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Suggestion for people in Hard Mode

Discussion in 'Rebooting - Porn Addiction Recovery' started by itsnotme, Oct 8, 2015.

  1. itsnotme

    itsnotme Fapstronaut

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    After I read a lot of posts about the people who reset in Hard Mode, I've seen that nearly all of them tend back to porn, but by doing that they are wasting most of their hard work and progression. I got a suggestion though, if you are in Hard Mode and the temptation is too strong and there is no way you won't be able to stop, Don't masturbate to porn. Close all of the devices you use to watch porn and go masturbate to your fantasies (not to porn fantasied as much as you can). Only do this if you are going to "break" no matter what. For example you are the horniest you ever been.
    What do you guys think? I am open for constructive criticism.
     
    Last edited: Oct 8, 2015
    Low, nfprogress and Calm like this.
  2. It makes sense. Porn is the worst, masturbating without it is better.
    However, this should not be used as a rationalisation of relapsing or giving in.
     
    Low likes this.
  3. kadiri007

    kadiri007 Guest

    what about staring a woman in public, feels same thing as p I think
     
  4. itsnotme

    itsnotme Fapstronaut

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    No not really, staring at a woman in public is completely normal and healthy, after you are done with your rebooting though. Porn gives your brain unrealistic expectations of sex and how it should be thats why it becomes an addiction by making your brain release dopamine when watching porn. Watch this video. It's the video that made me quit porn, before porn started going on the internet, there was no addiction and sexuality of men was normal.
     
  5. itsnotme

    itsnotme Fapstronaut

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    Yes I agree, but sometimes its just too much, I try to not use "giving in" because its not the same for everyone and its not always the case. There are some days that all your buttons in your sexuality are pressed and its just impossible to stop. The brain is not like a hard drive where you have to just wait a period of time without using it for it to format, in our case reboot, every minute your brain is away from porn is a positive step for your brain to stop wanting porn instead of real life women.
     
    Low likes this.
  6. kadiri007

    kadiri007 Guest

    well can't seem stop m in public to my fetish's secretly
     
  7. galaxim

    galaxim Fapstronaut

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    From experience, that doesn't work, as you're still keep having your dopamine fix. After a long period of reboot, you can choose if you can resume MO or not. For some is an option, for many of us it's not, as MO leads to PMO.

    I'm going to quote again William's post on quitting:

    "It is important to have a reason when quitting, a good reason, a reason that is important to you. Gary Wilson, of YBOP, asks the very legitimate question: why quit? Point being, this habit is a habit we probably would not quit unless it had some bad repercussions in our lives. Cigarette smokers would not quit if it did not affect them adversely. They lose lung capacity and eventually get cancer. There are all kinds of bad results from using porn all the time. From PIED to social interaction problems. I saw your post from earlier, about not being able to go more than two weeks. When I quit, I quit. I did not count the days, I woke up every morning and said to myself I am never going back. I think that is the mindset you must have. Quitting was horrible, an unpleasant time in my life, incredibly hard. I see you are a very positive person, and I think that is great. Now, don't take this the wrong way. You need to stay positive, but, ultimately, you have to get mean. You have to HATE it. Porn cannot just be a toy you are trying to put down but having difficulty walking away from. You have to want it dead. You have to want to kill it. You cannot keep porn in your life, even just a little bit, and quit the addiction. With the counters, a lot of guys approach this like seeing how long they can hold their breaths. Problem: no one can hold their breaths forever. Solution: you have to learn how to quit breathing. You have to expel porn from your life, defriend it, excommunicate it, loath it, hate it, reject it. The big mistake a lot of guys make is thinking if they can go on a few three week periods without porn it will get easier. It does not. There is only one extremely difficult, unpleasant, hurtful, mentally, physically, emotional torture-ous way to beat the addiction, and that is to starve it to death. If done right--and this sucks, I know--quitting porn will be the most painful thing you have ever done in your life. Let me say that again so I am clear, "If done right, quitting porn will be the most painful thing you have ever done." If you are not embracing the pain of quitting, you are not quitting, you are trying to keep it in your life, but control it. Porn addiction cannot be "controlled"; it has to be eradicated, it cannot be coddled, it must be murdered. You have to plan on the pain, expect it, anticipate it, know its coming, and even learn to want that pain. That pain is your brain readjusting to the new reality and the new reality is you are not giving yourself a dopamine high every day, repeatedly, through exposure to artificial sexual stimulation. That mindset does not have to last forever, but it does have to last for at least 90 days. Don't try and quit casually, don't do it in your spare time. During the hard 90 quitting must be how you define yourself, it must be your occupation, your religion, your reason for living, the reason you get up in the morning, the reason you go to sleep at night. Those who most successfully quit porn are consumed by quitting, it is their passion, their reason for living. Not forever, but for the hard 90. Once you get clean you can focus on other things like...reality. Take a look at your hand. Literally, hold your hand up and look at it. Is that what you want to be married to for the rest of your life, is that what you want to come home to with good news, or bad? Is that what you want to take out to dinner and have vacations with? Your hand? If you have any chance of reconnecting with reality you have to destroy the addiction, destroy it. It will not be easy, and it won't be pretty, so plan on hard and ugly right now. This is my advice to you".

    That is, take the hard choice and stop, don't try to make it any easier, as you'll fail. You need to rewire your brain and for that, you need to stop having dopamine each time some situation (positive/negative) arises.

     
    gogibasket, Low, RightWolf and 2 others like this.
  8. Calm

    Calm Fapstronaut

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    Wow thanks for this post :)
     
    Low and galaxim like this.
  9. itsnotme

    itsnotme Fapstronaut

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    @galaxim I was actually with William's point that porn should never be an option again in your life, but in my opinion masturbation doesn't lead to porn for someone who already finished rebooting, only fantasizing about porn could lead to it . For example if someone refuses to MO even after rebooting, then there is a big chance he/she will go back to porn, there could be a lot of reasons for that, what if he/she is not in a relationship or if the person's spouse is not up for sex?. Ignoring sexuality for a long time is very unhealthy and will have negative impact on life.
    A lot of people seem to think that masturbation has the same negative effects as porn, but they are actually wrong, the biggest problem with excessive porn viewing is the rewiring of the brain to graphical images instead of real life women and that would lead to the brain to only release dopamine when viewing porn instead of life to life moments and sex. That would actually lead to both an empty life and sexuality and could also lead to sexual dysfunctions.
    MO during rebooting would slow someone's progress, but won't actually remove it completely, the dopamine released when masturbating will be so minimal considering the extreme fetishes before quieting porn that it will keep the reboot going, don't get me wrong though, I don't advice people to MO while rebooting, as MO while rebooting will actually lead back to porn or at least porn substitutes.
     
  10. galaxim

    galaxim Fapstronaut

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    I wanted to say that for many of us MO leads more sooner than later to PMO. Or if you prefer, in my particular case MO leads to PMO.

    Ignoring sexuality for a long time is very unhealthy and will have negative impact on life.
    That depends on the person. Monks all around the world take vows of celibacy and are fine with it. It's not about ignoring, on the contrary, you recognize your sexuality, but you decide to use that energy in other endevours.

    The problem is that we live in a culture where masturbation is normalized, almost expected, the same as sex. You should be having sex all the time, otherwise you're out of the norm.

    As I said before, the use of MO after a reboot is controversial and it depends on each person.

     
  11. RightWolf

    RightWolf Fapstronaut

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  12. RightWolf

    RightWolf Fapstronaut

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    Thanks for this post...this really lays it out well, and I have found this this be very true...if I am still intentionally taking little hits of the drug (dopamine from porn and the like), it makes the full detox and long-term recovery, Harder, not easier...it would be like trying to wean off of alcohol by taking little swigs every couple of days or weeks, and then wondering why I have an unexpected full blown binge after a few months...and it requires passion and focus to get free ...I especially like this part of your post:

    "
    Don't try and quit casually, don't do it in your spare time. During the hard 90 quitting must be how you define yourself, it must be your occupation, your religion, your reason for living, the reason you get up in the morning, the reason you go to sleep at night. Those who most successfully quit porn are consumed by quitting, it is their passion, their reason for living. Not forever, but for the hard 90. Once you get clean you can focus on other things like...reality."

    This is so true...at the beginning, I am finding if I live eat and breathe my quitting porn focus, it actually makes it kind of simpler in a way...not easy, really, but easier than being half-committed, not focused and then slipping over and over and feeling like a hapless victim because I underestimated the power of my compulsion....I am really taking this part of the post to heart and throwing myself in this time...thanks again for this, I have read it over and over and it has helped my greatly to realize why it is working this time!


     
  13. galaxim

    galaxim Fapstronaut

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    Thank you! But please remember that I didn't write that, those are @WilliamOneAndDone's words, "don't try to quit casually..."

     
    RightWolf likes this.
  14. DogDaysOfLife

    DogDaysOfLife Fapstronaut

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    In my experience of doing hard mode, MO is only a temporary solution. While it's certainly better than PMO, I'd recommend avoiding it if at all possible because of the chaser effect. Any orgasm will make it harder to abstain the next day. Sometimes when someone thinks they "are going to 'break' no matter what," it's actually because they don't know enough self-control methods. You have to be aware of what situations make you want to MO and actively tell your body that it's not going to happen. For me, it was late at night. I had accidentally trained my body not to sleep without MO first, but then I found this post and now I fall asleep easily and kill the urge.
     
  15. nfprogress

    nfprogress Fapstronaut

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    It is definitely a controversial topic on these forums. The general notion of how to handle it all after reboot is equally controversial. Some men simply can't separate MO from PMO in their minds (or their bodies for that matter). From a logical standpoint, sure the idea sounds great. On an individual basis, it might be a matter of deciding whether MO will eventually lead back to PMO and which of several good paths you want to take moving forward in life. For a high percentage of men, actual sex is on the table at least weekly and they simply abstain to improve the relationship. For others, they are going for a relationship and use the extra drive to that end (or maybe they are virgins and simply don't want to be). On the strict side of things, many men view fantasy + MO as negatively as porn given that they are looking to banish objectification. There is also a large subset of men on here that experience depression and quite a few negative side effects after an MO session. This last point was very shocking for me and I still can't believe how many men seem to have long term depression issues related to porn. Still others view MO as bad from a religious or spiritual perspective. For both of those groups, the MO idea here loses much if not all of its merit. When you add those up, I recognize that the pro-MO crowd may be deeply in the minority (on this forum, but not elsewhere). In short, many people here are looking at this option as the lesser of two evils and it isn't where they want to be.

    'If' the idea in general is not likely to be helpful for the majority of forum participants, it tends not to be suggested as often even if it would be a good solution for some. People don't usually advise it without knowing the person they are giving advice to pretty well.

    For the record, if someone made me try this in my teens or 20's I'd have probably opted for the MO to fantasy + no porn trick myself as a first attempt. I have learned however that I am not very much like most other forum participants when it come to addictive tendencies (or my views on MO/Porn) so I don't like to use myself as an example.
     

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