Journey and Insights from an 12 year old addict

Hello People,

I'm here to share what I know about voice and triggers that might make you relapse. Although I may not be the right guy to share this- 12 years of usage with last longest streak of 27 days (dec 2019)- I noticed few findings by reading articles and posts from Nofap and other sources. Here they are

1. Be it PIED, weird fetishes, or extreme porn, you have successfully created and trained the neural pathways in your brain to react to porn. If you don't feel excited about normal porn or escalating/ed to extreme ones, it means your brain is bored with the old kind and searching for novelty and by further feeding it new content you are building new and stronger neural pathways which would make recovery much difficult.

2. Know your pattern: I noticed 4 patterns that trigger watching porn.

A)Order: Order is When things are perfect, when I'm happy, when everything is comfortable. I feel triggered and watch porn to enhance happiness through momentary cheap pleasure which suckksss badly after ejaculation.

B)Chaos: chaos is when things go wrong, when something painful or undesired happens. In this situation, I do it to escape the pain of the current situation. Chaos and the above case- order- are contradictory with respect to why I pursue.

C)Extra time/ Boredom: lack of social life and emotional support in addition to ample time at hand which I didn't use for productive stuff led me to increased watching hours

D)Sleeplessness/Night routine: Whenever I don't fall asleep or even if I do, I made it a routine to watch porn. If this goes hand in hand with a bad day(chaos) I would go on a binging spree followed by utter disgust on life.

After recognizing all these patterns I'm able to categorize all the events that trigger me. I would ask you to identify and categorize every triggering event so that you know when you are likely to watch porn. Recovery starts with clear identification/awareness of when it can likely happen

3. Your mind(the voice) rationalizes you to masturbate watching porn, by giving various reasons which you deeply know are not valid. The voice is so loud for me that I forget all that I know - science, adversities- and would continue to jeopardize my progress and everything. While calming down the voice I could only recall a few fragments of learnings and knowledge from various sources. All these tiny tiny fragments help me to resist.

My source of knowledge and learning from various sources: Eckhart Tolle (power of now); Your Brain on porn; Urge Surfing material; Article on Neural pathways; Jordan B peterson lectures and book; NoFap community experiences; David Goggins.


4. I also noticed, escaping- by deleting, adding blockers, etc- should not be the ideal way. Ideally, I need to notice the events and urges when they arise but should still have the confidence and will to control that. This thought led me to Urge Surfing- you concentrate on the urge as it arises, sustains, and dies eventually- it initially did not work as staring into the thought without giving in is so difficult. But my continued learning and understanding about it along with my year-long experience with mindfulness and meditation helped me use urge surfing better. I feel discomfort when an urge is at peak and later, it surpasses if you don't hold on to it. I feel very relieved that I didn't give in and that the urge was a temporary thing.

5. I read an article about a guy who has been watching for 11 years and crossed his longest streak to achieve day 60, relapsed after feeling very good about his 50-day progress. My Accountability Partner relapsed yesterday. These experiences humbled me that I'm still vulnerable even if I surpassed my oldest streak.

I got to be vigilant.

6. The voice in my head always convinces me that I better give up as I don't have what it takes to win. I fight this demon back with the knowledge that I'm learning every day that is contributing to change my pessimistic perspective.

The mind is a beautiful servant and a dangerous master guys. Be careful about the voice. I will share what is helping me down below:

1.How is the internet destroying your focus:

https://www.notion.so/Notes-of-Inte...2e764903d735#b3813059b6ab45a98bb3e510651e72f4

2. Urge Surfing:

https://med.dartmouth-hitchcock.org/documents/Urge-Surfing.pdf

If you reached till here, please vote

Ps: Now that you know about my triggers and condition please share any helpful material or advice that will facilitate my progress.

Habits i have/trying to inculcate: trying for a 6 pack, reading books, Intermittent fasting, focusing on education

 

thanks for the reply, appreciate that