Sex / Pornography Addiction Support Group
Sexual addiction, also sometimes called sexual compulsion, is a form of psychological addiction to sexual intercourse and other sexual behavior.
Hi everybody, as most of you know I am starting my PMO streak again after 60 successful days going smoothly. The fact that i relapesed was a devastating event for me and something I was really upset about it which i know doesnt really make sense as it was ultimately my choice to do this and i understand there are no excuses for the person i became in that moment. In order to not be stuck in the past and consumed by the mistake, i have reawakened hope for myself and others because i am not the addiction.
I decided to make this second post about checking in everyday because I know one already exists. I think it would be nice to expand on that as we really are in all of this together, holding and supporting each other. I used to go on this website everyday and in the begining of September i got too busy so i didnt check in for the longest time and I know that disconnect and loss of motivation from others was exactly what made me relapse. That is why i decided to check in everyday to mark my progress, no matter how busy i am or how small the post is. I encourage others to use this post too and hopefully this will become second nature to me. This is just one small road bump in a future that will be full of nothing but successes, freedom and happiness.
I decided to make this second post about checking in everyday because I know one already exists. I think it would be nice to expand on that as we really are in all of this together, holding and supporting each other. I used to go on this website everyday and in the begining of September i got too busy so i didnt check in for the longest time and I know that disconnect and loss of motivation from others was exactly what made me relapse. That is why i decided to check in everyday to mark my progress, no matter how busy i am or how small the post is. I encourage others to use this post too and hopefully this will become second nature to me. This is just one small road bump in a future that will be full of nothing but successes, freedom and happiness.
It will happen, if you check in everyday it will become second nature, and you're also right in where it can take as little as five minutes or as much as an hour if you wish.
I have to say if you're an addict like me you've lost the choice in whether or not you act out. That is why we need to surrender, and then somehow a power that loves us gives us the choice when we stop trying. It's like musicians who stop trying so hard and then all of the sudden are performing better than they could have ever dreamed.
You did the right thing by creating this thread, I'll help you and check in here too. Don't beat yourself up because compulsion and obsession had the best of you, they are serious problems with the power to manipulate the truth, so just recognize them and seek humility.
Have a great day. Also it helps to pass along anything you have learned for others, just if it is a little bit or "not that important", we never know what is and what isn't important to others but we will definitely know it will never be possibly important to them if we never try.
Thanks.
accountability partner?
Candycin, i do have filters and blockers set in place and intending to add more and i also joined other great programs like Recovery Nation.I would like to know of any more suggestions. Thank you.
That's what I've found from all the hard work I've done, and the solution is love, service, and the understanding that God will never stop loving you even if you have bought into the philosophy that he possibly couldn't ever love someone. It is impossible for God not to love anyone.
Have a great day.
You asked for suggestions. I have a few. These are the steps I took during my recovery that worked well for me and some I am still using even after 5 years because they keep me on my path of sobriety.
1) I started by deciding to take full responsibility for my willing role in the addictive cycle. I mean no one ever held a gun to my head and threatened to kill my cats unless I watch porn. So that left me with the insight that I have always had a choice on whether to act out or not, based on that then I started to build my life knowing I could choose health at any time.
2) To deal with the urges that would lie to me that I needed to act out every time either things did not go my way or felt an uncomfortable emotion, during recovery I learned that I was using porn to deal.with them, so I had to learn to feel each of those emotions and yes it was very overwhelming but I knew that supressing them would only put off my recovery and possibly make me relapse.
3) After I made my list of triggers, I formulated a plan of action to address them. Since I was dealing with my emotions, the triggers became few and far in between. To the extent that now when I am triggered I am extremely aware of it and just let it go.
4) I stopped cursing, saying sexually charged comments and started a serious helping of positive thinking and actions. I resumed my spiritual life, but the recovery process showed me that if I wanted to be sober, I needed to let go of limiting beliefs that no longer served me, such as: I will always be addicted to porn and my favorite I cannot change because I have always been that way. Truth is I was addicted to cigarrettes and I was able to stop that addictive behavior so since I had that on my belt, I knew I could stop the porn addiction, as well.
5) I knew this was not a simple matter of lack of will power or lack of self control. At its most basic level I had taught my brain and body to react to external images to view them as pleasurable, so to me, I could reteach my brain to do something healthier. So it boiled down to behavior modification, so I used the tools I had learned from cognitive behavioral therapy and added them to my recovery program.
6) When I joined the recovery program, I did not complain and I did not mention the addiction or moaned about how terrible my life had become because of the withdrawal symptoms, it was tempting but my thinking was that I had already given willingly 30 years of my life to it why keep talking about it. When I was sending my checklist was comprised of the things I did during the day to address the issues I had.
7) I went through the list of potential tempting situations and avoided them like the plague. I lived the life of someone who has never seen porn. So when I was outside and I would see people, I did not look at them for longer than 2 seconds and I always looked ahead, not down and if I did so much noticed it was wandering I would bring myself back to the present moment.
8) Self awareness was a great tool to acquire in recovery. I learned to pay attention to my thoughts and would changed them, debunk them whenever I saw them wander off where I did not want them to go because I knew exactly where it would lead me.
9) For me relapse was never an option. Why? 1) Already 30 years a slave to the moronic addiction and those years I was never getting back 2)I no longer wanted to be an accomplice to the exploitation of people by the porn industry and 3) There was absolutely no excuse I could find to roll back the clock just because I could not keep my word to myself ( trust me when I tell you that when I started recovery hell broke loose and it felt like the universe kept asking me how serious I was about being porn free and it found out I was dead serious)
10) It took me two years to get back to somewhat normalcy, that is where intrusive images did bother me out of nowhere, I kept pushing my total abstinence to allow my brain and body to reboot every 90 days when I noticed some tactics were not working, I kept tweaking them dozens of times and this was another advantage to being self aware.
Since my spiritual life was very active during my recovery and it stil is, I learned to thank the addiction for showing me the areas of my life that needed serious attention. Among them is that I no longer have an ego to protect, that I have always had the ability to change and best of all, I no longer have to be ashamed of anything even having been addicted all that time because it was a great teacher to me
This I need to add, when I started to live the sober life doors that had been shut for decades, suddenly opened, I got a promotion, my abusive boss of 30 years abruptly quit and I was given more enjoyable work duties..I have been less hesitant to take tougher tasks, my work relationships have improved, I am confident and assertive at work respectfully so.
My life has improved and continues to do so but it was not easy to recover 24/7 and work at the same time, specially when I was not sleeping well if at all for days on end in the very first months of recovery yet here I am writing this whole post to tell you that it is perfectly possible to live porn free. Difficult yes but impossible no.
What kept me going was my knowledge that I am whole and complete as I think so I shall be and I decided not identify myself with the addiction and that was the very thing that made it possible for me to lead me to a sober life that I was not the addiction. I realize it may ruffle feathers but my record speaks for itself.
Hugs,
Wolf (5 years happily sober)
Kim I hope you're still going strong and wishing you best of luck.
Have a great day.
To me, you are not on day 4 after a 60 day relapse, you are actually a day closer to freedom
It is all about perspective, focus on where you want to be. The past should only be used as a reference to avoid making the same mistakes.
Wolf (5 years sober)
That is great new however, relying on support may backfire if for some reason it is not constant as you would like, so perhaps you may need additional tangible forms of support, such as:
1) Establish a piggy bank where you place a dollar every time you do not give in to urges or temptations. When I first started recovery, I decided to use my recovery as a means to purchase myself something I had to save for, a big ticket item as it were. So every time I dd not give into urges, I put a dollar in my piggy bank. So by the time the recovery program was over, I had enough money not to but one item but two, well it also tells you how many urges I had in the process.
2) I started a set of index cards with positive affirmations which I put in my wallet to pull out whenever I was either feeling an urge or just off read them out loud so every cell in my body could hear it.
3) I would listen to Joel Osteen sermons, Wayne Dyer tapes, Louise Hay tapes, Eckhart Tolle tapes, you get the gist.
4) Before I went to bed and got up in the morning, I would alternate between listening to Morning and Evening meditations by Louise Hay or Meditations for manifesting by Wayne Dyer.
5) I read "You can heal your life" by Louise Hay, "Excuses begone" by Wayne Dyer, "The power of now" by Eckhart Tolle, "The power the power within you" by Eric Butterworth, "The handbook of higher consciousness" by Ken Keys Jr. Well, the list is endless but the gist is that I filled my mind with uplifting reading at all times.
6) Early on I discovered that even with the filters placed on my computer, it was too frustrating to turn on my computer at home, and it would just be too overwhelming so I decided to change the connection by simply not using my computer at home I used the one in the library to turn in my reports to my mentor and the one at work for work.
7) I carried with me on a self made business cards Psalms 23, 91 and 97 saved for every time I felt an urge coming on that my positive affirmation could not shake and I not religious
8) Early on, I asked God (whatever you want to call that energy that surpasses us all) to guide my steps and to show me areas of my life that I needed to address as time wore on but I simply surrendered to it, every time I had done it before, it had backfired because in the past I had not surrendered because I knew better, ha!
9) Last but not least, I cleaned up my mind and my mouth so nothing lascivious would either enter or come out of my mind without my being aware of it and now 5 years later, I have developed a serious aversion to anything crude or sexually charged, in a visceral way, in the same way that smelling nicotine makes me physically ill. In other words, just as I taught my body to react to lascivious images, I taught my body to react otherwise when seeing those images.
10) Which brings me to the most important thing: I stopped being reactive and started to being proactive and now, as s result, I do not get sick as often, my stress level is non existent. I also started to take care of myself and my body, feed it healthy food, wear nice clothes, you get the gist. The biproduct was that since I was feeling better about myself, my urges became less intense and when I did have them I refused to give in to them because I knew it meant I would feel bad so why bother? Since I knew I was whole and complete I did not need anything or anyone to make me happy.
Hope this helps,
Wolf (5 year sober)