Need a step by step plan - can’t stop by willpower alone

Hi there actually you asked a good question , because i imagine that a lot of people do not now how to start even that they have a very good education about the topic and knowing that they have tried so many time in the past , all this can be used by our mind as a proof that we can never heal from this disease , but you should know the actual steps of nofap's process so you can deal with those transformation during the journey , i've read in many ressources that the hardest thing is the first week because after about 7 days the neuropathways that we all have created during our addiction start to shrink, so for me the first week if you are struggling to pass the day 1 , you only have to prepare yourself for the war , you have to tolerate the pain , because after 7 days you will try to feel the amazing feeling of nofap, so to make things simple the first week do not think a lot about the strategy ,because your prefrontal cortex is blurred and he can never win the battle against those powerful neuropathways of dopamine that you fed during all these years , avoid the psychological war , make it physical , shout all the thoughts , make it physical war and control your hand from searching for explicit contents , once you finished this step we can make together a new strategy , i recommend you to read the official document of nofap PDF in the site where they explain all the steps of the nofap journey , best regards my friend

 

I really relate to the ops experience of having success in other areas not in quiting pm+. When I was getting close to peak addictive behaviors (part of the definition of an addict is tolerance, sensitivity etc which results in increasing frequency, extremity, duration and intensity) I was in the middle of summa cum laude performance in math at a university ranked in the top 100 in the world. Despite trying therapy, religion, diet, exercise, hurting myself if I acted out, getting married, building community (in one of my double lives that was a fight club, in the other it was conversing with friends about my problem), and joining a semi-cult, I would put my GPA for quiting pm+ at the inverse of my academic GPA . Just as much effort, opposite results. I got a job at a very competitive tech company (about 1 in 1000 applicants accepted) but I kept having problems relating with others, emotional blow ups, fear that it would all come crashing down on my head and if course the cherry on top continued acting out. There were many things I could do myself this was not one of them. Thank goodness I've been giving up not giving in for 2487 days.

 

Not to speak for Arnuld but the context of the quote had mentioned leaving a big void, and I just want to point out meditation is, on one level being comfortable with the void, with nothing happening. But after a while there, you might have an insight, or simply be more at peace and more regulated in your nervous system - but you can't predict those things.

People today are obsessed with counting time, and that includes how long they meditate. I've never seen anything written about traditional meditation that talks about the length of time to meditate or even heard someone mention such. But there ARE different types of meditation so this is a good question to consider especially when qualifying for what you're trying to do, or say what kind of psychological state someone is working with at the moment.

 

So what advice would you offer OP? What changed for you?

 

I wish to meditate. But, I don't know what to follow.. That's why I'm asking.

 

People with addiction can not be high functioning by definition. They are impaired.
Addiction has one core quality - it replaces other important activities in ones life overtime until it replaces all of them.
Addicted in individual is unable to choose between going to work or getting high. he may want to go to work and know it is in his best interest but cant.
That is what addiction is - it gains higher priority and individual looses ability to choose his/her behavior.

People confuse "inability to to resist" and "inability to choose"
Inability to resist is when you want something and find it hard to stop. It can be ice-cream, it can be attractive person, it can be a watch you want, it can be sex. This is not an addiction
Inability to choose is when individual is unable to select his/her behavior. He chooses to smoke every 30minutes, instead of continuing to work, he should go pickup his kids but instead gets drunk. He has to go to work but instead gets high. This is addiction.

So addiction literally destroys your life and changes your behavior it also gets worse overtime.

When people say - I am fully functioning addict for many years - its like saying I am living dead.
If you manage your behavior and control when you do activities you think you are addicted to you are not addicted. You just have difficult time resisting these activities when you feel like doing them. That makes them a habit not an addiction.

Now about depression. When people apply to join the army, they arrive there and during the first two weeks they get emotionally wrecked. They fall in to deepest depression they had and they are given no time to cry about it. They all regret they signed up in their mind.
In addition they are pushed physically to the limit, degraded and their stereotypes about the world are broken. They learn that when they feel like they are completely exhausted and can not move - they can still run for miles, they learn that when they feel depressed and completely shattered ready to give up - they can still reach their goals. They are pushed over and over past their limits and their begin to realize that those limits are in their mind and that is when they grow and develop emotional endurance.
I am not recommending you get a purpose, I am suggesting you push yourself to face those limits you think exist. It develops mood stability.

Your mood is dependent on chemistry of the brain, if you feel depressed - and take a stimulant, you will all of sudden feel positive and motivated. People drink coffee for this very reason.

How you feel is a sensation created by your own brain. If you say something stupid in group of people, your own brain will punish you - it will make you feel like shit, it will make you depressed. These are mechanisms we developed to keep everyone socially "good".
Research has shown that your unconscious brain assigns you social value, this social value then affects production of multiple neurotransmitters that affect mood. The higher the value you have the better mood you have, the lower in social structure you are the worse mood you have.
This is mostly out of your control, your brain looks at signals others give you to sets your emotional value and based on that regulate your mood.

Someone with low self worth, to begin with, is afraid of making any mistake because every mistake brings massive emotional pain, sending him in to in to depression. So these people tend to avoid others and exhibit introverted behavior patterns.
The reason people have low self esteem is due to poor parenting, and conflict avoidance lifestyle.
Resulting behavior, is isolation, lack of social contact and avoidance of anything new.
These people are just afraid of everything, anything new makes them anxious, and any negative experiences - bring depression.

So you ask what should I be doing, I will repeat the same thing - you should be building your self worth. Every movie, book, TV show, myth or story shows how this is done over and over.
Person is noone but has a goal, people do not take him/her seriously, he/she then sets a goal and begins working towards it. We watch hardship, pain and loss as this character goes though the journey and reaches his/her goal.
He is now taken seriously and people recognize him/her. He enjoys the benefits of good mood, happiness and higher social status. Its literally a roadmap to happiness in life.

When people isolate themselves and do not do much that brings higher social status and value - they are nudged gradually in to more and more pain - lower status - more pain. Porn and other abuse emerge as ways to manage this pain.
There is no value in trying to stop pornography use if it is used to cope with depression.

I am not sure what is confusing about doing hard things that feel rewarding?
Why do you think people donate their time at the local homeless shelter? To help the homeless? No, because it makes them feel great, it gives them higher social status - it keeps them happy.
Doing anything difficult - gives you status, your brain does that. That status affects your mood and you feel much better positive and motivated to go about your life. When that happens, coping behaviors naturally disappear.
Doing hard things pushing yourself is what makes you think higher of yourself, this is why people that stop porn feel amazing initially. Because they start doing something difficult and they feel so much better about themselves, their mood corrects, they feel happy, focused etc.
The problem is that when they fail - they degrade back to zero social status, swing back in to depression.
Subsequent attempts bring less and less value, brain is not stupid, if you say you will do X and you do not do it over and over. You get no reward, no value.

But if you say I will do 10 pushups every day - and you do them - you are trustworthy and you know it. You feel better about yourself.
Then you say I will do 20 and you do that every day - you feel even better.
Then you say - will take cold shower every day - and do that and you feel like you are honest and dedicated person. You get good mood.
Now you feel ok, you feel like you are worth something and people around you notice that, they treat you with more respect - you feel great.
You will have setback but if you endure and keep at it - you will begin to feel better, life will be more enjoyable and interest in porn will just go away, you do not need to cope with depression because someone said something bad about you at work, you know you are trustworthy and good person because of your actions.
That is emotional endurance at work, keeping your self worth even in face of criticism and suffering. When other people see this quality - you become their hero.

 

Well one typically starts by following the breath. The basic principle which may seem overly simplistic is just observe and be aware, whether that be where you feel the breath, bodily sensations or thoughts that pop up. There is not a ton of instructions, just a matter of doing it and being curious about it.

To tie it back in with the subject of the thread, I think a common mistake is people feel they HAVE to sit for something like 20, 40 minutes or an hour to feel like they have accomplished meditation - this misses the point. That is the attitude of willpower and is only concerned with amount of time and the posture you're sitting in. It is not like a job where you get paid x amount of $ by the hour. Just like someone on the job can discover and learn things by paying attention and another person just watches the clock, the same difference can apply to your quality of meditation. You won't always feel good but that's just one of the things you would observe.

The principle is you are exercising the power of awareness, which is always there but a lot of people just don't pay attention most of the time.

 

@ANewFocus thanks for asking. It's really hard to describe because it's all so easy to misunderstand because we're very smart . I've found my mind to be a liability and the sharper it is the deeper it cuts me and others.
I can take a stab at a beginning of it, and by the way I try not to advise ops, it's not by accident that my posts usually focus on my experience because opinions ... everyone has one and they all stink. It's related to what happened to make be happy about not using pm+ indefinitely, I started asking for advice and taking it from people happily refraining from pm+. Another change was actually calling recovered addicts on the phone to ask advice and be honest about what was going on for me including things I didn't want to say, they were embarrassing (I still do this regularly and if anybody would like to I'll happily share my number in a conversation). And those things helped me realize I hadn't really wanted to be happy. I didn't think anyone could seek misery but I had been doing so out of lack of consciousness. I thought not acting out was good but I didn't feel good doing good things because I deeply believed I was bad so I didn't deserve a good thing it just didn't fit this was part of why it didn't seem possible for me to ever be free of pm+ was "how could that be for a guy like me?". I don't know if the solution to that can be engineered but I know a lot of actions that can make it more likely, that's what seems to be my experience. Oh and I put off skiing anything and just kind of hung around wringing my hands for a long time until the pain of addiction got so great I couldn't stand under it's weight and that got me willing to be humble honest and do whatever it takes. So stupidity bringing lots of pain is definitely a big part of how things changed for me, that went on increasingly for years. It was not like a movie . It's easy for me to forget all the "mistakes" I made in the process and get prideful as could not pming when that is par for the course not special. I know people with thirty forty years that I'm pretty sure aren't addicts, and I know addicts twenty years off it. Anyways, that's just a bit of it if anyone wants to know more I'd love to swap ideas please feel free to message me. Of course there are lots of paths, this one I think is more for people like me who find other stuff not working.

 

Why don't you organize your ideas readable format that includes paragraphs, indentations and is in other ways readable by the general public. I will not read this wall of text.

Have some respect for the language we all lean on so heavily to express our ideas.

 

You might want to follow your advice and edit your posts for grammar.

 

You attack me for poor writing habits by defending people with bad writing habits?

We call people like you "hypocrite"

 

You attacked a person with poor writing habits using your own poor writing habits.

 

I know you are all itchy inside, you do not need to tell us.