recovery addiction

8th day today and feeling the mixed feelings, good in some ways and anxious in others. Its weird how a wave of social anxiety will take over out of nowhere. The social anxiety was a little painful today. It really seems to be associated with shame or confidence. I feel self-conscious when I go to the gym and this is where I have experienced social anxiety a lot recently and in the past. In fact, it was one of the reasons why I never really thought about going to the gym for a long time. I'll be honest, I dont really like the 60% of the guys in there.

Start of Week 5, day 29

A few more ups. As Ive learned from going through so many lows dealing with this addiction, if I just manage to make it through the rough patches, I usually feel REALLY good afterwards for a time. It was a struggle last week, and now this week feels good. I am feeling stable-minded, focused on my work, future, and life purpose, enjoying healthy social interactions. I remember this feeling from times that I have managed to abstain in the past- things just feel like they fall into place in my head.

4th week, day 22

I've known that inappropriate women are trouble for my addiction, but it's never really been an issue. I've wrestled with this one in the past, but my other bottom lines kind of took priority.

Day 30, the start of the 5th week.

I've had recent sucess with putting on a porn blocker. It's helping out a lot, but I'm finding that I will use the Internet to surf a lot and it uses too much of my time. I want to limit my Internet use to help out with the isolation as well as be more productive. I put on some software that will limit the time I spend online and allows me to control when I can be online. However, I have access to my own password of course. If anyone wants to work together on this, or if anyone would like to volunteer to make up a password and keep it safe for me, that would help me a lot.

I am tired today, but I feel a little better than yesterday. Time to get back into the hard work. I hope my withdrawals arent too bad this week because I have a lot to do. Im going to push through these withdrawals at all cost this week and try to stay focused on my school.

Last night was pretty harsh. I couldnt go to sleep. I was grieving the loss of my relationship. It came over me like a tidal wave. It was hard to stop crying. I went to sleep really late and I woke up this afternoon with my head feeling foggy and just tired. I was feeling a little depression too and just reminiscing my life before I moved up here and of course our time together. I wanted to contact her so bad, but to call and hear the cold and distant person that I saw on our last night would not be good for me.

I woke up this morning and couldnt fall back asleep even though I was tired. I made myself go back to sleep. I had a terrible dream- Me and a friend were walking down the street and we see these girls and they invite us back to their house to have fun. The only ride available was with my partner's mom and my partner's son. When we get there, my friend is like "lets do this" and runs inside with these girls. i thought it would be awkward for me to go with her mom and son in the car like this and she starts telling me how she's glad that I can be trusted etc. I felt decent.

Finished my final and Im glad to be done. All of that procrastination and stress for nothing, it went well. Its always bigger than it seems. Im glad that I did not have to give into porn or even coffee binges this finals. Its a big step for sure. Im good at handling stress, so this is a really good thing.

Now I leave to meet my partner and see my friends for the holidays.

Getting the urge to "reward" myself, but being at this recovery stuff for a little while, I know that its easy to get triggered when things are good as well as when they're bad.