A Key Insight that was very beneficial

Nofap helpful tips

Mid-late 30s. I started browsing lingerie catalogues when I was a teenager and progressed to porn in late high school and college.

When I was younger the feelings that I got from masturbation were the best thing ever. Now I understand what they were and why they felt that good. More on this in a bit. In my early and mid-twenties I was really sunk into porn – sometimes I’d spend hours at a time on the computer, browsing all kinds of websites. I even collected clips I particularly enjoyed – I had hard drives full of viewing material. Suffice it to say, I masturbated quite a lot.

I “knew” early on that this wasn’t a good habit (for many of the reasons others have elucidated – it distracts you from productive things, it encourages you to objectify women (thus harming your relationships), saps your energy, etc.), yet despite many attempts to kick it out of my life I only had modest success.

I had some success using calendar trackers, focusing on working out, etc. However, these methods all felt “forced” to me… and eventually I’d relapse. The most successful of these “forced” methods (combo of calendar trackers, working out, meditation (a “forced” type of meditation – e.g. “be in this position for x number of minutes”), etc) got me to one whole year in my early 30s with no porn and no masturbation before relapsing.

While I found these methods to be good, they couldn’t do the job completely. (To be fair, these methods did help me in “resetting” to a better level – porn and masturbation became a much less frequent occurrence for me – sometimes once a month, for example.)

These crude methods, did, however, lead me to see a key point that has been the most helpful of all, and which has allowed me to be porn free and fap free for two months now. (Yes, I know this is shorter thus far than the 1 year previously – but the feeling is different.) I can’t use words to describe to you to completely the difference – all I can say is that the previous success, felt forced – I had to compel myself to get away from the computer, etc.

Now, it’s the recognition that masturbation and porn, was for me, an escape from things I didn’t like in my mind. For example, if there was a work project that I disliked but that I felt I had to do, I would turn to porn as a way to take my mind off of it. This, to me, was a key insight. In other words, the great feelings I attributed to porn (& the attractive women therein), were not actually in those images and videos themselves at all. They were from me pushing aside thoughts I didn’t like (e.g. a work project I found annoying) and then feeling good in the absence of those annoying thoughts. (Seems obvious in hindsight, but it was not initially clear to me in my early 20s. I got glimpses of this insight over the years, and it became clearer and clearer to me overtime.)

From this point of understanding, I could directly work on those annoying thoughts in a productive way (e.g. drop them and/or reframe them – “maybe this work project that I find annoying is actually a great way for me to improve my skills”, etc.), since there was no longer a notion that porn could do anything for me except to provide a temporary escape (and I would have to face whatever I wished to escape regardless of whether I masturbated to porn or not!)

Thus, I found this “indirect” route very helpful in getting me to a successful nofap, no porn situation. I hope this has been helpful for folks here, I will update here as time passes, and I’m happy to answer questions as best as I can if anyone has any.

 

Thanks LordReshi! I think one of things that helped me immensely was a real wish to understand the "why" of it all. I would began noticing and catching the triggering thoughts (it could be a work situation, it could be a past trauma, it could be any number of things that one dislikes in one's mind) that would lead to using porn to escape. I wrote these things down, and that was also helpful!

 

Yes, I agree!

 

You can definitely overcome it! Best wishes.

 

Thank you for your insight! Yes, that was key for me as well. Instead of just fighting porn/masturbation directly and mechanically, address the other stuff that triggers porn/masturbation. Kind of like a misdirection/mental judo/cleaning out junk in your mind.

 

Thank you for kind words. These are excellent questions.

With regards to the previous ‘forced meditation’ I referenced, it was something along the lines of sitting in a position (e.g. lotus position) for an amount of time (let’s say 30 minutes, etc.) Obviously, this can be uncomfortable and in a way that forced bodily discomfort can help focus the mind and take it off of something with addictive qualities, such as porn.

While this is a decently good thing (as I note in the original post), I would say, given my experiences, using the key insight I mentioned is superior to that sort of forced meditation.

There’s no need to sit in any position, and you are consciously examining/dropping the triggers to the addictive behavior instead of just pushing them aside temporarily. (To be clear, I believe there are other, very effective methods of meditation, but what I used back then was not that.)

So that ties in with your second question, how to implement this in practice.
My suggestion is to do it two ways:

1) When you’ve got some spare time from work or school or whatever, sit down somewhere and think back on a time that you used porn and masturbated. Ask yourself: What was the triggering thought that preceded me taking this action?

It may come up right away in your consciousness, or it may take some time. It’s fine either way – by asking the question sincerely to yourself, IMHO it primes your mind to be aware of this. You can do this as many times as you need. Write down anything that comes up in a simple journal (could be simple word doc).

2) The second way is to ask that same question, when you get the urge to look at porn. (i.e. in the moment – catching it the process). This might seem hard at first since the urges can be strong. One tip is to see the urge as a curiosity as opposed to something you need to suppress.

Instead of “getting in a fight” with the urge, adopt a curious attitude, and separate yourself from that feeling:

“How curious that this thought popped into my head!”
“This doesn’t do anything good for me, so why am I interested in it?”
“Why I am so interested in some pixels on a screen?”
“It must serve some function – is it trying to protect me from something?” “What could that be?”

Again, maybe the answers take some time to surface, or maybe they come up at once. Either way is ok. Also, it could be something you can articulate with words right away, or it could just be a feeling you dislike (e.g. anger, fear, grief, helplessness, etc. and thus try to push down with porn) but are only able to feel without putting into words. Either thing is fine.

As the answers began to come in and you write them down, you can then look at those things honestly, clearly and consciously… and since they don’t serve you, you naturally let them go in your mind. You can obviously keep doing this as many times as needed.

An important thing to note is to be kind to yourself. Whatever comes up, it’s just a feeling. It’s also, in my experience and humble opinion, less important to figure out the exact trigger than to just let go of the feeling.

To use an analogy – let’s say you feel pain from some sharp, thin object imbedded in your arm. You could attempt to figure out if it is a piece of glass or a needle or a thorn, etc, but the more important thing would be to pull it out and toss it.

I hope that is helpful!

 

Yes, I agree and that's a great way to phrase it!

 

Thank you for the kind words. I'm glad the post was of help to you.

 

Thank you for the kind words!