Watching porn will never make you hate yourself.

What makes you hate yourself is not PMO. The damage PMO does is just a side effect.

What makes you hate yourself is that you continually choose to watch/do something that you know is harmful to you, despite knowing how wrong of a choice it is. If a friend came up to you and said “I know that the wrong thing for me to do to you right now is say something deeply hurtful to you, but I am going to anyways, because I feel like it.” You would feel hatred towards them.

Why? Because despite knowing better, they chose to do something wrong that was harmful to you. Its not different with ourselves. When we eat more than we should, PMO, say things we shouldn’t, spend too much time playing video games, etc. All things we know (despite our masterful rationalizations) are bad for us, or bad for us in excess, we are communicating to our own soul/psyche/heart that our feelings matter more than our own well being. Our soul/psyche/heart feels hurt by our poor choices, and over time will even feel hatred towards itself.

We get into a loop of “I dont care if this is bad for me, I want this” and “I just hate myself.” Then out of that self contempt, desperate for a little pleasure to numb the pain we think “I dont care if this is bad for me, I want this.” And you now see the spiral downward.

Porn is a symptom of self hatred. It is an addictive opiate to help numb the pain. Making your goal to be PMO free is a shitty goal. Your target cannot be to lack something. Your target needs to be to gain something (while also knowing what could happen if you miss...). So aim for a more enriching and fulfilling life. Start to make decisions that move you closer to that life. Start small. Reduce the amount of junk food dinners per week from 7 to 5 then to 3, then to 2, then to just 1 over time. Exercise by going for a walk and listening to a podcast. Watch your favorite show on the exercise bike. Start small, take baby steps, just keep moving forward. Save enough money so that you have a couple hundred dollars in your savings account, then $500, then a thousand then 2 thousand. Now you have a nice little emergency fund that will sustain you through most things that will go wrong, and that is something you can build off of and be proud of. Use an hour of video games as a reward for accomplishing things that are important to you.

All of this is a choice. Your brain will kick and scream like a little pissy child whenever you deprive it of its immediate gratification initially. Just accept it ahead of time. It will make all sorts of super persuasive arguments that will make you want to give in. Again, just accept it ahead of time, and resolve to ignore them. That looks like “Yes I acknowledge that I REALLY want to watch porn right now and would love to binge. I want pizza, not broccoli, I want to spend this money, not save it, etc...But I am not going to, because I will be better off in an hour if I dont.”

By doing this, you gain more respect for yourself. Just like with others. You respect leaders who put the needs of others before themselves. In the same capacity, you will respect yourself by putting your REAL needs before your selfish desires. You will build discipline, which builds a life of meaning and stability that also brings FREEDOM!

The more your pleasure comes from living a meaningful life, the less power pixels on a screen will have over you.