I am M26, father of two and a former Catholic turned born again Christian with the desire to keep my vices and coping mechanisms free from anything that can tarnish my self interest, my connection with my wife, or my connection with God.
Currently, rinsing my face with cold water or taking a cold shower can help me reset my emotions so that I don’t have to do anything that’s hurtful, but I always see myself going back to Masturbation, pornography, craving to start smoking, though I’ve never done it before, picking up a drug habit, or even just lustfully looking on Reddit at naked girls for a dopamine rush of happiness…
What advice do you offer or what have you guys found helpful?
Someone on here once told me to keep my hands busy, (which I do look to create things don’t get me wrong )but when I’m not creating things or taking cold showers I don’t have any options and things just happen and I feel bad for doing it.
First question you need to ask is why do you need to do something to cope and how do you process that better.
As for calming/changing focus I do like guided meditation and actually really like creative writing. I found a book of prompts so I set a 10 min timer to write about that prompt. The time limit forces me to focus on that intently the whole time. Highly recommend pen and paper vs typing though.
I actually love writing. I have a fountain pen and I have my own comic business but writing is so daunting for me these days. Maybe if I took this advice it would be more natural to write and wouldn’t feel like it’s only used for stress relief.
Start running, Cardio vascular activities that bring your heartrate at minimum 120 BPM make your body release serotonin that help your body eliminate cortisol. Cortisol affect your dopamine receptors by dulling them and make it so you need more dopamine to get the same sens of well being. Its one of the reason it help with depression, stress and that professional athlete often fall into depression once they stop training at the end of their career.
I stand with Oscar Wilde “What is termed Sin is an essential element of progress. Without it the world would stagnate, or grow old, or become colorless. By its curiosity Sin increases the experience of the race. Through its intensified assertion of individualism it saves us from monotony of type. In its rejection of the current notions about morality, it is one with the higher ethics.”
The energy with which you fight your vices, is the same energy with which they fight you back.
So quit fighting.
Quit feeling bad.
God is not some cosmic killjoy who prevents you from having fun. So go have fun. Do healthy fun stuff.
We’re you actually born again or did you just switch churches? Did your heart and mind change or was it just the address?
You seem to have joined a prohibitionist sect, so because everything is forbidden, everything is tempting.
“Love God and do what you want.” – St Augustine
This isn’t religion it’s mental illness. Start treating it as such.
This is tricky, because important pieces of information might be missing for anyone to give you proper advice. Have you considered a good therapist?
Generally speaking, some personality types need tension, direction and goals in their life. But a goal that’s challenging enough and productive. When they don’t have that, when life becomes too comfortable, predictable, routine or neutral, the mind looks for that tension elsewhere.
And tension also of course needs release. That’s why things like porn, drugs, gaming, gambling, etc. can become appealing: they provide both the tension and the release, and they can do it multiple times a day, which of course becomes addictive over time.
If you have that kind of personality for instance and had a more demanding job, for example, one that really challenged you (not overwhelm) a job that required you to solve problems regularly, that energy, that tension would probably go into that instead, the release would be when you solved those challenges.
Exercise is another productive outlet for such tension, with clear goals and progression. Some hobbies have that same built-in tension too: hunting, car racing, rock climbing, and so on.
You shouldn’t feel shame or condemn yourself for the current bad habits, that’s step one. Just acknowledge that they are there, accept that part, and also that you need a better outlet for that energy. That’s all.
In behavioral science, you shouldn’t quite a bad habit until you have a better habit ready to take it’s place. For instance you should start working out while you quite porn. Start slow, but start other good habits while you quite the old bad ones.
Good luck
Press ups, crunches. Start at a number that you can reach but you feel it. Increase each by one every day or time you feel you need the distraction. That’ll become a challenge (habit). Getting your heart rate going is the key. You don’t need any equipment for this, just hit the deck and go
Not masturbating is the dumbest idea I have seen in some time. Why would you think that would benefit you in any possible way? You will be a better man for your family when you sleep better, lower your BP, ensure your urinary health, etc.
Men who masturbate at least 21 times per month are shown to have a significantly lower risk of prostate cancer.
No real advice, just wanna say don’t set a bar so high for yourself that you’ll constantly struggle to reach it.
Because, you’re ironically more likely to fall from grace trying to achieve perfection than just trying to accept that you’re human and sometimes you fuck up. The trick isn’t to not fuck up, but to know when and how much you can fuck up and still maintain enough character to be able to motivate yourself to be better.
So I guess you can achieve that close to perfection, but you can’t start off with huge jumps or you’re going to fall down a chasm. Spend some time to understand what your true core values are and that will help you align your priorities to understand where you can bend and take a breath, and where you hold it in and put the hard work where it matters.
Unless your vices or indulgences or coping mechanisms are inherently bad, just moderate them. If it’s Warhammer, you’re cooked.
I simply don’t ascribe to a phony measures of “morality” that cast things as vices when they do virtually no him
harm to me.
The truth is everyone is different, some people get so fixated on something it crowds out other parts of their life. If that’s happening, you should address the harms of that specific thing in a focused way.
If you just consider various activities “bad” even though they aren’t harming you, then you’re just making your own life more difficult for no good reason.
Honestly, I get up early and go to bed on time- strenuously exercise, and often times I find that has been enough to extinguish the need for 2 hours of tube surfing finding yourself on page 59 out of 112 at 11:45 at night.