Can porn free masturbation help with rewiring?

[iwontfail67]

I recently had a one hour talk with porn addiction coach Noah Church from youtube and he really helped me talk through my issues and gave me logical information and suggestions on how I can make my reboot work for good.

My main issue with porn has been extreme escalation into genres that really disgust me. I have conditioned my sexual reward circuits to respond to things that I simply do not find attractive in the slightest and that has caused my huge amounts of anxiety and even forcing me to question my sexuality, something that I never even thought was possible for me no matter what. During my chat with him, he suggested that infrequent porn free masturbation may be a beneficial way to kickstart the rewiring process and honestly, he may be right.

I have been rebooting for 2 years with countless relapses, each one reinforcing my porn use with my sexual reward circuit. But what if I reinforced my sexual reward circuits to more natural thoughts and a more gentle touch? Currently my brain associates masturbation with a huge porn binge, death gripping sessions and extreme porn escalation, but what if I changed all that to natural, infrequent touch with natural, realistic and pleasurable thoughts? Obviously the challenge would be to avoid using or thinking about porn, the chaser effect and binging. But thats all part of it. I feel like abstaining from MO for months on end is basically just prolonging a relapse, and once relapsed, associating that sexual release with negative feelings of failure. However training the brain to MO 1/2 times a month to realistic things while completely staying away from porn will start to disassociate the link between sexual release and porn. I am yet to reboot like this but I am definitely going to try it during this reboot, which will hopefully be my last.

So please tell what you guys think of it. We aren't a cult here so please don't completely dismiss what I have said just because "this is nofap and you're promoting fapping so this is bullshit". I'm curious what everyone thinks about it. Mind you this is under extremely strict circumstances, and even considering a binge, porn use or anything linked to past habits is counterproductive.

Have a good one!

 

[pump20]

I would recommend that you don't masturbate at all because more likely you're going to have lustful thoughts in your head and going to relapse.

 

[iwontfail67]

I would recommend that you don't masturbate at all because more likely you're going to have lustful thoughts in your head and going to relapse.

Thats where the whole point of realistic fantasy and no binging comes into place. Lustful, porn influenced thoughts will make this counterproductive.

 

[Awedouble]

In theory sure, PMO vs. MO, at least you have that and that's just some peoples goal anyway - next to the counter of many you see "Porn" only sometimes. I also see you qualified it in terms of getting a kickstart so it's in view of the longer overall trajectory.

In practice, you need to be totally honest with yourself. As you already said there's still a fantasy element, and some people can O without any [conscious] thoughts at all, but for many of us P is really wired with MO in the first place, so there is actually almost no way we would MO if we just stayed away from P. Like for me I know it's easily 90% less without P and now not at all because I'm just not interested.

The truth is both PMO and MO have an element of imagination, the imagery being generated in the mind vs. on the screen and the particular scene isn't really as significant to me - the bottom line is imagining it is real and telling yourself that, otherwise you couldn't get turned on.

I'm all for the power of your mind, so my question is can you use your imagination to get turned OFF? If you're going to go there and only limit it to, basically FMO then it's basically a one way thing isn't it? Instead of being able to turn it on and off you can only turn it on.

And while willpower and mastery over our mind doesn't come over night, is it something you are interested in? I guess it does depend on peoples goals.

 

[sonic123rainbow]

I recently had a one hour talk with porn addiction coach Noah Church from youtube and he really helped me talk through my issues and gave me logical information and suggestions on how I can make my reboot work for good.

My main issue with porn has been extreme escalation into genres that really disgust me. I have conditioned my sexual reward circuits to respond to things that I simply do not find attractive in the slightest and that has caused my huge amounts of anxiety and even forcing me to question my sexuality, something that I never even thought was possible for me no matter what. During my chat with him, he suggested that infrequent porn free masturbation may be a beneficial way to kickstart the rewiring process and honestly, he may be right.

I have been rebooting for 2 years with countless relapses, each one reinforcing my porn use with my sexual reward circuit. But what if I reinforced my sexual reward circuits to more natural thoughts and a more gentle touch? Currently my brain associates masturbation with a huge porn binge, death gripping sessions and extreme porn escalation, but what if I changed all that to natural, infrequent touch with natural, realistic and pleasurable thoughts? Obviously the challenge would be to avoid using or thinking about porn, the chaser effect and binging. But thats all part of it. I feel like abstaining from MO for months on end is basically just prolonging a relapse, and once relapsed, associating that sexual release with negative feelings of failure. However training the brain to MO 1/2 times a month to realistic things while completely staying away from porn will start to disassociate the link between sexual release and porn. I am yet to reboot like this but I am definitely going to try it during this reboot, which will hopefully be my last.

So please tell what you guys think of it. We aren't a cult here so please don't completely dismiss what I have said just because "this is nofap and you're promoting fapping so this is bullshit". I'm curious what everyone thinks about it. Mind you this is under extremely strict circumstances, and even considering a binge, porn use or anything linked to past habits is counterproductive.

Have a good one!

I have seen many people try this and for some this kind of arragement has worked, but I would not to it, since it's the orgasm and pleasure part of masturbating which makes your life more miserable. For example if you try to do something boring(like im student and need to study), then masturbating which releases lot of reward things in brain will make that studying effort even more boring.
So masturbating is like negative e(Euler's number) for enjoying in life. Also having orgasm is also discouraged, because you lose lot of energy which you could also use to study. But these are only my viewpoints please don't dismiss them like everybody else.

 

[sonic123rainbow]

In theory sure, PMO vs. MO, at least you have that and that's just some peoples goal anyway - next to the counter of many you see "Porn" only sometimes. I also see you qualified it in terms of getting a kickstart so it's in view of the longer overall trajectory.

In practice, you need to be totally honest with yourself. As you already said there's still a fantasy element, and some people can O without any [conscious] thoughts at all, but for many of us P is really wired with MO in the first place, so there is actually almost no way we would MO if we just stayed away from P. Like for me I know it's easily 90% less without P and now not at all because I'm just not interested.

The truth is both PMO and MO have an element of imagination, the imagery being generated in the mind vs. on the screen and the particular scene isn't really as significant to me - the bottom line is imagining it is real and telling yourself that, otherwise you couldn't get turned on.

I'm all for the power of your mind, so my question is can you use your imagination to get turned OFF? If you're going to go there and only limit it to, basically FMO then it's basically a one way thing isn't it? Instead of being able to turn it on and off you can only turn it on.

And while willpower and mastery over our mind doesn't come over night, is it something you are interested in? I guess it does depend on peoples goals.

Recalling porn memories is really good strategy on remembering what you have been watching. I use recalling everyday when I study one of best methods.

 

[iwontfail67]

In theory sure, PMO vs. MO, at least you have that and that's just some peoples goal anyway - next to the counter of many you see "Porn" only sometimes. I also see you qualified it in terms of getting a kickstart so it's in view of the longer overall trajectory.

In practice, you need to be totally honest with yourself. As you already said there's still a fantasy element, and some people can O without any [conscious] thoughts at all, but for many of us P is really wired with MO in the first place, so there is actually almost no way we would MO if we just stayed away from P. Like for me I know it's easily 90% less without P and now not at all because I'm just not interested.

The truth is both PMO and MO have an element of imagination, the imagery being generated in the mind vs. on the screen and the particular scene isn't really as significant to me - the bottom line is imagining it is real and telling yourself that, otherwise you couldn't get turned on.

I'm all for the power of your mind, so my question is can you use your imagination to get turned OFF? If you're going to go there and only limit it to, basically FMO then it's basically a one way thing isn't it? Instead of being able to turn it on and off you can only turn it on.

And while willpower and mastery over our mind doesn't come over night, is it something you are interested in? I guess it does depend on peoples goals.

Personally I could probably O without any fantasy and I have been thinking about trying it like that for the first few times before adding realistic fantasy. Keep in mind this entire theory becomes counterproductive if even the slightest pornographic scenario or spike gets involved. Could you please explain the imagination getting turned off part a bit more? I don't quite understand what you mean by this.

 

[Awedouble]

Recalling porn memories is really good strategy on remembering what you have been watching. I use recalling everyday when I study one of best methods.

And again by the same token, the flip side it would be recalling relapse memories. There are times where that can be a prevention, but people are perhaps too emotionally fragile because there's so much shame around it that they just will not go there. So whether it's the capacity for imagination or memory it can be a double edged sword.

 

[iwontfail67]

I have seen many people try this and for some this kind of arragement has worked, but I would not to it, since it's the orgasm and pleasure part of masturbating which makes your life more miserable. For example if you try to do something boring(like im student and need to study), then masturbating which releases lot of reward things in brain will make that studying effort even more boring.
So masturbating is like negative e(Euler's number) for enjoying in life. Also having orgasm is also discouraged, because you lose lot of energy which you could also use to study. But these are only my viewpoints please don't dismiss them like everybody else.

For me personally, I am trying to get my baseline and innate attractions back to 100%. Unfortunately due to years of conditioning, my sexual reward circuits respond to extreme pornographic scenarios. The idea for me is to eliminate these scenarios by refusing to reinforce them, and by reinforcing natural scenarios with a natural form of stimulation that isnt an addictive style death grip. If this was done properly, wouldnt this basically make it easier to remove porn from my life, while teaching my body that natural stimulation with natural fantasy is normal, unlike porn.

 

[Awedouble]

Personally I could probably O without any fantasy and I have been thinking about trying it like that for the first few times before adding realistic fantasy. Keep in mind this entire theory becomes counterproductive if even the slightest pornographic scenario or spike gets involved. Could you please explain the imagination getting turned off part a bit more? I don't quite understand what you mean by this.

It's going to be more what I said in reply to sonic123rainbow above, after all it's much harder to stop thoughts than to change tracks - though that's kind of what you're doing when you're meditating. Of course you also don't have to stop the thoughts, but just let it be there without acting on it.

On the first point about changing tracks, it could even be said there are multiple tracks. Porn is simplistic and really when we look at it with a clear head, unrealistic. Suppose you meet this great girl, and you think you have a chance but then she shares something personal - lets say she was abused as a kid. With people who are smart enough, maybe has a one track mind they might see that as an opening and a vulnerability to exploit, and know enough to make sex happen, but if you have some emotional and psychological awareness and want the possibility of a relationship you would have another track and know this is not the time, even if you can coerce her to make it happen. In the first possibility she may never see you again, but in the other she may appreciate you listening and having some compassion and that could start building a foundation for a real relationship.

So the other direction, which also works is MORE thought - but not in terms of fantasy, rather the details of reality and thinking through all angles. This applies in a solitary situation of just not wanting to act out too. We probably all have enough experience to know how lousy we would feel if we PMO'd, and doing certain things increase the chances of having an urge. But I don't even think it's only before or after, again you have a choice in how to handle things. You may find yourself recognizing okay, I can just MO, but I'm still going to be a bit tired, and I have an early day at work tomorrow and that's just not going to work well, it's going to make my day that much worse even if it's just energy level and maybe a bit depressed and though I am doing this no fantasy or realistic fantasy MO thing this is just not the time, my urges are not that strong and I can just not do it right now. Big picture, basically.

 

[iwontfail67]

It's going to be more what I said in reply to sonic123rainbow above, after all it's much harder to stop thoughts than to change tracks - though that's kind of what you're doing when you're meditating. Of course you also don't have to stop the thoughts, but just let it be there without acting on it.

On the first point about changing tracks, it could even be said there are multiple tracks. Porn is simplistic and really when we look at it with a clear head, unrealistic. Suppose you meet this great girl, and you think you have a chance but then she shares something personal - lets say she was abused as a kid. With people who are smart enough, maybe has a one track mind they might see that as an opening and a vulnerability to exploit, and know enough to make sex happen, but if you have some emotional and psychological awareness and want the possibility of a relationship you would have another track and know this is not the time, even if you can coerce her to make it happen. In the first possibility she may never see you again, but in the other she may appreciate you listening and having some compassion and that could start building a foundation for a real relationship.

So the other direction, which also works is MORE thought - but not in terms of fantasy, rather the details of reality and thinking through all angles. This applies in a solitary situation of just not wanting to act out too. We probably all have enough experience to know how lousy we would feel if we PMO'd, and doing certain things increase the chances of having an urge. But I don't even think it's only before or after, again you have a choice in how to handle things. You may find yourself recognizing okay, I can just MO, but I'm still going to be a bit tired, and I have an early day at work tomorrow and that's just not going to work well, it's going to make my day that much worse even if it's just energy level and maybe a bit depressed and though I am doing this no fantasy or realistic fantasy MO thing this is just not the time, my urges are not that strong and I can just not do it right now. Big picture, basically.

Something I probably didnt mention is that this style of MO should not be forced. It should begin to happen naturally. For me personally, the effects of MO have only made me feel bad because I have done the to hugely extreme pornogrpahic material. Whenever I have done a gentle, MO session that was for example looking at instagram models, I don't really feel bad at all, and im not even suggesting using images for this style of MO that im about to try. But whenever it is to extreme stuff or after a huge death grip binge I feel like crap. I feel like the point for me is to train my brain to respond to the natural style of sexual stimulation ONCE every 2-3 weeks to retrain my brain on how this type of stuff should feel,so when it comes to having sex again, my sensitivity is used to natural and gentle touch. I was recommended to MO once a week but i feel like thats a bit too much. My ultimate goal is to disassociate the extreme conditioned porn stuff with masturbation and I have a feeling that if I am strict about this and do it in the most natural way possible, It will work.

 

[sonic123rainbow]

Something I probably didnt mention is that this style of MO should not be forced. It should begin to happen naturally. For me personally, the effects of MO have only made me feel bad because I have done the to hugely extreme pornogrpahic material. Whenever I have done a gentle, MO session that was for example looking at instagram models, I don't really feel bad at all, and im not even suggesting using images for this style of MO that im about to try. But whenever it is to extreme stuff or after a huge death grip binge I feel like crap. I feel like the point for me is to train my brain to respond to the natural style of sexual stimulation ONCE every 2-3 weeks to retrain my brain on how this type of stuff should feel,so when it comes to having sex again, my sensitivity is used to natural and gentle touch. I was recommended to MO once a week but i feel like thats a bit too much. My ultimate goal is to disassociate the extreme conditioned porn stuff with masturbation and I have a feeling that if I am strict about this and do it in the most natural way possible, It will work.

I have question for you @iwontfail67 have you ever been in Nofap hard mode(easy mode) for 20 days?
If not I would suggest this quota from Aristoteles: The only thing I know is nothing(And that man knew lot).
Now im not saying that hard mode is right way, but if some asian monks can do it for whole life and life up to 100 years old,
so how can you not try to do the same? I don't think you can override memories, you cannot convince yourself into believing that 1 + 1 = 11 after you have learned that 1 + 1 = 2. Does not work this way I think, but again I want to hear your argument about this matter.

 

[iwontfail67]

I have question for you @iwontfail67 have you ever been in Nofap hard mode(easy mode) for 20 days?
If not I would suggest this quota from Aristoteles: The only thing I know is nothing(And that man knew lot).
Now im not saying that hard mode is right way, but if some asian monks can do it for whole life and life up to 100 years old,
so how can you not try to do the same? I don't think you can override memories, you cannot convince yourself into believing that 1 + 1 = 11 after you have learned that 1 + 1 = 2. Does not work this way I think, but again I want to hear your argument about this matter.

I've had a 73 and 67 day streak before of no PMO and it worked amazingly but unfortunately I had a habit of replaying extreme porn scenarios in my head every day to make sure that I still found them disgusting. I had HOCD for a good while if you know what that is. But i eventually realised that i was experiencing anxiety fixations instead of attractions. But I do believe that you can definitely override something that isn't actually part of you in the first place. I grew up knowing 1 + 1 = 2, and over the years of my porn addiction my brain started trying to condition me into believing that 1 + 1 = 11, and now I am working rewire my brain back to its natural state. And I don't know if it will work or not but I don't see why it would not work, because if having an orgasm to the most minimal touch possible is considered bad, then shouldnt any form of sexual contact be considered bad? When in reality that is the goal here. My goal is to remove the link between MO and porn/deathgrip/extreme escalation, and i feel like naturally wiring myself to gentle stimulation once every couple weeks will do a lot more good than bad if none it is influenced by porn or porn scenarios.

 

[sonic123rainbow]

Well now we are in the same page.
I would suggest this book it has chapters about how to "control your thoughts"
https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/6-years-clean-rebooting-as-the-best-remedy.135983/

but there's also this book called you are not your brain which may also help you.
http://audiobookbay.net/audio-books/you-are-not-your-brain-dr-jeffrey-m-schwartz/
You need utorrent to download it, but it's great way to destroy any addiction you have.

I really do hope best for you! You are an amazing person @iwontfail67 and you deserve the best!
Since how many people are even trying to work out these problems which you are trying to fix, not many unfortunately.

 

[iwontfail67]

Well now we are in the same page.
I would suggest this book it has chapters about how to "control your thoughts"
https://forum.nofap.com/index.php?threads/6-years-clean-rebooting-as-the-best-remedy.135983/

but there's also this book called you are not your brain which may also help you.
http://audiobookbay.net/audio-books/you-are-not-your-brain-dr-jeffrey-m-schwartz/
You need utorrent to download it, but it's great way to destroy any addiction you have.

I really do hope best for you! You are an amazing person @iwontfail67 and you deserve the best!
Since how many people are even trying to work out these problems which you are trying to fix, not many unfortunately.

I will check them out. Thanks, I am really thankful I found out the dangers of what I was doing to myself before it was too late. By the end of the year if i stay vigilant and truely avoid porn for good, I am expecting all of this stuff to be a distant memory. Good luck to you.

 

[LoveIsAllWeNeed]

I recently had a one hour talk with porn addiction coach Noah Church from youtube and he really helped me talk through my issues and gave me logical information and suggestions on how I can make my reboot work for good.

My main issue with porn has been extreme escalation into genres that really disgust me. I have conditioned my sexual reward circuits to respond to things that I simply do not find attractive in the slightest and that has caused my huge amounts of anxiety and even forcing me to question my sexuality, something that I never even thought was possible for me no matter what. During my chat with him, he suggested that infrequent porn free masturbation may be a beneficial way to kickstart the rewiring process and honestly, he may be right.

I have been rebooting for 2 years with countless relapses, each one reinforcing my porn use with my sexual reward circuit. But what if I reinforced my sexual reward circuits to more natural thoughts and a more gentle touch? Currently my brain associates masturbation with a huge porn binge, death gripping sessions and extreme porn escalation, but what if I changed all that to natural, infrequent touch with natural, realistic and pleasurable thoughts? Obviously the challenge would be to avoid using or thinking about porn, the chaser effect and binging. But thats all part of it. I feel like abstaining from MO for months on end is basically just prolonging a relapse, and once relapsed, associating that sexual release with negative feelings of failure. However training the brain to MO 1/2 times a month to realistic things while completely staying away from porn will start to disassociate the link between sexual release and porn. I am yet to reboot like this but I am definitely going to try it during this reboot, which will hopefully be my last.

So please tell what you guys think of it. We aren't a cult here so please don't completely dismiss what I have said just because "this is nofap and you're promoting fapping so this is bullshit". I'm curious what everyone thinks about it. Mind you this is under extremely strict circumstances, and even considering a binge, porn use or anything linked to past habits is counterproductive.

Have a good one!

Great that you have a PA coach and are working with him. You apparently have been on hard mode for some time and if you want to try a different approach with the assistance I'd say GO FOR IT.

I did wonder about one sentence in which you described yourself in hard mode 'replaying extreme porn scenarios in your mind' to make sure you'd still found them disgusting. This seems to me a dangerous strategy since you still keep your mind focussed on porn. Neurons that fire together, wire together is a well know saying. So, even if you replay scenes for the right reasons it still reinforces your old pathways.

I have tried MO for 1,5 years going with the Tantric/Taoistic way of dealing with sexuality and masturbation. It didn't work for me since I kept my mind addicted to thinking about M. Now that I stopped PMO completely and realizing I need to focus my mind on what I really want in life (work, meaningful and loving relationships, awareness), it's so much easier.

So, I really hope you're successful with your MO strategy. If you focus on the true goals you want to achieve in life you may realize your dream and stop your addiction at the same time.
On the other hand if, like me, you cannot stop yourself from being addicted to sexual thinking, I'd suggest you go back in hard mode and completely get clean in your mind. This strategy utterly changed my life!

 

[iwontfail67]

Great that you have a PA coach and are working with him. You apparently have been on hard mode for some time and if you want to try a different approach with the assistance I'd say GO FOR IT.

I did wonder about one sentence in which you described yourself in hard mode 'replaying extreme porn scenarios in your mind' to make sure you'd still found them disgusting. This seems to me a dangerous strategy since you still keep your mind focussed on porn. Neurons that fire together, wire together is a well know saying. So, even if you replay scenes for the right reasons it still reinforces your old pathways.

I have tried MO for 1,5 years going with the Tantric/Taoistic way of dealing with sexuality and masturbation. It didn't work for me since I kept my mind addicted to thinking about M. Now that I stopped PMO completely and realizing I need to focus my mind on what I really want in life (work, meaningful and loving relationships, awareness), it's so much easier.

So, I really hope you're successful with your MO strategy. If you focus on the true goals you want to achieve in life you may realize your dream and stop your addiction at the same time.
On the other hand if, like me, you cannot stop yourself from being addicted to sexual thinking, I'd suggest you go back in hard mode and completely get clean in your mind. This strategy utterly changed my life!

Exactly the way i failed my most recent streak. I should not have been thinking about those extreme scenarios but I was dealing with hocd at the time and was doing that as a reassurance tactic. Obviously it did not work and it ended tragically with a relapse/binge. Thats why now I am hoping to rewire my sexual reward circuits to natural stimulation and natural fantasy like a date/anything with thoughts about real women. Hopefully that will remove the link of MO with extreme porn/death grip/ escalation/ depression/all that shit. I recently read an article on YBOP which said "The more you scratch, The more you itch", and that really made sense of why i should never reply porn scenarios in my head, even if its to make sure i still hate them, because that makes them more
"important" inside your brain and they don't go away no matter how much reboot. Hopefully now I am much more knowledgable and I can finally eliminate these extreme scenarios for good. This will be very infrequent MO, under extremely strict rules. Otherwise the entire process is counterproductive.