I’m on day 17. It’s taken incredible work to get here, I knew I had a problem when one day I looked in the mirror and I was scared of what I looked like. Couldn’t even stare at myself. Eyes red, feeling depressed, out of shape, and all I still wanted to do was to masturbate and forget about it.
First I had to slowly train myself to stop masturbating to disgusting things that I had picked up along the line, and started trying to watch “normal” porn again… and slowly, I was able to have short two/three day nofap streaks. Then I found this app.
After much trying I’m on my first ever 17 day streak and I feel incredibly proud of how far I’ve come. But nofap is taking a toll on me. I can’t focus on work, I can’t focus on anything. My body literally starts shaking sometimes, begging for me to just masturbate. And masturbating without porn doesn’t work for me, it’s a slippery slope that just takes me back to step 1. As I’m typing this now I have so much work to do but I can’t stay focused enough to do it. My arms feel like they’re vibrating.
Yet, at the same time, I’m also reaping the benefits. My eyes are not red anymore, I’ve started having dreams again (for some reason when I masturbate constantly, at night I didn’t have dreams, or I had dreams and could never remember when I woke up). I feel confidence in social interactions again, and so on. But this intense craving to masturbate is driving me mad and also affecting my life. The only thing that solves it is forcing myself to fall asleep. But then, when I wake up again the cravings come back after a few hours of being awake.
I’ve lost 10 pounds and am now 10 pounds away from a healthy weight since I started nofap, because I also do exercise to combat the urges. But this intense surge of energy is feeling like too much for me to handle, I’m losing my mind. I’m afraid I’m going to relapse soon, and if I do, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to get to day 17 again.
First of all, welcome and congratulations! You are making awesome progress.
Here are my suggestions for your current extreme urges.
Just like you have been doing, exercise is always good.
Take a cold shower. It is surprising how much it helps.
Put some headphones in and hit the urge button on the home page of this app. Take deep breaths, such as 5 seconds in, 2 or 3 seconds out and listen to the music.
If you are at work and can’t do any of those things, DO NOT BE ALONE. Do whatever it takes to be at a coworkers side for the rest of the day.
Other things I have found to help that may benefit you are:
Praying. God is on your side in this fight.
Talk out loud. Say out loud how you are feeling, what you have urges to do, what you are going to do about it, why you are not a slave to your body etc. Vocalizing things and hearing yourself say it helps put things into perspective.
If for whatever reason you can’t talk, writing it down like you did is a good second option.
Take a really good long look in the mirror. Stare into your eyes and give your own soul a stare. You said that you can already see the change in yourself. Look closely at who you are now, who you were and who you want to be.
It is always tough for me to ask for help when I have urges, mostly out of shame/embarrassment. So I applaud you for admitting and sharing your situation. I hope I was of some help.
Thank you for your advice! I’m not particularly religious but I guess I just needed someone to motivate me. I made it through today, I’m back home now and the urges have basically disappeared. I know they’ll be back tomorrow but I’ll do my best.
I think it’s better if you try to spend your energy on trying to expose yourself less to these urges. I guarantee you that even if you get the most seasoned NF warriors on this forum, none of them will last a day if you force them to fight urges all day.
As for your inability to focus, I would recommend taking a break once in a while from work. For instance, use the Pomodoro technique. It’s basically 25 min of work time and 5 min of break time.