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10 Deathtraps of Relapsing - How to overcome them

Discussion in 'Rebooting - Porn Addiction Recovery' started by Spiderwaffle, Apr 24, 2019.

  1. Spiderwaffle

    Spiderwaffle Fapstronaut

    I posted it into my journal but I think it can also help some people here in this section. This is a collection of over one year of experience of NoFap with many relapses and successes!

    A few weeks ago I made a list of "10 deathtraps of relapsing" and wanted to make a tally list which trap I step into most of the time. I wasn't really consistent with that one but I thought I'll share this.
    I fell into all of these traps by myself - multiple times - for each one - so I speak out of MY personal experience and also, about MY personal experience of overcoming it. Much of this can be used for many addictions and behaviors. Feel free to share.

    TRAP 1: Depression (after 0-2 days)
    What I mean:
    Right after you relapse and you're feeling like you're in heaven, you will fall. You will feel empty and full of regret. Maybe you now try to rebalance yourself by just giving you that dopamine overdosage again. Which is dumb, but in this stage you are not thinking clear. With every depression-caused relapse you will fall harder and deeper. That's also how I think drug addiction basically works. You "need" porn to get out of depression.
    How to get over it: Sort your thoughts and build up a motivated and positive mindset as soon as possible. Positivity is the key. Relapsing is part of the journey, it's okay that it happened, maybe it's even good because now you learned something. Still you can regret it, but replace the regretting with a spirit of doing better now. Know that you're down because you watched porn, know it will go away and get better in the next days, and know that doing it again won't make anything better and just make things even worse. Facts.

    TRAP 2: Dumping small streaks (after 0-5 days)
    What I mean:
    As you read this journey, you may notice I work with day counting. If it wouldn't make any sense, I wouldn't do it, it's a great way of motivating yourself and keeping track on how many days you made it through while also giving you a good reason to not just throw away your streak when having 24 days like me. However, it comes with a big flaw, not only if you count days, but especially then: When NOT having a big streak, you give it less worth. This is maybe my number one reason of relapsing. "you're horny, f* these 3 days, you will have them back in three days" - yeah. And then just think the same way again. And that counts up. I once thought like that for over two months over and over. Small streak after small streak. In this time, I could have nearly made 70 days.
    How to get over it: Learn to see small streaks as success too. Three days may not seem like a big number, but every day you made without porn is worth the same, no matter if it's Day 1 or Day 100. Don't get too obsessed with numbers. Use them for motivation. For me personally, I get obsessed with numbers very quickly. You may even see it here... I have to work on that heavily.

    TRAP 3: Following Triggers (can happen anytime)
    What I mean:
    This one is pretty obvious and it's not bound to how long your reboot already did take. An alcoholic can be clean for one year, see a liquor bottle and getting so triggered that he immediately goes for it. However, with a longer streak you get stronger and stronger against triggers.
    How to get over it: On your first days, avoid social media. Avoid internet. If you see a trigger, don't use it as P-Sub that may lead you to wanting more because your monkey brain is strong. But we can't avoid anything forever. We live in a heavily sexualized world where avoiding any form of trigger is impossible. I recommend learning how to deal with triggers and watching what happens with you when you see one. Know that it can lead to wanting more and let it pass. For me this is working pretty good. I love to get aroused, just need to have control over myself and get back on track. A sex scene in a normal movie can turn me on. But in the end I let the sex scene be what it is, enjoy that I saw it and try to feel control over myself by watching what happens with me. Yes, I'm talking about Game of Thrones. Always be careful.

    TRAP 4: Habits (after 1-7 days, start of rebooting journey)
    What I mean:
    You jerk off everyday at 8 PM. You regret it, you're super motivated to do better tomorrow. You're super motivated in the morning, you're super motivated at 7 PM. And then you relapse at 8 PM. Because it's a habit. Your body built it up as a routine. This is especially hard for people that are new to NoFap. As you reboot and get bigger and bigger streaks, you break the habit more and more.
    How to get over it: The story described above was literally me at the beginning of last year february/march where I first heard of negative effects of porn. I realised that it was a habit and put all my concentration to not masturbate at the time I normally did it. I just went to bed without it then. After 2 nights where I had trouble with sleeping, I was able to get my first streaks of 5 to 7 days and finally 18 right before I started discovering "NoFap" as it is this website. So the key is to know what your habits are. As of now, I don't have the "habit" anymore at all. When urges come, they come to no particular time, day or environment.

    TRAP 5: Addiction (after 3-10 days)
    What I mean:
    This is literally your brain giving you urges by itself. Maybe it gives you downs with heavy urges just for the sake of causing you to relapse. Maybe it uses it's porn images it remembered and let's it flash in front of your eyes to make you weak and feel aroused. Let's say you just heard about NoFap for the first time and you don't have a particular "problem" with porn, like, you do it sometimes, but you don't really know if you have an "addiction"... if you can do 10 days without feeling any psychological urges, then you may be good. For the most males with access to free porn however, it's another case.
    How to get over it: Focus and self-discipline. When you feel bad things without any particular reasons and a heavy urge to fap, this is the moment where you have to remember yourself what your goal is, why you are doing that and that THESE moments are the ones that will shape your journey most. A happy day where you had barely any downs is cool, sure, but it isn't that much of a progress in terms of your addiction. However, being strong enough while the addiction kicks in most is the thing that will leave you stronger. Keep that in mind.

    TRAP 6: Emotions & Impulsivity (after 7-20 days)
    What I mean:
    Basically, emotions and impulsivity are a benefit as they also mean energy, drive and motivation. After your body doesn't get fed up with porn anymore, it has to get you more active to get sex instead of porn. But with this change there also come emotions and as a porn-addicted human that always dealt with emotions by suppressing it with PMO, you now got to learn to deal with them through confrontation. Loneliness, stronger love sickness, jealousy, sadness and - that's a big one on NoFap - anger. The good thing however is, that you WILL learn how to deal with them and this will improve you as a human.
    How to get over it: You got to know one thing and let it flow through your head again and again: Emotions are just emotions. Emotions get triggered by things which were threatening our lives back when surviving was harder than today and lead us to do things that prevented us from dying. Loneliness made you looking for company so that you don't have to fight and live alone while anger made you a better fighter and let you show dominance to get your will. In our modern society this isn't such a big deal anymore like it was back then so whenever you feel something you don't want to feel, acknowledge that it's an emotion, accept that it's here, know that it will go and remember that whatever you feel - it's not as bad as you think.

    TRAP 7: Justification (can happen anytime)
    What I mean:
    "One clip won't let me watch more, I can control it." "Watching pictures won't lead me to watch porn" "Relapsing once won't set back my 30 days completely" "I will now do it and then do it with self-control like once any two weeks or so" "P without M" "It's not as bad as this whole community says anyway" "Well f* it, it's normal" "Everyone does it" "My addiction is already broken so I can do it now" "I don't want to get ass cancer"
    How to get over it: Know some of the justifications like those above and know why they're bullshit before they can occur to you in first place. Relapsing once won't set you back to 0, but it will lower your self-discipline and make you relapse more. And getting back on track will take MORE energy than not giving in now. DEFINITELY. Everyone does it, sure, but didn't you say you want a better life like all the ones out there? If your addiction would be broken you wouldn't want to do it now. Your monkey brain controls you to want more if you just glimpse at one picture or porn. Don't do justifications. They're stupid. But you will learn that on yourself.

    TRAP 8: The notorious Flatline (after 14-28 days)
    What I mean:
    Everything went great but suddenly you wake up with foggy brain, low energy and super bad mood and wonder why... you lasted over two weeks and everything is okay and you should be fine but you feel like you just did an porn binging marathon just yesterday. The flatline! Mine usually only last 1-2 days and not all day long, but I've read that they come in dimensions like... weeks. Thank god that's not for me! During a flatline you're tempted to get into a downward spiral of thinking and just blowing your journey off until the relapse hits you like a wakeup call.
    How to get over it: Your brain rewires. While it does that, it has to kill off much in your brain, I'm not a neurologist but in this process you will feel drained. But it's a good sign, because flatlines mean progress. I even would say, while you're on your flatline, you have the biggest potential to change yourself and your mindset by still fighting on regardless of not having the energy! It's the time where your brain is very vulnerable to changes and new impulses. Keep your discipline during a flatline and you will train your discipline hugely.

    TRAP 9: Questioning NoFap (after 10 days+, but also can happen anytime)
    What I mean:
    There WILL be a point during your journey where you lose your focus on your NoFap regarding goals and then just thinking "this can't be worth the torture, it has no real point at all, I can also get the benefits without nofap, nofap is just a tool". Ok, but why throw away your tool? Sure, there are self-confident people out there who watch porn all the day but you may not be. You once found out nofap works for you and now you just do another type of justification. For me, it was a video called "Why NoFap doesn't work" (or something like that) that literally only said "there are no scientific studies that say porn is bad and NoFap is good so enjoy your porn". Even if that was true, I know better from trying. I know that right now, where I sustained over 3 weeks without porn, I feel great and some kind of inner peace, positivity and love. I don't care if that can't be proven by scientists. At this point where I watched the video however, I literally GRABBED for that mindset, told myself "yeah the video is right, why you do this shit" and used it as a justification to relapse. That was two months ago.
    How to get over it: Questioning things is always good, but also question things that question things. You got your own brain. When you know that NoFap works for you, why you then should click on a video telling you why NoFap doesn't work when you know better other than needing a justification to not feel bad about it? If there's someone telling you it can't be proven that a funny looking berry is poisonous, although you've seen a friend eating it and dying - would you then eat it? No scientist watched, you know? Science is great but keep your focus and don't be dumb. Learn from my mistake.

    TRAP 10: Physical urges (15+ days)
    What I mean:
    This one will never go away. We're humans with the urge for sex. We will feel horny. We can do sexual transmutation but we will still be horny. Even if we masturbate however, we will still be horny. We're little monkeys that want to f*, masturbate and go for as many women as we can. We will have urges, no matter what. What I talk about here is the heavy sex-focused mindset that will grow automatically as soon as you reach a bigger number of days. For me it's around 15-20 days where things go hardcore. Right now I feel like just jumping on a women and doing her instantly if there was any in front of me.
    How to get over it: Be aware that once you got over it, the next urge will come soon. Sometimes the urge can feel so devastating that it hurts your balls. Often it's boredom. While not doing anything, your body can concentrate all it's energy to your horniness. So my tip here is, do something different, do sports, meditate, read, do SOMETHING and it will go away, I promise. Also, socializing is a good way. You can't do it in public anyway and for me I can say that I get very extroverted after a longer streak. Sports, reading and meeting people are my ways of distracting myself. But if you just sit around, of course - then your urge has the best oppurtinity to grow into your mind and let you relapse.

    Feel free to add your thoughts about this :D
     
  2. benvy

    benvy Fapstronaut

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    It's hard to imagine people going 20+ days. I've gone that long without m but looking at p is kind of a habit that I can't break
     
    recon117 and Spiderwaffle like this.
  3. Uncomfortably Numb

    Uncomfortably Numb Fapstronaut

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    A sound evaluation of the pitfalls... thanks for your views on how to combat them.
    Your ideas will work for some people but not all
     
    Spiderwaffle likes this.
  4. Infinite spirit

    Infinite spirit Fapstronaut

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    Great post. This should be pinned.
     
    Spiderwaffle likes this.
  5. Spiderwaffle

    Spiderwaffle Fapstronaut

    It's not easy, 3rd time I did 20+ in almost a year... while M can be even healthy, P is the dangerous thing - do you have any regularities, like times or situations you relapse or does it just come randomly?

    You're right, we all have different situations so nothing can work for everyone but maybe some people can take things out of this or see themselves in the same patterns :)

    Thank you!
     
  6. RealMe

    RealMe Fapstronaut

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    Thanks mate! Great insight.
     
    Spiderwaffle likes this.
  7. Reborn_

    Reborn_ Fapstronaut

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    Thank you for posting this!
    Trap 7 (Justification) is what always gets me.
     
    Spiderwaffle likes this.
  8. benvy

    benvy Fapstronaut

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    Spiderwaffle likes this.
  9. recon117

    recon117 Fapstronaut
    NoFap Defender

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    It's definitely possible! If I can do it then you can do it aswell!! You just have to know how.

    Focus on breaking P first. Cause P is the real threat
     
    Spiderwaffle likes this.
  10. Brown Sugar

    Brown Sugar Fapstronaut

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    Great analysis regarding the PMO addiction. The way you described every aspect of it, thoroughly researched and written in a relatable manner.
    Thanks!
     
    Spiderwaffle likes this.

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