Same Mistakes

.gif" alt="smiley"/> I just realised this week I started making some of the same mistakes again that have hindered me in the past and that I have read others do on this site.

I thought that as I managed to abstain so long before relapsing last week, that maybe counting the days that I was abstinent for just gave me a goal to destroy when I eventually broke down. So, maybe I manage to abstain for 4 months again, at some point I would say to myself, as I did last week, "Oh I've done really well, I could treat myself to look at some porn and then get back on the wagon as I found it so easy to go this long". So rather than set myself to do that I decided that I don't need to count days and weeks anymore, because I just don't want to ever look at porn again and a slip up after 4 months is as bad as a slip up after 4 days.

And of course I then had 3 relapses in the space of a week...

It seems that the limbic urges have eventually made their way through to my rational brain and sabotaged myself by destroying my own rational thoughts and ideas of how to overcome this addiction.

And like everyone says, you will slip up, but its important to pick yourself up and come back even stronger.

So I can now see how my rational brain has been overcome by my limbic urges and how important it is to have a rational support system and techniques for managing those urges, rather than just aggorantly assuming that I can just use Will Power to overcome my urges now... maybe its because Will Power comes from the same place as those urges. I think I had already made the decision to look at porn hours before I did, and my rational brain was just trying to come up with a story that would match the decision I had already chosen.

This time I ended up rationalising that maybe I could just have June off and then try and abstain for the remainder of the year... but of course the cycle will just continue turning in to july and beyond and before I know it the year will end like any other.

So I've got to get things back together again. Remind myself of why I'm trying to do this. Re-read my previous posts on here. Salvage the 2 full weeks that remain in June and the first half of the year. Summer Solstice is coming up next week and if I can abstain from solstice to equinox will be good achievement. Perhaps this time I will allow myself masturbation without fantasy, I just fear that is perhaps where I started to go wrong over the last couple of weeks.

Goals

I have recognised how important the Goals are that we set ourselves. Thinking about how this is my reward system, and that it's just acting based on stimulus picked up in my own mind, the connection between what we think and what we feel.

I think this is how Hypnosis works or at least is what hypnosis can help with. It's also what I'm picking up from CBT (still need to finish that course...).

• If I think my Goal is beyond reach, I feel sad and depressed, despair that my life can't be fullfilled.
• If I think my Goal is at risk, I feel anxious and nervous. :shocked:
• If I think my Goal is achievable, I feel motivated and energetic. [ying]
• When I think my Goal is complete, I feel elated (dopamine hit) and satisfied. [bigsmile]

But how do I feel if I don't have any goals? Not that I have achieved them, just that I recognise that I'm only working towards them for a shot of dopamine.

Well, I think I feel happy, genorous, and helpful. I think I would rather help others achieve their own goals (dopamine release). So then my goal is to help others.... and the strange thing is that I have been trying to make that my goal but my ego kept getting in the way, kept telling me to focus on my own selfish desires and wishes. But now I think what's the point of those when all I get really is a bit of dopamine for achieving not much at all.

Can my Goal be, to not have any Goals?

Well, I'm lying if I say it is. The Goal in my mind is blatantly to find a gorgeous wife, but I don't believe in myself when I think that it might be achievable, so the goal is always at risk or beyond reach... which further helps explain my depression and anxiety for the last how-many-years. I think if anything my goal is plainly unrealistic. I've been sucked in by the glamour on offer in porn and on TV and movies and magazines and everywhere, and my mental image of what I want in a woman is too screwed.

It's really difficult, I'm highly attracted to women in general as it is, and then I stop looking at porn for awhile and that just goes up. And then I'll pass a women with the *best* eyes I've seen for years and get depressed at how I could ever be happy with an average women when there's stunners that make my heart stop like that.

...and then my ego says "well, just maybe...." and that's how I got myself in to this mess in the first place.

Argh! Time to meditate on it all.