Any thoughts on why it is getting harder with each subsequent attempt?

Wonderful question … have no idea.
I've been at this for so long and have taken so many notes and tried to look at it from so many different angles. I don't think I can figure out. I usually end up waxing philosophical and think something like: addiction is a hijacking of the reward center of the brain. The reward center is responsible for motivating us to survive and for motivating us to pass on our genes. It evolved over millennia to be uber-sophisticated mechanism for doing those to things. Combine that with high-speed internet pmo, a culture (right or wrong) obsessed with sex and romance, possible substance abuse (sometimes part of the equation in my case) and you've got a an addictive concoction that defies description.

 

Your brain/body is so used to PMO stimulation that you're relapsing and finding your cravings much more "desperate". You need to start "starving" yourself and start teaching your brain to become accustomed to longer absences from porn. Like a person who is trying to quit smoking or drinking coffee, he feels like he wants more cigarettes or drink more coffee in order to make up for what he has missed.

Find something else that reduces your desperation for PMO by replacing that habit with something else. Learn to cook, make yourself yummy pancakes in the morning, ride a bike, play a game, go walk a dog, play with your family's kids, find a sports, just spend more of your time trying to enjoy yourself and be productive in not-so-mundane jobs. I don't know what to suggest when I don't know your lifestyle but watching my new pet fishes in the aquarium certainly helps shifts my temptations. I'm an animal-lover and sky-lover, so I can go out and bird-watch or stargaze then come back and feel too drained for the PMO-demon. Everybody has different hobbies and likes, you gotta find OTHER hobbies and likes besides porn and masturbation and then train yourself to crave for healthier alternatives.

 

Great Advice

 

the experience of helplessness and self-disappointment is devastating.

 

When the craving and urge to PMO comes up within you, have you ever tried just sitting there with the emotion, feeling it and allowing it to just pass through and exit your body? This is called emotional processing.

When we process our emotions and feel every emotion that courses through our body, they will exit and not come back again, but this means having to go through every single causal emotion we've ever experienced since childhood. Many of us have so many unprocessed emotions. When we suppress our emotions, we use things like PMO, smoking, alcohol, drugs as an outlet and means of escape.

There are many reasons why men PMO. Some examples of bottled up emotions are insecurities about women, anger towards women, being rejected by women, loneliness etc... The key is actually allow your body to process and feel all of those causal emotions. If you don't allow yourself to release such kinds of emotions, you'll just continue to relapse. We go back to what we use as an outlet simply because of unprocessed emotions, not because you felt an urge to do it.

Ever since I started doing emotional processing since January, my life has dramatically changed and the actual lustful desire to PMO has exited my body, because I have allowed myself since January to work through the causal reasons as to why I used PMO as a means of escape. Just allow yourself to work through and feel of your childhood and present emotions.

 

Thank you AlltheRageBackHome!

In the last days I already I did it:

though I feel not so much emotion. Rather thoughts and sensations in the belly.

I feel I could need this emotional process too. Not bc of pmo but rather to keep in contact to my (old?) emotions and my wounds or such. Do you do it based on a therapy or on your own?

Thanks for more information in advance

 

Hi Jodokus,

It's my pleasure to be able to help. I'm always here.

It's definitely good for old emotions, and in fact it's just as beneficial for old emotions if not more so. Childhood emotions and past emotions are probably the most important emotions to process. Many people were deeply and severely suppressed as children.

All emotional processing is done by yourself alone, with just you. Getting counselling and therapy is okay, but as humans we're absolutely more than capable of healing ourself. It's just that we haven't been taught how to, and the way to do it is through emotional processing.

So just allow yourself, in a quiet place, your room or wherever, to just allow those old wounds to rise to the surface within yourself. If it means crying, then just let that happen. Allow the feelings to pass through and exit your body.

We were created to be expressive emotional beings, but many of us have been shut down since babies. We've been shut down from society as well. What happens when babies cry? They are told to be quiet, or rocked and cuddled into silence. There are reasons, even psychologically as to why babies cry. It's never for no reason. When people cry, we are not supposed to stop them from doing that. They need to able to release their emotions.

The idea is to be an emotional being, 24/7, feeling and experiencing every single emotion that passes through us. Even if it's in public. Allowing ourselves to experience joy, sadness etc... In it's entirety, to just allow the emotion to take it's course and pass through the body.

I've personally not been through hardly any trauma in my life. A lot of my recent pains have come from relationship break ups, and relationships that didn't work out, and just some other things, but I do emotional processing with everything that happens in my life from now on.

For example, I was just at the gym a few hours ago, and at the gym a song came on which me and my ex girlfriend both used to love. It was "our song". Some sadness came up for me, so I stopped working out for a few minutes and I just allowed myself to feel that sadness. I just sat with it, allowed it to have it's way and it just exited my body. I was even in tears a little bit, but the idea is to allow ourselves to feel every emotion and release it.

If you've got any further questions, please feel free to ask.

 

Hi, like some guys here already mentioned, try to find hobbies or make sure your not in the neighborhood of a divice or book wich or will show women. I noticed i just watched porn, not becouse i was horny, but just becouse i wanted to do something. So like said before, try to find hobbies outdoor, and with other people (you probably won't jerk of, if they are with you). At the other hand, why not control emotions? I guess it would be difficult in the beginning, but it would be a good quality if you can control your own emotions.

Good luck.

 

Well I'm really quite in controlling emotions, that's not the point. Luckily I had a good childhood. But there are issues nevertheless and in later life ... just think I might got missed some emotional process... I will try it out. I will try to try it out [make inner note] - thank you AlltheRagebackhome, I will tell you about my experiences when I really do this.

 

Ultimately, why is it getting harder is bound to your emotions...

If you try and fail, try again and fail again with the time you get the mindset (based on experience that it cannot be done) if you try again with that mindset, it is pre-programmed that you will fail.

Now, imagine, that you get rid of all the triggers (all you can) set up web filter with blocking porn as well as youtube.

Then be happy for every single day, every hour that you are clean.

When there is a hard time, you try to fix your mind. Boner with the right mindset does not mean much...

Hope it helps...