First really hard day in a while!

Have you thought about healthy activities to do instead of MO?

Here's an excerpt from stuff I send people who contact me, maybe some of it will help:

1) What are your motivations? Write them down on a small card in your wallet or save them on your phone and take them with you everywhere. This is encouragement when the urges are trying to make you fail.

2) Make a list of barriers to your recovery and think about ways you can combat them. As you successfully defeat them, line them out (don't make them unreadable/delete them) and add new ones an necessary. It can be useful to review them later to determine if a barrier is rebuilding.

3) Porn filled a role in your life. What was that role? For me, it was stress relief. What are healthy behaviors you can take on to replace that. If you don't replace it, porn will always be ready to come back. Think of both this role and the amount of time it took. Ideally, you should have at least 3 activities: 1 that can be done at home, 1 that can be done out of the house, and 1 that could be done socially. Also, it can be helpful if at least one activity can be done at anytime, 1 can be free (no cost), and 1 is a deliberate activity (i.e. go camping). The key is to mix things up. Cover your bases, and accept that some activities won't work in every situation, or at all.

At first, you may only be able to find activities to address specific problems (i.e. I am going to be alone at home this weekend). I call this "active sonar threats." That's fine. Find specific activities that can address it (i.e. spending time with a neighbor, going to a coffee shop). As soon as you get those filled, start working with your "passive sonar" - think about the unknown threats and consider those general activities I described in the above paragraph so that if you don't have time to use "Active sonar" you're not left defenseless.

4) Build long term and then short term goals. Your long term goals should be open ended, i.e. I want to be P free. Your short term goals will be specific, and they should support your long term goals. They should be "SMART."

• Specific (simple, sensible, significant).
• Measurable (meaningful, motivating).
• Achievable (agreed, attainable).
• Relevant (reasonable, realistic and resourced, results-based).
• Time bound.

From <https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm>

Why? If they're not specific, you can't tell if you accomplished them. Same with measurable. They should not be impossible, nor should they have moving goal lines, and they need a reasonable deadline. We humans don't do stuff without deadlines. If you realize you are going to miss a deadline, reschedule.

Examples to support that long term goal of being P free:

• I will delete all porn from my computer (SMR) and 3 hard drives by Friday(AT).
• I will have a list of healthy activities (R) I am willing to try (A) by Monday.

It is okay to break them into small segments. For instance, you could have a separate task for your computer, and for your hard drives. This allows you to build on a series of small successes which will give you confidence.