Intrusive sexual thoughts

Write your goals and you reason down, keep this list and read it when the thoughts come. On the back list your plan and things to do when the thoughts come.
Maybe this will help. Anything is worth a try.

 

This sounds a lot with my battle with alcoholism as well as porn. When I quit drinking it seemed like every couple months I felt fine. Then I would just have to drink a ass ton of alcohol and blackout and be depressed for weeks to remind myself why I quit in the first place.

With porn I’ve had a few relapses when I felt great but just as fast as lightning strikes I’m cleaning up jizz. Then the spiral of depression and shame start all over.

You can learn from every relapse. It’s a process...and they will become further and further apart. Just try to ALWAYS keep your guard up...even if you feel fine.

Also I’ve come to notice that during reboot the thoughts will be gone for a while then out of nowhere they will hit HARDER than ever! It’s your brain. It’s it’s last ditch attempts to get what it wants.

 

Ive had this experience too.

 

Yes. I really started to commit to NoFap because I started having POCD. Since the brain tends to focus on the things you give attention to, the less attention and focus you give these things the better you'll get. When it shows up, ignore it. Occupy your mind with positive and productive stuff. It'll get easier the longer you go on for. Sometimes it can feel like you'll never get better (don't believe this) but as long as you take action (embrace healthier neural pathways) and don't reinforce the problem through relapsing, things should turn out for the better. Seeing a professional can go a long way too. They're educated in this stuff far better than I am and can ultimately give you better insight. Keep it up, you can do this.

 

My experience with intrusive thoughts were caused by anxiety and stress. The thought wasn't the important factor it was the act of fighting thoughts. In my life i believe that these obsessive thoughts were present because I continually fought things. Mentally. Fought to keep myself happy. Became infatuated with self help. Always trying trying trying. I became exhausted. Only when I stopped fighting. And stopped resisting things, emotions, feelings and thoughts did things start to improve. We fear these thoughts because they make us feel things we don't want to feel. If we can understand that a thought may pop up about something we don't like....we can eventually know In our minds it's just a thought. I just had a thought about taking a shit in the middle of the street. But is just a thought. Learn to laugh at your thoughts. However I found that certain thoughts have an emotional attachment to them.....and by purposely thinking these thoughts and journaling how they make me feel, multiple times over....the thought loses the emotional connection and will fade away naturally.

Self help caused me alot of pain.but I'm glad i went through that.

I believe managing emotions and facing them is key here. If a thought regularly haunts you... and you have an emotional reaction to that thought....it's very clear to me that the specific thought needs attention.....not distraction from it. Face them look into them write them down and imagine them. They will soon lose their power


Take care

 

This is the part I keep getting stuck at! All of a sudden after several weeks I get hit by a wave and I repeatedly say no but my thoughts just get worse and worse until I act on it and then I’m back at seemingly square one. When it comes at me, i use one of my methods to say no and then I’m like okay we’re good but then a couple minutes go by and I completely forget all of the reasons for quitting

 

I recall thinking about how good it would feel after a month of not doing it, after I let the fantasy of ecstasy run through my head and paced back and forth enough I came to the conclusion it was worth it. To be fair it felt every bit as good as I thought it would.

The thing is, there is so much lost, yes it feels good and honestly I think it is probably healthy to do once in a blue moon. Unfortunately you lose a lot of mental capacity and the spiral that is being referenced in this thread goes full throttle until you are spending your days in a mentally blank haze, masturbating multiple times a day. In my opinion the people (self included) that commit to nofap are those that can't healthily maintain a masturbation habit. If it were a once a month thing, sure that sounds enjoyable and it wouldn't have a negative impact on a normal person. For me at least, it seems I have too much difficulty stopping there.

 

That explanation helped me out a lot because you hear all the time that it can be healthy but I feel like doing it just once throws me off completely. I also find myself hoping I have wet dreams and I know wet dreams don’t count as a relapse but that doesn’t change the feeling it leaves behind. I believe I can do this!

 

Yeah, it's unfortunate and can probably be correctly identified as a disability to most people's standards. The idea of some people's inhibition failing when it comes to responsible masturbation shouldn't be too unbelievable. I view it as stimulant addiction, and as such I think we (the addicts) need to treat our problem with understanding. NoFap attempts to portray the science behind this all, but that kind of falls flat to me as the idea of an "end" to the challenge is not my goal.

I think it is important to remember this potential disability exists within our brains and avoid the stimulant. This could also be wrong, in which case we are not disabled and avoidance is actually for not, with any behavioral changes being simple placebo. I personally doubt that. I am a fairly skeptical person (though not infallible to this sort of thing) and have witnessed changes in my own and my close friend's lives.

Empirical evidence does have value. If you have experienced the spiral of hell with masturbation, than I would say NoFap without a day limit offers a proactive mindset to tackle the problem with.

Onward and upward.

 

you should find a thing that is stronger than all the reasons, for example swear on the holy book you follow if you are religious, or promise yourself or do it in the name of someone you love, you can also make your own punishment if you do it, for example i promised that if I do it then I will fight with my girlfriend father mother and my brother for no reason and so far I didn't do it because I know it will be hell if I fight with the people I love for no reason and everything is my fault in that fight so when these thoughts hits me, I dont think of the reasons that I stopped I think of my promise and swearing and the punishment I made so I dont do it, sorry for bad english I'm not a native English speaker

 

I’m very skeptical and cynical of a lot of things but I do believe in NoFap for sure too but yeah I’ve never understood the idea of a 90 day reboot if you’re just gonna go back and pmo again. Seems pointless cuz the only real answer is probably quitting all together. I do spiral way too much from masturbation and I need to put an end to it.

 

@Oh Susannah -James Taylor

The 90 day reboot is not the end of recovering from your porn.

After the reboot, your brain's sexual reward centers are "blank". You have to fill them with positive sexual behaviors, such as flirting, kissing, and having sex. If you don't you will just grow hornier, and likely start PMOing again.

It is essential to recovering from to porn addiction to instill a positive sexual lifestyle. Not doing so sets you up for falling back into addiction.

Are my sexual problems (ED, DE, low libido) related to my porn use?

Do I have to have sex in order to rewire?

Will stopping porn solve my problems?

Masturbation, Recovery and Sexual Health (Jordan Green, SASH)

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