Day 13 today, on route to being a hobbit. What I've realized recently is that self hate fuels this addiction and has been keeping me from totally overcoming it. When you hate yourself and feed yourself negative thoughts that leads to negative emotions which causes your brain to seek to relieve those negative feelings. It turns to porn because those pathways for pleasure are already strong in your brain and it's easy to access. Then in this case, porn/fap addiction becomes a way to regulate your mood by releasing 'good feelings' whenever you feel bad. After the fap your emotional state returns to 'normal' and you may feel happy for a few hours and those negative feelings seem gone. But then your brain connects the negative feelings with the pleasure from fapping and so it gets reinforced into the addiction. Then next time your brain craves the pleasure, you will feed yourself negative thoughts about yourself or your life and beat yourself down. This leads to negative emotions leading to porn to relieve that state temporarily to bring you back to 'normal'. Then you hate yourself more for fapping and breaking your streak and feeling helpless or trapped by this addiction, feeling worthless but this starts the cycle of self hate again leading to porn and so on. The self hate becomes an addiction within an addiction without you realizing and so your brain also builds wires for you to hate yourself and to enjoy doing so as reinforcement for the larger addiction. Over time , this addiction leads to low self esteem, confidence, negative career/school/relationship impact and many other problems you could imagine related. It can also lead to intentional self sabotage or destruction if the self hate addiction goes far enough , where you purposely ruin your life by either action or inaction to make you hate yourself more and feed the overall addiction. Small examples can include procrastinating before a test or assignment to reduce your chances of doing well, then feeling bad the day before for not starting earlier and then fapping/porn to feel better. Or showing up somewhere late when you knew you easily could've been early to make you hate yourself for showing up late. Then you go home carrying that feeling in the back of your mind and your brain notices and sends you urges and you fap. You may think that you're not intentionally doing these things to sabotage yourself but really a part of you enjoys it because you've wired your brain that way over time due to this self hate cycle. You essentially build this hell for yourself where to escape from your negative feelings of self hate you pursue pleasure from porn/fap, but this pleasure only makes you hate yourself more and even more addicted to hating yourself, putting yourself through so much pain and suffering because all because you don't consider yourself worth loving. If someone you loved was going through this hell wouldn't your heart pour out to them? Why don't we do the same for ourselves and deny ourselves that self love? I've come to realize that this self hate and not loving myself is the root of my addiction. Even when I started porn/fap those feelings were there. When I got to my longest streak of 6 months life was at its best for me and everything was amazing. But even then, deep down feelings of not being worth that happiness were there. I felt like this is temporary, that it will slip away because I'd mess it up. Ultimately that lingering self hate , that weakness, led to a downfall from that peak as a self fulfilling prophecy. I fapped broke my streak binged, and my following streaks got shorter and shorter. 2 months, then a month,then another month, then a few weeks, then a few days, then not keeping track. Over that next year I slowly went from feeling the best in my life to my all time worst. I didn't realize back then that self hate was the real problem, I didn't know who the enemy really was, it's not the porn/fap habit, it's the underlying self hate which is the root of the porn habit as well as all self sabotaging behaviours. Feeling the need to ruin yourself because you're not worth the best you can be, it's a terrible suffering we choose to live with because we think it's exactly what we deserve for being as we are. Life could be totally amazing if we didn't self sabotage. Most of our suffering is self induced in this way, I think almost everyone deals with this at some point in life but not many break free from it. I can see it almost everywhere in the people around me. I am sharing what I've realized over self reflection over these few weeks in hopes that it may help some here. To deal with self hate you don't have to go do anything. Things like exercise, working on your goals, eating healthy are great things to do to but no matter how far you may progress with life, lingering self hate can always pull you back down to rock bottom as it did with me. It'll be there somewhere in the back of your mind and it's a huge weakness that'll remain if unresolved. If you learn to deal with self hate now, it won't be a risk to the future you. What I do to deal with it is evoke feelings of uncondontional self love and accept it entirely without guilt. So to do that I'd think positive thoughts to myself and sort of have a conversation. " I have lots of flaws, I am addicted to porn, I hate myself and ruin my life (be honest with yourself) but regardless, I will care for myself despite my flaws and weaknesses and we'll work to overcome them and become stronger and happier. You're worth caring for no matter what because you're alive in this world and can experience the wonders of life. " Thinking along these lines brings up self love which you will notice yourself trying to deny or reject which is the problem. "But I did all these things, I am a bad person, I shouldnt have a good life ...". Then you got to slowly learn to accept that love freely without resistance or guilt and change your thoughts. Within that lies permanent change for the better to overcome this weakness within yourself. Don't hate yourself when you're doing self reflection and think to yourself 'I am weak or flawed'. You should accept it honestly to yourself and then say 'I am weak or flawed right now, but it's okay because together me and you are going to overcome this and become stronger because I care for you, and if we slip we'll get back up again and keep moving because you deserve much more for yourself." When I catch myself in the act of self hate, I do this to resolve those emotions and to start changing my brains wiring. Then on top of that you build healthy habits like exercise etc. and reinforce that self love while being aware of any self hate in your mind and dealing with it accordingly. You can flip that hell into heaven by changing your attachment to self hate to that of self love . Then when you become strong enough, you can be a light for others to help reduce their suffering, and that pleasure from helping others will fuel your addiction to self love and positivity and create this positive loop essentially building your own heaven instead of hell. I can't wait for myself and others to get there. My drive for nofap is so much stronger now because of these realizations and now I'm digging myself out of this hell again after falling back in, but this time, I Ieave hopefully with the wisdom to never fall back into it again. I may slip and slide, but now hopefully I got the tools to recover quickly and never see rock bottom again. Hope this helps someone.
Sure sister ,it's open to every soul which desires to leave their sins behind and realize their potential,to start the unfolding of the tasks in life which we were born to do. Welcome to the challenge! Warning:If you complete the challenge you will not come back as the same person you were before you started.
Hi @RiseToGreatness I'd like to join this challenge but instead of starting off at my current streak, I'd like to start on Day 0; the challenge gives me a good positive goal. Day 0 - Nazgul
It sounds to me like you are describing toxic shame. It's the true enemy of probably most, if not everyone here.
Checking in day 82. Feeling quite good although had planned only one thing for the whole day-meditation, but ended up studying for 2 hours and kept all my commitments wit other people as well as survived 1 our session with PT doing mostly calisthenics. Hopefully today I go to bed on time.
Day 182. Just started mindfulness meditation and now I'm adding "positive affirmations" to the combo. Supposedly they're more effective with meditations like mindfulness. Does/did anyone practice affirmations? @CALM IN SUFFERING congratulations on becoming a dwarf!!
Checking in Fellowship I´ve been wandering in the last weeks . But for those of you who recall the reasons why i have binged relapse last time, know that my new work project went well, really well, and we were congratulated in all departments. it was a sucess it cost me my streak, unfortunatelly, but also give me a great learning opportunity. i have done some mentoring calls meanwhile, some accountability in other communities, and i feel ready to embark on this challenge once again i will be more quiet this time, less active, due to time but also due to humility of recognizing that i still have a lot to learn on this process and it´s unwary for me to give advice. But i love you guys and girls, that´s why i´m coming back. I rather follow my own community instead of other people´s community. although i tremendously respect all communities of rebooters out there. it´s been a while since the last time i check so the ranking board is probably heavely outdated. i will delete all challengers names (expect the white wizards), and add again your names one by one, as you post your progress in the thread. Good to be with you again Fellowship. Let´s do this!
OK I must say that I forgot until now my check in. I feel a little sick and I need to sleep. No urges at all. Day 17
Day 34 Today was probably the closest I’ve come to relapsing during this streak; there was no clear trigger, I think it’s finally my brain crying out for dopamine after over a month of abstinence. Felt quite strange to battle with today’s urges, I both remembered the physical enjoyment of PMO as well as the emotional and spiritual cost of relapsing - the latter is what helped me stay strong throughout the day, I do not need PMO and I never will. Started lifting weights again, I need a physical outlet other that swimming to really let off some steam. Currently working on a reasonable routine that adds to my life without overtaking my daily routine.
@RiseToGreatness keep strong! I'm new on this one (Started at day 20 I think). Just a Hobbit about to become an Elf!
Day 4, feelin tired but motivated! I'm gunning for a full 7 days at the moment so halfway there is pretty good! Onto day 5
Welcome back bro, I was about to ask where you were in my post. It takes a brave man to admit that he has much to learn. Stand tall, my friend. Thanks to you, we have this wonderful fellowship. A bond we all share, as @Kairose mentioned. We may be at different places around the world, but we are all fighting our way out of this together. I've said this before and I will say it again, I owe you a great debt of gratitude for making this community. Thank you brother
Checking in Fellowship Friends, Day 379 free of MO and Day 451 free of porn. Last two days have been interesting, for those who read my last post, after ending that old toxic friendship..well I became irritable that night. I had trouble falling asleep because I wanted to tell the other person off even more, I sat with it. Went through the next day and suddenly a weight was lifted off my shoulders. I knew I no longer had to deal with her anymore, I felt the anger without resistance and it subsided. I slept like champ that night. Today was great, I got an awesome workout in and had a great day at work. Not my most thought provoking post, but it's simplicity speaks volume to me on the work I've been putting in on my path. Stay strong
Day 4 complete, Orc. Seeing lots of good progress and uplifting posts from the Fellowship over the last couple days. It really does help inspire me to do better myself, so that I can be part of uplifting this community as well. I think that's one of the keys: community. Porn and masturbation trap us inside these isolated, tormenting mental worlds of our own design. We become mindless and disengaged from reality. In trying to fix ourselves and growing back out into whole, healthy people, finding our place in some kind of framework of positive human interaction is essential to the process, if not a prerequisite. It's so good to see everybody working together on this because it proves we're learning how to be people who don't rely on neurochemical overdoses to feel as if they're alive. St. Blaise, pray for us!
