2 years clean but a lot of that was almost certainly spent being invested in something stupid as a replacement. I spent a long time trying to figure out what was working, why I was able to go 2 years then but struggle now, and I think that’s the answer. I built these weak foundations, that I didn’t know were actually helping, and when I stepped away from them the first big stressor/opportunity combo just blew me out. So this time around I’m building a lot stronger of a fortified structure and I think it’s working. At least I hope so, so far so good.
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Thank you for bringing forth these silent lessons. You’re mining gold.
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Beast. Keep it up soldier! You already beat it, you just have to stay the course.
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I was having trouble with the algorithms feeding me temptation in ‘reel’ form. This is FB btw.
So I selected to watch reels and proceeded to aggressively search raccoons, cats, and musclecars. I was hoping this would change the algorithm and supply me with either silly animal vids, or cool car vids. It worked like a champ. I have four FB pages. A personal page and three business pages. I did this for all of them. It really cleaned up my feed.
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YASS! Make the algorithm work for you! I haven’t searched porn with my current phone and I’m stoked about it.
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I’ve heard from the guy that invented infinite scroll and Tristan Harris from Facebook that the algorithm could work specifically to your advantage with like no downside if I recall correctly, knowing full well how bad it is used now by default. In principle it could feed you nothing but motivational reminders and tips to stay on track.