Morning Wood

I just had a bad case of night wood and relapsed. It sucks. I think perhaps if I (or you) can't sleep quickly, I need to think about doing something else, then trying to go to sleep later. Also, sleeping on your back tends to help--no opportunity to rub the bed.

 

BE VERY VERY CAUTIOUS MATE. I've entertained morning wood with some light fantasies and edging. I have not gone all the way to relapse but it could have easily happened. IGNORE it as much as u can, the same way u would ignore a tree; they're both just normal everyday things right? - get the hell up if u start having funny ideas.

 

Make sure you go to the bathroom before bed. Any kind of pressure down there can cause an erection. Also, lie on your back when you sleep, like TheIdealMan said. Just get up and walk around, do pushups, brush your teeth, lift some light weights, anything to get your blood flowing to other parts of your body and take your mind off the problem. This is just a phase. As your body gets used to your new lifestyle it will stop protesting.

 

I'm not telling anyone to go ahead and masturbate, but if you're even just a few days in with no porn, and you do jerk off the get to sleep, or just can't overcome the temptation presented by morning wood, it's NOT a huge failure. Resist as much as you can, but the feelings of failure and "starting over" are more damaging than jerking off once, or even once a day.

Unless you have VERY specific goals beyond just "not fapping" then I think avoiding binges is FAR more important than completely avoiding masturbation. The chaser effect might lead you to jerk off twice instead of once. But those feelings of shame and depression are what leads to a binge. Think about it, how often have you ever actually felt happy even DURING a binge?

 

but yeah, morning wood can be tricky, but think of it this way. You're not getting hard because you're thinking of sex, you're thinking of sex because you got hard. Go distract yourself, take a shower or do dishes, and the wood will go away, then so will the sexual thoughts.

 

Terrible advice

 

You misread me then. I'm not advising anyone to masturbate.

I'm saying that IF YOU DO, move on with your progress, rather than acting like you're back at square one. If you think you don't have so far to fall, then falling again doesn't seem like a big deal.

35 days and then one fap on a Tuesday is a FANTASTIC record, and you should congratulate yourself by turning that into 36 days with only one fap, and then 37 days, 38 days, rather than thinking on Friday that you've only got 3 days without jerking off.

 

What you adviced is kinda true. But its way too hard mate. Your body will convince you that one time is not that bad and that one time will turn into 100 soon. Trust me i have tried it.. Could be diff if you can control but not for me..

 

I agree with @Toven - this is terrible advice @BobDobbs!

You are providing people with rationalisation fodder. That is incredibly unhelpful and undermines people's determination. How can you get a big blast of dopamine from masturbating and having an orgasm and "move on with your progress"? What progress? Time and time again the most effective rebooters have strictly adhered to no P OR M OR O.

 

So tell me about your reboot efforts, how are they going. Your counter says one day. How long did it say yesterday? What's your longest streak? Your average streak? When was your last binge?

I'm NOT telling anyone to masturbate. But isn't it better to jerk off once, and stay away from porn, than to look at porn at all (even without masturbation) or go on a binge.

Which is worse, which do you think causes a bigger dopamine blast and withdrawal - a huge porn binge, and wallowing in depression and shame, every ten days, OR jerking off to your imagination and then moving on with the business you need to take care of every 3 days?

I'm not even saying which one of those is worse. Each person has to decide for themselves. There is not a single road to recovery. People have different problems, and different things work for different people. But I have seen far too many people on here CONSTANTLY struggling with an ideal that seem unobtainable TO THEM. People eaten up with guilt and low-self esteem because they can't stop binging.

I want everyone to find a way to STOP BINGING. STOP HATING THEMSELVES. And get rid of the ridiculous idea that there can be no improvement without 100% adherence. Having a solid streak IS important, but maintaining a low average is more important, especially for people who can't get that streak going in the first place because they further self-sabotage after each slip.

Do what works for you, and provide advice, but a ton of the advice I see here seems to further shame people after they slip up. Sometimes y'all are acting mean to people, making them feel like crap for failing, instead of trying to support them in their efforts to keep what strength they have built.

By saying MO is just as bad as porn, too many people rationalize it by going "if I'm gonna do one, might as well do the other, and start again tomorrow."

 

Fuck off Bob!

 

SnL,
I guess you're going to tell me to Fuck off too, but I get what Bob is saying. I believe we're all on here for individual reasons. For example, I'm not against masturbation at all. I am however against masturbation while watching porn. Some on here prefer no P/M/or O. Great, I can support and encourage. I can also provide the guy who masturbated some words of encouragement. Eliminating PORN is my only reason for being on here. Heck, I'm married and have a healthy sex life. I'm going to do things with my wife that some here would consider a relapse. Me, I consider it sex with my wife. I've chosen not to masturbate during this reboot, but if I did, I'm going to feel ok so long as it didn't involve porn. After each relapse, I've taken what I learned from the last and made improvements. I believe that's what Bob is suggesting. Make an improvement each time. The glass can be half full.

 

Not at all @jtmony08, you are not a dick. The nob made this personal by questioning my reboot efforts - to discredit me!

Yes, indeed.

 

Thanks SNL...and you have a point. I didn't catch that before. Good luck to you both.

 

Hello guys,

I find Bob's suggestion is a good alternative if somebody can't get out of certain habits.

I don't wanna say too much cause I haven't tried plenty of things yet, but when u wanna learn doing pull ups, let's say, somebody will benefit using elastic ropes (I don't know how these are called), to make it easier for the body to get used to the motion and using particular muscle groups in a certain way. Gradually he could start using kipping motions at which point it's easy to get to 10 repetitions. After that you can probably start off with 5 strict pull ups if you want to.

Breaking things down/scaling them down and set in-between goals can be a huge boost I think.

Might be considered cheating or whatever by some, the rules and the process YOU follow however in order to fix YOUR problem are set by YOU. Whatever gets you rolling works IMO.

Greets

 

@SnL , I am sorry. Whether or not it is accurate, I felt like across several threads you were attacking me, taking an aggressive tone, and misrepresenting my words.

You made a claim that hypothetically could be verified, but without any data to back it up. I asked how that claim compared to your own personal dataset, which would be the only one you would have access to. That was definitely making it personal, and I am very sorry.

I think that we have mostly been arguing semantics, because I searched your history, and found you saying something a few months ago VERY similar to my main points.

Pulled quotes for emphasis -

I wish I had referred to the Glossary sooner, to better illustrate that a huge problem I have seen with many people letting stress over a reset turn into a full on relapse. A relapse is BAD, but perhaps if someone feels like they have too many resets, they would be better off temporarily adjusting their own personal program/challenge, until they feel strong enough to tackle a harder challenge.

also from the Glossary:

• YMMV: Your Mileage May Vary. Good words to remember, because no two reboots are exactly alike.

 

For those who gets wood at night and/or in the morning you should be extremely happy. You just don't know how frustrating and scary when you don't get them. This happened during the early days when I was experiencing the flatline. Yet now I am some +50 days into this reboot/rewire I have gotten wood back with a vengeance. Yes that extremely hard feeling is awesome even if it wakes me up. All it takes is simple willpower to carry you through.

 

Morning wood - get up, go pee, go do something and get on with your day.

Night wood - go pee, cold water rinse the twig and berries.

 

Hi Bob, thank you for apologising for the personal comments. When we go with how we feel, it is easy for things to get out of proportion. I certainly felt that you were trying to discredit it me just because I have had a shitty week. In fact, I have had six or more streaks in triple figures with my best being last autumn: 211 days. I apologise for my insulting reply.

Of course, masturbating without porn is better than masturbating with porn. But I feel it kind of misses the point. We have an addiction around artificial stimulation of our dopamine-fuelled reward circuit. Masturbation and orgasm alone might not hit the jackpot of P+M+O, but it is still damaging to our reboot. My observations are that the more strict we are the quicker we reboot. It is the same with easy mode and hard mode. Of course, people can choose the relatively easier mode and have sex along the way. But countless testimonies say that doing so, especially early on in the process, just exacerbates the temptation to masturbate to porn. We enter this odyssey with our brains truly screwed up. I am trying to promote the method most likely to unscrew it in the speediest, most effective way. That is why I found your posts frustrating.