NoFap Social Anxiety (A guide)
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The Optimistminds editorial team is made up of psychologists, psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Each article is written by a team member with exposure to and experience in the subject matter. The article then gets reviewed by a more senior editorial member. This is someone with extensive knowledge of the subject matter and highly cited published material.
In this article, titled “NoFap social anxiety,” we will discuss what social anxiety is, its symptoms, the link between porn and social anxiety, NoFap, its main suggestion, how NoFap can change your life, and beliefs about NoFap.
What is Social Anxiety?
Social anxiety or social phobia is a persistent, irrational fear of performing any public actions (for example, public speaking), or actions accompanied by attention from strangers: fear of the views of passers-by on the street, fear of being in society, inability to do anything when observed from the side, and others.
“Social anxiety is the fear of being judged and evaluated negatively by other people, leading to feelings of inadequacy, inferiority, self-consciousness, embarrassment, humiliation, and depression.
If a person usually becomes (irrationally) anxious in social situations, but seems better when they are alone, then “social anxiety” may be the problem,” claimed Thomas A. Richards, Ph.D. Psychologist/Director of The Social Anxiety Institute.
Social Anxiety Symptoms
Social anxiety has cognitive, behavioral, and physiological symptoms.
Cognitive symptoms
People suffering from social anxiety, experience real horror at how others will evaluate them.
They are almost always too focused on themselves – on how they look, how they behave.
Such people also tend to have high demands on themselves.
Suffering from social phobia, they struggle to make a good impression on others, but at the same time, they are confident that they will not be able to do it.
Countless times, people with social anxiety can play in head possible scenarios for the development of situations that provoke anxiety, analyzing where and what they could do, or did not.
These thoughts can be extremely obsessive and torment a person for weeks after the corresponding stressful situation.
People with social anxiety have a small idea of themselves and their abilities; they tend to see themselves in a bad light.
There is also evidence that the memory of such people contains more bad memories (ordinary people quickly forget the bad ones).
For example, a new employee in a team gets acquainted with future colleagues and accidentally stumbles during his speech.
If he/she has a social phobia, then after that he will most likely have significant anxiety and will think about whether he made a good impression;
Moreover, the memory of this event will remain and become a source of concern in the future.
Behavioral symptoms
As mentioned above, social phobia or social anxiety disorder is a persistent fear of a wide range of situations in which a person is evaluated by others, while he/she is afraid to create a wrong opinion about himself/herself.
This condition differs from ordinary “shyness” in a way that it leads to severe disturbances in the life of the subject.
He/she begins to avoid any contact with people, especially in small groups, dates, or parties.
Beware of talking with strangers, visiting restaurants, and other things. People with social phobia are afraid to look into the eyes of the interlocutor.
According to psychologist B.F. Skinner, phobias are primarily characterized by avoiding the behavior.
A person simply begins to beware of any situations that provoke anxiety in him/her.
Physiological symptoms
The physiological effects experienced by patients are similar to those observed in other disorders of the anxiety spectrum.
In adults, it can be tears, excessive sweating, nausea, difficulty breathing, trembling in the limbs, changes in heart rate, as the results of the start of the “hit or run” reaction.
Gait disorders are possible (in a situation if a person is worried about whether he “walks” correctly), especially when walking past a group of people.
Involuntary redness of the skin of the face is also a reasonably common symptom among those suffering from social anxiety.
All these physiological reactions, easily noticed by others, intensify anxiety even in the presence of strangers.
Link Between Porn and Social Anxiety
Porn and anxiety are connected; porn can be both a cause or a result of social anxiety.
Social Anxiety Caused by Porn
Studies showed that excessive porn watching could cause social anxiety or increase it.
Some researches claimed that introverts experience social anxiety more than extraverts.
The majority of introverts find it hard to socialize and spend more time alone, which is a symptom of social anxiety.
Research showed that porn addiction affects brain chemistry, causing memory and cognitive impairment, and reducing the amount of dopamine D2 receptors.
According to another research, the duration of watching porn, for getting more dopamine, increases if the person watches it very often.
If 30 minutes sessions had increased the level of dopamine, after some time, it could increase till 2, and in some cases till 4 hours.
As we know, watching porn needs some privacy, so a person who wants to watch it locks in his/her room for a while, and that “for a while” can become two hours or more if he/she becomes porn-addicted.
As a result, those two or more hours, that could be spent with others, and serve to the person’s socialization, are spent alone, and the person loses his/her social part.
Thus, basing on some researches, we can say that excessive porn watching can cause social anxiety, independent from the fact if the person has had social anxiety or is prepossessed to it.
Social Anxiety Increases Porn Usage
Many addictions are used as tools to deal with some conditions, including anxiety.
For example, porn is often used to deal with social anxiety, but it can turn to addiction.
People who have difficulty in socializing and meeting new people from the opposite sex because of feeling shy, or some other reasons, are more vulnerable to porn addiction than others.
The reason is that porn is a way to get pleasure and not to get rejected by a person. By the time, though, porn addiction damages people’s health.
So, studies show that masturbation can be caused by social anxiety (also by general anxiety disorder).
What is NoFap?
NoFap is a website, community, and forum on combating adult-content and masturbation.
The name of the site comes from slang fap, which refers to male masturbation.
The NoFap community is a form of Opposition to adult-content.
NoFap was created in June 2011 by American actor Alexander Rhodes after an article about the 2003 Chinese masturbation and adult-content study was published on the famous Reddit forum.
The experiment involved 28 volunteers.
The study showed that in men who abstained for seven days, fluctuations in testosterone levels were negligible.
However, on the seventh day, there was a jump in the male hormone by 145.7% compared with the previous state.
The data obtained were the first to confirm periodic changes in the level of testosterone in men, depending on the frequency of their ejaculations. In the beginning, Rhodes created a community in Reddit called NoFap.
There, weekly and monthly tasks were held to abstain from watching adult-content and doing the masturbation and then added a day counting system.
NoFap Social Anxiety; the Main Suggestion NoFap mainly suggests sexual deprivation as a way of dealing with social anxiety.
It claims that if you give up on porn and masturbation, you can become more creative, your focus can sharpen, and you will have much energy.
NoFap is not a serious treatment for social anxiety.
However, you can give it a try, because, as you know, some things can seem simple but can work for some people, while they do not work for others.
NoFap Social Anxiety; How Can It Change Your Life?
NoFap can change your life:
Making you hungry for success
As soon as you do your first steps to quit porn, you will notice that the real-life you are living, is not that happy and successful as it seemed to be, and you will become hungry for success, which will be a stimulus to think about it and the ways to reach success.
Balancing your hormone levels
Masturbation increases the levels of prolactin hormone, which can cause hormonal problems, such as lactation.
Clearing your mind
If you refrain from porn and masturbation, you will feel that your mind is not foggy anymore and that you can concentrate better; the cognitive functions of your brain will improve.
If besides following NoFap, you keep a healthy diet and regularly practice physical exercises, the results will be much better.
Getting you back to reality
NoFap helps you realize that you lack sexual happiness, which becomes the primary motivation making you become a better person.
For quitting porn and masturbation, and getting back to reality, you will need a strong will.
However, you will not be alone, if you join NoFap, where you will find other people with the same or a similar condition, and share experiences with them.
The website also suggests you tools to help you quit porn.
NoFap Social Anxiety Beliefs
Proponents of the NoFap movement claim that after prolonged sexual abstinence, they experience mainly a positive effect on the psyche and physiology.
Thus, most noticeably they feel in themselves such qualities as:
- Social adaptation;
- Self-confidence;
- The concentration of attention;
- An influx of energy;
- Emotional stability;
- Happiness;
- Attractiveness.
Recommended books and sources
- The Shyness and Social Anxiety Workbook: Proven, Step-by-Step Techniques for Overcoming Your Fear (A New Harbinger Self-Help Workbook)
- The Anxiety and Worry Workbook: The Cognitive Behavioral Solution
- Thriving with Social Anxiety: Daily Strategies for Overcoming Anxiety and Building Self-Confidence
- Video – Why Nofap Destroys Social Anxiety-Nofap Social Anxiety
- NoFap Social Anxiety Video – NOFAP Q & A
- HFNE “Social Anxiety”
- HFNE “Shortness of Breath Anxiety”
Conclusion
Summarizing the article “NoFap social anxiety,” we can say that NoFap is a website, community, and forum on combating adult-content and masturbation.
It is connected to social anxiety, as is aimed to quit masturbation and porn, which often causes social or generalized anxiety (can be the result of anxiety too).
Even though NoFap is not a treatment for social anxiety, you can try it too as an option, as it can be helpful too.
Please feel free to comment on the content or ask any questions in the comments section below.
References
- Nofap Social Anxiety: Can porn watching be affecting your social life?
- Chronic Masturbation Can Lead to Anxiety
- NoFap Social Anxiety; NoFap
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