While reflecting on my life before porn, I realized that for the somewhat brief period that I became addicted to porn I've been very apathetic towards life in general. Do you think there could be link between porn and apathy and if so, can it be cured with PMOing. Thanks
Ithink i can accept life and many events and dont tend to think about it much when i stop faping , on the contrary when im faping i feel so bad about stupid things
Try it, if you’re here, you probably think, at some level you are not happy with your relationship to PMO
Yh, I think you're right. Porn generally makes us numb to our emotions especially for those of us who use porn as an escape from reality. I think by numbing our bad emotions, we also numbed our good ones. We generally stop feeling anything and that's basically apathy.
Yh, I'm definitely trying it. Porn could also be the root of a lot of other problems we don't even realized came from porn.
After 40 days no PMO, I find that I'm more sensitive to others, more receptive, less selfish. When I was on PMO, I think I built walls around my heart and focused only on my own selfish pleasure. PMO made me numb to others and left me feeling depressed, even after orgasm. Being clean, I feel like I'm breathing fresh air again.
Yes. It’s science. By overloading your dopamine receptors with porn and masturbation, you have severely limited your ability to experience the small pleasures in life. Cut off porn and masturbation forever. Cut off other forms of pleasure like sugar, caffeine, alcohol, video games and music for a month. After a month you will feel much better. You can then experience the smaller pleasures. It may take longer to get all the way back. But, life will be tolerable after a month of real restriction.
I have read the book and I can tell these steps of consciousness were pretty helpful for me. Maybe it can help you too. Thanks ;]
Porn and apathy is cause and effect. I am going to prove it. First check here, it is a study using data from our beloved recovery community. http://www.alec-sproten.eu/language/en/2016/01/18/how-abstinence-affects-preferences/ Read it entirely, but focus on the personality trait of conscientiousness (C). You can read more about if you google big 5 personality traits (and measure yourself if you want to). The idea here is that low C corresponds to apathy. As you see from the results of the abstinence study, if you remove the porn variable from your life equation, C surges. This study was for a month, but I bet with the 90 or 100 days it would be more pronounced. Cause and effect, and with this study is sufficient to show that the relationahip is causal (remove the independent variable, if it is true causality the dependent variable must also change! Here porn and C, the reverse of apathy if you want, although it entails a bit more complexity for psychologists, but enough for us). At the neural level, why is that? My ideas. Read this study, it is my favourite on porn detrimental effects on the brain (there are much more). https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1874574?resultclick=1 As you see, more porn means lower gray matter at the caudate. Now read about the athymormic syndrome, I promise you will relate to it the more you have pornholized (I copied from alcoholized) your brain https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athymhormia Want to know something interesting? Apathy, abulia or athymormia (clinical term) is a conditioning attributed to malfunctioning of the caudate! What a coincidence! https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16207933 Also to prefrontal cortices, but hypofrontality is also present in our addiction (as EVERY addiction). Besides, being an addict means lower basal dopamine (DA). Being DA the fuel of what is called the seeking and reward system, you have apathy because your car has little oil in the tank, so to speak. A tired horse will take you nowhere, it needs rest. There is also the fact that ejaculation shrinks cells in ventral tegmental area (I do not remember the study, but trust me this is true, check yourbrainonporn, it is where I found it). Why is that important? Google mesocortical dopamine pathway. Being VTA at the base, it is similar to the power battery of your brain being more "wasted". More reasons could be perhaps indicated but with this is enough. My point is, porn CAUSES you to be a looser at a real neurological level. Once you are... you go to more porn. What else could you do if you have sacrificed addiction for life?. Similar to homeless alcoholics or drug addicts. Reclaim your brain.