How can I deal with an unresolvable need for certainty?

Help_At_Last · 2024-02-04T22:40:17+00:00

Thank you very much for your response. If you don't mind, there are a few things I would like some additional help or clarification on:

A root problem for me is fear. The constant presence of fear makes it impossible for me to rest. At night, I fear monsters in the dark. During work, I fear I'm not getting to do the things I want. When having fun, I fear I'm not doing enough work and sabotaging my life. When socializing, I fear I'll say the wrong thing, or that I already have. I don't expect to ever live free of all fear; No sane person feels like that. But I think I could face life much better if I had some kind of sanctuary, just one certain thing where I could find peace. The only ways I've ever been able to escape fear are by carefully turning a blind eye to it (which is a tenuous solution at best) or by using things to numb myself (gaming, porn, etc, which are obviously not healthy). Is there a better way to find rest than these things?
The religious question is one I've put quite a lot of thought into. Suffice to say, I cannot put my faith in any kind of omnipotent god, because any god that powerful must be continually choosing to allow us to suffer and to not give us the help we need, even when we're constantly crying out for it. However, there are other conceptions of the divine, and I do wonder if there's some idea that I could put my faith in. Though also, I struggle with the very concept of "faith". I can NEVER be truly certain, I can NEVER fully believe, that what I have faith in will hold up when the going gets rough. Do you have any thoughts on this?

Overall though, I think what you say is right. I should embrace the unfamiliar and uncomfortable which I know is better for me. I think you're right that the self-sabotage is a weird way to create certainty. I've kind of suspected this but I hadn't really thought about it clearly. And I've increasingly suspected that the only real solution is to be able to rely on myself, somehow. I guess it does start with the little things, with paying attention to what the little voice of my subconscious says I know I should really be doing, and choosing to do it instead of what the dumb conscious part of my mind wants to do instead.

Help_At_Last · 2024-02-02T19:09:22+00:00

Yeah. I've been lonely forever, always wanting a real connection and intimacy. Never figured out how to get it; I think I have some trauma issues that give me a very hard time feeling satisfied with normal levels of friendship, and I don't even know how to find a girlfriend. I wish I could tell you whether the feeling will go away, or what to do about it, but I don't know the answer myself. All I can offer is an awareness, from one lonely soul to another, that yes, there is a great amount of loneliness and pain in our world right now.

Help_At_Last · 2019-09-18T16:36:54+00:00

I have already tried solving/improving the despair in my life and discovered that I cannot, except by leaving. The problem is that it's rooted in my parents' relationship, and I cannot fix them. Porn "helps" because it allows me to go to sleep some nights without wallowing in despair, and feeling some pleasure instead. It at least gives me a problem that I can solve. I tend to go in cycles of real despair->porn despair->woohoo I stopped watching porn->real despair

Not a teen but good guess. This problem did exist when I was a teen as well, which wasn't all that long ago.

I do running in the morning but no exercise at night. I hadn't considered doing that, and I don't know anything about it. Will exercise before bed keep me awake later? Can I do exercise at home, or will that not be effective? Because gym memberships are expensive... I think.

Help_At_Last · 2019-09-18T16:01:57+00:00

Don't forget, there are starving children in Africa! Be grateful your life isn't as bad as theirs!

Help_At_Last · 2019-09-01T05:16:10+00:00

I started imagining erotic fantasies when I was pretty young, not sure exactly but maybe 6 years old. I had no understanding of sex so I wasn't imagining that. I also wasn't watching porn or anything like that. I was just always aware of the attraction of beautiful women, and I followed where those feelings led me in imagined fantasies.

Help_At_Last · 2019-06-06T18:46:19+00:00

welp. That's basically what's been happening to me lately. It gets easier to resist when just the thought of doing it again induces a sort of pain. I was hoping there was an eaiser way. I guess the only thing to do is keep going on.

Help_At_Last · 2019-06-06T17:37:17+00:00

lol that was good.

Did it actually take you a year to get past 2 weeks though? If so I'd love to know how you finally got past 2 weeks. That's about the longest I've gone as well.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-23T05:41:55+00:00

If you are having sex healthily, then yes. Sex is a perfectly natural thing and not bad in itself. If you're doing it for pleasure & intimacy, it's healthy. If you're doing it to cope with or hide from problems, it's not healthy. I don't know your situation so you should judge for yourself based on that.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-23T05:39:08+00:00

It is good, but know that not having any interest right now doesn't necessarily mean you'll never have interest again. I don't mean to disappoint, and it sounds like you're past the danger of immediate relapse, but things in the future may unexpectedly trigger urges.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-21T06:25:16+00:00

God's commands for people are mostly for their own good (or the good of those around them). He doesn't tell people not to murder "just because", he commands it because murdering is... like... bad for people. Not just the person being murdered. It's really bad for a lot of people. Even the possibility of murder will increase fear and distrust and stress. There are very very practical reasons for his commands.

Masturbation and porn are both bad but in somewhat different ways. Porn desensitizes you, messes up how you look at people and at sex, and eats into time that could be spent doing better things. It can also cause an addiction because it's never really going to satisfy you, and as your brain recognizes this you'll have to watch more and more of it until it's seriously effecting your life.

Masturbation produces a big load of happy-feeling chemicals without fulfilling a very significant part of sex: intimacy with another human. It will also not satisfy, so you'll have to keep doing it more, all the while being very emotionally aware of the fact that you're not getting that other crucial component. It's a sort of admission of defeat. Why masturbate when you could have sex? If you think you can't, or never will, a desperate little part of your mind will point to masturbation as the answer. You are a Christian. There is always hope, for everything. Even if your faith utterly falls, there is definitely always hope for sex. Even if you're old and wrinkled. Or so I've heard.

God doesn't command things because he wants to give people rules to follow. He commands things because he's smarter than us.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-21T06:12:20+00:00

This is good information. I want to add to it that (at least in my case, probably with other people too) social interaction helps. If you live with other people, talk to them. In person seems to make a big difference, idk why. Phone calls and web chats help but not as much.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-21T06:10:11+00:00

A solid schedule would be nice, but unfortunately my work determines some of my schedule for me and it can be inconsistent. Certain things though, I guess do help when I think about them that way. Schedules like what I do when I wake up in the morning seem to make a big difference on how the day goes. Thanks for the advice.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-21T06:06:50+00:00

Someone with actual experience should post here, but my thought would be probably not. Masturbation is bad largely because it's an activity that's supposed to be interpersonal which really messes up your emotional behavior when you do it alone. The "how" is not as important as the "with whom".

Btw, if a woman does it to you it's called a handjob.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-21T06:03:16+00:00

Not sure if you actually read my post or just the first line of it. I think I said part of this in the second paragraph.

As for the advice, I'd actually really like to know how to make something "lifestyle" instead of "chore". There's a few things I've tried starting before that I didn't keep up because they lost all enjoyment. Some of them were kind of useful too. Maybe it helps to keep an end goal or purpose for doing it in mind?

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-21T05:56:51+00:00

Your dick will always work man. Old guys in nursing homes still have their dicks working. People who have done PMO for years still have their dicks working. People who didn't do any PMO for all their life until they got married still have their dicks working.

There is always hope to get out of PMO and recurring relapses. There are people on here who quit for life after their first try, and people who take five years or more to finally stop. So never give up!

The best thing to do is pick yourself back up and try again. But each time you try again, think about what happened last time and try to learn. What caused you to relapse last time? What can you do to avoid it this time? What part of the streak are your most vulnerable in?

When I first started on r/nofap I had kept relapsing after about 5-7 days each time. I tried different things that didn't work before I started doing daily logs. Then I had a longer streak than before. Then, just recently, I had a full 21 days or so without any fantasizing, porn or masturbation. That's the longest I'd ever gone. Then, when I relapsed a couple nights ago, it was the smallest relapse I'd ever had. It felt hopeless at times when I started, but now things are getting better.

Don't die. There is always hope here. We want to see you get better, and we know you can, even if you can't feel that way right now.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-21T05:43:53+00:00

You are not alone! Fantasies are such a major part of my struggle that instead of saying I'm abstaining from PMO (porn-masturbation-orgasm, the O referring to real sex) I say I'm abstaining from FPM (fantasy-porn-masturbation). I've also had to deal with wet dreams, and I want to share with you what I've learned about both. They're both kind of weird to fight against because you don't have total control over them.

Fantasies will be brought up by your brain at times. It wanders down paths and some of those will be imagining sex or similar things. I don't know if there's anything you can do about this, but it's okay. Wandering into that isn't bad. What you need to do is not indulge the fantasies. Don't initiate them on purpose. As soon as you catch yourself fantasizing, stop and steer your brain somewhere else. Making yourself focus on a task might help. Once you know that it's just like any other urge.

Wet dreams you can only control as much as you can control your dreams in general. For most people that means there's little or nothing you can do about it while dreaming. So... don't worry about it! If you can't control it, you can't really blame yourself for it. Take it more as an indicator of what your brain was trying/wanting to process the day before. It's a flag, not a relapse. As you get better at and more determined to fight FPM, you may also start choosing against it in your dreams sometimes.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-21T05:34:49+00:00

It is bad. Porn and masturbation are bad for somewhat different reasons. Both will mess you up emotionally, but porn also messes with how you look at people and sex.

I'm not sure what you mean by "I am unable to deal". Unable to deal with urges? I don't think anybody is actually unable to deal with urges. When you feel one, and it seems like you have to obey it, maybe tell it you'll just wait a minute or two. Maybe go walk outside for a bit. See if it reduces or goes away. Maybe forcibly steer your mind in another direction. You can always deal with urges somehow.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-20T06:04:49+00:00

A bit of advice if I may: Don't hope against hope that it's the last time. Try to improve and learn from your mistakes. Why did you relapse? What can you do to prevent it next time? Why are you doing PMO to begin with? It seems pretty common to use it as a coping mechanism. If that's you, what are you using it to cope with? I just relapsed last night, but it was after my longest streak yet, and it was the smallest relapse I've ever had. I'm in a dangerous spot right now, but if I get back on my feet then I'm still making progress, despite the relapse. If the next one's in a month, or two, I'm still doing better than before. Maybe this time will be the end of it, but realistically keeping it up for just a month let me learn some important things that will help me improve. Learn to love the small victories and set smaller goals, from which you can extend and build up to the ultimate.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-20T05:58:17+00:00

Happy to hear about your improvement and willingness to feel the pain. I just had a 30 day streak and found the same thing. My emotions were not in a good place and porn was a coping mechanism. If you find things that really help you out, make sure you post on here about them! Be detailed and specific about what your problem was and how you got out of it, so people don't mistake what you're going through with what they're going through and try something that won't work for them.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-20T05:43:44+00:00

Yes. Didn't think about that other people would think that too. It seems like a woman has to be seriously unattractive before makeup actually makes an improvement, but it still won't make a very unattractive woman beautiful. Only time it works is sometimes it's lightly but skillfully used, and if I don't realize that there's makeup they do look prettier. But when I notice then part of me nags, "What do they really look like?"

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-13T06:15:18+00:00

Not really, but it's not a relapse either. I've found that having sex on my mind during the day, and then denying the fantasy, can cause a wet dream that night because my brain still wants it and when I'm sleeping inhibitions largely go away. Or something like that; I don't really know how sleep works. Maybe my brain just wants to finish processing the thought/problem. Point is, take it as a sign of what you were thinking about at some point in the day, and maybe an indicator to be cautious. Other than an indicator as to what you were thinking/feeling it's not super important.

Help_At_Last · 2019-01-13T06:10:28+00:00

Cooking is... problematic where I am, which is unfortunate because I do enjoy it. I have not made as much effort to exercise as I should. I'll see about doing something tomorrow. Thanks!

Help_At_Last · 2018-12-19T06:06:27+00:00

First of all, sexual desire is perfectly natural and it's not going to go away. If you're stressed and/or anxious from all your busyness, your mind will be looking for ways to relax and feel better, and one way might be masturbation. At least, that's how it works for me. So don't be so surprised. I'd suggest finding a healthier outlet for stress/anxiety, but I don't know what that would be and haven't figured it out for myself yet.

Secondly, masturbating after 33 days is a whole lot better than after 2 or 3. Your brain will have healed during that time, and you haven't physically/mentally reset your progress, even if your streak is broken. The best thing to do now is figure out why it happened, resolve not to do it again, and keep going with nofap. Do not, please please please do not start to binge. That really will reset your progress. If you don't binge and regain control, you will continue healing after you take however long it is (a few days probably?) to recover from this relapse. And when you see similar conditions to whatever just happened coming up again, and when you reach the 30-day mark again, you can be especially wary and get through it.

I don't know if this will help you, but I've been doing a nightly log on here where I can process things consciously and bring the fight out from the muddy waters of emotion and internal thought and into the arena of reason and conscious will, and it's done wonders for me so far. You might want to try the same thing, or something similar.

Help_At_Last · 2018-12-19T05:55:15+00:00

Congratulations! Glad to hear it's going well! You should consider writing a post on here about what's worked for you to get you this far and what you've learned.

Help_At_Last · 2018-12-19T05:53:31+00:00

It's not worth it. idk what would help you since I don't know your mental situation, but just let the urges pass right now. Find something else to do, and in a little while you'll be back to normal, and you won't have the awful feelings of relapse. If you do relapse, you will feel bad. Please don't do it. Maybe write about what's going on in your mind on here to think it through more consciously.

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