ThePoint

Less energy Less motivation Less drive @StarStruck What sacrifices can I make? I don’t know what sacrifices there are to make. Isn’t thinking that not masturbating is a ‘sacrifice’ a bad thing? Because then you think you’re missing out? Man I wish I could just care more about quitting this shit. It’s like I’ve become a numbed creature. @UnbornTao Why do you think this is a natural impulse? I never had an ‘impulse’ to masturbate before my first time ever masturbating. I should look out for this trap. How can I know if I am doing this? I’ve been having a lot of self-defeating thoughts lately like “You’re so dumb” “You’re pathetic” “How are you still alive?” “It’s too late, I should just kill myself” How?

@thisintegrated Yes, because it makes my life worse. Do you hold negative beliefs about stepping on lava with your bare feet? I can’t answer that because I don’t know what it’s like to be a girl. I only have an idea.

@Osaid It’s making my quality of life worse every time I do it. To defeat the monster that wants me to keep doing it. The monster getting defeated means I no longer masturbate. Okay. “I am starting to believe I’m a lost cause. I believe I am hopeless.”

@UnbornTao So the difference between wanting to raise your arm and intending to raise your arm is the outcome (whether your arm gets raised or not)? I’ve tried the starting small thing with meditation. What happens is once I work my way up to about 7-8 minutes (over the course of a few weeks), I end up not sticking to it. It doesn’t get any easier despite doing it every day and incrementally increasing the duration. It’s like I lost my ability to build momentum in habits. @StarStruck Thanks bro. I know I’m weak. That’s what I’ve been telling myself for the past couple of months. I believe I’m too weak to do anything. I can’t care about anything for some reason. I should be caring more about how weak I am but I just don’t care. How do I care more? And about the push ups, I can’t even do that many. That’s how weak I am. I want to “want to stop”. How can I “want to stop”? How can I care more about stopping? It seems like I just don’t want to stop bad enough, but I don’t know how to make myself “want to stop” more.

I don’t care about the dreams I used to have at all anymore. I don’t care about my vision or goals at all anymore. I don’t care about anything anymore. I’ve been in a dissociated state for the past 2 years. I don’t feel like my self at all. I’m just apathetic, and can’t feel any emotions. Just completely numb. I lost years of built up momentum and foundation, took so many years to build and it all came crashing down when I got my health problems. It was all starting to pay off, but nope, my life turned upside down. Now I’ve regressed in pretty much all aspects of my life, and as every day passes I feel like I’m losing touch with my true self more and more. I used to not have any addictions because I had passions that I cared about, but now I do have two addictions (food and masturbation) to cope with how the numbness and suffering I feel every day. I feel like I am very behind on life now, and it feels too late to catch up because I missed out on irreplaceable opportunities that were right in front of my eyes. If my health problems didn’t happen, I would be in a much, much, better position. I don’t care about anything at all anymore. I’m just existing. I don’t know what the point of living is if I can’t even feel emotions anymore. I want my self back, but I don’t know how, and with how many treatments I have tried, I am feeling more and more hopeless. What do I do? Are my dreams are officially killed since I don’t even care about them at all anymore?

Masturbation has ruined my life. If I knew I had ADHD earlier, I wouldn’t have even considered the thought: “I won’t get addicted just from trying it once.” - Which is what the people telling me to try masturbating were saying. I would’ve known that ADHD makes me more prone to addiction, and would’ve avoided that thought entirely. Now here I am, feeling hopeless, doubting whether I’ll ever defeat this thing.

I’ve been battling debilitating health issues for the past couple of years, and it’s turned me into a completely different person. I’m not the same person I was before I got such life changing health issues. I have tried so many things, and the more I try without getting any results from the things I’ve tried (e.g. a treatment protocol that doesn’t work, spending thousands on doctors that haven’t helped, supplements that don’t work, medications that don’t work, etc), the more demoralised I get. I think that, as time passes, I am starting to notice that I might be slipping into a victim mentality. I am not sure how to describe it, but I can sort of just feel myself becoming a victim, or adopting a victim mentality. I want to remain hopeful, and maintain 100% responsibility, so I want to catch this and get control of it before it gets bad. How can I tell if I’m becoming a victim? What are the signs I’m becoming a victim?

@Razard86 Do you think it is a waste of time? Like, you could spend years watching it and have nothing to show for it (provided that you don't do anything else that is productive).

@Ima Freeman So are the heavy metal toxicity urine tests pretty much pointless?

@Leo Gura What I predict, is that once I solve my health problems, all that's going to happen is that I will think of it as a setback. Something that set me back years and cost me irreplaceable opportunities. I don't know how it is going to deepen my relationship to life. Might I appreciate life more? Sure, for a little while. But then I will be back to being busy and working on my goals, trying to avoid wage slavery (which takes a lot of labour) and create a self-actualized life. I've watched those videos a while ago. They have been very helpful and you have given me hope, Leo. I remember feeling optimistic after watching them, I knew that there were still things I haven't tried. It's just that applying Requisite Variety in your life requires a lot of persistence and resiliency, which I used to have, but now I feel like I am lacking them now after getting disappointed so many times. @Rob06 How can you afford it?

@mmKay I don't think masturbating and eating food are comparable. I've been eating food since I was born. I didn't masturbate at all until like 3 years ago, and I was doing not just fine, but better than when I started to masturbate for the first time. Do you see the difference? The former is a necessity, unlike the latter.

@UnbornTao I still don't understand the difference between intent and desire. Is it that action follows intention rather than what you want or don't want? I have cravings to masturbate, but I don't want to have those cravings. For example? How do I cheer up on command?

@Osaid That really makes me wonder, because that is exactly the same with me. My longest streaks have been when I simply just did not care and was busy with projects I was working on. But this was before my debilitating health problems started, back when I wasn’t using masturbation as a crutch. Unless you make money from them or it’s your Life Purpose, aren’t video games a waste of time despite inducing flow state? They can also down-regulate your dopamine receptors because of how much dopamine they release (if you play them for enjoyment), right? That’s cool. Personally, I barely feel anything from music anymore It just makes me feel like I’m wasting my time because I end up daydreaming, which is a waste of mental energy because it doesn’t lead to anything greater - it doesn’t build anything. That makes sense. Probably why music playlists for gym workouts exist. Bro, I can’t listen to music alongside other more productive things. It doesn’t make me more productive. I tend to just end up daydreaming instead. It distracts me from whatever I’m doing and puts me into fantasy land. I can’t relate to this at all. Showering is painful for me because my skin gets inflamed (yes, even when I used cold water), so I never felt better after leaving the shower. I’m left with a lot of (temporary) big red spots all over my skin, itchiness, and feeling uncomfortable for the next couple of hours after showering.

@UnbornTao That’s what I have been considering. I made a post about it a month ago (holy crap I can’t believe it’s already been a month and I’ve made basically no progress in my life): I don’t understand. Which one would’ve been better for you to have? A smoothie or a coffee?? Okay. So I should say it out loud right?

@NoSelfSelf How do you do this? Do you just force thoughts into your mind or something? I don’t care about my values anymore. That’s how apathetic I am. I did Leo’s LP course and almost finished it, which means I completed the values assessment. When I first did the course I was feeling a lot of passion and spark from reading those values, but now I don’t feel anything.

@Osaid That makes sense. A person that has never masturbated before doesn’t count how many days he hasn’t masturbated. My entire life up until the first time I ever masturbated, I didn’t count how many days I haven’t masturbated. It simply wasn’t on my radar and it was a waste to think about something I don’t do. I attract what I think about. By counting days, I am still keeping masturbation on my radar. So that makes it more likely for me to relapse. The ideal situation is where I forget about masturbation entirely, right? What do you think about this thought process? I haven’t been in flow state for almost 2 years. I have so much brain fog and fatigue now that it’s hard to get into flow state. Could you list some examples of flow inducing activities? Isn’t music a distraction that releases dopamine but doesn’t add anything to your life? I never feel like my life improves when I listen to music. When I listen to music I start daydreaming about imaginary scenes and scenarios that the music would fit in. E.g. if I’m listening to some hyped up song I’ll imagine I’m in a fighting scene. So isn’t it a distraction? How does SHOWERING lower your perception of time???

@Leo Gura After trying so many things and then failing, I have developed a lot of resistance to trying things. I know logically that I just need to keep trying, but the more things I try without success, the more demoralised I get. So I keep losing hope. It’s like, “If THIS didn’t work, then WHAT will??” When I first got these health problems I was eager to find solutions ASAP and put my all into it. As time passes I’m losing that drive. Like, is the rest of my life just going to be trying things to solve this problem that’s altering my life?? Hopefully not. I hope so. I just want my dreams back. I don’t care about the dream I used to have. It’s like I’ve lost my personality. What happened to me man? I would’ve never thought this would be me. I thought I was going to have an extraordinary life. No, I had an extraordinary life in my grasp already, but I’ve lost it. Yeah I feel you man, it sucks. Hope you get better. Someone on this forum suggested I watch your dream killers series. I remember listening to it a couple years ago before my health problems, maybe it’s a good time for me to listen to them again.

Where am I going to sleep? Thank you.

@Eyowey To be clear, I got emotional blunting before I got addicted to masturbating. However, I do not disagree with you. Masturbating is probably only making it worse for me. I have tried so many times to quit but I keep coming back. It feels extremely difficult, especially since there are no activities that replace it for me since I completely lost interest in the things I used to enjoy, and I can't experience joy in anything in general anymore. I have a desk that is for use while standing, and I use it quite often because I feel like I don't think as well when I am sitting down. How exactly does this help with masturbation addiction though?

I am starting to feel like a lost cause. I am so hopeless. How am I ever going to defeat this beast called masturbation? I'm finding it so hard to conquer this.

@Osaid What types of issues could those stories and projections cause? Why does it make you more likely to relapse? How do you lower your perception of time?

What are your thoughts on getting a dumbphone to reduce time spent on the internet?

@Consept Could you elaborate on this part please? What do you mean by “where the forum actually is”? I agree with you that it seems relatively rare to find people that are ‘higher stage’. There are definitely a few on this forum, but not enough to label this a ‘forum where highly developed people communicate’. I think these highly developed, higher stage people have better things to do than be on a forum.

@Artsu How can they develop on their own? Contemplation? Would you say this statement is correct?: The more you go up the stages (the higher your stage), the more you need to veer towards contemplation rather than information consumption.

@Fearey How can we best find ways to connect with second tier thinkers? I think one way is to write online, which may attract like-minded people. The internet can be used to connect like-minded people. What do you think? So do second tier individuals only care about material wealth to the extent that it brings them freedom?