For me I had to realize that the problem wasn’t the masturbation, or the porn, or the orgasm. None of the PMO was the problem.
The problem was lust. All that PMO stuff is a symptom of lust obsession.
Lust objectifies and reduces other people (and myself) into objects to feed the lust hunger. The lust wants to be in the driver’s seat, dominating my attention and my action and decisions, filling every atom of me with lust until, drained, I am spent, and sink into dissociation and/or sleep. Rinse, repeat.
Inviting lust into my life - by reducing others to objects to feed my lust, or by reducing myself and my body to an object to feed my lust (through self-touching and masturbation) - is playing around in mud that I’m gonna be cleaning up for days (at a minimum), or months or years. Meanwhile, my mind and heart won’t function clearly because of the mud clogging them up.
I guess my core reason behind the lust and PMO was combination of stress and low self-esteem.
I think subconsciously such mechanism was trying to raise my self esteem, and additionally “O” helped release the stress.
So in my cause it may looked like:
Stress → just go for “O”,
low self-esteem → thinking about myself in sexual way, that I’m attractive, powerful (well, erection gave that feeling of power), so lust overwhelmed the mind, dopamine did the job, and there was no stop button to prevent PMO.
Thanks for sharing. Lust is patient, cunning and waits to exploit those moments. Thanks for getting it in the light. Your 80 days werent for not. You’ve learned lessons during the journey. Just keep coming back
I know. But I hate myself. Why would I turn to porn last night. Why did I do that.
That just triggered more lust and the need for a release. Now I feel so off and depleted.
In the other thread where I asked, you described lust in this way (I’m moving the conversation over here to keep it on one thread):
So the lust is the craving. Kind of like craving sweets or dessert foods. Objects.
People are not objects. Lust makes people into objects. Lust makes you make yourself into an object (in my case, when I used to “act out”, I would use my body as an object for my lust).
For me I found the problem was more fundamental, more psychological. The dopamine is a physical thing - it’s a hormone - but the dopamine is in response to the lust. I had to dig deep to displace the lust, to get it out of the driver’s seat. I had to acknowledge that I had no power over lust - every time I let it into my life, it takes control and the results are negative - and I had to make a list of the problems caused for me and others by my lust, and then work on making amends for those. I had to more fundamentally change my way of living, to start from the heart, instead of from the body. (Trying to control my physical body was not working, because the physical body was not the cause.)
Control is not possible for me. I have an allergy to lust in the same way a person allergic to peanuts has a deadly allergy to peanuts. The risk of anaphylaxis is not worth the temporary and optional feeling of eating peanuts. There are many other things I can eat, other than peanuts; and for me, there are many other things I can do with my time, other than lust. (Volunteering, attending recovery meetings / doing recovery work, exercise, hiking with my wife, cooking, working, visiting family members and friends, etc etc - I have a full life.)
Sex is optional. If I have it within my boundaries - which is with my wife, without lust - it is a moment to savour. If not, it is ok, and I do not miss it, because it is optional.
Yes, but in my case I could not find it until I understood and accepted, with gratitude and peace, that sex is optional and that most of the sexual activity I did when I was in my addiction (including masturbation) was crossing unhealthy boundaries.
How do I fight the self hate, depression and so on… I make sure to share with others to help get out of self and to gain a better perspective. Also, finding people with the same struggles, that have been through the mid and made it out clean, and by that I mean others that have more sobriety and experience that I can learn from and be encouraged by. Also, learning myself, triggers, character defects and tools that I can intentionally put into practice.
Thank you. Yes it is good to find those that have been through what we are going through. That’s the one thing I love about this group.
We are all at different places in our recovery but are all fighting the same fight.
It is a journey Theres no need to feel bad one way or the other. We all only ever have today, whether we have 27 days or 27 hours or 27 years. What matters is what we do to get a helpful mindset and helpful connections and helpful behaviour today.
I don’t remember. I also think it doesn’t matter. The problem is lust - the lust mindset, and lust patterns of thinking and emotion - and the behaviours (masturbation, watching porn etc etc) are superficial symptoms of that. There’s really no difference between them for me.
I attend SA (www.SA.org). I’ve never been to an SAA meeting but in my early recovery I did study a book series in my recovery group that was by Patrick Carnes, who was involved in starting SAA.
Theres no need to feel bad one way or the other. We all only ever have today, whether we have 27 days or 27 hours or 27 years. What matters is what we do to get a helpful mindset and helpful connections and helpful behaviour today.