Reboot V2

Greetings: Some of you may recognize my nickname; it's been a few weeks since I posted and people change fast here! Anyway, I had worked my way up to 99 days of no PMO and relapsed. Technically, it was around 91 days because I found myself edging with porn for about a week before finally falling. So, what did I learn from the relapse?

• DON'T EDGE - This two word lesson should go without saying. But we can NEVER be too cautious.
• Mental health is just as much a trigger as seeing a beautiful woman. For whatever reason, I was lost in my head during the time I was edging. Some personal things were in flux and I wasn't dealing with them in a healthy way. To hide the discomfort, I suffocated myself with porn.
• Even though I wasn't acting out, I was thinking about it EVERYDAY! Now, I'm just 18 days in my reboot and I find I think about porn very little and that seems to keep me more sane. There was a discussion thread here a while ago about the counter and how it plays into recover. During my first long reboot, I argued the counter was an important part of the process. I've changed my mind. The counter and the obsession of watching the days accumulate are not what's important... staying sober and figuring out how to be mentally healthy are!
• I CAN NOT let a relapse stop me from recovering. Ok, so I lapsed, I'm not perfect, I'm learning from the fall, and I'm picking myself up and moving forward. If I let guilt and shame back into my head space, they'll just work themselves up to another relapse.

So, here I am working day to day to stay clean of porn. I learned a lot from the first run, and I think, in some ways, I changed fundamentally in the process. And that change appears to helping in this second run. Here's to recovery!

Peace