It's Not Just PMO

Introduction
​

Hey everybody.

I am currently on day 55 of a no-PMO streak. My previous record was 60 days. I have been trying to quit PMO and take back control of my life for 1.5 years.

I am a 26 year old male. I am about to graduate from an Ivy-league professional school. I will be moving to the city this Fall to start a high-paying and high-prestige job. I enjoy singing, playing guitar, and working-out. I have a group of friends with whom I routinely hang-out. I take myself seriously in work and school but I am easy-going in social situations. People tell me I am smart and funny but occasionally quiet and distant.

I am single and have never been in a relationship. I have never had sex before and I've only been intimate with a girl once, when I was 25. Girls have expressed interest in me at various times in my life, but for various reasons - some unknown and many of which I have identified and am working-on - I've never been in a romantic relationship.

Nevertheless, I am proud of the hard work I've done in school and my career to get to this point, and I am eternally grateful for the emotional and financial support my family has given me. I really feel like I made the best of it. People have told me that I "seem to have my shit together". These external things - school, work, finances - are well-settled at this point in my life.

But I have been struggling with emotional issues for a long time. I started seriously confronting these issues about 2 years ago. I also started confronting my PMO addiction around that time as well.

My emotional issues and my PMO addiction are intertwined. But the emotional issues began first. I started PMO to distract myself from those issues. But in doing so, my mind was adversely affected. Physiologically, I developed a craving for the dopamine rush of PMO. Developmentally, I socially isolated myself and struggled to develop connections with the world and people that create true happiness.

First, I will talk about my experience with PMO and abstinence. Second, I will discuss the personal issues which I believe led to my PMO addiction. Third, I want to talk about the work I am currently doing.

Experience with PMO and Abstinence​

I first started watching porn and masturbating when I was 12. The first masturbation-induced orgasm I can remember experiencing was while watching porn.

For the next 12 years I masturbated and watched porn nearly every day. I started with "clean" Youtube porn but soon started watching nude porn. I kept looking for different types of porn to satisfy my cravings.

I was hooked on PMO. I could not wait to get home from sleep-away camp so I could watch porn and masturbate. I would cum into my pants and go to sleep without washing myself. I secretly watched porn and masturbated when my friends were in the same room at a sleepover. I waited until my parents went to bed so I could masturbate in the bathroom without being disturbed. I would sit on a ski lift and rub my legs together just so I could feel the friction on my penis.

PMO became so routine that it was practically unconscious - almost like breathing. I did PMO to stay sane so I could get through school, work, exercise, and socializing - none of which were nearly as satisfying as PMO.

Then I tried quitting PMO when I turned 25. At first my streaks would only last a few days. Then they lasted maybe a week or two, but with the occasional pornography and edging slipped-in. I would also find ways to cheat - convincing myself that I was reading a sexual novel or scrolling through a girl's Instagram for some made-up reason, when the real reason was to experience sexual content.

Eventually I managed to string together consecutive weeks of no PMO. That's when the "superpowers" started.

In my experience, the superpowers are real, but temporary. They give you a taste of what life looks like without PMO and the motivation to start addressing the core issues which lead to PMO addiction.

I experienced the superpowers. When I stopped PMO for a week, I felt free of all the shame attached to my PMO addiction. I walked taller. I could look people in the eye easier. I could speak my mind without feeling as inhibited. I diverted the energy and enthusiasm I expended on PMO to self-improvement. I went to bed earlier and woke up earlier. I cleaned my living space and improved by hygiene. I took risks and made myself vulnerable. I started taking singing lessons and performing at open mic nights. I recorded myself and posted videos to Youtube. I organized social events with my friends and became more curious about other people's lives.

But the superpowers wore-off at around the 1 month mark. At that point my mind started craving PMO. And that's the point when I took a hard look inside to explore what was driving me to PMO then, at 24 years old, just as it did when I was 12 years old.

The Core Issues
​

I reached a breaking point when I was 24. I was in the midst of my PMO addiction and in the first year of a very challenging graduate program. I was a complete and utter wreck. I would call my Mom over the phone and break down in tears. I felt so directionless, hapless, and alone. I had suicidal thoughts. I remember feeling that I was at rock bottom. I knew I had to get professional help if was going to thrive, or even survive.

I saw a therapist for a couple months, stopped for a bit, and then started therapy again, then stopped for a bit again. I started therapy again 7 months ago and have been going weekly since.

I have made lightyears of progress in that time. I practice accelerated experiential dynamic psychotherapy (AEDP) to help connect me to my core emotions. The concept is simple but effective. When a person feels a "core emotion" like fear or joy, sometimes they suppress it because something in their life experience tells them that it's not okay to feel that way. In its place they feel an "inhibitory emotion" like shame or guilt. And they shield themselves from that inhibitory emotion by engaging in "defenses", like PMO or drugs. The goal of AEDP is to identify the inhibitory emotions and defenses, and experience the core emotions that lie underneath. Once we experience the core emotion, we can reach an openhearted state of connection, contentment, and compassion.

In short, therapy has helped me identify the core emotions that drive me to PMO.

These feelings are myriad but can be boiled down to low self-esteem. I sometimes feel unwanted by other people and unworthy of affection or compassion. Sometimes I feel like I have a defect that I need to change in order to be accepted - I'm not outgoing enough, I'm too ugly, my voice is too deep, I'm not tall enough, I'm not muscular enough. I sometimes feel like I have to act a certain way with certain people in order to please them. Behind these thoughts is shame.

Therapy has made me realize that shame has been with me since I was a child, even before PMO. And I have been combatting that shame with various defenses - PMO, over-exercising, self-isolation, obsession about my appearance, avoiding intimacy.

The shame, in turn, is covering up a deep sense of fear. Fear is what led me to shame and PMO.

NoFap talks a lot about "rebooting" the brain to a pre-PMO state. That's exactly what I do in therapy. Therapy is helping me "reboot" my brain to the period before shame and PMO, when there was only that core emotion of fear.

Without going into specifics, my therapist helps me travel back in time to my pre-PMO and pre-shame brain by reimagining those childhood experiences that led me down this path. And it works. In therapy I have experienced some of the most intense, tear-ridden, heart-rending, and ultimately cathartic core feelings I ever had. Afterwards I literally feel like I am high on drugs. That's my brain being swept clean of all the cobwebs, all of the wires unplugged from their old sockets and writhing around in sparks, and forming new connections.

This is rebooting.

My Work So Far
​

The most important work I am doing now is therapy. I put the therapy into practice by recognizing when I start to feel shame.

When I start to feel shame, I no longer do PMO like I did in the past. Instead, I stop what I am doing, take a few deep breaths, and travel deep inside myself. When I am inside, I imagine myself now - a mature adult - interacting with my younger self. Sometimes I go back to a traumatic experience and comfort my younger self, and tell him that everything is going to be ok, and that I love him and that I am so proud of him. Other times there is no specific past experience and I just act as a soothing presence.

Put simply, when I start to shame-spiral, I tell myself "You are enough, just the way you are."

I have also made changes to my routine. I cook my own healthy food and rarely eat out or drink alcohol. I go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. I only take cold showers, which make me feel more alert and embodied. I clean my living space at least once a week. I always make sure I am well-cleaned, well-dressed, and well-groomed, even when I do not have any specific plans that day.

I am 55 days PMO-free, with the occasional wet-dream. I try to avoid sexual content as much as possible. I only watch shows and read books that are free of sexual content. I try to limit my exposure to social media as much as possible.

I also put myself out there with my music. I record videos of my guitar and singing and post them on Youtube. I perform weekly at a virtual open mic and also do live feeds on my social media to perform. I genuinely love to play music, and I feel great shamelessly pursuing and sharing my passion.

I also make sure to spend time with my friends at least once a week. Although I am introverted, I try to strike a balance between socializing and doing solo activities. I genuinely believe that my introversion is natural and not the product of PMO. I am learning to accept my authentic self.

Of course, there are moments when I am deeply unhappy. Quitting PMO is like uncovering a veil hiding all of these negative emotions I have been hiding for so long. My focus right now is recognizing them, confronting them, experiencing them, and taking the deep sense of calm resulting from the experience and storing it somewhere where I can always find it.

Finally, I want to talk about my perspective on women at this point in my life. For a straight male, PMO is a severe obsession with sex between a man and women, albeit in fantasy form.

I've never had sex and have only been intimate with a girl once. And on that one occasion I was still in my PMO addiction, and unable to truly feel like I was in the moment. So my experience with real women is limited. And my experience with sex has only been though pornography.

Right now I view romance as a felt sense, and not just a box I have to check. I never want to pursue a relationship with a woman just because I feel like "it's time", or "I need a significant other to make me feel better". Happiness starts within. Without the self, there is no other. Once the self is discovered, then romance happens naturally. I believe that when it comes to true authentic attraction, "you know it when you know it".

I believe there is a world where men and women experience a visceral, natural, and primordial sexual attraction to one another. For most of my life that attraction was overwhelmed and tainted by PMO, shame, and fear. I don't know what it's like to show up to a woman as my complete, vulnerable, uninhibited and unashamed self. And I have rarely seen a women as a person, and not just as a means for my masturbation.

But I feel that changing now.

Every day I try to show up in the mirror as myself. And very gradually I am beginning to accept that as enough. I pursue my passions shamelessly, especially my music. I sing and play guitar live even if people don't like the music. In the past I would perform just to impress women or not at all. Now I do it because it's who I am. And that's good enough for me.

And as my no-PMO streak continues, I feel myself becoming attracted to women in a vaguely familiar yet mysterious way. Familiar because it is reminiscent of how I felt as a boy on the cusp of puberty, wondering why I was suddenly drawn to women. Mysterious because I still haven't been completely vulnerable and intimate with a woman yet.

Even my occasional wet dreams are changing. Early in my streak, when I was still watching modern sitcoms inundated with sexual humor, my wet dreams were literally me dreaming about masturbating to porn. But I recently had a wet dream that honestly felt like that first time I had orgasmed in my sleep when I was 12, before I even knew what porn was. I knew a female was involved somehow, but there was this curious mystery about it. It's not something I could find by watching pornography.

This is what a "reboot" feels like. A reboot is cleansing your brain of all the PMO and inhibitory emotions and getting back to those core emotions that started it all. It's scary and it takes work.

Sometimes I find myself looking at other people who I believe have had intimate sexual relationships and wonder how their minds work or how happy and fulfilled they must feel. I wonder if I am simply starting over again from 12 years old and starting all of that development now, when I am going on 27. It feels so discouraging.

But this work is not a linear progression. Life is not a linear progression. We start and we stop, we advance and we regress. I believe that all of the work I am doing now is getting me in touch with my core self, and learning to accept that as enough.

Happiness comes from acceptance of the self. Without the self, there is no other.

I look forward to meeting people on a similar journey. I am eager to hear what your own experiences with PMO addiction have been like.

Cheers,
Soaring Eagle (Day 55)