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Please any advice

Discussion in 'Rebooting - Porn Addiction Recovery' started by frankied, Dec 30, 2015.

  1. frankied

    frankied Fapstronaut

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    How long should it take for sleeping problems to go away after stopping watching porn ?
    I get panic attacks when i try to sleep, and my body is all tensed up, i take this with me during my day, even excercise won't help to relax my body. This usually starts for me at day 20 and stays untill i relapse, last two times were on day 45 and day 70.

    Could this be another underlying problem then porn ? Because i hear most people don't experience this.

    If i can fix this problem it would be alot easier to quit forever, because my energy levels are insanely low, even though i excercise and eat quite healthy.
     
  2. Hi.

    What we need to understand is that PMO is only the effect not the cause.

    The PMO habit/addiction is only the surface of the issue. Beneath PMO is the actual underlying issue. The real problem, the unhealed emotions which can even stem from childhood.

    Allow yourself to go right into those emotions. You said you get panic attacks. Feel them. Panic attacks are usually related to childhood events. PMO doesn't cause them. Feel the anxiety and allow it to course it's way through your body, and you'll be surprised at what answers come up. This is all about getting to know the real you, your real, raw emotional state. People become surprised at all of the different emotions that arise when they begin to abstain from PMO. The emotions were there all along, it's just that we used PMO to numb and suppress those emotions.

    If you love yourself, you'll allow ALL of your emotions to flow, whether they are pleasurable or painful. PMO recovery is not just about abstaining from porn and masturbation. It's about getting to the root of the issue by doing deep self reflection and healing our emotions. You just need to let yourself feel your terrors, anxiety and sadness. You need to get to know yourself and find out how deep these emotions really go. It's the only way to heal.
     
    frankied and Saoirse like this.
  3. deadrole7

    deadrole7 Fapstronaut

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    I used to have severe insomnia too, but it's getting better everyday since I started doing meditation, especially before sleep.
    There's an app called Qi Gong Meditation that contains a good amount of guided meditation.Try it & see if your sleep gets any better.It has helped mine significantly.
     
  4. Saoirse

    Saoirse Guest

    There is a lot of truth in this. Since starting my reboot I've had to think about the 'why' behind PMO quite a bit. It's like getting at the roots of a weed to prevent it from growing back. I could indulge in a bit of armchair psychology here, but it would only be guesswork. That said, if PMO/Fantasizing allows us to feel desired, desirable, Alpha, controlling, proud, etc. it might be because the cold reality of our lives is that, even though we are not bad people and have many many good aspects to our characters, we have allowed ourselves to fall into the role of a figure that is thin-blooded, unimpressive, slight, dull, and charmless.
    We can't fake our way out of this. We really have to take our cues from some good role models, and make men out of ourselves.
     
    AlltheRageBackHome likes this.
  5. Yeah, this is key what you said here.
    The truth is also, that many of us don't feel so macho deep down, an that's the actual sadness that we need to feel. Many men feel insecure deep down, but instead of actually feeling the emotions of unworthiness, they resort to other physical addictions, and PMO being one of them.

    If people were just honest about their true emotional state and how weak and undesired they really feel, progress and healing would be much more rapid.

    You're doing really well on your streak, man. 191 days? Wow. Have you written a post about your on going success or anything? I'd like to read what you'd have to say, or any tips you could throw out there.
     
    Saoirse likes this.
  6. Saoirse

    Saoirse Guest

    I agree. Again, I'm not a therapist and have only been considering the 'why' of PMO for a short while, but I do think it has root causes. Basically, I don't think that anyone has known they were undesirable or charmless and just sighed and said 'oh, well - I might as well just PMO, then'. I think PMO just invades a space and then grows there to the detriment of anything [or anyONE i.e. a real life partner] that ought to be there.

    I'll take you up on the offer of writing about my journey so far - but later, as now I want to take advantage of a break in the rain and go for a cycle :)
     
    AlltheRageBackHome likes this.
  7. Awesome. Well, I look forward to reading it.
     
  8. IGY

    IGY Guest

    @AlltheRageBackHome, can you explain how this works because I don't understand what you mean. For example, how does feeling your anxiety result in answers?
     
  9. Rav70

    Rav70 Fapstronaut

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    My bf takes a few hits of pot before bed and he can sleep. He has severe leg twitches, tight legs with pain in them and his hips. He can't get to sleep. Ambien doesn't even work.
    When he smokes a little he goes right to sleep. Any chance you can try medical mj?
     
  10. The concept here is called "emotional processing", and is also encouraged by many psychologists. I was also introduced to it by someone in January 2015, so I've been living it and applying it for one year straight now. It has changed my life to degrees that I cannot express.

    When you feel an emotion, it helps you to get the actual psychological root matter of the issue, so for example, a lot of peoples terrors stem from childhood. It's the same with anxiety and panic attacks as well. Emotions remain trapped in the body if they are not fully experienced and felt. Some people have terrors, whereas they might become literally frozen solid in fear. Literally. Some people shake. They'd need to let their body go through that process and not run from it. In that moment, you identify why your body is doing this, and thus may remember certain events that caused the terrors in the first place, then after that, you can access the sadness, anger, and other emotions. Then you can release those too, just by feeling it. It sounds simple, but it is, and it works.

    It's the same for anyone who may have experienced rape or other horrible actions. The key is to go with the anger in such situations, of course, not to project the anger at another person, but to use a punching bag, pillow etc... To release the anger. When people usually express their anger in these effective ways, they almost always then begin to connect with the sadness. The grief is the most important part for allowing ourselves to connect with. In other words, letting yourself have a good cry. It's one of the best ways to heal and release emotions.

    Women generally find anger difficult to connect with, and men generally find grief harder to connect with. This is mostly to do with the expectations society has placed on gender roles etc...

    I also had a girlfriend a couple of years ago who had anxiety, and suffered from panic attacks, and she had an abusive childhood, a difficult time with her father, and knew that her path to freedom was just by allowing herself to connect with the grief, anger and sadness. It worked for her, but it was a process.

    Another example, I just helped someone on a thread about this emotional stuff too. He expressed that he usually resorts to PMO after arguing or having a big disagreement with his wife. The emotion here, is that many men feel "unloved" when anger is projected at them from their spouse. The key here would be to look at this emotion and delve right into it. Feel it, feel the emotion of being unloved. The truth is that the feeling of feeling unloved has always been there inside of him. His wife didn't create it. If that emotion is not felt and experienced, one will continue to use PMO as an escape, to deal with the emotion of feeling unloved. Of course, everyone is different, but many people find that when they access the real emotion, the actual cause and not the effect, that emotions from childhood spring up as well to their surprise. They might have recollections of feeling unloved by their mother as a child and are instantly able to relate that even to how they feel at times within their marriage, discuss the emotion with their spouse and deal with it and heal right there and then.

    As I've said in other posts, I go with what I experience myself, as that is the only proof for myself that something works. I generally do not go by theory or philosophy. Experience will always prove for the stronger case.
     
    frankied likes this.
  11. IGY

    IGY Guest

    Hmm, fascinating. So are you referring to this:

    The idea of ‘emotional processing’ was introduced by Jack Rachman in 1980 to refer to what goes on in the background when people are faced with emotionally distressing events. “most people successfully process the overwhelming majority of the disturbing events that occur in their lives” said Rachman. Can we understand the psychological principles behind this emotional processing? What is healthy and unhealthy emotional processing? Can it be measured? Can serious traumas be successfully processed? “It is as if the body has a second immune system, an emotional system, devoted not to physical protection but protection from emotional hurt and trauma” Baker 2003 http://emotionalprocessing.org/
     
  12. feo1966

    feo1966 Fapstronaut

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    This can be a part of it. But not completely required to have underlying emotional problems.

    When rats find out that they can self stimulate their reward center by pushing a certain lever, they will walk across an electric floor that burns their feet raw to be able to get to the lever.

    Humans did not fair much better when they were given a means to stimulate their reward center as much as they wanted. (back when they could do studies like that on humans). In the studies, within a day, humans skipped meals even though they said they were very hungry, just so they could sit there and keep self stimulating by pushing the button. All the humans got quickly addicted to pushing the button, not just the ones with emotional prolems :)

    And porn is just that....an unnatural way to stimulate your reward center as often as you want.

    You can take the most emotionally balanced person in the world, give them cocaine a couple of times per day, and they'll become addicted to the domamine.

    With the way the culture is now, people don't think of porn as badly as they do hard drugs. So it seems like an OK thing to do.... "natural". Unlike hard drugs, some well adjusted people that get addicted to porn. It seems like an innocent little pleasure until you get hooked. There are a lot people here going to university, or have degrees. I look at the population of NoFap, and I see some pretty great people, who just happened to get addicted to a source of stimulating their reward center.

    Also, there are lots of stories here of emotional problems being fixed after people found a way to stop using porn. People became happier, more motivated, etc. So for many, porn is the cause.
     
    Lioness likes this.
  13. Yeah that is pretty much it. I also now strongly believe that almost all sickness is caused by suppressed emotions as well. I know that sounds like a pretty loaded statement, but it would take me a while to address how and why I've come to such conclusions.

    Not completely required, but I only mentioned all of this because the OP mentioned anxiety and panic attacks which are almost always related to other events.

    I too used to believe that people just aimlessly pick up habits or addictions along the way, but I no longer believe that. Addictions are picked up due to a hole, a void not being fulfilled in a persons life. There are all emotional reasons for this as well. Everything is driven by emotions, because we are emotional beings. People might look fine, but we are incredibly complex beings and most of the times don't even understand our own emotions. Nobody does something for no reason, especially when it comes to addictions.

    Of course, abstaining from PMO can surely do the trick, because you're simply no longer engaging in the emotions that drove the PMO in the first place. Also, abstaining sometimes doesn't always deal with the cause, only the effect. Many have had success stories, but many still feel lousy after abstaining. Now, that's not because retaining the semen doesn't work. It really does work and the benefits are real. It is just all to do with the un dealt with emotions within the individual.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 31, 2015
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