If you haven’t started the NoFap streak (the challenge to avoid bad habits) yet, then read this section carefully. It is a NoFap Recovery Guide for the first seven days of the journey.
What are the Stages of NoFap?
New rebooters (those starting the challenge) often assume that our state will remain the same for 90 days in a NoFap streak. But that’s not entirely true. As we progress through different stages of NoFap, there are ups and downs. Sometimes urges are very strong, and sometimes they disappear completely. Sometimes a person feels very powerful, and sometimes extremely weak. That’s why the journey of NoFap is divided into different stages so that you can understand the stage you are in and move forward accordingly.
Thousands of successful rebooters have passed through these stages and shared their experiences on various websites. If you want to know more about them, visit the NoFap website.
Most rebooters are not aware of these stages and relapse due to misunderstanding or fear. Therefore, it is better to understand and keep in mind all stages of NoFap so that you know the challenges you may face during this period and how to deal with them. This section will focus on the first stage of NoFap.
First Stage of Nofap:
It is also known as the Excitement Period. The duration of this stage is seven to ten days. This week is the most dangerous period of NoFap because during this stage, urges (sexual desires/cravings) can be very intense. Therefore, the chances of relapse are highest during this period. Most people who start NoFap for the first time relapse during this period.
Feeling Victorious on Day One:
When you successfully complete the first day, you feel great and think you’ll breeze through this entire journey. But as you approach the third or fourth day, urges become increasingly intense. By the end of the first week, you’re in a fierce battle with your urges. To progress to the next stage, you have to defeat these urges.
Edging: A Dangerous Thing
Urges reach their peak when you edge. Remember, if you edge, the inevitable result is a relapse. Edging leads to relapse for most rebooters.
Understanding the First Stage as an Olympic Arena:
The first week is like climbing a mountain. When you reach the summit, you catch a glimpse of freedom, and then you’re willing to do anything to reach it. Your determination becomes stronger than ever.
Two Major Challenges in the First Stage:
Remember, you’ve been living an addicted life for many years, so you have to be very cautious to avoid relapse in the first stage. Rebooters generally face two major challenges in this stage:
1) How to avoid relapse?
2) How to deal with it if a relapse occurs?
In this section, we’ll provide you with four powerful concepts and practical suggestions to avoid relapse, along with three emergency tips. If you implement them honestly, you’ll guarantee yourself protection against relapse and easily overcome the first stage. So, read these tips carefully and let us know in the comments which one resonates with you the most.
How to Avoid from relapsing in first Week
(1) Eliminate Your Triggers
(2) Unfollow all accounts on social media that serve as triggers for relapse.
(3) Turn off notifications from apps or browsers on your mobile device that deliver inappropriate content.
(4) If you’re accustomed to reading explicit material, watching dramas, movies, or browsing YouTube, abstain from these activities for at least a week.
(5) If you need to watch a lecture on YouTube or view something work-related on Facebook, do so in a place where your family or roommates can easily see your screen.
If you’re accustomed to PMO (Pornography, Masturbation, Orgasm) before sleeping, you’ll need to work on changing your bedtime habits. Turn off all internet devices at least an hour before bedtime, and refrain from using the internet during that time. Instead, adopt a different bedtime habit, such as reading a book, writing in your journal, meditation, reciting, reading religious texts, light exercise or bedtime yoga, prayer, planning your tasks for the next day, taking a shower, calling your parents, organizing any pending work, etc. Failure to establish these habits may lead you back to PMO.
Remember, the addicted brain that traps a person is not even aware of its own cunningness. Therefore, take great care and keep yourself busy. Define the purpose of your life and strive for it.
Beware of the Banners of These Four Risks of Relapse
(1) When urges are intense and you have access to the internet.
(2) When you’re alone and idle.
(3) When you’re not fulfilling your hydration and nutritional needs.
(4) When you’re stressed.
(5) Remember, Porn Desire Isn’t Natural
(6) Don’t fall into the misconception that pornography is like hunger, where we have a need to satisfy it just like we need food.
Whether you believe it or not, fulfilling the constant desire for PMO can make you feel as if porn is also a necessity. But when you reach ninety days, you’ll realize that the desires you’ve been satisfying as hunger until today were actually a terrifying addiction. After ninety days, although you may have gained significantly more masculine strength, you also develop a tremendous power over yourself. This power prevents you from being bothered by frivolous thoughts. Just dispel any misconception that porn and masturbation are necessities. As far as sexual desire is concerned, you can’t suppress it, but you can definitely change its direction. You can channel this energy into creative pursuits, studying, bodybuilding, etc., and become a genius human being. We’ll discuss this topic (sexual energy transmutation) later.
Break Free from Your Unconscious Imprisonment
Do you know that living a constant addiction lifestyle sends repeated messages to your unconscious mind that you can’t quit porn? This is why it feels difficult for you to quit porn. (This is what we call mind set).
Let’s explain with an example:
If you were asked which is the strongest animal, after much thought, most people would answer an elephant, because they have seen elephants in circuses, at the zoo, or elsewhere, tethered with a weak rope. The elephant remains unaware of its strength, and the rope tied around its neck does not have any significance for it. However, the elephant spends its entire life enslaved to that rope, believing it’s too strong to break it. Similarly, living a constant PMO lifestyle makes you a prisoner of your mentality. You don’t even realize that you have more power within you than your thoughts. By utilizing this power, you can break free from the bondage of PMO.
Dear friends! It’s possible that repeated unsuccessful attempts to quit porn may momentarily discourage you, but that doesn’t mean you lack the ability to break free from it. So, when you’re ready to fight with full preparation, PMO will flee like a scared mouse.
Use Powerful Affirmations
Every thought, every word that comes into your mind leaves a deep imprint on you. Weak thoughts make you weak, and powerful thoughts make you strong. We’ll write detailed posts about them later. For now, think, feel, and repeat these words in your mind, especially before sleeping and upon waking up. Initially, your mind may not accept these sentences, but that’s okay. Keep saying these sentences to yourself. Soon, your belief will become strong.
Powerful Affirmations:
– I am rising above the temptation of PMO.
– I am stronger than PMO.
– I crush negative thoughts.
– I am filled with pure energy and love.
– The desire for PMO is fading away.
– I am generating sexual energy within me.
– I am a strong man.
– I don’t waste my energy.
– My sexual power is being used in creative pursuits.
– My mind is becoming stronger than ever.
– My regrets are disappearing.
– My resolutions are stronger than mountains.
– I never compromise on myself.
– No one can make me relapse, even with a billion dollars.
– Because I am loyal to myself.
Note: Record these powerful affirmations in your voice and listen to them repeatedly in repeat mode. You’ll see the impact on yourself in just one day. After completing this duration you will feel different benefits of Nofap.
Note: It may seem strange to you, but there is a whole science behind it, which we’ll explain to you soon.
Nofap Recovery Guide Tips:
Repeating a task repeatedly forms a habit, and often, without realizing, that task starts happening. Similarly, due to the habit of PMO, sometimes you inadvertently get close to relapse.
So, while using a mobile phone (or even otherwise), if you suddenly start getting negative thoughts or feel tension in your organ, considering it as an indicator of relapse, become alert immediately and follow emergency tips.
When you get stuck in urges, you forget all precautions because your reptilian brain takes over, which doesn’t have the ability to think or understand. In such a situation, don’t forget to take help from emergency tips.
Here are emergency tips:
(1) Cold Showers and Push-ups
Both of these techniques are excellent for combating urges separately. For example, if urges start bothering you, and you feel like you’re heading towards relapse, don’t stop, but instead rush to the washroom. Just before entering, put your mobile phone aside and start taking a cold shower. During this time, try to take long, deep breaths. Stay under the shower for five to ten minutes. This will circulate blood throughout your body instead of just in your genitals, and urges will gradually disappear. Your actively thinking brain will begin to function again.
(2) Immediately after taking cold showers, warm up your body slightly and then apply as many push-ups as you can (at least forty). While doing push-ups, think that instead of flowing in the drain due to masturbation, your energy is being spent in bodybuilding. If you correctly implement this tip, urges will disappear just like they do after masturbation, but this time, you’ll benefit instead of losing. If you’re not convinced, try it now and see.
Utilize the Power of Imagination
Imagination is the ability of a human through which they can create an image of anything/event/thought/place in their mind, feel it, see it with the mind’s eye even if it’s not physically present. The famous scientist Albert Einstein once said that reality is merely an illusion. Imagination is everything. Allama Iqbal, the renowned poet, also has a famous verse:
“Don’t just look with your apparent eyes,
For true vision lies in the eyes of the heart.”
Dear Readers! By harnessing the power of your imagination, you can prevent relapse. Keep several such imaginations ready in your mind all the time, so whenever the thought of relapse arises, immediately employ these imaginations. You will avoid relapse.
When you feel urges, you can:
– Think about how, if even approaching zina (adultery) is prohibited in the Quran, then surely, in this world and the Hereafter, there is only harm. So why engage in an act that would damage my physical and mental health, my worldly life, and my Hereafter?
– Imagine your favorite personality, such as Imran Khan, Qasim Ali Shah, Dr. Israr Ahmed, Javed Chaudhry, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, Shahid Afridi, etc., standing before you, witnessing your struggle against urges and preventing you from relapsing.
– Think about why you started NoFap and how many days behind you’ll fall if you relapse today.
– Visualize the regret, shame, and weakness you’ll feel after relapsing.
– Imagine that just as you’re about to relapse, the door to the washroom suddenly opens, and your wife/girlfriend sees you. How would you feel?
– Imagine the woman you’re fantasizing about today dying tonight and being buried in a few days. How ridiculous your fantasies seem in reality!
– Imagine that your respected parents catch you watching porn. How embarrassed would you be?
– Think about whether your favorite personalities would be at the same position today if they had indulged in PMO.
You can come up with more such imaginations for yourself. Continuous thinking about these things may eventually make your brain fed up with PMO.
Hold Your Breath
(This technique is particularly effective when you don’t have the option of a cold shower, Wim Hof method, or other emergency measures.)
You may find it strange to hear this, or you may not have heard of it before, but breath retention is a complete subject.
Breath retention is a fundamental part of yoga and ancient Chinese martial arts disciplines. Although breath-holding has countless benefits, and numerous books have been written on it, this technique is also used as an emergency measure to kill urges.
When urges overwhelm you, immediately hold your breath. Your body will soon forget about urges, and the crisis of oxygen depletion will kick in.
To make this technique more effective, exhale all your breath. Your body will quickly enter a crisis mode. Initially, you may struggle to hold your breath for even twenty seconds because during urges, breathing is often shallow. Practicing three to four times simultaneously will increase your Dry static apnea duration from forty seconds to one minute. After practicing breath-holding for three to four minutes, immediately start taking long, deep breaths. This will activate your parasympathetic nervous system, eliminate urges, relieve stress, and uplift your mood.
Dear Friends! In this episode, we shared very important recommendations to avoid relapse in the first stage. In the next episode, we will tell you how to handle it if a relapse occurs (especially in the first stage).