Understood. Now, forget the hate. Forget the shame. Forget so-called "streaks." None of those things help you. You are 22. This is the best time in your life to quit the pmo. Otherwise, it gets much more difficult. Brother, I would kill to be your age. Don't let it fuck up your life. Get more serious - no offense, you can do this but it takes work. Get back on the damn horse! You can do it!
Thats the trap our mind makes, I suppose. Almost all my relapses happened when I felt the best(I always feel shitty anyway, just a little better sometimes) Like once I made an angry gesture to sb who pissed me off. I thought wow im feeling masculine, like what I always had to feel. I relapsed later that day. Another example, I felt horny without any special stimulation. I said wow this is so manly. I felt goood. Of course I relapsed after. Whether its the trick of mind to make you relapse or its your healing nervous system showing progression in rewiring, we need to be aware. Relapses are lessons for us. Next time you are energetic be aware that a relapse is near to you so be very concious those days. I hope this helped
If your best friend had this problem and wanted your advice, what would you tell him? Now tell that to yourself. Good luck.
Atleast for me in the past as soon as I was telling to myself things like " damn i have stayed away from pmo for X amount of days". I tended pretty quickly relapse in the span of 1-3 days. Not sure if I was speaking something into existance. I think it is just your urges testing you but you probably know yourself that it is better to stay away than give in. Might be a good idea to adjust the things that you do to prevent you from pmo. Make it more strict or add a method.
Hey man, try not to beat yourself up too much. I think part of it is not realising just how much damage PMO has actually done to you. We all want to believe that it's not that bad and that we can get better pretty quickly or easily. I used to fall into this pattern of thinking.. stop using PMO, get to between 7 - 14 days and think I was almost recovered. Then boom, relapse. The truth is that it will take probably at least 6 months being 95% free of PMO for you to really be DEEP into recovery. I've taken that into my approach and currently it has worked. I'm almost 60 days semen retention with about 4-5 uses of porn but no orgasm during that time. On this streak every single time I've heard my mind go, "Hey! Look how far you've got you've beaten this addiction" I just say to myself, "Hold up there, you're doing well but you're only just getting started." It keeps me vigilant. Porn is a damn hard drug to beat. You have to be vigilant and even militant in beating it. I don't mean be militant with yourself like talk down to yourself or anything like that. Love yourself through the whole process. Have compassion for every relapse, but recognise the danger in the use of porn, and be militant with removing all traces of it from your mind and your life.
I really relate to this. With my last relapse it was almost as if my brain said "You don't have enough problems in your life right now. Here, let's add one." Then I ended up doing something I regret. What I've found hardest every time I've tried to go without porn and masturbation is that my relapses would get even bigger. For a while I gave up even trying, thinking that small porn usage every other day or even every day wasn't as bad as having one big blow-up every few weeks. Unfortunately, I realized over time that even that my daily "lighter" porn use was getting bigger and more omnipresent. It becomes hard to determine if you're really dedicated to this, you start wondering if you really want to quit, and that's what makes it so hard. Your desire to look at porn is clouding your reason for doing this. Don't give up, man. It's difficult, but we need difficulty to have a meaningful life. I started trying to curb my porn habit when I was your age, actually. Here I am, years later, just now taking NoFap seriously. Don't do what I did, take care of this now. It's only going to bring you more hardship, guilt, and heartache, I can promise you that.
I wish I had started this at 22 but I guess back then nothing was really said about porn addiction? It was 12 years ago. I can't remember because I never tried to stop. Back then, I was in adult chat rooms and watching porn daily. I was sex-starved and desperate. I thought then if you didn't have a woman to have sex with, porn and masturbation was what you had to do to 'relieve your sexual energy'. I thought porn was healthy, I guess. Just remember, if you beat this now you won't have to beat it 10 years, or more, down the line.