The Mind-Body Connection

What do I believe? What do I actually believe about the world, about myself, about life?
These are all questions I need to ask myself every morning.
The mind directs the show and circumstances are just circumstances.
How do I perceive my environment, other people, myself?
Yes, I am living with the results of past thoughts, actions and decisions, but do I have to be "stuck" with how I perceive them?
What about pain, loss, suffering?
This whole thing is a mind game. What about sex?
What about emotions? They are part of the mind...fear, anxiety, stress, tension.
How much do these emotions affect the body? I am starting to think A LOT, and I mean really A LOT! More than I ever imagined...

 

I got up very early for the first time in two months.
My Summer went to shit right after "Independence Day". Acute back pain followed by the "perceived" immobility, stiffness and prolonged pain. I had been through all of this before.
Before long I was back in the old mindset again, no hope, depression, anger etc. and eventually back to porn...
My thinking patterns, my suppression of emotions and my cycles of depression have all contributed to chronic pain in the body and when I look back through the years I see how the pain moved from one are of the body to another, and of course the doctors have a name for everything, don't they? Once something is diagnosed, then you have been labeled as someone with a "disease".
My disease is and always has been in my mind.
Is pain real? Yes, but most of the time I am the cause of it, not some external factor.
Same with porn...yes, there are triggers, but again, I am the one reacting to these "triggers".
The mind comes first, the mind was there before the body and will be after the body. The body follows the mind.

 

I have considered certain conversations with friends or family as therapy, but I have not sought the services of a "professional" therapist, but perhaps I should.
I am reading a book currently that is challenging my way of thinking, my presumptions, my paradigm. I have limited myself or allowed myself to be limited so much in my life that it amazes me just thinking about it.
The last two nights I had no desire for PMO and I know it was because of the inkling of hope that dare appear on the horizon....

 

"feeling" anything at all is what I have struggled with all my life, and I suspect that this may be a problem that is related to modernism...my feelings can be overwhelming, and then I want to numb them....porn has been one of the ways to accomplish this, but it is a form of repression, and there are many ways to repress emotion or unwanted emotion...
Perhaps I am getting to the "heart of the matter"....slowly....letting something sink in vs. understanding only intellectually

 

Yes, thinking can become the enemy, and old thought patterns dominate...
I can learn something new and say yes, I believe that, and intellectually understand it...for example the notion that trauma stores in the body as pain, disease etc. but unless I change the old thinking patterns, I will continue to allow tension to affect my body in negative ways.
Also, I can understand that engaging in porn represses feelings, but unless I actually stop using porn I will continue to repress emotions and therefore cause tension and the tension will create bodily harm.
It's a constant cycle and it has to be broken, not just once or twice but daily.
How do I see pain? As my tyrant or simply a result of something that I can control?
Emotional pain led me to porn in the first place.

 

My thinking patterns default to threats, pain and problems instead of growth, opportunity and progress.
It feels like a curse.
When I think of all the suffering in the world, wars, poverty, disease...people dying, it's terrible, they are circumstances that greater forces have unleashed typically, but then there are circumstances that we have caused ourselves, and there is the condition of internal suffering, existential suffering or suffering brought on by bad thinking, conditioned thinking, propaganda etc.
Every moment of the day I have a choice, a choice of what to focus my mind on, a choice of where to put my attention...and it really is moment to moment. Despite all of the world's suffering, what can I do right now? What resources do I have available to me right now?
I have to think like a kid, a kid inside of an adult body, and that's really what I am anyways...
This sex thing, this craving for a woman...it has to stop. It's in the way, it's always been in the way, and it started with my mother, then my father...they set the stage for me, they infused me with bad thinking.
Now I have my own kids and grandkids, and godammit, I am so internally focused on my suffering!
What am I going to do with the rest of my life???????
I was hit with acute pain this Summer, right at the beginning of Summer, and the origin I am now convinced was totally psychological. It put me in a state of panic and fear and kept me in isolation for the last two months.
Of course it led me back to porn...and in the meantime the world keeps turning.
Get out of your head! And live!

 

That's the end goal for being here, you're on the right track brother! I think there's definitely a brain/body connection, we obviously don't understand it all yet, but we can certainly think ourselves into happiness or depression, and the body reacts accordingly. Think of being super happy, you can literally have a spring in your step!

As for professional therapy, I'm not against it but folks have to realize that's not free, there's a costnand it could be hundreds of dollars, these days that could also cost you a job one day. Obviously suicidal thoughts and harming others demand real professional therapy ASAP.

But for me and my situation, I've found NoFap.com to be the therapy that works, much as AA was the needed recovery program I needed for that addiction, NoFap.com is what I need for PMO addiction. However, just as in AA, I have to stay vigilant and weed out those who are not helpful to my recovery. I've "ignored" a couple, but only 2.

I've found most folks that are on here are happy to help in any way they can, because they know in the end, that's helpful to their OWN recovery as well. Nobody can help an addict like a fellow addict in successful recovery.

 

Yes, that's so true. I want to help people in some way...even if it's just as an example, I don't know.
A book I recently read about the mind-body connection was the inspiration for this thread. In it a medical doctor writes about this experiences with helping patients overcome chronic pain, and even though the pain is caused by physical issues, the mind actually creates the physical problems, so it's a matter of fixing the mind and eventually the pain subsides or ceases altogether. I have noticed a difference in the pain depending on how I think and where my focus is. And it's the same with porn...my triggers are typically emotional, depression, anger, anxiety.
In AA they call it "stinking thinking", and it is a matter of the will...the will decides what to think and what to believe. Despite circumstances, even if I have created them, I can maintain my core self, my core self being my solid and unshakeable "me", my true potential, the "God" within me.
I started waking at night and reading again, kind of a midnight break from sleeping, the reverse of taking a nap during the day. When I look at the yin yang symbol, it represents this perfectly, the white dot in the black being my midnight break from sleeping and the black dot in the white being my mid day break from waking....I like it.
This has nothing to do with optimism, it has everything to do with sobriety and reality. Optimism is just an unbalanced focus on what I perceive is "good". I don't want to focus on good or bad, I want to focus on life, energy and growth.

 

I'd never heard of waking and reading, then sleeping again, so that's new to memfor sure.

What about guided meditation? I keep meaning to learn more and try it for real, I've made a few halfhearted attempts but I admit I haven't REALLY tried it properly.

 

Everything I've learned so far about meditation revolves around the breath. Getting into meditative states initially is through focus on breathing, especially in zen Buddhist tradition. I use the same technique when practicing deep stretches and poses. Directing the attention away from the external and towards the internal is the goal of meditation obviously, and after much practice the breathing becomes automatic and the focus can be directed entirely on the inner space of the mind and eventually to cosmic consciousness.
For me this is the ultimate existence, because it it streamlines us into the next life and it eliminates karma or at least minimizes it to a large degree. During "normal" everyday living we accumulate a lot of karma or "stuff", baggage, shit, whatever you want to call it. And some of us don't handle it well, including me.
So, yes, the idea of dropping out so to speak and taking the inward journey is very appealing to me, very appealing. I honestly don't want to strive in this life, I hate all of the bullshit, the relational crap, the societal pressures, the expectations etc. Many humans have pursued this path throughout time. Normal so called life is suffering, and deep meditative states such as nirvana are freedom, a release from the restraints of the physical body...
Thank you so much for bringing this up, because this path is the solution for me.

 

When will I be free from the constraints of this body?
The emotional and physical pain have become one.
Every morning I expect it and there it is.
Is it the expectation alone or the expectation and the anticipation?
Even this is based on memory. Why can't I simply release the pain?

Where is my attention?
The same old thought patterns or complete absorption of new life, of cell regeneration?
Is the focus on the problem or what I perceive to be a problem?
Do I create my own hell willingly or out of habit?
Even this will pass. Why don't I just let it pass?

 

Sensation-Feeling-Awareness
The human state of being
The question is whether I want to numb the experiences of existence, which in a way is denying myself a part of who I am, a big part of who I am, the human nature vs the animal nature...am I an animal? simply just an advanced animal?
No, because animals are not addicted to porn.
The various porn fantasies are connected to the subconscious, there is the collective aspect and the individual one
Much of the degradation of women in porn is a societal phenomenon I think, a repression of hatred towards women in general, because on a subconscious level men feel threatened...
For me personally it has to do with my hatred towards my mother and then later towards my wife
I chose a wife who had similar traits as my mother because it was a form of comfort, a sick form of comfort nonetheless, so it's not her fault for simply being who she is
I think my father was sexually attracted to my mother for the same reasons that I was sexually attracted to my wife. They were both needy, pathetic, stupid.
Even though I still struggle with sexual attraction to this kind of female, there is a romantic side that craves a mature and intelligent, sophisticated woman.
I am still divided, I am still compartmentalized....

 

Every day is a new beginning and I forget that, I have to remind myself all the time.
Today is an opportunity.
Tomorrow is a dream.
I had no desire for porn last night, that's progress.

 

OK, it's time to start over again.
I had a major pain episode that started two months ago, right at the beginning of Summer, which threw me for a loop and set me back quite a bit with my physical recovery process. The accompanied stress led me back to porn, and after struggling with it for a few weeks now after a four month porn free period, I must get back on track...I must.
Here we go, one day at a time.....