PMO - Porn, Masturbation, Recovery

I’ve found adult content blockers can be a useful tool, but very much are not the solution.

I’ve used them to help me avoid triggers (adult content popping up unexpectedly, doomscrolling on Facebook/Instagram reels), while putting effort into understanding why I had been struggling with a porn/sex addiction, trying to understand my feelings and emotions, and giving myself more appropriate responses to those emotions rather than just hitting the porn button at any and every opportunity.

At the end of the day, if you want to you can disable or bypass a porn blocker. I’ve had more success by fully committing to getting better, not just installing some software and thinking that’ll do all the heavy lifting.

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Feeling the urges pretty badly today. I’m around 4 days clean from looking at porn.

I feel like i keep lying to myself about sexual media though.

I fantasized about porn in my head this morning and went to the app store and looked at sexual media there.

Looking at women with skimpy clothes on (sexual media) i think still keeps me in this addiction.

I need to change how i view sexual media. It should be treated as badly as porn.

I keep thinking i can swear off internet porn, but i’ll just get a playboy in the future…but that is still continuing the addiction (it just might not be as bad as internet porn for you)

I think of it like this;

Would my future wife want me to secretly by myself to jerk it to other women in a magazine or online instead of having sex with her when i am horny?

No

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Triggered this evening. I was closing pages on my computer and unintentionally saw some p*rn in google images.

I didn’t stay on the pages long since i was in the process of closing pages, so I just counted the relapse as

An unintentional viewing of p*rn relapse.

But now my mind is trying to rationalize that i can view porn now because it “was” an actual p-relapse, but it wasn’t, because i didn’t intentionally go on my computer to view porn.

This is totally true.

What if for some reason the filter was not on and someone else searched up p*rn on your computer and you found it are you just going to relapse to it? No

You’ll notice it is something you swore off of and won’t engage with.

I block the app store along with a bunch of apps. Lock me out hasnt 100% stopped me, but im thankful for it!

What is this “Lock me” out app? Is it on the App store on iphones or is it on Android phone’s app store?

Android
It’s the best blocker imo

I use an accountability app not a blocker. my wife sees all i do on my phone and laptop and asks questions if i get flagged for something. i dropped out of social media all together and just found this forum love hearing im not alone in my journey

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Had a bad dream last night where I relapsed.
I know dreams are part of the process, and it felt awful even in the dream, but I got hit by a big wave of urges to act out when I woke up today.

Trying to stay strong and continue to think logically but today is feeling a bit tricky.

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This is the only way. Blocking doesn’t help if your still hiding, it just strengthens the shame. I’ve got a lifetime of this behavior to prove this.

You’re gonna be ok…. It’s ok to give yourself some grace and seek help and accountability

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@LifeWarrior135 I think the best thing you did was put the behavior in the context of a positive future that you actually want. Keep fleshing out that vision, and also the negative vision about what happens if you just let it get the upper hand. I personally cannot believe how deep I got into it, and perhaps it’s more surprising how in just a couple years I’m living a totally different life that is beyond what I expected I could achieve.

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