M
mphill85
Guest
Evening all.
As a human I’m no stranger to temptations, whether big or small. My teenage life was the worse because I wasn’t exactly “brought up” on the faith. Rather it was through learning bits and pieces on the internet (that is when I’m not giving in to those “temptations”). Only in the last couple of years have I have managed to somewhat get a grip on my life.
In those last two years, I can say that I’ve been doing a lot better with my spiritual health. However, ever since I have I’ve noticed that my temptations have gotten worse, as in how often I’m tempted and the strength. But the worst part of it is that sometimes these temptations aren’t actually temptations, but are, for a lack of a better word, a craving.
If I have nothing to occupy my time, my mind starts wondering and it goes to dark places. I do have a very active imagination and I’m usually able to keep tempting thoughts out of my head. But when these “craving” temptations appear, I can feel almost a desire for them. I try to tell myself “no” or “enough” and have tried praying as well. It feels like I’m missing an old friend or something. The problem is the “darker” the temptation, the stronger the craving. Desires of the flesh (masturbation, pornography) have always been my greatest challenges to avoid. The biggest craving I have is being sexual engaged with another individual.
How temptation seems to work with me is that I can be doing something that doesn’t have anything to do with the above mentioned temptations. But I can be doing something that triggers a thought, feeling, reaction from the past and it starts making me think back on it. As I think back on it I start going on this downward spiral, which usually involves “skirting” the desire, such as viewing something that isn’t bad to look at (at least as far as I know) but that I shouldn’t look at, trying to feed the temptation a morsel. The plan is to get it “full” enough that it goes away and would be good. As I have yet to learn from these repeated process, it doesn’t work and eventually it goes somewhere that… well lets just say it does involve a confession or two. Maybe three depending on how strong and how bad everything got.
I end up getting a tightness in my chest some and while this is all going on I’m focused on this temptation/craving in my head. The worst part of the whole thing is while I tell myself this is wrong (when I can get a word in edgewise with myself that is), sometimes the thoughts actually invoke feelings of happiness, content, etc. About 99% of the time those temptations are directed at the sexual interactions with others rather than being by myself.
Maybe I’ve kind of blown this out of proportion. I was curious to see if anyone has had cravings (not necessarily the ones I’ve listed above) that proved or almost proved to be too overwhelming and if they can share some insights on how to fight them.
Thank you all and God bless!
As a human I’m no stranger to temptations, whether big or small. My teenage life was the worse because I wasn’t exactly “brought up” on the faith. Rather it was through learning bits and pieces on the internet (that is when I’m not giving in to those “temptations”). Only in the last couple of years have I have managed to somewhat get a grip on my life.
In those last two years, I can say that I’ve been doing a lot better with my spiritual health. However, ever since I have I’ve noticed that my temptations have gotten worse, as in how often I’m tempted and the strength. But the worst part of it is that sometimes these temptations aren’t actually temptations, but are, for a lack of a better word, a craving.
If I have nothing to occupy my time, my mind starts wondering and it goes to dark places. I do have a very active imagination and I’m usually able to keep tempting thoughts out of my head. But when these “craving” temptations appear, I can feel almost a desire for them. I try to tell myself “no” or “enough” and have tried praying as well. It feels like I’m missing an old friend or something. The problem is the “darker” the temptation, the stronger the craving. Desires of the flesh (masturbation, pornography) have always been my greatest challenges to avoid. The biggest craving I have is being sexual engaged with another individual.
How temptation seems to work with me is that I can be doing something that doesn’t have anything to do with the above mentioned temptations. But I can be doing something that triggers a thought, feeling, reaction from the past and it starts making me think back on it. As I think back on it I start going on this downward spiral, which usually involves “skirting” the desire, such as viewing something that isn’t bad to look at (at least as far as I know) but that I shouldn’t look at, trying to feed the temptation a morsel. The plan is to get it “full” enough that it goes away and would be good. As I have yet to learn from these repeated process, it doesn’t work and eventually it goes somewhere that… well lets just say it does involve a confession or two. Maybe three depending on how strong and how bad everything got.
I end up getting a tightness in my chest some and while this is all going on I’m focused on this temptation/craving in my head. The worst part of the whole thing is while I tell myself this is wrong (when I can get a word in edgewise with myself that is), sometimes the thoughts actually invoke feelings of happiness, content, etc. About 99% of the time those temptations are directed at the sexual interactions with others rather than being by myself.
Maybe I’ve kind of blown this out of proportion. I was curious to see if anyone has had cravings (not necessarily the ones I’ve listed above) that proved or almost proved to be too overwhelming and if they can share some insights on how to fight them.
Thank you all and God bless!