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I have long been a fan of cognitive behavioral therapy as an alternative to drugs to treat depression and anxiety.
One of the things that can be most depressing for men that no one talks about masturbation.
And this is a problem because masturbation is actually very damaging.
Most people don’t know the damaging relationship between masturbation and health.
One damage of masturbation is that it causes desensitization in many men.
They lose physical and brain sensitivity.
The end result can be ongoing ED.
A more insidious damage is that it causes men relationship issues.
So, knowing the damage, the next thing is to figure out how to quit masturbation.
You can use CBT as a method to quit the habit of masturbation.
It may be desirable to replace masturbation with another behavior — perhaps the behavior of meeting women and having a woman in your life, a partner, and all the good things that come out of that.
This new study shows how that can be done.
So let’s now backtrack a bit.
Let’s discuss cognitive behavioral therapy for a moment, or CBT.
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There is a lot of evidence to show that cognitive behavioral therapy works at least as well as drugs.
And since there is a lot of evidence that the SSRI drugs are harmful, CBT is clearly a good thing.
It may even be a BETTER thing since it doesn’t have side effects, but discuss that with your doctor.
Cognitive behavioral therapy works by helping you identify the relationships between your thinking, how you feel, and what you’re doing.
And it’s been used successfully as a masturbation addiction treatment.
Ask yourself the question, “when you masturbate when you don’t want to, how do you feel afterward?”
Consider how does that affect you?
What behavior can you use instead that might serve you better?
CBT uses a format where you generally journal about what you’re working on.
You write your thoughts and the effects of your actions down, so that you can understand better how actions follow thoughts.
It’s an extremely helpful technique when it comes to behavioral modification and fixing bad habits.
However, CBT may not be the best way to treat anxiety and depression.
Other therapies are available to help with anxiety and depression, and they often work quite well.
One of these results from just taking the behavioral component out of CBT.
Basically just ignore all the thoughts, and the thinking, and focus on the behaviors.
They call this behavioral activation, or BA.
With depression and anxiety, it works really well.
The patient has to determine in advance what they will do any time that they feel depressed or anxious.
So they always have a plan, and that already starts to help them cope.
And then the planned action soothes and helps to boost them toward resolving that episode of anxiety.
BA can also be quite effective when coping with trying to break a negative habit.
I use behavioral activation a lot.
The simplest way of illustrating behavioral activation in habit breaking is the example of masturbation.
Let’s assume that you’re trying to avoid masturbation.
It’s causing you desensitization.
It’s causing you to dissipate your male energies.
It’s resulting in your not doing enough to meet real women.
So with cognitive behavioral therapy, you would determine what thoughts lead to masturbation.
You would keep a journal and observe those thoughts and the effects of those thoughts.
It can be a longer process.
And it works, but maybe you want to take charge of your life more quickly.
Behavioral activation just takes the idea, “I want to stop masturbating,” and works from there.
You decide in advance that the next time you want to masturbate, you’re going to do something instead.
You might decide that you’ll go for a walk, read, or go to the coffee shop and hang out.
So behavioral activation ignores thinking completely.
There is actually a habit of thinking too much (called rumination), which is also depressing.
And behavioral activation works wonders on helping to stop over thinking.
Instead of thinking too much, you pick another behavior in advance and you do that when the rumination begins.
Instead of thinking through things over and over and over, you may go for a walk.
Or maybe you decide that you’ll chat on the phone and talk to a friend when it starts.
Whatever you decide, you’ll choose alternate behaviors you’ve decided on in advance.
And then when you are ruminating, or want to masturbate, you just choose these alternate behaviors instead.
It takes the stress out of the situation and helps you move past the urge.
We use this a lot in coaching.
I use a lot of behavioral activation methods in our coaching in our high-end dating programs.
It works extremely well.
It’s fast, and it really doesn’t matter what’s in your mind — what matters is what you actually DO.
And besides personally knowing that it works, there is scientific evidence to support the process.
This study found that behavioral activation is at least as effective as CBT if not more effective.
What they don’t say about the study is that you can do this yourself — you can do this at home.
The key is finding out what behaviors you want to change, and what job they serve in your life.
If you’re eating a lot of cheese, and you want to stop, look at the times when you eat cheese.
Maybe you have gotten too hungry to resist.
Maybe it happens in the afternoons when you are tired and run down.
Now that you’ve figured out when you are likely to over-consume cheese, you pick alternate behaviors.
You decide that “Next time I’m going to eat some fruit first.”
It can be that simple.
So in the case of cheese, eating fruit would be the chosen behavior.
In the case of masturbation, the replacement behavior may be to go for a walk, go down to the coffee place, or read a book.
Then you just go ahead live your life.
When you realize you’ve started in on one of those behaviors that you don’t like, you already have a plan as to an altered behavior.
Now just follow the plan.
It’s simple and stress-free.
I call this system replacement behaviors, instead of behavior activation.
And I find it there very useful.
You need to pick the replacement behaviors in advance, and you need to actually follow the replacement behaviors when the time comes.
This study is further proof that the whole concept of replacement behaviors works.
You can do it too.
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(16)31140-0/fulltext
https://www.healthline.com/health/masturbation-and-testosterone
https://www.nateliason.com/testosterone-timing/
https://www.testosteronesite.com/guides/masturbation-and-testosterone/
Sexual motivation is usually dictated by hormones and thus in a lot of ways the role of testosterone in men also affects the levels of estrogen, especially during sex. Usually the fodder for rumour mills, it has been debated a lot whether masturbation has any effect on the hormone levels of the body. Does it affect testosterone levels and if there is a propensity of individuals to suffer from sexual problems in the long term? The answer to this question depends on several factors. Testosterone levels normally increase after a brief span after masturbation but it also has been found that frequent masturbation increased the levels of estrogen receptors. There are reports which prove that ejaculation at the moment of orgasm and being sexually satiated may cause different changes in the brain, one of them is where the androgen receptors in the brain declines and the estrogens levels increase. Usually, the level of testosterone rises and comes back to normal within a 7 – 14 days time. It also has been found that both testosterone and estrogen levels in the body experience a boost through regular sexual activity which in a milder form is masturbation for sexual release. There has also been studies which prove that male masturbation without orgasm will increase the testosterone but not the estrogen levels. Estrogen is found both in men and women but among women in the reproductive age, it is secreted the most and effects different hormonal changes such as induction and control of the ovulation cycle and also controls a woman’s sex drive. Estrogen actually promotes the functions of the hormones oxytocin and testosterone. It is also known that with age men’s estrogen levels increase while their testosterone levels fall.
2. Does masturbation lower testosterone?
The age-old question of whether masturbation lowers testosterone is still a contended question with various proponents, putting different views on the same. Studies have found that there is a sharp decline in the androgen receptors and an increase in estrogen receptors when a person has multiple ejaculations. But short-term abstinence from masturbation has been found to increase the testosterone levels to some extent. But research also shows that ejaculation does not increase or decrease the serum testosterone levels very much significantly. It is important to note that after ejaculation, the testosterone levels may fall for some time or during orgasm but it does not affect the testosterone levels in the long term.The myth that masturbation lowers testosterone is not true. Though in the short term the abstinence from masturbation may increase the testosterone, but abstinence for longer intervals may not necessarily cause an uptick in testosterone levels. There is also the question on the number of times that an individual masturbates and how it affects the testosterone levels in his body. According to some studies, two or three ejaculations over a short period can increase androgen receptor activity but doing it for four times or more can affect the androgen receptors negatively.Though the hormone testosterone has not many interactions with an orgasm, but does affect libido or sexual desire in an intense way. Though ejaculation does not directly affect the levels of testosterone, repeated ejaculation sessions can affect the way the body uses testosterone. For example masturbation twice or thrice a day causes a decline in the androgen receptors in the brain. But the results are very different for somebody who experiences ejaculation during sex with somebody else compared to ejaculation by sex play. It has been seen that testosterone levels rise to as much as 72% when men have sex, than those who just masturbate. It is interesting to note that sex with someone engages more of the healthy aspects that mere masturbation. So in many ways, if one explores abstinence for short periods like a week or two, it can increase testosterone levels. But abstinence for a period more than that does not increase testosterone but on the contrary, the testosterone levels can decline. Moderation is always the key, since too much masturbation can also lead to the rise in estrogens in a male body.