How to Quit Porn Addiction | Nofap Strategy
I have tried so many nofap strategies, I have read so many books and watched videos on how to quit porn addiction for good, but not a single nofap strategy worked.
My willpower is low and every time I succeed in nofap for a few days or for a few months, I relapse for some reason.
I feel like I am a loser and I can’t do anything in life.
I feel hopeless and I go to bed crying every night. The inability to control my urges and frustrates me, the inability to quit porn addiction for good creates self-loathing and I don’t know what to do now.
I feel depressed and when I read all the successful people in nofap forums, I feel hopeful for some time, but soon it disappears.
Why did God make me like this? Why do I have no self-control?
So, just reading a single article will not stop my porn addiction forever.
There is no nofap strategy that works for me.
***
But, there is.
I know how you feel right now, trust me on this. I was in your spot for a long time and I want you to read this article with an open mind for only 10 minutes.
I am not asking much.
This will change your thinking because this article is not about how you got addicted to pornography or what is going on in your brain.
This article is only about the methods/ strategies that will help you to quit pornography addiction forever.
*A huge thanks to Brian Brandenburg for the book, Power Over Pornography which truly changed my life. If you are really serious about nofap, you should go for this book.
Again, the ideas and concepts in this article are based on this book.
Let’s start…
1. A small commitment from you.
Nothing comes for free.
You have to pay a small price to quit your porn addiction.
No, it’s not in monetary terms but in the form of a small commitment.
A commitment to do the necessary steps that will be asked in this article.
Newton’s first law suggests that an object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it.
To quit porn addiction, you have to put a small force from your side and that is a small commitment.
This article’s tasks should be completed in a six weeks period, but you can read everything in one go and come later to do the activities.
One important request to you is that, don’t just read the points and skip the paragraphs, you will understand nothing and there will be no benefits. Read everything…
So, if you are committed to complete the steps then move forward to the next point.
2. Clarifying the cloudiness of consequences
We know the consequences of viewing pornography.
The above sentence is party correct: The complete correct sentence is, we think we know the consequences of viewing pornography.
There is this cloudiness that is obscuring the real consequences of having a pornography addiction.
In the words of Brian Brandenburg, “Whenever we choose an action, we choose the consequences of that action whether we want to or not.”
We may think that the consequences of viewing pornography are career failure, or love failure, or perhaps low self-confidence.
On the other hand, the consequences of not viewing pornography are becoming successful, high self-confidence, or a better relationship.
But, what is success according to you? What picture can you paint when the word success comes to your mind.
What do you mean by love failure? How does it feel to lose the person you love? Can you visualize it?
Our goal in this nofap strategy is to focus on the positive consequences of not view pornography.
When you are reaching for the positive goals and consequences, you will be motivated and you will take action to reach that goal.
The first activity for this nofap strategy is to clarify the negative and positive consequences of pornography addiction.
The consequences should be such that you can visualize it clearly in your head.
Action Plan
1. Sit down at your study table or wherever you want and write down all the consequences, both positives, and negatives that come to your mind.
2. Do research: Go to online forums, articles, watch videos, find scholarly journals, and collect all the consequences for viewing and not viewing pornography.
Add them to your previous list.
Here are two articles that I wrote that can help you:
10 confirmed benefits of Nofap after 90 days
10 Negative Effects of Pornography Addiction
These articles are not enough.
3. From the list of negative and positive consequences, select five negative and five positive that matter the most to you.
4. Now, visualize the consequences you have selected.
5. After all these, we will only focus on the five positive consequences most of the time.
Example:
The five positive consequences that I visualize every day are given below:
a. Career success
For me, my career success is publishing my novel and writing more blogs everyday.
I visualize my books are in the bookstore. I visualize the fun I am having while I am writing.
I also visualize the email I receive from the publishers, mentioning that my manuscript has been accepted.
* It will be difficult to visualize and get motivated at the beginning of this nofap strategy because you don’t trust yourself yet.
But if you do it every day, new neural pathways will be created in your brain and you will start to believe that this is something possible.
b. Better Relationship
Just like career success I also visualize the important relationships that will become healthy if I quit porn addiction.
c. Self-confidence
Self-confidence reflects in every area of your life. It reflects in your work, your behavior, in your relationship, and in your personality.
If you have followed a nofap strategy before for a month or for a period of six to seven months, you certainly have experienced the boost of self-confidence in you.
I visualize the feeling of self-confidence in me.
d. World-tour
In this early stage of nofap strategy, it is hard to believe that only by quitting porn addiction our financial condition will improve and do the things we dream of.
I visualize that I am going to Norway, or sometimes touring with my friends on my bike to the Himalayas, etc.
e. Making movies with my brother
I visualize that we are making our movies that we have been planning for a long time.
One important point to remember is that the positive consequences of quitting porn addiction should be about you.
No matter how selfish and bad it sounds, it should be about you.
Your family and friends will automatically be benefited when you are benefited.
You can spread happiness only when you are happy first.
Note: Take two to three days to clarify and visualize the consequences.
3. Welcoming the temptation
Wait, what?
You may be thinking, why would I welcome the temptation, if my goal is to quit porn addiction? What kind of nofap strategy is this?
I know what you are feeling now, but as requested above, I am again requesting to keep an open mind for some time.
Once you proceed, you will understand the underlying factor of welcoming the urges rather than resisting.
We as humans don’t like resistance.
We have learned from all the other nofap strategies that, to be able to quit porn addiction, we need to resist our urges or temptation.
But, no matter how strong your willpower is, resisting is spending your willpower or wasting your mental energy on something, that keeps getting stronger every time you resist.
One more reason to resist our urges and in the words of Brian Brendunburg is that, “We feel guilt and shame because of the urges. The more you feel guilt and shame, the weaker you will become and eventually relapse.
The temptation is not the source of guilt and shame. The action we take after experiencing the temptation is the cause of the guilt and shame.”
You are human and the urges you have are natural. Moreover, the temptation you feel is also natural because of the many years of viewing pornography.
This is how our brain works.
You don’t need to be hard on yourself for having the temptation to view pornography. It is normal and everybody experiences the same.
Pornography cannot take your inner power, once you welcome and embrace that this temptation is normal and there is nothing to feel bad about it. It happens with everyone.
Key points
a. Welcome the temptation. This is normal and it happens to everyone.
You don’t need to feel guilt and shame because of it.
b. Embrace the temptation immediately when it occurs. Realize that you are tempted to view pornography.
Say something like, “I want to view pornography because of my urges and there is nothing wrong to feel about it this way.”
Urges are natural, but the urges you are feeling now are for viewing pornography and orgasm. The future urges will be only for sex for a real partner.
So, now what?
Let’s move to the next point.
4. Power to choose
You always have the power to choose.
This is your birthright that no one, no situation, or any circumstance can take away from you.
After welcoming the temptation, there will be two choices for you.
You can view pornography or you can select those positive consequences for now.
The power you have preserved by welcoming the temptation will help you to choose the right thing.
Again this power is not your willpower, it is your inner strength that is not lost in guilt and shame.
But, this power is not enough.
You have to follow some key points while choosing:
Keep the below points in mind when choosing:
A. Choose for the moment
I have highlighted ‘for now’ in the above sentence because you are always choosing for the moment and not for the future.
Tomorrow or the next time, you will again have your choices to view it or not.
When we choose for this moment, we keep options open for future choices.
If you choose not to view pornography for life, “A sense of deprived feeling starts to lurk inside you.
Once you start feeling deprived, you then start to feel like a victim, which leads to thinking you deserve to view pornography and this leads to viewing and go right back from where you started.” – Brian Brandenburg.
Again, It is our human nature to rebel when we are compelled to do something.
We thrive in freedom and parish in captivity. We don’t like to follow orders from others, and we also don’t like to follow orders from ourselves.
Once you make a choice for all the future decisions, you limit your freedom of choices, and this causes the rise of your rebel nature against you.
When you choose for the moment, you are not compelling yourself to choose the same choices every day.
*Remember, this concept is hard to grasp at the beginning of this nofap strategy. But, after daily practices, you will understand the gist behind it.
So, perhaps you are thinking, if you choose the positive consequences for now, what you are going to do in the future.
I will say, you will have your choices then and you are free to choose.
B. Must and have lies.
Whenever you say, you must do this, must not do that, or have to do it are all lies.
Brian Brandenburg named these lies as the MuHa lies because you always have a choice to choose your actions.
So, whenever you find yourself saying these words, must have… just laugh at it remembering Muhahahaha.
Key points
Now, you have two parts to deal with your urges.
- Whenever you are tempted to view pornography, just welcome the temptation by telling yourself that, “I want to look at pornography and this is normal.”
- Second, remind yourself that you are free to choose.
To make your freedom of choice more powerful, let’s talk about the next point:
5.Vision
In the second point, we have found positive consequences of not viewing pornography can do.
“The vision of these five positive consequences is more powerful than the temptation.”- Brian Brandenburg.
The vision, positive consequences, and results will give you the power to choose.
Whenever you are tempted to view pornography, welcome it, remind yourself of the power to choose, and then visualize your positive consequences.
This will even give you more power to make the right decision and your hope and self-belief will start to surface.
*Remember, this is only the initial stage of this nofap strategy and if you become overconfident, you may slip and go back to your old habits.
So, here are the three key elements to deal with your temptation:
- Welcome
- Choose and
- Vision
The acronym is WCV.
The more you practice WCV, the better and more powerful you become.
You will start to believe in yourself again, your self-respect will start to grow and your hope for living a healthy life will get stronger every day.
Action plan
- Here is your full technique to deal with your temptation.
- First, welcome it, and then remind yourself of the choices you have.
Remember to do it immediately, whenever temptation strikes.
- Remind the vision you have. The more you try to remember the vision, the clearer and stronger it will get.
- This vision will give you the power to choose.
- Practice it every day, five to six times.
6. Embracing the Negative
When you start to see some initial success in this nofap strategy, your stress and discomfort start to increase.
Why does this happen?
Because now you are going out of your comfort zone.
In the past, whenever you are stressed and uncomfortable, you choose porn as an escape from these feelings.
But, after relapsing, you feel more stressed and uncomfortable than before.
This leads to more viewing and relapsing.
Now, by applying WCV, you are getting out of your comfort zone because you are not doing what you usually do for stress and discomfort.
So, getting out of your comfort zone is a good or a bad thing?
The next time, whenever you feel stressed and discomfort for not viewing, just remind yourself that you are expanding your comfort zone and these sad, stressed, negative thoughts, etc are all temporary.
Once you get out of your comfort zone, you will be okay.
Usually, getting out of your comfort zone takes between two to three weeks, unless you hit flatline.
Remember: Stress, Anxiety, Discomfort are a good thing. If you are feeling these emotions during nofap, it means you are growing and all you need to do is to embrace them.
Once you embrace the negative, it will no longer have the power to trouble you.
7.Facing the problem
In my case, when I was not in nofap, I tried to deal with temptation by diverting or avoiding it.
I used to play online competitive games whenever temptation hit me or whenever I felt stressed.
This worked for a few months, and I thought I finally found the best nofap strategy to be successful.
In short, I tried to hide from the problem.
Therefore, after a few months, I relapsed with an additional addiction to video games.
Note* The definition for addiction can be different for everyone, but for me, if I am doing something that I don’t want to do then I am addicted to it.
Even if I am doing it once a year, still I am doing something that I do not want, then it is an addiction for me.
M.Scott Peck an American psychiatrist mentioned in his book, The Road less traveled, “Problems must be worked through or else they remain forever a barrier to the growth and development of spirit. The truth is that our finest moments are most likely to occur when we are feeling deeply uncomfortable, unhappy, and unfulfilled.”
It is true that facing our problems creates pain, but that is the basis of human growth.
Face your temptation, wait for it or invite it on your own, and use the above techniques to deal with it.
Because if you hide today, the temptation will get stronger every time, and sooner or later you will relapse.
8. Practice, practice, Practice…
Practice the above technique every day for more than 5-6 times in the initial period of your nofap journey.
If temptation doesn’t come to you, invite it. Create deliberate temptation and deal with it.
Yes, you read correctly.
Creating deliberate temptation and practicing will strengthen the neural pathways in your brain.
The pathways of your power to choose.
The more you practice, the more powerful you will become.
On the other hand, if you stop practicing just after a month or two, thinking you have quit porn addiction, then there is a high chance that you will relapse after 100 days.
Most of the people in nofap relapse after 100 days.
The many years of pornography addiction are not going to be over in just two to three months.
It takes more than that.
Conclusion
The summary of this article is that guilt and shame are the number one reason for which we relapse in nofap.
The best nofap strategy is to welcome your temptation and say to yourself that this is normal.
There is no need to feel guilty and shame because of your inability to quit porn addiction.
You always fight against it, you always suppress the temptation, avoid it, run away from it but things will change now.
You don’t run away from temptation anymore. On the other hand, you welcome it because you have a choice.
You have a vision and there will always be choices in the future decisions too.
Nobody is compelling you to do something, nor you are compelling yourself to it either.
You are free to choose.
Best
Ahbab
*As mentioned above, the article is based on the book Power over Pornography by Brian Brandenburg.
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