[Testimony] Control Your Destiny Through Sexual Integrity Training
We received this testimony from a young man named Atdhe Zyhranaj from Kosovo who attended a few of High Noon's events. It's always inspiring to hear from men and women who are making a difference in their lives through living a High Noon life of sexual integrity.
"Thank you for taking the time to read through my testimony about my relationship with pornography and masturbation. Hopefully, my story can be an inspiration to anyone who is dealing with any kind of bad habit.
When I was about 12 or 13 years old, I sat down on a computer at my cousin's house and was playing games, as any kid might. Suddenly, I started going through the web browser history and ended up finding a porn site. That was the beginning of my relationship with pornography. At first glance, when I discovered porn, I thought it was something good. I kept on watching, on and on, until it became an addiction that I couldn't control.
Human beings were created to experience love in many ways, including through sexual organs. When a man and woman come together, they feel love through a sexual relationship. And because porn and masturbation express that relationship, I kept on consuming porn, thinking that it is just another way of expressing love. But the difference between a sexual relationship and porn is that a sexual relationship is experienced physically with another person, whereas porn is based on brain-generated fantasies. By watching porn every day, it infected the way I was thinking, day in and day out. That’s why even though it felt good for a moment, right after I felt guilty, ashamed, and unworthy. I felt like I was the worst being in this whole universe.
As I got older, my self-awareness grew and grew, so I started to understand that what I was doing wasn’t right at all. As a matter of fact, I was acting awkward to a certain degree with people. Porn and masturbation had such a bad impact on me that sometimes I wasn’t aware of many things I did throughout my life. When these addictions consume you and become subconscious, they are really tough to control.
I’m really thankful for one thing though; throughout this time of struggle, I kept on being a happy person, and I always tried to befriend people no matter what. And this is the reason why I am here sharing today. I had an open mind and was always looking for the truth (and I still am) that is within us. Besides these, I also had problems sometimes with my family. Sometimes I was angry at them, and today I know that porn and masturbation was causing that. My behavior with other people as well was really bad sometimes. I still can’t understand how I could just keep this problem for myself for such a long time.
My greatest problem was to accept myself. I wasn’t able to talk freely about this topic because I thought that people would not like me anymore. I had expectations. So having expectations didn’t allow me to change myself. I wasted so much time thinking about what others will think about me.
I can truly and undoubtedly say that my life of faith has helped me a lot to get where I am today. Two years ago I attended the 2017 Global Top Gun workshop in Korea. This workshop helped me open my mind, in terms of dealing with my addiction. That's where I met High Noon!
What I understood from their talk is that I can’t really beat this addiction by myself—unless I share it with others. So I shared my addiction during the workshop. Right afterward, when the workshop finished, I headed back to Kosovo and about two weeks later, I talked to my future accountability partner. He accepted to help me through this struggle, so we worked together on my addiction for more than half a year. As of today, I still have struggles, but I can proudly say that I can differentiate what it means to be in charge of your own body and what it means to be controlled by such a bad addiction.
I'd also like to share about my experience with my accountability partner. I didn’t really like to share every little detail with him at first—because of what I mentioned earlier: ACCEPTANCE. I couldn’t really accept the way I was, because I was afraid of being judged. So I really struggled to deal with the fact that I had to share everything with him. But in the end, after a certain amount of time had passed, I wanted to accept myself as I was and let everything go. I told him every little detail that had somehow bound me to this problem. His reaction was priceless—he was so humble and kind and understood what I was going through and didn’t judge me at all—for keeping so many things a secret.
So my advice to anyone reading this is to just let everything go. At first, it’s going to be a bit hard to give away such information, but give it a shot and don’t hesitate. I personally think that if you have a sincere and humble heart, in the end you will receive Gods Love and Grace.
Dear reader, don’t let expectations from others create fear inside of you. That’s what your evil mind wants you to do. It wants you to keep your negative thoughts a secret so that they can control you. Don’t listen. Don’t let your own car get driven by some idea that will not benefit you long-term. Take the wheel and control your destiny because nobody can do it better than you. Share, share, share and the gates of freedom will be opened for you. Thank you!"