The happy mind guide

[neveragaintw]

Hi everyone who is here to have a natural life back. A life in which you feel good, in control of your self and unrestricted by all the bad habits.
For everyone who is scared because most of the people in this forum are telling you hardmode is the only mode, orgasms are bad and only by force you can get free. Here is the right place for you.
I don’t wanna cure one restriction (porn) by placing 10 others on my self. I wanna be free!
In fact, I think that hardemode isn’t the right mode for most of us.

Why am I here?
I spent about 3-4 hours each day watching porns while edging. I have a girl friend and felt like I constantly betray her. I as a man started to feel like crap and wasted so much time every day.

What is my goal?
I wanna have a natural life back. A life how it should be. I don’t wanna be in the death grip of porn, I wanna be a good husband, I wanna spend my time every day for the things I like to do. I wanna enjoy everyday, I wanna enjoy being outside and enjoy all the beauty nature made, I wanna have an eye for that again.

How do I achieve that?
By behaving naturally!

• Why shouldn’t I have orgasms (having sex with my beloved)?
  we are MADE to have sex. Just because you don’t have an orgasm doesn’t mean that your sperm stays in your bag. Our body destroys and reproduces them! We don’t gain energy by edging while having sex!
  Also, sperm is healthier if it is used. (there are many studies supporting that)

• I wanna learn how to have sex with my beloved. How to really appreciate the nature of our bodies and the act. I don’t wanna be abstinent! I wanna learn how to have sex in a healthy and natural way! So, I do have sex but I try to figure out how it is meant to be.

• If I have an urge I “meditate”. I go outside (also inside possible) sit on a bench and at first do nothing. this sorts my thoughts. It removes all the stress from the everyday life and lets me calm down. Then I look around (or just listen or smell) and appreciate all the beauty of the nature.

But i have heard only hardmode works??
WRONG!!
I haven’t watched a single porn in over 52 days. I don’t even feel the urge to do so! I feel free of all this shit because I know myself better! And this with three simple restrictions:

• No porn
• No Masturbation / edging
• Spending much time on figuring out how I wanna be

My girlfriend asked me just yesterday what happend with me because I seem to be so happy and energetic.
I have so much free time! I can go outside and enjoy my life.

Why do I think that hardmode is the wrong mode.
For me, hardmode is as if you are fat due to an eating disorder and everyone tells you, that you should make a diet. So, you force yourself to eat less, you create habits which help you to eat less and to suppress your urge to eat. And it works. You will see your weight drop. probably you will even feel “good”. But you never cured your disorder. Staying abstinent of porn is just a small fraction of your way and putting too much emphasis on how can I stay abstinent, how many shackles can I apply which prevent me from relapsing is just not working in the long term (or it can but it isn’t healthy at all. You can’t tell me that you are healed just because you are abstinent for 1 year but you still have to force yourself everyday with the same shackles you needed on day one). You NEED to get to a natural life.
So, my thoughts for hard mode? Good for the first two, maybe three weeks. But afterwards you need to learn to LIVE.

[anon83788728]

Hey there neveragaintw thanks a lot for your post:) really really cool and interesting, I like it!
I agree for you on most points but i do think that hard-mode has its own importance as an instrument of rewiring and “cleaning up”. In order to quit drinking one will probably have to drop drinking at all before even tanking into consideration to drink a beer again. And well natural mode is for someone who has no gf actually a hard mode

Besides that i think you are right when you say that hard mode is not the only mode! The right one is the one which works for YOU!!
And yeah i do think that it is kind of stupid to make a hard mode the way of life or the ultimative objective

[anon9232166]

Beautifully written

[amadeus]

I could not have said it better. This is why I left the forum of NoFap on Reddit and joined this community, because I think most people there and what they write and propose to others are still part of the problematic cycle we wanna leave. It’s as if people measure their life on a scale, and when they recognize that ■■■■ is their way of climbing up on that scale they start to think they need to get up there without it. That’s a good start, but it does by no means stop there.
Because in the end, our goal should be all about leaving said scale behind.
How each single one chooses to do so is part of his or her own journey and can’t be taught by anyone.
It’s something you need to find out by yourself, supported by others.
So I’m with you. I’ll proudly be one of the first ones to proclaim #naturalmode
Thanks for the post!

[novoluar]

I liked the natural mode concept, @neveragaintw. Way better than the misleading “easy mode”, since there’s no easy in being more than 50 days away from porn.

And regardless of the “mode”, what everybody here in this forum have in common is the purpose to overcome the porn/masturbation addiction. So there’s no point in any kind of secession. There is an array of approaches to reach the goal, each one will find out what fits better for him/her.

[neveragaintw]

@anon83788728

And well natural mode is for someone who has no gf actually a hard mode

eeh yea, I guess you are right
I guess I do have similar rules to the hard mode. But I think the difference is how i wanna approach them. Not with brute force but with understanding of the problem and myself.

@anon83788728

The right one is the one which works for YOU!!

Absolutely right. That’s maybe why i often are a bit aggressive against Hardmode. There are so many topics about hardmode that I would like to ensure that everyone sees (especially the new ones) that they have an other option if they can’t identify them self with the hardmode concept

@amadeus

leaving said scale behind

Every mentioning of any kind of identify yourself with a number on a ranking or comparison almost makes me cry. It was the root of my whole problem that my dad used to say that I should reach for something (even) farther than he achieved (he was a professor at university). My whole youth, I tried to measure my success and tried to be the best in everything I did.
Until I broke

It’s nice to have you as buddy on my side

@novoluar Yea, I was always like “eeeeh easy mode? i think, what I’m doing is pretty damn hard too”

[newlife2018]

For a person like me who has no girl friend hard mode is only mode.

[amadeus]

Can you elaborate on that?

[novoluar]

I’m doing normal / natural mode (i.e., real sex doesn’t reset my counter) and currently I have no girlfriend. Resort to P/M is not an option. So, I’m actually doing as “hard mode” as the hard mode guys…

@amadeus, maybe that’s what he meant.

[newlife2018]

Yes exactly @novoluar

[neveragaintw]

The last few days I was thinking a lot about why and when do I have urges? which situations are these.

My current believing is “cure your mind and it will help you cure your addiction” which I think should be the long term goal. Cold showers are an amazing tool to fight an urge but I don’t wanna be 50 years old and still taking cold showers because I have urges

I wanna to try this, because i was at home for two weeks and felt great and realized that I didn’t have a single urge in two weeks. not the slightest one. Now I’m back here in my shared appartement just don’t feeling that comfy and bang, all urges are back.

So this could be a guide to prevent urges rather than fighting them. It would be great if you help gathering ideas how we could make our mind happy, so that it doesn’t need ■■■■ for it. I don’t have a solution but I could write down some ideas and assumptions:

• Keep a daily or weekly goal and write it down clearly visible. It’s a great feeling if you work towards something. You probably will learn that long term goals give you more satisfaction than instant gratification from ■■■■ / social media.
  I have currently written that I would like to finish the birthday present for my girlfriend. So, I would like to get my school stuff done efficiently so that I can work on my “long term” goal. Once I reach that (probably end of this week) I will feel a huge gratification and will feel amazing. Much better than any ■■■■ can do. I hope my mind can learn that

• Do things that you usually dont do. Not something that scares the shit out of you but something that you have to work a bit towards. last week I invited some friends for dinner (something I never do because it scares me some how). I had to think about meal, organisation and stuff. Or I started taking tango classes.
  It keeps your mind curious for new stuff and the gratification you get afterwards is on a completely different level than the one from ■■■■.

• Love yourself. Most of the time we are way to mean to our self. What does it mean to achieve something in life? does it have to be a new record? quitting ■■■■ totally? Why are people telling that they are weak because they relapsed? (Yea it’s not what you should do but should you feel worthless because of it?)
  Tell yourself what you are doing good. Doesn’t matter what it is but do it as often as you can. Best would be multiple times daily. It raises your confidence and you start to like yourself. You won’t need the faked attention of a pornstar to feel good.

I don’t know yet if these work amazingly or if they are the holy Grail of quitting ■■■■ . But even in the worst case where they don’t work they will still make your life better

What do you think? Do you have additional things that we could incorporate in our everyday life to make the feelings we crave after by watching ■■■■ redundant?
Hope we get a good list together so that everyone finds things he could do and which help to make our life easier

[neveragaintw]

The following questions are some basic ones. I guess everyone briefly thought about them but truly answering them helped me a lot. I’m only on day 5, but five days ago I answered the last open question and I do feel differently now. I feel like I really can make it past the 90 days!

The questions are: (They probably sound confusing or trivial from just reading them, so I will make an example afterwards and answering them for my case)

• What are the things I’m enjoying on porn or any other negative behavior?
  if I don’t know why or to what I’m always drawn to, then I won’t be able to change them.
  It’s not just “I like porn because it gives me pleasure”. Try to differentiate as detailed as possible
• Why shouldn’t I feel positively about the previous things?
  For everything on the list you wrote before, find a reason why you shouldn’t like this particular thing.

These are two easy question and it sounds very simple but it isn’t. I found out, that I personally will never ever be able to quit porn as long as I have positiv feelings towards it. Until now I always thought “porn is a bad thing. That’s why I should stop watching it even though I enjoy watching it”

It worked for 40 days but afterwards I told myself that I did so well that I can reward me with one single short clip. And even if I hadn’t and powered through to 90 days. What then? At some point I would have thought “today I wanna enjoy a good old porn” and I would be at the exact same point I am now.

About 4 weeks ago I was able to change my mindset, so that hardcore porn started to become a disgusting thing and from then on I haven’t watched a single hardcore porn again. I did opened porn pages some times to find a porn I enjoy but I always closed them without watching a single one since I never found one I like.
But I always relapsed to cam videos since I still enjoyed them and only tried to force myself not to watch them.

So, here the example of the answers for my case:
What am I enjoying?

• Hardcore porn: because I enjoy beautiful women, I like women getting satisfied
• Cam girls: because they enjoy what they are doing or at least it’s not as abusive as porn
• Masturbation: because it feels good an makes me happy
• Watching YouTube videos of hot singers / performers

Why shouldn’t I enjoy it?

• Hardcore porn:

1. most of the women aren’t my cup of tea
2. even if they look good. What does it mean to be an attractive woman? My perfect girlfriend should be intelligent, enjoy sports, interested in what she is doing for a living and so on and as minor point should look decent. So, if I find a girl in really life attractive only if I like her mindset then why should I only focus on appearance when it comes to pornstars? Do I wanna see a girl having sex even though I don’t like her?
3. pornstars don’t get satisfied. That’s not what porn is about! It is uncomfortable, they shoot in poses which no one would ever want to have sex in. They have to have sex with male stars they don’t know / they don’t like. They get abused and have to do what the director tells them.
4. Do I really wanna see girls having sex with some other guy than me?

• Cam and masturbation:

1. Yes, I do enjoy the moment I’m doing this. For me, it is not possible to find something really disgusting of the act itself. But: I know that afterwards I’ll feel like crap. I will have a hangover for many days which is why it is not worth watching it or masturbating.
   When I was younger I enjoyed going out, drinking excessive amounts of alcohol like many of my friends still do. But at some point I realized, that yes I do enjoy drinking alcohol since it made me to forget all my problems but because of the hangover it’s just not worth it. There are activities which give me at least the same amount of joy but without the hangover!

• YouTube Girls:

1. I watch it because I imagine her having sex with me. But, I know how many problems already my girlfriend has because she has to think that she has to look good. That she has to look a certain way to please me or her surrounding. How does it have to be for these girls who are constantly watched by the public?

-> Do I wanna have sex with a girl with all these problems
-> Do I wanna support that? Why should a girl be more attractive because she almost shows her boobs? You can almost feel how desperat they are. The more boobs they show the more attention / likes they become. But I wanna have a strong girl. One who doesn’t have to show skin just to please someone.

What did change since I realize these things?
I still do have urges. At least as bad as before. But before, I had to force my self to ignore the urges. It took me a lot of force. Now I feel the urge and know that I have better things to do than giving in. I also start to see everything through different eyes. I look at advertisements and wonder why it is necessary to strip the women of all clothes.

It definitely feels better than before!!

[amadeus]

I can confirm this. It really helps!

I once hit about 6 months of a PMO-free life, which meant not watching porn at all. Before that, my consumption reached a new high. I watched the most disgusting hardcore-porn because nothing else could satisfy my needs anymore, I was in contact with two or three online-dommes, it really consumed my life back then and I didn’t have that many social contacts.
The reason why I quit back then and made the 180ish days was because I didn’t force myself to stop watching it anymore. For a while, I continued, because let’s be honest, it felt good, I didn’t harm anyone (else than me), and it really helped me with my loneliness. But only in those very moments, not overall. I never really escaped the loneliness, and when I noticed that, I started to make real progress.
I asked myself: why do I do this?
Because I feel lonely.
Does it help?
Yes.
Does it change anything though?
No. Oh shit. You’re right. Let’s do something about it. Let’s get out. Let’s try this sport I always wanted to try out. Even if you are scared, you might escape the loneliness and those sad feelings.
And I did. I didn’t immediatly stopped watching porn after this. It changed gradually, over time, kind of like a walking stick until my legs were strong enough.

I believe that like you say, everybody has an answer to this question. In my case it was loneliness, in other cases the answer might be different. But everyone has an answer that helps him treat urges like you do now: see them coming. Accepting them. Having a reason not to give in.
Thanks for the post man!

[neveragaintw]

It’s a long time since I opened this topic, which could give some hints on how to quit ■■■■.
During the last months I lived after these principals and refined some of them.
This should thus be a little but pretty powerful update to the previous posts. I try to write this post so that it could suit the “average” ■■■■ addiction. Sure, it won’t be perfect for everyone, but it could be a starting point.

In my opinion, there isn’t such a thing as an isolated ■■■■ addiction without any further problems. A healthy mind doesn’t get addicted! Sure, a healthy mind can enjoy an activity so much that it spends a lot of time doing them but it won’t get addicted!

I see this whole addiction like a tree on top of your brain which puts its roots deep down and manipulate all your thoughts and actions. The often-made mistake is the thought that you can blow hard enough or cut off some branches and thus destroy the whole tree. Surely, you can weaken the tree by these means, which make them a legit weapon but you need to address the roots in order to cure your mind permanently!

For me, blowing and cutting off branches is the “what do I do when I get an urge”. It goes from challenges to pushups, cold showers and so on. I do all of them too but it’s no enough. To really defeat this thing, you have to cut its roots – Every single one! –
What can these roots be? How do you find them and how do you destroy them?

What can it be?
It can literally be anything. Often, they aren’t created by your ■■■■ addiction, but the problem and the addiction are supporting each other. Take for example a depression. Neither has a ■■■■ addiction to cause a depression nor does a depression necessarily lead to a ■■■■ addiction. But once I have both it will lead to a downward spiral.
You feel bad → You fap → You feel even worse

Just some examples of possible roots which are enhancing your addiction and vice versa:

• Depression
• Low self-esteem
• No friends
• No hobbies
• Boredom
• Stress
• And a really important: Shame (you can’t tell anyone about your problem because you feel ashamed of what you are doing)

These are just some examples but I think pretty common ones

How do you find out what your infested roots are?

• One of the most powerful strategies definitely is meditation. In general, listening to your body tells you a lot about the condition in which it is. Your body isn’t your enemy! It tries to help you and give you hints. The challenge is to read them. Again, signs that something is off can be anything from feeling down to real illnesses. I personally found out that every single feeling can be connected to a symptom of my body. If I’m stressed I get extremely tired, if I fear something my stomach and so on.
  The high art is to learn to listen to your body

• Also, sports which are repetitive and during which you don’t have to concentrate help a lot. (jogging, hiking, cycling…) During these you have a lot of time to let your brain wander, to figure out how you feel and so on.
  We live in a stressed world where we forgot to give our brain time to do nothing. It is under constant pressure and thus pushes all its problems away in the hope that there will be a time where it can take them out again and address them. But we never give it this time and thus the problems get deeply rooted in our brain and we as a person will completely change because we keep all this negative energy locked inside our brain.
  Doing completely nothing is often hard to accomplish thus a repetitive sport or activity (like knitting) are extremely good to give your mind the free space it needs!

How can you destroy these infested roots?

• Talking! This definitely is the most powerful tool we have. Talk to friends, girlfriend or companions! Treating these problems alone is damn hard. Write in this forum about your feeling, join a group chat with people of this forum. Start to discuss also other mental problems which you think aren’t related to ■■■■. They often are!
• If you don’t have this chance, watch youtube videos about it. There are topics about every single mental health problem out there and they can really help to get some new insights.

Once you cut enough roots you will feel that the grip of the addiction gets weaker. It’s by no means over but it is definitely easier. A weaker grip doesn’t mean that you lose the urge to fap but you will feel that you don’t need it anymore. Even just one month ago I felt that I NEED ■■■■. I felt that my body misses something and that it searches it in ■■■■. Now I only feel the urge to fap out of habit but there is no power behind the urge. It is still hard to resist but it feels completely different than it did even one weak before when I cut down my second last root.

Recently I found my favorite video about quitting ■■■■:

10 Mistakes You Make When Quitting Porn | Porn Addiction Problems

They have many more but unfortunately I haven’t had time to check them out yet.

I hope this can help you too and as always feel free to discuss, add concerns or stories. This topic is not meant to be a monologe

[s3k1232]

This absolutely is correct. Thank you.

[plwa]

In past i had hard mode (66 days) and i notice many positive change on myself. But, through the hard mode i meet my current girlfriend and hard mode become impossible to practic. So i made few decision about NoFAP:
FORBIDDEN:

• No ■■■■
• No Masturbation/edging
• No peeking
• No sexual/fantasy thoughts

ALLOWED:

• Sex (but strictly when i don’t have urge and not more than once per a week)

Now i’m on 22 days and i feel very well, but i think benefits coming little bit slower than in hard mode. @neveragaintw has excellent thinking about natural mode