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Post by choselife on Oct 26, 2006 16:27:42 GMT -5
Excellent!!! The earlier you catch it, the better.
CL
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Post by LookingForward on Oct 29, 2006 22:13:10 GMT -5
Thought control is a major part of beating this, I think. Congratulations on even being capable, in a moment of temptation, of conjuring a trick to keep your mind porn free.
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Post by sisyphus on Oct 30, 2006 9:04:46 GMT -5
Day 8
I woke up this morning in a bit of a funk, for no real reason - tossed and turned all night. Had a great weekend, so maybe it's just that I don't want it to end. At any rate, this is a weak point for me, usually. I'm in a bad mood...don't want to deal...easy just to got to the old medication. I'm not going to do that today, because I know it does not work.
That's all for this morning - just want to start the day saying to myself, no porn today.
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Post by sisyphus on Oct 30, 2006 15:11:35 GMT -5
I need to add something here, prompted by reading DJ's journal this morning.
I realize that I haven't really put the possibility of an affair outside of my mind. I mean, I think I have, insofar as I think I wouldn't go there again, but when I'm really honest, I have to recognize that in fact I've left the door a little open...if the right opportunity arose.
This is a problem. I need to set a moral ground, establish some sense of what is, in any circumstance, unacceptable. I' veen downt he affair road before, and it did unspeakable damage. So why have I not absolutely shut that door? Because I play this morally relativistic game. "If it didn't hurt anyone...." Well, Jacob my friend, it would hurt you. Start there.
I travel a lot, alone, and this comes up all the time. This means lots and lots of near misses. But what DJ's journal reminded me of is how easily a near miss can become a disaster. I'm only ever a tiny mistake, a single bad decision, away from trashing my life, again. I won't get another chance.
And it's still day 8.
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Post by reconstituting on Oct 30, 2006 17:08:01 GMT -5
sisyphus,
sensible thinking I'm sure. Keep going.
Recon
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Post by sisyphus on Oct 31, 2006 9:45:40 GMT -5
Day 9
I thought yesterday was going to be a struggle, judging from how it began, but in the end it was not a bad day at all. I want to try to remember that in fact I can, if I try, turn things around on any given day.
Played poker with some buddies last night - always a good, healthy thing. It's a guy thing, but there's none of that typical guy talk, no talk of women at all, really, except maybe wives.
I feel as if I'm drinking a little too much - and I need to do a reality check here, to make sure that I'm not actually self-medicating. I just don't know, but I need to give it some serious thought.
Plan for the day: run a couple quick errands this morning, go into the office and work on my book, then home to take my daughter trick-or-treating. Seems pretty simple, safe.
I'm in a good place right now.
Thanks for the encouragement!
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Post by sisyphus on Oct 31, 2006 11:46:19 GMT -5
I'm still at home, not, as I had planned, at the office yet. I went to the DMV to take care of what I thought was going to be a major hassle, but it took only about 2 minutes. Typically, this would have opened the slightest crack for the addict - well, you just got a big gift of time, so go on a little binge.
Instead, I decided to come home, read here a bit, have lunch, and then go to work.
Yesterday, I was working on a chapter of my book, one that's been a problem and that I've been revising, on and off, for two years now (obsessively, I might add). I found myself being really impatient - I wanted it to be right, and I wanted it right now. I didn't want to go back to my research, to go slowly and do it right. I just wanted to delete some bits, quickly rewrite others...I just wanted to get it done.
This is my addict. He wants it all right away. He doesn't want to work at it, doesn't want to make slow and steady progress. That infuriates him. That's why porn works so well for him - it's as immediate as it gets.
I'm like this across the board! It's not just my work - and I really don't think I've always been like this (I wouldn't have survived as an academic if I were), but it has gotten progressively worse. I come home hungry, and instead of making myself a salad, I grab a handful of pretzels. And then I'm still hungry., and want more pretzels, the salad now a distant memory. I want my run to be over as soon as it starts, and thus rather than enjoy it, find it tedium. When I'm with my kids, I'm always thinking about the next thing, always several steps ahead of where we actually are. I'm always the first person to leave a meeting, rushing of to...where? The next thing about which I'll be impatient? And on and on. I'm so rarely in the moment, really in the moment, and as a result I miss so much of life. God, that's just sad!
This is what the addiction is all about for me. When my addict kicks in, when he's engulfed in porn (and before that, actual women - god, I turned to porn so that would stop having affairs...I need to revist this), he's really in the moment. I've never really thought about it this way, but there is something profoundly immediate about porn. Wait, this isn't quite how I wanted to say that. Let me try again....
When I'm looking at porn, I'm not doing anything else. My mind is completely absorbed. There are no distractions. I'm completely in the moment...and it feels like a kind of bliss, it really does. But, and the but is huge here, that moment is itself an illusion, an escape. It seems to be a moment of complete connection, but it's really the opposite - a moment of complete detachment. I'm in a room, all alone, connecting with pixels on a screen. I'm as isolated as I can be. Thre's nothing human about it. But it seems real.
The point has to be to live totally in the moment you are in, not live in some moment that is not real, that is disconnected.
Porn is attractive to me precisely because it is an illusion, an escape. But it seems to be real...until you come down, and then all you want is to go back to that moment of unreality. This all seems pretty obvious, but it certainly isn't in the midst of a binge, or post binge.
The Buddha was highly critical of some meditation masters he observed because he saw them as simply escaping reality. They would meditate, and get into a higher state of calm/bliss...but then they would, inevitably, come down. They then would go back into that state. But while in the state, they weren't really living, but only escaping life.
What he proposed was something completely different - not escape, but connection. Be in every moment as it is happening - no matter the quality of the moment, no matter if it be happy or sad, joyful or painful. Live it.
God, I know all of this...but I forget so easily.
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Post by Nick on Oct 31, 2006 12:08:32 GMT -5
Hey sisyphus,
I can so relate to the condition you describe: the impatience, the hurry and anxiety, always pitching myself into the future only to find myself as abstracted in the next task as I was in the last.
And I relate too to the almost uncanny state of present-ness we experience the midst of porning: all of our energies and attention focused on the pixellated image before us, the endless click click click of the mouse. God, the hours I have spent on end in pursuit of the Next Big Thrill!
Both are, of course, states in which we are absent from life -- either abstracted from it or captive to what seems to us a ready form of escape. It takes a lot of discipline and courage to stay grounded in the present. It is at times a struggle to do so. But both of us must know at some level that it's deeply worth it. For me, at least, the wish to remain present to my life and to my relationship has been a big motive to recovery.
Best wishes to you,
Nick
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Post by sisyphus on Nov 1, 2006 9:39:40 GMT -5
Day 10
Nick - thanks for stopping by. It's always amazing to me how similar all of us, in the end.
I had a disturbing dream last night, and I don't usually remember my dreams. I was sitting in front of my computer, and typed in the url of one of my old favorites. What was weird was that I was watching myself from over my shoulder, and the self that was watching was saying, "Man, don't go there...that's a slip...you'll be back to day 1 again. You don't want to go there." I didn't "see" any images, but in my mind I knew that it was a slip, and I'd be back to the beginning.
So when I woke up, I actually thought, for a moment, that I had looked at porn. And then I had to think, well, I dreamed it, isn't that a slip, too. No. It was a dream, dummy.
But the dream certainly tells me something. It tells me that the addict in me wants me to go there. Of course he does. But man, getting to me in my dreams? That's a new one for me.
It was all very triggering. I barked at my SO, and felt all the old insecurities slipping in the cracks - that has always been a pretty clear warning of an impending slip. I'm not going there. I was making coffee while she was in the shower, and just started telling myself, "You know she loves you, so don't go some place dark just to justify a binge." She then came out and put her arms around me and said, "You're wonderful, you know." It was some sort of karma.
At any rate, I feel that I need to be especially vigilant today; the addict in me is starting to wonder, "Wow, is he really serious about it this time...let me test him."
I'm sure I'll be back later today, a long, long day of teaching.
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Post by sisyphus on Nov 1, 2006 15:18:49 GMT -5
So I've been thinking more about this dream I had, and, particularly, about my last binging, which really lasted for many months.
What happened? How did I get from a fairly good, healthy point in my progress, to really going back to where I'd been at the beginning, only deeper into it? And, perhaps more importantly, how can I not repeat this?
On one level, this is fairly simple - I took one little step, then another, and eventually all those little steps got me very far away, indeed. It doesn't happen all at once, except that now I know that if I take that first step, I'll get to a place of darkness much, much quicker, and probably go even darker the next time. This is why the first step is so crucial, or, rather, avoiding that first step.
But what is boggling to me, and perhaps that is how it must stay, is that I can get so very far away from where I want to be, who I want to be (who I think I am), and that becomes acceptable. I can wake up in the morning, kiss my SO and daughter goodbye for the day, and then spend ours looking at depraved filfth...and somehow I can live with that. I shouldn't be able to, but it gradually becomes normal. The lying, or rather the not telling, the nagging feeling of being caught, the negative sense of self...but it isn't normal, not in anyway. It effects every part of who I am.
So here I am, a good but small bit of sobriety under my belt, and I don't ever, ever want to go back there, don't ever want to slip back into that insanity. And I think, how, how am I going to stop myself from taking that first step? Well, it seems pretty basic from here - one moment at a time. Keep the guard up. Constant reality checks.
Yesterday, I was doing something, and found myself almost instinctively going to Google to search something...I wonder what A is up to, wonder if she's out there to be found. But I stopped myself, because that's become a bottom line. The thought, alone, is inner circle, but once I go to do the search, that's bottom line, and it's bottom line because it is that first little step.
I'm good today, I really am. The dream made me feel a little vulnerable, but in a positive sense - a reminder to be vigilant.
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Post by otto9176 on Nov 1, 2006 22:53:06 GMT -5
Hi sisyphus...you're right....don't take that first step. Dont budge, not an inch, not a millimeter. Just stand firm and if temptation throws punches at you, then turn the other cheek and take them. The end result is you'll win the battle.
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Post by LookingForward on Nov 2, 2006 10:33:18 GMT -5
Sisyphus,
I found your insight, several posts back, that you are in the moment, albeit an escapist moment, when porning to be right on. It is totally absorbing and time just flies. The only similar experience I ever have is when I am teaching. There I am completely and totally engaged--it's like being in a different mental state--and, again, time just flies by.
I have never been able to achieve such a state while writing. Oh, if I could!
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Post by sisyphus on Nov 2, 2006 10:47:39 GMT -5
Day 11
LF - Yeah, I get into that mode when I'm teaching, sometimes. I find that when I'm mountain bike riding I get there too - if you don't utterly concentrate, you go over the bars, and that just hurts, a lot.
But this is a real reminder to me that I want to try to cultivate a better sense of being in the moment, no matter what it is that I'm doing. It has to be an effort, which maybe defeats the purpose, but if I don't make the effort it certainly is never going to happen.
So this morning I found myself slipping into an old kind of insanity. I need to come clean about it....
I went down to get something out of M's car, and noticed that the passenger seat was pushed way back, and I thought, immediately, "hmm, wonder who she's riding around with." So my mind started spinning. I then walked her down to the car to say goodbye, and asked, jokingly, about the seat. She just laughed and said, "yeah, right, me and my boyfriend...." But I didn't let it go, and asked again, more directly, to which she just replied, "Honey!"
All of this got my head in a very negative place, and I started spinning out all sorts of scenarios. But then at some point I kind of pulled out of the spin and said, "Ok, do you really think that's what is going on?" No, I didn't really think that. It was just plain insecurity, but also a kind of self sabotage...and I'm pretty sure that's the addiction, or whatever it is that feeds it. So she called me on the way to work, and had completely forgotten about it, but I hadn't, so I answered the phone, "Hi, it's your mentally ill partner," and we had a good laugh.
This was a really healthy resolution to what, in other times, would a situation that would have lead me to a binge. Pathetic, I know, but this is how the addiction works for me: any little crack and I can be gone. And now, this morning, rather than beat myself up about how silly this all was, I think I want to say "Yeah for me!" It's so hard to look at the positive, it really is.
Ok, off to the office, back to writing. It's going to be a good day!
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Post by LookingForward on Nov 2, 2006 14:25:08 GMT -5
Once again, you were able to change your thinking about a situation (the car seat) so that you were not triggered to act out. To me, that is the key to controlling the behavior.
I think it is interesting that you had a jealous reaction by thinking it was possible that your SO was having an affair. As pieces of evidence go, a pushed back car seat must be among the weakest indicators of an affair. Yet, the thought of your partner having an affair quickly jumped to mind and was clearly upsetting. The irony here, of course, is your own admission that you have not completely closed the book on extra-relationship sex. How do you think these things are connected?
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Post by sisyphus on Nov 2, 2006 15:16:08 GMT -5
They are completely connected, no question about it. I know I project my own lack of trustworthiness onto her, and although I'm trying to get a handle on that - mostly by being more trustworthy myself - I have a long way to go.
As for the pushed back car seat...yeah, really, really flimsy, and the really ironic thing is that I probably pushed it back when I was cleaning her car the other day.
Mentally ill indeed!!!!!!!!!!!11
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