Biggest Mistakes We're Making Everyday with PMO

Spent a couple of hours reading a few threads and decided to put this out there based on what I've read and from my personal experience. Quitting porn is a rough road. Triggers are at every turn waiting to sabotage you. Relapsing threatens your self esteem and belief in yourself. Sometimes the struggle is just so long and arduous that the easiest thing to do is just quit trying and live as a chronic porn user.

I know the struggle. Today I've compiled ten of the major mistakes we make when trying to quit porn. Knowledge of these mistakes is a requirement if you are going to seriously quit porn.

1. Thinking that staying away from porn will fix your addictions:
It won't. More often than not, your porn use goes beyond pornography. It could involve low self esteem as a teen or even a traumatic event as a child. Whether its one year or four years- if the root cause of your porn use is not handled, porn will inevitably creep back into your life.

Some men have progressed far beyond their porn addiction into sex addiction and even acting out their fantasies on willing and unwilling participants.

Don't fuck around with your recovery, guys. You're going to have to change the person that porn made you.

2. Tackling recovery with less enthusiasm than watching pornography
Recovery is not a walk in the park. Too many guys think that a 90 day commitment to PMO will get them started on the road to salvation.I'm not hating on reboots- I just think there's alot more preparation and understanding of PMO that is required before we jump into it.

Bluntly speaking, without an "enthusiasm" that matches your porn use, it won't happen. If pornography consumed your life, if you couldn't wait to get back home to launch those browsers, if you ran back to porn every time you experienced even the slightest bit of stress in your life, if all you think about on a weekend night is how much fun you're going to have watching porn, then you must be just as enthusiastic about quitting porn.

Anything less than the obsessiveness you gave to porn use will not work. The recovery process requires commitment and self discipline. How long do you have to be committed to the process?

AS LONG AS IT TAKES.

3. Underestimating the challenge of recovery
Personally, I struggled with porn for 11 years. I experienced one month where I decisively harnessed every ounce of willpower and discipline that I had to apply every lesson I'd learned over those years into conquering porn once and for all.

I never relapsed after those 30 days, but make no mistake- it took me TWO MORE YEARS to rewire my brain and change the person I had become thanks to porn. Till today, I take no chances. I still maintain strong habits that ensure I will never relapse. I meditate daily. I study every book and scientific journal that comes out regarding addiction- especially pornography addiction. I'm alert to potential triggers.

Recovery has no definite timeline. Maybe it will take you five years to recover. Maybe a decade. Be prepared to work at it for AS LONG AS IT TAKES.

4. Becoming a self improvement junkie
The internet is mired in “self improvement” information. Its not uncommon, in the process of quitting porn, to take up an active interest in self improvement.

I personally have a library of hundreds of self improvement books. I've read all of them and if I could change anything about my history with self improvement, I would have picked two solid books and not read another until I had mastered the principles in both of them.

There is one pitfall with reading and watch self improvement videos everyday.

Self Improvement is more often than not, mental masturbation.

Self improvement is not a substitute for recovery. It will make you “feel good” and perhaps take some limited action on certain area in your life, but it will not cause help you give up pornography use.

Bear in mind that many of the “self-improvement” gurus you follow and study are in denial about their porn use.

5. Ignoring serious relationship problems
If you are in a relationship, chances are your porn use is contributing to some of the problems you have.

Whether its physical problems like low libido, erectile dysfunction or problems like infidelity, loss of attraction to your partner because porn is your preference, depression or an increase in misogynistic tendencies, trying to quit porn while in a messed up relationship is like trying to put out a house fire by pouring gasoline on it.

Your relationships, especially your romantic relationships can rarely be separated from your heavy porn use. If you are emotionally dependent on your partner, this weakness will only MAGNIFY your porn use.

If you have a partner that nags, complains and has no inclination to support you in your recovery, you're better of single. If you have a partner whom you are emotionally dependent on, fix your emotional dependence or quit the relationship. Its likely that this move will shift your recovery into fifth gear.

6. Assuming that porn addiction is the only problem
Porn is rarely the only problem you have. You're hosting a party and porn never comes to the party alone. It always brings friends and the longer and harder your party, the crazier the friends it invites. We now understand that porn changes the brain. You can never assume that your only problem with porn is that you “watch too much and masturbate too much”

Here are a few examples of some of the problems that “party” with porn:

-Erectile Dysfunction

-Lack of Motivation

-sex addiction

- Depression

- Sexual deviancy & change in sexual preference

- Internet addiction

-Low Self Esteem and Self Hate

-Increased drug and alcohol use

Porn use cannot be handled by stopping your porn use alone. All the problems associated with it must be identified and worked on together. The reason why you assume that porn is your only problem is because you want to come across as normal and give yourself the illusion that you are in control.

If you love to drink and get high, drugs and alcohol could also be a problem. Many of my relapses occurred when I had come back from a bar or club after a night of drinking, or after smoking up. The truth is that recovery from your porn use may require complete disuse of drugs alcohol.

Cross addiction is also very common. Sex addiction can quickly replace porn addiction.

7. Being a special flower
Back in the day, when a man was born, he knew his place. A prince was a prince, a peasant was a peasant, a butcher was a butcher, a farmer was a farmer and you had to be satisfied with your lot.

As the world becomes wealthier, smaller and more connected, we are exposed to more possibilities. We can become anything. We are all special.We live in a world where we are bombarded with how special everyone is. Everyone is making money online, firing their boss and becoming an entrepreneur, everyone is becoming incredibly self disciplined and getting a six pack, men are learning game and becoming players, banging 10's and finding their masculinity in the process... on and on and on.

Readily accessible information has lead to readily accessible inadequacy and insecurity.

The raw and unfiltered truth is that WE ARE NOT SPECIAL. We watch porn and masturbate, sitting down at our masturbation stations at 1:00AM with a limp dick and a sperm soaked bunch of tissues wondering how why we just watched something so fucked up and feeling like shit. We approach women rarely and get shut down and blown out. We get angry at ourselves and generate self hate.

Some of us just want a girlfriend, happiness and a steady job that pays enough to cover our expenses and save a respectable amount- and that's alright. That's alright provided you remember that to achieve these things you still need to strive to be the best you can be. And the best you can be is not special.

8. Dishonesty
One of the characteristics of a chronic or compulsive porn user is dishonesty.We lie on the forums, we lie about the extent our porn use, we lie about the sort of porn we watch, we lie about acting out.

You've given up PMO for multiple months, but are still experiencing massive urges? Are you still on Instagram? Do you watch Game of Thrones? Hentai? No surprise that you're struggling.

Lying to others about your porn use is one thing. Lying to yourself about it will keep you frustrated in your recovery efforts for a long time.

9. Trying to become Mr. Perfect
Overcoming porn use, as you now know is no walk in the park. Its a rough climb up a mountain on an uncertain path.

Some of us want to be the very best at what we do. We want to pass all our classes, arrange our works paces just right, pick up the girl with the perfect sequence of approach to close, and quit porn by following a recovery program to the T.

Being Mr. Perfectionist will make this journey longer and harder than it needs to be. You will fail.

You will relapse.

It may not take you 90 days to quit, you may find out you have other addictions, you may quit porn for good and struggle with erectile dysfunction for a few months after.

Its o.k.

Make the commitment and push through till the very end.

Fail your way to success.

10. Trying to fix everything
O.k, so you have relationship problems, are cross addicted to sex,you suffer from ED and you're depressed. Jumping into the mess and trying to fix everything at once will leave you overwhelmed and stressed which make this journey tougher than it has to be.

The simple solution is to attack one problem at a time. You first have to find out which problem is the most urgent. How do you figure this out? Journals certainly help, but journals are more fluid and less systematic.Another thing that does is a detailed Relapse Analysis (attached).

What are some of the other mistakes we've seen that are messing up quittng PMO?