Question About Relapses

I mean urges it all about self control and it is not easy to recover from porn when you could watch it anywhere so easily

 

I think it is because of mentality.
In my early teens I didn't know about nofap but I was trying to give up fapping. I even went about 5-6 months. I didn't look at girls. I didn't even want to fap but I adored girls body much. I thought men are naturally like that, I came so far by avoiding triggers (by not looking at girls).
And when the spring came, everything was ruined.
The reasan of my the last considerable streak's (it was 42days) was the same. After analysing so many relapses, I came to conclusion I will never adore a girl's body for no reason (If I love her and marry her then I do), this should be my choice.
I am not saying I relapsed for only one reason. There were many. But only after eliminating them (depression, social anxiety etc.) I noticed this one: just lusting.

 

What was your biggest streak?

 

Last time I relapsed, it was caused by stress. I fought it & the rationalization going through my mind at the time just hit me. And it was like fk it, I need this... afterwards it was like why the fk did that go through my mind! Now I deal with urges, simply by shaking my head and saying to myself, "your a fking addict" or "your a fking moron". Then I'll force myself, to read what ever book is closest to me, which could be anything from Your brain on P, to calvin & hobbs.

The first few days, and every so often I'll pick up ybop, and its a general reminder how fked it can get if I or anyone were to jump back down the rabbit hole. As Gary Wilson, said in his book, in the beginning it was "vanilla" years of overconsumption, warps your morality, and genres that you once found disgusting or whichever descriptor you want to use, are now in your playlist / tabs. There will come a time that your tastes will go down a particular path, I vowed to myself a long time ago, that if I ever found myself looking at a particular genre (I won't say it, but it's the type of genre that you go to prison for), I'll put a bullet though my head!

 

They stop working on themselves, this is a lifelong journey, if you go to the gym consistently for 6 months and all of a sudden quit your progress will reverse untill eventually you're back at square one. Everything in life operates with a use it or lose it principle.

There is another reason however and it has to do with changing life situations, perhaps untill that point they lived a relatively low stress lifestyle but all of a sudden things became very chaotic in their life and they weren't able to keep in tune with themselves in their struggle to solve life's challenges when things went from 0 to a 100. If they reach a point where they can control themselves under high stress circumstances they'll be easily able to maintain a streak during more peaceful times.

 

Historically it’s been substantial and chronic stress. I’ve had a 3 month clean streak (from p) before, but wound up relapsing sometime after an awful breakup.

 

I can speak from some experience. I went about 6 months without a single orgasm, but it wasn't a perfect recovery. Everytime I had a craving for porn (or novelty) I would edge. I just wanted to see the updates on my go-to porn website.

This took place every 5th to 6th days in recovery, roughly speaking. I was lying to myself; I thought I was recovering and having a new life when in actuality I wasn't recovering at all. I was bombarding my brain with pleasure chemicals through edging and reversing my recovery. I was just not cumming.

I relapsed when I failed to keep it at the edge one day and cummed. So yeah, everyone who boasts of 1 year recovery and then relapsed might not have fully abstained from pornography.

Secondly, I was deep into social media. All these models and celebs I saw on Instagram and Telegram really gave fuel to my edging habit in the first place.

So the advice I can give is to schedule your social media usage using app blockers utmost to an hour daily, or forsake it completely.

 

Exactly!

Complacency or just forgetting where one came from.

Or something major happening, and PMO is still in the memory as an efficient way to block out emotions.

I had the latter a week ago, lost my job and broke down emotionally.

I knew PMO would 'solve it' for that day, but luckily I was very conscious of how it would actually not solve it, just kick my emotions down the road not allowing them to be processed.

But I can imagine if I had this situation a few years ago I'd go way off track. And something more stressful would be more problematic too.

But I also imagine after a certain point, and with enough wins and losses, you get to build up a resilience and find other healthier ways to process it all.

 

i have relapsed 2 times after more than one year streak. It's hard to say the real reason. It's like a demon inside that takes control of your mind. The question is can you win the battle forever? there are just some days you are weaker...