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Changing your life vs blockers?

Discussion in 'Porn Addiction' started by skaterdrew, Jan 1, 2020.

  1. skaterdrew

    skaterdrew Fapstronaut

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    I have mentioned many times before how I don't have a smart phone, I don't have a tv in my bedroom, and I have my laptop blocked beyond belief, and my friend is the administrator of my laptop and holds all the log in details and passwords to the blockers. I just use a standard account on my laptop. Basically there is hardly anything I can relapse to on my laptop. You have no idea the level of how much everything is blocked.

    I put most of my success down to this system. I suppose in a way it's actually quite similar to monk mode, just doing away with all technology in your reboot. The blocking system I have and how restricted I am from porn and artificial sexual stimulation is similar to monk mode I guess.

    But recently I have read that changing your life is actually the most important thing in curing porn addiction? So changing your life so that on a daily basis or near daily basis you're out trying to achieve thing's and doing healthy rewarding activities on a daily basis.

    I have read the reason this is so important in porn addiction recovery is because if your not doing healthy rewarding activities regularly then your brain will naturally try to get the rewards else where, and if you're a porn addict, drug addict, alcoholic or what ever then your brain will naturally try to get it from these things.

    This does make sense to me.

    I have focused far too much on blockers and restricting my self for a long time, rather than actually trying to change my life for the better.

    But I have to be honest, I actually think being restricted and not being able to access porn and artificial sexual stimulation is more effective for me healing from porn addiction than what changing my life for the better would be.

    For instance if I had these two scenarios.

    First scenario. Living a healthy satisfying life, but porn and artificial sexual stimulation being unrestricted.

    Second scenario. Not living a healthy satisfying life, but porn and artificial sexual stimulation being completely restricted.

    If your asking me what scenario I think would keep me off porn and artificial sexual stimulation more I need to be honest, I think I would be off porn and artificial sexual stimulation much more with the second scenario.

    See the thing is a lot of guys on this think the only reason someone relapses is because they don't feel good in some sort of way. So their stressed, depressed, feeling unwell or something and then boom relapse. I think not feeling good in some sort of way probably is one of the main reasons for relapse, but it's not the only reason for relapse. What about just feeling horny? What about just being triggered by something on your computer? Basically what I am saying is you can easily still relapse even if you feel good.

    That being said I do want to try aim to live a healthy satisfying life. Obviously one of the reasons I want to do this is to get over porn addiction, but another reason is well if your not achieving good things in life then what actually is the point in life?

    So do any of you guys have any recommendations on healthy rewarding activities I could do on a regular basis?
     
    Last edited: Jan 1, 2020
  2. hollyman

    hollyman Fapstronaut

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    aahh so you relapse again after 3 days ? i was remember i commented on your last post tho

    the answer is : do a healthy activities + blockers also

    without good activities u are 100% will go back to porn but without a blocker u possibly will come back to porn and that relapse will hurt you even more cause the odd of relapse at day 20++ is way more frustating than relapse on day 3


    i know cause i experienced it

    1. do a positive activities
    2. install porn blocker make ur friend make the password and tell em no to give it to you
    3. stop excuses, over thinking and whining it will not help in any matter


    and no i dont have that any reward what not because the reward of nofap that you will experienced is good enough tho,,,and imo the rewarding system will not benefit u in the long run
     
  3. skaterdrew

    skaterdrew Fapstronaut

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    Alcohol consumption has been a bit higher because of the festive period. I think that's the reason relapsing has been higher.

    Yeah I think blockers+changing my life seems like the best bet.
     
  4. IR254

    IR254 Fapstronaut

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    Here's my view on the matter:

    To find out what we have to do in order to get control over our addiction, we have to know exactly what addiction is and how it developes.
    My view is based on a conceptualization of addiction, which is a little bit different than the traditionational disease model. I personally follow pretty much Marc Lewis' concept of pathological learning, because it is by far the best & most empowering concept in my opinion. You'll have to accept this premise to understand my point of view.

    I'll shorten and paraphrase the concept real quick: According to this concept, addiction is not a disease nor a choice. It is simply the result of long periods of powerful, pathological learning processes. This means we simply kept doing the behavior for whatever reason (boredom, coping, trauma, fun, etc.) for longer periods of times, so we deeply wired ourselfs to the behavior of choice (accelerated pathological learning). Sounds pretty basic and simple, which is one reason why I like it so much.

    But this concept has another very important implication: If you follow the disease model of addiction, you basically tell yourself that you're a victim and are powerless over your addiction. You tell yourself to be careful and concious of everything, because you are never really healed. I find that extremly demoralising and I don't want to think of myself as a victim. When you follow the learning concept on the contrary, you accept, that you brought the addiction apon yourself. This is hard to swallow, BUT it means that you can also heal yourself through another long and steady learning process.

    Now that we established the basis of addiction, we can take a look at what the solution could be: When the reason for the addiction is prolonged repetitions of the same behavior, then we have to intervene right there. Behaviors are almost always driven by the scheme of Trigger -> Behavior -> Reward. We have two choices: 1) We can try to avoid triggers forever or 2) we can try to act differently after triggers, i.e. change our behaviors.

    Trigger-avoiding-strategies are pretty much guaranteed to fail in my opinion, because we can't avoid triggers forever. After years and years of addiction, pretty much everything can be a trigger: Stress, emotions, people, things, times of day, surroundings, behavioral patterns, and so on. We can't erradicate all of them forever. For that reason we have to intervene on the behavioral level in my opinion.

    We have to change the behaviors, that we associated with the behavior. The longer the addiction was, the more severe the changes have to be generally speaking as far as I see it. Only trying to cut out the watching-porn-behavior will probably not work, because all our other behaviors are so closely linked to porn and can act as triggers on their own, that it is almost impossible to pull off.

    If we change our behaviors, not only do we make it easier for ourselves to avoid porn, we also actively make ourselves better. This gives us even more momentum to strive for personal developement. More and more, we will unlearn to turn to porn all the time and learn to do other (productive) things instead. In my opinion, this is the only way to gain long-lasting control over our addiction. That being said, we still have to accept, that it's incredibly hard to pull the behavior changes off. It takes so much effort and endurance, that we probably fail a lot before we eventually manage to do it.

    This whole thing only works, if you accept my premise in the beginning. Feel free to think differerntly, but to me this is the only concept of addiction, that makes sense and is empowering at the same time. And I think that is essential for betterment.
     
    AspiringVitality likes this.
  5. Man, here's a simple answer:

    You have to change your life. Quitting PMO is just one small part of the equation. Use blockers to help you acheive that. But shift your focus on changing your life and the way you process things. Stop obsessing simply about PMO. You have to learn how to deal with uncomfortable emotions. You have to learn to know and accept yourself (the good and the bad).
     

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