The course mentioned in the end of the video can be found right here.

Wondering if quitting porn can help your social anxiety?

Or if quitting porn can help with confidence in general?

Well, if so, you definitely have to stay for a while because this is exactly what we are going to talk about today.

Let's begin...

Can Quitting Porn Help With Confidence & Social Anxiety?

Scandinavian Bob here, hi.

If you are into NoFap you have probably read on several places online that people doing NoFap often start becoming more of a badass, in terms of confidence and less social anxiety. 

And many people report that they have started giving less of a fuck what people think of them.

Now I’m going to share an interesting study  related to this in a moment, but let me build up to it some more.

Ok, so when this badass phenomenon happens many people just automatically assume that it has to do with increased testosterone. 

Increased social confidence after quitting porn has not much to do with testosterone...

But here’s the thing, I personally believe there are many reasons behind why this is happening. Now sure testosterone, or increased androgen receptors may play a part, and so too may reduced shame and things like that, but here’s what I believe is the biggest factor of them all.

Ok, so listen up here…

As you all know by now, all addictions share the same fundamental brain changes, with one of those changes being a reduced number of dopamine D2 receptors in the brain.

Well, here’s the deal...

The link between dopamine D2 receptors and reduced social fear after quitting porn...

The department of Clinical Neuroscience in Karolinska Institutet in Sweden did a brain and personality study to explore possible associations between the personality trait social desirability and dopamine D2-receptor binding.

And what they found was very interesting, they found a negative correlation between dopamine D2-receptor binding in the striatum and social desirability.

A negative correlation in this case means that as one variable (in this case, dopamine D2-receptor binding) increases, the other variable (social desirability) decreases, and vice versa.

Could people who quit watching porn start to feel less need for validation?

If you don’t know exactly what social desirability means, social desirability is the tendency for people to want to present themselves in a generally favorable fashion...

...and they do this because they feel a stronger need than others to be liked  and accepted.

In other words, with more dopamine D2 receptors binding, people don’t worry so much about what others may think of them, while with less dopamine D2 receptors people are generally more afraid of what people will think of them. 

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Now isn’t this interesting!

If you stop watching porn you will most likely get more dopamine D2 receptors in the brain - at least if you have been going hard with your porn...

Because, well,  I can tell you, if a random dude walked up to me on the street and said: tell me one thing I could do to get more dopamine receptors...

...I would just say, "Stop fapping to porn" and I would walk away.

And I would say that because I would assume he is doing that, because, well most men in today’s modern world do. And chances are he is doing it so often that it really is affecting his receptors in a negative way.

And as far as that Swedish study goes, that study  is not the only one pointing to this dopamine receptor social link either.

Studies on monkeys show similar link between dopamine D2 receptors and status...

There are for example animal studies showing that monkeys with less dopamine receptors are more submissive and afraid and that monkeys with who are more alpha have more of those dopamine d2 receptors. 

Even other human studies have shown that people who are leaders and so-called go-getters tend to have higher dopamine receptor binding than others. And I believe this has an even higher impact on your drive badassness than testosterone. 

The dopamine system will heal when we quit abusing it - and thus we start functioning better again...

And, so, what I believe is happening here is that many people who go on a NoFap journey have some degree of porn addiction, and as they stay away from fapping to porn the dopamine D2 receptors in their brain start to grow as their addiction heal and thus they start feeling like, you know, that they give less of a fuck than what they used to. 

Now granted, the studies I mentioned were not NoFap studies, they were just studies on dopamine receptor binding, but you have to remember that all addictions will knock out some of your dopamine receptors.

All addictions, no matter what they are, takes a toll on the dopamine system...

And then that Swedish study actually showed, black on white,  that with less dopamine receptor binding, people do indeed tend to become more wary of what other people may think of them.

But as I said, since there could be even more than this going on, it just goes to show how powerful NoFap really is.

I mean if we were to take a big box here and we started adding things to it, like...

• Increased dopamine receptors
• Reduced shame
• Potentially increased androgen receptors that testosterone binds to.
• Increased confidence in general because we feel that we are growing and improving our lives
• Potentially and potentially testosterone itself is higher
• The fact that people tent to respond more positively to you when you’re doing NoFap,

If we created a nice little package of all the above then of course that package as a whole could be a powerful driver of that increased confidence feeling people who have quit using porn are reporting. 

It's very interesting...

Anyway, I just find these kinds of things so incredibly interesting so I just have to share them from time to time.

So consider subscribing for more and if you need help with relapses you can read about my 4-step porn crushing system here.

And also to learn more about porn’s effect on the dopamine receptors, if you haven’t already, make sure to watch my 4 part video series on porn and the brain right here because when you do, you will for sure discover things that will absolutely blow your mind. 

Thanks for reading!

-Scandinavian Bob

Related articles...

• Does NoFap and quitting porn really increase confidence?
• My experince with confidence after quitting porn
• How watching porn makes you more shy and less alpha (scienftific link)