Are you worried about the sexual thoughts you have when you see someone or something? Are you looking for ways to overcome the lustful thoughts occurring in your mind?
If you are seeking the answers to the above questions, we are here to help you out by suggesting 15 tips to control your lust. Lust is considered to be the intense desire for something be it money, power, food or sex. Here, we are talking about sexual lust. You have an intense longing to have intercourse and are unable to control yourself even while you’re present in a crowd. It may happen when you read, hear, or see something and the thoughts keep revolving around it.
There can be grave consequences if it is not controlled on time. It will affect not just your personal life but also your relationship and sexual life. So, let’s first begin with understanding the causes of lust and then move forward with knowing the ways to suppress it.
What Causes Lust?
Before you work on controlling lust or lustful thoughts, it is essential to understand what leads to lust. There are many causes of lust like:
1. Watching Excessive Sexual Content
If you are wondering what causes lust then engaging in excessive sexual content is what leads to it. Excessively watching or being addicted to pornography, sexual chats, and other sexual content can cause one to have lustful thoughts, and always have these thoughts lingering in their mind, which increases their sexual desires a lot.
2. Excessive Physical Attraction
Among the various causes of lust, one of the causes of recurring lustful thoughts and sexual desires, no matter where you are, is physical attraction. Many times, due to certain body features or certain people, you may have the feeling of intense sexual desire or lustful thoughts. If you easily get attracted to people then it can be a cause of lust.
3. Suppressing Your Feelings
So, what causes lust? One of the reasons is suppressing your feelings. If you are someone who does not speak about their feelings or desires to your partner, eventually it will lead you to have lustful thoughts. Suppressing your feelings of sexual intimacy and arousal can cause you to have them excessively leading to lust.
4. Not Engaging In Self-Pleasure
Just like excessive masturbation can cause a lot of problems in your sexual life, similarly, not engaging in self-pleasure can also increase your desires, which can lead to lust. While you go for self-pleasure, there are some masturbation techniques for guys to know that help them experience orgasm but avoiding it can lead to lust.
5. You Are Going Through Negative Emotions
When it comes to what causes lust, then one of the reasons can be that you are going through negative emotions. Negative emotions like self-doubt, anxiety, stress, performance pressure, etc can cause you to have lustful thoughts. Since you are unable to express them, it leads you gradually to lust or intense sexual desires.
15 Tips To Control Your Lust
Now that you know the causes of lust, following the tips to control your lust can help you overcome it easily.
1. Look At How Much And What Content You Consume
There are many ways of how to control lust, one of them is to keep a watch on how much and what content you are consuming. In the days when you get all the content on one scroll and click, you cannot keep track of what you are watching and how much of that content you are consuming, as what we see is what we take. The broad variety of content available for everyone at any time consumes you and leads people towards leads. One of the ways to control your lust is to keep track of what you are watching and how much impact it has on you and limit or avoid interaction with it so that you consume wrong and sexual content excessively.
2. Find Ways To Divert Your Energy
One of the tips to control your lust is to carefully and correctly channel your energy. Investing your energy into sexual content and physical attractions can lead you to lust. Therefore, when it comes to how to control lustful thoughts, it is best to divert your energy to other activities that are engaging and lead to personal growth. Some of the ways to divert your energy are to engage in new hobbies like swimming, cycling, and dancing, invest in other craft activities, get yourself busy with work, and focus on self-growth and other activities. It will help you shift your energy and focus to other activities, leading to a diversion from sexual content and lustful thoughts.
3. Engage In Meditation and Exercises
As we stated above, it is essential to divert your energy because it provides you an outlet for your emotions, so, one of the ways is to engage in meditation and exercises. One of the benefits of morning meditation is that it helps you stay grounded and calm your mind whereas exercises help you release your emotions more healthily. Knowing how to control lust is essential so that you don’t invest your energy and focus on things that give rise to lust and drain you. Therefore, you must work on being physically active through regular exercises and meditation to get various benefits apart from controlling lustful thoughts or desires.
4. Try To Do Self-Analysis
Among the best ways to control your lust is to do self-analysis. We often tend to lie to ourselves and keep ourselves in the dark, but to overcome lust, it is essential that you understand where your thoughts are taking you. Do self-analysis about how much time you spend watching porn, how often you have sexual thoughts, how easily you get sexually attracted, whether you can control it or not and other related things. This is the best ways to stop sex addiction as it will help you to understand your thoughts and how often they reoccur so that it will help you to put a stop to or limit it to avoid being lustful and having lustful thoughts.
5. Consider Going To A Therapist
It is not easy to overcome any addiction or lust easily, and if you find it difficult to overcome it, then you can consider going to a therapist or taking addiction counseling. Taking therapy can help you to share your feelings and identify what is causing the problem, which can help you to find relevant solutions and apply them to yourself. Though it may take time, it will help you get over your excessive wild thoughts easily. So, if you don’t know how to control lustful thoughts, the best way to deal with it is by taking therapy or counseling sessions. It will help you find the potential causes that lead to it and also the solutions to overcome it.
6. Communicate With Your Partner
Want to know how to control lust? One of the reasons, as we stated above, that causes lust is suppressing your feelings and your sexual desires. Often people under various pressures and stresses do not speak about their sexual desires and what they want in a relationship, which leads to lust. Therefore it is very important that you openly communicate with your partner regarding your sexual needs and your fantasies so that you don’t end up thinking about it always. It is among the various ways to overcome lust as it helps you communicate your needs and desires so that you can have a better sexual life as well as your relationship.
7. Avoid Excessive Engagement In Self-Pleasure
Avoiding excessive engagement in self-pleasure is also one of the ways to control your lust. When you excessively engage in self pleasures or completely avoid it then the lustful thoughts or sexual desires go on to peak. Therefore it is essential to manage your engagement in self pleasures or masturbation to avoid any harmful consequences. Keep a check on how much time you engage in self-pleasure and that you are not being dependent on it completely. You can also look for different ways to avoid excessive masturbation or therapy sessions as it is one of the ways how to suppress lust or overcome it naturally.
8. Help Yourself To Overcome Negative Emotions
We often shelter ourselves with negative thoughts and emotions and are often unaware of where it’s leading us. When we surround ourselves with negative thoughts and self-doubt, it often leads us to suppress our emotions, which can cause us to have lustful thoughts. Helping yourself to overcome negative emotions like performance anxiety, self-doubt, sexual tensions or relationship issues then, you tend to have less lustful ideas. You can always take anxiety counseling or go for other ways to overcome negative abortions as it is one of the ways how to control lust.
9. Work On Identifying The Triggers
Don’t know how to suppress lust? Just working on identifying the triggers that lead you to have lustful thoughts is also one of the ways to control your lust. Often we focus on the disease rather than also focusing on what causes it. We all must have heard that precaution is better than cure, and therefore, when you work on identifying the triggers, you have the remote to your lustful thoughts, which you can easily switch off. Try to find what things or features lead you to have sexual desires like specific body features, specific person, video, image, sound, or other things.
10. Resist Yourself From Giving Up To Temptations
Once you have identified the trigger now it comes to resist yourself from giving up to the temptations. This is how to control lustful thoughts. As soon as you know that certain things lead you to think in a certain manner, then you should work on avoiding them or baking your will so strong that you don’t give up on these temptations. If it is a certain sound, image, video, or a specific person, then try to avoid seeing them or listening to them. This is one of the ways to overcome lust as it helps you avoid the triggers which will lead you to have lustful thoughts.
11. Acknowledge Or Accept Your Feelings
Then in the various ways to overcome lust, the next step is to acknowledge or accept that you have lustful thoughts. You must understand that it is normal to have sexual desires, but when it crosses the boundary or limit, then it is something that you should worry about. Acknowledge that you feel lustful when you see specific things or get sexually attracted to people and work on reducing it. Once you acknowledge and accept the feeling it becomes really easy to overcome the causes of lust. This will help you to accept yourself as you are and avoid negative thoughts.
12. Seek Emotional Fulfillment In Other Ways
Many times when you are not stabilized emotionally or you see emotional fulfillment, you tend to have lustful thoughts. It is essential that you find different ways to seek emotional fulfillment, like engaging in foreplay tips for new couples, communicating with your partner, engaging in playful activities, and emotional stability by talking about how you feel and what is making you stressed, etc. In this way, you can easily work on reducing the occurrence of lustful thoughts. This is actually how to suppress lust by engaging in other different ways to pacify your emotions or other feelings.
13. Set Boundaries For Yourself
Setting boundaries for yourself is also one of the tips to control your lust. It is important to set yourself a boundary or a limit that you cannot cross so that you don’t engage in lustful thoughts or other activities that give rise to lust. Knowing how to control sexual urges in public places is essential in this case as it can create a negative image of yours. For example, if you are someone who often switches to porn while you are working, try working in a place where you’re surrounded by many people or a cafe so that you don’t switch to porn and hence restrict yourself in that area and work.
14. List Different Reasons To Avoid Temptations
Listing out different reasons why you must avoid the temptation of lustful thoughts is also one of the tips to control your lust. Usually, people don’t stick to restricting themselves to the various reasons they list but then it is a matter of willpower and discipline that you succumb to the reasons and avoid temptations. For example, list very strong reasons why you must not engage in lustful thoughts like, “you want to stay loyal to your partner” or something else. This is how to suppress lust by giving yourself reasons why you must not do it and sticking to it no matter what happens.
15. Reduce Excessive Consumption Of Alcohol
Though there is no direct connection between alcohol and lust, it is how to control lustful thoughts. When you have lustful thoughts and you consume alcohol, it inhibits your sense of resistance and thus continues to have the occurrence of sexual desires. Because of excessive consumption of alcohol, you are unable to control yourself, and thus, you can’t resist temptations and other attractions. Therefore, reducing the consumption of alcohol is not just to improve your health but is also one of the ways to overcome lust and stay within the restrictions you make for yourself.
Conclusion
As we come to conclude this article on 15 tips to control your lust, we have tried to understand what lust is and how a person comes to have lustful thoughts. Understanding the signs you are a sex addict or have lustful thoughts is essential when all you think about is sexual or physical intimacy with someone. Trying to divert your energy through exercises and meditation, limiting the content you watch, and identifying the triggers can help you overcome lust and control yourself.
It is not wrong to have physical intimacy in a relationship but there’s a difference between having healthy sex and being lustful. It affects not only your relationship but also your personal life, leading to guilt and shame. Hence, you should take note of it.
FAQ’S
1. What Is The Difference Between Love And Lust?
There’s a major difference between love and lust. Love is about feelings of not just sex but care, affection, emotional connection for someone and caring for them but lust is all about physical and sexual attraction or desires. The development of love is slow but lust happens quickly as it is mere attraction.
2. How To Know If It Is Lust Or Something Else?
To know if it is lust or something else like love or casual attraction, then you must focus on what comes to your mind. If you only think about physical beauty and sexual or physical intimacy coming to your mind and not affection, care, security or praise, then it is lust and nothing else.
3. How Does Lust Impact Relationships?
Lust can be very dangerous for your relationship as it can lead to conflicts because it causes emotional distance from your partner, harmful behavior, compulsions, and also leads to cheating in relationships. If sexual pleasures exist along with love, then there is no harm, and it leads to peaceful relationships.
4. What Are The Consequences Of Engaging In Lust?
The consequences of engaging in lust can be harmful not just for your personal life but also for your relationships. It can cause you guilt, shame, self-hatred, desperation, cheating or broken relationships, sex addiction, and other issues like jealousy, sadness and negative emotions.
5. What Are The Signs Someone Is Lustful?
It is not easy to identify someone who is having lustful thoughts but it is not impossible. The person is always selfish and seeks more physical intimacy, they don’t share or talk much about them or other things until it is about sex. Also, you would meet them only when you are to have sex.
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