Seasoned no-faper here, advice for newbies

ichdiegross12345

Fapstronaut
I know title makes me sound way more important or competent than I actually am (just saying haha) but I have been a member of this website since a few years now and though I haven't ever completed the 90-day challenge (I'm still trying to, everyday) I think I might have some useful, practical tips for newbies.

I see a lot of posts here that encourage people to not give up. The posts are full of beautiful rhetoric and kind words but eventually in my own personal experience, I have found that keeping my fickle mind focused is tough with mere rhetoric. Here are some tips backed up with neuroscience that might help you-

1.) Your brain has been hardwired into acting a certain way when it receives a certain stimuli. For example, you see someone hot on Instagram-your brain has been trained to seek reward when this happens-it overrides itself and forces you to do what it has been doing since a long time-more often than not it gets it way. Or here's another example- You're studying hard for your exams. You get super nervous and anxious about them and instead of working hard, the anxiety that you haven't found a healthy outlet for clouds your brain and if you have had a habit of going to PMO when this happens-your brain again overrides itself and you give in.

2.) Now that you understand how brain circuitry and neurolinguistic programming works (on a very 'dummy' level) and so you can now try to figure out how to beat this. You have to break these patterns in your brain that associate something with PMO for a long enough time (eg. 90 days) to give it time to develop new pathways so you can clinically free yourself of this addiction.

3.) Try not to beat yourself up for failing. This part is incredibly important- I can't stress this enough. You are fighting against evolution- the strongest urge any living being has on this planet. You are fighting your brain-not many succeed and its OK to fail thousands of time. Beating yourself up for this will only damage your progress because you'll hate yourself. A better solution might be to-

4.) Understand that your mind isn't 'you'. It is merely a part of you. It is a super advanced machine (my fellow computer scientists might understand me better) and you have to reprogram its algorithms to beat it. This is called mindfulness. Look it up- it is important to look at your actions as distinct from yourself to be more mentally stable and have stronger control over them.

5.) From day one, you need to start altering these neural pathways. Whenever you get an urge- breathe in and breathe out. Try to think of yourself as distinct from your feelings. Reward yourself with something- eg. pound cake (random example I know, but that's what I've been eating lol). That way your mind will start thinking that instead of PMO, it can get a different kind of reward. Slowly replace these replacements with healthier activities (you don't want to develop new addictions to counter old ones) and repeat.

6.) Find a regular outlet for your emotions where you can express how you felt, how your progress was and what helped you. Doing so on Nofap would not only help yourself but also all these resilient Fapstronauts I see around me and make no mistake- the more you'll help others, the more you'll get better yourself.

That's all for now. It's been three days since I hit my rock-bottom after 7 months and my urges are crazy high. The withdrawal symptoms like low energy, depression, brain fog, etc are all too real for me right now. On top of that I need to cook, work out, do coding challenges and look for jobs and deal with rejection every single day like a mindless robot which makes this even more challenging. But I know from my past that nofap helps me transcend into a strong human being overall and nofap is one of the biggest assets people have in their lives. I am currently countering my urges by working out, eating a small amount of pound cake every time a craving is too strong, keeping myself busy and listening to music. I'll keep posting in days to come. When I grow, I want everyone to grow with me together. Let's all get this 90-day bread guys! Stay Strong!
 
Epic post, this should go into like a set of NoFap commandments! DM me about your job search, I may be able to help. I am an engineer at one of the big tech companies and have some contacts at others.
 
Epic post, this should go into like a set of NoFap commandments! DM me about your job search, I may be able to help. I am an engineer at one of the big tech companies and have some contacts at others.
Thank you for the kind works! And that sounds great, I’ll DM you! Who knew you could network on Nofap too
 
Thanks for your suggestions and please make sure top apply them to yourself - especially not to beat yourself up too much. A very wise person recently said to me that recovery from porn/sex addition is potentially so much more powerful than other addictions such as alcoholism, other drugs and consumerism - because sexual energy is CREATIVE ENERGY, and if you use that energy wisely, you can use it to create things (not just babies, but anything associated with creativity). I found that quite inspiring.
 
Exactly. That is very true. I watched a ted talk one time that said porn is almost as powerful as cocaine for the human brain-and that is outrageous! It's because that energy-like you said- was supposed to be used to harness our potential and actually meet new people whereas nowadays its all being wasted on a bunch of pixels on a screen. We need to start taking care of ourselves and always strive to be our best selves. I see you are already 8 days in, congrats-the first and second week are always the hardest. Keep going brother, you got this!
 
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