Urges are one of the most common causes of relapse on nofap. You’re gonna get a lot of urges on nofap, especially during the initial days. It’s necessary that you learn to control them.
In this article, I’m gonna discuss what is nofap urges, why do you get them, how to control them, for how long you’re gonna get them, and everything else you need to know about nofap urges.
What is NoFap Urges?
Urges mean a strong desire/temptation to do something. In NoFap, urges mean a strong desire to watch porn, masturbate, or edge.
When you give up an addiction or compulsive behavior, you’re gonna get a lot of urges to do that activity.
The more addicted you were to porn and masturbation, the stronger the urges will be.
Why Do We Get Urges on NoFap?
Before we discuss how to deal with urges, you need to understand why do we get urges on nofap.
An urge, scientifically speaking, is part of an addiction pathway formed in your brain.
Watching porn and masturbating releases a huge amount of dopamine in your brain. Your brain has associated watching porn and masturbation with pleasure.
If you stop doing those activities, your brain gets starved of dopamine, which is necessary to feel pleasure. So, your brain tricks you by giving you urges so you indulge with them and your brain can get dopamine.
Without that dose of dopamine, you’ll not feel pleasure. Porn and masturbation have de-sensitized your brain up to a point that the dopamine released by other pleasurable activities(like exercising, socializing, working on a goal, etc) doesn’t give you pleasure because the dopamine released by Porn and masturbation is much greater than those activities.
Since you can’t feel pleasure from other activities, your brain forces you to indulge in porn and masturbation which gives the most amount of dopamine.
The key here is to give your brain enough time to get sensitized again. After you refrain from PMO(porn, masturbation, orgasm) for enough time, your brain will start getting pleasure out of other activities, and you won’t need to consume porn or masturbate to feel pleasure.
Urges are just your brain’s way to make you go back to your old habit of watching porn and jerking-off, so it can get its dose of dopamine.
How to Control Urges on NoFap?
Now that you’ve understood what are nofap urges and why do we get them, you need to understand the different ways in which you can control them.
1) Get Busy
If you’ve been practicing the Nofap lifestyle for some time, you’d have noticed that most of the time urges hit you when you’re free and have nothing to do.
Keep yourself mentally and physically occupied for most of the day. Don’t sit idle.
If you keep yourself busy mentally and physically, you’re gonna get very few urges. And the urges you get while you’re busy doing something, won’t probably make you relapse.
You can learn a new skill, build a new hobby, work on your goals, watch something informative, to keep yourself busy.
The key is to replace porn and masturbation with something constructive and to fill the time you wasted on PMO with something beneficial. If you don’t replace it with something constructive, you’ll keep relapsing.
2) Unfollow All Models on Instagram
You need to watch out for the triggers which give you urges and make you relapse and then work on eliminating those triggers.
For a lot of guys, it’s hot models on Instagram. Seeing half-naked women will definitely provoke and trigger you, especially if you’re on the beginner stage of nofap.
Unfollow all the models, pages, and any content which can trigger you, from all your social media.
The ideal scenario would be to give up all social media during the initial days of nofap(less than 30 days). But, if you can’t do it then unfollowing all the content which can make you relapse is the least you can do.
3) Meditate
Meditation is an effective way to control urges. Controlling urges on nofap is just one of the many benefits of meditation.
Make a habit of meditating daily for at least 20 minutes. It’ll calm your mind and you’ll notice that you’re getting fewer urges during the day.
If you don’t meditate, you have a monkey mind. It’ll go in all directions and think about everything(randomly), then the chances of some sexually explicit thought coming to your mind is higher, so the chances of getting an urge and relapsing are also higher.
If you build a habit of meditating, you’ll notice that fewer random thoughts are coming to your mind and the chances of sexual thoughts coming to your mind are also less.
4) Do Push-ups Whenever Urges Hit
Push-ups are instant urge killer. Whenever you get an urge, immediately drop to the floor and start doing push-ups.
It’ll kill your urges within no time. Do as many push-ups as you can in sets, until you run out of breath.
Urges on nofap are nothing but pent-up sexual energy. That energy needs to come out in some form. If you don’t transmute that sexual energy, you’re just gonna ejaculate and waste that energy.
Instead, you can do push-ups and utilize that energy for something beneficial. By doing push-ups, you’re utilizing that sexual energy to build a good physique.
When you’ve exhausted yourself and ran out of breath by doing push-ups, you’ll notice that your urge is gone.
5) Take a Cold Shower
Cold showers are another instant urge killer. Cold showers have a lot of benefits in addition to controlling urges on nofap.
Whenever urges hit you, go to the bathroom, take your clothes off and hop into the cold shower. You’ll immediately notice the difference.
Cold showers make you uncomfortable and make you forget about your urges. You’ll be too uncomfortable to think about relapsing.
Ideally, you should build a habit of taking cold showers every day. Why wait till you get an urge to hop into one?
What you can do is after your regular shower, you can switch to cold settings for 2 minutes. It’ll be enough to take care of your urges for the rest of your day.
6) Spend Time Outside
If you’ve been practicing nofap for a while, you’d have noticed that most of the time relapses happen when you’re in your room alone with no one to talk to.
The key to overcoming it is to spend as much time as possible outside. Since you can’t masturbate outside, you’re safe as long as you stay outside.
It helps a lot, especially during the initial days of nofap where the chances of you relapsing are higher, to spend a lot of time outside.
You can go hang out with your friends, go to an event, volunteer for something, or just go to a park and sit there.
Make a habit of spending 30 minutes outside, close to nature.
Spending a lot of time inside your house is not only bad for your nofap streak, but also for your mental health.
7) Call a Friend Whenever Urges Hit
This is also a very good way to deal with urges and make sure you don’t relapse because of it.
Whenever urges hit, call a friend or a relative to talk about anything. It’ll distract your mind from urges and keep you busy. You can’t relapse while talking on a phone.
If you have a nofap accountability partner, it’s even better. You can call them and tell them you’re having an urge to relapse. They’ll motivate you to not relapse and keep you on the phone as long as the urge is there.
Even if you don’t have an accountability partner, you can call any friend and talk about anything until your urges are gone and you feel in control.
8) Online NoFap Forums
If you don’t have a friend which you can call and talk to or it’s late in the night to call someone, you can go to any of the online nofap forums on the internet.
They are a great place not only to learn about nofap but also to avoid a relapse whenever urges hit.
If you go there and read some of the motivational stories, you’ll get motivated and immediately remember why you’re on nofap.
Remembering why you’re on nofap will strengthen your determination to control the urge and not relapse.
Nofap forum on Reddit, r/nofap is the most popular and the best nofap forum, in my opinion. Reboot nation forum and forum.nofap.com are also great nofap forums.
9) Remind Yourself How You’ll Feel After Relapsing
If you’re reading this article, chances are you’ve been doing nofap for a while now and have also relapsed at least a few times. You know how you feel after a relapse.
No one ever is happy after a relapse. Relapse is always followed by a feeling of depression, anxiety, guilt, and regret.
Remind yourself of those feelings before relapsing and it’ll make you resist the urges and not give in to your temptations.
You can also write how you feel after a relapse on a piece of paper and look at it whenever urges hit and you think about relapsing.
How Long The Urges Will be There?
Now that if you’ve understood how you can control urges, you might be thinking for how long you’re gonna have to resist and control urges.
The answer to that question is urges will always be there. but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
It’s human biology to get horny. Even if you give up PMO entirely, urges will be there but you’re gonna be better at controlling and transmuting them.
Urges Are Not Necessarily Bad
As I’ve said before, urges are not necessarily bad. If you give in to your urges/temptations and relapse, that means you’ve wasted that sexual energy and became more dependent on PMO for pleasure.
If you control those urges and transmute that sexual energy into something constructive, then urges are your friend because you’re utilizing them to accomplish something positive.
Sexual energy is one of the most powerful forms of energy that you can transmute to achieve something or accomplish your life goals.
If you’re experiencing the negative side effects of porn and masturbation and are trying to it, I recommend reading the book “Your Brain on Porn” by Gary Wilson. It explains the scientific reason behind porn affecting our brain negatively and what you can do to quit it. It’s the best book I’ve read on the topic. It is available on Amazon.
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Conclusion
Urges mean a strong desire/temptation to do something. In NoFap, urges mean a strong desire to watch porn, masturbate, or edge.
If you give up any addiction or compulsive behavior, you’re gonna get urges to indulge in that activity.
Urges during nofap is your brain’s way to make you consume porn or masturbate so it can get its dose of dopamine to feel pleasurable.
Here are the 9 ways to control urges on nofap:-
- Get Busy
- Unfollow All Models on Instagram
- Meditate
- Do Push-ups Whenever Urges Hit
- Take a Cold Shower
- Spend Time Outside
- Call a Friend Whenever Urges Hit
- Online NoFap Forums
- Remind Yourself How You’ll Feel After Relapsing
Urges will always be there, but with time you’ll get better at controlling them.
Urges are not necessarily bad, it’s just built-up sexual energy. You can transmute that sexual energy to achieve something or accomplish your life goals.
