Feelings of futility and hopelessness

[Mr. Robot]

I feel like I keep falling into the same traps over and over.

My masturbation and porn addiction has been around for about 20 years. I started out with pictures in the late 90s and as videos became available I started downloading and collecting and organizing/rating them. 95% of porn videos don't really do it for me anymore, and I put no effort into my dating life. I also have PIED. There are escalating tastes and interests with porn that have concerned me. I eat compulsively. I go to the store and buy mountains of sugary and generally bad foods, then gorge on them. Especially when I'm depressed, which is generally all the time. My friendships are often strained, I judge people over nothing and use it as an excuse to push them away. One of my only close friends died and I didn't know about it until six months afterward. I don't go out and socialize much anymore. I have a strained relationship with my family. They're all judgmental and egotistical, and criticize me constantly, so I don't visit a lot. My health is bad. I bite my nails, and grind my teeth. I have terrible teeth and high blood pressure. I'm overweight and lethargic.

The only thing that's going well for me is work, but I'm trying to sabotage myself with that too by not putting effort into enhancing my skills, oversleeping/being late, not being productive while I'm there. If I lost the job, the one good thing in my life, I don't know what would happen to my state of mind.

A year ago I burned all of my porn collection (to disc) and put it in my safe because I wanted to make it harder to access. I was hoping that having to go to the safe and enter the combination would make me reconsider. Sometimes it does. I know I should toss it, but I've never been able to. This is as far as I've come, and in a way it's progress.

It bothers me that I'm an intelligent and rational person, but I feel helpless to stop myself. It's about self discipline, and I feel that all of my issues are interconnected. And I know that I want to stop these behaviors. There's just usually a point, something happens where I get so sad, and all rationality leaves my mind, and the center of my thoughts becomes food, porn, or both. And I can't quiet my mind until that thing happens. It's like a switch, that just clicks on, and then it's all over.

My life is being ruined (has been ruined) by my irrational behavior, and at the rate I'm going, I'm going to have nothing and no one, and die alone at a young age, probably from stress/heart attack. I'm scared that something terrible is going to happen to me that snaps me back into reality, but by then it will be too late. I need words of wisdom because nothing is working for me. How to I climb myself out of the abyss I've created?

 

[Everyonelies]

I don't know if I'm wise but feel compelled to respond because you are asking questions I have asked for years.

What I can say is that you need to break the cycle of depression and addiction because it will just keep getting worse otherwise.

You need to start taking care of yourself. You need to find a way to like who you are.

whether it's getting some sun or eating properly, or seeing a specialist you need to attack the depression.

Throw out the porn, wipe your phone/computer, find an accountability partner on here and start making small steps in taking care of yourself. Don't push away people. Get out of the house. Wash, groom, get new clothes. Get a dog.

You have to decide you are done and you want to move on. It will not be an easy journey but anyone can do it.

 

[lolos]

This is something that helped me: At any decision point, where you can decide between having a wank, having a cold shower, studying, doing anything really, you might find you have 2 voices inside your head, one telling you to do the bad thing (wank, not get out of bed, watch another youtube video), and one telling you to do the good thing (go to the gym, have a shower). Start listening to the good one. You will have these time where you are thinking 'fuck man, I don't know, is it even worth doing this? Do I really need to go to the gym? Is it really going to imrpove me?'. This is those two voices battling it out. It's literally a war. They each try and use every fucking strategy they have against each other, every rationalisation, everything they can to win. Right now the shit voice(the first one) is winning, and has been winning for a long time. It's powerful, it knows the enemy well and how to defeat it, but you can still win. You have to feed the other voice. When the two voices are battling each other out, the good voice might get the upper hand for just a split second. At that moment you need to act as soon as possible, while you still have the advantage. You will be standing outside the cold shower and the shit voice is saying 'fuck man, this sucks, just have a warm shower instead, we can have a cold shower when it gets to summer' or 'cold showers aren't even worth it, you don't even get any benefits from them', then for a split second you hear the good voice pipe up with something like 'no fuck you, I'm going to do it'. As soon as you hear that voice stick your head under the cold water. There's no going back from there.

Basically you have to do everything in your power to defeat the shit voice. The good thing right now is that you are aware. Some people don't even have the voice telling them what they are doing is wrong. But you can feel it, the angst, the tension, the 'fuck, what am I doing with my life'. Become hyper aware of these voices, sometimes the shit voice will hide itself as the good voice, that is probably it's worst trick.