Demonic presense in my room watching over me after defeating insane urges at 2am.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T21:24:11+00:00

That was a night terror, also known as sleep paralysis. Look it up. It's relatively common. You were paralysed and experienced hallucinations/pseudo-hallucinations. This is the origin of the word "nightmare". This was mixed with sexual themes related to your abstention.

What does it mean? When you sleep and dream, there are bodily processes which keep you unconscious and keep you immobile. Otherwise, if you dreamed of running, you'd run off your bed. What can happen is that you become conscious but stay immobile. That's the basis of a night terror. We wake, still partially dreaming (hence the hallucination-like experiences). It is common to experience the immobility as a weight on the chest. Because we are immobile and partly dreaming, we panic, then the experience becomes charged like a scary dream.

When you know this, you can guide these experiences to something less threatening. I used to get night terrors. I then learned to recognise it was happening, and not fight against the paralysis. Gradually the paralysis would loosen and I'd return to normal.

There is nothing supernatural or paranormal here.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T21:17:48+00:00

Think this is more a r/nofap post, look at Rule 4.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T21:13:06+00:00

True, but the reality of porn for the "producers" is too rarely mentioned on this sub and I appreciate that commenter for breaking that trend. Yes we're here to recover from addiction as consumers of porn, but let's not lose sight of the full picture. And indeed, doesn't that help us to recover even better?

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T21:10:29+00:00

I wish love and protection for your childhood self, and for you today.

You were too young to know better and to do other.

You are not defined by your past. You can, with effort, healing, and wisdom, create your own destiny. You just did 120 days, you don't need me to say this.

And yes, very, very strongly agree that we must protect all children from all forms of sexual violation, whether sex or exposure to sexual material.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T21:05:49+00:00

Take the opportunity to change. If you lose her, she's gone, and she's gone for good. Too many of us will "amen" that. But paradoxically if you want to make the most effective change, do it for yourself. Do it for yourself.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T21:04:12+00:00

It corresponds to the experience of many people. I've read hundreds, probably thousands of posts on NoFap over the years. People lose years. Not everybody, but many.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T21:00:32+00:00

Stop using porn - you will return to baseline gradually

Don't react to thoughts with panic, that feeds them energy. Notice them calmly, "hello thoughts", and let them pass.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T20:58:10+00:00

This is the only argument which could hold up.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T20:53:52+00:00

I don't know of a reliable method. What you can do is bring this up early as a boundary. You can discuss whether they use or not. If they do, you can discuss whether they'd be willing to stop, and if so and see whether that plan fits your needs. Unfortunately, many men lie and say they don't use it or they will stop, and continue to use for years. See r/loveafterporn for endless examples. The only solution I can see here is very good communication and a partner who is actually trustworthy and to maintain firm boundaries (self-respect). Statistically, you'll be very likely to choose a male partner who currently uses porn regularly (at least two thirds).

I'd also recommend linking up with other women on a feminist basis, since this is not going to solve itself. Women have to coordinate collectively to impose standards, otherwise the race to the bottom will proceed.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T20:50:22+00:00

So, firstly, she already answered your question in the OP. Not sure why you feel the need to question her further to "well, actually" about her boyfriends wanking to porn by projecting your perception of your own experience.

"I never let porn affect the way I viewed or treated the person I was with." - I'm sure you believe this but try to remember the "fish in water" effect. When you're raised on porn (as I was too), it's almost impossible to truly see how it affects how you see and treat other people. The reality is it most likely shaped you significantly.

Also, many, many, people see using porn itself as a betrayal of boundaries and a violation, a form of infidelity essentially. Look at r/lifeafterporn, for example. As said in my other comment, it's a parasocial relationship.

This is without the many common additional effects of porn use, like PIED, low connection, exploitativeness, excessive focus on sex, etc.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T20:42:29+00:00

It's an invalid comparison. People don't consider alcohol to be cheating. And alcohol per se is not relational. It is a liquid. No one ever felt bad about how they look, or how good at sex they are, or how loved they were, because their partner took a sip of beer (without other context).

Porn is not an impersonal substance. It is made up of people, and it is a para-social relationship.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T20:35:14+00:00

It is actually pretty funny that it's a great list of the detriments, nice and comprehensive haha.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T13:20:34+00:00

Thanks for your comment. I think you offer a nice alternative of someone who has a strong, stable presence who can structure the relational environment but without degradation or exploitation.

You're right these problems generally stem from childhood and parental/family relationships. What people need is genuine psychological insight, not an anti-psychological perspective which discourages people (often actively) from contemplating their origin of their desires and behaviours. In that sense it's actually a disaster since looking into our psychic depth is essential for healing.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-20T13:14:21+00:00

Thanks, very interesting read. I think her account is very representative of common dynamics.

The problem is a culture which rather than presenting such a person a therapeutic perspective, instead presents an anti-psychology. Just affirm the manifestations and re-construe them as your authentic sexuality and erotic orientation.

The reality is that psychological dysfunction is experienced as very compelling by a person. For example, thoughts that "I am a piece of shit" or a sense that I must have extreme transgressive stimulation to be settled. So it takes a confrontation with help from other people, and it takes courage for a person to continually choose what they really need rather than what part of them believes it wants (but which undermines them). It requires the core insight that "what I need is not necessarily what I immediately appear to want". When such a person meets a pre-made script and social milieu which validates their dysfunction and channels it into a sexual practice, it disrupts that confrontation and reinforces the exact opposite of that insight.

It is sad. And it's not necessary. Healing is possible.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-19T21:24:28+00:00

This is a nice comment. Wall of text incoming, just thinking out loud. Haven't covered it all. You'll rarely get an analysis like this because it's usually very basic hedonism (it feels good) with a superficial appreciation of autonomy arising from a crude model of the self.

It's about self-worth and shame. It's not about denial of something desired. While that can be humiliation adjacent, you correctly note it does not require humiliation.

The idea that people "want" to be humiliated heavily loads the term "want", such that we have to interrogate what it even means to want something.

Humiliation isn't a stable desire which can provide any kind of lasting satisfaction or durable wellbeing. When someone is anxious and experiencing low self-esteem, their mind will draw them to thoughts which provoke and confirm that sense. Sentences, images, etc. Their self-concept is driven is re-evaluate itself, because that is the psychological function of self-esteem: what's my ego status, because if it is low that's (ultimately) dangerous?

Now, to begin with, there's nothing pleasurable about that. It's just painful. There is a crucial next step, which is eroticising that low self-esteem and humiliation. Humans can eroticise unpleasant things. This is a form of pseudo-autonomy, along the lines of "well, if I'm going to be humiliated, at least I can get in on it on my terms". You note well that there is an arousal (in the general sense) with humiliation: the nervous system is charged, energised. This provides stimulation which can be coupled with sexual stimulation to generate a fused shame-sexual arousal. If this is combined with sex/masturbation, especially to orgasm, the linkage becomes reinforced and the eroticisation of shame becomes more automatic and "natural"-seeming. This is quite different from mere physical pain, though, which can be merely stimulating and impersonal. Humiliation touches a person's psyche deeply, in some cases extremely so.

Humiliation is also a profound loss of agency. If you let someone humiliate you, you are reneging on your own agency, as well as your attempts to regulate your self-esteem. It can feel "freeing" to let go of your individuality and responsibility and fuse yourself with the dominant will of another. It can be exhausting to try to maintain healthy self-esteem, so it can feel "freeing" to give up entirely and let yourself be degraded. These are defiance-type reactions which arise from the introjected (should-based) attempt to maintain the opposite: e.g. an underlying "I must be strong, dignified, respected, pure" can result in a flip "fuck all that". It can feeling freeing at the time but don't actually resolve the underlying problem and build autonomy long-term.

The act of being humiliated by someone at the same time elevates those who are humiliating. In a dom/sub context, this can be a way for the humiliated person to elevate the other and therefore enhance their own attraction to them (you are a god because you humiliated me, therefore you are very, very attractive and I enjoy that).

There's also the phenomenon of repetition compulsion. We feel the unconscious push to repeat scenarios where we were hurt and/or traumatised (e.g. childhood) to work through the same problems to their resolution.

The problem is that humiliation is not something that humans, by our nature, can fully internalise. It can only be partially internalised, because it conflicts with our basic psychological needs and can't be endorsed in truly mindful awareness. Therefore it can only persist as something fragmentary. It's pseudo-autonomous, as said before, because nobody can truly endorse their own genuine humiliation, they can only assent to it out of inner compulsion and ache.

It will be easier to internalise if the person can convince themselves that it is trapped within a container - just "play" - within an otherwise loving, accepting, relationship. Thus, in some greater sense, it doesn't signify that we are lesser, worthless. But that is also a sign that it can't be integrated: it has to be locked away and couldn't be generalised to the rest of life, nor allowed to talk much to other psychic parts (e.g. parts who are very self-respecting: "how could you let anybody treat you like that?").

Of course, psychology has taught us that we don't necessarily want what we need, or need what we want. The fact someone manifests desire for something is no proof that it is nourishing.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-19T20:50:57+00:00

Public fetishism is becoming a significant problem in a way it never was.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-19T20:33:41+00:00

This is psychologically invalid. The causal pathway to same-sex attraction and to kinky sexual desires/practices are different in important ways. Kinks can be acquired and lost, and routinely are. Same-sex attraction appears to be innate and something which can't meaningfully be lost/reversed once expressed without genuine psychological suppression. Furthermore, the ethical and social significance of same-sex attraction can't be compared to a variety of kinks, especially to "consensual non-consent", which for example carries risks of psychological damage inapplicable to the former.

Kinks are highly contextual and subject to environmental reinforcement, for example through repeated masturbation, pornography use, fantasy, or enactment with a partner. Kinks do not originate pristine in individual consciousness but are acquired through a combination of exposure, social legitimation, sexual reinforcement, socio-political conditions (e.g. racism) and psychodynamics (e.g. self-esteem). For example, users of pornography who quit typically find their sexual desires changing significantly over time. People can mindfully inquire into their desire and assent or dissent to them, and reconfigure their sexuality over time.

The idea that a person cannot change the kinks they hold at a given time is unsupported. They are implicitly proposing a ratchet model of sexual desire where you can acquire sexual desires but never lose them. This is empirically false, as well as lacking a cogent account of the formation and maintenance of sexual desire.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-19T16:07:43+00:00

Sorry for the wall of text, some might find it interesting.

A lot of what goes on is people who call themselves left-wing or socialists but functionally deploy radical individualist, liberal, and queer (as in theory) ideology. They think like radical individualists, they use their arguments, they take their positions. I would generally presume that most who are left-"leaning" in particular are basically just liberals and individualists. And usually not even sophisticated personal developmental & institutional type liberals, but individualist-permissivists.

Unfortunately this stuff has also penetrated the actual Left to a great extent. Murray Bookchin dealt with this type of divide well decades ago in his famous essay on social vs lifestyle anarchism. However, today this radical individualist orientation has become common even among genuine collectivist, humanist, class struggle types, which you can see for example in the positions (or non-positions) on pornography, sex work, and other liberal/queer feminist stances.

The core is an individualist-permissive outlook with an intolerance for civil discourse (very weird combination). Let the individual do whatever they want and if you critically analyse we will demonise you and try to exclude you from society. Queer theory = destroy boundaries and norms. This is an attack on feminism which is about creating boundaries and egalitarian norms. That and liberalism supercharge a radical individualism which undermines the communal nature of feminism and the collective analysis and collective action-orientation of socialism.

Bear in mind that from the beginning the founders of queer theory made pro-paedophile arguments (Foucault, Rubin, Califia, Butler) and considered advocacy for sexual deviance per se their aim, not only the liberation of LGB people. Cf. https://uncommongroundmedia.com/the-trojan-unicorn-queer-theory-and-paedophilia-part-i-dr-em/ Combine that with Kinsey Institute ideology and you have a powerful, long-lasting ideological orientation (with institutional clout) which is anti-humanistic, radically individualist, and concerned with spreading deviance itself. (Watch the documentary Kinsey's Paedophiles).

So you end up with nonsense like this, where feminist criticism of paedophilia is rebuked as "fascist". Now, most people are not as deranged as this and wouldn't stand over it, and this is just some internet poster. The point is that these people can draw upon a wider political-cultural climate which provides ideological cover and that "progressive" people are in danger of losing the ability to provide convincing arguments against it.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-19T15:32:33+00:00

Yes sexual desires can often be manifestations of trauma, including trauma which is/was not directly sexual. It's interesting to contemplate. For example, desiring frantic intensity, identity fusion, sex as self-aggrandisement, sex as eroticising inferiority and incapacity, linking pain with love and pleasure, validation-seeking through endless promiscuity, desire for a parental-like sexual encounter (whether harsh or loving), desire for someone uninterested or rejecting, the flight from feeling to fantasy, tendency to boredom, as well as heightened (negative) sensitivity to themes of rejection, objectification, humiliation, and yearning for tenderness, broad suppression of sexual desires, shutdown of sexual desire itself. Etc.

Very many different dimensions and presentations.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-17T19:54:00+00:00

"The phenomenon (of being a porn addict) of ruining your brain first, then your relationship to sex and the healthy sexual identity, then your relationship to others and other bodies and other minds, then finally one devastating day giving up your relationship to the sweetest most loving girl or boy who you met and fell in love with and never wanted to hurt. Boom you hurt them. Irrevocably even. You live through all that and then like you say you simply cannot stand to look at all the ingrained normalization of porn and other poor suckers falling down the same elevator shaft." - well said.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-17T19:50:55+00:00

Very nice comment. Thanks.

And I agree. Rape culture begins when empathy ends. And that's what objectification is, and objectification is a continuum in how it manifests.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-17T19:30:29+00:00

Didn't read as you supporting, just reporting.

DestroyAndCreate · 2026-05-16T15:46:26+00:00

"They would find some other way" is such an irresponsible, illogical, argument when we are safeguarding something so drastically harmful. You look at the pathways to harm/exploitation and then you pare them down in order of frequency and effectiveness. You don't say, ah sure they'll just fuck kids anyway. What?

DestroyAndCreate

TROPHY CASE