The Guide to Nofap Relapse | Physiological and Psychological
After reading this article you will never relapse in nofap.
Why is that?
When we know why we relapse, we can take action against it. Right?
First thing first,
What is nofap relapse?
Nofap relapse is breaking your nofap streak by going into PMO (Porn, Masturbation, and orgasm).
Watching only porn is not a relapse, but it will eventually lead you to relapse, and no, wet dreams during nofap is also not a relapse either.
As long as you are not masturbating by watching porn, it is not a relapse.
What about only masturbation? Isn’t that a relapse?
Before answering this, I want to ask, why you are doing nofap.
Is it because you want to improve your life and experience all the amazing benefits that you read online or do you just want to get rid of porn addiction?
If your goal is the former one, then it means, you have to retain your semen.
All these benefits come from semen retention and if you masturbate, perhaps you will get over porn addiction, but you may not experience all those benefits.
So, coming back to our topic, why do we relapse during nofap?
Is it because our willpower is low, or is it because of the urges?
Let’s understand both physiological and psychological reasons.
*If you are into Nofap, these articles might interest you:
Physiological reasons for nofap relapse.
The physiological reasons for nofap relapse come with the understanding of why we get addicted to porn in the first place.
We get addicted to porn because of the vast release of happy chemicals in our brains.
These happy chemicals are dopamine, oxytocin, endorphin, and serotonin which are also known as neurotransmitters.
There are three factors for which these releases of chemicals vary in our brains.
1. Immediate gratification and close to survival.
We like immediate gratification rather than doing something that may or may not result in the distant future.
Whenever we do something, that is close to survival and the results are immediate, our brain releases happy chemicals.
These happy chemicals make us happy and want us to repeat the same behavior over and over again.
The closer the activity to survival, the release of happy chemicals will be more than any other activity.
The activities include sex, love, food, drugs, watching videos, or surfing the internet.
Now, you may think, how surfing the internet is close to survival?
Surfing videos or social media may not be directly close to survival, but it gives us instant gratification.
The tricky part here is, our brain doesn’t know the nature of an activity is bad or good, it only knows this activity releases happy chemicals and marks it as important.
2. Scarcity
The other important factor that boosts chemical release in our brain is scarcity.
There will be a higher amount of chemical release if the nature of the activity is scarce.
In ancient times, our ancestors risk their lives for food.
Finding food in the dangerous forest was more rewarding than the present.
Now, food is everywhere but still, if you donate a meal to a beggar he will be happier than you.
Scarcity is the reason that we get overwhelmed when we achieve something after a lot of hard work.
If you just get a high-paying job every day, you will not be as thrilled if you get it by an interview process where a thousand other participants participate.
You will not be thrilled to earn 1000 USD every month if you already have an abundance of money.
Now, you may also question, but porn is not scarce? There is an abundance of it.
There is more than abundance.
3. Novelty
This brings us to our next factor of high dopamine release.
It is called novelty.
An experiment was done with rats where a male rat was placed into an enclosed large box with four or five female rats.
He immediately began to mate with all the female rats repeatedly until he eventually became exhausted.
He didn’t respond despite their nudging and licking but when a new female rat was placed in the cage, the male rat became alert again and started mating with the new rat.
This is called the Coolidge effect.
Try to masturbate on the same porn every day.
Soon, you will lose interest in that porn.
Today’s high-speed internet provides us an overwhelming amount of porn at the tip of our fingers.
This gives us an unlimited amount of novelty porn for which some people are so addicted to porn that they masturbate not once or twice a day, but more than four times.
So, now the real question is why do we relapse?
When we repeat the same behavior every day we create neural pathways for that particular activity in our brain.
Through these pathways, the neurotransmitter travels and makes us feel all these emotions.
The stronger the pathways, the more habitual we will become for that activity. This is neuroplasticity.
Our brain changes physically when we do something new or repeat a behavior.
The opposite is also true.
When we do not repeat the behavior, the neural pathways start to shrink.
It becomes dormant.
One thing to remember is that, once a pathway is created, it never completely removes from our brain.
It just shrinks and if we again do the same behavior after a long time, the shrunk pathways will grow again.
When we start nofap, these pathways stop receiving the flow of chemicals.
Moreover, the brain thinks there is something wrong with you for which you are not receiving the chemicals anymore.
For the brain, it is important to our survival and because of this, it creates urges.
Here, the brain refers to the unconscious brain.
The conscious brain knows what is good and what is bad.
When there are high urges, and also because of habit we relapse in nofap.
If you are serious about nofap then you should read these three books.
This is how I began my journey and it helped me the most.
When we know what we are doing and what is going on in our brain during nofap, it helps us more to continue in our path.
How to control your urges and break the habit?
The only mantra you should keep in mind during these urges is that this is temporary.
The urge to watch porn and masturbate will go away eventually.
As mentioned above, the more you remain absent from doing something, the more neural pathways will shrink, and eventually, there will come a time when you will say;
why the heck I was watching these useless digital naked girls in the first place.
It is so disgusting.
This kind of thought takes time.
It is good to start with a 90 days nofap challenge or 21 days nofap challenge, but the real challenge is continuing this your whole life.
Don’t worry, I am saying about PMO, not sex.
After a year and a half, nofap becomes a way of life.
If you are addicted to porn for a long time, like 10 to 15 years, trust me, it is going to take more than a year to rewire your brain completely.
So, what are the activities you can do that will help you on this nofap journey?
1. Productivity:
An idle mind is the devil’s workshop & makes a person lazy, Mahatma Gandhi said that.
When you get bored, your brain looks for activities that can give some kind of happiness, quick gratification.
Porn is the quickest and most gratifying activity you can think of because it is easy and within the reach of your fingertip.
Fill your mind with productive thoughts.
Become busy today, make plans, create routines to achieve your dreams, and don’t just sit there procrastinating.
2. Knowledge:
Increase your knowledge of self-improvement, on every topic you are interested in.
Focus on learning rather than earning because success is something you attract by developing your character, not by focusing on the result.
Increase your knowledge, apply it without caring for the result.
Nofap is like fertile land, the only thing you need to do now is planting the seeds in this land, the trees will grow quicker than you can imagine.
3. Physical exercise and meditation:
Don’t skip it. I repeat, don’t skip mediation nor physical workout.
I am not saying you should go to the gym and workout like a maniac.
I am saying, in the morning when you wake up, start your day with meditation and physical workouts.
There are unlimited benefits of these two and I don’t need to mention them here.
If you are interested, you can just type in google. It is that simple.
You can do yoga too.
Take care of your body, this is the ultimate wealth you can have. Don’t neglect it.
4. The fourth is obvious. Keep reading articles from basicideaz.com. hehe… and subscribe to the weekly newsletter.
Psychological reasons for nofap relapse
To understand this in detail let’s first understand Self-concept.
Self-concept:
You have a self-concept of yourself that you are aware of or unaware of.
Life events shape this concept in your subconscious mind.
Perhaps public speaking is hard for you, because you have never done it before, or perhaps you did and it didn’t go very well.
Maybe you have grown up in a strict environment and because of this, there is low confidence in you that you are worthy of anything in life.
You tried a lot of things, like starting a weight loss diet, joining a gym, starting a personal business but you failed in everything, and the self-concept that you are not good at anything strengthens.
If you have a healthy self-concept, your growth in life is unstoppable.
If you have an unhealthy self-concept, no matter how much you progress in life through your hard work and skill, eventually you will fall.
This is the reason why so many people cannot handle success, why so many people cannot be successful despite trying so many times.
I have talked about self-concept in my last article in nofap:
Nofap timeline-The complete nofap stages from Day 1 to Day 365
If your subconscious mind believes that you are unworthy of success then it will do all kinds of tricks and activities to protect its belief.
The psychological problem of nofap starts from the third month of nofap, according to my experience.
For you, the experience will be different.
You will feel stress, worried about your career, your life, and all the other problems that already existed before.
There will be days when the urges will be under control but you still watch porn promising yourself that, you will not jerk off.
This eventually leads to nofap relapse sooner or later.
There will be days, when you feel like you have worked too much, let’s just watch porn for some relaxation because you know you are not going to relapse.
Moreover, there will be days, when you cannot control your anger, sadness, pressure and you may feel like nothing is working.
This nofap is not as good as you expected.
But, in these times, you should only remember, these are just games played by your subconscious brain to protect its belief.
The only thing you can do in these situations is to keep going through it over and over again until your subconscious brain accepts that watching porn is actually not that important and you are worthy of success.
Nofap is difficult because according to some research porn addiction is stronger than drug addiction.
If you can go through this journey, it not only helps you with all the amazing benefits that you read online but also boosts your self-esteem.
You can read the psychological benefits of nofap here:
The psychological benefits of Nofap.
Conclusion
I have concluded both physiological and psychological reasons for nofap relapse.
People who are successful in nofap are not because they have strong willpower, your willpower will increase automatically, but the real reason is why they have started it in the first place.
For some, it is because of religion, for some because of unsatisfied sex life, and for some it is because of their depressing and unsuccessful life.
What is your reason and how passionate are you about your goals?
Best
Ahbab
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