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Do you ever feel apathetic during your reboot?

Apathy is something a lot of men run into while working through their porn addiction and compulsive sexual behavior. It’s frustrating when it happens because we know the pain that brought us to reboot. We understand the serious impact that our porn addiction counseling had and still has, yet we often reach a point where we don’t give a damn about our reboot.

I want to reassure you that apathy is a very normal part of the process. If you’re at this point you’re not alone. In fact, if a man doesn’t experience feelings of apathy during the reboot process then something is wrong.

A recent question from one of our brothers summed this up perfectly:

“After doing the feelings exercise for a solid while, I’ve observed that a strong emotion I encounter which tends to lead to a slip or an unproductive day is apathy. It’s a very constant factor where I don’t feel like doing anything because it seems like nothing matters. 

“Does anyone have any advice on how I can work on dealing with this? How can I snap myself out of the pit of apathy that I tend to fall into now?”

I’ve found that apathy begins the moment you run into a challenge, especially when you realize it might take a while to overcome it.

What are some things you feel apathetic about? Are they things that you don’t actually care about? If you’re honest with yourself, they’re usually things you care a lot about but it’s going to take time and effort to accomplish or work through them.

In reality, apathy is often an avoidance mechanism. This is exactly why apathy is a common part of the reboot process. When you get to the Porn Addiction Recovery – Reboot program and realize how much work it takes to implement the system, apathy kicks in and you try to convince yourself that you don’t really care.

Overcoming apathy is an important part of the reboot process. You need to trust that these feelings are normal and that they will pass so you don’t give in and relapse as a result. 

The first step to overcoming apathy is learning to recognize your apathetic thoughts. Maybe you tell yourself that you don’t have enough willpower to be successful with your reboot. It might be the belief that you’ll never control your urges. Perhaps you think you couldn’t possibly do this every day for the rest of your life.

Next, you need to understand that any time you tell yourself you can’t do something you’re really saying that you won’t do it. It’s not can’t, it’s won’t. It’s a refusal to do the things that you know will take work because putting in the effort sounds exhausting.

You always have a choice. Let’s say you need to wake up earlier in the morning to have enough time for your morning routine. Although you’re perfectly capable of waking up early, you probably don’t want to because you already have a set way of doing things. Maybe it’s the journaling or writing exercises that you object to. You don’t want to write for any assignments because it’s not a pleasurable, dopamine-inducing activity.

But if you want to be successful in your reboot, you need to change every aspect of your life.

I’ll never lie to you and tell you that rebooting is easy but I will tell you that the result is worth it. Pushing through the feelings of apathy and doing things you don’t want to do will make you unrecognizable over the coming months. 

Remember – you don’t feel apathetic towards something you truly care about. Apathy arises when you’re resistant to doing the work it takes to get there. While apathy is a normal part of rebooting, overcoming those feelings is also a critical part of the process.

You’re not alone in dealing with feelings of apathy. Every man in the Porn Reboot program deals with them at one time or another. You may overcome them now and then have to deal with them again in the future. So long as you’re willing to do the work it takes to move through the apathy, though, you’re still on the right track.