BooksandTrees

After going through my emotions last night and today I've found that I'm looking for something different than what I was originally looking for with some experiments about mindfulness. I think I'm honestly just going to meditate each night. After doing my porn analysis the way I analyzed myself with video games, I found that I want to watch porn for the following reasons: Stress relief Relaxation Anxiety relief Panic Attacks Loneliness Arousal Boredom Procrastination/escapism/avoiding work Mood boost/Depression Relief If you notice, the green colored font means I want to relax and calm down. I think meditation will help with this along with exercise and proper sleep. The orange font can be solved by planning more activities either with friends or with myself that I'm actually interested in. The purple font highlights trying to escape my problems. This can be solved by just directly working on my problems. The negative effects porn is having on me are: Depression Ruining my sleep schedule with too much stimulation at night or naps during the day Shame and disgust with myself Regret that maybe if I didn't watch porn so often I might have tried harder to get a girlfriend Loneliness Becoming lethargic after watching it and not wanting to do more challenging activities After watching porn I'll want to eat junk food and be lazy Potential neck/posture issues by watching in bed Instead of falling asleep I get energy at night out of excitement to watch porn Inability to concentrate for long periods of time Stress If you look at the orange fonts above, you'll actually notice that the negative effects highlighted are reasons I watch porn in the first place. They share common points in reasons I watch porn, negative effects from porn, and triggers that cause me to watch porn. So basically, porn is not helping my problems at all and actually adding more problems in my life. Triggers that cause me to watch porn: Stress Anxiety Depression Tiredness Boredom Meeting an attractive woman Knowing that I can find someone on a porn site that looks like someone I meet in real life A romantic event in a book or someone falling in love in a book Certain online advertisements Dating profiles/online dating The interesting thing I notice from triggers is that the blue text is stuff that is exacerbated by porn viewing, while the red font is just loneliness and looking for love. Finding a girlfriend during the quarantine is not the best idea as we all know, so that will be the biggest challenge. The blue highlights will go away. This comes to my conclusion. I've gone on many porn free streaks this past year and a half. I usually make it about 1-2 weeks and then I get lonely and aroused. Once I relapse from arousal, I re-introduce this stress of blue back into my life. I know online dating does not work for me. So I need to just surround myself with friends more often with the quarantine in effect. Maybe I can meet a girl eventually, but this isn't the best time for it. I've got to be strong here. If I can get my loneliness to only masturbate instead of watching porn then I'll feel better about myself. After that I'll try nofap entirely, but that's going to be difficult. The ideal goal will be to watch no porn, masturbate only once or twice a week until I meet a girlfriend and then become intimate with her. The issue is we all say oh, I'll masturbate once or twice a week. And even that turns into an every day affair. So I'll have to maybe see about doing hardcore nofap for a while and just not do anything for a bit. Today I'm grateful for my job, my friends, and myself for coming to a few strong realizations.

Probably going to try to change the way I masturbate to be honest. I do it as fast as possible as a stress relief. I think I'm going to change the mindset to take my time and enjoy the session and focus on mindfulness and not finding something online. If i change the reasons and then change the process i think i can win.

Glad to hear you both turned things around. Those are big steps indeed. Glad you're both in the community.

Today was good. I got accepted to rent the apartment I wanted. I move in 10 days. I was a little more productive at work today, but not really. I meditated and relaxed tonight for 5 hours. It was frustrating and peaceful at the same time. Although I'm going to bed late again I feel like I made progress. Today I'm grateful for my new apartment and my job and myself for being brave and patient tonight.

I've been trying to reduce energy during the day to rest. Music I'm listening to hang pan drums instead of death metal for work. It's a little better lol.

No, I'm out of climbing until we get a vaccine. I like trails outdoors and have lots of those.

Thanks. I'm just at the point where I've fully recovered from video game addiction to be honest. I've tested myself and I'm done. I want to focus on quitting porn now.

It's kind of funny to be honest. I noticed it last night.

Today I didn't work that much. I felt sick and was exhausted from doing so much yesterday. This house touring has been frustrating me and it's sapping my energy. I saw another house today and it was good. I filled out an application. It's cheaper rent in a nicer place. I really hope that it works out. I'm tired and just want to find a home for at least a year or two and just focus on work, my exam, cartoons, and living life. I spoke with my therapist about overcoming my addiction to porn. This diary is going to be switching towards being a porn recovery diary. I know it's not gaming, but the NoFap website is full of assholes and all they talk about is sex, which is triggering to me. I really want to just avoid porn and move forward in life. My therapist also agreed that a schedule would be nice and I'm putting too much pressure on myself to animate over the weekends. Maybe a few hours per week is good enough until I'm there, which I agree with. Today I'm grateful for the potential apartment, myself for getting through the day, my therapist, and a few friends I guess.

Is it possible to set ground rules that when you're in the partition not to disturb you? Or even have your mom explain to them that when you're working you can't be disturbed? How was Parasyte? I wanted to see it.

It's just tough because our minds can only take so much. Work is stressful with all the projects, then I gotta look at 6 homes to rent within 4 days, then I gotta move and coordinate that, then I want to fix my life a bit, learn hobbies, talk to friends and family. It's not realistic. I did half of my schedule right yesterday and I fucked it up by watching porn before bed and not sleeping. This kept me up super late and I felt unrested upon waking up. I hope you're able to sleep better soon.

Also wanted to add porn at night ruins my sleep schedule badly. I wish I could stop.

Today I stuck to my schedule, but failed at dedicating time to animation. I had a slow day at work because of staying up late, then I toured that apartment. It gave me bad energy. I walked in and just felt dead. It was so surreal. I did not feel comfortable whatsoever. I've never felt that bad about a place and it was in good condition. Very strange to me. Something happened there for sure. I can tell. The landlord told me several conflicting stories which leads me to believe he doesn't take care of the place. I just left. I have another tour scheduled tomorrow and one on Sunday. I don't want to do the one on Sunday because I'd have to pay another 2 months rent at my current place at a high cost. Fuck that. I made a new recipe for beans tonight that I enjoyed with my dinner. I also need to post my monthly summary. I'll try to do that tomorrow. I did everything to schedule today except I had to talk to people and research homes so it left me unavailable to do any writing or 3d modeling. It's a bummer, but it happens. I'll try again tomorrow. Today I'm grateful for my intuition, connections, friends, family, community here, food, and life.

I honestly think it's going to require like 2 weeks of good sleep, not just a few in a row, so I'll track how I feel as the month progresses. I guess we're all struggling to get sleep.

I find myself lacking all motivation to work today. It's very frustrating. I've been so stressed out with moving and searching for homes that I haven't wanted to 3d model or write or even do my normal job. Then I grow insanely jealous that others are doing their hobbies and I become angry at myself. I am following my new schedule so far, so maybe after a few days I'll feel better this week. I think the sleep schedule should help starting tonight.

Hi everyone, I hope you're still going strong or have made new commitments to bettering yourself. This past month was the most difficult for many of us during the pandemic, but it has also brought dozens of new members to the website who are trying to overcome their addiction to video games. Feel free to write a quick paragraph about something you're proud of that happened over the past month. For me, I overcame the most difficult video game cravings I've ever felt. This happened at the beginning of the month and needed many emergency therapy sessions. I am now at 83 weeks straight. I got derailed on other good habits, but I'm going to stay strong.

Today I want to talk about fear and what I realized about it regarding my lifestyle. Fear can be categorized in many ways. Fear of failure, phobias, death, and much more. One that I'd like to talk about is something we all deal with here on the forums. Fear of stress. All of us have stressful lives. We escape into gaming, porn, sex, alcohol, drugs, and TV to escape from stress. For the most part, these activities are safe activities or allow us to escape into an environment with more pleasure. As many of you know, I got into 3D modeling. Although I don't have lots of experience with it, my models look pretty fucking awesome. I'm not gonna lie. I'm proud of them every time I look at them. The issue I'm facing is that I get so stressed out trying to make things work. I spend hours trying to make something happen and if it's not a major component to the model/animation being completed then I feel disappointed at the lack of overall progress I've made because I focus too much on the big picture. The week day starts with me working 8-10 hours. This is stressful because my job has lots of pressure. I do like the job though. It's just a lot of pressure and stress. I love animation and want to create something beautiful. Theoretically, this would be a destressing activity for many because it allows them to express themselves creatively and destress. To me, I am afraid to actually start 3d animation. I have to psych myself up for hours and then once I do it I have all this pent up energy. The moment I encounter one problem, that pent up energy unleashes and I freak out. I yell at the computer, I smash things, I beg people for help, I rant to my friends. It takes hours to calm down. Then once that pent up energy is gone I can model and create something beautiful. I'm then proud of it and want to do it again, only to repeat the process. Over time I get burnt out and then give up. I'm creating a toxic environment for myself. I'm not afraid of failure. I'm afraid of the stress I'm creating for myself. I'm afraid of going from a stressful environment at work to another, more stressful environment for fun. I'm putting so much pressure on myself to create a fun lifestyle that if I don't have fun doing it I erupt and take out all my frustration on myself. It's unhealthy and quite frankly a miracle I haven't relapsed with video games. The only thing keeping me strong with video games is honestly how much I hate gaming. Sometimes it's good to be a sith lord. All of this comes at a cost and I wanted to piggyback this post onto my last post. I think lifestyles come together like a puzzle. Exercising after work will release my pent up frustrations from the work day. Eating and drinking water will satisfy those natural cravings. Then I can look forward to 3d animation. I can do this for 30 minutes - 1 hour tops for the next few months. I need to treat this like a marathon. I can't rely on impulses and sprints anymore. I basically want to animate for 30 minutes to 1 hour and then write scripts for my cartoons for 30 minutes to 1 hour tops. This is something I've been dying to do, but just been too afraid to do it because I'm a very mean person to myself and don't want to feel this abuse much longer. Weekdays: 7 AM wake up, weigh myself, eat breakfast 7:30 AM work 10:30 AM walking break 10:45 AM work 12PM eat lunch fewer than 450 calories to not be lethargic later and watch TV or relax 1 PM Work 3:30 PM Walking break 3:45 PM Work 4:30 PM Exercise/shower 5:30 PM Eat/Meal prep/Cook 6:30 PM 3D model for up to 1 hour 7:30 PM write scripts/plots for up to 1 hour 8:30 PM Watch TV show 9:30 PM Read book 10:30 PM Go to bed Weekends: 7 AM - wake up, weigh myself, breakfast 7:30 AM go for a walk or exercise 9 AM shower 9:30 AM do a fun activity with friends or do a series of hobbies for up to 1 hour at a time so I don't burn out or do chores for myself 12:00 PM Lunch/relax 1: 00 PM do a fun activity with friends or do a series of hobbies for up to 1 hour at a time so I don't burn out or do chores for myself 5:30 PM Dinner 6:30 PM do a fun activity with friends or do a series of hobbies for up to 1 hour at a time so I don't burn out or do chores for myself 8:30 PM movie or something 10:30 PM bed I know it seems stupid to have a regimented schedule, but I need it or else I get depressed. After 2 years of this now I know I don't do well without a structured lifestyle.

I agree. I'm starting today and I'm going to outline below what I plan on doing a little because I made another revelation.

Welcome to the forums. Detaching from the gaming lifestyle is one of the hardest and emotional transitions you'll make in life, but I promise it's worth it. I sense a lot of frustration and emotion from your initial post. I have full faith in your words that you're doing the right thing by quitting. You sound similar to me. Although I'm 83 weeks free from gaming, I still get pissed and have cravings. I recommend finding new ways to deal with anger such as exercise, eating properly, sleeping right, talking to friends, singing loud music, etc. Also, be kind and patient with yourself. I think I've found long term and short term ways to deal with anger. If I'm brutally frustrated I'll do exercise to death metal for 10-30 minutes and it works. Otherwise I'll do vinyasa yoga and fix my sleep schedule for weeks and it helps.

Ah ok. That makes more sense.

That's a great quote. I think most people place their significant other on a pedestal.

It seems to me that over the past year you've built and developed a lot of self respect for yourself and life has become more beautiful for you now. Good shit.

Today I'm 83 weeks free from gaming and 85 weeks free from social media. Getting close to the 100 weeks mark. I toured two apartments today. I'm going to apply and see if I get one. I am excited by both and I am guaranteed one of them. Hopefully I get the less expensive one. I feel very motivated after visiting the homes. Both are beautiful and up to date. My place now has beautiful property, but the house is in shambles and has lots of mice. It's annoying. I visited my friends today and we had a social distanced sit down in the back yard. No drinking or eating. It was annoying. I feel like this group of friends is so boring to talk to. They just summarize work, brag about talking to contractors or different projects at work. I don't wanna talk about work. It's so annoying. I always come back home so depressed after talking to them because it's a solid 3-6 hours of talking about shit I'm not interested in. I'm just annoyed with it. I think I've made a connection to my creative hobby issues. After work I'm mentally drained because I'm doing difficult work all day. This leads to two possible routes: Exercise and do mindless yoga to clear my mind, take a shower, eat dinner, watch a tv show, and then I get my energy back to 3d model or write. Watch porn, lay down, take a nap, eat like shit, and stay up late and then I'm tired the next day It's so stupid that I don't follow option 1. But most nights I follow option 2. This leads to depression and lack of fulfillment. The other thing is I then put all this pressure on myself to be productive on Saturday, but after working so hard during the week and being depressed, I have so much planned for Saturday and I cripple under the pressure and avoid my hobbies. I then get depressed and watch porn and then do nothing. It's like I'm so unhappy during the days and I just want to be creative and feel something. Here's the new plan. I'm doing Option 1 each day because fuck off that's why. I'm fucking tired of being this lethargic fuck. I want to write/model/animate for at least 1 hour each day. Relax for 1 hour before bed. Sleep 7 hours, work 4 hours, eat lunch, work 4 hours or so, repeat. I want to be creative. My mind is teeming with ideas and the only way to deal with it is through creative outlets. I'm afraid to be creative because I don't want to fail. I day dream about how great life would be by creating beautiful art and I just give up because I dislike myself so much and just want to be miserable. FUCK OFF Seriously, fuck off dude. This is bull shit. Whoever created this notion in my head that I deserve and need to feel miserable is a cunt. I'm gonna write cool shit and do cool shit because go fuck yourself that's why. I want to enjoy life. I want energy and I'm gonna give myself energy. Fuck this porn crap. God damn dude. If I can quit social media and video games I can fucking quit porn. Jesus christ I can fucking do it. I also wanted to thank people for reading and posting on here. I've eclipsed 50,000 views and 1,500 replies. I have appreciated everyone's support over the past 2 years and am surprised how popular my posts have gotten. I could not have gotten this far without all of you.

I like rock climbing and support you doing it once the virus ends. The community is very friendly and it's actually majority female. So you don't have to worry about toxic guys around. Even the guys who look like they'd be bros are just muscular and friendly. My friend group at my rock gym is a group of maybe 15 people and I'm one of 4 men. Video games it's 95% men and a little toxic in my opinion. I rock climb because it's 100% social, which was why I gamed. I want attention and community. But I also enjoy physically exerting myself, setting goals, tracking my progress, and not having a mentally exhausting hobby. I can just zone out and climb and not think of creating something like my cartoons or a book. It's not a consuming hobby. It's an exerting hobby that is still fun. As for the boyfriend situation, I haven't been following your diary much. I'm not sure how old you two are, but if he's not supporting you quitting games then he's a problem and you need to move on. I know I'm sounding harsh, but it's the truth. Most gamers who attack you for quitting games are getting offended that you're quitting. They have their own issues like regret about not spending their time properly, lacking responsibilities and neglecting things in life, etc. They escape all of their pain in gaming and just want others with them because misery loves company. You're making all of these life changes with eating habits, lifestyle habits, and hobbies and if you're not with someone who supports and also thrives in this lifestyle choice you're making then they're going to hold hostility towards you and try to hurt your progress. If he is causing relapses or talking about games then just move on. It's not worth listening to because they're being selfish. Also, I noticed you were trying to quit a lot of other things. I don't recommend quitting a lot of things at once. Picture cleaning your home for a moment. Once you start cleaning your bedroom you become in the mood to clean EVERYTHING. So you start cleaning the living room, dining room, kitchen, bathrooms. Now your whole house is clean and it took 1 day. That's not how your mind works. Quitting games takes 6-12 months before you stop craving things full time. That's only if you're avoiding triggers and dealing with stress properly. So if you try to quit eating sugar, watching porn, smoking, playing games, doing drugs, drinking, social media, etc. all at once then you're going to utterly collapse and relapse on almost all of them. I suggest reading my post about quitting games for over 500 days in the celebration threads. Treat your addictions like the legs of a chair. If you break one leg of the chair (gaming) then replace it with the reason you gamed. If you game for social reasons, replace it with a social activity. Now you have 4 legs to sit on again. Once you trust the new leg, break another chair (drugs) and replace it with something that soothes the reason you do drugs and so on. Good luck.

Video games are like any other addictive substance. Some people can do it a few times and some people depend on it for their emotional needs because they don't know how to deal with stress. That's why escapism is such a big word. I can drink 1 beer and not want another one again. It's because I didn't form a connection in my head that alcohol makes me feel better when I'm in a bad mood. However, if I play 1 video game or watch 1 porn video I will become hooked because my body and mind will always remember how I depend on it to feel better. In that sense, I had to quit cold turkey. I'm 83 weeks without gaming and 85 weeks without social media. I still can't quit porn. You're on the right path and I hope you stick with it. I wrote a post in the celebration forum detailing how I was able to quit games for over 500 days (i'm closing in on 600 now) and I did it without Respawn because I was too afraid to even buy Respawn out of shame admitting I had an addiction. So you should be proud of yourself for getting Respawn. That's a brave thing to do. Many of us quit for different reasons. Many of us have different ways of quitting. I wrote down exactly how I quit and the solutions I took in that post. The funny thing is, that doesn't work for everyone and it doesn't even work for the same person. You can have the right steps in place, but lack the drive to quit. I still lack the drive to quit porn because I prioritize seeing naked women over my own health. Until I reverse that decision I'll be addicted to porn. I did make the mind change with gaming and social media. I realized how angry both of them made me. The side effects I dealt with and their negative impacts on my lief crippled me. "That's all I can stands and I can't stands no more!" is when you quit something.