Is good or no to counting days?

For me, it's been a good thing. This is my first time on a no PMO journey, and I think marking the days helps with the challenge. Setting goals for myself. In fact, on my calendar I have every tenth day of my streak marked. And I have a small celebration at each one. I'm starting my 39th day today, tomorrow will be 40. I'm pretty excited. My initial goal is 90 days of no PMO. After that, maybe I'll keep marking the days, or, maybe marking the days won't seem as important after that and I'll be more engaged in just living a no PMO lifestyle. But one thing I'm not going to do is get hung up on the number of days, like that's all that matters. It isn't. Curing the addiction is what matters.

 

I think it's good at the beginning, like the first 90 days. I'm coming up on 60 but I have a little over a year off this (other destructive addiction.)

When you get nice and solid, but still maintaining daily vigilance, the days aren't as significant except, you know, a year, 5 years or whatever milestone you measure by.

There's nothing kookier than going to a 12-step meeting and some person says "I have 21 years, 8 months, 2 days and 3 hours."

I think, also, counting the days sets up a sort of mental phenomenon where you want praise and acknowledgement and a "Good for me!" Nothing wrong with it on the surface but you don't want to fall into some kind of ego trip about it.

I look at it like "I had a problem, I took care of it, and here I am, ready to live life instead of being addicted to images on a screen."

 

I write down both my number of no P and no drinking. I Journal every day, even just a few lines, and write my new numbers. It’s funny because I don’t even acknowledge most of the time what those numbers mean, but I know deep down its acknowledgment and helpfulness.

 

For now I keep my count because it makes me realise how new I am to abstaining P.
I am sure that my mind will change later and I will not keep any count.
It really depends on you.

 

It could be both.
Because let's say that you set a goal to reach 60 days without watching porn and masturbating and you finally reached it.
How does it make you feel? What kind of emotions does it bring? Happiness? Feeling of achieving something good? strength? or maybe to some of us self-confidence?
But what happen next? and here your role gets in.
Do you set a higher goal and continue fighting the same way you did before or you allow yourself to 'slow down' and to 'relax' (a dangerous decision here because that sense of relieve is tricky and it might lead you to a relapse in no time).

In my opinion there's nothing bad about setting a day-counter and checking on your progress once in a while but try not to get obsessed about it.
I wouldn't recommend you to look at your day-counter every day as many people do it.
Instead, to it once a week or once a month, that's more then enough.
Because too much of anything is bad.

 

I personally think its good at the first 3 weeks because at that time you would be having withdrawal symptoms and your brain wont function like it was before abstaining from Porn but after the third week you should stop counting days.but thats my opinon so

 

Count your days until you forget which day you in, happened with me hahaha

 

I have felt a lot better mentally since I stopped counting days.

I think the problem with counting days is if you have any form of slip then that is usually a reset, and it somewhat tricks you into thinking you're back to square one, when this couldn't be further from the truth.

Counting days put me into a mindset where I was completely obsessed with being 100% perfect, this obsession was basically on my mind nearly 24/7, and this actually really negatively effected me mentally.

I also think a lot of people naturally eventually stop counting days as well. Because are you literally going to count your streaks for the rest of your life? I think most people would eventually get fed up doing that.

Generally I only reset my counter on here these days if I go back to anything that slightly resembles my old addict behaviour.

This doesn't mean I just relapse when ever I want to. I still try to avoid porn and artificial sexual stimulation altogether.

But I guess I know myself when I have fell into the danger territory where I realise it is really bad, and reminds me of my old addict behaviour, and this is when I reset my counter on here these days.

But yeah if I end up having a random slip that doesn't seem like that much of a big deal, yeah I don't reset my counter on here for that these days.

 

Once I get past a number I'm comfortable with, I stop counting... Once I stopped after 2 months and went on for a bunch of months more. Overall, I think counting is good, as it reminds you that PM shouldn't be taken lightly. When you start thinking everything is too easy and start considering taking a "peak" to test yourself, that's when you are most likely to fail. So, this time, I'll keep counting.