Here Is Why Strategies Fail you

Greetings, my brothers!

There are all sorts of strategies that we have learned to use to fight urges, but sometimes they just don't work.

Sometimes the urge hits you and you immediately remember what you have to do (press the panic button, do pushups, go for a walk, talk to someone, take a cold shower, etc.).

You may do it and then relapse. A moment of silence for those who have gone through that experience. Hope is the only thing you have to keep on fighting this thing. If you have followed someone's advice and it didn't work, then this traumatic experience can crash you!

But there is always the milder case of not being able to go through the strategy even if you remember at the time of the urge. And though this won't damage your hope as much, it's a traumatic experience as well. You weren't strong enough to respond to the urge the way you were supposed to. Now, you need to dust yourself off and wait for the next urge.

So why do strategies fail? I think it's very clear once you understand what role the strategy plays here.

The strategy is a weapon. A weapon you equip yourself to prepare for war (the urges).

So some people use it and fail anyway. And then they reach for another one and wait for the next army of urges to come; certain that the next time will be different.

Some don't use it all though they do remember they have to when they're attacked by the urge. So they have to eventually use it and see if it works before they lose hope.

In some cases, a weapon sometimes works and in certain times it doesn't. That's really bad news because you don't want to leave your reboot to chance.

But for some, it always works. "Well, it works for me every single time", you might hear someone say who sits down and meditates when the urge comes. Does that mean that some strategies work better for some than others?

Maybe. A weapon won't be equally effective in the hands of all of us.

But when you equip yourself with a weapon and wait to be attacked without training, you're just asking to be put down.

You cannot use a weapon without the necessary training. And this may be surprising but I am not suggesting that you need to meditate more frequently, work out more, make cold showers a routine, create a habit of writing here in the forum, etc. All these things might help and I do recommend them, but none of them has a lot of power to help you overcome the urges.

The training I am referring to is reminding yourself why this is so important to you.

Ask yourself this: "why do I want to stop watching porn and masturbating?" Yes, I'm serious. The reason no strategy works for you is that it doesn't have enough fuel to work. Not a strong reason to work.

If you don't want to use a weapon and fight, you just won't. Or you'll say you did use it, while in reality you just gave up after a while and threw it on the ground, proclaiming it useless.

So, before you pick up a strategy-weapon, have a talk with yourself. Understand why you want to quit porn.

I would lie to you if I said that all reasons for quitting watching porn are good reasons.

If you want to quit PMO because you think it will help you be more attractive to women, then you're doomed to fail forever. When the siren comes, you need a reason to motivate you to run as far away as possible. Wanting to be attractive to women when you want your PMO fix will do nothing.

The attraction to such imagery is a natural attraction gone wrong. It cannot be suppressed by a general attraction to women (which actually fuels the reason to be attractive to them). This is the same thing. You cannot have something work against itself.

Then, there are far better reasons like preserving your health. We all more or less understand how damaging porn is to the brain. Others go a bit further and understand how unhealthy frequent ejaculation is to the body (which is best made possible by porn).

I know this may be shocking, but even this reason can be completely ineffective under circumstances (that most of us who continue relapsing every now and then are in).

When you have the urge to watch porn, pitying your brain so you don't watch porn is very unrealistic. The urge can use many arguments against you. From "just one more time won't change much" to "you have been clean so long, so there's no way some seconds of watching will harm you much".

This is a very good reason and actually has helped me tremendously in the past. But alone, it's not as powerful as the urge to watch porn sometimes.

Others (and this is a very small minority IMO) don't watch to watch porn because they don't want to support the industry. Good luck explaining that to the urge when it comes. PMO can be done a hundred ways without supporting the industry and guess what. You will use at least one of them to override your morals when the urge presses you to.

This is actually a great reason, but it too alone can fail spectacularly.

Now, you may be expecting me to give you the "good" reason that will actually work at this point. But I cannot do this, I'm afraid. My "good" reason may not be your "good" reason.

The only sensible thing for me to do is help you find it. So, let me first describe its power.

When the urge arrives, you know what to do (the strategy you have to use). And then you remind yourself why you want to use it. There's no one around to stop you from watching porn and yet, this reason is like eyes staring at you, expecting you to resist.

Just watching porn to make this uncomfortable feeling gone is not the easy way out this time. It's painful to even think that failure is an option here. Executing the strategy to make this feeling go away and being determined to not stop until it does is actually easier.

You feel an obligation to respond exactly how you had decided to respond when an urge arrives. You have the patience to just wait for this "stranger in the house" to leave empty-handed. You look at him, determined, and say: "there's nothing for you here, unwelcome stranger. You're wasting your time. I'm not going to watch porn."

This is how powerful such a reason can be. Now let me describe a good reason in more detail.

This is something that when you think about, you are moved. You feel a duty to resist when you contemplate it. It's something "sacred" that you just won't defile with your base desires. The thought of it makes you very uncomfortable, so you're not even tempted most of the time.

This reason usually comes out of love towards something very dear to you. The more you love it, the less you love pornography. It is hard to define it within space or time and for that reason, nothing can happen to it.

But the real key I can give you is that it cannot co-exist with your addiction. It's one of those you-cannot-obey-two-masters situations. It's diametrically opposite to all this imagery. Which means that it's beautiful. Eternally so in a way.

The reason why I resort to all these cryptic descriptions is that you will understand even less if I tell you my reason that works. By having a vague idea of what this reason that is waiting for you to find is, you will have a better chance at finding it.

But since this post may be incomplete, I am looking forward to having a conversation with you. Let me know of your experiences with strategies, reasons, and everything in between.

For those that do understand what I mean and have found their "reasons", I'd love to know their opinions on this topic.

In any case, I hope this post is useful but you can help me make a thread that is even more useful. So, let's chat!

 

Indeed. In a way, PMO addiction is a sign that we have a bigger problem to fix in our lives that we have been ignoring.

 

Thanks for your comment. Yes, it seems that after very long streaks, you forget why you have been doing this and it's in a way easier to be persuaded by an urge to relapse.

Going to sleep would never work for me as I feel there is a lot of energy that I need to transmute and inactivity will not do that for me. I have tried in the past with no success because I really cannot sleep when I have an urge. Just another example that a strategy may work for one but be completely ineffective for another.

 

Ah, yes. You cannot be ready for war unless you preserve the reason you want to win.

 

Yes, these are very good examples.

 

I sometimes forget expressing it in such a simple way. Becoming a better person is a reason that has so many layers of meaning. It sounds like a simple reason, but it contains every good reason you can think of.

Not supporting the industry, taking care of your physical health, and preserving an innocent way of looking at women, are all reasons that come from this one.

Thank you for your input.