I talk to experienced NoFappers, with long streaks, ones that were able to stay away from the addiction for a long time, they tell me that you have to really believe in youself, trust yourself when you say to yourself that you're not going to fail this time, if you don't believe in yourself you will relapse. I mean okay but how can I trust myself when I say I'm not going to relapse this time when I have already said it hundreds of time before but ended up relapsing, you reach a certain point your brain says : we are going to do our best, but is it our last time, I don't think so, we already said that hundreds of times before if not thousands, let's be real with ourselves.
I think it depends on how do you feel mostly. If your libido is "normal" and you have days when you're really horny, I can believe it's very difficult to not relapse. That's a physiologic problem (i.e. it's the body that's asking you to relapse). If your libido is almost zero and you have PIED, the major reason to relapse (at least for me) is the lacking of feedback from your body and the fear that the (long) streaks doesn't work in any way, and you feel the needs to "test" your progress. This is not a "physical request" but a "mental request", meaning it's your brain that's asking you to relapse. I didn't have the change to be in the former case (unfortunately) but only in the latter case... so I did relapse of course, but I think to be able to do nopmo for months if needed (thats' also my current goal).
Well, here's what's real: lots of guys try and fail 100 times, or 1,000 times, or even 10,000 times and then the 10,001 time is the successful one. If you knew the next streak would last the rest of your life, would you skip that one? No. If it's not the next streak, maybe the next streak is when you learn something about yourself that changes everything for you. Or maybe, your next streak is when you make a connection with the person who will be your greatest ally. Or maybe, your next streak is when you finally gather the strength to make that change you've been thinking about for years. Here's what helps me with self-doubt. When I used to feel like that, I just said to myself: "Which is easier: being right, or convincing yourself that you're right?" Of course, convincing yourself that you're right is much easier. How many people are certain while being dead wrong? And there's nothing easier to be certain about than yourself, because only you know yourself. The only person who can know if the 1,001st time is going to be different from the 1st-1,000th times is you. Recovery doesn't cost anything and it only benefits you. What do you have to lose?
For me the only way I could quit P is to have a stronger negative reason than positive reason for P, conditioning P to be "bad" rather than "good". A huge reason for me is that you don't know what you're going to stumble across, and there's extremely disgusting shit out there. Quitting M is more difficult for me because there's nothing that can go "bad" about it, however M can lead to PMO, and has been strongly tied to PMO, so that's one reason to quit M. If I quit PMO without conditioning P to be "bad" (i.e. quitting a "good" thing rather than quitting a "bad" thing), then yes, quitting PMO would be way more difficult.
Chronic relapser for decades. 1000's of relapses. I look at myself at the beginning of this journey, I really didn't have much of a chance. Those that had experienced long periods of sobriety didn't offer me enough insight to lead me in the right direction. If I had a chance to talk to my earlier self, I would emphasize the importance of seeing my porn use as not the real main problem, but as a symptom. That there are other deeper rooted problems within in me, far more serious, working against me and my conscious efforts to stop by using willpower. This journey has challenged me to change my entire personality. Once a loner, I now see the importance of building strong connections with other men. Once having poor boundaries, I now see the importance of mastering my mind, living in the moment instead of in my mind and fantasy. Once not understanding women and relationships, I now embrace my own masculinity while learning and appreciating the uniqueness of feminity. Once desperately seeking validation from others rooted in my toxic shame, I now embrace conflict and demonstrate that I'm a person of value. Once seeing porn as something of value, I now know that I'm not living a life of deprevation, but one of abundance without it. Once feeling disconnected with God, I now embrace the importance of aligning my life according to His will. Relapse was an opportunity for me to force myself into exposing and addressing my deeper rooted problems that God wanted to heal. Without relapse, I would have never been aware of these more serious problems. Yeah, I just wanted to stop the porn. That's all my loved ones wanted too. But that wasn't happening. I wasn't going to get what we all wanted because God wanted to do something deeper. Long lasting sobriety didn't happen for me until I stopped playing the sobriety game focusing on the symptoms, and started putting my main attention on these deeper rooted problems I explained above.
I struggle to even know what are my root problems, how can I know them? I've been in the nofap community for a year, watching videos and sharing but I still don't know what are my deep roots, I know that I'm not discipline, I know that I use pmo to numb my feelings, I know that I'm far away from god, I know a lot of my problems but I feel like I haven't discovered the root causes yet, knowing though that I have never been sexually harrased before, nor mentality or physically abused as a child, I had a pretty normal childhood. What advice would you give to me so that I can find out my deeper rooted problems, how did you become aware of them, I would be grateful if you give me any advice that can help.
@ThePerspicacious You are out-thinking it. You are still reasoning with the addiction; a mistake. Those who suffer from what is called "porn addiction" suffer from an unconsciously conditioned response to porn, which actually is an unconsciously conditioned to using porn to trigger a sexual thought which in turn results in a dopamine reward, which we interpret as pleasure. The key to fixing it is just not pushing that button. Not pushing it is incredibly fucking difficult in the beginning because pushing it is sooo easy, and pushing it feels sooo good. Also, for someone who has been pushing for a few year, not pushing it results in withdrawals, as in feeling like total shit. When I quit I thought this thought: I feel like I am dying. I feel like I am dying in the morning when I get up, throughout the day, in the evening, and at night when I am trying to sleep, but cannot. I just felt like I was dying. I hate to say it, but mentally prepare to feel like you are dying all day every day for a few months, and then one day, a few months out, you wake up and you feel normal.
I would start by refining my Connection. I define connection as men in my life that know me and are invested in encouraging my personal and spiritual growth. I go to a face to face meeting each Friday and I'm part of a weekly zoom meeting on Tuesdays. I have lots of men in my life supporting me. I would not consider being part of NoFap as adequate connection for me. It's better than nothing, but I needed more. I consider the lack of connection in my life that was a more serious problem than the symptom of acting out sexually. I get what you're saying about not knowing what your root problems are. The most challenging part of this journey for me was actually identifying and exposing those roots. It wasn't obvious to me. But once they were exposed, addressing them was less challenging and this journey made a whole lot more sense.
