What is the killer way to stop nofap urges permanently? Take a cold shower? Take a walk? Do twenty pushups?
Well, it is none of the above.
I was in the same situation you are in right now. While I was on nofap, strong urges would come and it felt like I could do nothing else except to watch adult videos and masturbate.
I gave in to the urges more than I resisted them. But then I sat myself down and thought ‘You mean there is no way to permanently kill these urges?’
I was 100% sure there was something I could do to completely kill urges to fap. The only problem was finding the strategy.
From that time onwards, I stopped trying to resist urges to watch porn and fap. I put all my energy in looking for a way to permanently kill fapping urges.
In this article, I will walk you through the entire process of how I eventually found a strategy that killed all urges to watch porn and fap.
Today, I am completely free from porn addiction. You can read my full experience of struggling with porn and masturbation from my eBook.
Mistakes People Make
The first step to take if you want to kill urges to fap is by understanding what doesn’t work. It is only when you know what doesn’t work that you will start looking for what actually works.
There are several people I advised to use the method I used to kill urges to watch porn but they refused. Instead, they went ahead with their own ideas which they thought would kill the urges.
I have chosen to start by mentioning what won’t work so that you remove these strategies that don’t work from your mind. It is only when your mind is empty that you can take up a new strategy.
Using Porn Blocking Apps
Porn blocking apps do not take away urges to watch porn; they only take away the porn you want to watch. They are ineffective if you have other means of accessing adult content such as looking at adult magazines.
Also, porn blocking apps are easy to override. It takes less than 10 seconds to turn off the Google safe search. When the urges to watch porn come, you will most likely switch off the Google safe search and watch porn.
If you have been using porn blocking apps to try and kill urges to fap, don’t bother anymore. You can’t get anywhere with such apps.
These apps are good once you have already beaten porn addiction. You should think about blocking porn on your phone or computer because it is filthy not because you want to kill urges to watch it.
Working Out
Working out whenever you get urges to watch porn may divert your energy and cause the urges to fap to cease. But then those urges will return.
In other words, working out to kill nofap urges only reschedules those urges to some other time. Again, working out is not always convenient. What will you do when urges to fap come when you are so tired?
Working out is good exercise but then it is not a good strategy to use if you want to get rid of urges to watch pornography for good.
Remove working out from your list of ‘things to do when urges to masturbate come’.
Taking a Cold Shower
A cold shower has the same effects as working out; it postpones the urges to a later date. Postponed urges are still urges and they will surely come.
You may manage to cool down the urges for a few days with a cold shower but as you keep postponing them, they become stronger.
Someday, they will come with such force that even your normal cold shower won’t be able to divert them.
Also, just like working out, you can’t always take a cold shower whenever the urges to fap come. In most cases the urges to fap will come when it is inconvenient for you to take a cold shower.
In my article Nofap Cold Showers: Do they really work? I explain why it is impossible for cold showers to help a porn addict quit his addiction.
Read it to get more insight.
Thinking about Negatives of Fapping
It may sound ideal to use the fear factor to stop yourself from giving in to fapping urges. But then that is only true on paper.
In real sense, when urges come, no reason seems strong enough to convince your mind to back off. In fact, most people who fap already know the terrible things that can happen to them but they can’t stop themselves.
In my eBook, I narrated how I was caught fapping twice and had several narrow escapes but I still fapped. When urges to masturbate come, somehow your mind goes to the mode of ‘we shall repair later’.
No matter what negative effect you throw at your brain, it slides off. You are sure you will feel worse after relapsing but you can’t stop yourself.
Thinking about negatives of masturbation as a way to kill urges to masturbate doesn’t work. Thinking about positives also doesn’t work.
The very brain you expect to be thinking is often too preoccupied with finding thrilling adult content.
When do Nofap Urges come?
If you have observed carefully, urges to watch porn and masturbate come whenever you get an empty feeling. The empty feeling may be a result of a disappointment at work or in your social life.
Other times, the emptiness comes when you are alone and don’t have anything in mind to do. That is why in nofap you are advised to keep yourself busy.
Although that sounds like good advice, it is next to impossible to keep yourself busy all the time.
Nofap urges also come when we embark on doing something that is boring. You may start reading a book but then it doesn’t cheer you up.
In most cases, people try several activities that they hope will cheer them but when they fail to find the thrill they are looking for, they resort to watching porn.
Urges to fap are always lingering around waiting for you to get bored with whatever thing you are doing.
Some strange cases exist where people resort to watching porn because intimate time with their partners is not thrilling.
After having their routine sex, they get urges to watch pornography and fap.
The most notable thing is that urges in different people are triggered by specific things. Some may get urges to fap simply by being alone while others get them when they get a disappointment.
Either way, it is important to know what triggers your urges.
Why Urges to Fap come
Urges to watch porn come on legal terms. They are not in your life illegally. Hoping that they will magically stop coming is a pipe dream.
You have to intentionally put in the work to stop the fapping urges from showing up. The first step of working to kill nofap urges is understanding why they come in the first place.
Nofap urges come to cover up unwanted feelings. The unwanted feelings often have different sources for each individual. In many cases, they are emotional.
If you have experienced so many disappointments in life and your brain can’t figure out a way to stay away from them, it will find something thrilling to fill the ‘disappointment gap’.
People who lack emotional connection get tempted to fill the ‘emotional gap’ with something interesting. Many prefer porn and masturbation since it is cheap and easily available. It also seems to have fewer consequences than other forms of coping.
Once you have taught your mind to use pornography as a safe space from emotional pain, anytime you encounter emotional pain, your brain will prompt you to watch porn.
The urges to watch porn will come from your mind. That very mind that you are using to quit porn will drive you to watch it.
That is why you may resolve to stop watching adult content and even swear to it but then when the urges come, you throw your resolution out of the window.
Your brain has no problem noting that you don’t want porn but then when you encounter emotional pain, your brain is tasked to protect you. Unfortunately, it only has one solution to escaping emotional pain; masturbating.
With this understanding, I hope you see why I began by mentioning to you methods of killing urges that don’t work. Urges are coming from your brain and your brain is doing the right thing; protecting you from emotional pain.
How to Permanently Stop Nofap Urges
The only way to stop urges to fap from coming is by healing from the emotional pain that triggers them.
Most people in nofap advocate for giving your brain an alternative way of dealing with the emotional pain. That may work but it is temporary.
On the day that the alternative way of dealing with the urges fails to mask your empty feeling, you will resort to masturbation.
It is only when you have healed from the pain that you can be sure you won’t get the urges anymore.
Healing from the pain that triggers your mind to create urges to watch adult content takes time and effort. That is why I normally recommend my readers to hire a therapist.
The therapist you hire is coming to help you uncover the root cause of your addiction. He will also help you analyze your childhood in order to find the source of your pain.
Once you have discovered the source of pain, he is to help you heal from it. The healing process is different depending on the type of pain everyone has.
Some pains may be too deep and may need many sessions of therapy to heal them. Others may be simple pains that you can easily heal from after one therapy session.
The clue here is the deeper your addiction to porn and fapping is, the deeper your pain is. Either way, if you faithfully follow the guidance of your therapist, you will eventually break free.
If you want to know how long it might take you to come out of porn addiction completely, read this article.
End Result
Urges to masturbate will decrease as you heal from your pain. Once you have completely healed from your past pain, the urges will disappear completely.
You will become like a normal person who never has to bother about resisting urges to fap. The amazing thing is that you will have a strong and healthy attraction towards women.
Imagine a life free from urges to fap and yet you have a strong attraction to your partner. On top of that, you don’t need to do any hard exercises to keep yourself from the urges. Is that not the life you want?
Pay the price and you will get the life you want. Therapy is not the cheapest service everyone can buy but it is definitely the best service a porn addict can buy.
I have written a detailed article about the cost of porn addiction therapy (Link opens in new tab) and the company I recommend. Read it to get an estimate of how much it will cost you to hire a therapist.
Don’t waste your time trying to kill nofap urges using another method. In the end, there is only one thing you can do to end the urges; heal from your emotional pain.
Good luck!