How bad are sexual thoughts for rebooting?

I'd say it sets you back a bit during reboot. It's of course normal but so is sex and orgasm. Yet you're abstaining from sex and orgasm (and masturbation and porn) for a period of time to overcome your porn addiction. In normal mode, meaning no PM, O via sex is still fine, a reboot takes longer and is more difficult.

 

Just don’t touch your penis. Leave it alone. Zero touching in a sexual way. Absolutely no edging. If this is hard for you to do it proves you’re not serious enough and still clinging to the addiction. That’s been my experience.

 

It's bad but not for the reason most people think, the 'worse' thing is because you don't realize it's really a repetitive ACTION rather than a thing.

Thinking is an action, thought as a noun makes it seem like a thing. Your question, as is the case with most people when they think about this is framed with a noun. It may seem like semantics until you actually see how it influences your perception, it is a misunderstanding as to what is going on with the mind.

The good thing about the mind is you can always change your thoughts, unfortunately most people don't realize this in everyday life.

Here's a key distinction:

1. Porn content
2. Pornographic thinking

The first only involves an action to start streaming the data. The second, whether it's fed by current visual stimuli or just a memory (which doesn't even need to be visual btw) is what you decide to do with it. If you want to work on your mind at a deeper level, you'd be looking at changing the thinking process. Even if you're bulletproof with your blockers and just don't get any NEW porn content/input, there's stuff you remember and IDEAS, whether you've actually had that experience or not.

If anything I find identifying reasons why I'm thinking whatever PMO related patterns that seems to just pop-up in my head out of nowhere more powerful than just trying to block it out, and then also reasons for taking it in another direction. It makes sense to do that with content, but it is impossible to do that completely or even mostly with sexual thinking or actually with most thinking for most people - so it's just being realistic. But identifying the reasons let you steer it in a different direction. The more specific you are, and the more explicitly you state it (like saying it out loud to yourself or writing it down) the better it seems to work. So instead of something like "I'm stressed" without so much as identifying what is stressing you out like a job or family/relationship issue etc. do exactly that and say who at work or at home is doing what to stress you out. And that's just the first half, it can diffuse it a lot but then you can follow that up with reasons to take it in another direction. It can be as simple as "I know I'll feel better if I just get out of bet and start the morning than if I PMO and I'll end up with brainfog" etc. Again, spoken out loud is a good idea.

Repetitive thinking patterns that seems to have solidified into a "thought" is still just mental activity, and people basically just needs to get used to changing their thinking. Just because you're used to always taking the same route to work driving it doesn't mean your car can only take that exact route, you can take a different turn at any given time.

 

Just don’t intentionally continue to think about sexual thoughts.

Porn, sex, girls, anything arousing/and or capable of giving you an erection or sparking arousal just stay away from for the reboot.

sometimes thoughts just come. Just don’t dwell and make a conscious effort to get rid of them. Don’t let them linger. The less you think about arousing things, the faster and more powerful the reboot will be.

15-20 days into a streak, everything may start to arouse you. The more you get through this without giving in the more the benefits will come and the more you will reboot.

good luck!

 

Sexual thoughts are not bad, period. Every man and woman in this Univers have it, even childs have it.
It is bad only if it is a trigger to watch porn.

 

I don't agree with this. I can do without porn but I can still mess things up by having sexual thoughts. Past partners can be a particular problem - they can be my passport to O in a few minutes. So what do I do? Replace thoughts of them with pension planning... mental maths to think of something else. I also read for 10 minutes every night until I'm tired, reading something I really need to focus on to tire me out.
BTW glorious of course sexual thoughts on themselves are very normal. It is how and when we decide to use them.

 

Conscious sexual thoughts are like standing at a slippery slope and letting go of the railing. Sooner or later you'll slide and find yourself at the bottom. That's how I see it.

-J29

 

just because everyone has them doesn’t mean it’s ok during a reboot.

In my eyes, a reboot requires a clean mind just as much as no pmo. Like I said, sexual thoughts will come out of nowhere sometimes, which is out of ones control. Just don’t dwell on them and focus on something else immediately.

Over time, you will recover and reboot. You will find that these sexual thoughts are no longer an interest. You will have a clean mind. But only if you avoid sexual thoughts.