A concrete tip for staying away from porn - Keep a recovery journal

This post is part of an ongoing series of posts about staying away from porn

Keep a recovery journal

We cannot get very far in conquering our addictions until we get to know them. We need to discover what triggers our unwanted behavior, we need to know what helps us to resist. And we also need to have a place to brag about our victories, even if only to ourselves. For many people, keeping a paper or computer-based recovery journal can be useful to achieve these ends.

Write in your journal every few days, or whenever you have a successful or unsuccessful event in your recovery, e.g. a slip or a near-slip. You don't need to write much, a couple of paragraphs, or even just a few bullet points, is all you need. Don't worry about spelling or grammar.

If you have a slip, write about your feelings, before, during, and after. If you successfully avoid a slip, write about how you managed it. Any lessons learned? Any specific triggers that you noticed? Any words of wisdom for the future you?

Some people are not used to free-form writing. For them, it may be useful to write up a few questions beforehand, and just give quick answers later, instead of writing free-form paragraphs about their insights. Thanks, u/vnnwlkr , for suggesting these:

• How am I feeling today?
• Did I have any urges today?
• How did I deal with those urges?
• Write down one important reason why you want to leave porn behind for good and write a short story why you find this reason important
• What am I doing to move ahead in life?
• Write down something positive. A short optimistic story about where you are heading, or what is going well.