Are you dealing with porn addiction and intend to quit fully? Do you want to give up on masturbation, or if you have a friend or partner struggling with masturbation and porn addiction, are you searching for ways to help them overcome their struggles?
Read on because the best NoFap benefits highlighted in this article will provide insight into its advantages and exactly how it would help you. It sure did help me!
What Is NoFap?
NoFap describes abstinence from masturbation. It is a popular movement worldwide that aims to encourage long-term abstinence from masturbation and overcome porn addiction. It started as a casual discussion on Reddit by some people who had successfully stopped masturbating.
In June 2012, Alexander Rhodes, a former online pornography addict and Pittsburgh web designer founded the NoFap forum to help other persons suffering from porn addiction quit.
Why Is NoFap Beneficial?
Ever since the NoFap movement became popular, countless questions are being posed daily concerning NoFap. One of such questions popularly asked by many people is whether there are benefits attached to NoFap, and is it worth giving a try?
There are numerous benefits of NoFap, but before delving into that, it is pertinent to, first of all, acknowledge the fact that when you are trying to quit porn or masturbation, you could experience the “justification or excuse mentality” phase.
Justification Or Excuse Mentality Phase
The justification or excuse mentality is when your brain tries its best to find justification for you to rely on so that you won’t stop masturbating or watching porn. It is undeniable that so much pleasure is gotten from masturbating.
Our human nature loves pleasure so much, even if some form of pleasure may pose potential harm physically, mentally, and emotionally. Who doesn’t love feeling happy?
And if something makes you feel happy and gives you a great sense of satisfaction, you are likely to keep doing it. At this point, addiction could set in, causing compulsive behaviors when your body needs a rise in dopamine, and your human nature will always ask for more if it keeps getting it.
So do not be surprised if your brain finds excuses for you, telling you, for instance, that “you are hurting no one,â “but it makes you feel good when you are doing it,” and many other excuses.
Benefits Of NoFap
If you have ever found yourself in such a situation trying to justify your addiction to masturbation and porn, then the 12 benefits of NoFap listed below will be helpful to show you why committing to NoFap or giving it a try is worth it.
1. Youâll Be Happier: Reboot Your Dopamine Receptors
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter released during pleasurable moments, contributing to the feeling of reward, motivation, focus, happiness, and alertness. You know that feeling of satisfaction you get after you’ve accomplished something, for example, after you have reached orgasm?
You get that feeling, all thanks to dopamine. Not only that, dopamine usually gets the blame for addiction to pornography and masturbation. Here’s why. When you masturbate, there is a rush of dopamine release, which makes the act feel pleasurable. Because we want more of those feelings, we continue to find more of those stimuli, which result over time in addiction because your brain will start to require more dopamine release than on previous occasions to make you feel the same level of pleasure.
The major problem with this is not just the addiction to those particular stimuli, but also the fact that other little things that would make you feel pleasure normally, like playing video games or spending time with friends, will no longer give you the same rush of dopamine.
You will suddenly find that you are no longer excited by those things that would have caused you to be excited normally, contributing to low concentration and motivation. NoFap is beneficial because you can compare it to rebooting your dopamine levels.
Not masturbating or exposing yourself to pornography that stimulates you restores your dopamine level to factory setting by decreasing the level of dopamine in your brain and consequently increasing dopamine receptors. Increased dopamine receptors cause excitement and pleasure to be gotten again from doing those simple things.
2. Increased Willpower, Determination, And Discipline
This is often one of the first testimonies you will hear from people on a NoFap journey. Quitting porn addiction and masturbation is no child’s play and will demand a high dose of willpower, discipline, and determination.
Taking a cursory look at the irony of it, people addicted to porn and masturbation have little to no willpower to stop. That’s why they keep going back to porn and masturbation. Although it may seem like a discouraging factor since they lack willpower in the first place, it should be the opposite of discouragement.
Remember, only something damaged in the first place can be repaired, and only a void space can actually be filled. In the same way, NoFap does not just help maintain and increase existing willpower but also gradually builds it up in those who have none.
3. Better Self-Esteem
The benefit of NoFap cannot be overestimated when it comes to building your self-esteem. NoFap helps you build trust in yourself and your abilities, including your partner. Most porn viewers will know very well that porn tends to be “extra” in its depiction.
It portrays exaggerated things that are far from reality in terms of bodily features of the actors, the manner of the acts, and a lot more. This often causes addicts to develop a negative view of their bodies and their performance in bed with their partner, consequently causing their self-esteem to decrease. It creates a feeling of dissatisfaction, vulnerability, and loss of confidence in oneself and abilities.
It cannot only affect your self-esteem but also your partner’s. When a partner notices that their other partner is trying to avoid intimacy with them and prefers porn over them for sexual pleasures, it could make them feel not enough and destroy their self-esteem.
Many Fapstronauts have claimed that NoFap was an opportunity for them to get over their unrealistic past, accept the present, connect with reality, and above all, accept themselves.
4. Increased Energy
NoFap increases energy in two ways, by reducing hormonal release that would have otherwise caused the energy to be wasted and lost after masturbating and building mental strength and stability, which positively affects your physical output and strength. In the first case, masturbating and having orgasms require so much energy.
Ejaculation causes the release of hormones, increased blood flow, and an increase in the release of prolactin. Also, masturbation causes an increase in dopamine and a decrease in testosterone, resulting in tiredness, low motivation, and low output.
On the other hand, NoFap leads to an increase in testosterone levels, which will, in turn, contribute to more energy, activeness, and better muscle development when you hit the gym. In the second case, our mental stability is necessarily connected to our physical performances.
That’s why people feel tired, weighed down, and unproductive when dealing with mental issues. On the brighter side, mental strength and stability(which is one of the targets of NoFap) equals less tiredness and more of the feeling of being energized.
5. More Time
It is no joke that pornography and masturbation addiction consume a lot of time for many people. By refraining from masturbating and spending a lot of your time on porn websites, you will not only gain control of your life but also have more time to build better relationships and be productive.
6. Helps With Anxiety And Depression
Although there isnât a direct link between masturbation and anxiety or depression, many people have experienced anxiety or depression resulting from masturbation. Ironically, anxiety and depression are often triggers of porn addiction.
Here’s how NoFap helps deal with anxiety and depression. Resorting to Porn, Masturbation, and Orgasm (PMO) may seem like a temporary solution to help reduce anxiety and depression, causing you to feel relaxed temporarily, but it is not a permanent solution.
It can lead to compulsive sexual behavior (CSB) as It creates a vicious circle where you are stuck in resorting to porn, masturbation, and orgasm as a way of dealing with your depression and anxiety temporarily.
After CSB sets in and you try to stop the cycle, you will discover that it is not easy, which could worsen the existing depression and anxiety and push you to resort to porn, masturbation, and orgasm. That’s the vicious circle! NoFap helps by gradually building your willpower, determination, and discipline to escape being stuck in the vicious circle.
7. Increased Confidence
NoFap enables you build confidence in yourself through goal setting. When you set a goal and eventually reach it, it gives you confidence in yourself and your skills.
The ultimate goal of NoFap is to abstain from porn and masturbation. If indeed you are willing to abstain from it, then when you finally succeed, you will experience ecstasy, a better sense of direction, and an upsurge in confidence.
It is noteworthy that although abstinence is the goal of NoFap, you may have several relapses, and that should never make you feel like a failure.
After all, winners are not those who do not fall at all, but those who fall and learn to rise again each time they fall until they master how to avoid falling fully.
That is precisely how NoFap helps in quitting masturbation and porn addiction; by giving you the confidence to rise again even after falling into another relapse, till you fully learn how to perfect it.
8. Positivity And Optimism
NoFap is associated with positivity and optimism, which improves your outlook on life. Being positive itself comes with many benefits healthwise, among which are
- Improved mental health and stability
- Lower rater of depression and anxiety
- Low level of stress
- Greater stress coping mechanism
- Better social skills
9. Better Sex Life
Stronger and more intense orgasms, increased libido, and other positive improvements in a person’s sexual life are added advantages of NoFap. Masturbation and porn addiction can take a terrible toll on sexual relationships with other partners.
It could negatively affect a person’s sex life by causing genital desensitization, which is the feeling of numbness and the inability to feel a level of expected pleasure. This is because the genitals have become accustomed to a particular intensity of sexual stimulation that you may not be able to experience with a partner. It usually results in sexual frustration and dissatisfaction with a sexual partner.
It is also related to the dopamine rush from a particular sensation that is higher than what your partner gives. Therefore, the level of sensation that your partner gives will only cause a little dopamine release, not sufficient to get you feeling satisfied.
Leading to Porn-Induced Erectile Dysfunction (PIED), where a person finds it hard to get an erection or keep it firm for sexual intercourse. This is because they find it difficult to get stimulated by a real partner as the brain is already accustomed to stimuli from the screen. The issue of self-esteem, botched confidence, performance anxiety, depression, and other negative emotions can affect one’s sexual performance.
Abstaining from porn and masturbation will give your body the chance to forget the intense pleasure you have become so accustomed to. During that phase, the dopamine receptors in your brain will increase, and you will be surprised to find that even the slightest stimulation from your partner would make you feel excited.
10. Increased Productivity
NoFap won’t only help with depression, anxiety, loneliness, self-hate, and saving time; it will also make you highly productive. During the period of challenging oneself to quit porn and masturbation, people are usually encouraged to keep their minds occupied and their hands busy. After all, boredom is one of the major triggers of masturbation and porn addiction.
Numerous ways have been utilized to keep themselves distracted. For example, some people prefer to learn new hobbies and cultivate healthy habits. Some other persons focus on developing their relationships with families and friends, spending quality time with them.
Also, some people go extra with their work, set goals, and fix their minds on achieving them as a means of distraction from porn and masturbation. Regardless of the means employed, the result is usually an upsurge in productivity.
You cannot expect anything less from a busy mind and a hand at work. Besides, the mental stability that comes with new habits, lifestyle, and social relations reduces stress, improves sleep, and increases energy. .
11. Negative Emotion
By abstaining from masturbation and porn, you can fix certain emotions that are not healthy for you, including loneliness and self-hate. Have you experienced this feeling of loneliness that comes after a successful round of jerking off?
Countless people have reportedly felt that way, and that’s just how it is. Masturbation sometimes creates a sense of melancholic anticlimax, a strong feeling of loneliness after having an orgasm and not sharing it with someone.
This often happens because of some of the triggers of masturbation and porn addiction which could be boredom, loss of a partner, loneliness itself, depression, failure, or just a bad day at work. Orgasm would give you a short escape from these negative emotions, making you feel good only at the point of having it.
When it is over, dopamine decreases, you become tired, less motivated, and less energized. Those negative emotions you were trying to escape from would easily creep back in at this vulnerable point.
NoFap encourages you to adopt healthy habits, willpower, discipline, and, most importantly, positivity to get you through these challenging times. Tough times and negative emotions are a part of life, but what matters, in the end, is how well you can handle them in your life.
12. Improved Quality Of Life
Maintaining health practices and good habits during the NoFap period generally improves your quality of life. NoFap challenges you to take control of your life, as well as your decisions and choices. The overall health, physical, and mental benefits cannot be overestimated.
Conclusion
There you go. Discussed above are a few of the enormous benefits youâll get with NoFap. NoFap is beneficial sexually, physically, mentally, and emotionally. Some have claimed that the concept of NoFap is wrong because it is only normal for humans to seek sexual pleasures by masturbating. It may be true that pleasure drives most of us as humans, but remember, not all pleasure is necessary for our survÄșval.
The worst part is if that pleasure begins to take control of your life. Based on the scientific connection between NoFap and the bodyâs physiological system, coupled with the shared experiences of thousands of people all over the world on how NoFap has helped them Improve healthwise and in other aspects of their lives, NoFap is worth giving a try. If you are already giving it a try, you shouldnât give up; because it’s worth it with all these benefits!
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