Sexual Imagery taking over !

Hey there, I hear you! I think most of us have struggled with this to some degree. I once went hard mode for over two years and at times it was smooth, but the sexual imagery and thoughts always come back in one way or another. It’s one of those weird things that is different from other addictions. I’m in recovery from drugs and alcohol, and I rarely get urges to drink or use. But with porn/sex addiction, sex is such an integral part of human life and such a strong instinct that in many ways I think it’s a more powerful addiction than most, because unless one is damn near a Buddha, we are going to have sexual craving going on to some degree for most of our lives.

That being said, I’d say setting yourself a limit, that when sexual imagery comes up, you intentionally think of something else in ten seconds or something. Sometimes we’ll go over, but the idea is to have that intention to catch ourselves and redirect the mind to something else. Maybe our goals, or reminding ourselves of our last relapse how we felt after, bringing our awareness to our breathing or sensations in our body.

This may sound morbid, but Buddhist monks will often contemplate corpses or the unattractive parts of the body, like the organs, bones, blood, piss, shit, not to be negative or to hate the body, but in order to cool down the lust, cool down the heart. If one does these practices, it’s good to combine them with thoughts of kindness for oneself and others, or thinking of one’s goals, or whatever helps one think happy thoughts, in order to balance the mind and not let it get negative.

So basically, redirecting the mind when sexual thoughts come up is super helpful when I remember to do it. And we CAN do it, we just might have to put some extra effort in to do it, cause our minds have a lot of sexual thoughts and imagery downloaded! We might have to do it 50-100 times a day, but we can. It doesn’t take an extraordinary person, just an extraordinary effort, one moment at a time. Good luck my friend!

 

If you're aware that scenes are played back, how about you pause them,fade them out, minimize and launch them into the distance where they can't be seen, then quickly changing the content and going about what you want (or have) to do instead?

 

One day, one user told me something along the lines of "If you experience sexual imagery, imagine the scene as if it was coming from a computer screen then being stamped by a big red cross and another stamp on top of it that says "BANNED" in red letters, and then the whole thing blows up in flames, or you can imagine yourself punching and smashing the screen/laptop/smartphone with all you've got and walk away."

I applies this method when I was under the influence of weed (my most vunerable state) in the past and it helped me stay on the safe path back then.