(unconsciously) teasing ourselves - How to break your cycle

Hi all,

This will be my first post, so I want to give a bit of context. To be honest I’m not sure when I first started watching porn. What I do know is that I was probably around 8 years old when I started masturbating (didn't know what it was, but it just felt good). Once I got a phone I started really getting into porn, that in combination with gaming and watching YouTube all day was an ideal high dopamine self-destruction mixture. For 5 or 6 years this mix was around 95% of all I did besides sleep and school. Turning me from an energic kid into a shy and skinny kid living inside all day. I managed to quit my gaming addiction, which I thought was the most destructive one, but only by filling the void it left with more YouTube and porn.

All those years I would give in to ever urges I got in an instant, dropping my pants and getting on the hub. Finishing in a few minutes, feeling down and then drowning myself into a YouTube rampage until I got another urge. Completely derailing my brain. About three years ago I starting getting into NoFap (not even realizing I was addicted), without much success. Until about six months ago when I started really trying, keeping a score on a sticky note. But once again I kept falling again and again to the insane amount of urges after a few days. Then it hit me, I finally realized where 90% of these urges were coming from. YouTube’s title, thumbnails and video’s filled with constant erotic impulses.

YouTube isn’t the cause of my porn addiction but it is the thing that keeps the fire going. I’m currently on a 12 day no orgasm streak, after day 5 I complete quit YouTube which dropped my urges by an insane amount. Enabling me to go without PMO for the last 7 days with relative ease. I still get really bad urges for both YouTube and PMO but they are much easier to power through when they aren’t that frequent.

I guess what I’m getting at is that if you truly want to quit PMO you have to completely cut out the things that are giving you the most urges. Which is probably social media for most of us. It’s no rocket science but we tend to (unconsciously) tease ourselves for a bit of dopamine, keeping the cycle going. If you manage to break your cycle, you will take of a lot of the pressure.

Anyways, this seems to work for me so I'm hoping it might work for some of you aswell. Keep your head up and remember; the obstacle is the way.

Jack

 

I can relate to that, spending a lot of time alone makes it's much easier to relapse. So I've been trying to be out of the house as much as possible. Of course that not always possible so I've started getting into some odd hobbies (playing piano, learning French but also posting here on NoFap) just to keep me busy, that way I can distract myself once I get an urge. I wish you the best trying to cross the 60 days threshold!

(I do think you can use "MO" when you're still engaging in porn)