I genuinely do not know how people do this

Not true...

Experiencing that "I made no progress" feeling gives you a lot of insight into the depth of your problem. And that insight, slowly, turns into measurable progress.

Think about your worst day - the most times you ever relapsed, the worst genre of porn you watched, the biggest consequence you faced because of your problem.

As long as you do better than that today (and tomorrow, and the next day), you have made progress; and each day, do something that's measurably better than the last day. Clean your room (or wipe the table for 30 seconds), go for an hour-long walk (or walk in place for 3 minutes), start a self-improvement or habit-building book (even 1-minute of reading, and taking 3 bullet-points of notes).

Slowly, these small activities will compel you to pursue them more and more. You will develop momentum - far more appealing than pmo. You will discover activities, books, and philosophies that will take you further than you could dream.

This is a natural process; I got out of a long depression by simply getting dragged through the mud - year after year - until my brain started doing some kinda primal-instinct survival stuff that got me to re-gain my footing.

And soon (within the next year), you will see this magic, too; you will feel more blissful than ever. All because you took a small half-step today. And kept working on it.

 

Perfect response. Progress is progress. I remember years ago when I used to PMO several times a day. Then I did just once. Then just once a week. Then once every two weeks. From there I've had several 3 month+ streaks, and while I still need to try to beat this addiction, I haven't returned to fapping every single day. We tend to minimize our achievements.

 

There are only a few things in life worth doing, all of them are difficult, this is one of those things.

 

I think a possibility of you not being able to stop using porn could be your lack of goals for your life. Plenty of guys come here and plan to stay on the righteous path and they swear up and down they are done with porn for good. The problem is that they only live for the moment. They don't look ahead. They don't say in 2 weeks I want this... And in 30 days I want this.
One goal would be for you OP to say is I want 2 weeks because I want my anxiety to go away. Then after 30 days you feel even better. After 60 a lot better and at 90 you don't look back as long as you can build the power to start reeping the awards.