Hey, no I didn't see where I could turn on my karma from.
You're right, the Mishna says someone who is 'kovesh' their yetzer is a gibor.
But it does not say that someone who refrains from doing sin for any given reason for any amount of time 
is a kovesh. I believe that to achieve the title 'kovesh' you have to be matzliach in
not giving in to the yetzer for a much longer time, it has to become part of your personality.
(Like R' Yisrael Salanter says in I think lamed)
If a person were to be under constant surveilance, would we call him a gibor for not masturbating?
Personally I think that it's clear that that would not be g'vura, that would just be embaressment being 
the victor in a fight between embaressment and sexual desire, or there wouldn't even be sexual desire
because of the potential embaressment.

So it is possible to not give in to the yetzer without g'vura. That being the case, I think even a very long
time is not sufficient to define someone as a gibor, because it's possible that he was never really kovesh
the yetzer, he was just in a matzav where other inner forces were beating out the yetzer. Those other inner
forces could even be unhealthy ones. For example, lets say a person is crazy r'l, and believes there's someone
watching him through the ceiling, and for this reason never masturbates. Is such a person a gibor? Not only
is he not a gibor, but his lack of sin is not even healthy.

Granted in my case I don't believe there's anyone watching me through the ceiling, except Hashem of course, 
but Hashem watching me has unfortunately not been a deterrent in the past. Maybe g'vura is when the force you
use to overcome the yetzer is the belief that it's ratzon Hashem. I wish  I could say that that's my main motivation,
but if I'm being honest, I think that the main motivation for me is that I can't stand to feel so terrible, which in the end
of the day is a selfish motivation. 

At the same time, selfish motivation is not a bad thing. In essence all motivation is selfish, like the chovos halvavos says
no act of human giving is truly selfless, even the one who gives to a pauper because he can't stand to see him suffer is
really giving to alleviate his own suffering. Nevertheless, giving to an ani for this reason is extremely commendable.
So maybe in the same way it's very commendable to overcome your yetzer in order to escape from the suffering?
I really don't know. 

What I do know is that after being clean from porn and masturbation since last Sunday morning, I feel a million times better
about myself and I'm very happy to be staying away from it.

Thanks for still being here if you read this far, sorry for the ramblings of a young man

General question for the wonderful veterans amongst us: of course the battle is never over. that being said, i think there's something quite different between me, who's been clean for a bit over a week, and someone who's been clean for a year, for two years etc. i don't want to make any blanket statements, and i'm sorry if i'm misjudging the nature of your challenge, but it seems to me that there's a certain point for some of you where you feel 'free', or 'over it' to some degree. for example, someone here sent me in a dm that they don't have thoughts of going back (hi).
so tell me, at what point did you realize you were free? what did it take to get to that point?

General question for the wonderful veterans amongst us: of course the battle is never over. that being said, i think there's something quite different between me, who's been clean for a bit over a week, and someone who's been clean for a year, for two years etc. i don't want to make any blanket statements, and i'm sorry if i'm misjudging the nature of your challenge, but it seems to me that there's a certain point for some of you where you feel 'free', or 'over it' to some degree. for example, someone here sent me in a dm that they don't have thoughts of going back (hi).
so tell me, at what point did you realize you were free? what did it take to get to that point?

ithank you. i read much of in the past, maybe i should give it another read.
this is my second time on gye, i was on here around 2.5 years ago, shortly after i started 
being on the computer alot. at that time i did find some things that helped me to not get
to involved in porn, not that there's an amount that'l ok, but not in a way where i was way
out of control like i've been now. anyhow at that time i looked at a bunch of material available
through gye, including the battle of the generation, and i remember liking that book very much

General question for the wonderful veterans amongst us: of course the battle is never over. that being said, i think there's something quite different between me, who's been clean for a bit over a week, and someone who's been clean for a year, for two years etc. i don't want to make any blanket statements, and i'm sorry if i'm misjudging the nature of your challenge, but it seems to me that there's a certain point for some of you where you feel 'free', or 'over it' to some degree. for example, someone here sent me in a dm that they don't have thoughts of going back (hi).
so tell me, at what point did you realize you were free? what did it take to get to that point?

Thank you everyone for your answers. The general picture I'm getting is that freedom, or recovery, or whatever you want to call it, is some sort of mindset shift, and there's no specific amount of time that causes it

I'm dealing with strong urges to masturbate now. I feel tired out by life and lonely. Hashem help me to stay strong please. I'm posting to stay connected