Night Porn Urges Explained (It’s Not What You Think)

How to deal with strong urges at night. This is one of the most common struggles that people go through when it comes to quitting porn. Throughout the day, they're at work, they're with colleagues, family, friends, whatever. But at night, they're tired, they're lonely, they're bored, they can't sleep. And because of that, most people end up watching porn at night instead of throughout the day. But the thing is, The thoughts, the desires that you feel at night is not the problem. It's your relationship with the thought or desire. Let's get into it. The thoughts you have at night are habitual. They're not desired. Think about it like this. If you have a random thought about porn, does that mean that you want porn? We need to make the distinction because most people, whenever they have a thought in regards to lustful behaviors, and they think that it's wrong, or they think that it's something that would completely ruin their life, they start panicking. They start feeling fear because they think that it's a desire and it might be there to get them, and then they might fall back again. But the truth is, you will have random thoughts about porn just because you used to watch porn. These are what we call habitual thoughts. Habitual thoughts are flashbacks. They show up because of what you did before, not because of what you wanna do now.. So if I played hockey all of my life, which is the case for me, I played hockey for many years when I was younger, and then I stopped. It's been a few years that I haven't played, but sometimes I have random thoughts of, it would be so nice to play hockey right now. Or I think about a moment where I had some fun playing hockey. I'm like, maybe I could sign up for the league that is in my city, but I, I don't see it as a strong, powerful urge to play hockey that is going to get me. And because of that, thought actually goes away. A flashback is just a memory passing through. It is not like a craving demanding to be fed. The thought is normal. The panic is what keeps you stuck. Very important you understand. Insight number 2: they done a research at Queen's University in Canada, and they found out that on average you have 6,200 thoughts. Can you imagine that? And I've seen other studies that were done before this one, and they claim that we have up to 30,000 to 40,000 thoughts per day. So the question is why do you treat the thoughts about porn, masturbation, lust different, like emergencies, like a potential threat, when you disregard every other thought? The thought about eating junk food and that desire to eat junk food that you just dismissed, the thoughts of getting angry at someone, that desire to lash out, these things we do not see them as emergencies. Therefore, we feel in much more control of them. And you also have like random images, old memories. Oh yeah, you traveled there, it was so nice. Or that friend you used to hang out with. You think about these things, think about strange ideas. I mean, when you're on top of a balcony and you could be jumping off and you think, oh, what if I jump off? What would happen? Oh, uh, I would die and it would be the end. From these thoughts, you have them, but you don't give them so much meaning. You're not like, oh, because I thought of jumping off a balcony, that means that I might be suicidal. No, you know that this is just a random thought passing by. So the question is, why don't you treat your thoughts about porn, masturbation, lust the same way? You don't give them much importance. You see them as passing by. Because most people, when they try to quit porn so hard, they think, let me be productive. Let me try to stop and analyze the thoughts. Let me try to debunk them. Let me try to react to them. Let me try to fight them. Let me try this technique on my thoughts. Let me try to be mindful. You apply so much force, but then the thoughts are just passing by. To give you an analogy, imagine there's a police car on the road and you're driving and you start panicking because you see the police car. And so you start making mistakes on the road. Guess what happens? Your likelihood of being arrested will be much higher. If you were to just drive normally as you were doing before you saw the police officer, the police officer wouldn't even bat an eye at you. And that is the difference. It's not the thought itself when it comes to porn, masturbation, and lust, it is your reactions to it. And as you can see here, I listed the studies if you wanna take a look at them on your own. Now, insight number 3, and this is the best research I've came across that really debunks this idea that you will fall prey to your urges. Listen carefully. The Dutch psychiatrist Marius Romp studied 2 groups of people who heard voices in their heads. There was Group A, who were psychiatric patients, They suffered, they struggled, and they needed treatment. And then there was Group B who were healthy nonpatients. They were not in treatment, but they had the same voices. But the difference is they lived normal lives. They lived the same lives other people that didn't have these thoughts. The voices did not control them. They didn't believe that the voices was out there to get them because the healthy group, the ones, the Group B, they believed that they were stronger than their voices. That the voices was there in the background, but it didn't have power over them. It couldn't control them. Whilst the patients who believed that the voices were stronger than them, Group A, they believe voices were stronger than them, then guess what happens? They start feeling hopeless. They act accordingly. They will let their thoughts literally control them. But then that's just a self-fulfilling prophecy in that example, because they believe so much that their thoughts, their voices has control over them. And because of that, they might start panicking, they might start being worried, they might take decisions based on fear, they might have distorted thoughts and so many different problems. So that single belief changed everything because it's the same exact thoughts, same exact voices, but two different lives as a byproduct. And if we apply this to porn, the thought of porn is like the voice. The question is, do you believe the thought is stronger than you, or do you believe that you are stronger than the thought? It's not a question of willpower or discipline. Like, let me just man up and say that I'm stronger than my urges or my thoughts. It's not about that, because if you think about it like that, then that means that you will still be fighting it because you believe that there's something to fight, which is not the case. But we'll get to that. But do you believe your brain is conspiring against you because you consume so much porn to the point where you don't have control over yourself, or that you don't even have free will. You need to question these beliefs. That's what I do with my clients. And they go from feeling powerless to empowered and in full control. Insight number 4, the harder you try not to think about porn, the more you think about it. Suppression does not erase the thought, it just feeds it. You could try thinking about a white bear, because they did the, an experiment in 1987, as you can see here, But the more you try to not think about something, the more you think about it. It's self-explanatory. When you try to sleep and you say, "Let me sleep, let me sleep. Am I sleeping? Am I not sleeping?" Constantly worried about sleeping, then it takes more time to sleep. And you can't sleep if you're thinking these things. But the moment you don't try to think about if you're sleeping or not, you end up going to sleep. So if in your mind, before going to sleep, you're thinking, "I must not think about porn. I must not have the desire." Then what happens is you'll start anticipating that desire. And a desire or a thought for them to appear, you only have to think about them. You literally are going to desire something because of your thoughts. Desires for porn and masturbation are not necessarily biological, meaning they do not just come from your body randomly. Yes, as human beings, we have an innate desire for real intimacy, real woman, but the desire for porn and masturbation is different in a sense of you learn to like it. It is not innate to you. It is something that you learn to like. It is something you learn to desire. And because that's the case, the good news is it means that you can actually remove completely the desire for porn and masturbation. But you are not going to do that by trying to force yourself to not think about it, to, or to see if you still have the desire or not. Because if you do that, then you'll think about the white bear. And I'm saying this, the moment you don't make quitting porn a goal and you no longer care if the thoughts shows up or if the desire shows up, you will see that naturally you'll just like completely forget about it. Like you'll completely forget about porn and masturbation in a sense where you're, you're not going to be worried about it first and foremost, but also you're going to forget what the experience used to feel like. Meaning the pleasure that you might associate to porn and masturbation, it's gonna be so far gone that you don't even know why you should even indulge in this behavior again. This is how I help my clients find permanent freedom. You can get to that state just like you did with other habits. If you played video games in the past and then you stopped and it's been like, let's say 5 years that you haven't really played or maybe you played occasionally at an event, it's like, you know that it would be fun to play again, but you don't really see the point in playing anymore. It's been such a long time that you haven't experienced the quote unquote pleasure that you, got from this experience that you forgot what it used to feel like. So you don't even wanna play video games anymore. You don't even wanna watch porn anymore. Now, insight number 5, most porn recovery advice makes the problem worse. This is what I talk about often in my channel. If you try NoFap, accountability apps, streak counters, it's always about fighting, fighting, fighting. Today I'm on day 20, I managed to succeed., but there's no success or failure. That shouldn't be your mindset because if your mindset is, am I succeeding or not? Again, you're keeping the fight alive. You are always going to check, oh, am I succeeding or am I not succeeding? You're going to monitor your thoughts. You're gonna fight your urges. You're gonna track your streak. You're gonna panic if you slip. And tell me, even if you're on day 1,000, but you are constantly doing these things on a day-to-day basis, is that even freedom? I would argue that Someone on day 10 that is not worried about it is much more free than someone that's constantly worried on day 1,000, because every thought becomes a threat, every urge becomes like an emergency, and every night becomes a battle. And the more you battle, the more your mind learns that poor thoughts are powerful, the desires are powerful, they matter so much, and they must be obeyed or destroyed. This is why a lot of people, they go clean for like 90 days, or most commonly 7 to 14 days seems to be the most common streak, and then they go back after 7 to 14 days. 'Cause the streak is not freedom. It's literally a cage that you put on yourself. It's a mental cage. It's a mental prison. As cliché as it sounds, real freedom is not winning the fight. It is realizing there was never a fight to begin with. Point number 6, change the relationship, not the thought. Okay, you will stop having thoughts about porn, okay? I'll make this promise to you. You will stop. It's a guarantee. You will stop feeling like you're controlled by them. But you can't achieve that state by constantly trying to fight these thoughts, these desires, or constantly monitoring them, constantly working your hardest to try to remove that problem from your life. So what you can do in the meantime is if you have that thought, instead of panicking, instead of being worried, instead of trying to overly monitor it and try to apply a technique to that thought, you can just change what the thought means to you. Right now, if porn feels— a porn thought or desire feels like a threat, and you interpret it as a sign that you are broken, that you're still addicted, that You might come back to it again because last time you realized at night again, you could think, oh, look, this is a thought that's popping back up because I used to do this in the past, not because I need to do it or because I want to do it, but because I've done it so much that it's almost automatic. But I know with time it's going to pass. Or you could think also like a lot of people doing the sexual transmutation niche, which is, oh, look, I have a thought or desire to watch porn and masturbate. In reality, what I really want is I want a real woman. I want to get married. I want to have a family. So that thought, that desire, it's motivation to go after it, because when I desire things, I'm more likely to act on those things. So now the same thought, desire, is seen as an opportunity to better your life instead of a threat that might destroy you. But you can see how the thought is the same, but you react to them differently. You change the relationship with them. So what to do next time an urge hits at night? Now I don't want you to think of it like a technique. This is more so the natural way that we would rationalize with ourselves and make decisions if we didn't have that mindset of, I need to fight this. Meaning with other habits that you left behind in the past, for example, for me, I used to play video games hours and hours on end every single day for multiple years. And when I decided to leave video games behind, obviously I still wanted to play again, even though it was not to the same extent. I still wanted to play again because sometimes I was lonely, I was bored, I had nothing to do, I had no social life. I wanted to play so I can talk to older friends of mine, but I would just rationalize with myself, be like, okay, yeah, I could play, but let me make a decision that would actually benefit me. It was very natural. There wasn't like, oh, I need to fight this desire because I shouldn't play again because video games is just a waste of time and it's gonna ruin my life and my potential. So first you can say to yourself, And again, don't try to implement this as if it was a technique, because if you try to implement it as a technique, it's like you're still fighting it. If you see a thought or a desire and you're like, oh, let me think about what Samir Gardner said and let me try to apply that, you're going to feel like you're still struggling. It doesn't mean you're going to watch porn, but you're still going to be somewhat fighting a battle. You could say, okay, look, this is just like a habitual thought passing through, doesn't really matter. Just stay calm. Like, do not panic. There's no reasons to panic. You don't need to overanalyze it. Do not check if you're still thinking about it. Now, if you want to understand maybe why you have the desire, then what you could do is you could rationalize instead of fighting and say, oh look, does acting on this actually serve who I want to become? Which is just like rationalizing. Okay, if I watch porn or if I play video games or if I eat junk food, would it help me with my specific goals in life or what I actually value in life? Which is something that we do, but don't try to do it as like, No, you shouldn't watch porn and masturbate. How is it going to help you with becoming that version of yourself that you want to become? No, it's just like you're having a neutral conversation. You're not trying to be one-sided or biased in that sense. And the question you could ask if you want to really understand your desires could be, okay, why do I want to do this? And to be honest with yourself, like, okay, I really want to do this because I feel like I'll never be married. I mean, I, I'm lonely, I'm bored. And then you could ask, okay, yeah, I mean, That makes sense. And of course you don't want to judge yourself because oftentimes when you ask yourself this question, you'll get answers that might sound irrational, especially if you say them out loud, but they're rational to you because there are things that you learned in the past that are not outdated, but that you still act on, or you still believe unconsciously. So you could be like, okay, well, yeah, because I'm lonely, I don't have a partner. And how will porn Help with that. Okay, well, when I watch porn, I feel like I am escaping from life. Therefore, I don't have to think about this problem, and I feel like I'm getting somewhat of a substitute from the real experience. And then when you're honest like that, you realize logically, rationally, consciously, that porn is not going to give you that. The desire literally starts disappearing. So that's one way to go about it. Then just move on, like treat the thought like a junk email. You look at your inbox folder, then you look at your junk email, you look at it for like half a second, then you return to your real inbox because it's just junk email. You know, it's not really that important. And you'll see that with time it will just go away. So the one thing to remember, your urges are not desires. They are simple habitual thoughts. Habitual thoughts only have power when you treat them as powerful. Change the relationship with your thoughts and desires and freedom will literally become effortless. If you guys want to learn how to break the 7 to 14 days binge relapse cycle, I made a video on this. It's right here, you can click on it, and I'll see you guys in the next video. Peace.