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The beautiful downsides of NoFap

Discussion in 'Rebooting - Porn Addiction Recovery' started by Spiderwaffle, Oct 26, 2018.

  1. Spiderwaffle

    Spiderwaffle Fapstronaut

    Today I want to talk about a life-changing realization I made lately, it's an effect of rebooting that I noticed by watching myself on this fap free lifestyle and it's the "downsides" of NoFap.
    And why these downsides may be the best benefits of this whole thing...

    Because NoFap comes with a lot of downsides. Something I could watch on me are my bad emotions coming back. I get angry when someone annoys me. I start discussing things because I'm too proud to just admit everything. I feel lonely when I miss people or when I'm spending an evening alone. I feel sad when life fucks things up badly or when I'm getting disconnected with people I like. I feel disappointed when my trust in people gets broken. I feel dissatisfied when I don't set or meet goals.
    These are all awful feelings. But they are wonderful awful feelings.

    How does this make sense?

    I didn't have bad emotions - or at least only very rare and weak ones - when I was jacking off to porn everyday or filling up my brain with other things like endless scrolling through Facebook and Twitter. Just depression, depression however isn't a feeling - it's just a complete emptiness of feelings.

    On PMO, I was hiding from any argument, kept every possible conflict away from me, I didn't care spending a whole weekend without seeing anybody, I just could kill every upcoming bad emotion with some porn, I felt indifferent about things going down and my life getting worse from day to day, I was completely giving a fuck on what other people feel in any way, I couldn't care less about my life, my to-dos, my plans. I just didn't care, I didn't even care that I didn't care. There just were no bad feelings. Now these things are coming up because my brain woke up from it's porn-drug-coma.

    But isn't having no bad emotions the best thing you can imagine?

    The counterparts of all the typical NoFap benefits like energy, love, general happiness... sadness, loneliness, anger, rejection, disappointment. I came to absolutely love these emotions. This sounds kind of ironical but in some way these are the emotions that you need to come forward. Hiding from them makes things just worse. If these emotions wouldn't make any sense, we wouldn't have developed them in our evolutionary process.

    We're supposed to socialize to find friends and opportunities. So we feel lonely by not doing so. We're supposed to get our arguments in the game to make an impact and show that we are of importance. So we feel angry when they don't receive attention. We're supposed to mate and find someone who loves for who we are and supports us no matter what happens. So we feel the inhumanely torturing emotions of falling in love to get motivated into connecting with people...

    When bathing your brain in false satisfaction, you're just suppressing your natural engine of motivation for living a fulfilling life. I told myself to stop that. Life just is like that sometimes. Don't hide from these emotions, they're normal and they're good. Accept them. There is no balance without anger, no joy without sadness, no love without loneliness.

    Embracing these negative feelings was definitely something I had to learn at first but now I absolutely love them. I love having emotions, no matter what they are and I try to just get something good out of them whenever I can. Because the emotion itself is temporary, but the things you can get out of them can be permanent. The only thing you can't get something good out of is depression. I don't want depression anymore. Give me sadness, loneliness, anger, jealousy, all at once, and I'll accept them and maybe even see something good in them. But not depression.

    Depression isn't an emotion, it's worse than any emotion could be. It doesn't motivate us.

    I'm on Day 14 and this is something I want to develop into, I'm far from done. But writing this down was a big step for me personally to get my thoughts about this topic in some order.

    What do you think about that?
     
  2. Great post Spiderwaffle. During my best, initial NoFap streak of 23 days a few months ago, I noticed these negative emotions coming out as well. I started crying about things almost every day. I became discouraged because these feelings didn't feel good. But you're right that even though they don't feel good, they are still a good sign.
    I would love to know what the biological process is whereby doing something like PMO everyday numbs the emotions. How does it work exactly? I don't know. Doing PMO is an emotional experience, and an orgasm is certainly a very emotional experience (if only for a few seconds). It's like that becomes your emotional outlet and the rest of the time becomes dull and lifeless. But how and why does it work like that?
     
  3. Fallensoldier1

    Fallensoldier1 Fapstronaut

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    Very good post. You are so correct. I always used pmo for the same thing. To escape life, and I didn’t realize I was doing it for yeaaaars, untill now.

    Depression and loneliness is some of the worst withdrawal symptoms. I have this overwhelming feeling of loneliness. But at the same time most of the time I avoid people and do not want to talk. It definitely comes in stages. I have had some very good days lately. And I haven’t ever been able to say that since I can remember. But In a instant, I can be triggered by something and it all starts to go downhill. It’s a roller coaster.


    When I first started NoFap several months ago, I deleted all social media as well. A month or so I got Facebook back and for different reasons, deleted it again a few days ago. Well last night I started feeling some of the same withdrawal symtoms I have after I reset and I was thinking, why? It’s been a couple weeks and I haven’t looked at P or M’d once. And it hit me. Facebook.. I was using it for hours a day. Looking at friends pages and without even really realizing it, oogling girls and their photos on there. So I was getting dopamine rushes looking on there. For normal people I’m sure it’s no biggie. But for someone that’s recovering from looking at P everyday, it’s not good. So I’m glad I managed to get rid of social media again, but I do feel lonely and disconnected without it. Best of luck to you man. Just. Keep. Going. I have reset so many times. I keep learning every time. But I don’t want to anymore.
     
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