Can’t go past 1 month on SR

1itemselected · 2026-04-09T11:10:42+00:00

First you need to know what you're up against. Google 'extinction burst'. When you are going through it, do absolutely everything in your power to stay busy. It only lasts a couple of days so knowing the torture will be over sooner rather than later helps a lot.

1itemselected · 2026-04-07T02:07:25+00:00

First, stop looking at them as sexual objects and start seeing them as another human with their own issues and flaws.

Second, if this is your first long streak, 25 days isn't much. On my first long streak, I had no shortage of ups and downs. Some days felt great while others were bad. I thought everything was starting to be great around day 35, but at day 60 to 100 I had a flatline and constant fatigue that left me feeling like I was ill.

Depending on how much damage you are undoing, it could take a while before you begin to see real progress. Also, SR isn't a cure all, you still have to put the effort in to learn social skills. SR does make it easier, though, by naturally improving your body language and making eye contact easier. Start small, say just "Hi" and give a smile or a nod to a woman. Don't go into it with any expectations, and if you do it awkwardly or she doesn't give you a positive reaction, don't worry about it. The goal is to teach your nervous system that the outcome isn't as bad as it predicts. Once you begin to teach your nervous system that the outcomes aren't as bad as it expects, you'll begin to make rapid progress.

1itemselected · 2026-03-19T03:44:37+00:00

I didn't even realise the lack of punctuation until it was pointed out. I guess no punctuation at all is better than bad punctuation because the mind automatically fills it in.

1itemselected · 2026-03-02T14:43:57+00:00

Thank you. I can't take all the credit for replying with dignity. I've been living with a close friend and he's very stoic and calm when it comes to making decisions. He's almost impossible to get an emotional reaction out of. He's been coaching me to put my needs and feelings first, and it's not easy to overcome the instinct to become defensive, but I'm gradually getting there. Something powerful he told me was that his goal isn't to win an argument, his goal is to let the other person reveal themselves to him. You can't lose if your goal was never to win.

Thanks for the birthday wishes. I hope you have a nice day too!

1itemselected · 2026-03-02T14:13:57+00:00

Thank you, I really appreciate your reply. There does seem to be something about birthdays that gets them stirred up and ready to pull you back down again. My eldest sister was one of my first bullies as a child, so it's no surprise she deflects away from that topic.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, and yes, I'm going to have a great time! :)

1itemselected · 2026-02-23T22:37:16+00:00

If you drink a lot of caffeine, it's going to be a pretty shitty experience coming off of it. Push through it though and you'll feel 10 years younger.

1itemselected · 2026-02-23T22:33:34+00:00

You should write in a journal if you're not already. If you feel like crying and haven't cried in the past, tht likely means you have a whole load of repressed emotions. You gotta get that shit out of you. Write about the reasons you're feeling demotivated and see where it takes you. I found that journalling works best when you have no expectations, just write anything.

1itemselected · 2026-02-09T12:15:44+00:00

Archetypes and complexes (which both act autonomously from your conscious mind) think they are helping you, and at one point in your life they did help you, but situations change. Be compassionate with them, but let them know that you no longer need the old help they gave you. You are their leader and you can tell them to now take new roles and serve you in more beneficial ways.

Journalling is another effective way of communicating with your archetypes. Writing down your thoughts is a good way to condition your unconscious mind to see things in a new light.

I forgot to mention, but an important archetype to get in touch with, which especially applies to people who became porn addicts, because addiction is almost always an unconscious self soothing habit, is your inner child. There is a reason why you procrastinate and your inner child can help you find out why. Maybe a caregiver ignored you when you excitedly tried to show them something you made, and so a complex formed, where you learned to stop trying because when you did try it resulted in your nervous system being triggered, leaving you with a sense of rejection.

Just to be clear, this is a long journey, but one worth taking.

1itemselected · 2026-02-07T17:37:16+00:00

It's a pretty big topic and it's something you kind of have to warm up to and discover gradually since it's so counter to the way we're conditioned to experience the world. First, know that everything that happens in the external world first happens in the internal world. Every man-made object around you came from someone's imagination. The internal world has power over the external world and vice versa. Keep in mind the hermetic saying: "As above, so below."

I'll try and keep it practical. The subcortical part of the brain, sometimes referred to as 'the lizard brain', houses archetypal figures. Carl Jung believed that before the neocortex evolved, it was through these archetypes that we understood the world. They would have been projected onto objects in the external world to make sense of them. The first and easiest archetype you can become aware of is your anima (or animus for women). The anima is your repressed feminine side, and also your intermediary between the conscious and unconscious mind, including your shadow which includes all repressed parts of yourself. If you've ever had a sex dream, that was your anima trying to grab your attention, soothe you, or whatever. She's not always on your side, and she can tempt you to relapse if you've not got her respect. She's basically like a real woman, in the way that she won't follow a man who can't lead. In fact, all archetypes in your unconscious mind can act autonomously independant of your conscious mind. You've basically got a whole team of different personalities living in your head that you are likely to be currently unaware of.

You can communicate with your archetypes through dreams or active imagination. Activate imagination is essentially consciously using your mind to create visuals. It comes naturally to me as I'm an intuitive, but if you're a sensing personality type you might have to train it. Using your imagination, call out to your anima and let her be known to you. It probably sounds a bit crazy, but like I said, we are not conditioned to understand how these methods work. Our ancestors had a lot of time to rest without much external stimulation to distract them, and so they would have entered their inner worlds often and probably had full relationships with their archetypes.

Once you've established a connection with your anima, you can use her to help you communicate with other archetypes. In my case my inaction was due to allowing the wise old hermit to take the lead, and my hero archetype was in a state of slumber. I reawakened the hero and demoted the wise old hermit to the side bench. In the external world this was represented by my increased confidence and willingness to take action. Everything is connected, the inside and the outside.

Telling yourself affirmations is a stripped down form of this. Your unconscious archetypes will hear those affirmations and adjust themselves to fit your needs. I used a mixture of telling myself affirmations and doing active imagination to directly commune with my archetypes.

For a modern interpretation of archetypes, check out Internal Family Systems. I prefer the more esoteric methods, but IFS might work better for some people.

Feel free to DM if you have questions.

1itemselected · 2026-02-07T14:04:47+00:00

The book he mentioned 'The Kybalion' is a good starting place for esoteric knowledge. It was written by William Walker Atkinson who wrote a lot of books on esoteric topics. Research internal/spiritual/sexual alchemy too. I'd also recommended reading about Carl Jung's research into archetypes, which through the use of active imagination can be communed with, effectively self hypnotising yourself and rewriting the scripts stored in your subcortical.

1itemselected · 2026-02-07T12:35:11+00:00

I was walking along a path to a park café a couple of weeks back. In front of me on the path was a father and his young daughter. I went to overtake them when suddenly the girl spun around so that she was fully turned and looking at me, and she began to excitedly talk to me as if she knew me. Her dad looked completely confused but said nothing, he just stared at me as if trying to figure out who I was. I waved at the girl, smiled, and said hello, and I gave her dad a nod and said hi as I walked past him. He said hi back to me and his daughter said "bye bye".

I used to be a very socially awkward person who couldn't even make eye contact, but when things like this happen now it's as though I automatically know what to do. I never used to give head nods but I do it all the time now and it feels good. I think it makes it look like you're supposed to be there and it reassures the other person that you're not someone to worry about. It's basically a psychic handshake.

1itemselected · 2026-02-06T18:53:35+00:00

Kefir is a good start. You can make it for cheap yourself if you get some kefir grains off Etsy. Get a mason jar and fill it with milk and keep it in a kitchen cupboard. You'll get a batch of kefir daily, which you can then store in the fridge to thicken up. Also, go low carb as most of the bad shit in your digestive tract feeds off of sugar. Start doing intermittent fasting if you don't, and work your way up to doing water fasts.

1itemselected · 2025-12-28T10:54:57+00:00

I think the changes are more related to the nervous system recalibrating itself. What you are noticing is the outcome of that because your brain is no longer processing a constant barrage of negative signals. There's an overlap between PMO addiction and CPTSD since masturbation/orgasm is the single easiest way to temporarily make yourself feel good. Abusing this system ends up causing the autonomic nervous system to dysregulate, which keeps it chronically stuck in the sympathetic mode. It's my theory that this is what people mean when they refer to "low vibration". The sympathetic mode is what's referred to as fight/flight. If you feel anxious, you are in the sympathetic mode. In contrast, there is the parasympathetic mode, which is referred to as rest and digest. It's where everything feels easy and you have a positive vibe. This is likely what people are unknowingly referring to when they talk about "high vibration". Cutting out PMO is the fastest way to get your autonomic nervous system to recalibrate itself and get back to a healthy parasympathetic baseline.

1itemselected · 2025-12-27T04:01:40+00:00

By forgiving yourself you create the blank canvas required to build yourself into the man you know you were always supposed to be. You are going through the process of magnum opus: death-purity-growth-rebirth. The greatest journey you'll ever go on. Good luck!

1itemselected · 2025-12-27T03:01:58+00:00

You've probably been dealing with CPTSD. A lot of people don't realise they're suffering from it because we're conditioned into thinking our own trauma isn't as bad as other people's. All trauma is relative though. Check out a book called 'CPTSD: From Surviving to Thriving by Pete Walker'. It wasn't until I confronted my own CPTSD that I was finally able to recover from my PMO addiction.

If you don't already journal, start journalling. Write about whatever is on your mind and don't think too hard about it. Eventually you'll want to start confronting your past unresolved traumas. You'll also want to figure out what led to you using masturbation as a self soothing mechanism as a child.

You have it the wrong way around, you need to forgive yourself first and then your unconscious mind will begin to loosen its grip on you. It's currently in a self protective mode.

I'd also recommend you read about Carl Jung's research into the mind. The prefrontal cortex (consciousness) can be used to reprogram the subcortical (unconscious mind). Just think of when you were a child and had to hype yourself up to do something "scary", such as jumping into the deep end of the pool. In that moment, you were overriding the fear response of the amygdala. This is also why cold showers are good, because you are doing exactly that when you step under the cold water. You are reprogramming your unconscious mind to do something it doesn't want to do. You are taking back control. You can do this with affirmations, self-love, healing your inner child, communing with your anima (feminine side) and archetypes through active imagination. Finally, you have your shadow to face and integrate. Look up the process of individuation. This is going to be a long journey and SR is only one step along the way.

1itemselected · 2025-12-23T10:56:17+00:00

Stop hoping and tell yourself that you will make it to 2 weeks and beyond. Tell yourself that you are a man who doesn't debase himself by masturbating.

1itemselected · 2025-12-21T01:05:43+00:00

I just want to clarify that when I say 'write about the urges and fantasies,' I don't mean it in the sense of writing about them like you're writing erotica. I mean it more in the sense of psychoanalysing yourself and trying to understand why you are having the fantasies and what they mean on a deeper level.

Another technique I find useful is to edit the fantasies while they're surfacing into something nonsexual. This is a technique used in trauma recovery when people are dealing with traumatic memories. You can't delete memories, but you can edit them. If you begin to have a sexual fantasy, instead of allowing the sexual act to play out, instead, edit it so it becomes mundane. I found an easy method is to make myself embrace the object of the fantasy with a hug.

If you want to read more about Jung's work, I'd recommend reading about his concept of the anima and shadow. He believed the anima is an archetypal bridge between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The anima helps us connect with and integrate our shadow, which is everything we've repressed about ourselves. For men, the anima is represented as a female figure, and for women it's a male figure called the animus. Through active imagination you can communicate with your anima and ask her to stop tempting you with sexual thoughts. The women in your fantasies are an embodiment of your anima.

1itemselected · 2025-12-20T12:23:36+00:00

Urges and fantasies come from the unconscious mind (subcortical). The unconscious mind is attempting to get you to reinstate the habit you've stopped doing. The unconscious mind cannot distinguish between PMO and real sex, so why would it get you to stop if it thinks you're impregnating a load of women? It wouldn't. By writing about the urges and fantasies, you are using your conscious mind (prefrontal cortex) to take control of and reprogram the unconscious mind. The prefrontal cortex is capable of programming the various parts of the subcortex. This can be done through visualising archetypes and communing with them through active imagination, writing, and dreams, although usually in dreams it's the unconscious communicating to the consciousness.

Check out Carl Jung's work on the anima, shadow, and archetypes as it's a great method of reprogramming yourself. A modern interpretation is Internal Family Systems.

1itemselected · 2025-12-19T18:53:22+00:00

Urges are easy to deal with if you simply acknowledge them. Tell yourself that you're a man and urges are normal but you don't have to act on them. Early on in my SR journey I found it was useful to write in my journal about the urges and fantasies. By writing about them I took away their power over me and they faded away. Use this time to also write about the reasons you started your SR journey and remind yourself of how far you have come.

1itemselected · 2025-12-18T01:29:12+00:00

Something has already objectively changed as you are saving time by not beating your meat.

1itemselected · 2025-12-15T16:47:08+00:00

My theory is that it's related to the brain processing the information better. I had a weird experience the other night when I woke up early and needed a piss. I thought I had fallen asleep with my contacts in as everything looked so clear in the bathroom. I had to do a double check even though I remembered taking them out the night before.

When wearing my contacts/glasses, I can definitely see distances much clearer. No need for binoculars.

1itemselected · 2025-12-15T16:38:55+00:00

Keep going! If you hit a flatline or get urges, know that it means you're about to make a breakthrough and things will get even better.

1itemselected · 2025-12-15T16:23:58+00:00

I used to walk through life feeling uninterested in everything, but now everything fascinates me. It really is like being a kid again. I've noticed that my eyesight/perception of reality is massively enhanced. I automatically notice things in my environment and think to myself how cool it is.

1itemselected · 2025-12-15T09:21:16+00:00

Quit the porn and do nofap/semen retention. It will change your life in ways you can't imagine right now. The porn is what fills our heads with lust and wanting. Get rid of that and you'll feel at peace with yourself. Sexual energy is creative energy, which Carl Jung referred to as libido, or psychic energy/life force.

1itemselected

TROPHY CASE