New here, I want to break free.

I can feel youR pain ..... Start your journey and win the freedom you want....

 

You have to do meditation daily so that you can focus on your work.... You can also do exercises as well.... It may be helpful to control yourself...

 

Welcome to the forums and lots of luck!

As stated before, meditation helps immensly, and exercise will bring you a sense of self control and discipline which will build up slowly if you maintain your consistancy, and that will snowball to even more discipline then ever before.

Cold showers are also a great deal. it will feel great to throw yourself into cold water and endure it, and not chicken out. It will build your confidence and self control.

Remember, Discipline IS FREEDOM!

 

Welcome to NoFap!!!

 

Best of lucks
Welcome

 

What happened with the porn blockers? Did you get someone to manage the un and passwords?

 

Coming here is great and porn blockers and techniques to distract you and spend your time on something positive like exercise, etc. are also great. My opinion is that you can't do this alone, i.e. you need connection with other human beings to try to break free from this. What has worked for me to get to 200+ days is a therapist, joined a NoFap weekly support group and a SAA group, and have found a wonderful Accountability Partner in another NoFap member. It is having those real conversations with another, especially those who have or continue to struggle with the same or similar issues as you, that really has power to help get you on the road to recovery. To say out loud to another human being what you are struggling with, especially those who have been on the same journey and will provide you support, is really powerful. PMO is done in isolation and secrecy, and recovery is done with honesty and connection. Lots of other good resources out there too, from the various Patrick Carnes books to Porn Free Radio (www.recoveredman.com) if you like podcasts. Try one: www.recoveredman.com/75 "The 5 Lies That Keep Us Coming Back to Porn." We all feel your pain, and share in it, and want to see you succeed in this. Best wishes on your journey and we know you can do this!

 

@Surfguy Robindale nailed it. You do not need better technology, you do not need a Ph.D. in neurobiology with a specialization in addiction, you do not need to move to a third-world country (oops I should rather say 'developing country', okay) with crappy internet to remove the ready availability of your favorite kind of porn. (And while you mention the attractions of 'the girl next door', for others it can be some specialized fetish, it really doesn't matter.) And even if you were in say Haiti or Somalia (as two examples of poor developing countries with crappy internet) I am reasonably sure you can still hire a prostitute just about anywhere.

As Robindale so succinctly put it, "PMO is done in isolation and secrecy, and recovery is done with honesty and connection." You can read up on the stories chronicled here of men who have relapsed, again and again, and come here to write about it, again and again. I do not shame them, I am really sympathetic to how difficult this relationship with porn is to break. (Note I said relationship rather than addiction, I'm thinking through this concept now, and believe there is something to it given the emotional connection to porn that drive our behavior, where we are triggered by feelings - of loneliness, of boredom, of need for excitement, of desire for entertainment, of sadness, of anxiety, of fear - and porn is the solution to these feelings.

You are frankly not strong enough. Full stop. You are going to need connection with other individuals: could be a combination of a therapist, a group meeting, several accountability partners, a sponsor, and peripherally your significant other (if there is one, your SO can be an area of support but it does get complicated as there is a relationship there as you are in recovery, but still is an area of support and of course connection).

Here are a list of tools I put into place at the start of my recovery, and am working through a 12-step program through PAA. I recognize this process of breaking a 40+ year cycle of pornography addiction is probably the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life, but am already reaping vast rewards in proportion to the effort and time I'm putting into it. (I have spent over an hour here just this morning, for only two posts, so it goes.) (And I view posting here to help others as a needed part of my own recovery - see Step 12 for details on that.) I wish you the best as you recover.

 

Best of luck and welcome aboard.

 

It was this exact kind of scenario, after 40+ years of a PMO addiction, where I escalated to the point of bringing my addiction to the bedroom over the past two years or so, that caused the discovery and the crisis for me. I fell asleep with the phone on mute, the damn app that played these videos when the phone was picked up would play the audio, and at 1am on March 25 I had what you could call a Rude Awakening.

And @Surfguy this is very hard indeed; I realized yesterday that this is the hardest thing I've ever tried to do, to break a four-decade-old habit and addiction. Of course over all those years I just called it a private habit, like picking your nose, that didn't really hurt anyone as long as I kept it hidden. Seeing it as an addiction, because it is so hard to break, was the huge difference. For those reading this, and wonder if you are addicted, well you can take this self-assessment and see for yourself. It's a 40-year relationship that I'm breaking. FWIW it was Doug Weiss' excellent The Final Freedom where he delves into the emotional component of pornography and sexual addiction.

From Doug Weiss The Final Freedom p.71 Chapter: Psychological Freedom, section on 'Feelings'
This is a major part of sexual addiction recovery. During our development years, many of us did not learn to identify or communicate feelings, and yet feelings can be one of the most treacherous and dangerous areas in our early recovery. Many sex addicts at some point felt unloved, rejected or unappreciated, which put them into a difficult place if they don't know how to express their feelings. Many addicts end up medicating through a unhealthy sexual activity as a way of dealing with feelings. In any addiction, I find that feelings are something that addicts don't have much skill in fully expressing. This is just a lack of a particular skill issue. It is not a matter of a level of intelligence.

In the midst of the addiction, when the sex addict had a feeling, and didn't know what it was, when he acted out, it went away. It was a simple solution. But in recovery, he doesn't have the solution of acting out. Now he has the problem of having a feeling and not knowing what it is.
//

I see in myself, as recently as only yesterday after a Very Stressful situation at work (major presentation to over 100 people), that in my interaction with my spouse over something that happened shortly after (not porn-related, just work-related) that she 'got all in my business' and emotionally it was added stress on top of relief after the Very Stressful situation was over. At any rate no relapse or temptation, just the emotions of stress, and last night while working at the computer (on my d@mn taxes of all things) I realized how it would have been an ideal circumstance to look at porn and masturbate, for two reasons: to 'celebrate' getting through the day, and to feel better after the emotions of stress with the spouse. Looking back, that was a major victory of sorts. I got the taxes done, I had no temptation or feeling at all to turn to porn, I shut the computer down at the time I usually do (I make it a habit now to shut off every screen a full 2 hours before sleeping), and went along my usual business without even thinking about it.

I used to think myself 'better than others' because I did not act out with prostitutes, nor did I get into fetishes, nor did I indulge in camgirls or sugar babies or the rest. Heck in my life I only went to a strip club once in my 20's, and never went back although had many opportunities over the years, and even declined an invitation to a strip club when overseas with coworkers (I went to a Starbucks instead with a few local distributors in that developing country, and talked about life in their home countries instead). But as the first two steps say, my life has become unmanageable, and only God can restore my sanity. And that third step awaits: I need to turn my life, and my will, over to God.

@Surfguy consider joining the Sunday 3pm ET PAA meeting, it's free, it's just a conference call that lasts for about 1h 15m, and I have found it remarkably helpful. Yes it is a 12-step group, yes it is specific to pornography addiction, yes it is a simple group of men who are in various stages of recovery, and yes it really does help. Hope to see you there; feel free to PM me if you have questions.