If you are spending the time searching ways to bypass your blockers, do you really believe you want to quit? Or are you only doing it because of your girlfriend? What other ways are you trying to get into recovery? Because you’re right, blockers are easy to get around. It’s easy to find ways to use and hide it. Blockers/accountability apps are just to give you time to decide to implement other coping tools rather than to use. What tools do you have to combat urges to use? Do you know your triggers and addiction cycle? Because you won’t get far if you don’t know those.
Agree, 100%. If you don’t write down every time, you have a slip and try to figure out what made you slip and get to the heart of the matter or you’re gonna keep slipping.
Relapses do not occur in a vacuum! Something has to trigger you. Once you understand what’s triggering your self, you can start to create an action plan.
Don’t look at each relapse as a failure look at it as an opportunity to collect data. Write down when it happens and start to notice a pattern. For me, I’ve picked out certain hours of the day when I’m most vulnerable.
Instead of trying to distract yourself or trying to go outside or exercise or avoid everything.
Try something else.
I’m gonna give you some advice I got from the overcoming pornography for good podcast.
Try mindfulness meditation and breathing exercise.
What I mean by that is when you get an urge
Leave your phone in another room
Or whatever device devices you use.
Then go somewhere where you can either sit or lie down. Then I want you to close your eyes and start describing your urge and a way that is his neutral as possible. Imagine you’re describing it to a robot or an alien.
Avoid terms like it’s overwhelming. It’s rushing use terms such as I have a tingling in my leg, or I feel there’s blood inside my penis.
Uses as clinical terms as possible. The reason for this is you want to describe what’s going on in your body, but you don’t want to give it power.
Then while you’re saying these things out loud, I want you to try and think what are you trying to avoid, are you buffering? Because that’s what pornography over eating over spending it’s a buffering activity. You’re trying to avoid something.
And then focus on your breathing, close your eyes and sit in the quiet until your urge passes. I want you to get really good with discomfort.
Because you’ll find out that all an urge is is it’s a signal from your brain craving dopamine that’s causing your body to have a vibration.
It helps to think of an urge as a toddler. It’s gonna scream at you. It’s gonna yell at you. It wants its candy, but it can’t hurt you. I can’t force you to do anything. You can sit there and comfort it, but you don’t have to give it what it wants.
There are some days you’re just gonna have to ride around in the metaphorical car with it in the background screaming at you. And that’s fine, that doesn’t mean you have to give in.
You have the choice to become the kind of man who doesn’t want to look at pornography.
And finally, you are not urges.
