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Question regarding planned relapse.

Discussion in 'Rebooting - Porn Addiction Recovery' started by ad man 99, May 22, 2019.

  1. ad man 99

    ad man 99 Fapstronaut

    From experience, would you say it's best to plan once you hit your first goal to M then set another goal or should I keep going beyond that goal until I feel like I can't anymore? I have a day in mind to M then begin my reboot once again, but I'm not sure if I should keep going. I fear that if I was to relapse without planning it, and after too long (for my first reboot) that I might binge. Any help is appreciated.
     
  2. kropo82

    kropo82 Fapstronaut

    When I hit my first goal (90 days) I decided I did not feel 'rebooted' and so went straight on to go for 180 days, etc. My thinking is that while I have found the techniques etc. that work for me I should stick with them.
     
    Deleted Account likes this.
  3. basically a cheat day?
    They tend to cause problems later on. Not recommended because if you reward yourself with the one thing you are trying to keep yourself away from, How is that overcoming it? Reward yourself with delicious food!
     
  4. kropo82

    kropo82 Fapstronaut

    For me the issue crops up when it's not the goal. My goal is to stay away from porn for the rest of my life. I am not against masturbation, but I have found that abstaining from masturbation helps me stay away from porn. So when do I go back to masturbation? When am I 'fixed'? I'm on Day 954 now but I'm still nervous about going back to masturbation, even just occasionally, since abstaining from masturbation has become such a cornerstone of my porn-sobriety.

    One more thing, @ad man 99 when you say
    what do you mean?
     
    Fenix Rising likes this.
  5. ad man 99

    ad man 99 Fapstronaut

    Well I'm not exactly sure what I mean but I'm guessing since I'm stopping myself all of a sudden, the urge will come back to haunt me and I worry that it will be worse than if I do it once after the initial goal.
     
  6. kropo82

    kropo82 Fapstronaut

    I think the opposite. The longer that you practise doing something (or not doing it) the more habitual it becomes.
     
  7. Targaryenn

    Targaryenn Fapstronaut

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    I fully agree with this. You are right!
     
  8. , sometimes our mind and body will do anything to justify doing something it wants to do , I think worrying about not doing it leading to having a worse experience later on when you do do it ? Is just a way of trying to justify and making it fit your desire , don’t over think it , once you get that rush and hit of endorphins the mind and body will seek that again , stay single minded remind yourself of the benefits and being in control
     
  9. kropo82

    kropo82 Fapstronaut

    I think @mark1012 makes a good point here. The early days of a reboot are so hard. Instead of focussing on what you will do after 90, 180, 365, ... days it may be worth focussing on what you will do now, today.
     
  10. Fenix Rising

    Fenix Rising Fapstronaut

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    Planned relapse is one of the worst things you can do. You might as well continuously PMO. I'm not saying this, because I'm some kind of purist, but because how human brains work. If you preplan your relapse, you'll crave dopamine reward from PMO achievable after predetermined time period. That way you're not abandoning neurological pathway you've build over the years of PMOing (deep learned behavior) and start creating new one, but actually sustain it or even reinforce it. The right set of mind would be, I'll never PMO again. Because we're only humans and slips/relapses are part of the recovery process, you must develop some kind of contingency plan in case shit hits the fan (which statistically probably will happen few times during your recovery).

    Mine looks something like this, but take it with a grain of salt and develop your own rules that work for you:

    I have reservations about days counting, especially once we hit 90 days monk mode reboot mark. I'm looking at the counter more like a remainder of when I started walking on my path to recovery, not about how long no PMO streak has lasted. All or nothing mentality doesn't work at least not for me. Losing long streak is devastating if you adopt such mentality, which is very prevalent on this forum unfortunately.

    From what I've read about successful addiction recoveries of any kind, it's crucial to differentiate between a slip and a relapse:

    1) Slip is a moment of weakness. In our case it would mean that you PMO one time after 90 days of successful reboot, analyze why did it happen, learn from it and immediately continue on your path. If you manage to do that, I even wouldn't reset the counter as your healing progress hasn't been lost.

    1) I'd categorize relapse as a state of returning to your old path: when PMO leads you to days, weeks or even months of old behavior. That causes you to abandon your newly build narrow neuropathway, you've been trying to build in your brain and start using the old neuropath-highway you've build and used over the years of PMO addiction. That's when most (in case of weeks or months long relapse probably all) progress you've made has been lost and you need to start from zero (resetting your counter).

    With that being said, I'd set some ground rules to this. First you need to complete 3 months of PMO reboot without relapses (preferably in monk mode) to give your brain time to abandon old and build new neuropathway (it takes about 66 days on average plus minus few weeks). Secondly you also have to set some rules on how often slip can occur to be counted just as a slip and not relapse. For me once or twice inside 2-3 month period would still be considered a slip, 3 times not anymore as you start to walk a path of delayed gratification (-> you crave for PMO, sustain for a few weeks knowing award awaits you, do PMO, sustain few weeks, do PMO again->… that's as bad as PMOing continuously because you keep sabotaging your newly build narrow neuropathway in your brain).
     
  11. What's the point of doing nofap then? If you just continuously hit a decent streak, then fap you destroy the purpose and progress of what your doing, and return to old negative habits. It's a joke and the path to self destruction.
     
    Fenix Rising likes this.
  12. ZenAF

    ZenAF Fapstronaut

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    I think the question here is, if we don't plan on PMOing ever again anyways, why setup a goal with a set amount of days in the first place? Well because a specified goal is something that your brain can grasp as a project. It has a start and an end. It's much easier to stay motivated when you set it up with a clear goal rather than an indefinite "never again".
    So should you just PMO after x amount of days? No, I would look at it like this: If you PMO after the amount of days, you proved to yourself that you can achieve the goal and should be motivated to aim at a bigger goal. But you don't plan to PMO, ideally you don't and you transition immediately into the next goal with a higher amount of days. So instead of saying "after that amount of days I can PMO" say "I will do my best to never PMO again and after x amount of days I've reached my first milestone and can go for the next one."
     
  13. ad man 99

    ad man 99 Fapstronaut

    Thanks for all your replies... and most of them follow the same theme which is that it's not the right way to go. This is why I asked, and I do appreciate all the great replies. The details and explanations help me grasp the idea of NoFap better than I had, and now I can go forward with some more experience as to what not to do! Thanks everyone!
     
  14. I had a Christian friend who didn’t masturbate for years before he got married and he didn’t explode , sure he had temptations but I admired his strong character and self control , sometimes we think if we don’t masturbate that we are going to go off like a pressure cooker but provided we have healthy outlets and we are not flirting with pornography and getting ourselves wound up nothing bads going to happen , other than the supposed risk of prostrate problems with not ejaculating but compared to the utter misery of being trapped in sex addiction and pornography , it’s destructive nature
    and how it affects my quality of life , health and well being I’ll take the risk. Glad you’re doing ok
     

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