Memory triggers / Images seared onto brain.

Don´t know if there is a way around this, would like to know as well. Focusing on breathing helps to get over it, but they might come back again.

 

I assume meditation might help with this matter. Summing up, meditation is all about focusing on your body sensations so that you can't think about anything else (not an expert on the field, sorry if this is imprecise).

 

I don’t think erasing these images would be optimal, besides, it’s all part of our learning.

I get those images bombing but I just keep focusing on what I’m supposed to be doing until they fade away.

 

I haven't hear anything but time and forging postive new neural pathways - but there is some interesting work being done with EMDR


that might help? I don't know how effective NLP is - but it used to be you would take an image and then imagine it turing to black and white and smaller - it takes repeated times, probably best with a professional, to get results, from what i heard (disclaimer never tried it long enough to see if it was effective)

 

I have done Hypno- therapy before. But the woman that I went to see also had her regular therapy license as well. We did this exercise where I visualized my life as a huge library. All of the books in the library were about me. And she told me to search my memory and find the book where I kept all of my shame. Once I found it, she asked me to search my subconscious for the name of the book - after some time, I had said that the title of the book was, "unresolved". She told me to put it in a specific place in the library, and to keep it safe, and that we would revisit it on another session. When she brought me out of the hypnosis on that session - I started crying. And I confessed 3 things to her (2 things I had done sexually IRL & 1 thing I had seen in porn) that I was particularly ashamed of. I got everything off of my chest and told her everything. She listened to me, and didn't judge me. The act of confessing the things that I had done and how they affected me, and the image I had of myself - it was the most freeing thing I've ever done. I can't recommend it enough.

 

This is so real. I can still remember the pictures in the first porn magazine I looked at 40 years ago! The key thing is that time really does heal. Like you, when I first started recovery, I had a constant stream of images, videos, even sounds from porn videos that would pop into my head randomly. After 8 months of being clean, those things are still in my memory, but I have to actually think about it to pull them out of the archives. The constant mental noise of all things porn is more or less gone. Put some time in, and see what happens.

 

These images are strongly fixated in the brain, due to some substance that are segregated in order to remember where the "good things" come from. I don't remember whether this is the deltaFosB htat Gary Wilson writes about. Anyway, I don't think that it's possible to entirely get rid of them, so I wouldn't focus too much on it. I remember images from 20 years ago. But the point here is more to forget those images in a nasty corner of our brain. This can be done with enough time of recovery. Basically the memories are there, but you don't think about them.

Of course the temptations and memories are tricky and can be triggered because of something that we can't control. But we need to dissociate things in that sense. It's not the same to come across the thought than to engage in it. Those are two phases, and not the same thing at all. Mastery of this process is key for us.

 

I think that it must past with time.

I used to watch gore stuff, like real gore and rotting corpses. Everything out of stupid curiosity and as it's kind of addicting as it releases stress hormones when you look at it

I stopped that like 2.5 years ago because I got a mental breakdown due to that. Of course I thought that the images I saw will never go away

But in a sense, they did go away because I just haven't been watching gore for the past 2.5 years. Also, even if I still remember what I've watched, it's not that "fresh" anymore like "I've watched this such a long time ago, why should it bother me"

I think with porn it could be similar. Right now I'm more than 2 weeks in, and images are popping up, not gonna lie. But I know that that will pass, and even if they will pop up, I'll be like "So what?"

 

I'm having the same problem too, I've reseted for the last 2 days because the images wouldn't quit popping up. I know it's a reaction to cutting myself off from the porn almost a month ago, I just hope that with time the memories will start to vanish or at least I'll start becoming less reactionary to them.

 

I notice that certain images and memories will become instructive when my anxiety starts acting up. If you start handling the anxiety, you’ll fix the issue

 

true, they're in fact the main cause of most of my relapses, I think it comes down to knowing that they will stick with us, the same way the feelings we have for our first previous relationship will always be fresh in our mind, it's about the initial shock and how it lasts.

but on the bright side of things, those images do become less and less effective when a long time has passed, or is it just me?

I would love to be able to simply format by brain and erase some of the unnecessary contents, or am I asking for too much?

 

The memory of past porn images and videos always pop up in my head after few weeks of nofap. It happened out of sudden and it is the hardest thing to fight for me. I will feel powerless when it happens, especially during sleeping hours at night when my mind and body are vulnerable.

When porn memories invade my mind my hand always play with my schlong unconsciously. When it happen I usually ends up edging and then I will relapse...
To be honest I can't resist the pleasure of stimulating myself