How to Keep Your Streak

I was asked on a Fabstronaut chat group of what I have been doing to keep my streak, so I thought I'd put together some tips for fellow Fabstronauts new to the journey. Good luck!

Tips for fellow fabstronauts on keeping your streak:

Philosophical and Therapeutic:
- Understand that what you are attempting is to undo a profound addiction to neuro-chemicals that accompanied PMO, and that addiction is scientifically proven to be as profound as addiction to hard drugs;

- Understand that the reasons for running to PMO are emotional and deeply seated. These are the root causes of addiction, and until you address the roots, attempting to reboot without dealing with the roots is like just trimming weeds in your garden. You WILL need help to get to these roots (see resources below in practical tips);

- Sexual transmutation: taking the enormous stores of sexual energy now building up due to NoFap and channel that energy to creative and productive ends. For me that started with getting back in the gym and back into martial arts. Working out actually created more energy than just the NoFap, and I’m transmuting all that energy toward tending to the home, my marriage, and to my work and entrepreneurship;

- Have a spiritual practice. I am a Christian and also have learned the Eastern art of Qigong through my martial arts training. I have fused both into a spiritual and physical regiment, which ends in meditation and prayer 3-4 times a week; Qigong is very useful in sexual transmutation as well;

Practical
- Build for yourself a tribe of support resources: peers who are going through it at the same time (like this chat group), mentors who have walked the road and can guide you on the journey, therapist(s) who can help you dig into the deep roots of your addiction, and get on an addiction recovery program like 12-step or SMART Recovery for sexual addiction. Most importantly, devote a significant amount of time to the hard work of recovery in the form of self-reflection, journaling, doing workbooks, reading, prayer, meditation, and attending groups;

- Build a digital safe haven at home. We use Circle with Disney, which is a hardware internet blocker connected to the router, and my wife keeps the admin password. It locks all devices connected to my wifi. We also have content restriction turned on all our mobile devices, and she keeps the passwords to those as well.

- Plan your time. One of the triggers for PMO are boredom and idle time. I no longer have idle/unplanned time. I make lists of what needs to get done in all areas of life to allocate to what used to be idle time, like the home, our marriage, time with my boy, time to tend to things, time to workout/exercise, time to recover and relax. Yes, the time to recover and relax is planned time, and I have specific things that I plan for that, like what I might watch on Netflix, and communicate that to my wife. I set a timer, and head straight to bed when the timer goes off. I try not to idly surf social media or the web. It does happen, but I catch myself. I hope to stop that behavior completely as it is dangerous to my recovery and my streak.

Of course each of these tips is like an entire chapter in a book. Hopefully this gives you a glimpse of how my recovery is structured. Good luck on your journey!

Day 72 no PMO; Day 182 no P. Longest streak 7 years.

 

My first 7 year streak was a religious renewal run. Then we had a major trauma happen in the family, and I because never dealt with the underlying childhood traumas and the resulting emotional coping mechanisms that were the root cause my addiction from ages 5 to 29, eventually I relapsed in a big way. This time around, through the intense therapy regiment I'm undertaking, I'd digging up all that old stuff and finding healing...finally.

7 years and relapsed! What have you done wrong to back in ?[/QUOTE]