Captain_Pilz

Welcome to the forum from my side, too. What Alexanderle said is very right. Just quitting gaming won't get you anywhere. I also think you are at the right place here. You seem to go through severe withdrawal symptoms, probably more severe than I ever experienced and it's understandable that you feel overwhelmed as you've just found out. This means that I will hold back with tips for the moment as I am far from being an expert. Still, it's great that you take responsibility for yourself and your loved ones by quitting games and that you have professional help. I am convinced you will make it.

Day 12: Right now, as I'm writing this post, I've spent the last 3 hours trying to figure out a solution for my phone. I forgot a passcode which I need to make crucial changes but resetting this stuff on Apple is so annoying. The only way left to go is to do a full reset but the backup won't finish its last two millimeters. What was good today?: To be honest, there was not much. I didn't manage to accomplish any part of my main objectives. In the morning, I watched YouTube and in the afternoon I still wasted massive amounts of time. Still, I made a little progress. I am currently trying to figure out why I often feel so ill. For a long time I took this as a sign no to start working out. However, lately in a productive and very healthy phase after I was ill, I felt awesome. Then over the last few days, I fell back into YouTube and I ate a lot of unhealthy food and I didn't move. Now, I feel sick again. Obviously, a healthy lifestyle makes you healthier. Also, I've noticed that watching gaming and entertainment videos on YouTube brings back my cravings and makes focus impossible. Not only do I have to reduce my YouTube time but stop watching YouTube on devices where I can't control myself. On my laptop, I use DFTube, which is a powerful chrome extension cutting out recommended videos. However, on my phone and the TV I just don't have the opportunity. Right now I am working on blocking YouTube on my phone. This means I just have to overcome the urge to watch it on the TV when I am alone. On my PC, I am still allowed to watch videos if they are for research and only then. What was bad today?: The fact that I watched YouTube all morning and the amount of time I wasted on setting my phone up right sums things up pretty well. Nothing finished, extremely unproductive day. My morning routine has been disrupted for the last four days now. I know what I have to change and I know why I want to change it. On the other hand I didn't do anything about it rather than thinking. I am stuck in my head, again. What would make tomorrow the perfect day?: I would be blessed if I made this YouTube detox a thing. Also, if I finally managed to contact my friends, I would be happy, too. In hope David

Day 11: (I do the numbers for the sake of structuring my journal. I have not intention of going back at all.) I just reread yesterdays post and I am glad I was so honest. There is a lot of truth to it. Moreover, my actions don't align with who I want to be or who I really am. That's the reason I feel so frustrated and tense. As I write this right now, I feel the exact same way. What was good today? There is not much actually but there is still one aspect. I took an assessment about one and a half weeks ago to get a better idea of what my values are. This is a professional psychological test and I have to admit that the results accurate. The next step would be to evaluate my current goals and ACTIONS based on these ideas. Again, my actions don't reflect my values at the moment! That's also (unsurprisingly) a result of the test. No wonder I feel the way I feel. By the way, this is basically what I found out yesterday. I also had a four minute call with... someone from my family (I don't know the name for the relationship.) What was bad? Let me be honest and tell you what I did today. I woke up, I ate breakfast while watching TV and I watched TV and YouTube all day, eating crappy food and not moving at all. No wonder I feel the way I feel! (Also, monotony. My language is not the freshest right now.😅) What would make tomorrow great? There is one thing that would make me super proud of myself. Going through my morning routine, while nobody is at home. No TV, no YouTube, just the routine and then action. If I connected a little bit more with the people around me, the people I care about, that would be cathartic. I need to get out of my head because right now there is not much more than me and my own mind. That would be fine if I meditated 24/7 but since I don't do so and also don't aim to, the isolation I inflict on myself right now is harming. Being social is an absolute must!

Wow, that's powerful and you nailed it! Evaluation needs to depend on where you aspire to be in life, on what is right for you. It doesn't matter how many days you are in because if it works it works and you should double down on it. Keep going. You have done enough introspection to know why you should quit porn and act differently. You have realised that watching porn doesn't align with who you are deep inside.

It's been 10 days since I last played video games. I didn't have any cravings and that seems to continue. Different habits have taken gaming's place. It is super hard for me not to watch YouTube or Netflix at any given moment. Even though I gave in to some of those cravings, I still managed to do some important stuff. Currently, I am moving away from the thought of building habits and all the science that comes with it but I try to find a different perspective. I took a walk in nature today. It is super relaxing and gives me room to think. I reckon that the problems I have are not just practical but rather emotional issues. The place my life is in right now, especially in this constant state of self-quarantine is really bad. For the last two years, I have constantly been trying to get better, and I definitely have. I have failed a lot and that is normal. But it seems like every time I fail and every time I don't live up to the promises I give myself my fear of failure seems to get worse. This might be part of the process of "waking up" but I think there is more to it. For years, I looked at people, striving to be like them one day and I had people tell me that I was talented and that I could really make something out of my life. That can be positive. I guess in my case it turns out to be negative. I realise now how I only ever saw the goal and the image of the perfect. I tried to do too much and I was not satisfied. And every time I failed, I felt less able to accomplish that. I learned a whole lot of theory and talked a lot but I didn't manage to let my actions reflect that. I already gamed and consumed content a lot at that time and I would have been able to get out of that state. But I started to wake up. I started to feel guilty about all these things. But because I was afraid I started to use it as an escape. I managed to get better. I am in a better state today and I am more conscious of my own actions than most people. However, it is my emotional connection to those actions that screw me up. I've noticed that. It won't help to build thousands of habits if I don't get my mindset right. It won't help to have plans if I don't detach myself from this ideal life that has built up in my mind. I have to take action but I have to stop mindlessly pursuing some milestones as if I were in a video game. My main goal is to overcome my fear of failure. This takes action, this takes effort and this is uncomfortable. This is what it is. But there can't be any pressure, pressure I have put on myself for such a long time. This post is negative, I know but I believe there is hope. What I try to state is that sometimes we cannot continue the way we acted before. Sometimes, something that was originally meant to be good backfires severely. In hope David

First of all, thank you @Alexanderle for your continuous great advice. I have been going through a rough time lately, despite the fact that I have never been so disconnected from gaming since I started it. Somehow, I notice that YouTube on my phone and TV-shows start replacing that escape. The more time passes by the more my brain gets fogged and I forget what my actual aim is. For instance, today, I watched Avatar the whole day, ate a whole lot of unhealthy food, even though I know I want to become much healthier, and disregarded my duties and my relationships. Also, that my parents are working again, which means I have to hold myself accountable. I am surprised how much easier it is to concentrate when there is someone around. I genuinely feel like my life is falling apart again and that I will not make it. I know this is plain wrong. I know it is possible but at the moment I momentarily stopped believing that it is. But I am afraid of failing, of being stuck in this cycle for the rest of my life. That is my biggest fear at the moment and it paralyses me to the extend that I built even more fear. That's a rough place to be emotionally and I suppose you know that. In the future, I just have to listen to myself better. It is not a coincidence that I am highly motivated and then highly demotivated and then highly motivated and then highly demotivated and so on. Maybe, I always wanted too much quickly. A broken leg doesn't heal over night, so why should a mental issue? Instead of focusing on achievement, I think I should focus on cleansing and healing. And therefore, I will not create a big plan but share some opportunities. 1. I never really cared about the people around me. I wanna start that now. 2. Without energy there is no progress, so I want to progress towards a healthier lifestyle. 3. I have big tasks I procrastinate on. It is studying. Instead of focusing on the grades, I should focus on the skill.

I struggle doing this every day. Honestly. My morning routine is getting more and more solid and I am surprised how much more energy I have through the cold showers and the meditation, and also how well I am doing in my martial arts forms. I even took a walk afterwards. Getting to work afterwards is a struggle though. The studying I have to do is kind of fascinating but also very tiresome. The fact that I do four subjects at a time does not improve that. As I emphasised before: Getting to work after the morning routine must be my number one priority. However, today I self-sabotaged again.

My daily journal seems to become an every-two-days-journal. This habit is so crucial, I gotta keep it up! Daily! Nevertheless, I am glad to say that I made some progress. My morning routine got much more valuable since I started cold showering. And even though I slept in today, I was faster than ever before. My struggle now is to make the transition to working after that and this is the part that didn't work out so well today and yesterday. I spend a whole lot of time on YouTube and even though I got some inspiration, the rest of the days was the definition of inefficient. Apart from this evening. I also noticed that: very important: PORN IS UNSATISFYING! I am glad that I make this experience again and again and the reason I share that information with you is that I want to hold myself accountable and make this notion not just a short term feeling but a long term observed fact. As I just said: Tomorrow is the day to start working directly after my morning routine instead of self sabotaging myself into watching YouTube. Let's go!

Pew. The time from Friday to Monday has been rough. I watched gaming videos and the whole first season of Avatar and an abundance of porn. This left me with my focus all over the place, quite touchy towards my parents and also with crappy energy levels. I did not feel as powerless as this morning for a long time. Also, I've noticed that the sitting around all day and not having an exercise routine at all leaves me in a weaker place every week. I am naturally quite skinny but I have reached another low since I was in quite a good condition last summer. On the contrary, today was awesome. I went to school to get my pre-exams and realised I wrote a perfect one in English. That got me motivated. I even bumped into a few friends. Being in quarantine I did not think about them at all but today I realised how much I miss them being around. Grateful for that. I also deleted Prime and Netflix on my XBox and I am planning on selling the device as well. The biggest impact I made on my day was formulating my current core values as well as the core values I want to live according to. I never reckoned that comfort was on my number one spot for such a long time. Now, my top values are health and energy, honesty (crucial in my state), love (which combines romantic, friendship and self-love) and a variety of others. Having those will make decision making much easier, but not comfortable. To conclude, today went well. And I know tomorrow will be even better.

Yesterday, in the afternoon, I conducted a little self-experiment. I intentionally relapsed, downloaded Minecraft and gamed, and documented my emotional state. It took seven hours (although it did not feel that long) and in the end, I not only uninstalled the game but deleted my Mojang account. I will never be able play this game again! Here is what I found: I am surprised how well this reflects my relapses. The best thing is: I know exactly what is going on inside me and what will happen if I act upon my cravings in the future. I would also like your opinion. Do your relapses play out similarly? Are they different? The experience emphasised that I don't want to go back. The pattern I discovered is horrible and I don't want my life to play out that way. I know what I do not want to be! My next task would be identity. Who do I want to be? I have ideas but I want to have a clearer picture. For now, I will keep up my existing positive routines and continue to study. My first exam is coming up in 25 days.

Awesome to see you back in the game. Every failure is a step closer to you goal. But beware: If you fail, fail quickly! Yes, I agree. You can be happy if you don't let your cravings control you. When you quit you are like: "I will never do this again!" The next morning cravings start. I have been through this several times. It is important to create something that reminds you how the process of a relapse looks like emotionally.

I had an amazing day yesterday. I tested myself on a complete exam for four hours and twenty minutes straight. Couldn't be more proud. I played the drums for the first time in about a week and I did some chores. Most prominently, I wanted to take a test in the evening. Just download a game and play, set a timer and answer a set of questions every fifteen minutes. This way, I originally wanted to document the process of going through a relapse, intentionally. Now, listen to this: I failed to relapse!😂 I f***ing failed to relapse! Fate disabled sounds, I was not able to get them working and I just uninstalled everything! Today, I will check my results on the test, do some more obligatory work, go shopping for my family and play the drums. Afterwards I am going to conduct the attempted experiment for two or three hours. I am looking forward to getting rid of my games for good. Sell my XBox (That actually means making money!) and not only uninstalling Minecraft but actually deleting my Mojang account, so I cannot download it anymore. After this step I will not have a slight chance of laying hands on a game for at least five months. Exciting!

All right, I literally beat myself up yesterday evening. Looking back, the post reflects my emotional state very well. It feels like angels and devils are talking to me at the same time. I want to game but I know it is probably going to be lethal in this crucial phase. I am writing this right before I start to work on my Physics stuff. I will be doing the most direct practice available which is writing an actual exam. Never did this before. I have discovered @James Good's journal today. Due to people being very active there I really found a lot of fascinating stuff. Identity based habits, how to interpret struggle, "third person gaming" (observing yourself closely while gaming). I might think about all of those and execute them in the afternoon when I am finished. Yesterday, I even found an amazing YouTube channel (actually a second channel of one of my former favourite gaming YouTubers). The guy shoots mini documentaries which inspire and show the beauty of life out of the gaming world. Mumbo - SILVER SURFER: Journal of a 70 year old surfer That's my favourite. I also think Cam would love it!😉 PS: Is there any way to adjust the spell check to British English? I am German and it confuses my writing as we learn the British spelling at school. I don't wanna sit here in 3 years writing gibberish.😅

I want to realize my dreams. And I know I am capable of doing so. So why do I keep failing? It feels like I simply forget what I said when I have the opportunity. @Victor James: You are so right. Today, I watched YouTube videos again. For the whole day! Why do I keep do this? It's mental! But how can I not give myself the opportunity to indulge in that? I feel like not matter how strict I am, it will always come back. I guess it is just the learning process. I need to keep on. Now! No YouTube! No YouTube, at all. But it feels so wrong! Maybe I shouldn't go hard quitting on this. But I don't trust myself. There is simply no way that I am continuing the behavior I display now. Well, my phone is the problem. It is the platform all of this sh*t happens on. I stop caring about school, about drumming, about family, about my friends. Everything that should be precious to me stops being precious to me. On my computer, I have regulating software (DFTube for Chrome is awesome) and it works well. The best step for me to take would be to stop watching YouTube on my phone and on television and for god's sake stop watching porn. It just makes no sense! Logically thinking, I can get out of this hole. But comfort and fear keeps me in here. I wanna be courageous! I have doubt but I also have things to strive for. It is OK if I struggle. However, I need to fail quickly and continue growing again. Come on David! Just do it!

Let me be honest. Because I have not been completely honest with you and myself. I have quit gaming once again even though I still have cravings to go back, which is normal. So far so good. Now, over the last few days, I found myself watching a whole abundance of martial arts videos, more specifically the development traditional martial arts have. I did not study at all, except once for one hour. I have further uncovered a tendency of mine that I never shared with anyone: I live in my head. I have dreams. Having dreams is great if you realize them. However, I have another kind of dreams. Daydreams in their most intense kind of state. I can literally spend a week daydreaming. Let me elaborate: I find something great, I get caught up in it and I build a fantasy world in which I start to live. I have experienced this many times now. Starting a gaming channel on YouTube, studying a certain topic, becoming a speaker, learning KungFu in China (the latest one), even girls I fell for (which is not healthy at all😭🤣 I literally have no clue if I should cry or laugh). All these dreams are dreams worth fighting for but I do nothing to achieve them. I will take up the fight against daydreaming, I want a healthy relationship towards myself and my aims. In the future, I will build awareness of my thinking. As soon as I notice that I am daydreaming I will apply the following steps: 1. Acknowledge the fact that I am daydreaming. 2. Visualizing my goal and formulating it as an infinite game. 3. Finding the best thing I can do NOW to get closer to this goal. 4. Doing this thing. Secondly, in order to not waste my day, I need a thorough plan. I will formulate this plan in my notebook every evening and see how this method works. Does it add pressure? Will I have enough time for my tasks? Will the recovery time be enough? Actually, I am looking at the challenge of real repose and what it means as well as working under pressure, working under a time limit. This boils down to efficiency and effectiveness. Also, I realized that the books I am reading right now bore me. Reading biographies is hard, even if Arnold Schwarzenegger wrote them. The 80/20 Principle might be a really good book to read as it is applicable to my current situation. And it fascinates me. Having set the foundation for my future action. Let me get to work and close this journal off. I am grateful for having this community. Thank you David

At least, I managed to do some work today. It was difficult to concentrate and somehow I got out of my workflow and started browsing the Internet again. Currently, I try to get an idea where this comes from. For the time being I will just have to do my best. Also, I just noticed that I stopped tracking my tasks over the day since I relapsed. This and the journal is hopefully going to give me a direction. The latest episode of the Game Quitters Podcast left me thinking. For the next few days, I might try to do this before I get to work as James suggested. I am really experimentative right now, trying to find my own style Tomorrow, I will definitely be able to do more. My objective is to finish a chapter of Physics and get my morning routine right, including the early journaling.

Hello again! My morning routine today almost worked as intended. I simply forgot to meditate before going to work. This would have helped me because my focus was all over the place. It has been for the last couple of days. I watched lots of martial arts videos instead of doing the things I have to do. The thing is that exams are still coming. They will be covering the content of my last two years so I'd better get my practice for school down to the point. It all is a big struggle. The only way I can imagine to cope with these road blocks is to distance myself from YouTube. That would be a healthy decision. Accordingly, tomorrow, I will stop watching YouTube and start working!

Hearing that from someone who has struggled a lot but never ceased to improve really gives me hope. Thank you for that. I have clearly lost some of my momentum. Coming back is hard and of course I have doubts but I am on it and dedicated to succeed. I really need to tighten up my morning routine and set a specific time for my evening one. In addition, I procrastinated a lot today, so tomorrow I have to improve those exact parts of my day, the first and the last. I want to make them optimal. Today, I am grateful for the impact my hobbies have on my life and my consciousness that keeps me going, as otherwise I would be in pain.

I have been inactive for a few days now, the reason being that I relapsed. For more info, please read the post down below. Luckily, I had some time to schedule my future action. I have worked on a morning and a night routine I will start tomorrow. I am quite optimistic as I have already gathered experience in this area and know some pitfalls from experience. Also, no sheets of paper flying around because I will do a counter right here. I am grateful for: All my anchors and my dreams that keep me going. See you tomorrow.

A round of applause!👏

All right, let's face it, I relapsed! After I had finished my exams on Monday a vacuum appeared. I got ill, I didn't know what to do since my short term goal was accomplished and due to COVID school is closed. These are the reasons, I relapsed. I had no purpose, nothing to wake up for and to be honest, even going to school in the morning works to set me up. However, this is not going to stay like that. What am I supposed to strive for when all of this is finished in 2 months? To summarize, I relapsed because I don't have any long term goals. And this is not the only thing I learned. Relapse after relapse, they become shorter and shorter and shorter. The last one was two weeks. This one was three days! I am improving. In addition, while watching YouTube, which I did a lot, I realized that content creators spend a massive amount of time making their videos. I would love creating the things they are creating but it would cost me an abundance of time and dedication. I better spend this time growing and not investing it into video games.

Hey mate, I can relate to that. Both of us know that growing is better than playing video games but we still relapse. I just relapsed, too. I wish you the best of success for you next try. Keep going.

Day 12: My cold is better now. I have not been feverish which means it is most likely not Corona. I still watched YouTube today. However, I managed to study for my upcoming maths exam. Furthermore, I have an idea on what skill I want to learn over the next weeks, as I will have lots of spare time. Over the last few years, I have developed the dream of becoming a professional speaker, so I have decided it might be time to dive into storytelling. Tomorrow, I write my last exam in the morning. When I come home I am going to sleep a bit and then develop a solid idea of what I want to do with my time. I might also study for my Physics class.

I know what you are talking about. When I study for exams I always feel like I could do more and more and more. A similar situation occurs when you have become really good at something. Then, for one thing you learn five new ideas come to your mind. And this happens all the time. In the study environment, this notion is simply more subtle. Of course, you can never do something perfect and in the case of an exam you can never be prepared for every eventuality, cause that's what life is like. I am currently learning to accept this feeling. Now, I am focusing on working more effectively which basically comes down to getting myself into a realistic scenario if I have the opportunity and building my intuition. Find your own ways and get the balance right.

Day 11: My writing over the last few days has been quite spare, so I‘d like to catch up to that and tell you about my current state. It has been quite a standard Saturday. Saturday has often been an unproductive day for an extended period of time. In addition, albeit I didn‘t play any video games, I have consumed a solid amount of gaming related content, especially on Youtube over the last couple of days. Also, with the release of Ark Genesis some good memories got to the surface. Today, I watched a lot of Pokemon videos. This is strange as I never played the game in my life. I even had the craving to throw all this and just start my console and... well you can guess the rest. What I have noticed is that I cannot do anything about the fact that I find certain things appealing. Those feelings of nostalgia and those cravings will always be there, even years into the future. I guess, what also makes YouTube and TV and other things appealing right now is that I am ill and simply don‘t have the abundance of energy I usually have. In the past this often helped me out of difficult phases. Conclusively, in the meantime it is all about prevailing. By contrast, I would really love to start training again and work on my discipline and my work ethic. Now that school, in terms of going to classes, is over, I get the awesome opportunity to use much more of my time. I get the really challenging opportunity to have the whole day at my disposal and still not fall back into my old patterns of behaviour. I have fear. Fear of the pain of failure but fear of the pain of discipline and boredom at the same time. That is just my state right now. I guess the only way to amend this is to expose myself to the latter. This forum is truly an anchor to me. If it weren‘t for you, I would have relapsed by now. I have decided to start a gratitude journal in which I profess... things I am grateful about, obviously. 1. As I already mentioned: All the amazing support on these forums. 2. The support of my parents. 3. The support of my teachers. One of them actually called me yesterday to notify me that we will write the last pre-exam on Monday. 4. The fact that I have developed into who I am now, that I have found my inert will to change two years ago. Tomorrow, will again be about surviving and consuming less entertainment media than today. David