This week one of my clients, Douglas, shared with me a great post over on Gary Wilson and Marnia Robinson's site.
"Underdog" is the guy who runs their "Rebooting Your Brain" forum. It's a great resource for anyone trying to kick the porn habit.
On the forum you can set goals, share them with others, track your progress, and journal about how it's going.
Douglas found it so helpful to see in people's journals their periodic hard patches.
He discovered he wasn't the only one who had really strange dreams as he's detoxing from porn.
On a down day he read the journal of a guy who had once been really depressed for a few days. It was a simple and yet profound thing for him to see that things turned around and were back to normal for that other guy after a few days. It helped Douglas keep his own suffering in perspective and gave him hope.
That's big.
Reading other people's entries and keeping his own journal on that forum is helping him view his recovery from the bird's eye view. That's huge, since addiction keeps its hold by blinding us to the big picture and keeping us locked in the moment. Addiction is all about instant gratification; taking in the bigger picture is a way back into recovery.
Douglas said that the articles on the "Reuniting" and "Your Brain on Porn" sites are "warmly written" and useful. One that really hit home for him was by Underdog: "The Top 3 Fatal Mistakes Rebooters Make." Check it out. I think you'll also love the great insights and practicality of Underdog's suggestions.
Just read the post here Mark,...and also went out and read the "Top 3 Fatal Mistakes" post you referenced. Liked them both. The quotes from the Buddha were also very enlightening and helpful--the idea of "mindfulness" practiced so much in meditation techniques is woven right through separating physical pain/sadness from mental lust fixes. Being "with" the pain, acknowledging it is there, and making peace with it is certainly a more positive choice than medicating it by blasting away at the "happy receptors" in your brain!
ReplyDeleteAnyway, the post was a good one. Thanks for writing.
Glad you checked it out and found it helpful Rob. Yeah, reading those quotes from Buddha made me realize how much of modern psychology's teachings on mindfulness really came from him!
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