36 days hardmode, 75 PMO free. This is where the fight is.

This battle, this rewiring of the brain - there is nothing glamorous or easy with this path. I know some beg to differ on language used like 'fight', 'battle' and 'struggle' to describe noFap challenges (or other addiction breaking proceses), but I honestly can't see it any other way. I think it is a fight on many fronts - against our darker selves, against habitual patterning, against our morals, against darker forces - is there any good out of PMO or porn? I think not.

So this 'battle', it's not like a glorious sword wielding foray against the demon hoards and undead, where castles and maidens await your muscled self in victory. It's more like you and this other guy, in a fight you don't quite understand, in the mud of a sodden battlefield trying to kill each other with slippery hands. Maybe you kill the other, right, and you lay with heart pounding for an hour with his body next to you, and you stand up to see what's what. What's what is that the battlefield is strewn with bodies and struggles and muck. One day in the future, maybe you'll get to taste victory in your homeland and see the lives you saved back home by volunteering to fight, like your family, but for the moment, shit is hard. That's it. Super. Fucking. Hard. Regardless of your faith, religious beliefs and standing (and I do trust God) - the fight is hard.

Read about this lady on fightthenewdrug.org, who's father screwed their whole family with porn - he didn't fight early enough. Do I want to be him? Do you? Or a mother with the same issue?

I visited emergency.nofap.com and clicked on 'Rejection' because I think the fear of rejection is weighing heavy on my heart for reasons outside of PMO, to do with feeling useful, valued, worthy etc - things that have dogged me for years, and yet another lie in life. This was the youtube vid - called Dream - Motivational Video. I found it helpful, I hope you do too.

75 days in - I think this is where I really start to struggle. The initial momentum of the fight has worn off, it's no longer a cute idea in reaction to binging on porn and having fall out with a loved one, it's a full-on slog. A certain apathy is at risk of setting in - starting to explore p-subs can become easy at this point. Some people notice big changes by now which is fantastic, but the likelihood is that mine are longer term and more subtle - as I've known PMO is an issue for years and so being PMO free is not a radical change for me. This length of time, however, is. I have made it to over 100 days previously, but life stressors unhinged me if I recall correctly. Going hardmode obviously puts a lot of stress on the system, but I firmly believe I need to do this if I'm to break any of the chains binding me. Given how much I've been struggling the last few days, I'm certainly not out of the woods by any means.

I'd appreciate any prayer and thoughts. This whole thing is pretty shitty at times to say the least.

Stu

 

@Gareth M Tanner Yep, I couldn't agree more. I think rejection is a really tricky one because it's such an internal, maybe irrational, cycle that doesn't necessarily make sense, yet we feel it so strongly. Like, how do you fix a sense of rejection? Very hard to do!