How to Self-Regulate to Overcome Even the Most Difficult Cravings
Learning how to self-regulate is the key to overcoming difficult cravings and and many addictions: like porn, drugs, alcohol and even bubble tea. đ
Most of us never learned how to tap into this raw, simple, and natural powerâinnate to each one of us. Ready to be used.
Iâd like to teach you how. Scroll down for a video training that walks you through the 3 simple steps on how to self-regulate.
But firstâŚ
I want to share with you a personal story and accidental epiphany I stumbled upon 3 years into my longest no porn and no masturbation streak.
If youâre new to the NO FAP movement. This might seem extreme.
Trust me. It is.
I compare porn and masturbation equal too or greater than crack addiction.
I came home around 3:00am one morning after a fun night of dancing, spending time few friends and beautiful women.
The events that lead up to this point are irrelevant. All you need to know is that I hit a wall. The highest point of cravings I had ever experienced in my entire life.
And there was nothing I could do about it. There was no release, no escape. I was stuck with this uncomfortable feeling.
I wasnât going to watch pornâŚ
I wasnât going to masturbateâŚ
I wasnât going to have sexâŚ
It was just me, my cravings, and a few crickets speaking amongst themselves outside. Like myself. Iâm pretty sure they were wondering what I was going to do in this most unfortunate situation.
This is when the realization hit me⌠I could no longer run away or escape these feelings. I had to deal with them head on.
The realization I was about to make was so simple and profound. looking back, I canât believe it took me my entire lifetime to discover itâŚ
I lit a candle and put on The Hobbit Soundtrack (Old Friends by Howard Shore to be specific) to help ease the mood and relax some of the tension I was feeling.
With my shoes and clothes still on I laid back in my bed looking up at the ceiling which was flickering from the candle light. Mesmorizing. Calming. I took a deep breath and decided to just feel what was going on inside of meâŚ
It felt like a thousand knives moving into my stomach, like I was about to die if I didnât get some sort of release soon.
I remember thinking back to all those TV shows and Movies where the character was curled up in a ball surrounded by sweat and puke as they tried to detoxâgoing through the scariest withdraw symptoms when they quit something like hard drugs or alcohol cold turkey.
And now I was going through it. Wow.
But then something unexpected happened.
I felt the uncomfortable feelings change and transform inside of me. It moved from my stomach and my chest.
I continued to breathe and relax into it.
And then all of a sudden I smiled just a little. And said to myself. This wonât kill me.
It must have been about 30 minutes or so into this whole process of âjust feelingâ my way through these feelings (cravings) that I started to let go.
Then it hit me. It felt like a torrent had left my body. In just a few seconds I released and the entire thing just dissappeared into thin air! It felt like a giant boulder had been removed from on top of me.
I had accidentally tapped into the power of self-regulation.
I was flooded with happiness and confidence, I felt absolutely amazing, and free, and the cravings were gone.
From that point forward I knew I would be ok. I would never need to depend on something external ever again to bring me relief. I was truly free from this addiction.
This is a skill I wish to pass on to everyone. I believe everyone MUST learn how to SELF-REGULATE in order to withstand the most difficult cravings that are all part of destructive habits.
This realization transformed how I approached NO FAP and other things I felt I had no control over and gave me the confidence to quit once and for all.
The answer to all of lifeâs problems? Self-regulation (which is inside you) instead of seeking out external forms of regulation (the outer world and all its distractions).
You see, what happens when life hits us (and it hits all of us in different ways) is we get this energy build up inside us over time. If not released. It just grows stronger in pressure manifesting itself in strange ways in our lives.
It needs an exit. We need relief, soothing, something to ease us through the discomfort of all that pent up energy. So what do we do? We turn to harmful things that offer us a moments release. Itâs quick. Itâs easy. But it comes with a a hefty price. One that moves us further away from being able to self-regulate on our own amongst other things.
When we remove these escape mechanisms (like watching porn and masturbating). We are left with the energy intensified within us and no way out. Because we are poor self-regulators (never learned how). We relapse. Time and time again.
The solution to this problem is learning how to self-regulate (the video will walk you through it below).
This will help you get through the most difficult cravings, time and time again. So you can reconnect with yourself and your natural ability to process and release all this pent-up emotion, feeling, and energy.
Ok cool, but how do I self-regulate?
This is something we can all do naturally, but requires shutting off the thinking (modern) brain and reconnecting with our feelings and long lost reptilian brain.
The reptilian brain is here to serve us. Itâs responsible for all our automatic functions like breathing and walking, things we donât have to think about.
Another function of this amazing 10,000 year-old reptilian part of our brain is its ability to clear pent-up energy, stuck emotions, trauma and self-regulate.
But what happened is we started grasping at external things for relief and regulation, and we lost our connection to the reptilian part of the brain that handles all of this for us.
Sure, going to the gym, and the other 149 replacement habits I talk about here will help relieve a little pressure, boost your mood and help keep you happy and whole. But it doesnât stand a chance against the critical mass of a longer streak or more difficult cravings on its own. We must clear some of this pressure from the inside out. Or else it will feel like moving mountains.
Until you learn to tap into the long lost power of your reptilian brain and allow it to help you self-regulate, you are bound to hit a wall and relapse time and time again.
So if you want to quit porn, masturbation, or any other feel-good escape mechanism once and for all, you need to understand that there is this wonderful innate power within each and every one of us that we need to reconnect with.
By tapping into this power, you will be able to harness the energy inside you, process it, and let it go.
This is how you survive those bouts of incredible cravings and so much more in life.
Stop seeking external relief. Instead reconnect with your reptilian brain and unleash the ability to self-regulate from within.
Hereâs how to self-regulate in 3 easy steps:
I would summarize the process of reconnecting with your reptilian brain and self-regulating in 3 easy steps as follows:
1.) Awareness (feeling what your feeling, not thinking, explaining, or trying to escape or avoid it)
2.) Processing (let your reptilian brain do what it does best, sit with the above, lean into it, and let it do its thing automatically which is to clear it on its own)
3.) Letting go (practice breathing through the above until it releases itself, the reptilian brain will do the heavy lifting for you).
Itâs actually easy to do once you get some training on it. Do it successfully once and it will forever change your life.
Thatâs it!
If you need any additional support quitting difficult addictions or working through some of the material covered here, then check out my 1 on 1 coaching packages here:
www.coach.me/lifelessons
Until next time.
Keep up the good fight and never give up!
