BooksandTrees

Good advice and I agree. I was reading an interesting piece about forgiveness for your past and love for your future. It's just a lot of these expectations I put on myself that are unrealistic. It is going to be important to be fair to myself and be a real friend to myself.

Hey Iron, Sorry to hear about your relapse with porn and the struggles you've been experiencing. I'm new to your thread so I don't know your full journey yet. I just wanted to say that I think porn has been more difficult to quit than video games. I am 8 weeks free of gaming and I can't go a few days without porn. It's terrible. I think we put so much pressure on ourselves to be perfect with these daily routines instead of gaming. It's like walking on a balance rope in the air and the ground is playing video games and watching porn. One false step and we just fall into it again and can't get out. I'm starting to think of different mindsets that work. Like turning around and just driving to another town. That way you can't fall back into town again and do your old habits unless you purposely go there. If we walk on this tightrope of perfection and worry about falling all the time then we're going to fall. All of those acrobats succeed because they don't fear falling. I'm sorry if my analogy is stupid, but try to forgive yourself and not get angry. I'm being a hypocrite because I just wrote a piece about how I exploded in anger today. But don't let that be an example. If we can forgive our past selves and love our future selves then the present day choices can be easier on us. Good luck, Matt

ANGER I had a very explosive day today. I had to wait at a car dealership for almost 3 hours just to get my oil changed and tires rotated. I completely freaked the fuck out and scared everyone there. I then went home and just exploded in a very horrible display of anger that I am not proud of doing. I am not proud of this because my father used to have a horrific temper growing up. He'd make you feel so afraid and he was so uncontrolled that I always wanted an evacuation plan just in case something bad happened. I've been afraid of my temper because I know my temper is unfortunately worse than even his was. He could turn happy after an explosive moment and it bewildered me. I could not and cannot do that. It's very hard for me to let go of anger. I think this is bad because I never let things go and I remember everything. This compounds onto itself and when the right thing happens, oh man, you should not be near me. I became blindly irate and guided in a fit of rage like a tidal wave in the midst of a hurricane. It's not good to be in front of that wave when it crashes. After the tirade was over I was very embarrassed. I felt like Gohan or Goku did in Dragonball Z and Dragonball when they felt terrible for the destruction they caused. I didn't destroy anything, but I felt like I destroyed a bit of myself in my rage. It's sad, really. I'm frustrated and have been frustrated for years. I used anger as the guiding force to healing my life after bad events in my childhood, video game addiction, and depression. I used that anger to sculpt discipline through fear of failure. I became an incredible person at the cost of my mental and physical health due to using anger as my fuel. I'm trying so hard to not be the negative one. I'm trying to hard to be positive. I guess I'm stuck in a loop. The good news is that I'm 8 weeks free of video games. The bad news is I keep going back to porn and I keep having a fear of working on my hobbies that I enjoy working on. I enjoyed putting in the effort to write, draw, podcast, and exercise. It's just that when I stop doing them for a bit, I never want to return to them. I get so depressed at work that I just don't enjoy my days. I get home and I'm so tired from fighting depression that I just want to sleep and do nothing. My life is boring. I wake up, go to work, come home, get tired, do nothing, watch tv, maybe make dinner, maybe not, and then read some news articles, go to bed, play a sudoku puzzle, watch porn, watch a youtube clip, and sleep. That's so fucking boring! I don't understand why I'm not just doing these things. It's that effort that I need to put in to make this happen. I just really miss the availability of video games. I'm craving them so much. I hate the fact that I need to start over again to enjoy life. I'm not looking forward to the challenge and journey of learning something new. After being an expert and professional gamer for most of my life I just hate having to restart. I miss the prestige and I miss the easiness of it. I don't want to work hard and I don't know why. I keep watching these videos and reading snipits of books and articles about doing it for yourself and just doing it. How the fuck do I just do it? "dude, man, it's in the question itself. Just do it. Haha, like Nike, right??" Fuck off. I just don't understand why I don't want to do it. Am I not doing this because I hate myself? Am I not doing it because I hate the fact that I'm going to die and it most certainly means nothing anyways? I'm not motivated at all. I don't know if I love myself. I'm just afraid to be in touch with my real emotions and I can't get into them. People say I need to open my heart and be vulnerable to feel happiness and bond with others. Maybe even find a relationship with a woman. But I can't even connect with myself let alone doing that with a friend or woman. I'm not ready for love from a woman right now because I don't understand how to feel love or feel happiness, really. I don't want to wait for someone to make me happy either. I'm not sitting there and hoping for a miracle. I think my mind is just frozen with my heart. They're both not moving at all and it's overheating and causing extreme distress and anger. I want to understand on a fundamental level why I'm not allowing myself to fully commit and dive into something. Even when I dive into something, it doesn't last more than a day or two. I get tired of it and not balanced. It's all or nothing. It's like I need a constant life coach or something to navigate my days. I just fear that if I don't make this connection and understand why I can't commit to life then I won't go anywhere and eventually play video games again or something and fail more. Anyone have any ideas? Matt

Is this the self esteem book?

Hi, I'd suggest creating a diary in the forums on the daily threads. Start by creating a list of pros and cons to gaming in your opinion. If you think you shouldn't be gaming, there's something underlying about the whole thing. Start thinking about what those reasons are and get yourself thinking. Good luck, Matt

I was reading something that said it takes 51 days to breakdown the polysaturated fat bonds in your body. It made sense since I made most of my progress after 3-6 months and onward.

Hello other Matt!

1. I feel your reasoning with this thought. I go crazy tracking my hours doing hobbies or socializing. If I don't reach a specific hourly amount then I'm a failure and then give up entirely. It's stressful and makes me also feel like I'm trying to fill my day up to have it pass by easier instead of allowing myself to build a natural enjoyment for my hobby and live life instead of push life by. 3. Craving food is good. You can lose sight without working out as well. I'm not saying this to suggest not working out, but I lost 60 pounds just by having a healthy diet and eating smaller meals 5 times per day instead of 3 large ones. Going to the gym helps me on top of the new diet and together they're beneficial to every aspect of life. My point in explaining this is I don't want you to ever hold yourself calorically hostage and ruin your day or health. Keep up the good work. Matt

I like this a lot. I tend to be very difficult to myself and bevis a hypocrite but telling others to be easy on themselves. I gotta practice what I preach a bit a work harder at healing. I haven't gamed in 8 weeks, but I also haven't done anything in 8 weeks. I just sit here now and I'm getting exponentially depressed and cynical towards others. Brooding with hatred. I don't like this feeling.

Cam's Video on Participating I hope this link works as I'm writing from my phone. I was really upset the past few days because I'm not understanding why I can't build the courage to work on hobbies or live life. I still want to ask my therapist if I'm afraid of happiness or trying to be happy. It seems like I want it, but I want it to come to me. I get angry if friends don't message me or if work doesn't tell me I'm doing well without me asking how my performance is going.I wonder if I'm being selfish and a baby. That might be harsh, but I just wonder if I'm being fair to myself and also if I'm being fair to those in my life and environment. This video was really what I needed tonight to help me ask the right questions to my therapist and myself. Matt ps, I'm 8 weeks free from video games.

This is important in your healing process. I'm sorry you have to experience these emotions. A lot of the community members here suffered through some sort of abuse, troubled past, or stressful events, which lead us into these addictive habits such as gaming, anime, TV bingeing, porn, YouTube marathons, and reddit surfing. It's just an easy place to escape to and it suits our emotional needs so well, but only temporarily. Hopefully your progress will lead you to long term happiness and growth. It just so happens that we always need to keep reminding ourselves of why we're on this mission to heal in the first place and keeping our goals in front of us. Implementing our goals is the hardest thing. Good luck.

It's good that you're strong in your faith and have a nice community around you. Keep sticking with it and do your thing. I feel your frustration, as you mentioned in my forum page. I think there's some sort of higher level problem where we need to change our routines and maybe key parts of the routines to make life a more fulfilling environment for us to live in. I have been thinking about this for so long and change is difficult. We just need to keep taking the steps toward improvement and taking time to understand ourselves. If we can keep doing this more doors will open for us to walk through. We don't need to stay in that room. We can be curious and inquire about life and explore it. It's still more exciting and risky than an open world game.

I decided to change my routine up and I'm just gonna stick with it. I got to work 2 hours before I normally do today because I was tired of wasting my time. If I keep this up then I'll hopefully have more time and energy to work on my real passion in life. Maybe this can lead to happiness? It's worth a try. If I can build and evolve my structure to adapt to the happiness and freedom I need then I will feel better. Ld just having a routine, getting proper sleep, and a schedule will improve my mood regardless.

I shouldn't have exploded on here, but I think it's just raw frustration. I worked so hard to get to where I am with my life and I'm just let down by it consistently. I really hope to prevail here and make my dreams come true. I'm proud of you for quitting and sharing your feelings. I know it's so debilitating knowing you only got a handful of minutes to yourself it feels.

I sometimes have days where I ask myself what's the point? I dislike a lot of my life and it leads to certain unhappiness. I think I loved gaming so much over the past 2 years because it let me live. I feel like I get trapped in my current life and just wish i could go home and play games, be myself, meet people online, and just escape it all. But after a month or two of it I just get so depressed because I'm repeating the cycle. If I had to repeat this until I died I'd freak out. So I freak out. I haven't played in over 7 weeks during this stint, but it's still coming with different challenges each week. There's weeks like this one where I'm tired and get depressed after work. I'm not happy some days and it's just hard to be happy all of a sudden when I get home. So I just sit and stay unhappy because if I just be happy out of no where then it means I wasn't happy for no reason during the day. It also feels like a dumb trade off to be unhappy for 12 hours and then be happy for 3 or 4 hours and feel like, oh, i should go to bed now that I'm full of life. This makes me want to give up on a lot of endeavors of mine, but I realize it's something where I just need to keep going. If I start finding a passion in life outside of work then I'll look forward to the day more often. It's just a daily reminder that if I get the crap out of the way and keep moving forward then I'll eventually find this desire for life and to live and be myself. It's just tough because I'm extroverted and need to keep putting myself out there, keep pushing myself, socializing, and getting my goals done. I just get so swayed by the thoughts of giving up because it's easier. Just gotta stay strong. I think I'm just upset because I knew that I was tired and frustrated after work. I just wanted to sleep. I'm angry that I didn't have the energy or desire to work on my podcast that I wanted to post today. Instead, I complained for 2 hours and then cooked and ate dinner. And of fucking course I'm full of energy now and fully awake. WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It pisses me the fuck off. I'm so tired of this fucking shit. I'm tired of being fucking exhausted after work and then filled with energy before I fucking go to bed, not sleep well, wake up, fucking snooze my fucking alarm clock, go to work late, leave work late, and repeat the fucking cycle since I don't play fucking play video games anymore. This pisses me off so fucking much. FUCK. I just want to work on my hobbies now until midnight or something and I know I should go to bed. I hate leaving work late because I get super tired after 3 PM. I'm so unproductive at that time. Fuck. I just sit there all day getting depressed and angry, then I'm exhausted and don't have the desire to do anything. I'm tired of getting 1-2 hours a day of MILD happiness and then I go to bed. This is why I turn to fucking video games and porn during depression. It's fucking weak. How the fuck do I get over this exhaustion after work? It's killing me. I'm seriously getting very depressed. It's unbearable some days. Matt

Staying determined through your frustration can be difficult, especially when you are feeling defeated. It's important to remember how frustrated you were with gaming and old habits when you're at that point of breaking. It's like going back to yourself when you first wanted to quit gaming and tell them life hasn't been terrible without it and you've been very strong along the past few weeks without gaming. Just keep reminding yourself that and keep treating yourself well.

I'm 7 weeks free of gaming now. I'm starting to invest in my hobbies again. I was starting to only spend my spare time seeing friends after work or on weekends, but this has really exhausted me. I am an extrovert and feel better when I'm around people, but I really do feel better when I get something accomplished. I'm currently not doing that and it is wearing on me. The good news is that I've been focusing on my podcast again and will record it today or tomorrow and will publish it on Monday. I missed talking about hockey and really want to get back into something productive on that front. Another thing I've been focusing on lately is talking to family members. I kind of ignored them for years due to personal reasons from my childhood that I can't talk about, but I have felt better staying connected with them and figure I'll talk to them like once a month or something to stay in touch. I miss my sense of family and belonging and think it's an important thing to have. I'm still having trouble staying self disciplined with other bad habits and it is frustrating to me, but I just remember how difficult gaming was for me to quit at first and now I have to repeat that with other bad habits. It can be kind of demoralizing. Matt

I bought a few online classes with some help by @fawn_xoxo and her recommendation. I bought Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, Premiere, and a cartoon drawing class. I also bought a stress management class. These were all on sale for over 90% off so I actually didn't spend much money. I like that they're structured in a classroom format because it gives me some time to dedicate to my hobbies after work. One of the things I struggle with in my new hobbies is getting started. It reminds me of college and engineering school. I knew I had to learn all of this crap and started panicking, but I couldn't learn most of it unless I learned the basics first and spend the years developing my skills. So I'm going to do that here. This will teach me discipline, give me a structured portion of my day outside of work, and get me excited to work on my hobbies. If things go well then I'll continue to produce my cartoon again, write my book, and continue my hockey podcast. The stress management class has been nice for me to recognize my goals and then be more forgiving. I think with this class, professional therapy, and this online community I'll make great strides. Matt

Here's the thing most people will agree with you on. I mentioned this in my forum thread as well. These people are not real friends. They are selfish, depressed, and want you to be with them so they can feel comfortable gaming and ignore the hard facts that gaming is bad for you. It's like an alcoholic telling you to join them at the bar because it's so great. Then when you stop drinking they forget about you. Similar to a drug addict spending time with you during your drug episodes and then forgetting about you when you get clean. These people are sick and don't care. We get so caught up with social media and gaming communities where you have X amount of friends. You feel better because you can turn to any number of these people and just shoot the shit with them and go back to your gaming afterwards. This isn't how real friendship works. You have to commit hours to them and they commit to you as well. If it's one sided then it's not real. I learned that once I quit gaming I lost dozens of "friends" who don't check in on me or ask what I'm doing. In fact, they get offended that I quit gaming and think gaming is bad. They feel insulted and inferior that I quit gaming and resent me for it. They're pathetic. Your friends should inspire you and be inspired by you. Real friendship is when someone loves you as a friend and is there for you. You both have impacted each other emotionally in a tangible way. Not some bull shit gaming way where they carried you in a game, etc. They are there for you when you're struggling AND when you're succeeding. Never forget this. I put so much effort into my friends and it's never reciprocated. Only a handful really give back anything. Matt

I know we talked about it earlier this week. I've just been working 60 hours and not able to complete this by then. I mentioned in here how it is important for me to create a schedule to follow and with me moving an hour away from work instead of 5 minutes then I lose 2 hours in the day. So creating something to depend on during this time to work on myself is important. I'm also a firm believer in doing the correct research on myself and understanding myself before looking at these speeches and stuff. I'm more writing down my findings here and trying to understand how my moods are caused instead of treating the symptoms right away. So it will take me some time and I just need to keep learning right now. I'm working extremely hard at this whole balancing a difficult life and that's why I wrote why it's important for me to understand the benefits of relaxing and to understand the best ways for myself to healthily relax. I can't always be all or nothing on things because if I don't have the energy to be 100% on self improvement then I'll give up. I did this in the past too many times. It's important to forgive myself for doing small things to improve my life instead of criticizing myself for not doing great things to improve my life all of the time. My approach just needs to be more methodical and calculated first. I'm learning. Thank you for the time and insight along with my progress. Matt

So it has been a week and I really think I do better in life when I subtly plan things out for certain days, but allow myself some time to just relax on other days. It's difficult to find the right balance. If I plan too much during the week I get pissed off because I want to work on productive hobbies. If I give myself too much time, I think about how exhausting it would be to work on this hobby for 15 hours and just get lazy and depressed and watch tv or play games. Then I get angry at myself for wasting time. I was reading about my personality type (ENTJ-T) and it said that people with my personality type really enjoy hobbies and activities that are productive. This makes sense to me. I really enjoy working on projects with friends or alone. This can include playing a competitive sport to advance in a league and not just playing for the hell of it. I don't really just enjoy playing a casual sport. This is why I enjoyed playing competitive video games. I'd much rather play Overwatch or NHL instead of a single player Mario game that is just casual. I don't really enjoy relaxing in that sense. Even relaxing hobbies need to be productive. I'd rather watch a TV series that stimulates my thoughts or read a book and advance the story at a nice pace. I like to exercise to improve myself permanently and not just to move. This is why I get so hard on myself during these tough nights. I come home from work mentally exhausted and don't want to work on anything. Then I get very angry at myself for not working on things. If I just watch a mindless show or play a game I start to berate myself for wasting time. I wish I could cut myself slack. It's like I fear my life is going nowhere and I need to be productive 100% of the time or I'll die without doing anything important. The funny thing is I'm designing bridges across the country and it's improving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people who are now driving on new and safe infrastructure instead of old and unsafe infrastructure. I don't even take pride in it. One of my goals this winter is to come up with a way to be more proud of the work I do and appreciate how hard I worked to get to this point in my life. It's easy to forget about this when I'm constantly occupying myself with endless goals. From quitting video games, I've been experimenting with things. I learned that I feel more restored when I'm with a group of people, but it's not always comforting to constantly be putting myself out there alone and pushing my comfort zone all of the time. I think it's good to push my comfort zone, but it's not healthy to just keep expanding it daily/weekly. It's important to pace myself. It's another form of moderation like the hobbies I mentioned in the first paragraph. It's hard to game in moderation and I don't think I can do it since I keep failing. But I do think it's possible and important to see things in moderation no matter what. This will hopefully make me happier in general. I am glad I'm putting myself out there and experimenting, but I also realize I need to pace myself with that as well. Having the mindset of "I don't play video games anymore and need to occupy all of my free time with excelling at new hobbies, and becoming a genius in other avenues is not realistic at all and is in fact exhausting and unfair to my self esteem. That self esteem eventually dissipates and I get depressed. I remember the fun times I had gaming and the success I had with it and will turn to games to pick myself up. It works for a few days and then I just play non stop, get a foggy head due to dopamine rushes, and then feel depressed and sick again. This is why I think I can't have a successful campaign with quitting games until I resolve these self esteem and lifestyle issues. I'm learning more and more each day, but it's important to keep being real and forgiving with myself and not forget what I'm writing. Matt P.S. I'm 6 weeks free of gaming.

Welcome to the forums and good luck with your journey. Feel free to read other people's daily logs from time to time to see how your peers are handling stress and the challenges of our new lives.

Thanks. I've just been debating why I should even pursue these things because I'm focused on a bigger reason for things. Like a larger sense of purpose. I'm not suicidal or anything so don't get scared by that sentence. I just mean I feel kind of meaningless with my every day activities and believe I should be doing other things.

I feel like I've taken a major step back these past few days. I was on vacation the past 3 days and all I've done is watch this TV show. I did stuff on Thanksgiving and saw a friend each day for a bit, but I just didn't really do anything productive. I paid my bills, did my laundry, and got my errands completed, but just nothing hobby related. Now I sit here with that same dopamine headache that I got from video games or porn or something. It sucks. I just feel so drained and frustrated about it. It is getting better with more water and rest, but I think I fell into this again because the show was so addicting to watch. It's also been like 10 degrees all week and very cold. I hate the cold and don't want to go outside and my room is damn cold as well. I've been mentally drained because of work and just didn't really feel like doing anything. That's hard for me some days or weeks. I just wake up and don't have energy or that fire to do anything that I want to do. I didn't cave in and play games or anything at least. I've just been a little depressed because I'm frustrated with a few things in my living situation and with work. I won't be discussing those issues on here so please don't try to give advice on these issues. I just know those are things that get me stressed out. Matt

Glad to see you are still doing well. I haven't really been on much because of work and stuff, but it seems we have all been busy. It's hard to keep journal entries coming, but as long as we're staying on top of our goals and being responsible then it is ok. Don't be afraid to commit to these decisions to change your life. The hardest part of change is committing to it, but when you have been thinking about making a change it's because you know in your heart something needs to change. Stay strong with it and trust yourself. This is your chance to open up with yourself, extend a branch of trust, and move forward. We all believe in you. If you need to talk let me know and we can arrange a time!