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Escapism

Discussion in 'Self Improvement' started by Joyoflife, Jun 22, 2017.

  1. Joyoflife

    Joyoflife Fapstronaut

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    Hey. Don't know about you guys, but the more I discover about my porn addiction, the more I discover about my wider personality as a whole. I've come to realise that such a big fuel for this whole situation has been this overwhelming desire for escape from day to day struggles. This has left me feeling really detached from so many areas of my life.

    Rather than confront all these different spheres, Porn has been a 'safe space' to escape to - and once that 'space' is removed, life in its magnificence and with all its difficulties takes its place. I'm slowly 'rediscovering' parts of me I forgot existed.

    Anyway, what I was wondering is - does anyone know of good, scientific and psychological literature on areas of 'Escapism' or 'Escapism through addiction'. Did a brief google search and couldn't see anything that looked like it was decent quality and well-founded. Are there any other related books that would be of interest? Just ordered Gary Wilson's book on porn, so that's a start.

    Thanks for the help.
     
  2. TheFutureMe

    TheFutureMe Fapstronaut

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    It is incredible isn't it? And to realize we've used this (and other) stimulations to numb ourselves so much is staggering.

    About your query, maybe the word escapism isn't the best choice to make searches. If I'm not mistaken, "escapism" isn't considered harmful in any way, it's a stroll in the park because you feel like it, not a runaway to try and forget whatever you're trying to leave behind as fast as possible, as in "avoidance". How do you relate to "avoidance" compared to "escapism"?
     
  3. Joyoflife

    Joyoflife Fapstronaut

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    Yes, for sure, I was using escapism in the negative sense of 'escaping from life's challenge and issues', which I guess comes down to the same thing as avoidance. Porn has just acted as a way to numb away all the serious life questions and challenges I've ever had. I guess it's stupid to expect the 'lows' to be numbed without the 'highs' to go away with them. It's made me so distant from such a big part of my self and my human experience, and seems to have created this huge schisms between how I percieve 'Myself' as I really am, and the way I act.
    Be that in my relationships, my achievements, or my ambition. It's so depressing and frustrating when you get dumped in some real-life situation, and feel that disparity physically unfold before your eyes. You meet someone, and think 'wow what a great person that I would really get along with, I feel like are personalitites are really compatible, I really want to be friends with this person', but your brain fog, awkwardness, and general detachment and lethargy in life stops you persuing the relationship in any meaningful way. Or you're doing a piece of work on a subject that really interests you, thinking abstractly how much you have you say on the subject, but then you sit down and your brain switches off and can't focus for more than five minutes. It comes about because I've spent so long just theorising about who I want to be, but never put it into practise because of my stupid attachment to porn. I just want to find some way to re-engage with the real world!
     
  4. TheFutureMe

    TheFutureMe Fapstronaut

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    So true and so well put. I can relate to every word you say, so can a lot of fapstronauts I think, granted they've already realized how separated from their true self they are because of the P habit.

    There's good hope we will be able to reconnect with that which is us, the real us. The reboot process (however long it will be for you or me or anyone) is successful when we manage to get the numbing, the distraction, the procrastination and the detachment out of the way. But there's a catch - these aren't shapable in the sense there's nothing we can do to effectively remove them directly (like you would take a pill to kill the pain). It is ourselves we need to change, in depth, where the source of our escapism/avoidance rests. Like the boy says to Neo in The Matrix, we can't bend the spoon because there is no spoon - all we can change is the reflection of ourselves in the spoon (i.e. change ourselves) and then the spoon will appear to have changed.

    I know this can happen because I'm currently living this reconnection process, this spoon-reflection changes (however sluggish I think it is). Indeed we'd like to press a button and be done with it, to be able to move on. I'm convinced this holds one key to our P-free life : the abandonment of instant-gratification and instant-results. The life we want to achieve where there's nothing that comes in the way of what we're ready to work for (relationships, jobs, dreams, materialities) is right there after this veil of shadow that we're grasping right now.

    I think the litterature you're looking for is the right one to combat and comprehend addiction. It won't be found in current studies about addiction as the medical institutions see it - a disease caused by the addictive nature of what's used : That's only one step of a much longer path. I believe it's in the psychological aspects of the self and one's mind balance that we will find the right answer to addiction. Why at first do we chose to dedicate all this time to that habit. When does that happen. How the behavior reinforced itself and we slowly left out entire parts of one's life. What doesn't even have room to fit in our lives after that. How helpless we can be when we try to get away. And when we've asked these questions one by one, we can start understanding them and gathering answers, and starting to realize : this process took years (decades) and has adjusted to our age and circumstances, which means it can change, it has never been set in stone, it's a fire that burns whatever we throw at it. How about stopping throwing time and effort at it! How about finding what fuels it best! How about turning away from the fire and throwing time and effort at other things! How about throwing time and effort at ourselves, to take good care of ourselves! This is the start of everything good, and will probably take years to recover from. But there's only two ways : this way, or the one we already know and where we come from, and we know exactly where it ends.

    This looks interesting enough :
    https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...sobriety-and-reality-the-psychology-addiction
     
    Last edited: Jun 26, 2017
    Second_chance, Joyoflife and ARezE like this.
  5. Joyoflife

    Joyoflife Fapstronaut

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    You managed to formulate the exact question that I couldn't quite articulate myself. That's exactly it. It's true at this point I feel like I'm living in a reality with limited control over myself, but that's only the result of more fundamental issues that have to be dealt with at the same time. If anything, this is an exciting opportunity to come face to face with your true self, flaws and all. Porn was just a manifestation of something inherent in all of us that we have to learn to control in order to lead fruitful lives. Who knows, maybe early exposure to porn and my recovery will give me a better and deeper knowledge of myself (and of yourselves too!) that will allow me to excel in other areas of life more meaningfully.
    That article was also fascinating, and dealt exactly with the issues and interrelationships of the psychological ('spiritual') and the biological when it comes to the evolution of addiction. Many thanks. How did you go about finding this article, if I wanted to research other similar ones?
    Also loved the fact you quoted the Matrix. Watched it a couple of weeks ago for the first time. Could so easily have been written by a porn addict :p Was life-changing!
     
  6. TheFutureMe

    TheFutureMe Fapstronaut

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    I know right, seen from our perspective it's pretty amazing ^^ I'm currently preparing an article on that to post in the forums later.

    I probably found the page I linked earlier by searching for "avoidance+addiction" and went on reading stuff that didn't look like they were trying to sell me a 10$ ebook.
     
    Joyoflife likes this.

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