The Lord of the Rings Challenge

Thanks a lot for your help. Omnia possum in eo qui me confortat.

 

Day 6 completed successfully

Problem 2: Pornography is More Novel than Primitive Sex
Likewise, the reward center of our brain doesn’t distinguish between the limited novel sexual experience of an attractive mate from a distant clan and the practically unlimited novel sexual experiences now available at any time on any of the electronic boxes we carry around.

More than just abundant sexual stimulation, our reward system is built to crave novel sexual stimulation. The reward centers of evolving humans didn’t merely seek to have a lot of sex to maximize their chances of passing on their genes; they sought to have a lot of sex with a lot of different people, thus ensuring a wider spread of our genes. Therefore, our reward systems are primed to seek novel sexual stimuli–sex with people we’ve never had sex with before. This can be observed in a phenomenon behaviorists call the Coolidge effect: mammals of either gender will seem disinterested in having sex with a partner they’ve just had sex with, but will show renewed sexual interest when presented with a new partner to pair with.

This craving for novelty is why most porn users, whether they are addicts or not, would not be satisfied to simply look at one picture or video for the rest of their lives. If they owned only one picture, they’d get bored with porn pretty quickly! Prior to the Internet, porn users often had a stash of magazines and videotapes to use and would add to their collection every so often to keep things from getting too stale. Now that we all have high-speed Internet access, there is an unlimited amount of new porn available on-demand 24/7, and no porn user need ever be bored! (Rather, it is now impossible for one human to watch all the pornographic content that now exists!) Once a certain performer or sexual act or kink gets too familiar, there are always new performers and acts and kinks to explore!

All the best brothers
Your brother in this struggle

 

was waitin for that tobacco long 15 days!

 

True...
These words are really true "as long as you keep relapsing you will stay at same place
I have been meditating to avoid reset but the binging reduces dopamine so much that i don't even have motivation to meditate and that creates a negative loop

That is what i will try
Today was good i made it
I will look for additional tips in your signatures as well

The youtube video was really inspiring
Thanks a lot

Hopefully i will give my best

 

Day 13 ends.
Today was very busy. Monday is always busy...
No urges today too...
In the last 3 day I didn't get any urges.
It's very strange but very good too

 

Day 3.

 

Day 11.

 

Day 1

I had a few minor urges to masturbate this morning, but I got past them an I am now waiting for my weekly meeting with my directed study instructor which I almost always look forward to. The problem with having relapsed Saturday evening instead of say in the morning is that when I start the day, I am always half a day away from the next day completed. I don’t know why that bothers me, perhaps because I am still up when the new day starts, and I like waking up knowing that my new day started while I was sleeping. To be clear, I am not going to use that as an excuse to relapse, but I like patterns and mathematical regularity (I am a mathematician), and having my new day start at 7:20PM just bothers me. In fact, I think I am going to reset my counter to 6AM so that when I get up in the morning, I will have made it one more day. I feel it is relative, and as long as I not saying I relapsed earlier than I actually did, it should be fine. I just feel more accomplished that way, which motivates me to avoid porn and masturbation more so than if I have such a weird reset time such as 5,6,7PM. I am fine with my daily anniversaries being in the morning or at 1PM at the latest, because I usually get on NoFap after that, but 7:20PM just makes me anxious. So here is to a Sunday 7/19/2020 6AM counter reset to prevent me from relapsing due to my discomfort with the time.

Best,
Mathman1994

 

Day 6

 

I've noticed similar thoughts in me. I think there's a potential trap in that NoFap and NoFap challenges rely on counters. We inadvertently become focused on the "days gone without NoFap," the number of NoFap days showing in our signature, our rank in a particular challenge, etc. and this becomes a source of anxiety and leads to the same kind of compulsive behaviour which underlies our compulsive attachment to porn. These counters are meant to help us keep track of our progress on the way to freedom. They are tools, nothing more. We should be careful that they do not become a new source of anxiety – since anxiety is one of the main feelings that we watch porn precisely to escape. We should be careful not to use the NoFap forum and tools as new means to feed the vicious cycle of anxiety-compulsiveness which underlies so much of our addiction to porn. I've only been here for just over a week, and I've already noticed this danger by observing my thoughts. The anxiety over our NoFap days counter or rank in a NoFap challenge can be a mediate cause of our relapsing. If you find yourself checking this forum more often than is necessary, and engaging in compulsive behaviour in this forum (e.g. obsessing over your counter, who replied to you, how many likes you received, etc.), then you should be careful: you could be unconsciously fueling your desire to relapse (to relieve the anxiety). The NoFap journey is complex – it is essentially about progressing from emotional immaturity and dysfunction to emotional maturity and health, i.e. the smooth functioning of our complex emotional system. We should try to observe even the tiniest movements in our minds and hearts at all times. It's good also to remember often that demons are smarter than we are: they can deceive into using the NoFap forum in a way that can lead us to slip and fall. I am speaking to myself first and foremost. Good luck!

 

Day 69 done

 

Day 83

 

Day 14.
One day to become a hobbit..

 

Day 2