Deconstruct_themind
Fapstronaut
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.
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.
