Hey fellow fapstronauts, I'm fairly new to nofap. I've been taking the challenge for 12 days now and only just recently felt the strong urge to m. I've found that my desire/need to m came from my depression. P and m were my coping mechanism to deal with my depression. Luckily for me, I have been making changes and improvements in myself a couple months ago before I joined nofap. I started going to the gym, i changed my wardrobe up, got a nice haircut, and started group therapy. My depression hasn't been as bad and I've been feeling better about myself. Even though my depression is under control, my level of confidence is still incredibly low, which is why ive decided to take the nofap challenge. I'd like to know if this will affect my nofap experience negatively. Since I had a mental addiction to cope with depression, I don't feel strong urges to do it since I haven't been depressed. Will I still feel the benefits from nofap? I'm assuming and hoping the answer is yes, but I'd like feedback to be sure.
Your post is interesting in that there are many different angles of looking at what you wrote. Your immediate question is whether what you describe will affect your NoFap experience negatively. I don't see how it would. I don't know what negative experiences you had in mind. If you have an alternate means of controlling PM outside of NoFap - I salute and congratulate you in all earnestness. I don't believe this forum or any other is the ultimate or only solution for everyone, but for those of use who are able to thrive on this forum through the support of others as well as helping others, it's invaluable. I believe you have 2 separate issues here. A reliance on PM as a coping mechanism, and your depression. Depression can be a serious condition and affects more people than what society would care to admit. As someone who is self-diagnosed as having depression, meaning I've passed every checklist imaginable regarding depression since I was a teenager but have never seen a therapist, I know first hand how debilitating it can be. I'm glad to read your depression is under control, and the steps you've taken to overcome that are tremendous and I encourage you to keep it up. Your other issue is using PM as a coping mechanism. I'm not sure how far down the rabbit hole of that issue you are, but I can attest to the fact that it is a strong indicator of porn addiction. I don't know if you are or are not a porn addict, but the more I educate myself about the harmful effects of pornography, the more I'm coming to believe that porn is a blazing fire that will eventually burn everyone who comes near it. It's a scale, as with any addiction, and some are more susceptible than others and experience more consequences than others, but that doesn't change the fact that it is destructive. Keep in mind, using porn as a coping mechanism "works" for any emotion or situation and not just depression. I've used it to cope with sadness, anger, boredom, procrastination, laziness, apathy, and many others. With that said, anything you can use to do away with porn is positive, and that includes NoFap. By participating in and completing a challenge, you are training yourself to develop alternate coping mechanisms that do not involve porn. That coupled with other fringe benefits you can read about throughout the forums, I can't see how this would be a negative experience. Feel free to ping me anytime - we're here to support each other.
Thank you so much for your feedback. I think everything you said makes perfect sense, but there is one issue that is important to me that you didn't address, and that is about the confidence. Everyone who succeeds nofap reports a large boost in confidence, energy and motivation. I would like to know if abstaining from porn and masturbation will still help achieve those goals even though my circumstances a slightly different than most
I can only speak from my own experiences, but one thing I've learned since starting my reboot is that I now know overcoming my addiction is possible. Before, I had no hope, and I was living a failed life consumed with shame and guilt. This was me with zero confidence. I now have done things I didn't realize I could. Posting in this forum, publicly giving advice through my posts, but in addition, I've become more comfortable interacting with others. I believe this is because my shame and guilt are gone. For me, my reboot has increased my confidence dramatically, but when starting out with zero, there's nowhere to go but up. Regardless, if you can develop the self-discipline to abstain from an activity that is so ridiculously prevalent in our society, imagine what else you could achieve? That is an automatic confidence boost. I think my motivation is largely improved now that I know I can succeed. Before, I had no motivation because I was fully expecting to fail. Since realizing I can succeed, I am so much more motivated to continue in my success. The one thing I can't attest to is increased energy. I believe many experience it. I do think excessive porn use can lead to brain fog, which zaps energy. Then again, I started running to develop a healthy habit, and the exercise has given me more energy, but I attribute that more to the exercise rather than my reboot progress. In short, everyone can have drastically different experiences, but enough have reported similar enough experiences to demonstrate clear benefits. I think it comes down to how much of an addiction you have. A social drinker who abstains will not experience the same thing as an alcoholic experiencing sobriety for the first time in years. Hope this helps.
