WHY YOU RELAPSED?

For me it was relying on masturbating to help with sleep. I did it for a while without porn and then one night I needed something to finish so I could sleep. Then the next day I just PMO'ed without thinking and I was back in the porn cycle.

 

You relapse because you crave pleasure. Porn gives you huge amounts of pleasure by stimulating your senses with sexual content, which makes your brain release dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical that gets naturally released when you do something satisfying and gives you a sense of pleasure. We're wired to see sex as satisfying because in the past getting a mate wasn't easy and population was lower, hence it was important to reproduce. Obviously times have changed and now this function of our brain just makes us addicted to various stuff like porn and sugar.

You are more likely to relapse if you get into unpleasant situations (and want pleasure to escape from pain) or if you get bored, but eventually you're likely to relapse anyway as your brain's dopamine levels will get lower. The only way to not relapse again and again is to find a strong enough motivation to resist the temptations and something worthwhile to do. If you stick around long enough your brain will slowly unlearn the patterns of thinking that lead you back to porn. They call this "rewiring the brain" and you will get more control over your mind and less cravings. With that said, by abstaining from masturbation eventually natural horniness will come again. I haven't gotten to this phase yet, but I imagine it will be harder than what I am feeling now, but easier than the intense cravings after a relapse. A lot of self-control and determination is needed. Understanding how pointless porn (and sexual gratification in general) is helps.

Something that personally helped me cope with cravings was alcohol. I warn you this is not for everyone and for some people it actually makes cravings worse. With that said, personally I get just a little pleasure from alcohol, but it's not much so I am able to control it in small amounts without addiction or anything bad happening. So I made a promise to myself that I will rather get myself drunk to the point of being unable to masturbate than to relapse. When I got cravings in the morning I first reminded myself a lot about how pointless it is, how it will only lead to more misery, etc. This helped me not to get deep into fantasies, but it didn't stop cravings, so I drank a shot of vodka, which numbed my mind (less thinking in general) and since I already felt a bit pleasant it made the need to go to porn for pleasure weaker. I don't know if this will help you, but you can try it if you find that willpower alone isn't enough. You can also swap alcohol for anything else that gives you a bit of easy to get pleasure and that you can control, e.g. sweets. Be careful not to choose anything addictive, you don't wanna just swap an addiction for a different one.

Good luck.

 

My biggest triggers to relapse:

• Boredom
• Loneliness
• Stress
• Rejection or criticism
• Being sexually triggered
• Night time
• Being tired near the end of the work week
• Staying up too late
• Not doing recovery work in the morning to set my mind right
• Exercise

I sometimes use ice cream or sweets to help cope with lonely evenings.

 

Mine was the stress. I was too getting used to use porn as medium to handle stress but in fact the curse would only be deeper when you do it. It stopped my record (two weeks, which was a breakthrough for me). This experience reminds me of being alert for stress and emotion. Hence, I set up a new approach for myself: I put down everything, calm myself down, and then go clean up my room. Removing all unclean stuff (like removing garbage in mind), and put things back to the way they should be, would certainly helps to clean up your mind.

Hopefully it helps.

 

When you relapse, you are already preparing your body for it a few days before. It is important that you make a crisis plan for yourself. It is also important that you lower your gaze.

 

What do you mean by a crisis plan? Perhaps I should have one before I get to that point!!

 

Share an example of that crisis plan u mentioned. It would mean a lot to me... 2 days ago I was sleep deprived which made me feel uncomfortable the whole day and the cravings and urges were like at the top and I couldn't handle it, pmo seemed to be the only way I can get away from cravings other than just going to bed and sleep for an hour or two... If I had just slept without touching my phone, I would have been feeling much better... But, I will fight again

 

One of the crisis plan I can think of now is to activate and give full access to adult blockers, especially when I get into that phase of days where relapse is imminent

 

I recently relapsed after 8 days staying clean, twice. It was yesterday evening out of pure frustation and now this morning by reading a particular article on news. After reading this thread, it made me reflect a bit and I reached to one easy conclusion why I actuallt messed up. Lack of routines, yeah. Now I got a pretty soild morning routine so far, but unfourntantely it can't be only saving grace ofc. You'll need a foolproof plan for rest of day, like big routines for whole days. I haven't come up with new routines to do after morning, so I myself going to get help from this community. But yeah, lack of routines and encountering triggers on web is reasons enough to relapse and that's why I change not only my life, but my mindset as well.

 

A crisis plan is how to deal with your urges. It could be, for example, that you have prepared training clothes at the door every day. When you get an urge, you quickly put on your clothes and go out. You can talk to a friend about your problem and call this person.

 

I relapsed because of stress and boredom, having nothing to do and being on my phone

 

For me it is the lack of a vision of where I am trying to go with nofap.

 

I relapsed often because of the high amount of value that I placed on porn. I really felt that I was making this huge sacrifice by giving it up. Although I hated what porn did to me and others, I still glorified the acting out experience. Brainwashing led me to believe that porn felt good. That it relieved stress. That it filled a void.

For most of my recovery years, I held on to that stance. So for instance when I felt stressed, I called that a trigger. Trying to find better outlets for stress. But looking back, I have to admit that in order to use stress as a trigger, I have to believe that porn actually reduces stress. Believing that porn is a stress reliever is actually a greater concern than the amount of stress in my life. Stress is not something that I can always control. Life is unpredictable in that way. But my mindset doesn't have to accept that porn is beneficial. I have to admit that I was being deluded, brainwashed. When I act out, dopamine in my brain is released. But when it wears off, I'm left more stressed, anxious, more obsessing, craving, feeling more deprived. Porn doesn't fill a void. It creates one.

And here I was assigning all sorts of arbitrary high amounts of value to this drug of mine. When, in fact, porn has no value. It has no benefits. It's worth $0. By choosing to reset the high amount of value that I was placing on porn and replacing it with its true value, which is zero, choosing sobriety becomes easier.

 

Habit, habit and habit.

It's a deep set habit that has formed over (by this point, for me) decades. Some triggers are stronger than others, but almost everything leads to pmo as the coping mechanism. I try and stay busy to alleviate boredom, but business makes me tired and stressed and that leads to pmo as well. I try and improve my diet and daily routine, but having too much energy makes me restless which can also lead to pmo. I try and spend more time with my friends to avoid loneliness and being alone, but this can lead to rejection or fear of rejection, or stressful situations, leading to pmo. I am trying to avoid media and particularly sexual situations in films and real life etc. but the extra vigilance can lead to anxiety about sex, which I have learned to relieve using ... well, you get the picture.

Breaking habits is about forming new connections and associations, as well as new healthy (and healthy-ish) coping mechanisms. It is taking time and extraordinary effort, for the time being I am mostly relying on discipline which we don't have an endless reserve of, as you know. It's worth a reminder that no one thing is going to replace pmo in your life, but different things in different situations.

 

An example of a plan would be - calling your ap’s, getting together with friends, limiting alone time, practicing self care, journaling what you’re feeling. It should be a step by step plan of things you do that will help prevent relapse.
My husbands plan- goes something like this
Journal, call ap’s, get outside, ride bike, memorize Bible verses, read, work on hobby/ project, wake up wife and talk.
So his plan is modified depending on when he is struggling the most. If it’s in the middle of the night, he reads his Bible, memorize verses, journals, gets up and goes into living room ( he has never acted out in the living room) wakes me up as last resort. One of the most helpful thing for his recovery was recognizing his addiction cycle so he can address whatever is going on before he reaches a crisis.