Hello everyone, this one is a bit of a long post, but I hope it provides substance for those who want to stop PMO and also become more confident.

I see a lot of posts on this sub talking about the confidence that comes with NoFap, questions about how to increase your confidence and why they aren’t feeling more confident while they are on their streak, so I’m going to dive in and explain as best as I can so you can understand the confidence that comes from NoFap, and what to expect.

Before anything else, what is confidence?

I won’t be using any dictionary explanations for the word, the easiest way to put it is how somebody would act when the situation could easily make them act out of character. For example, You feel pretty confident on your own, then you meet a woman, now you’re not acting the same, the situation requires more from you, and in return, you may alter yourself or your personality in order to attract this woman, the same goes for walking into a room full of men as a man, you may become more quiet, or your body language changes, these moments are clear examples of when a personality can shift, but what is confidence?

The ability to be your true self, in any given situation.

People often get confidence mixed up with courage, A confident person doesn’t need to fight, or prove anything. If you are a kind peaceful person, then being confident is being kind and peaceful, in any given situation (with in limits). both confidence and courage go hand in hand, it’s hard to be confident if you cannot build up courage, and you cannot build courage if you have no confidence.

So why do p*rn addicts suffer from a lack of confidence?

There are two main driving factors that lead an addict into having very little confidence, and we will go through both, so that we can see the psychological effects behind the addiction, and what it truly takes to become confident.

The first is the inability to differentiate between real women and the women you see online, (the same goes for the addicted women, this post is in the perspective of a man but the same applies the other way around for women)

The part of your brain that is responsible for critical thinking will know that the women that you watch online are only on a screen, but men and women are also harbouring their primal thinking, your primal thinking genuinely believes you mate with thousands of women, and a result of this, means that your brain and body will simply stop trying to make you attractive.

There is no hunt, Your brain is tired, and it’s simply does not have the energy to maintain this many women, even though you may be single, your primal thinking will always see those women as women you have mated with, and this comes with a huge list of negatives which I will go into now.

for starters, sex already releases a huge amount of dopamine, according to scientific studies, sex is the highest dopamine reward you can get from a natural stand point. Of course, drugs and p*rn have significantly higher amounts of dopamine being released, so you’re releasing even more dopamine than just having regular sex, which over time will start to have a massive effect on your motivation and your physical health.

So what happens when you keep going?

The term we use is brain fog, it is a feeling where you cannot think straight, but this is actually your mind trying to take a break, a break which it is struggling to find, because every time you watch something explicit online, your brain is going into overdrive, And once you sustain this for long enough, you will develop depression, anxiety and low self worth. This is your bodies coping mechanism, it is trying to make you as ill as possible so that maybe, it will get a break from all this dopamine, and if that break never comes, these issues just get worse and worse, you are not equipped to deal with this at this magnitude.

So what’s the second reason?

The second reason ties in with the first, the inability to stop.

Being unable to stop an addiction that you know is harming you, is a true recipe to low self-worth. anyone who watches porn daily will know exactly what I’m talking about, That inability to stop, even though you know that it’s hurting you, that toxic cycle of failure chisels down any confidence you build up about yourself, This is the same as being in a toxic marriage or relationship, You’re unhappy, but you’re addicted to the highs, and in return, you tell yourself that you’re a piece of shit with no self-control, You constantly blame yourself for falling for the traps set by your own brain, It makes you ill when you don’t consume, but also makes you ill when you do consume.

Of course, these results may vary depending on the severity of the addiction, I’m writing this in the perspective of somebody with compulsive disorders/addiction, and even if you haven’t experienced this severity yet, tread lightly, the addiction only gets worse.

Those are the two main driving factors that will hinder your confidence, there are many more but porn addiction is a very complex addiction to understand. It has never been as easy as right now to engage and/or watch 1000s of videos/cam-sites, we are experiencing a wave of new addicts, and that number grows stronger every single day.

Now that we’ve covered the factors that make up for the low confidence, let’s get into the good stuff.

Why NoFap builds confidence, and how to utilise this confidence efficiently.

The reward centres in your brain need a time out, but you also need to get that dopamine, so if you stop, you will get withdrawals. If you’re one of them people who doesn’t feel anything, good for you, seriously. But for the most part, 95% percent of you will experience withdrawals, and this is your time to fight. You think you know yourself, but your brain is miles ahead of you, and it will try its best to make you consume more porn, but during this battle, is where you build something truly immeasurable.

Will Power.

Just like your muscles, will power needs to be trained, you’ve spent so long giving in to your desires that you lack self control, therefore you lack confidence within yourself.

Before you can think about becoming a better you, think about what it takes to become better, can you achieve any of your goals without proper will power?

Will Power has value, it’s sexy. I’ve had more success with the opposite sex when I didn’t want to fuck, when I had the will power to prioritise other things in my life over sex, which sounds crazy because most men that are single will not turn down sex, but then, you’re just like every other guy. This isn’t a play to make the other gender like you more, but naturally by having great will power, it will spill in to your confidence and then you can build the tools for a great life, which is attractive.

Just by abstaining from PMO, you’re will power will improve and your confidence will start to rise as you feel more in control of your life, especially after the one week mark.

Seven days is the given time in which brain fog lifts, your energy will double because your body isn’t busy replenishing all its juices (which is a strenuous process by the way). It’s at this moment your natural testosterone is at 150%, but a common misconception is that it stays this way, it doesn’t.

Your testosterone does raise, but it then lowers as your brain realises that you’re not going to PMO, this is a normal process backed by science, there are tools to boost your natural testosterone further, but there is nothing that will permanently increase it past what your body can create, only steroids will do such a thing. Testosterone also slightly increases in women during their streak, but their oestrogen will lower, taking away the feelings of high/lows and over all being less agitated.

This confidence is short lived, because we assume that a journey without PMO will automatically make us who we want to be, but that’s the wrong way to look at it, instead, we must angle it this way.

The positives gained from abstaining from PMO should then be poured into more activities that aid the process of becoming the best you, I’ll try to explain as best as I can.

If an introvert is addicted to porn and struggles to talk to new people outside of his/her comfort zone, this will not change, you just went from an introverted porn addict to an introvert. You haven’t magically learned any new skills because just as we teach babies, you need to be taught.

The confidence you want is a reflection to how much effort and will power you put in, reading these posts about your confidence not shooting up as you expected are a result of relying on NoFap too much, you’re not an anime character.

NoFap is a community that encourages men and women to abstain, but the benefit that is the most valuable from this process is the ability to think clearly, and that’s the tool you should be utilising in order to put your goals in-front and tackle them.

You can’t expect to be a fighter, if you never fight.

You can’t expect to be great socially, if you don’t socialise.

And lastly, you cannot expect to be confident in the unknown, especially if you’re not building skills that inherently improve your confidence.

Only you know what you lack in confidence, whether you feel weak, worthless or anything else, getting through the journey will grant you perspective, and only then will you move towards the most confident person you can be.

There is more to life than a magic pill, it takes work and constant attention to your mental/physical health. It takes sitting down and assessing your weaknesses, it involves having hard conversations with yourself, and it involves you bidding fair-well to a person you no longer want to be/know.

No Fap is the truth, and the positives you read are also true, there might be posts over exaggerating their success, but for the most part there are more up sides than down sides, and those who oppose movements like this are in fact addicted, regardless of how much they consume or how little they let it affect their lives, they are lying to themselves, but you shouldn’t.

I hope everyone on this sub-reddit becomes the most confident versions of themselves, and I’d like to leave with a quote that may open your perspective a little more.

‘The biggest man you ever saw, was once just a likkle baby’ - Bob Marley.

Treat yourself like a baby, tell yourself you don’t have it all figured out and that you have much to learn, like that, you won’t rush the process, you’ll be more forgiving with yourself, and in the end you will learn to love the journey and yourself.

• Kashif