How much damage does a temporary relapse do to your progress?

One relapse has kept me in misery and misery. The only way you’ll benefit is to not relapse to porn.

 

Basically if you have protracted withdrawals and are relapsing you are basically kindling. Kindling causes excitotoxicity which kills of neurons, which may or not be permanent.

For me recovery has been gradually slow, much like benzo addicts on benzo buddies. I believe that BDNF (google it) increasing activities and foods/supplements helps neurogenesis (creation of new neurons) which might explain why withdrawal is long winded.

To answer your question I started watching porn innocently at 13 and my habit got out of hand by 15-19 three times a day everyday.

During that time I had funny symptoms popping up that I couldn’t account for but I now know was withdrawal. Inevitably I fapped myself into a darker hole but on the rare occasion when I was doing streaks, even binging. I had streaks of 120+ 210+ days and still felt like shit after relapsing.

My first streak however in 2013 of only 77 days, I felt more alive than ever and I had a rock hard erection at that time of relapse something I haven’t had in a while. So my point being relapsing to porn will take you back to square one in my case. Orgasm with a real women I don’t think does any damage your rewiring to real sexual cues and how nature intended things to be.

Edit: it’s bloody scary how overlooked the damage of a relapse can be in recovery if you have withdrawals. It literally scared me to never relapse again.

 

I kindly disagree. A relapse can be detrimental if you can't fight the chaser effect that comes along with it. That's why relapses are so dangerous, it isn't nescessarily the relapse itself, but the extreme urge to then view more pornography. You didn't lose all your progress. Think about it, if you used to PMO 2-3 x per day, but now you're consistently building streaks of 3-4 days and avoiding the binge watching porn, that is HUGE. That is progress. Use you relapses as a learning experience and figure out why it happened. Two ways I see it: "I went ten days, relapsed and lost all my progress... might as well binge!" OR: "I relapsed , I had a setback, but don't do more damage by watching more porngraphy. You did not lose all your progress" Which one do you want to tell yourself?

 

I’m going by my own experience and many others on this board who ended up with PAWS. You can look for yourself. One relapse if you have severe enough withdrawals will keep you in a vicious cycle of symptoms.

It’s like if a benzo addict after years of recovery was to take a benzo they will experience withdrawals straight off the back it’s no different, very much the same for an alcoholic.

I honestly went back to square one in my mind and even worse than the previous relapses in time. Look into kindling.

 

1 time relapse - almost nothing changes
2 times - 1 week of progress lost
week ( 7 days) - 1 month of progress lost
month - progress lost, you can start again

 

Relapses are bad, since they put you in a sour mood for that day and generally damage the progress.
But, you should never give up on this journey.

 

https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.p...drawal-and-my-symptoms-can-you-relate.164085/

For anyone who doubts that a relapse won’t set you back neurochemically have a look at that thread, there’s loads more like this but this is just an example.

 

I’m new here also. I slipped today and looked at some porn briefly and wanted to out myself and also to say I do believe I am making progress because instead of beating myself up about it or caving in and saying “o well I might as well pmo” I closed the screen and came here directly after only a few minutes. So maybe I’m retraining my response and using my shame as a motivator to get me here. I’m so lucky to have found this community. This is truly a problem and it’s so great to not feel so alone.

 

Good on you for resisting that temptation!
Our brain wants us to cave in to that unhealthy dose of dopamine due to how much we've been exposed to porn.
You're a good man, keep it up

 

If you are having a streak going on and relapse, you will feel bad for sure, but beside that, its not the fact that you first relapsed that damage the progress, its the feeling of shames, dissapointment and sadness that follows each relapses that often leads to more relapses in the same week..

So my advice, try to avoid the 1 relapse as much as possible, its the perfect thing to do.

 

According to Alexander, a single slip is only a reset, not a relapse.

A slip is oops, you masturbated once only, and nothing else.

A relapse is using porn, or excessive masturbation, or repeated masturbation.

A single reset within a 90-day hard reboot (according to this) won't set you back much in your brain, but of course your counter goes all the way back to zero.

But a relapse not only takes your counter back to zero, but also significantly undoes some or all of your brain's progress.

Conclusion:

• Delete all of your porn stash including the backups.
• If you can't trust yourself online, install porn blockers. Some ISPs allow you to block adult sites.
• Do your level best to avoid a reset. If you use this knowledge as an excuse to reset once, you'll be tempted to do it again… which becomes a relapse.

In other words:

• No porn!
• No masturbation!
• If on hard mode, no sex or orgasm!

 

BTW, this has nothing to do with neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

 

They're really not so bad and people here way over blow it's effect on the healing process. But the question is, can you do it only once or will it make you want to do it again and again for days and weeks?

Just find a bunch of different ways to judge your progress and make sure you're trending in a positive direction.

 

Common sense tells me a small lapse is not a big deal in isolation. As great as the counter tool is (and it is!) the more negative side is that it makes the recovery process very one dimensional
I've just done 25 days on no P&M which I have reset due to some brief browsing of non-pornographic but 'arousing' content (kidding myself to say it doesn't count but on the flip side it's hardly the same as looking at hours of disgusting fetish porn, to say otherwise is dangerously erroneous).

So despite achieving the following;
* a record streak
* Avoiding all pornographic websites
* Stronger ability to turn down or stop triggering activity
* Still 25 days of no O
....I still feel like I've failed so might as well O before starting all over again, which seems overly harsh and counterproductive.

Shame there's no recognised way of 'banking' that progress - but determined to build on this and not keep repeating history

 

Is this your own model or taken from elsewhere? It would be great to have a universal version of this sort of thing - I've seen similar suggestions elsewhere. Otherwise the counter feeds an 'all or nothing' thought process. Which is brilliant until the (almost inevitable) setback