Hacking the Science of Habits - Advice Please!

It sounds like you already know enough about the process and on the other hand, we don't know what's available in your life context so you really have to look at the possibilities. I will just say that what you think of as reward may change in time, and you may start to tolerate a longer response time and subtler feelings of satisfaction. Toward the beginning you may be thinking in terms of a more immediate reward based on feeling good, but for example you might derive pleasure from successful overall repatterning beyond a single habit. Even with PMO we have stress as the other one, which we can say in general is avoidance, and one can do the opposite and lean into it, but you need to further qualify it given the intensity - like it may not be appropriate to force yourself to meditate and sit with the feeling if it's a full on PTSD trigger.

So basically I would not invest completely in working with the small cycle in this way, you want to have some background disciplines and awareness but the trouble is the addicted mind is short sighted by nature. It will seem that's other stuff that doesn't have much to do with it.

Actually let me back up. I think a more helpful way of looking at that sentence may be not just change it so you get a reward from different stuff, another possibility is change it so you don't get a reward from the problematic stuff, or just change it so you no longer NEED a reward. The overall SET of habits is more important too, so you may work on that scale rather than just focusing in on PMO - again it may seem like the life improvement stuff is removed but that's not the case if you're working on that level. So you change the relationships between the habits like other ways of responding to stress without relying on a one-and-done approach like exercise only, implement an entire network of healthy acitivities including diet and some form of mental discipline.

 

Ok lets go with a specific example of morning wood and the possibility of MO without P. As a background condition this is where sleep hygiene is really helpful, but more specifically you might actually introduce stimuli like using a sound file for your alarm that reminds you to not MO, especially if you haven't gotten your sleep dialed in yet. But at this point I wake up without alarm and I just have enough awareness to know I'm dreaming and fantasizing (like this morning actually) and the awareness that there's a choice. The alarm file doesn't even necesarily have to be about PMO or recovery in particular, you may be able to find something that is just generally inspirational that will do the trick - and also switch it up every so often so you don't get used to it. (maybe there's an app that randomly picks from a set of files?) It's also possible to set off a visual timer for a lamp, it's new stimuli you're not used to around that time if nothing else. (though I would just get a full spectrum lamp)

Just remember all this is technological stuff which means it is external, I would suggest everyone always works towards self regulation. But it's good practice in terms of thinking through designing your environment.

 

I think you can naturally get subconscious conditioning by practices like journaling and reading inspirational stuff during the day, maybe poetry. The idea of playing something upon waking is the opposite, it's to work with the conscious mind as it is entering that phase upon waking.

 

Picking up new habits has been key to me. You can't just kill a bad habit, you must replace it. I believe this process of change can develop into the so spoken "sexual transmutation" if you're dealing with a sexual addiction like PMO.

 

I believe, changing the cue is possible. But it cannot take effect in few days. On average an adult takes 65 days to set a habit. So if you continue the cue for 65 days that might become a habit.