P.A.W.S. - what are they, cure, duration

That is definitely, definitely not Wim Hofs story, brother.. He just learned it through experience years ago. Just here in Amsterdam, mate.

Look, if you're not into those things it's totally fine. Live and let live

But we digress on the topic of this thread.

How's your PAWS symptoms?

 

This is all very much true, but I just don't know how to react to a trigger. I've already stopped watching tv-series, movies and mindless browsing just to reduce the amount of triggers and pointless time wasting. Frankly, my brainfog has been so thick lately that I can barely keep up with a TV-serie episode, let alone a movie so I've just dropped them altogether. Today I got a trigger while doing a crossword by seeing a pair of drawn boobs and I immediately started to think about Googling the real stuff. It took me a couple of hours of rigorous cleaning and going outside to get rid of the increased anxiety. All of that just by seeing a simple thing like that. Later today I watched a couple of minutes of TV and got a picture of a woman in bikini. How ridiculous is that? It's incredible how tawdry promiscuity is now an ubiquitous thing.

I either have two options: reduce my activities even more when my activities are already limited thanks to this insidious toxic waste that is porn and sex in general or just not care about it at all when I see a trigger on TV or anywhere else and accept that it's just the state of our current western society, but that's easier said than done.

 

Yeah life has many sexual and pornographic triggers. I am struggling with the same thing here..

Stoïcism (the real one, not the "suppress your emotions" version) seems to help me with this somewhat. The works of Epictetus & Marcus Aurelius give priceless advice in my opinion

 

Thanks for the question, I nearly relapsed to P, but thanks God I could escape with one time M. Had some weeks when my symptoms become worse than before, but nothing like the hell before.

How you doing? Is your sleep better?

 

I'm glad to hear you slipped through the eye of the needle with that one. One time M is certainly less damaging than P (or even worse, edging).

My sleep has been improving, especially since I have taken the time to create a healthy circadian rythm and stop eating 5 hours before going to sleep on a daily basis.
But the dreams man... wow did I (and still) have a lot of processing to catch up on.

Now approaching the 40-50 days range again. Where most of my streaks the PAWS get really like hell.. So I am trying to make sure I'm best prepared for the coming months

How is your sleep atm?

 

Not man, that ain't true at all
before I developed porn related symptoms I would experience the benefits of meditation all the time, I would just stare at a fixed point and enter a bliss state, I was fully present in the Now, the present moment was 100% fulfilling to me.
.
When we get addicted to anything we end up losing this ability, no wonder meditation was painful for me in the first 18 months of my reboot, I would get agitated and it was an uncomfortable to practice mindfulness.
Thankfully I can meditate nowadays for long periods of time, I'm not 100% mentally healed though. The point is, we didn't have this thing called awareness, It's like I said in another thread:

we didn't know how the brain functioned and how we're supposed to feel in a healthy mental state, we were mindless addicted zombies, we fried our own brains with the drug and then one day we started to feel all the negative consequences that PMO bring to one's life.

What does that have to do with awareness? Well, now that we have IT we know that the way we're supposed to live is not by abusing and binging on instant artificial stimulation, Super stimuli destroy our sense of well being, happiness, gratitude and fulfillment. under normal circumstances we should be able to feel extremely good by just breathing, that's where meditation comes in, when our brains are normal and healthy we are able to do nothing for 30 minutes - 1 hour and feel bliss, that's what happened to us, that's what happened to me, since we didn't have awareness, we didn't know any better and we took this for granted we fucked up this power
.
when you can sit down and meditate for 20 or 30 minutes and feel absolute bliss that's when you know your brain is working the way it's supposed to be, that's something we should never take for granted from now on, I certainly won't, we should value this shit, in a world full of artificial stimulation, social media, high speed internet, junkies, porn addicts, alcoholics, drug addicts so on and so forth we must set ourselves apart and not fall for these traps, we're supposed to be like children, when you were a kid you'd wake up everyday full of energy and all the minute details and nuances of the world around you would excite you, this is a very underrated benefit and I could go on for hours talking about this subject but don't think this is trivial, IT'S NOT, this benefit right here is EXTREMELY important for your life, trust me when I say that, it means you're sensitive to the world around you, it means your intuition and emotional inteligence is at its sharpest and most powerful level possible, it means you're operating in a high vibrational frequence, life flows effortlessly and gets way easier when you experience this, when you ARE in this state

 

This, at least for me was a simple question to answer. I needed to eliminate most triggers during the first 3 months or so of my reboot. After that they shouldn't bother you quite as much, but eventually we all need to learn how to live with them.

I never got to the point where i started thinking about using P during my successful reboots. If ever i got to the point of fantasy or sexual thoughts in the past, then i would always end up relapsing

 

Wat u mean twitches

 

This right here. I do 100% agree with this. Like I said in my previous comments: live life to the fullest. Meditation can be an aid in training ourselves to just sit and be with ourselves and our surroundings in the here and now. It is one example of a high level in Stoïcism: a simultaneous combination of accepting what is and taking 100% control over what you do have control over.
It's just common sense. Literally common SENSE.

I remember when I was a kid I would wake up and be instantly happy about the fact of having another day where I can do lot's of things. Man, the enthousiasm for life we've lost as a collective. Then coping with it by chasing shallow, superstitial crap trying to fill that hole inside. When we meditate we encounter this hole, and start to confront it. That's called taking responsibility

For us Nofap is a big part of this

 

Bro.. before porn messed up my brain, just looking at the sun would excite me
The wind also did the same thing
We made a mistake, we took it for granted, actually we didn't even take this for granted, we didn't even know this existed or if this was possible
and like they say, experience teaches harsh but it teaches best
and I definitely learned my lesson after 3 years of PAWS

 

I was thinking about the same thing that eventually one has to stop avoiding triggers as much, and by avoiding I mean actually watching a tv-serie or movie and not be bothered if there's a sex scene or a half-naked woman. Right now I'm not watching anything, partly because I can't really focus on a long story because of the brainfog. I think three months is a good value for that, by that time the brain won't be so vulnerable to triggers and it has most likely healed enough to not get all jumbled up by seeing one. Three months might sound like a big amount for someone, but it really isn't considering people here have been addicted to porn for years or even decades.

 

100% agree. For me it took 4-5 months of doing this before i trusted myself to be around triggers. I would still watch TV but i would be very cautious of what i watched. Cartoons or animated shows are great (i like family guy).

Keep going the way you are going buddy and you will be at 3 months in no time

 

If I avoid triggers, and keep circadian rythm too as you said i can sleep kinda well. If i wake up middle of night i get out of bed and start reading aloud, or writing my diary, praying etc. That do the trick, and i can fall in sleep again soon, lets say in 25 minutes then i sleep deeply.
Yes I got you, i have many vivid dreams too still.
Stay strong, you can pass that range! Just be wise, and dont get nerve damage as i did...

Just saying for me the biggest triggers are enviroment / life situations / certain times in a day, computer use. But I think you right, P addiction heals slowly because we become constantly triggered.

 

Nice , but as I said in my experience meditation was a sure relapse for me to P. I could easily achieve that "so called blissful state, when i saw everything in blissful fog" without problem even when i was deeply addicted, I started meditation because I read here it so great for recovering. So in my experience it is not true an addict brain can not achieve that bliss feeling, it can, but the cost will be very high. My brain learnt how to go in that bliss full state and guess what it did, i went into autopilot mode and ended up watching P.

I speak in my experience, you speak in yours, we will never make agreement probably.

 

Man this sound sensitivity stuff is killing me lately, having it nonstop for over a week now. I really do wonder when it will go away. I really need help because its driving me crazy at this point.

 

How long are you into reboot? Are you going through other withdrawals besides this? Other rebooters have gone through both light and sound sensitivity during their journey. We all do wonder when will our withdrawals go. Its difficult to tell as everyone's addiction and brain are different. I am into my tenth month and still going through severe withdrawals. Long terms rebooters say 1-2 years!

 

I'm nearing the 4 month mark into reboot with no relapses, I've been having the sound sensitivity for over a week now and everything around me is so loud and it startles me and makes me more stressed and agitated.

 

Withdrawals can be rough. All I can tell you is that it will get better and then go away. You have to be patient. Stay put and let it pass. Just don't relapse. The fact that we all are having these PAWS confirms how much porn has destroyed our brains. We just have to stay on this path and get our healthy brain back from the clutches of porn

 

I just hope this symptom doesn't cause me any hearing loss, since having everything around you be very loud may harm your ears.

 

If I'm not mistaken, there was a thread about "curing your pied." I thought your reboot was over.