Hey bro! I feel sad reading your post. So I will try my best to help you with all the knowledge and understanding from my experience in nofap from 2017. But I’m not an English native speaker so please bear with me.
First of all, thank you for speaking up! I’m proud of you because you have made it this far. It must be hard to do it on your own. And it takes courage to be vulnerable to ask for help. So please appreciate yourself, because you have decided to take this journey and you are fighting in your own way, and the fact that you’re on the path of nofap, it means that you’re already half-way there. Because thousands of even millions of people out there don’t even care about their own well-being, mental health, let alone care to know about nofap. There are several things that I want to share, let’s get into them one by one:
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Addiction is really a complex thing. The face that you’re having relapses is the very proof that what you face is an addiction. From what I learnt from dr. Gabor Mate, an addiction is basically a coping mechanism, an escape, in a bad way. It gives you temporary pleasure but painful in the long term. So, the point is, not to ask why the addiction, but why the pain? What the addiction gives to you? For me, I have a deep emotional wound which make me craved the dopamine, and it gave me temporary feeling of happiness, fake happiness that is. So, try to have compassionate curiosity towards yourself, like, have you ever thought why you get the addicted in the first place? It’s not a immoral thing to have an addiction, but it proves that you need to go to your path of healing, healing yourself as a whole human being in every aspects of your life (we humans are biopsychosocial creature, learn to make every aspects of your life better and better, it doesn’t have to be perfect but it has to carefully take care of) that compassionate curiosity really is important so you don’t end up blaming yourself for everything that has happened in your life.
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Have you ever heard of the Rat Park experiment? To be honest it really hard for me to explain it manually, so I’m just going to copy from a post from Rewire Companion message board (written by AR23055), sorry about that:
Almost everything we think we know about addiction is wrong. Imagine you put a rat in a cage with two water bottles. One contains plain water, and the other contains water laced with heroin or cocaine. In this setup, the rat will almost always prefer the drugged water—and usually ends up dying quickly.
In the 1970s, Professor Bruce Alexander came along, looked at this experiment, and noticed something important. He said, “Wait, we’re putting the rat in an empty cage. It has nothing to do except take drugs. Let’s try something different.”
So Professor Alexander built a new environment he called Rat Park. It had plenty of cheese, colorful balls, tunnels to explore, and—most importantly—other rats to play and bond with.
Here’s what’s fascinating: in Rat Park, the rats didn’t want the drugged water. The overdose rate dropped from almost 100% in isolation to 0% in a happy, connected environment.
What if addiction isn’t about chemical hooks? What if addiction is about the cage? What if it’s a response to the environment?
Maybe we shouldn’t even call it addiction. Maybe we should call it bonding. Human beings have a deep, natural need to bond. When we’re happy and healthy, we bond with people around us. But if we’re traumatized, isolated, or worn down by life, we’ll bond with something else that gives us comfort—whether it’s gambling, pornography, cocaine, or anything else.
Because bonding is our nature. The opposite of Addiction is Connection.
Or you can read about it on the article, “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, but it’s human connection” it’s available online. But this one explains that the psychosocial aspect of our life as human being. That’s why, what works for me is to actually build connections with people, especially with women, because, just like you said earlier, we as men don’t want to objectify women, and I love your genuine intention on this, it’s already a great realization. So, how do you do that? By actually build connections with women in your life, so you will experience (not just understand it on intellectual level, but to really experience in firsthand) that they are lovely human beings, they are beautiful and can be great companions, especially in this process of healing, they are our allies, because we can truly feel that they do have personalities, have feelings, emotions, have life stories, have goals, they are alive, not just for our sexual pleasure. I do have some of the most beautiful friendships with some female friends in my life and it helps a lot, even one of them like respects my vulnerability so much that once she apologized for posting semi-naked photo in her social media. Like, if you build that connection with people, you will be amazed by how many kind-hearted people out there who are willing to help you in your journey.
So definitely, real women >>>>> fake women on adult videos who don’t even know nor care that you exist.
- Oh, I totally forgot, I haven’t given my background a little. My longest streak is 431 days, which I reached a couple years ago. I reached months several times but eventually relapsed over and over again, so I’m still learning myself, all about this addiction thing, also about mental health in general because they’re so interrelated. Then, one thing that works for me right now is, I totally forbid myself to bring my phone to the bathroom, and it has been working for a long time. How about you try this method? The point is to be discipline with ourselves. Or, study when or where or how you usually relapse? Usually there is a pattern, which can be broken down by science. But I’m sorry I’m not an expert in this, but you can study online, the science of habit which comprise of cue, behavior, reward. The point is to get rid of the cue. Or to rewrite the association that has been ingrained in it with something healthier. Like, I usually use Chrome to look for adult videos, then I force myself to rewrite it with using it to study, then the association with it will change.
- Have you ever heard of Mindfulness? Basically, learn how to observe your thought. Because urges are basically similar to thought (felt in the mind) and emotions (felt in the body). So, the point is to understand that urges (like thought and emotion) comes and goes. No need to try to control it, because we can’t control it and that’s okay, we’re not supposed to control our thought. Just observe it, be the observer of the mind, just be aware of it. We are not our thought and emotion, we are the awareness which experiences them. There’s a similar technique called Urge Surfing. Try to look it up, mate. It may be useful for you.
- Last thing I want to share is, try to write every thought and emotion every time you relapse. Make a journal so you can track your feelings whenever you relapsed. So anytime you write it, your mind will more determine to do nofap. Or another way is, I make notes which I put in the widgets on my phone, and I put mu browser near the notes, so whenever I get urges to look for adult videos, I will immediately stop because I read the notes, fully written with the harm I felt through out these years of PMOing, also I wrote my goals in it as well (I want to be a healthy and confident man, also I don’t want to objectify women, therefore I need to stay on nofap)
- Oh one more thing, try to work toward you goals instead on focusing on nofap alone. Do things that scared you the most but you know you will be so happy if you achieve it. Because in the end, addiction is a life problem. If you want to heal, you need to optimally take care of every aspects of your life, like your life style, what you consume on medias, how your qualities of friendships, how’s your work, your goals, your family, like literally everything. The “be busy” advice is only half-right, if the things you’re busy with is not the things that support your well-being, your goals, your life, then you will definitely relapse again, because there is no satisfaction in it, then you will try to escape and look for instant dopamine to feel that fake happiness again.
- Another one, sorry lol. Live intentionally. I mean, every small things that we do, comes from an intention. Like, for example, you open Youtube for studying, then you stumble upon and triggering ads. Try to be mindful as much as you can. If you click it, what will happen? What’s the intention behind it? Try to be aware of every little things that you do, This is where a discipline mind comes from. From paying full attention to little things, so you don’t go to automatic or autopilot mode and then bang, relapse again. Unfortunately we can’t control our environtment, who can preditct when or how we will meet triggering content or triggering women? We don’t know. So it’s important to avoid the triggers at all cost, but the point is not when there is no trigger, but what is our decision when we are indeed triggered. We need to exercise our willpower, our free will, to understand that we actually do have a choice. To go to relapse again or to take a U turn and breath deeply and say “no, fapping doesn’t serve me anything good, I won’t do it anymore” then you don’t need to make promise or anything because you know there is no value in PMO.
Hmm alright brother, that’s it from me for now. I guess I wrote to much. But it’s okay since I open this on my laptop. Hope these helps. Good luck!
