Did conquering lust and porn addiction unlock deeper trauma, obsessive overthinking, and mental spirals instead?

I’m 22M. Celibate by choice. I was addicted to porn for 5+ years. I’m proud that I conquered lust and urges by channeling that energy elsewhere. I used to think lust was my biggest enemy. It felt like the surface-level demon. I cut off the sources. The first phase was brutal, but over time it became manageable. But I never expected obsessions, overthinking, intrusive thoughts, and vivid mental spirals to be far worse.

I grew up self-parented. My parents were emotionally distant. I was sexually and physically harassed as a child. I was bullied. I had no real friends. To cope, I turned to porn and to an imaginary friend because real life only gave me isolation and hostility. I had zero genuine friendships until engineering. Engineering was the first time I felt normal. I had good friends. I was stable. Now I’m in my final year preparing for CAT, isolated again, and my mind is spiralling nonstop. It projects future insecurities. It replays past trauma. It creates scenarios that don’t exist and then makes me emotionally react to them as if they’re real. Since childhood, I’ve had overstimulated imagination, hypervigilance, and extreme self-awareness. I can analyze my own thoughts while thinking them. It helped me survive. It helped me solve problems. It made me sharp. But now it’s turning against me.

My brain is hyperactive 24/7. I’m exhausted during the day. I have insomnia at night. I’ve tried grounding it through Surya Namaskar, HIIT, and Kapalbhati but no real difference. When I rest, the mind explodes harder. My empathy is overwhelming. When someone shares a tragedy, I don’t just understand it. I experience it. A friend once told me about his father’s cancer. I imagined the hospital room, the smell, the atmosphere, the fear. I felt like I was inside it. I ended up crying as if it were my own memory.

Now, alone with books, the mind doesn’t stop. It creates vivid futures. It drags up trauma. Sometimes when I’m about to sleep, I physically feel the hands on my chest from childhood abuse. That sensation alone keeps me from sleeping. The next day my brain spikes harder. If this continues, I start feeling like I’m slipping into hallucination-level fatigue.

I searched everywhere but no one talks about this side, what happens after you conquer surface addictions and are left alone with an overpowered, overstimulated brain that never shuts off. The only temporary relief is drowning myself in study. The moment I pause, it comes back. I’m tired. Mentally and physically. If anyone has dealt with something similar, hyperactive imagination, trauma loops, obsessive future projections, empathy overload, I need real solutions.

I genuinely thought lust was my biggest battle. It wasn’t. This is.

I’m done fighting shadows without a map, I feel I'm lost...