4 reasons why you need a support group to stop masturbating

It can be scary to wake up and realize you really need to stop masturbating. Maybe it’s when you realize it’s taking a toll on your relationship with your spouse or partner, or maybe you're spend so much time and energy on it that it's getting in the way of your daily activities to the point that you really want to quit. However you got here, now that you’ve decided to stop masturbating, the next question is – how?
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Ultimately, the best way to stop masturbating is to work with a support group. Here are the top four reasons why:
1. Connection is the opposite of addiction
2. Peers in the same boat are powerful motivators
3. When you feel the urge to masturbate, you need to reach out
4. Accountability is critical to stop masturbating

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Below we’ll discuss each of these points further to examine why you need a support group to stop masturbating.

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1. Connection is the opposite of addiction

In Johann Hari’s famous TED talk, “Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong”, he highlighted some groundbreaking psychology research done by Dr. Robert Weiss. He put rats in a cage on their own and gave them the choice between normal water and drug-laced water, and nine times out of ten the rat chose drug-laced water... eventually overdosing and dying.

He repeated the experiment, but this time with all the rats in the same cage, with things around them to stimulate them and allow them to play and mate with each other. Suddenly the results changed – the rats all chose the normal water, even though they had the option to do drugs. None of them died of overdose.

This proved that the typical view of addiction as just a behavior isn’t complete. The opposite of addiction isn’t just sobriety, or stopping behavior; the opposite of addiction is connection — replacing that behavior with interpersonal relationships.

That’s the first key reason why you need a support group to stop masturbating. Even though you’re probably not clinically addicted, you’ve got a strong compulsive habit tied to chemical responses in your brain, and to change that behavior you can’t just stop it. You need to replace it with human connection.

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2. Peers in the same boat are powerful motivators

You might be thinking, “Cool, it makes sense that I need connection – why can’t I just talk to my [spouse, friend, another confidant]?” The answer is that you should definitely include whoever you want in your support system, but the best and most powerful relationships that will help you stop masturbating are often people who are on the same journey as you. Think about how many support groups there are for alcoholism, depression, loss of family members, even just being a mom – you name the challenge, and there’s probably a support group for it. People who are working on the same problem tend to team up for a few reasons:
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• Empathy: They want to talk to other people who really understand
  how they feel — and you don’t always get that from family, friends, or
  even therapists
• Safety: They want to be able to share their struggles without fear of
  judgement or overreacting, and who better to confess to than someone
  else who’s in the same boat
• Commitment: They want to work with someone who’s motivated to
  support and help them through their trials

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When you work with a support group to stop masturbating, you’ll find that it feels different than just telling a friend or spouse. You get empathy, safety, and commitment, and that will be a powerful motivation to drive you to really make change.

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3. When you feel the urge to masturbate, you need to reach out

Habits form as a sort of biological formula in our brains – we respond to certain stimuli with certain actions. When I’m hungry, I eat. The problem arises when you create a formula that leads to unwanted, unhealthy, or excessive actions. For example, if you eat a lot when you get really stressed, your body can start to form a compulsive habit around that formula and drive you to eat every time you feel stressed.

Masturbation is the same way; you have certain triggers that drive the urge to masturbate, and many of them aren’t inherently sexual — you might be lonely, tired, stressed, or bored, and your brain tells you to masturbate when you’re feeling that emotion because you’ve created that habit.

To stop masturbating, you need to start to retrain your brain to respond differently to those triggers. You may have already tried, and if you do, you know it’s extremely difficult to just tell yourself to rewire and change the formula.

That’s where the power of connection comes in. It’s much easier to add something to the formula than delete it:

• STATUS QUO: Boredom --> urge --> act out
• WITH SUPPORT GROUP: Boredom --> urge --> reach out to group teammates

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If you can do that, train your brain to reach out to your group when you’re feeling the urge to masturbate, you’ll slowly start to see progress. You may not totally stop masturbating right away, but sometimes your group will successfully help you avoid it, and that progress will slowly build.

The Relay app is one tool that does a great job of this, making it easy to reach out when you feel the urge to masturbate. All you have to do is tap a button and your group gets a notification saying “[NAME] needs help; reach out and share your support!” This is way better than having to call someone or type out a text. Even if you don’t use Relay, you should at least pre-write a text to send your group so it’s easier to reach out when you feel the urge to masturbate.

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4. Accountability is critical to stop masturbating

One thing that makes it hard to stop masturbating is that it’s not something that you share with anyone else. You’re probably the only one who knows
how much it's happening.

To successfully jump on the "nofap" train, you don’t need to confess to your group every time you relapse, but you do need to find inputs — things you can control that affect your urge to masturbate — to keep track of and report to your team. For example, one input might be how much sleep you get or how much exercise you get. That absolutely affects your mood, which in turn affects your urge to masturbate.

Here’s a list of example inputs:

• Hours of sleep
• How far you run each week
• Daily journaling
• Daily spiritual habits
• What time you stop using your phone each night

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With a support group, when you decide which input to focus on and share your goal with them, your group will help motivate you to get it done. They can help keep you accountable and provide an external push for you to make the changes you want so you can stop masturbating. For all those reasons — the power of connection, the power of peers, the power of reaching out when you feel the urge, and the power of accountability — a support group will be the best way to help you stop masturbating.

Now that you’ve learned how to start your journey to stop masturbating, don’t wait until you’ve lost this clarity and fall back into your
habits! Join a support group today!

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