100 Days- How to overcome PMO

Hi welcome! At nearly 100 day of hardmode no PMO, I'd like to share advice on HOW TO deal with urges, and what has gotten me this far.

Well lets get right into it:

You have to quell sexual thoughts. It all starts in the mind. If you can control your mind, you control your actions.
If you are new to nofap, you don't have much experience or knowledge with how to combat/avoid urges. Even if you have experience and knowledge, I recommend still constantly seeking out advice and new information about nofap. There is always more to learn. For instance, oftentimes when I would feel overwhelmed with school and the urges hit hard, I would simply type in google: "nofap day x", where x would be whatever day I was on at that time. It really helps, because there are always at least a few results that pop up where people talk about there experiences on that particular day. One benefit I had from doing that is for instance, at day 89, I read many threads where people relapsed... at day 89!! And the subsequent spiral they plummeted into afterwards. You must realize, especially if you are at a high streak, the danger of being careless and thinking a relapse is no big deal. My friend recently reached 96 days of no PMO, relapsed, and downward spiral- really really sad. It can take weeks or even MONTHS to recover and get back to where you were. A general pattern I see from people who lose high streaks is that the next streaks successively dwindle. For example : (51 days, then 37, 21, 10, and now they can't get past a week!).

No matter whether you are new to nofap or an expert, each day you should constantly be looking up nofap related material such as success stories, people's failures, rebooting material.
But I also think its unwise to linger tooo long, because internet addiction and nofap addiction (addiction to this site) can lead to triggers, lapse in motivation, or even relapse. So fill up your nofap motivation tank for the day, and then once the tank is full, go forth about your day and do the productive things you wanted to do. Don't spend too long looking at computer screen!

What's happening when you constantly feel urges? You may feel insatiably horny all the time. How do you control this?
You are letting your thoughts wander and therefore the urges are unable to tamed. There are many things, too many to list here, you should and need to change in order to control this. It is not only your mindset you need to change, and your awareness and knowledge of urges that should be improved, but also your habits. Will power alone is not enough! This is what many fail to realize.

Overcoming this addiction is incredibly difficult because you need to change your thought pattern, your day to day routine, eliminate bad habits, replace them with good ones, filter what you see, hear, and interact with in your personal sphere, and most importantly change your mindset- basically you have to change your life.

But for starters, I think number one is THE most important tip
https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/my-super-powerful-tips-for-all.181666/

Every single thing you do and thought you feed is either helping you avoid relapse or is counterproductive to nofap. Every habit is REALLY important. I have now meditated and taken cold showers everyday for the past ~80 days. Cold showers really help kill the urge. My advice: when feeling urges at night, take a cold shower, and hit the sack right after. By the way, can you please take the time to read this if you don't what cold showers do, cuz lemme tell ya!!! There is nothing that builds discipline then forcing your body in that freezing water. You are going to hate it first, but eventually you will learn to embrace and use it to kill the urges for that night. Cold showers can save your streak
https://www.menprovement.com/benefits-of-cold-showers/


Discipline is everything- EVERYTHING. See my profile pic. The pain of discipline is far less than the pain of regret!
This quote alone saved me many times. Yes, many things in life are extremely taxing on your brain, willpower, or body- BUT, when you actually discipline yourself and get through it, don't you like the rewarding feeling! Whereas if you are lazy and don't have self control, if you don't discipline yourself, you realize only later, after the fact, how much you regretted your actions, or lack of action for that matter.
Get the book The Power of Habit. Numerous people on this site have recommended it. Think about some habits right now that are causing you to stumble and do away with them IMMEDIATELY. For instance, in the past I always relapsed in the bathroom because I would take my phone in there. Therefore, at the start of this journey, I made rules. One of them was that I was NOT allowed to take my phone with me into the bathroom. If I did, I would not be on it. One of my APs ( a girl) had problems and temptations in the shower (shower head) and she made the good decision to shower in a different bathroom, one where the shower head was not removable.

It is extremely important to make a list of mental rules to yourself, even better to list them out in a journal or google docs to remind yourself. One of the most important rules is NO TOUCHING down there. That is the rule that on my past two streaks (the previous one was 30 days), I did not adhere to and hence why I failed. Some rules I adhered to: no going to bed past 1 AM, no phone late at night right before bed, no PSUB, no edging, no touching down there in any stimulating way- only for shower or bathroom, no lingering on sexual thoughts or fantasizing (yes you can control this but it takes immense discipline at all times). One other one I just added on last week is no looking at naked self in mirror. For the first 80 days, I could not do this since I was at school but ever since going home, I realize that looking at myself in the mirror after shower caused lustful thoughts, so from now on I don't look at my private parts in the mirror. Lol kinda weird but that was one tip I just realized.

Touching or stimulating yourself without climaxing, (edging), is a big NONO. As one guy put it, I don't see how it is possible to get too far if you are constantly stimulating yourself and edging. It only builds up the pressure, and that pressure eventually needs some form of release, whereas if you don't engage in edging, there won't be a buildup. You won't feel so consumed by your desires, it won't be so difficult to control your thoughts. But if you edge, you are still SEEKING for that fix, that dopamine hit. That is the underlying problem. The constant SEEKING out of pleasure. And seeking causes what? It causes PEEKING. SEEKING and PEEKING are the two BIGGEST stumbling blocks you need to avoid.

Once you peak, even at one little image, and once you let your eyes linger on that image even for a few seconds, do you not realize that your brain is already going into autopilot mode?? You better bet that 30 layers in the back of your mind, your brain is already forming the PMO pathways and getting ready to "launch". You have lost control at this point. It may already be too late, because you have two sides: your logical, rational self (the prefrontal cortex) and your emotional/lustful/animalistic self that constantly overrides your logical self in the heat of the moment. What's the secret then?

The secret is stopping the process in its infantile stage before it gets to that point- it is maintaining control before you let it get too far. The secret is DON"T PEEK. AT ALL!! Don't harbor any lustful or sexual thoughts in your mind. KIll them as soon as they spawn! It's a chain reaction. If you can stop the click that fires the synapse that lulls your brain into "ape mode" or your lustful self, if you can avoid peeking, and even better avoid seeking, then it will be much easier to control your urges. You have to extinguish the flame while it is small, not wait for it to turn into a forest fire. Stop the process before it begins and nofap will be effortless

It is not only the obvious and "noteworthy" habits that matter, but also the small ones. The little things. Each little habit, no matter how small, plays a part in helping you exercise discipline, which will ultimately help you with nofap. For instance, I made it a point to meditate every day (just 5 min in the morning when I Wake up), floss and put on retainers every night. Are habits like these so painful? can we really argue that they take up too much time? No, there are no excuses. Implementing these little habits helped me for sure to maintain discipline.

The desires to have to start somewhere. You are fueling them because you are not being careful what you see and do on a day to day basis. For instance, are you obsessed with social media and dating apps. Those can act as P-sub (Porn substitute) and trigger many of the unwanted sexual thoughts. This may sound extreme, but you need to cut off all the bad fruit off the tree, everything that is causing you to stumble and until you do this, you will remain a slave of lust!

What worked for me is I deleted all dating apps (seriously dating apps are bad bad bad for nofap) and social media (facebook, insta, twitter, tumblr, snapchat- yes I lost streaks but you tell me- what's more important: a snapchat streak or nofap streak LOL), limited my time with the opposite sex, cut off many of the hours wasted in front a screen, and a bunch of other things.
I would recommend cutting out social media. Yes cutting out, not cutting down, at least for a few weeks... And also TV. Man, some of the shows most people watch have a lot of sexual scenes that stir up lust. For instance, Game of Thrones. I read an article saying, Game of Thrones is basically porn. I don't watch it, but one time I fastforwarded to a scene and relapsed. Avoid cinema and movies that excite your sexual thoughts.

The Bible says "If your right eye causes you to lust, then cast it out for It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell." Now obviously don't actually do that. But take note of the metaphor. We have to be radical in our efforts to eliminate anything that causes us to stumble. Oh ya all the screenshots you have been saving or links you have been compiling or whatever "stash" you have. Delete it. Delete it all right now. And by all means delete it from the deleted folder too!! Don't deceive yourself. And ya at first, you will say "I can't do that!! I searched so long and hard to find the BEST videos and pics." But you came to nofap for a reason, because you wanted to improve your life, not masturbate to pixels on a screen. You might feel that you would regret doing such an extreme act, deleting everything, but the real regret is when you look back 5,10 years later and think: if only i had stopped back then. Believe me i had a stash i had to delete too and it was really hard. I held onto it for a month into my current streak. I realized it was the last stumbling block, the final thing holding me back.

Once i let go of it, i felt free.
~If you want to fly, give up everything that weighs you down

Many times when we feel urges, those urges have a source and a beginning. If you cut off all the entry points, the urges will not be able to surface. You need to barricade yourself, your mind, like an army under siege.
Keep in mind that you will not have a successful battle if you yourself aren't convinced if the negative effects of PMO. One advice I came upon a while ago that really stuck in my mind was that you must say, think, feel, and know deep in your heart that you cannot watch P EVER again.


Also, secrecy is the enemy. Part of the crippling nature of PMO that is different from other addictions is the degree of shame we feel. It has to do with our reproductive organs and it's really difficult to muster up courage to be able to open up because we fear being rejected or seen as weird or judged. But we need to woman and man up! The secret nature, how we have to hide everything, delete history, lock ourselves in the bathroom, constantly be alert for parents or family members coming home, having to put devices back just as they were so that no one would know we used them, having to lie, and having no one to turn to- all of it eats you up. And the secrecy is darkness. But listen here, because opening up to someone, your mom, your best friend, your youth pastor who respects you, your girlfriend, spouse, it will CHANGE you and EMPOWER YOU.

When darkness is brought to the light, it LOSES ITS POWER. It takes the weight off your shoulders. Momentarily, for an hour, a day, a week, perhaps you may feel humiliated and will have doubts about opening up, but it is so crucial because now that you have taken that first step, you can more easily open up or talk to that person in the future. At two weeks into this journey, I confessed to my mom, just my addiction to masturbation. I didn't really mention P. And it was really awkward at first, but really helpful eventually. I ended up being able to talk more and more openly about it. One night (day 84), I'll never forget. The conversation of nofap came up, and I ended up relating everything, my true feelings the past few years, why I was "anti-social" or "didn't want to hang out with friends or go in public" and I just told her everything- how much of a loser I felt because of my PMO problem. And she comforted me and told me how much she loved me. And that experience- life changing. It reminded me again why nofap is so important.

Think about this if you are feeling terribly afraid of opening up, especially to your partner. Maybe, they have caught you and you told them you quit, but you lied. Listen, mate, you are trying to do it all by yourself and you will hurt your partner really bad. It will rebound and eventually bite you in the back later if you try to keep it a secret. I would say almost everytime on this site that I see someone confess to their partner about their addiction, the partner seems always willing to help out and support them. It can be you alone, or you can have the strength of another.
What is more important: momentary embarrassment or saving both your lives and your relationship? It is your life you are saving by doing nofap!

Remember that porn would block you from your bright future!!!! You were never meant to PMO all the time and waste your life. You have a second chance, a second life. You can become the person you want to be! It's never too late, no matter how many times you have relapsed.
Do you realize how much potential you have? How much you have been blocking yourself and the world from seeing the REAL YOU, not this degenerated, corrupted, weak you. Do you not realize how much more confident, charismatic, strong, fit, intellectually smart, respectable, more attractive and just better in every aspect of your life you could be?


- We need to cut away the things from our life that cause us to stumble.
- We need to know our triggers and have exit strategies
- We need to flee from habits of isolation and secrecy
- We need to know who we are harming. That includes our own brains and bodies, those around us, and the performers who are being sexually exploited.



Glad you are here! Hope this helped​

 

Thanks brotha! I learned from the master

 

Ye ye!! You can do it Asher. Stay strong buddy. While everyone else faps away, you will rise!

 

Thanks bro I see you are doing really awesome as well. I like seeing you here and there giving support

 

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Ikr!! You can see where others went wrong or right