How to Overcome Masturbation – by Samuel Otigba
My wife sent this post to me, she encouraged me to share my struggles, how i overcame them & my own unique way of keeping it at bay. Hope you get to see this & i pray this helps you.
This is a long article but a worthy read.
First of all, I need you to know that you are not your weak moments. The secretive nature of porn addiction, makes it easy to always beat yourself up every time you engage in self sexual pleasure & harder to seek help from its addictive shackles, esp as a Christian. I’ve been there before & i know the struggles that comes with living with guilt.
You need to rid yourself of such feelings, there’s nothing wrong with you. You are experiencing a natural feeling the wrong way, simply because you didn’t have anyone to show you better. A lot of people’s first introduction with their sexual desires was trial & error, while others was a trauma response, an escape. Very few get it right. I was sexually/emotionally abused as a child, so porn is the usual pipeline entering teen-hood for most boys.
Research shows that 9 out of 10 boys and 6 out of 10 girls are exposed to pornography online before the age of 18.
The first exposure to pornography among boys is 12 years old, on average.
71% of teens have done something to hide their online activity from their parents.
Anything can be addictive, from food, to relationships, shopping, sex, sports, even power in any form, and porn is no difference. The problem isn’t in the nature of a thing, the problem is its power over you & your inability to control it.
Here are the Facts: Pornography can be used in individual or couples sex therapy to bring a couple closer together by taking the fear out of their sexual fantasies, and spicing up their sex lives.
164 Some sex therapists recommend that couples watch pornography together and use it to refresh their relationships or spark sexual desire.
When the purpose of a thing is not known, abuse is inevitable. It took me 18 years to realise i couldn’t help myself no matter how hard i tried simply because I have abused my sexual leaning over the years. I tried penance, anonymous confessions, even almost delved into corporal mortification as an extreme measure. The extreme faith teaching here doesn’t help either. This led to depression, living in constant guilt, timidity & shame. I attributed most of my early career failures & near-success moments to it.
What saved me was my understanding of God’s love for me. Once I understood I didn’t have to do anything or be anyone else to experience wholesome love from God, I was free of that chain. All I needed to do next, was to fix my heart.
Now that we have gotten the guilt part out, the first question you have to answer is: when did this all start? You need to go back to the beginning & deal with the main cause, rather than focus on the symptoms.
I realised while introspecting I was still harbouring unforgiveness in my subconsciousness towards my abusers. I needed to let them go, to be free. For years I kept on beating myself up: “why me, why didn’t I have a normal childhood & have my first sexual experience just like everyone else.” Never had my first kiss or lost my virginity my own way. That power was taken from me.
I realised I couldn’t change the past, instead I can always focus on what I could control; my present. What drove my sexual desires was wrapped in pain, not love. I reached out to the ones I could & told them I forgave them. This is not an easy thing to do, I promise you. Take your time, no pressure. Your form of closure will or maybe different from mine and no one can force you to forgive till you are ready. It took me 10yrs +.
Now that your heart is in the right place, you need to understand also that you can’t stop this habit over night. You need time to take apart, just as long as it took to build. This isn’t a sprint but a marathon. I had help. The best way to free yourself of any bad habit is to take away its secretive nature. So I confided in people I could trust that had my best interest at heart.
It was no more a secret again, someone out there knows about my struggles & that made me feel seen. It’s power over me was gradually rescinding, although I indulged in it time after time, in fact more if we are being honest, but I was no more bounded it. I was free.
Next, I began replacing those long moments I spent in private indulging in my alternate sexual reality, with other positive virtues: started building genuine relationships, took up dancing, social projects, spent more time build my personal relationship with God through prayers & reading my Bible (for christians), started painting & cooking, read more books, I did anything to replace the free time I had to myself now. The danger of not replacing it is in Matt 12:43-45 (for Christians).
also realised through my healing journey when I started understanding how my body/mind works, that the moments i indulged in it the most, are when I am stressed, overwhelmed or excited. So I was conscious of it and prepared myself. And in moments I indulged in it again, I’ve trained my heart to forgive myself as frequent as possible. We are all work in progress.
I have been on this steady journey for years & I can assure you that it gets better with time when you are intentional about your progress. I have so much amazing things going on for me that I began to forget where I was coming from.
Marriage made it easy too, all that sexual energy was channeled there in a healthy way lol. Part of the symptoms of sexual abuse in childhood is high sexual drive as adults, luckily for me my wife is a medical doctor & there are several medical/psychology ways to balance that energy (another 🧵 for another time). 🙂
Nonetheless, I hope this helps.
One last thing: You’ll know you are making great progress when you’d suddenly realise one day that you are no more addicted to masturbation. It becomes a past memory. Just like everything human, you can never see the daily progress of a child’s growth no matter how much you stare at them daily, until someone or a situation points it out, that is how you know you have total healing. Take your eyes off the negativity & focus on all the positive things that brings you closer to your goal.
Credit: Samuel Otigba (SamOtigba) | X.com.