PMO Has No Power Over You

Funny how I am seeing this today because last night I was thinking along similar lines. I realised that the real enemy is not porn but lust. Porn is external but lust is internal. There is no need to get into an arm wrestle with porn (which I will eventually lose) if I just turn away from lustful thoughts and desires and set my heart on the higher things - God, Jesus, Holy Spirit. This is my new strategy. Let's see how it goes.

 

THANK YOU! This is KEY! If only people understood this! We are not victims. We are responsible - AND can do something about It!

 

Hm...
I think that it is very dangerous to moralize this, since we are dealing with an addiction.
Maybe i misunderstood you, ...
You say it is not outside of our control. I would say, control is relative.
If it helps you, cheers!

I think it depends on how deep you are in the shit: when your dopamine-circuits are compromised to the bone, its no question that praying a mantra about control wont help (again: i do not want to get into a fight here, i just feel like its important to point out that there are other approaches to this matter). Most cocaine addicts know that it is "wrong" what they are doing, still they would do it.
I think it is reasonable to state that porn is bad for you. But unfortunately most of our choices are NOT RATIONAL.

I recommend Gabor Maté's "In the realm of hungry ghosts: close encounters with addiction" to have a more clear view on addiction. I think he says that people that are not vulnerable psychologically wont become an addict as quickly as most people think. He says that it is a myth that there are substances that can make you dependant after first consumation. But he also says, that, the group that is trying that shit is mostly a group that is vulnerable (why else should you try that shit if you know its bad, cause you are desperate for good feelings and want to make the pain go away!), and so they do indeed get addicted with the first shot, cause theres no good feelings from another source that can compete...

I am at the end of my first week of pluckeye. I force the stuff away from myself. I do not think, i am weak therefor, i think i just know better. I have proven in other areas of my life, that my will is very very strong. It just happens to be the case that i am a very vulnerable person, that seems to be welcoming in addictions of all sorts, and with depressive tendencies. To put on top a moralizing judgement that is making me feel worse, cause i lost power over my will in certain circumstances... i do not know if this would serve me very well. So i am trying to keep this away from me with pluckeye, so that i may regain my free will in that field (including other sorts of addictions such as social media and internet at the same time).

Whatever you guys view on this is, feel free to disagree with me. I mean to those who are trying without filters and stuff, with just pure will, good luck, you can do this, its not impossible! Maybe i am just too much on the side of the psychologists who would argue more in favour of the classic conditioning.

So whatever your take on this is, good luck! Tell me what you think about my thoughts.

 

Control may be a relative term but so is addiction. In the DSM (the book medical professionals use to diagnoses individuals) there is nothing about sex addiction. Sex addiction is always self diagnosed because there is no way to diagnose it professionally.

Even with those that are heavily addicted to drugs there is still a choice. You have to find cash, go to your dealer, buy the drugs, and do whatever you need to do to use the drugs. There is ALWAYS a choice.

People do things everyday that they know isn't good for them. We eat cake when we know we should eat a salad. We then feel guilty. We sleep in instead of going to the gym, and we feel guilty. We kick ourselves and promise that we will do better the next day. But then we don't do better the next day. That doesn't mean that we have an addiction or that we aren't making choices.

The truth is that unless we are willing to accept that we are 100% responsible for ALL the decisions we make we will not be able to make the changes necessary. Surrendering to some unknown power is the act of giving away our agency (I do not mean this in a spiritual sense. I am Christian and believe that Jesus Christ is my Savior, but I also believe he wants me to work as hard as I possibly can to be the man I know I need to be).

By admitting to ourselves that we make choices we are giving ourselves the power to CHANGE the choices we are making.

 

Jazir made a good point if you are already an addict you are out of control.

So sometimes it does feel like a boxing match or even a war with yourself to get that control back. Once you take control then you have more power to resist turning onto PMO as you stated quite well above Alphakadabro. Thank you for your thought provoking post.

 

Yeah, that is true, the DSM may not list it. But the DSM does also not list porn, still we are struggling with it. The DSM is more a compromise between hat is known about f.e. addiction and what financial and societal consequences come into play, once you "legitimize" something as a health issue (f.e. in germany in some cases your health insurance may has to pay for it, so some have interest in not getting a certain sickness into the catalogue).

How determined we really are by our circumstances, be they conditioning in the past or social circumstances, we will never fully know.

Of course, if you believe in god, there is less room (at least for a lot of believers) for some kind of deed that cannot be judged, because it would evoke a lot of other questions.

I do not want to "fight your beliefs", cause i cant, lol, nor do i have interest in it. Maybe i just comment too much on stuff, when i should stfu.

But nevertheless, its an important question, to what degree you have a free will in addiction. I understand if some people choose to apply more moral pressure in order to win, especially when they believe that their god wants them to and i respect that. Plus: if it works out fine, you get kind of a "bigger victory", cause partly you did the thing, or at least let god do his work or sth., so HOWEVER you beat this, i am on your side, no question!

I am just a little worried... you know if faith helps, its good. I just think one should be very careful about stating such things on a forum that is trying to help here. Your view might help some, others maybe not. I do not know if the science is very clear here, but i cannot imagine that a scientist would comment on addictions and say: "Just believe hard enough and push through all you addicts! It's a decision!"
Obviously, you guys didnt do it, but i just felt like adding a more pragmatic view here.

At the end of the day i know, that somehow you guys are right, too: if you believe it, it becomes a selffulfilling prophecy, so belief works somehow. I am just worried about people who fail and fail again, you know?

 

...ah! And to your point about "giving away our agency": Thats a very strong argument! Here i am more on the faith side too, maybe.
Cause i know from my shit and getting it together, that there were a lot of things holding me back in my life. And at one point was the question, where is my responsibility in this. I read a book about this, from the son of the former german chancellor Helmut Kohl "Leben oder gelebt werden" (="to live or to be lived", at least kinda), where he reflects on the pain that was inflicted on him by his fathers career. At one point, he found out that he had to make a decision: blaming his father endlessly (which he has a right to do) or forgive him and start to take responsibility for his life BACK. Cause if you stay in the phase of blaming others, which you can to some degree and have to maybe, and you just see their fault, you may fail to realize your power and responsibility. Will Smith (@Minute 4:14):


So yes, it may be irrelevant how others contributed to the problem. But if you are seriously addicted, it could be even more responsible to know that you are not in full control of your will and may use tools to make it easier. How you deal with yourself, i did not make the experience that strong judgement of myself and my behaviour (like shaming etc) did ever help me. BUT, i know that it IS IMPORTANT to take stock of your life honestly. Hm, yeah maybe we are even seeing this very similar and got confused on vocabulary... (even if not, who cares )

 

@Jazir Thanks for your reply. I am not advocating that it is easy. Or that it is even simple in some cases. Simply that we make choices. There is no part in the process where we "lose control". A person who loses control acts outside of their moral system. I am not talking about their professed moral system, but their actual one. You can tell what your real moral system is by looking at your behavior. A man may profess that he is against child abuse. But if he abuses his children, he isn't really against child abuse. Make sense?

Most men who use pornography do not cross certain lines, for a while. They are things that are "acceptable" forms of pornography for them and then there are things that are "unacceptable". The things that are "unacceptable" are the things they choose not to engage in. Over time, more things move from the "unacceptable" zone to the "acceptable" zone. That is one of the great danger of pornography. Man men eventually find their way into things they would never have guessed they would do. But there was always a decision made to introduce that into their life. If a man truly loses control there would be no unacceptable zone. But most men who indulge in pornography CHOOSE which pornography they view. There are SO MANY choices being made.

Is changing how we interact with pornography as easy as changing how we interact with social media or food? Probably not for most of us. I am not saying it isn't a big problem. I am not saying it isn't hard. I am not saying it is simple. But the truth is that we are making choices.

The reason it is so important to acknowledge that we are making choices is that it gives us power to make better choices.

If there truly was NO choice how would we have any hope to change?

Acknowledging that we are making choices doesn't take away from the severity of the problem, it just gives us the knowledge we need to accept responsibility for what we have done and then move forward.

 

Yeah i partially agree.
But you could also make a religious argument here: Often times, even the bible describes it as entangling yourself in sins: you do a "little mistake" (maybe its a big one, who knows!), then a line is crossed, you repeat it, repeating it does not "cost" anything in terms of your already compromised conscience, so your stop signs are not there anymore. I think this is where we agree.

But what i wanted to point out is: once you are trapped by the entanglement, "sin" (if you want) has got a firm grip on you already. You become a slave of sin etc. So i think you have to admit, that even your religion leaves a lot of room for interpretation there, that you are somehow trusted with a free will, but it can be compromised. You can be LED ASTRAY, so if you dont lead, who does? Again, one could argue here with giving yourself to christ, so we have the power again etc.

This is somehow mysterious and has always been a question to mankind, i guess we wont solve it here. But the christian tradition has always known, that there is somehow a paradox at the heart of the matter, Paul wrestled with this, too:

"For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate...For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing" (Romans 7:15, 18b-19).

This doesnt mean, that i do want to say that you cannot do it. My motivation was to put it into perspective a little more.

But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death.
— James 1:13-15, ESV
So, may your god be with you! May you find your way out of being controlled by your desire!

 

Paul, the author of Romans, is just a man. Because he is a man I do not believe that EVERY word he writes is absolute truth. When he says he doesn't have the ability to carry it out (BTW there are SO many translation who knows what the real word was that he used) he is speaking as a man grieving choices that he made. We all do things we don't want to do. It doesn't mean we aren't acting for ourselves. It doesn't mean we aren't making choices.

I disagree that we become a "slave" of sin. Slaves are forced, against their will, to act. Were you ever forced to turn on your computer? Were you ever forced to look at pornography and masturbate? I wasn't. I did it willingly, with great regret afterwards. But I was always the one who turned on the computer, I wasn't in a trance or a stupor.

I understand what it FEELS like to be out of control. I have felt that. But that simply isn't reality. I found true hope and true healing when I was able to go before my Maker and admit that I made every choice. I did it all. There was no one there but me.

When we blame the addiction for our choices we are hindering our ability to move forward.

 

loved it!

 

Dude, absolutely appreciated!

Yeah thats a good group to address to, we need it the most! (maybe i have too strong an opinion for being in my second week )

Great stuff there, thank you! Especially the thing with not overcharging yourself in the first days/weeks: i also often did the mistake of "changing everything at once", like even giving up my morning coffee and taking things from myself that could give my a little stability. In some cases its probably better to start small.

Thanks for the encouragement, also to Love2LongBoard for the discussion, we agree to disagree, keep going strong!

 

I will need ur help as a mentor please
So far I am on my eighth day. Nofap encouragement as been instrumental to my abstinence
Hope to continue

 

Awesome perspective- thank you for sharing!
Really changed my whole outlook. I realize I can been thinking about the whole thing the wrong way.
I believe the new way of thinking about it will bring a lot of freedom
And truly looking forward to it!
Cheers

 

Thank for sharing!