Week 2: Get Out of Your Own Head

The week was the diagnosis.

So. How did it go?

Did you set your mind to it and stay clean the whole way through? Did you white-knuckle it to day five or six and then tell yourself you'd earned a release? Did you fall once, quietly, and climb back on. Did the whole thing come apart by Tuesday? Did you make it through the whole 7 days, but did it first thing this morning in the shower?

It doesn't matter. Because the first week was never the whole program, it was the diagnosis. And whatever happened, you have your answer.
Because most of us walking around with this addiction are convinced we don't have one. I could stop any time, I just don't really want to right now. That sentence feels true right up until the moment you actually try to stop. For a lot of people, that was the first week in years they actually looked the thing in the eye. However it went, you know more now than you did seven days ago, and you can't un-know it.

This is usually where the mind gets clever. It goes looking for someone to compare you to. Everyone struggles with this, it's normal, I'm not as bad as so-and-so. And you know what? It’s probably true. But guess what? That doesn’t matter either. Just because everyone’s a hypocrite and everyone struggles with lust, doesn’t change the fact that you’re addicted and it’s holding you back in life.

It doesn’t change the fact that yes, everyone likely struggles with this, but they might not be as addicted to it as you are. And the only real difference between you and the person who seems to have it handled, is that they found something better to do with their time, and you haven't yet.

Men will tell themselves it’s normal. Women will tell themselves “it’s just once a month during THAT period!”. We’re experts at coming up with excuses, but again, it doesn’t change the reality that the fact that we’re coming up with with excuses just proves that this sin is controlling us, and severing our communion with the one we desire most.

Before any of the deeper work, there's some cleanup that costs you almost nothing. Go through who you follow. You know the accounts. The egirls, the thirst traps, the ones you tell yourself you follow for some other reason. Unfollow them, all of them, today. Stop the simping. None of this is the addiction itself, it's just the kindling you keep stacked right next to it, and there's no reason to make this harder than it has to be.

And if you've tried the blockers, the accountability apps, the filters, and watched yourself find a way around every single one of them, you already understand something important. A determined addict will do almost anything to get the hit. The software was never going to save you, because the problem was never that you lacked a wall. The problem is you. One day you’re going to have a husband or wife, and no external tool is going to stop you from comparing them to a fake pornstar or a fantasy billionaire werewolf man with a prehensile penis.

So this week we’re going start somewhere that might feel backwards. Not with self-improvement. With other people.

Lust is the most inward sin there is. It curls you in on yourself, it makes the whole world about your own appetite, and it leaves you feeling like garbage afterwards. The old word for it was self-abuse, and that name is more honest than we tend to give it credit for, because underneath a lot of this is a person who doesn't actually believe he deserves any better. That's why telling someone in this state to go work on themselves so often goes nowhere. You can't build something good for a person you secretly hold in contempt.

So this week you don't start with you. You do one genuine act of kindness thing for someone else, and you keep doing it every week from here. Not for the story, not to feel holy about it. You serve because the fastest way out of your own head is to be useful to someone who isn't you, and because a sin this inward is answered by turning outward. Call it reparation if you like. You've spent a long time taking. This is where you start giving.

**Ideas**
- Help a family member run some errands or babysit a kid/pet
- Send a kind message to someone
- Donate some money to a charity
- Give food to a homeless person

**Commitments**
- Abstain. The aim now isn't a perfect streak, it's to stop feeding it, and to get up fast if you fall.
- Continue your daily prayer devotion
- Go to confession this week.
- Do one genuinely kind thing for someone else

**Reflection**
What's the rationalization you reach for most, the one that always seems to let you off the hook? And what are some ways you can serve others this week? Make a plan. Share anonymously if you want.