Day 31 for me: reflection on my current journey

Thank you for your comments. I believe your stand is correct, in fact it is, based on current discoveries. I’ll like to share the definition of addiction:
[dictionary.com] the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.
[Cambridge dictionary] the need or strong desire to do or to have something, or a very strong liking for something
[wikipedia] Addiction is a brain disorder characterized by compulsive engagement in rewarding stimuli, despite adverse consequences.

The brain is no longer fixed as it was said to be in the past. It is plastic, able to adapt to changing circumstances and make decisions to thrive. Your brain is wired to pmo, you can weaken that connection to the extent that it will become a distant memory which you will not access. This is due to its plastic mature.

Regarding addiction, it’s true that if you believe it’s an option you’ll tend to use it. However, demonising it, having a mindset that I MUST not pmo is not very good either, since you’re still thinking about pmo. If you think about it, your brain will still make the connections to entice you to engage in it. What you should do is not think about pmo or repressing the thought, but focus on the current moment. You will come to forget how or why you intended to do it.

Next time, if you relapse, calm yourself down and analyse your state of mind and your ability to use the self control, skills that you’ve picked up until now. Even though self bashing will occur since you did what you did not want to, your skills are still there. As long as you remember how to use them, they will not disappear. If you judge your progress by how many days clean, you’ll never be free of the cycle. The reason why I believe we can recover from the state of addiction is because it’s a habit, and we can break habits.

Supposing you are clean for a year, and you feel that you’re clean. Then what? If all this while you’ve not thought about what life you look forward to living, you’ll be going about your usual way minus pmo. Instead of focusing on abstaining, which anyone can do, make a better life for yourself, by choosing opportunities to stretch yourself, by making better choices. A habit is formed due to the decisions you’ve made. You can choose not to pmo. So do it.

In conclusion, the brain is very adaptive so it can change provided you want to change. With every relapse you gain more so live your life and forget about pmo altogether so you won’t have a mental link on it to relapse further.