What DIDN'T work for you?

Great idea, will be interesting following this thread!

 

Great thread idea.
Neither beating myself up every time I PMOed nor convincing myself I wasn't such a bad person ever helped.

 

As someone who just made a conscious decision to abstain from PMO for the first time in his life, I'll definitely keep an eye on this thread. I literally have zero experience, so I'm curious to know what works and doesn't work for everyone else.

 

To answer the OP. This is kind of the opposite of a success thread. I like it, highlighting the failures you've had can help you get on the wagon again .

My "what didn't help" list:

Having the wrong attitude to the whole idea of Porn being harmful to my life. Having no knowledge of it being harmful.

Telling my best friend (no longer my friend at all) that I was giving up Porn and in doing so, trusting the wrong person.. Honestly I needed to pick the right people to trust and I eventually did.

Not building up the discipline. Being too confident in my ability to give up. Not forgiving myself.

I went for 1042 days with this idea in my head. It's a good way to start off the journey and keep going, and I applaud anyone who can do it.

 

If you wouldn't mind, could you please elaborate on this? I would be interested to know what effect telling a friend about NoFap would have on succeeding in it.

 

The friend I had at the time, encouraged me to go back to PMO, MO in particular, after I told them. It was years ago, and I did relapse after that.. Though it was my decision to go back, being encouraged (and the normalization of Porn) didn't help either.

 

Hands down my biggest obstacle to success is being overly critical/not managing expectations. I have been prone to this in alot of areas of life and it has led me to achieve some awesome things but has also totally wrecked me with unreal expectations at times.
This mentality has been responsible for a super delayed recovery. Leaving NoFAP for months at a time, etc.
I needed humility and self love more than punishment and loathing.

 

One that comes to mind is about activities that take up the time once used for porn.

In past attempts I would be lazy and only try the activities suggested to me by whoever was helping me at the time.

I was too lazy to come up with MY own activities that would capture MY interest.

I’d get tired of trying the activities suggested and quit. Back to the PMO and deeper into despair.

I needed to come up with healthy things that I wanted to do, not what someone else wanted to do. Seems so obvious now, wasn’t then.

 

[This might be helpful for other persons, but it never was for me:]
Participating in challenges, especially the ones where you get "ranked" down when you relapse, or up when you keep going. It builds pressure, and as PMO was always one of my escapes from pressure, this never was helpful for me.

 

It of course gets complicated in this battle to break free. Each person’s path different. Initially I had no interest in challenges. But at end of August I had enough with the relapses and I made this site’s September Challenge my starting point and have been going since.

Keeping inline with the OP’s intentions, I’ll say that challenges initially didn’t work. Just wasn’t ready for it. But later it did work.

 

Well initially, before I'd fully got my head around NoFap, I thought reducing the number of times I did PMO to say 2 or 3 times a week (instead of every day) would help. Not a chance - it just caused me to binge on my PMO days far more than I would before.

 

Got to agree with Headspace. @2525 decided challenges was the way to go and created a forum for it and now we are awash with them! But I have seen so much negative feedback from them. People enter them full of hope and enthusiasm but eventually crawl away on their knees with their chin on the ground. So called "healthy competition" does not work IMO. I think @2525 would have to concede they don't even work for him now. But who will slay the monster he created?

 

Sheer willpower just dont work without purpose and new passion.

 

A little while ago I wrote out a list of things that didn't work for me, and what I now do instead.

You can read it https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/my-top-five-mistakes.205854/

 

Things that haven't worked for me;

Blocker, apps, and software: I have used a bunch and always either get around them or use some other type of P-Sub.

The idea that I can limit the behavior to "just this": In the past I have tried to limit my use of P to on certain categories that I don't find too objectionable (the whole industry is objectionable), or tried to limit my use to only a set number of times per week. I guess the idea that I could M w/out P also falls into this category. One thing for me always leads into another and back to the kinds of extreme behaviors I was seeking to avoid.

Doing everything by myself: The vast majority of my attempts have been conducted alone. By it's very nature PMO is secretive and and solitary...so trying to recover from it and a secret and solitary manner doesn't really break you out of the psychology. Even sharing anonymously in an environment like this is better than not being able to talk to anyone.

 

Thats a shame, the only people I ever told about it were supportive and fully understood it, almost like more people than you would expect know PMO is a problem but just dont want to talk about it, which is interesting.

 

Hello, Yes, I am aware that you had a long streak over a year ago. But there have been many relapses since then, so the benefits are surely lost. Why is it that the many challenges you have started have not helped you since then?
I do not think "these challenges" are the answer. Consequently, I can suggest no "smarter approach" to make them so.