I agree. The line "It ain't doing shit for you" resonated with me. Sure, we're talking urges, cravings and addiction here. But there's also this justification and rationalisation process, where your mind tells you that in some way it would be good to do pmo, as it would make sense.
It doesn't make sense and it isn't good for you. It's just important to tell this to ourselves again and again and also tell ourselves the reasons why it's bad. Here come some lines where I debate this further, trying to get to the bottom of addictive patterns. If it's too long you can just skip it and read only my conclusion down below
Argumentation (skip, if too long):
We all eat or drink stuff which is not really, at least occasionally and we know it. But we have our reasons for it. I'm not saying that we decide right all the time, but for example eating a dessert together with your family could be a super healthy in some regards (socially, psychological) and unhealthy in terms of physical health. When we're NOT addicted, it means that we can often act impulisvely, too, but we are generally capable to make decisions where we ponder pros and cons. The addicted (or hungry, stressed, anxious) mind has complete tunnel vision. It ignores certain knowledge and so on. But here comes my point (finally): relapse is a process where we go many steps - especially if we're in recovery and use tools and precaution. So the mind is telling us that for some reason we need to go these steps. It even acknowledges some of the negative aspects. I mean, before we loose ourselves in pmo we know that we do something wrong. But what makes us jump there? Not only the feeling of anticipation (and the feelings of pmo are not even there yet), it's mostly the arguments of our mind. Experts tell us that first comes the mental relapse (where we haven't done anything yet, but we already made up our mind) then the escalation of which pmo is usually the last step.
Often when I'm in this process of mental relapsing, I say to myself ok, I doesn't need to do this, I have the option of staying clean, keep the streak gain the laurels. But then the other voice says "BUT!". Tt really hasn't much more to say; it has no real arguments. But it tells me that I can as well shit on like everything and relapse nonetheless. Sometimes it creates kind of an illusion in the form of "have the cake and eat it too". What I mean is, that once you're in recovery for a while your mind has not any arguments that really work on a rational level. But of course it tries to convince us anyway. It can create all kind of sex thoughts, flash backs and both positive feelings of anticipation and negative feelings when you dare to put in question that you will follow.
Conclusion:
What has been said, demonstrates a little why it's so difficult to change these patterns and beat the addiction. Unfortunately there's no silver bullet. But the argument I'm trying to make, is that the mind tells us things and we have to challenge them. Feelings alone won't make you relapse so long as you have the right mindset. But these false and tempting ideas of the addicted brain has to be challenged. That we often don't want to challenge it at all and just go the easy route is just another trick. In fact we can do a lot of things: urge surfing, writing down reasoning, exercise, changing set and setting and so on and so on
-> So our recovery has to target exactly this: build these tools and learn to use it. Practice to deal with this situation: learn to deal with urges.
-> When we get stuck, we have to do this process more methodically. Maybe with a coach, therapist. Maybe in a group or through other means.
Finally: we will prevail! If we really want, we can do this.
Take your time!
