Whats the hardest part of rebooting for you?

The empty feeling I get after some time of no-PMO. I feel like part of myself is missing, something deep in my gut is just gone and I want to need to fill it so that my life can go back to normal and all the obsessing can stop! I'll be honest, I haven't yet made it past that part yet, but I hope to soon.

 

Facing reality is whats hardest to me. Porn is a way of escaping my current problems its more about avoidance than pleasure..but i know that the only way i will be happy is if i dive into life and live in the moment addressing problems as they come

 

Em in my day 25 streak, all these days I was suffering from flatline, which was good in a way to keep me focussed on other stuffs, but since past few days urges have hit hard... So now I have to control myself daily morning and night from relapsing... Also the lonely feelin which you get sometimes in initial period was bad... Avoiding sex or hot scenes in movies I watch I theatre, I have to close my eyes without my friends noticing it....

 

Even i get paranoid when i have to decide whether i've fallen or not.
i get envious when i see others with partners. feel left out.

 

The hardest part would be i guess when im back home after a 10 hours day at work and feel bored and lonely. Porn was a way to escape and release stress i could spend hour with 15 tabs open to have the perfect vids. It also when i have a fetish thought when im going to bed . The urge come so fast and i picture massive bell ringing and yelling stop just to think about something else. After that i think i dont have to clean off the jerk in kleenex or feeling ashamed to have semen in my sheet at 2am when i have to wake up at 7 . So it very hard but such rewarding.

 

The mood switches are getting to me. I always felt like I was emotionally dead inside although I am not, everything was just supressed by isolation and PMO. I absolutely have to do something now to get my head out of this spiral, it's a tough road ahead but I'm willing to take it on.

 

You cannot "have" or "own" a woman.

This kind of thinking is of course amplified by porn, because porn gives you the illusion you can "own" a woman just by downloading her picture.
Or you go into the next sex parlour and you can "have" sex by paying.

By the way, also a woman does not want to be "owned".
She wants to be free, but feeling save in the harbour of a relationship.

Good relationships are finally only based on trust.
Nothing else.

 

The absolute hardest part are the emotions which come up when I seal off all my escape routines.
When I fully focus on my life, and allow myself no distractions. No porn, no sex, no junk TV, etc.

What happens? Fear comes up. MASSIVELY! Increased heartbeat, tightness in the belly, heavy breathing. Sleeplessness.
At times, it was unbearable.
Meanwhile, I've made progress. I'm doing self-hypnosis (autogenous training), and that helps a lot.
If you do it as a daily routine, you become much more relaxed.

 

The hardest part of rebooting for me is relapsing and starting over,back to day 1.I start to feel helpless like I am never going beat my addiction and this makes me very frustrated.When I reach past a week and the days get harder my mind tells me that I need to scratch an urge.I watch some porn subs and eventually give in.I see couples in public and some of friend's girlfriends and I think to myself that I should be in a relationship as well.I think about that a lot and makes me lonely but I am still a slave to porn and masturbation and I cant date anyone until I am cured.

 

The urges are definitely the hardest part for me. I had a Flatline of 17 days and then the urges came back strong man! Now they come and go but are still very powerful.

 

As a hope for you: This is a common misunderstanding.

You think like "FIRST, I need to reboot, THEN, I can date"

But that's wrong, because dating is actually a part of rebooting.

In fact, your whole way of interaction with women and people in general is a part of rebooting.
The rebooting takes place when you know what you want, and when you use your energy for pursuing your goals and for interacting with people.

But what holds you back from your using your energy for your own goals? Answer: Fears and doubts. Fear of rejection, fear of criticism, fear of losing. And there, the addiction comes in. The addiction is a kind of lightning conductor for your energy.

But once you know what you want, then you become automatically an attractive person. Actually, you need to do nothing else. Especially, you don't need to "pursuit" women! The surprising truth is: The less you do, the more you are getting attractive to women.

BTW, I'm 43 and at least with women, I've always been very successful.
For me the PMO addiction is something else. It holds me back from successes in other fields.

 

I agree with your response that dating is part of rebooting,I am open to dating during my reboot but I am not ''whole" as a person.I have an idea of where I want to go and what I want to do with my life but this addiction is a process.I need to go at least 90 days of hard mode before getting into anything sexual with a woman.I will date during those 90 days but I wont have sex.

 

Hardest part is dealing with the disappointment.
It's not just Oops, I did it again moment. You can't pat yourself on the back for failing.
It's that bloody counter that tells you 'You were this close, mate and you blew it.'
Plus, it's the routine of it all: here I go again, no worries, I'll just reset.
After 50 resets you feel like you're going insane. Then, the calm hits ya, like warm, summer wind.
Now I feel sort of giddy and excited just to break my previous record.
I know I'll last longer this time.

 

I see very few women that I think about watching porn. I my lucky if I talk to one woman a week. I work 2nd shift.

 

Well yes, for a significant amount. I am working on myself now since almost 2 years.

Results:

• Depressions and feeling of loneliness are finally gone. That was a constant part of my life which has now fully left me. I am confident to say that this is really overcome.
  
• Fears are there, but I am now "using" their energy, even almost "enjoying" them. I feel them "clear" and "real", not fuzzy as it was before. And so I force myself into actions I otherwise had avoided. I feel the heart beat and tight belly, and still I go on stage, or I demand something, say "no" to someone, call a customer, openly make a mistake, etc. Even when it sometimes becomes very heavy.

There are some important exercises I can recommend:

a) Focus on your goals and disallow any kind of distraction. First, do this for only a few days (2-3 days). Concentrate on your goals, and disallow yourself any kind of distraction - not only porn and sex, I mean also junk TV, facebook, hanging around in Bars, etc.

The result: When you are really extremely hard on yourself, then you force yourself into your goals. You must work, exercise, practise, learn, visit your mates, family, etc. - And in that moment, your fears come up. You possibly won't believe what comes up. For me, in the beginning, it was unbearable, I had really heart racing, belly tightness, heavy breathing.

b) Learn to do daily meditation. That works realyl wonders. I am doing around 10 minutes of autogenous training (AT) , combined with visualization. It has become a routine like teethbrushing.

During AT, I mainly let warmness fill into my belly, which is giving me a great feeling of self assurance.
And during visualization, I see myself in a specific situation I want to be. Like practising the piano. Or designing a plan. Or presenting it to a customer. Or visiting a house with my girlfriend.

Fo me, I think that the warmness exercise finally removed the depressions forever.

c) Another one is a kind of "now attitude". I have found that happyness comes right now in the moment when you start with some activity.
It never comes "then" (by thinking), it comes only now right in the moment when you are doing. So whenever you find yourself "hesitating", then force yourself to start with some action as quickly as possible. Forget all the thinking and hesitating.
Better to do something, than to do nothing.

d) Ah yes, and a key is also to make peace with yourself.
Don't hate yourself for your actions. It is all a part of you, you cannot fight against yourself, you are only hurting yourself.

e) There is more to add, like sports, socializing, etc. I would need more time to write it down.

The transformation is a process. Sometimes you make big steps, then you have stagnation. But always keep continuing. There is aways coming light after a dark time.

 

This is so good! This is gold. I'm glad that another brother gets it.

Nofap is not just about abstaining from porn, but it is also about trying to reconstruct our minds from the way it's been conditioned. We need to be resupplying our minds with new thoughts, seeing women how they should be seen.

While I'm refraining from PMO, I'm purposely trying to shift my thoughts and focus back to what is real.

All of these emotions of jealousy and envy that we feel when we see other men with women, we really need to deal with those emotions, man. My opinion is that they fall into the same category of "needy" emotions. That's another man's partner. We need to see these emotions for what they are.

 

No need to throw back until the wwii to be disgusted by what human are able to do. I live in Paris and was there during the terrorist attack of the 13th of november. I remember cried a whole week every night, when i was seing all these victims from 16 to 60 mainly between 20 and 30 years old having fun with friends boyfriends family. One of my friend was in bataclan and fortunately is safe but what he saw was a war scene with dozens of body lying on the floor with still a pint of beer . A story who shock me was two sisters of 25 and 27 having a catch up because the youngest one lived in barcelona and the inhumanity take their life and 128 others. I cant imagine how their parents should be..
Definetely happy to be alive but the human is the worst savage beast .
Off topic off !