How To Stop The Vicious Cycle Of Relapsing by having SELF-COMPASSION

Hey Guys,

this is Tobi & I want to share with you a technique that ensures to not relapse over and over again - just because you relapsed one time.

This thread is obviously not for everyone on this journey, but I see it ALL THE TIME. People relapse and feel extremely bad afterwards. Blaming themselves, insult themselves. Feeling angry about themselves. Or even worse, becoming depressed and hopeless. FUCK, I relapsed.

And this can easily become a VICIOUS CYCLE OF RELAPSING over and over and over ... and over again. I was there, too. I felt extremely ashamed when I relapsed. And why not? I set myself the goal of doing XX days of NoFap and I relapsed. I'm bad. I'm fucked.

But do you see the BIG MISTAKE here? Remind yourself of the last times you relapsed. What was the trigger? What was the emotional state you were in? Were you happy, in joy, creative, active or present right before you relapsed? Do you had a positive emotion right before relapsing?

Probably NOT. You were probably in a darker kind of headspace. Maybe you were sad, felt lonely, felt depressed, maybe you were unmotivated or you were bored. Whatever it was. It was not a positive emotion. Otherwise you wouldn't have relapsed.

My question right now is the following. And I want you to think about it for a second.

What is the WORST THING you can do after relapsing that will make the probability that you will relapse again go higher like crazy?

Exactly. Being in a negative state of mind. Beating yourself up. Beating yourself even more to the ground. Showing yourself what a pathetic and lonely person you are. That is the worst you can do. I experienced this for a long time and constantly fell back into relapsing over and over again.

Until something changed.

I ACCEPTED that my whole sexuality in the last years contained only porn. I ACCEPTED the fact that I used porn in a compulsive way and that I have a problem. I ACCEPTED that going cold-turkey will be the single best way to approach this problem. But I also ACCEPTED that this way will be hard.

And after I relapsed, I didn't feel bad anymore. I didn't feel ashamed anymore or angry or sad or depressed. I just felt neutral. Obviously I wasn't like happy and stuff, but I totally accepted it and didn't interpret anything negative into the relapse.

No, you are not a bad person because you relapsed. No, you will still recover even with this relapse. No, you didn't fucked up. It's okay. It is just a relapse. Cool, let's go back to NoFap.

I just saw the relapse as it is - one relapse, nothing more, nothing less. It's just a warning signal that you should be more aware of your life and how you live it. And the urge of relapsing again and again became less and less for me.

And I also saw a development process. With time you will relapse less and less. You get stronger and stronger mentally and you learn to become independent from your emotions because whatever you feel you can be there for you without needing the compensation with porn, sugar or whatever.

This can be trained. And one good way to do that is HAVING SELF-COMPASSION. Compassion for yourself.

THE BASICS OF SELF-COMPASSION

1. AWARENESS

First of all, you want to become more aware about your emotions in general. When you want to be there for you in bad times, when you feel lonely, depressed or negative in any other way. When something didn't work out the way you want it. Or when you relapse. The first step is to actually be aware of the fact that you feel negative.

You can raise Self-Awareness by

• doing little "check-ins" every single day and ask yourself: How do I feel?
• asking yourself when you feel the urge to watch porn: In what kind of emotional state am I?
• Daily meditation (HUGE!), 20 minutes a day is enough, if you never meditated before: just sit down where and how you want and it is comfortable for you. You can even lay down on your floor. And then simply watching your breath going in and out. Constantly bringing back the awareness to the breath.

When you master this skill, sometime you will be able to be in touch with your emotions and notice a negative feeling super quickly, which is a great skill for preventing yourself from relapsing.

2. BEING THERE FOR YOURSELF

When you caught yourself in a negative state or when you relapsed. Don't beat yourself up. Whatever you are feeling, be there for you. Be there for you like you would be there for a friend that have a really bad time.

Imagine your best friend would relapse and beat himself up. What would you say to him? You probably wouldn't talk the same way as if you yourself relapsed. You would try to be there for him, console him, talk good to him so that he comes out of his negative mindspace.

Be the best fucking friend ever to you when you feel negative or relapsed. Talk in a positive way to yourself. "You relapsed / you feel lonely and that is okay. I can see why you feel that way or why you relapsed. It's hard, I know. But look, it is just a relapse, you will get back up on your feet, this is not the end of the world even though you may feel like that right now." --- Talk kinda like this. I think you get a sense of what I mean. Work on not talking yourself down in such situations.

3. CONNECTION WITH THE WORLD

There are nearly 9 billion people in the world. You are not the only one who feels depressed, lonely or who relapsed. But when we are in a negative mindspace we often don't see it like that and we feel super alone with our problems. Stop that by reminding yourself that there are other people that are on the same path as you and that also fail. Remind yourself that there are million other people who feel exactly like you right now. Remind yourself that there are a lot of other people that feel lonely. You think you are isolated, but this is not the case. Make sure you have that in mind when you feel bad or when you relapsed. We need that connection to not feel isolated.

Try to practice that and keep in mind: feeling bad about your fuck up is the single worst thing you can do after a relapse.

So, stop that vicious cycle of relapsing over and over again or even relapsing in the first place by practicing the art of self-compassion. Be there for yourself in bad times and don't escape from your feelings with porn. Because all you are doing is escaping when you watch porn. Escaping from your emotions. By becoming self-compassionate you don't need to escape anymore because you know exactly what you need then. Love. Love from yourself.

I'm out. I want to keep it short and I hope there is at least a tiny bit of value for you in the post and I would be happy to hear from your what you think about it. So if you read until here, please write a reply!

If you want to go further into that topic, I can recommend the book Self-Compassion from Kristin Neff!

Cheers,
Tobi

 

Thank you, Jake!