NoFap Urges: 5 ways to deal with urges in a NoFap emergency

If you’ve ever been down the NoFap alley, then you aren’t a stranger to NoFap urges.

A NoFap urge is simply the compulsion to watch porn after you’ve started NoFap for a while.

Urges are a signal that indicates a compulsive addiction.

An urge to drink is how the alcoholic finally admits that he’s an alcoholic after years of denial.

Having porn urges is how the porn addict finally comes to terms with the fact that he’s hooked on porn.

But unfortunately, urges aren’t just signals; they’re what constitutes over 80% of NoFap relapses.

Because when this compulsion—to watch porn—suddenly occur, you find yourself in a NoFap emergency.

At that time, it’s either you handle the urges or you relapse!!

This post is an anatomy of NoFap urges, where you’ll learn everything you need to know about them.

You’ll also get to know the tools you have that you can use to resist these urges so that you don’t relapse on your NoFap.

Why do we have NoFap urges?

We’re creatures of habit. Habits are like software programs that drive our existence.

These software programs get installed with constant repetition of a particular act.

And as long as this act is repeated enough times to be reinforced in the brain neural pathways, it becomes a habit.

Your brain installs these programs because it doesn’t want to spend all eternity having to explain to you how you’ll tie your shoelace every time you have to do it.

Your brain will make these neural connections—regardless of if you choose to be doing a hundred push-ups every day or if you choose to be ejaculating to internet porn three times daily.

Once you do a particular act enough times to reinforce it, regardless of if the act is good for your health or not, the act—habit—becomes the status quo.

So, urges are your brain’s way of sticking to the status quo.

Your status quo as a porn addict is to watch porn and jerk off to it every day.

When you get the bright idea to go on NoFap, you’re challenging that status quo.

And because of the strong neural connections you’ve already built to porn, your brain will crave porn.

At any point on your NoFap, if you interact with any of your usual porn triggers, your brain will secrete a little bit of dopamine.

You’ll want more of this dopamine.

And that feeling of wanting more dopamine from porn is an urge to watch porn.

If you’re not caving and still refuse to log in to your favorite porn site, the urge gets escalated.

You might start feeling tense, angry, depressed, bored, and in some cases, physical pain.

At this point, this is your brain telling you, “Hey dude, if you want to make all this pain go away, all you need to do is jerk off to porn.”

What are your usual porn triggers?

Your triggers are the things you interact with that secretes that little bit of dopamine that sets the whole urge-cycle off.

On the surface, you might think that many things can trigger you to have porn urges when you’re on NoFap.

But, as many as those things can be, they are all secondary triggers.

NoFap urges boils down to only ONE direct trigger, and that is;

Any sexual thought you have

This is the root cause of all porn urges for the PMO addict.

This is the only thing that can directly trigger porn urges.

All other causes (triggers)—like social media, movies, seeing a beautiful girl—are secondary, and their effects are indirect.

Here’s why;

We can all agree that sex is a natural thing for us humans.

Except you’re an alien—that’s asexual, or a monk—that’s meditated all sexual urges away, you’ll have sexual thoughts now and then.

The difference between a porn addict and an average person is that for the porn addict, porn thoughts will instantaneously replace any form of sexual thought he has.

This is because the PMO addict had been using porn as a sexual outlet for a very long time.

That means if you want to stop having porn urges, you have to stop having any sexual thoughts.

And this is synonymous with me telling you to stop having any thoughts whatsoever and ask you to stop interacting with the world around you totally.

But this is an impossible task.

The take-away from this is that there’s no way you can escape having porn urges when you’re on NoFap.

4 things you used to believe about NoFap urges that are wrong

We’ve established that you can’t escape urges on NoFap.

But when the urges do happen, there are a lot of misconceptions about them.

And it’s these misconceptions that make your NoFap urges too powerful for you to overcome easily.

1. Porn urges is the same as natural sexual urges.

As I said earlier, we’re creatures that always seek sexual expression now and then.

The only thing that’s off with being a PMO addict is that you’ve used porn to suppress the natural sexual urges you’re supposed to get from time to time.

As a result, you probably haven’t felt a real sexual urge in years.

So, within the first month of your NoFap (depending on your level of addiction), the type of urges you’ll (mostly) get is your brain wanting to get a dopamine hit.

This type of urge is the porn type of urge.

It’s at these early days of NoFap that you need to be vigilant and not follow the trap your brain is setting for you.

But as you add days to your NoFap, another different kind of urge joins the fray.

This second type of urge is the natural kind that you haven’t experienced for years.

This second type of urge is good.

This urge is telling you, “NoFap is working. Your body’s recovering from all the damages porn has done to it.”

These real urges are a result of built-up sexual energy. It is raw energy and power that you can use in pursuit of a worthwhile goal.

The goal can be a creative expression, or expression of the urge in its most basal form—by having sex with a partner.

But you have to pay attention and not mistake this type of urge with porn urges.

2. Porn urges will stop coming when you get to a particular day of NoFap.

No!

They don’t stop coming!!

You can’t stop having natural sexual urges as a male, can you?

And for a PMO addict, there’s a fragile line between natural urges and porn urges.

Sure, as your brain gets re-wired on NoFap, the frequency and the intensity of your porn urges will reduce with time.

But you might be three months into the hard mode of NoFap and still be getting porn urges. And if you engage these urges, they start gathering momentum and become more intense.

One thing that does change with time on NoFap is an increased ability to handle these porn urges.

This ability increases because;

• You’ve been re-wiring your brain away from porn, and
• You’ve been working out your willpower system for as long as you’ve been on NoFap. Your willpower system has gotten strong for you to confidently and quickly resist these porn urges.

3. Motivation can help you win the porn urge battle.

Relying on motivation to achieve a goal is a flawed mental model.

What I see time and time again is people leaving their NoFap success in the hands of motivation.

So, when the urges come calling, they rely on the motivation they had on the first day of NoFap to help them weather the storm of porn cravings.

You should have already deduced with your time on NoFap that NoFap motivation doesn’t last past the first or second day of NoFap.

On the third day, when the porn urges start coming in, relying on motivation will fail you.

An urge is a physical-chemical process in your body.

It’s not an imaginative or an emotional process.

So, it only makes sense to deal with it practically.

Having a list of physical steps you can take to reverse an urge’s chemical process is a far better plan than relying on the emotion of motivation to help you resist that urge.

4. Relying on willpower at the early stage of your NoFap

Another mistake you might have been making is counting on your willpower system to help you beat NoFap urges.

One of the main reasons we do NoFap is to rebuild our willpower system that porn has shrunk.

I’m not saying you won’t eventually get to use your willpower system to resist porn urges.

Still, you can’t count on it at the early stage of your NoFap (within the first month of your NoFap at least).

And this is precisely why it’s easier for you to relapse in the first month of NoFap than any other time.

Again, just like motivation, willpower at the early stage is not reliable to beat porn cravings.

5 ways to INSTANTLY beat NoFap urge to get out of a NoFap emergency

We’ve established that motivation can’t help you, and your willpower isn’t coming to save you, not when you just started NoFap.

There isn’t a magical button you can press (on an app) that will make the cravings go away.

So, to effectively beat NoFap urges, you need to take a form of action.

An ideal action to take is to disrupt your brain’s patterns and re-direct your thoughts away from porn.

The following are ways you can get out of a NoFap emergency. It doesn’t matter if you’re just starting or you’ve spent five months on NoFap. They work just fine.

When you get urges for porn on NoFap, pick one, two, or three of them that’s most convenient for you, and you’ll be able to beat the porn urge and get out of the NoFap emergency.

1. Step into your awareness alter ego.

Since thoughts are the root cause of NoFap urges, you need to be aware of these thoughts when they arise.

It’s not only super-heroes you see on TV that have alter egos.

There are different selves in YOU. From time to time, you switch between those selves based on your needs at that moment.

Sometimes when you’re angry, you assume the mean alter ego. At this time, people around you will say, “don’t go near him; he’s not himself.”

In recent years, you’ve been assuming the PMO addict alter ego whenever you’re in your room by yourself.

When you’re on NoFap, anytime you get porn cravings; it’s that PMO addict alter ego getting those urges. He wants to satisfy his dopamine cravings.

Your job when this guy starts getting these cravings is to become an observer. Become aware of that guy by stepping into your awareness alter ego.

Awareness of your PMO addict thoughts is the first step in recognizing the addict’s subconscious porn patterns.

It’s when you recognize these patterns that you can interrupt them by taking more action.

So, how do you step into your awareness alter ego?

• Lie down on your back and take deep breaths: helps refocus your mind and helps re-organize your thoughts for what you’re about to do;
• In your mind’s eye, project yourself outside yourself and look at that PMO addict. What is he thinking? What is he trying to do to get his dopamine fix? Hear all the excuses he’s giving you just to jerk off to porn. You can go a step further and play the scene of you just finishing your PMO session. See how that guy will feel shameful for doing what he just did.

OR

• Look in the mirror. Look at that PMO guy about to jerk off to porn and have an honest conversation with him. Tell him what you’re trying to achieve. Tell him what he stands to lose if you give in to his request and watch porn.

OR

• Practice mindfulness meditation. Close your eyes, focus on your breath and hear all the thoughts running through your mind. Don’t judge those thoughts. Just notice how they come and go, and realize that you aren’t those thoughts. Do this for five to ten minutes.

2. Leave your porn kingdom.

Every PMO addict has an environment where he (mostly) watches porn.

And because you’ve watched porn a lot in this environment, your brain has mapped massive pathways to this location and porn watching.

If you’re observant, you’ll see that urges for porn will be most significant in this location.

For me, it was my bedroom back at my parents’ house. It was so bad that anytime I stepped into that room, I instantly crave porn.

So, where is your porn kingdom?

Might be your bedroom, or on top of your roof, I don’t care. If you start getting porn urges, just leave that place.

The mere act of leaving your porn kingdom interrupts your brain’s pattern and ease that craving you’re getting.

The more you do this, the more you associate new neuro-pathways with your porn kingdom.

These new pathways will be that of successfully resisting NoFap urges.

3. Take a walk and look at objects far away.

Talking about leaving your porn kingdom and interrupting your brain’s pattern, you can do another thing while having porn urges.

And that is to take a walk outside.

By walking and looking at objects far away, you release endorphins. This hormone relieves cravings as it secretes the natural kind of dopamine, which counteracts the urges you’re getting.

4. Neutralize your sexual energy

Suppose all the built-up sexual energy is prompting your NoFap urges. In that case, you can ground yourself to neutralize the porn urges.

How do you do this?

For starters, stay away from feminine energy for the time being.

When we absorb feminine energy, it builds up sexual energy. And when you stay away from it, it calms the energy—and consequentially, the urges calm.

So, while you have urges, you can do some of these to calm the feminine sexual energy;

• don’t text that girl you want to get down with,
• Don’t go on social media and check out that model you have a crush on (or stop doing it),
• If you have a girlfriend, take that day off talking to her. Tell her you’re busy on a project you need to finish for the day;
• Stay away from movies that have sexy actresses in it. If you have to watch a movie, watch a documentary on world war II, or a documentary on the rate of poverty in Africa;
• Pick up a self-help book and read. Read self-help non-fiction: don’t read romance novels or fiction where the words can arouse you.

Aside from reducing the feminine energy and grounding yourself, you can further neutralize the energy by getting more masculine energy or urge-killing energies.

Where do you get urge-killing energies from?

• Talk to your male friends over the phone, or better yet, go out and have drinks with them;
• Go and hang out with your female family members—like your mom, your sister, grandma, and so on.

5. Transmute the urge

Anybody that’s read Napoleon Hill’s classic Think And Grow Rich will know what sexual transmutation means.

It’s diverting the urge you’re getting for sexual expression into other things.

With this technique, the more intense the urge, the more you’ll get out of the activity you’ve chosen to transmute the urge into.

Transmutation is an advanced technique that I’ll only recommend to the experienced Fapstronauts.

Transmutation is for long-term Fapstronauts because; if you’re a NoFap beginner and you try to transmute sexual energy, you might not notice the profound (but subtle) difference the process just had on your thought and energy.

So, it’s highly likely you’ll relapse anyway.

Because noticing this subtle change is vital in easing the porn cravings you’re getting.

There are different ways you can transmute sexual urges, and some of them are listed below;

• Physical exercise: I’m talking about an intense workout where you bench press 150 pounds or run for 5 miles, or spend 30 minutes on the treadmill, and so on.
• Third-eye chakra meditation: this meditation is when you move the sexual energy in your sacral chakra all the way up to your third eye chakra. Doing this over time, activates your third eye—which increases your visualization and intuitive power.
• Write down the 101 goals you want to achieve before you die.
• Start working on those goals no matter how small a step you can take RIGHT NOW!!

In case you eventually succumb to the urges you were getting on NoFap, you can watch the video below to learn the 3 things you can INSTANTLY do to feel better after your relapse: