Need a step by step plan - can’t stop by willpower alone

My best advice is you need to get to the root of your problem. If you are using porn to escape your problems then it is a symptom of a much larger issue. You are right that will power doesn’t work. You have to have a why connected to something important. Most people stop an addiction when the addiction is making their life unmanageable in a major way. And there is no way to sugar coat the truth- And that truth is quitting is really hard. You can take cold showers, meditate, work out, spend time with friends ect...and that will help. But be prepared when you quit an addiction it leaves a big void. And that void has a lot of space and it’s going to get mighty uncomfortable at times. You are 100% going to have withdrawal symptoms. There is just no way around that. But every day it gets better. And it beats the alternative. Because no one is going to have the best possible life with an ongoing addiction. You may need to seek counseling or start attending SAA meetings. Almost no one can do this on their own.

 

"After a relapse, many brothers would blame it on the lack of willpower and self-restraint, this reveals an inadequacy in our understanding. According to my experiences, relying solely on willpower and perseverance is extremely difficult, unless the person is some kind of rebooting hero who would rather die than to masturbate, these people are very few in number. Seeing people failing time and again, I’d like to point out a clear way for everyone, this method has helped me to free myself of the control that masturbation had over my life. There is a good saying: “Success has its ways, lest you have not yet found one.” When you fail it’s important to consider in depth on why we fail and not to carelessly blame it on the lack of willpower, if we act this way we will fail again in the future and thus being unable to free ourselves from this vicious cycle. I would like to spread a very important concept for everybody: brainwash! Everybody has probably heard of this term before. Those brothers who managed to stay clean were all thoroughly brainwashed."
From Book: Rebooting as the best remedy.
https://www.academia.edu/39057478/Rebooting_as_the_Best_Remedy_Season_1-40


You need to read rebooting materials that increase your awareness against PMO and cleanse the bad materials in which we have filled our brains for years.

 

If you're truly dedicated, you don't need a guideline or whatever to achieve success in nofap.
“If you quit every time it’s challenging, you’ll never make it. That’s why only the dedicated succeed. Only the people that truly want it.”

 

The thing is it takes at least a certain depth of analysis to see something will work, even if you don't come up with the plan. Otherwise it's the old "lots of people have done this" rationale.

Nothing about good analysis prevents you from taking action today. What if your plan simply has to be designed and refined over time, through experimentation and trial and error? In that case yes you would be paralyzed if you wait until you have a 100% certain plan you know will work because the first step was never taken. The design process itself taking time you cannot know until you start, and there's no way we can know it without knowing all sorts of details about you and your life situation. You start with a first draft and give it a test run, after a time you change certain things.

Besides, if a plan is that detailed can you say you'll follow it completely? (and maybe it would take close adherence for it to work) But by starting before you know everything, which will most likely involve simpler things you at least can gradually build it up and develop some measure of discipline.

What if it's like this: You start with a basic strategy that gets you about a week, and having cleared some of the mental fog you see certain *possibilities* about how you can improve, and that gets you to about a month, and on and on. See in this case it isn't the total bullet proof thing right from the get go, it is possible what has worked for a lot of other people won't work for you for whatever reason, or at least won't work without some minor adjustments.

It is also possible a perfect plan exists, but you wouldn't consider it relevant whether that's the stuff it calls for or it's simply different from your life goals and situation. Some people actually run off and become a monk, which is a plan that could work but not everyone even necessarily wants to do monk mode.

Analysis is one thing, design is another. We all get to design our life and recovery, the important thing is taking the opportunity rather than perfectionism that blocks you from starting that exploration.

And as a side note, there seems to be this meme in recovery about not being able to rely on your own thinking, which is probably largely true but obviously not completely. When people think "doing it my way" is wrong it often doesn't qualify it in any way, it might just be a blanket judgement that it's prideful. But it might actually be you do the stuff everyone else does plus more because you need and/or want to, and the generic thinking automatically framing it as some kind of addict pride probably won't see an honest effort at self discipline and understanding in that analysis.

As far as practical stuff goes, you can start with a basic breakdown of factors in each area affecting your reboot efforts, something like this maybe:

Psychological
Social
Physical
Environmental

Each area can also be broken down by input and output, input in the case of psychological and social stuff would be educational material, diet for physical and where you choose to hang out for environmental. Output is basically various forms of exercise - writing, socializing, designing your environment even if it's as simple as putting your bed and computer chair in a certain place or changing it.

 

I from china ,I know this book.

 

Hello bro,I come from china .I know 'rebooting as the best
Remedy ' well. I use it to reboot for five years,Finally I find it superstitious .So i give up it then go nofap to find some better quitting methods.

 

W

What do you think of that book from a
European view.

 

Hi there, to me the book has a helped me a lot, I am still reading it. This thread speaks about it:
https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/6-years-clean-rebooting-as-the-best-remedy.135983/

 

To me it sounds like you should quit. No one can make a plan for you that will 100% work. The only way something will work is if you allow it to work. You have to make your own plan, grab bits and bobs from everywhere of different methods which works best for you. We are all different, therefor my plan may not work for you, but you may see something in what i say that you can take from and add to your toolkit of life. Overcoming addiction, ridding bad habits and changing your life will not be instant. It wont be one or two days. People are always looking for shortcuts to bettering their life. But have you noticed to the road to a better life may seem like you are going backwards? It can take 5, 10, 15 years to control your urges or get rid of them. for others it may take less or even more, but I don't know whats worse. living a life of consistently bettering yourself. Or living in a purgatory state of feeling shitty about yourself. Its not a easy road, you wont find quick ways or shortcuts. You must dig to the core cleanse the darkness and cleanse it again. then rebuild again, the path to greatness never ends and it never begins.

 

OK

 

Lots of good suggestions here, but, as others have noted, some counselling is crucial.
It is not a question of who wants it the most, or who is the toughest.

 

I think you described your problem rather well - you have no control over your behavior, unable to make plans and stick to them.
This goes far beyond pornography use, this is typical personal organization issue. The result is unorganized life, which manifests as "endless, habitual, meaningless life"
So to make this short - you are bad at life.
We humans have a massive flaw - we need constant change of priorities and goals to feel good and enjoy life. If you do not do that well - you have pretty miserable existence and habits mostly help us cope with the misery.
Getting a new car keeps you happy for 3 months, then you kind of get used to it and then it gets boring.
So to answer your question - you have to learn how to set goals and work your ass off to get them done.
I keep saying to people that nothing changes after you stop pornography use, nothing changes after you stop masturbation, literally - nothing changes.
The process of doing something person finds difficult - that is what gets people going, they feel great when they resist for one more day - that is why they continue. But that great feeling is you working towards a goal not benefits of "no-use".

There is no secret technique, its simple - set a challenging goal and get it done.
50 pushups by end of day - get it done
Cold shower for a minute - get it done

When you do it - you feel great and that will keep you from wasting time.
Trying to stop pornography use is about as effective as trying to return from work by walking 10 miles every day.
Yes you can do that, and walking 10 miles is good for your health, but hoping it will change your life is - odd.

 

Lack of organization indicates lack of motivation, lack of motivation indicates depression.
Depressed people do not want to do anything, they claim they are tired, busy and occupied with life.

They live in a clutter, they do not care much about how they look.
Depressed people are characteristically lazy. "Why should I do anything?, life sux as it is"
You are a prime example of that.

Unfortunately depression is not always a disease, it is more often a state of mind.
Same way one can have poor cardiovascular health and be unable to run more than 500meters without being out of breath, your mood management can be out of shape and minor changes in your surroundings can cause you to fall in to deep emotional depression. In majority of cases, people lack the endurance to withstand emotional perils everyday life brings, and they experience big mood changes when encountering even low impact emotions or physical obstacles in life. This makes people very emotionally unstable, they live in constant mood swings. From being happy, exited and motivated to feeling like a looser, all in response to minor events.

In order to have a stable mood, one must develop emotional endurance.
Emotional endurance is the ability to maintain normal mood when faced with difficult circumstances, instead falling in to depression and sobbing.

To do this you have to do difficult things, and despite facing regrets, fear of failure and pain, shame etc - you have to keep going.
When you push past that sensation of "I am failure I cant do it" - you subconsciously realize that maybe things are not as bad and you were overreacting and next time you face a challenge you may not feel as bad as you did before. Next time you are afraid you may fail have failed, you may not feel as bad about it - your mood will stay more stable.
Do this as often as possible and you will discover you do not feel down when facing setbacks in life, you are not as afraid to fail.
And maybe you will start trying to do new things, you were afraid to do before, because trying and failing no longer sends you in to a depression and you no longer need to cope every day.

By the way - this is nothing new. Boy especially have always been forced to face danger and do the difficult things, specifically so that they develop the quality needed to maintain stable mood in face of adversity and danger. This quality is what turns Boys in to Men - ability to face adversity with positive curiosity, willing to take action.

You are bad at life because you did not learn to face adversity, you did not learn to enjoy pushing back at pain, suffering, and to endure to achieve difficult goals.
When you experience facing adversity and can do so without sobbing, you will not only rid yourself of depression, but you may grow the balls to open a business, travel the world among or any other dreams you fear re too hard to achieve.

I will finish this by saying that in many ancient cultures there is a ritual where a teenage boys around 18 years of are sent in to a dangerous situations, to hunt and survive on their own, some of them died.
Movies depict this over and over, legends, stories, all say - you have to face adversity and overcome it - only then you gain qualities needed to endure life and become a "Man"

We now have a generations that do not help Boys become Men, they never learn to face adversity, they fear violence, and they are all depressed and scared to death to do anything.

So do the most difficult things you can do, things you never did, things that have meaning to you and people around you. Face the fear and you will be surprised how quickly you life changes for the better.

 

I'll be honest with you. The will power method never worked and will never work for lots of ppl, simple because you cannot be 24/7 strong, there will be times where you will be weak, it's just unavoidable. And it only takes a couple of minutes where you're weak to fall into addiction again. So never rely on the willpower.

Why you want to quit is the most effective way. For me it helped me to have a 180 days PMO free. So it proved it's power. Of course with major change in your daily routine.

 

What do you mean by meditation?

 

Check this vid, this guy helped me a lot. You have to have a solid reason to quit. That's the first step. Why do you want to quit? Forget everyone else.