Issues that used to cause porn and masturbation came up today. Body issues. Worked out to work through them, but I need to apply that logic that I shouldn't feel shame in this situation as well. Because I can only make more of an effort from here on out. And I shouldn't feel ashamed that I got up and worked out. I can only be better than I was yesterday, not better than someone else was yesterday. Need to internalize that.
Daily Update: Yet another day passed. Not too much of an issue today. Feeling better, still working on not comparing myself to anyone but myself. And for the most part, it has gone good. Only one time today where I really did that. Took on a food challenge and beat it, so things are going pretty well! Each day that passes will make you more and more focused, as well as more and more disciplined. Started telling my friends about my current successes, I'm proud as fuck. Took 3 years since I made my first "committment" to stop using porn and/or masturbating. And she's finally done. It's weird that now even seeing the word porn is kind of scary to me. It's like if I look at it too long I'll spiral down a bad path. But what matters is that I've gotten out, and I have the will to pull myself away from it every time. I don't know what else to say other than your normal sex drive begins to return after some abstinence, and that you start to cut to the chase in what you're saying if you had problems with dancing around a subject. Day 31, out!
02/22/21- Not a bad day at all. Settling in at work, now I have something consistent to get up for in the mornings. I've been feeling a lot less tempted now when I sit in the office to do my schoolwork. It's the fact that I've built fortitude and get up every day with the intention of maintaining and improving upon that fortitude that has gotten me here. And I can only keep going harder!
10 straight hours of calculus completed, proud of that. Didn't quite get to the gym and cheated on the diet I was supposedly going on :/. However, I have a good workout planned, and will get to it tomorrow. Planning on doing back squat as well as more HIIT. I have to settle in so I don't overtrain again. Try to take things too hard too quick, don't forget to sleep and recover some days. And go hard whenever you go at all. No softcore shit. I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel tempted today. But I kept thinking how pointless it would be to give in now, and how I'll never give up on being porn free. I cut it out of my life like how I threw that bag of chocolate chips out. If you don't want it, don't even entertain the thought of it. Simple as that. Fuck yeah can't wait for tomorrow!
Struggled this morning. Forgot to pray for willpower to combat porn addiction, I got cocky and assumed it was over with. Got up this morning and searched for the snap stars and felt a tremor for the deeper, darker, scarier types of porn. Fought it off, but eventually succumbed to just simple, vanilla masturbation, after edging to the fantasies of the scary kinds of porn. If I can turn this around, I should be able to salvage my streak. I'm not going to just be "one and done" and give up and start over. Frustrating as fuck. And I know I let my guard down. I'm not going to shame myself, because it's inevitable to slip up sometimes, but I thought I was past this. I guess not, I need to work to make sure it doesn't happen again. Been craving a lot of pleasure recently ig, I need to do a fast from that shit. I need to just get back to what is important. And that is self-improvement, career improvement, and body goals. I don't feel ashamed, even though I should. I'm going to be more assertive today because I will need to be. And I'm going to make sure I get to lift and run today. I felt ashamed yesterday for taking a recovery day. But every article I've read says it's important. I don't want to overtrain again. And thus I should take care of myself, not just my responsibilities. You can do this, just put your mind to it. It's all over the place every day. Just focus.
Better day today, I had work, and I had prayed for will and resolve last night and this morning. I love my job. I pray that I continue to stay strong and expel lust from my head. I pray that I can keep my confident, masculine attitude that I've gotten through god and avoiding porn and lust, and that I can continue on with my streak.
I sat in my office and did all the calculus assignments for a week and a half at school. I had trouble spreading them out, so did all of them at once. Basically, studied 10 hours.
Another week, another success. Until today. I woke up this morning feeling normal, but ended up masturbating later. Again, I can turn this around. I haven't consumed porn in close to 2 weeks and I have been seeing my life become much wider than just porn and avoiding porn. I fell into a sort of trap that once my life wasn't about porn, it was about avoiding porn. And now that I'm going beyond that, sometimes I feel like it doesn't have much of a purpose. I know that's not true, but I can only exercise intensely 3-4 days a week and have only a part time job, and it's weird having nothing to do in the open time. I can turn this around. I can pray to god, and avoid porn yet again. Going strong with that, proud of myself. Ousting masturbation has been tougher than ousting porn and certain genres. Yet it is still achievable. I can do this. This is a journey, not a destination. It's good to let your thoughts out. It leads to clarity in what you want and need. Sometimes, I get tremors of the old demented porn I used to watch. By tremors, I mean like flashbacks, where it takes over my thoughts for a period of time. It scares the hell out of me. Most times, I can fight it off. But other times I cave and masturbate. I don't know if these will ever stop, yet I'm hopeful. These have been the biggest struggle in combatting recently, even moreso than boredom or general lust. I bet it stems from the intense fear I felt when I first discovered it, and there are trigger words and emotions that cause this to occur. I've done well undoing any stigma, fear, hatred, and such with a lot of this, but sometimes I stumble upon other triggers. I used to feel a particular, indescribable feeling when giving in to the fear and addiction. Sometimes a craving for that comes back too. It will go away. If I keep praying and keep a large amount of fortitude in my mind it will go away. Even this far into the journey, it is still an uphill battle. But that doesn't mean I can't look down the hill and see how far I've come. I've come from a place of hopelessness to a place where the tirade goes on. Where I can almost see the top, yet the bottom seems distant and far away. Where soon I feel as if I will complete it, yet to do so requires all of what I've learned along the way. Only then can I truly complete this. Since I dreamed of giving this up when I was 16, I never though I'd see the day where I'd get out. When I hit rock bottom and tried unsuccessfully to get out at 17. The false rises and falls when I was 18. And the final stubborn rise at 19. I don't have porn in my life anymore and I don't invite it in. No matter how tempting. I don't want to change the past. I can't change it. But I want to change the future. No false pretenses will make me go back, there is no "better porn." All of it will try to draw me back in. I will cast out masturbation. I've been doing a damn good job at stopping. I've seen actual changes in my life. And I know I can. I will check back in later.
Another couple days, more successes. I'm coming to terms with who I am. I've sort of isolated myself from society a little bit, as I realized I'll only really talk to those who talk to me first. Today I practiced by hitting my friends up even if they didn't respond and not taking offense when they didn't. Almost talked to a couple people at walmart just because but backed down last minute. From afar this girl wearing my favorite band t-shirt looked about 19, but up close looked more like 15, and didn't want to catch a case lol. I'll still find a way to have conversations with strangers and get that social confidence up. Should help me break any desire to go back to porn and masturbation. NO masturbation since that little hiccup a couple of days ago. Been focusing on improving myself, and it has been working! Been working on my girlfriends' car, and fixed a couple things, with plans to head on the road to get a fuel tank for 10% of the price tomorrow. Stayed lifting weights, and even tried a new thing in shadow boxing last night. I've always wanted to dip my toes into boxing and just took the first step. Proud of how far I've come. For any guys out there reading this, don't get discouraged if you don't have superpowers right away. I encourage you to take a look and write down how you feel at the start of your journey, and when you're in the middle like I am, look back and see how you saw the world. The results can be astounding, with realizing how you were so far down the wrong path you couldn't even see the right one.
Life has picked up, it's been a lot more difficult to record my progress here everyday. Now that I have a job, school and everything keeps me focused. I haven't even had the urge to look at porn for the last 5 days. And I've fought off that urge I had 6 days ago, and that urge was weak as is. My sexual desires still feel a little weird, I sometimes have a rare tremor, yet they are nothing compared to the world breaking ones I used to have. They're light and soft, like an echo of a whisper or what once was. My sex drive has been fairly low, and my performance is short rn. I don't know if it's because I'm obsessed with wanted to do semen retention except when I'm feeling expressly sexual, but I've only wanted to have sex for about 5 minutes instead of 30-45 like I used to way back when. If any guys out there have had the same phenomenon lemme know. Masturbation urges are starting to recede. Maybe it's because my girlfriend stayed over for a week, but I haven't felt much urge to masturbate, even on my morning wood. That's the only time- if ever- I still feel the desire to beat it. I usually just denounce the idea entirely. I know that it will get more difficult when I have to be alone next week because quarantine will be over, but I can do it if I have a gameplan and I bring my fortitude. My focus and drive in life have been healed though. I can actually change things. It sounds ridiculous, but before I would think about changing things and not really believe I could do it unless I made a huge deal about it. This morning I was tired and not talking to anyone. I wanted to change the fact that I'm being isolationist at work, so I reached deep down and found some initiative to go talk to my coworkers. It sounds little, and it was. But it proved to me that I can change the little things too to make life more enjoyable. I managed to get my taxes done, set up an IRA, submit my FAFSA weld the fuel tank so that it holds fuel, emroll in my next semester of college, and reinitiate some friendships and lifting weights. I also reinitiated my macros, whilst getting a start going on organizing my garage. After I do the fuel tank, I plan on finishing the garage before shoving the fridge in the dining room until we do the floor. Then I can finally go back to working on the firebird. I'd have to say now I lightened up the restrictions on myself. I gave myself access to youtube in my browser, but not through the app. That was kind of scary, as I didn't want to fall right back into the trap I was in before. I haven't gotten much time to relax recently. When I do relax, I've been trying to play a game instead of watching something. But now I have to go back to school and do homework in addition to what I had going before, so this will test my system. But I am hypermotivated and am eating right, so who knows what I can do.
Shit, this is crazy. I didn't think about porn or masturbating all day and I didn't even think about it. My new habit is going to this site. I haven't misused the freedom I gave myself so far and have no intention of doing so. I pray that I keep up this fortitude, because I never want to go back to how I was. I'm so proud of myself. Superpowers do be real tho. I stood up for myself when I was getting accused of all this crazy shit when all I've been doing is working hard and taking care of myself. I took the accusations like a man, held my ground, avoided getting too upset in return, and dismissed it. That's the strongest and the squarest I've ever held my ground. Even though I should be down about that, it hasn't broken my spirit because I haven't let it. And I have no intention of stopping here. If this is Day 53, I can't imagine what Day 90 will be like. Or Day 180 for that matter. I've been less afraid of everything recently and have tackled other things that make me fearful/nervous/anxious. On top of that, I feel like I've been taking control of my life instead of scraping by. Workout wise, money wise, nutrition wise, relationship wise, career wise, and school wise. Although living like that got me by, I can be better and I'll never stop improving. I never want to give this website, and this movement, up. It has changed me for the better and laid a solid foundation so that I can build my dreams upon it. It exposes the hypocrisies of people saying that porn and masturbation are "healthy." It solidifies my faith in god, and that the spirit is a true part of yourself. We're more than just electrical pulses and brain chemistry. We have a greater purpose, and there are things that will drain your spirit. But I will get up everyday and fight like hell to make it stronger. In other news, getting pretty good at my job, I've been playing with the idea of starting a little side business. Change batteries, oil, tires, and some fluids on the side. My city doesn't have a very assertive community of mobile mechanics so it may work. I think it's worth considering. Been taking working out more seriously recently, and I've also been taking nutrition more seriously. No more ice cream! Cravings can be satisfied with one bite! Going to the gym is only half the struggle, you gotta go in and give it all you got! No matter whether you're going heavy or doing volume, you should make the most of that workout. For once I'm ahead in my classes. If I stay on here too long I won't be, but it pays to get your thoughts out. Calling companies and getting things done isn't as hard as it once was. Before it was terribly difficult to try to manage to remember to do certain things, but now I have mental notes that I make. I have a notebook where I write down my important info, and I've been getting shit done! Except the gas tank, we've had shitty weather so I haven't felt very inclined to lay on the pavement and take it out. Moral of the story is once you get far enough, it gets much, much easier. You don't think about porn and masturbation and shame. You begin to see the issues beneath those. You fill your time with more fulfilling activities. Or activities you should've been doing the entire time. You don't hate other people for having their shit together and knowing who they are. You don't hate much anymore, a lot of my hatred stemmed from my porn addiction. Just felt like I'd never get on track to getting a girl that hot, convinced myself I was a loser and went down a dark path. But no longer. Now I feel like I'm on a path to greatness. I wouldn't say that I'm a beast yet. I still got a lot of work to do to make my dreams a reality. But the difference between then and now is that I'm actually doing it.
Tough morning. Listening to spotify and for some reason it suggested sexual asmr and I couldn't change it because I was driving. Thankfully got it turned off and was only half hard in doing so. Does this count as a relapse? I did get hard and couldn't help but fantasize but didn't see anything and didn't really seek it out.
Tough day. Relapsed, on both. Porn and Masturbation. That's about the 5th one since I began my 90 days. This is harder than I thought. Life doesn't stop throwing punches, even when I seem to do everything right :/. I guess all I can do from here is get up and go on. Not make myself feel ashamed about it. Recently I've been feeling very depressed. Like I don't see a point in going on. It's like I can only get one part of my life together without fucking the others up. I need a job because I need income. Without it I'll go broke. I need school for my future engineering endeavors. I need to keep a good relationship with my dad so I have somewhere to stay. But I also need to quit porn/masturbation, and this week I slowly drifted back to masturbation and eventually porn. I got cocky. I feel sort of ashamed that I've had 3 relapses for masturbation and one for porn. It's like it crept up on me first through Spotify and then through youtube. I need to avoid youtube if I want to avoid defeating myself. It wasn't the blockers that were stopping me from watching it before. It was me. I'm the solution just as much as I am the problem. And I can be that solution. I don't need to use porn as a crutch. But lately it's been feeling like everyone is a burden on me. Lately I've been feeling like everything is against me, and it's me against the world. Lately I haven't been very interested in my girl and my home life, I've just felt aloof and depressed, trying to get my shit done to stay on my goals. I desperately crave that energy I know I have, that I know is there, but am blocking myself from getting. I need to drop the idea that since I have access to YouTube again that I can just go back to how I was. I can't and I won't. I need to avoid masturbation, and especially porn. A couple relapses are inevitable, but a relapse week like this is avoidable. And it doesn't make me less than any other man for avoiding porn. It doesn't make me less than for not having the same success story as anyone else. My story is mine alone to tell. Maybe I need to prioritize myself a little more. I beat my dick because I was feeling down and I was used to having my girlfriend there whenever I got an urge. Maybe I should insert myself into the forums and make a legitimate effort daily to come onto NoFap. The days when I come on before doing my homework remind me that I am not to watch porn. No regression! We only look to the future! No shame for it! Relapses WILL happen! But they WILL become less frequent! And that is because you WILL get back up on your feet every time and fight it! Not "I should fight this," but "I WILL fight this!" So what if there is new stimulus in your life? There will always be! Don't mope around about this, you will have a crest and a low point with everything, but like the stock market you're still inclined to rise. I awoke my spirit and it will not go back to sleep for awhile! I'm awake physically and spiritually now! I don't want to leave this forum until I'm good and ready. I've got papers to write, quizzes to take, tools to unpack but this is making me feel fulfilled right now. And I'm important enough to myself to do so. For anyone who is just reading through, feel free to disregard. But expelling all my thoughts into this forum is a way to deal with all the guilt, shame, and fear. I felt ashamed that I didn't talk to these people today because I have incredibly high expectations of myself to nail every social interaction. And it's okay that it failed. Some people don't want to talk. Some people are just jerks and ain't gonna jive with you. No bad days! We learn from everyday. You, my friend, have the world on your shoulders. That doesn't mean that your life energy has to be squeezed out through your penis though. It just means that I know you can get back up. You were born to fight. Get up and fight. Get up and fight! You've improved both your physical and mental skills this week, and you haven't stopped pushing. I wouldn't say your spirit left you at all. You get tired sometimes but you can get back up and make it work. You can change things. Plan? Homework now, my girl later, and work tomorrow. After work, straight to homework. No afternoon showers, none of that shit. Hang out outside, you even convinced yourself when you were in the process of relapsing that it wasn't worth it to watch it outside. You even convinced yourself not to watch it in your room. You let your guard down about the office when no one was home. And we learned to keep the guard up. Only someone else can protect you, the past cannot. But I know you can do this, let's do this!
Very much enjoyed reading these posts, gave me a lot of insight and motivation. BTW I dig the profile pic.
New strategy: Use the old one. You have fallen and you've accepted it. We are focusing on re-ousting porn, and masturbation is fine as long as it is not to porn. It's fine, but not ideal. Obviously not going to do it everyday, but maybe every 3 days as a release and not on days where you're expecting to have sex. THat's how you will effectively combat this.
Good shit. 4 days strong. Occasional temptation, but the lack of shaming myself has worked. Life hasn't slowed down for me. But it wasn't tolerable when I would have to constantly reload my life energy because of porn and masturbation. Now, I'm always moving, but it's something I can handle. Man, growing up sucks sometimes. Didn't realize what my mom did for us until she was gone. Anyways, over the past 4 days I've noticed: It's much easier to pull myself out of my low points than it was before. It's like a dip in a stock market graph, you're still going up, and are much higher than you were before. It may still be a struggle to pick yourself up and get back up off your feet, but it does get better. I can honestly say that I had never gone 60 days without watching humiliation porn, and that is a record. I didn't want it in my life, and I manifested it out of it. Now I just have to move on from the one occurance rather than the day after day of it in the past. I know it's tied to deeper emotional problems and I'm working on them. I've addressed Porn addiction, which is a symptom of something wrong on the inside. But that's enough of that. We're celebrating victory right now! I'm setting my intentions that this isn't one of the days where I post that I'm doing great, get all stressed from doing calculus, and then go back to doing what I was doing. I'm better than that now. I can do better, be better. I know that it was a problem, and I'm addressing it. And I will beat it! Overall, the past couple days, after battling the post-quitting urges, sexual temptation has been minimal. Porn always seems more tempting than the gratification you get from it. It doesn't make me feel "high" anymore, it's just the memories of it. Those memories were probably because I was on drugs when I watched porn, not because porn was soooo good. I just need to keep remembering that, and then I'm back on the path to having a fulfilling and rewarding relationship and life. My fight is far from over. But, this is another chapter I have to live through. I've seen the close of the third chapter, and it wasn't a happy ending. But the beginning of the fourth is. I know I can do this, I just know.
Bad streak. Bad day. Bad feelings. Bad attitude. At a low point, but shouldn't be. Fuck it, still am. I will never satisfy others eternally, need to focus on myself. And I need to focus on being satisfied when I reach my goals, not downplay it. I'm going to start living for myself, I've come to hurt too much this way.
