How to Prevent Relapse After a Streak

Obviously, reducing the number of relapses you have is a good goal to have in mind. However, I don't think that should be your primary goal. Instead of focusing on how long your streak has gone on, I think it's better to look within and to focus on what causes you to relapse in the first place.

If you do relapse, don't give up. You're not back to square one, only your counter is. You still have all the experience you gained during your previous streak. Take a deep breath, and analyze the situation carefully. What caused you to relapse? What was your mood like during the day? Was there anything in particular that you think triggered you into relapsing? Was the trigger something you can avoid in the future? If so, what do you need to do to avoid it? If not, what can you do to prepare yourself for that sort of trigger?

It sounds like you anticipate going back home to your family being a trigger for relapse. That's great that you have that awareness and understanding of yourself. Using that knowledge, you can prepare yourself mentally when the time comes for you to go back home for holiday. If you are mindful of that trigger, you will be in a better position to prevent relapse. If you do relapse when you go back home, just remember that you're not a failure for relapsing. It just means that you may need to do some more reflection. Like I said before: your counter may go back to zero when you relapse, but you are still a better man than you were when you first started recovery.

 

https://www.nofap.com/forum/index.php?threads/seven-days-now-what.183685/#post-1566190

 

There's a difference between a relapse and a reset.

• A relapse is where you fall back into an old pattern of behavior. If you were masturbating to orgasm every single day, you quit doing that, and then you went back to doing it every single day, then that would be a relapse. You slipped back into the pattern of masturbating every day.
• A reset is where you break your commitment to your goals in a single moment of weakness. It's not a pattern. Let's say you were trying to quit drinking coffee. You cut it out cold-turkey for two months straight and then have a moment of weakness where a friend offers you a cup at lunch, and you accept. It breaks your commitment to quitting coffee, but you don't continue to drink it after that. You didn't relapse into your old coffee-every-day habit, you just had a moment where you drank coffee.

Sounds like what you went through was a reset and not a relapse. You didn't slip back into your old PMO pattern, you just had a moment of weakness. It's okay. You can keep going. The important thing for now is that you stay sober and don't continue to masturbate. You made a mistake, but it's just an isolated mistake, and it's not indicative of a bigger pattern unless you allow it to become that way.

I understand why you feel that way, man. I just hope you're able to realize that you haven't lost everything. Resets suck, and it feels really shitty when you break a commitment to yourself. However, not all is lost. You have so much experience under your belt from all those days of sobriety. They don't magically disappear just because you masturbated once. Try to focus on the present. In the present moment, you have your sobriety again, and you can just continue to stay clean from here.

Take the fact that you feel depressed and feel like you lost everything as a sign that this journey is really important to you, and let that be a motivating factor for you going forward. Whatever you do, don't medicate your depressing feelings with more masturbation. That's how a reset turns into a relapse.

You got this, dude!

 

You have to get to the place where you make your mind up that you are done with it and close the door forever. PMO is a curse and is not worth it.