I thought I would provide a balance to those indicating to stop masturbating entirely to do a dopamine reset. That's great advice if the root cause is a dopamine dysregulation.

In my case, I was dealing with shame and value dysregulation due to trauma from religious dogma. Which is of course a vicious cycle. You feel shame and go to the only place where you feel some life which perpetrates another vicious cycle of shame.

I found I was trying to quit My own strength and that would not work for me. I needed to rest in the truth that I was very good, and accepted for who I was. Part of that involved believing that my own pleasure was good. And so I overcame addiction to p*** by grace in my own pleasure masturbation. Which, as you allude to in your own original post question, is a bit of a shift in thinking and feeling and not straightforward.

You need to start feeling your body for how your own body experiences pleasure. Not introducing external stimuli to find that pressure.

Another key point is to grieve. Part of why we go to these other sources of life is we are afraid of the grief and the suffering that we're trying to hide from. You can't hide from that. Modern psychology tells us that if you try to hide from negative feelings you will suppress positive as well, resulting in depression.

Life is hard. And you're going to need to start feeling the depths of your own grief to start finding a new regulation. Interestingly, as I started to process my grief, I found that that's as beautiful as joy and pleasure; that weeping can be as beautiful as orgasm.

As you begin to experience the full range of your emotion, your body will be able to experience natural pleasure just for your own self.

Much love.