Need help in understanding triggers?

Hello there!

First of all, congrats on your achievement on NoFap, it is not easy to reach 54 days. And I am glad that your wife is fully supportive, which is important to your journey.

The "triggers" could be different from person to person. Simply put, if there's anything that may lead to an urge within you, then it is a trigger to you. You may see some people talking about a list of possible triggers, those are the common ones among us NoFappers, it serves as a reference. If you truly feel nothing when you encounter the hot girls while in the gym, then that's not a trigger for you, and you don't have to avoid going to the gym.

The main reason of avoiding the triggers, is of course acting as a preventive measure against relapses. An urge will often snowball into an uncontrollable lust, which then turn into real actions. Exposing yourself to triggers by accident is fine, it is a good opportunity for you to learn how not to react to it, you just raise your self-awareness, look away and fight off the urges quickly. This will definitely help you to rewire your brain. However, I think it becomes a problem if one is actively chasing after those triggers, this reinforces your old habit of fishing for dangerous stuff.

It depends on how you react to it. Sometimes you cannot control what your friends say during a conversation. If what your friends say causes urges in you, then you can see it as an opportunity to rewire your brain. You cultivate a new habit of not reacting to your urges, just let it come and go. It is fine as long as you don't actively seek for this kind of stimulating discussions. Also, if you find yourself unable to control the strong urges, while those friends just keep talking about those triggering stuff, then it is the best to do something about it, e.g. telling them you don't want such discussions, reducing the no. of meetups, avoiding them altogether...etc, do what feels appropriate to you.

A few possible factors here, just from my opinion. First, your body entered a "sobriety period" when you first started your NoFap attempt. This is common among NoFappers, especially when they make up their mind and want to quit PMO for good. However, this period only lasts for a time. It will wear off and you start to miss PMO again. Second, one of the things that motivated you to go NoFap is the recovery of your PIED (or other health problems for other people), but now you see signs of recovery, and somehow this motivation is no longer here. Thirdly, as your body recovers, it has gained extra energy, so as your libido. Your body has a tendency to go back to your old habits once it has recovered a bit. Therefore, don't let your guard down no matter how long you have been on NoFap. Your inner demons could come out and give you a challenge at any time.

I hope you will find all of the above useful, and I wish you good luck. Keep going!

 

No , if you can control yourself after those conversations it is everything ok, what will be not ok should be "i can't control myself after those conversations and then i binge with the adiction so i avoid them forever to not relapse".
It is a good sign of success recovery controlling yourself.

 

Simply put, don't entertain your urges. Most of the time, it is masturbation. But you know a lot of us will keep thinking of erotic stuff, eating junk food, spending hours on social media, before they relapse. These things should be avoided as well, you know the escalation.

I am not very sure about whether it is p-sub to you, but ask yourself, if you know those discussions would give you strong urges, why would you still actively seek for more of that? What are you looking for in those discussions? If you are looking for the dopamine highs, then yes, it is like p-sub, which is very similar to peeking p-sub photos / videos without masturbation. But whether you treat it as p-sub or not, you know it is a trigger to you, so be careful and don't play with fire.

If the parties are triggers to you, then the ideal case is of course avoiding those parties unless necessary, so you can start appreciating simple things in life. We have been in dopamine rushes for so many years through PMO, and our reward systems were messed up. However, it is easier said than done. If you have some deep-seated habits of seeking for stimulations (in your case they may be the parties), and you don't want to be too strict to yourself, then maybe you can do it step by step. For example, you can start with reducing the frequency of parties. Some people may find it okay to do it in moderation, while some may find themselves unable to control themselves. I must say it doesn't feel right to me, as I guess I will relapse after the parties, but maybe you are right, looking at real couples is still better than porn. You can try to do some experiments.

About the rewiring process, being strict to yourself speeds it up, but often feels more uncomfortable. Whether you try to do the parties in moderation or not, once your brain is rewired, I believe you will start feeling happy even with simple things in life. Maybe you may still go to parties once a while, but you don't need them to make you happy, then you are truly free.

 

Can someone tell me pls how to get arousal and libido back for real women . I am on 2.5 yr reboot but i dont have any attraction or libido towards real women . Whn i see a women on screen i get sensation in penis and if i keep looking at for a while i may get orgasm from it but real women looks like a piece of meat for me but no attraction at all pls help guys

 

Here's my opinion, I know that lots of people might disagree, but it's just how I perceive things according to what I learned from yourbrainonporn.com, books I've read, and people like Mark Queppett online:

The purpose of avoiding triggers is to make your recovery more manageable. It's way harder to reboot when you expose yourself to triggers that constantly make you crave the "easy fix" that porn offers.

Now, rewiring to your wife or real women is just the same, really, there's no difference on that, and if you've suffered from PIED, it means that you need a break from absolutely all kinds of sexual stimulations (reboot).

Also, about your swinger friends, I would ask myself:

"Is this the people and the environment that's going to take me away from porn for good?"

I doubt it because the fact that you were so triggered after a conversation with these people is proof that it won't help you at all, rather, it will pull you back to Porn and all its consequences.

 

No, don’t stop doing romance with your wife. That’s actually good for making a connection to a real human being.

The “standard reboot” in which guys report to have their negative symptoms like PIED is 90 days abstaining from all kinds of sexual stimulation.

After that, you could see if your PIED is gone as you try to softly engage in sex with your wife.

If it's not gone, then keep going and be close to your wife running tests with her.

Whatever you do just make sure you don’t run test with porn or anything similar to it, like fantasising about it.

Your PIED will be gone depending on how deep you’ve gone to this addiction.

Its like paying a debt of a credit card. You won’t be done until you payed all you spent.