Need some friends to talk to about nofap.

The days that break you are the days that make you.

Ask yourself several questions:
Why do I do this?
When do I usually relapse? Fill that time with something. Consider purposefully written softcore from you as relapse. That will stop you from writing it.
When the urge hits, take action. There are 3 good tips: A. anything connected with exercise or being on a public place
B. cold shower
C. meditation
When you are at work or school, it´s harder, but there are people around you... imagine you are not alone at places where you relapse.
Nobody is perfect and there are weaknesses. Try to figure yours out and share it with this forum. Mine are the wet dreams which occure usually after 10 days. Hope this helps, it´s my first advice to someone here

 

Hi FitBunny and welcome.
I'm new here but had a chance to see it's a great place to get some support.

I won't pretend I have all the answers because I'm only 9days or so into my abstinence and previously I did maybe a month or so and then fell back into it.

My first piece of advice though is remove all temptation as best you can:
- Delete everything you have saved. Not just files but bookmarks and browser history too!
- Put adult filters on your PC and phone! I know you can remove them again but it puts an opportunity in front of you to stop and think one last time about what you're about to do and hopefully stop yourself.
You could even set the password to take off the adult filter by randomly mashing the keyboard so you don't know what it is..
- Don't test and tempt yourself!! So no softcore or underwaer catalogues or steamy films that could get your pulse rate going.
I recently deleted all of my stored files and it was hellish difficult to resist "one last look". This was over a week into my streak and would have been much easier if I just did it right at the start and didn't have to resist the urge.
Set yourself up to win by getting all this anti PM admin out of the way to begin with.
- Try not to attach too much importance to the number of days you've been going. Presumably your end goal is to give up entirely so while each day is a further achievement, in the end the number becomes kinda meaningless (if the number was important we'd count in hours or minutes to get the high score!)

- try not to be alone. Sounds silly but.. you ain't gonna jerk off in company or at a family event.

- fill your time with better pursuits: gym, reading, friends and family, meditation, painting.. whatever. Just stay busy and soon you'll be enjoying all the things you're achieving in the time you would previously have wasted on porn.

At the end of the day a lot of it is will power that you think you don't have but probably do.
Start a journal on the appropriate section for your age on the forum and talk to us all regularly and you'll get there.

Good luck and go for it friend

 

Traveling from school back home can be a great opportunity to push the urge away. If it is not more than 5 miles or kilometers, walk on foot. At the end, you will be so exhausted that relapsing will be the last thing to think about. I am of the opinion that for the first 2-3 weeks, a person has to do something that kills the urge (cold shower, exercise, meditation). After some time, they will do it automatically and the urge will be weaker, the first several weeks are tough though, I am going through them right now too

 

Well don't beat yourself up over any of it anyway. Positive attitude and as my friend above says, exercise, distractions and tiring yourself out work wonders.

 

Hi. Welcome to forum!

Make sure you create a personal journal thread in Reboot Logs section and blog there on a regular basis. As well as just generally be active participant in various forum discussions. I recommend this to everybody new here because it's the major thing that helped me when I was first starting. Just lurking on forums, reading and learning is great. But it usually is so much more powerful to engage. It helps to keep us motivated and accountable when we are active part of community. And keeps this in front of our minds so we don't forget about importance of it and slip away in our old habits. Sharing is also therapeutic. This is a major reason why AA meetings work so good. But that was developed before internet era. These days we can get most of the same benefits online through communities like this. So don't underestimate the power of active participation.

I would also like to suggest you to look into mindfulness meditation. It has helped me personally tremendously to learn how to deal with urges and triggers. It takes a while to get good at it and notice results, so you need to be consistent with it, but once you do it's very powerful. It has been used by sages for thousands of years to deal with various issues of the mind. And in recent decades the science is also catching up to what ancient sages have know for centuries. Meditation these days are widely used as very effective tool by psychologists for treating addiction and by neurologists for supporting recovery of the brain after physical injury. Plus it is generally a great exercise for the brain the same way as jogging is great exercise for the body.

You gotta make sure it is proper mindfulness meditation though. "Mindfulness" meditation where we just focus on breath is more like a concentration meditation instead. It works too but differently and not as powerfully in my experience. Real mindfulness meditation however trains you to accept your urges by understanding the nature of them by observing them, not just suppress them by concentrating on something else instead. It makes you comfortable with them. And once you accept and become comfortable with them there is no need to get rid of them, so there is no need to PMO. Only reason why we PMO is because that urge, that itch in our crotch is uncomfortable, we wanna get rid of it. And then after PMO we have our release. Or we simply want pleasure. And inability to have that pleasure makes us uncomfortable. But if we accept that we can not have pleasure then resistance is gone and there is no reason to PMO.

Acceptance and mindfulness is the key. Check out this Ted talk on acceptance and mindfulness practice, it gives a good idea of what's it's about when it comes to philosophy. The mindfulness practice as described by psychologist in a the video can be used by itself but ideally should be used as supplementation to your daily sitting meditation. Sitting meditation I personally practice and recommend to people is as explained by meditation expert in this YouTube playlist. If you don't like the monk or want other method there is this awesome smartphone app called Headspace for guided meditations.

Wish you lot's of strength and success in your reboot journey!