Well, that was embarrassing. Didn't even make it through a day without binging on porn. Ok. Not gonna beat myself up about that. I'm going to get up, dust myself off, and try again. I've got more accountability now with an AP on here and a friend in town that's going to do a streak with me. I make a lot of excuses for practicing bad habits like porn, drinking, and other unhealthy things. Time to start taking apart my thoughts and mindsets and dismantling the excuses.
72 days done. I’ve found a big part of success is being willing to wait, wait for the urge to pass. And to be willing to be patient with the pain. Porn is such an easy way to kill the pain temporarily, but it ends up creating more of it. Meditation, prayer, exercise, volunteering, reading, writing, getting outdoors, support meetings, reading and posting on nofap, proper sleep, thinking about others, learning new things, all these things help. Really it’s just about replacing bad habits with good habits. It’s difficult and takes a bit of time, but all of us can do it with the right mindset and by supporting each other. Keep going. Get one more day. Just one day.
Day 1 I counted yesterday as Day 0 and I am resetting after 21 days, because during sex with my gf I helped myself a little too much again. We decided not have sex for at least 10 days and no helping myself during sex again. I have not watched any porn or masturbated alone.
Day 0 I have not relapsed since my last post. I'm just posting in the morning and it hasn't quite been 24 hours yet so this is my Day 0 post. Along with dealing with negative thoughts I'm going to try and do some habit trading here. Mark Q gave some good advice in one of his videos about trading up when it comes to bad habits. Since porn is such an unnaturally high dopamine spike and our brains are accustomed to that level of stimulus, it can be really hard to replace porn with anything that's really healthy, like reading. At this point in the healing process reading might just seem way too dull and bland (not saying it actually is dull and bland, just that brains hooked on porn can't appreciate the more subtle joy of reading). So, sometimes it works to replace a really bad habit with one that's just not quite as bad. It would be better to play video games and eat sugar cereal at night than to get drunk and binge on porn. Video games and sugar aren't the healthiest thing, but they are better than booze and porn. Well, aren't you just trading one bad habit for another? Technically yes, but not all bad habits are equally bad for you...like I said, video games and sugar are better than porn and booze. Think of it like a stepping stone. It makes the transition off of porn easier because your brain chemistry isn't having to make such a dramatic adjustment all at once. Then, once your dopamine has down-regulated a bit you can think about replacing those habits with even better ones. That's going to be my strategy this time anyway. I'll keep you posted on how it's going. Thanks for all your support guys!