/nofap/ - Fappers Anonymous★

‘Pause of Progress’ is exactly how it sounds, it’s merely pausing to progress; it’s not relapsing, it is merely resting to get back the energy so you can continue progressing again. Go back to the running 50 kilometers example --- because it is impossible to run 50 km’s in one go without ever stopping, you have to take inevitable breaks. You take breaks so you can rest up and energize yourself so you can continue running again. You are, indeed, pausing to progress just so that you can progress further. This is because it is impossible to achieve your aim in a single bound, you have to take rests; and these rests act as shifting of gears in your journey to overcome your addiction. I visualized this concept in the ‘figure 1’ of the pic related. This leads us to the conclusion that a failure to abstain from masturbation is not automatically a relapse, it can be ‘Pause of Progress’; and what decides whether or not the failure to abstain is a relapse or a ‘Pause of Progress’ is how you react to this failure.

When the going gets tough, which will happen inevitably, it’ll become too much and you’ll fail to abstain and masturbate. If you go “Oh hell, I failed. Might as well go all out” and masturbate 5 times that day and continue masturbating as many times the following days, this will be a relapse. By abstaining and enduring you’ve chipped away at the addiction and gained quite a lot of control back, but by incorrectly reacting to a failure and turning it into a relapse by binging, you have now given the control that you’ve attained by abstaining back to the addiction. As you can see in the ‘figure 2’ of pic related, relapsing causes the erasure of progress and undoes all or some of the progress you’ve achieved depending on how hard you relapse; but erasure of progress is not the only thing that happens after a failure to abstain, in fact, as I’ve just mentioned, failure to abstain is not a bad thing, it is inevitable and essential in overcoming addiction. What makes a failure to abstain a relapse is the incorrect reaction to it. In the running 50 kilometers example, this would be the equivalent of running for 10 km’s, then inevitably stopping but instead of resting, instead of getting back the energy to continue running again, you call off the race and withdraw from it because in your head you’re unsuccessful because you failed to run 50 km’s in one go. This would be misunderstanding how the process works, not knowing that the failure is an essential part of it, and because of this lack of knowledge, reacting to failure incorrectly. So how do we correctly react to the failure?

As you can see in the ‘figure 1’ of the pic related, failure to abstain --- which is inevitable -- doesn’t automatically cause the erasure of progress. If the reaction to this failure to abstain is correct, this failure to abstain becomes a ‘Pause of Progress’ and you successfully shift gears, getting to the next level of attaining control over your lust. Let me give you a personal example, my own experience.

I’ve renounced lust and started to abstain from masturbation on 2nd of January. I was able to go 18 days without breaking. On day 15, things started to get tough, I started to get lasting thoughts, thoughts that started to chip away at my will, the addiction started to whisper in my ear, slowly infiltrating my resolve, nothing I couldn’t handle though. Day 16 was harder than the previous day. I spent a good few hours fighting off the urges. What was once easy to fend off was now getting to me. I started to lose grip on my long-term goals and started to give in to the whispers of the addiction. I would’ve failed if I hadn’t left the house and taken a cold shower. Day 17 was even harder. You know how this works, as your will starts to deteriorate you start to justify masturbating in your head, finding more and more excuses to fail. On the night of the 17th day, the urges were so big that I couldn’t sleep. The addiction was keeping me awake, gnawing at me. I tossed and turned in my bed, failing to get those thoughts out of my head and finally sleep. I started to get a headache, my mouth started to dry, the standard withdrawal symptoms were at full force. The thoughts to keep going and the thoughts to masturbate were fighting hard, and this war of thoughts really took its toll on me, I felt terrible. I was so close that I was convinced that I would fail. I was going to turn on my computer and load up lustful materials to masturbate to. I even started to think about just how much I would ejaculate or what I would look at. I was really going to fail but I pulled through. I had enough resolve that instead of breaking, I took a cold shower and went outside for a walk. I came back home still feeling terrible, still at the edge of breaking, but I barely managed to busy myself until I finally slept. I woke up the next morning thinking because I won the last night’s war and managed to continue abstaining that I would wake up feeling great. I thought I would be washed over with this sense of accomplishment, this feeling of victory because I stayed true to myself and didn’t masturbate. This did not happen at all, what I expected to be a sensation of success ended up being the complete opposite --- the suffering continued from where it left off! All the thoughts and urges that I fought so hard to keep off came right back. Instead of waking up to a fresh head, I woke up to the same brain fog. Nothing changed, the same urges, the same temptations. I just passed out for 5 hours and when I woke up to nightmare continued. After realizing I couldn’t go any further, just two hours later I found myself masturbating; but this was, indeed, a blessing in disguise because this event, this failure to abstain, led to the revelation of the difference between a relapse and a ‘Pause of Progress’.

You must understand that you cannot achieve full freedom in a single attempt, it’s impossible. You’re inevitably going to break and fail to abstain. This needs to happen and is perfectly normal. Full abstinence can’t happen if you’re addicted. For example, I’ve not drunk a single drop of alcohol in my life, so technically, I’ve been abstaining from drinking alcohol my whole life. I can do this because I’m not addicted to alcohol, but a person who is addicted to alcohol will have a hard time abstaining for even a week, because he’s addicted and I’m not; and freedom from addiction can only happen through abstinence. The more you abstain, the freer you’ll become, the less control the addiction will have over you, and, soon enough, after adequate amounts of abstinence, you’ll become free; but this can’t happen in a single attempt. This can only be achieved through abstaining and enduring as long as you can, then failing correctly by not binging, and in doing so achieving ‘Pause of Progress’. Much like a runner who intends on running 50 km’s pausing after he’s run 10 km’s to rest and build up energy to continue running and repeating this shifting of gears, until he completes all of 50 km’s. Again, him failing to continue running after 10 km’s doesn’t mean he is unsuccessful in his attempt. He is merely pausing to progress and, in doing so, making it possible for him to continue going some more.

This is the same mechanism with overcoming masturbation addiction --- it’s impossible to succeed at abstinence in your first try. You have to abstain and endure, go as long as you can, and when you cannot go any further, when the urges and the temptations are just too much, you have to fail *properly*. You have to react to failure to abstain correctly by not binging, by allowing yourself to masturbate for only once or twice and getting back on track as soon as possible, within no longer than 3 days. This way, you will achieve ‘Pause of Progress’. Let me tell you how my story continues…

I could go for 18 days, that was my limit. Over the course of those days I saw pictures and videos that occupied my head for days, kept me rock hard. I couldn’t focus on anything else but those lustful things. Eventually I broke and masturbated, but an interesting thing happened. After spending 2 days and masturbating 3 times in total only, those pictures and videos that turned me on so much no longer interested me. This is what happens with the indulgence of lust, the thing that aroused you greatly no longer does anything for you after you’re done masturbating to it. Under the light of this new revelation I realized what was going on --- 18 days was as long as I could possibly go in my current attempt. Because of this, to shift gears and continue progressing, I needed to fail; and in failing properly, in not letting it become relapsing by binging, in pausing to progress so that I can rest and build up energy without undoing my progress, I could shift to the next gear and continue going. Much like the runner resting after running as long as he can so that he can rest up and continue running some more, after those two days I went back to abstaining, continuing on my journey to overcome my lust; and I feel great. Having leveled up, I am untouched by the temptations that, previously, gave me such a hard time, and I’m much closer to freedom now.

The process to overcome your addiction is not a binary state. It’s not like you’re either 100% addicted or 100% free; it’s more like a tug-of-war. You gain some ground and, sometimes, you lose some ground. The way I look at it is there’s plan A and plan B --- the plan A is to fully abstain from it but because you’re still addicted you might fail. This is where plan B is triggered, this is where you react to failure properly making sure it’s a ‘Pause of Progress’ and not a relapse. By abstaining and enduring as long as you can, then resting, shifting gears to continue chipping away at the addiction with the next attempt, soon enough you will conquer your lust, soon enough you’ll be a free man. As a personal advice, I recommend always going longer than your previous attempt, always abstaining longer, always improving on your personal best. This ensures that you are performing optimally and not getting lazy.

So, this is the revelation that I’ve achieved with my experience; this is the wisdom that I feel responsible to share with you. Thank you for your time; and in closing: A man cannot conquer the world if he cannot conquer himself.

-End-

Thanks for sharing your experiences OP. I've had a similar experience, though I do not believe failing in nofap is inevitable or should be expected. I think its a question of dedication and effort. We fall because we become careless, with time and some successful days in a streak we think we've conquered lust/masturbation addiction and we can go along pretending like we have won until *SMACK* the pang of lust hits us out of nowhere, when we least expect it, and it takes over us with such force is near impossible to resist. That's still our fault, for being careless where lust could corner us and make us submit.

There was a man once named Gautama Buddha, married with a child, who one day decided to go full monkmode nofap and never looked back. He created Buddhism, one of the oldest surviving religions today next to Hinduism. Then there have been men like Tesla and Newton who are documented as living fully celibate lives, and both are on record either being proud of their celibate lives (Newton) or promoting celibacy in pursuit of greater intellectual knowledge (Tesla). I don't think these men ever masturbated. They were hardline religious, believed in God, and never touched a women because of their closeness with God.

I don't think failing is inevitable. Its easy to fall, but it does not have to be that way, its all up to you. You say you fought against lust by taking cold showers, jogging etc but it still blockaded you from proceeding with your life until you gave in - I've been there and know exactly what you're talking about - I would myself describe it as a thousand pins striking from every direction and making it impossible for me to move, do anything else, read, talk, breath unless I mentally give in (sounds familiar?) - and I did give in - like you, but I still realized that it was still me being WEAK. I believe even if we end up in that mental state, we must still keep on fighting against it and eventually we succeed. Turn to God (The bible talks about fighting lust plenty and how "His" name instantly kills lust - It absolutely does), meditate on why there was once a version of you who swore against lust/masturbation and why that person must come back and take control again without you masturbating and falling into that post orgasm depression again. That is how you win. By facing it and not giving in, and going on with your day. There will be struggles, but you will become stronger with each passing moment. You have to face this evil of lust and route it because you're not a degenerate pleasure addict. You could go on a 500 day streak against it and it could still come out of absolutely nowhere strike at you like baseball swung at the back of your head. That's when you muster every ounce of the real you, recognize it as degenerate and not a part of you, and with your actions - refuse to submit to it, even if it is mentally pounding at you. The most you focus on why you took that vow of nofap, and why lust is bad for your health and soul, the greater the ease with which you will route it out of your system.

I think the key is meditating on the truth. The truth, whether you're an atheist or religious is pretty simple - masturbation is a degenerate behavior. It is not manly. Your hand is not a vagina, plain and simple, and giving into it once is giving into it forever. What is this lust of women too? Women age, their skin rots, they carry feces inside of them all the time, they are made up on a skeleton, puss, blood etc, and you're a slave to that? They will eventually lose all their beauty and become lifeless (same goes for that handsome charming prince man, if you're a women struggling with nofap. He will become bald, with bad breath and rotting teeth in a matter of mere decades.). Focus on this truth - and remember this truth all the time, practice having an iron will and you will succeed and these pangs of lust which hit you randomly and seem like a truck heading towards you unless you relapse - will suddenly have no power over you and nofap will be your eternal lifemode.

Thread needs a sticky. We've been playing the game wrong. We really are all gonna make it

I was originally going to write this as a new thread, but I figured it'd be better to shove it in here because you brought up most of the points I was going to make

if you reach the point where your dick is screaming for release and you find it nearly impossible to concentrate on anything else, the act of masturbating itself isn't the failure

the failure is getting to that state in the first place

you have to conceptually separate the urge from the instinct

the urge is the thing that gets you hot under the collar in the first place

if your dick has been throwing a fit all day and it just won't settle down, you've already hit the fail condition

YMMV, but in my case I've found that it's usually much better to just get it out of the way when that happens

IMO confusing these two ideas is one of the biggest mistakes people make, and why people find it so hard to get away from jacking off all the time

what you should be trying to do is not try to control or suppress the instinct itself (which is virtually impossible, it's on the same level as trying to control your heartbeat - similarly, ignoring a heart attack doesn't make it go away), but the urge that triggers it, which is a mental structure that you can control completely with some practice

the key in this case is simply to avoid anything sexual that could trigger your more base nature

I'm not saying you should live in a monastery, but it's important to identify things that will get that particular ball rolling and do your best to avoid them, because once it's on its way down the hill it's only a matter of time before it reaches the bottom

the long-term strategy isn't to catch the ball every time it tips, it's to avoid bumping it long enough so that you can build a platform around it

the wider the platform, the harder it is to knock the ball off, and once it's there it'll only shrink if you wear it down constantly

tl;dr, don't abstain from masturbation itself, identify and abstain from the things that lead you to it

bump