I think I'm losing my mind...

I think you first need to do something about your anxiety regarding relapses.

 

I personally would not consider it as a relapse if I were in your shoes.

 

No, it's not a relapse. It's a trigger.

A trigger is something that you find stimulating, just out in the wild. It can be something you see on the Internet, or in a movie, it could be lyrics in a song, seeing someone dressed to impress, or even a passing memory or thought. You don't have extensive control over these. You can choose to spend time in places where you are less likely to encounter triggers. If a nude statue is one for you right now, for instance, stay away from the museum. Many guys delete their Instagram app for this reason. But just seeing a trigger is not your fault and has zero bearing on your streak, which is just a game we play, and has little effect on its own on your recovery, which is happening in your brain.

What is under your control is if you choose to recall this image or idea or whatever. Even that doesn't really affect the game or your recovery directly, but I pretty much guarantee that if you entertain those thoughts you're setting yourself up for a reset.

A reset is where you intentionally look up some form of erotic content, what your brain perceives as Porn, and/or you Masturbate. Then you reset your day counter. And we throw O for Orgasm on the end of it, even though wet dreams are not cause for reset. Resetting your day counter is only part of the game, but while it is somewhat indicative of your progress, it's not the best tool for measuring your recovery and that's why some guys choose not to use the counter.

A relapse is where you decide you're going to abandon your NoFap journey, at least for a while, and you go back to your porn usage and your wanking. Usually a binge is involved. Maybe you do that for a month, maybe just a day, but I wouldn't call one or even two wanks a full relapse. That's a deeper threshold. You are doing your best to take care of yourself, and you deserve the credit. Don't go cursing yourself for something that was outside your control, and even when you do make mistakes, that's to be expected. Quitting porn is hard. It's a skill you develop, not something you just decide to do one day.

 

Define “relapse.”

 

Try and take the emotion out of it for a second. The emotion let you know something is wrong, that's good, it did it's job but now it's holding you captive so you can't move on to the next stage, which is to do something about it. To do something about it you have to figure out why you're doing the things you do, and the answer "because I'm a bad person" is too shallow, it's not sufficient to address the problem.

As I understand it, you saw a statue of a naked person, and wanted to know if that was a relapse. Is that accurate?

Seeing a naked person, in porn or in person or as a statue, is not a relapse. If you binged on porn after, that cold be considered a relapse. Bingeing is the relapse. The trigger is the thing that can prompt you to binge/relapse. The trigger is not a relapse.

 

@Meshuga @saddist_adult

This is what's happening with your brain when you watch porn or any erotic content.

Your brain is programed to get horny and give you an erection when you see a naked women because, when your brain sees this it will send out a signal to your penis that it's time to get the job done and reproduce. The brain isn't clever enough to distinguish a naked chick on a screen or in real life.

What happens when you watch porn is that, every time you change from one naked lady to another your brain will send out that signal over and over again, with every new women you see. Your brain will see them all as potential sex partners and want to reproduce with them. Which will completely fuck up your brain, because it will get into a mating mode and it's goal will be to get as many ejaculations as possible.

Before internet and magazines with porn, you would either have sex with your girlfriend, your wife or if you had none maybe you paid a prostitute. But it doesn't really matter who you had sex with because it only saw that women and you weren't able to swipe to see a new one in a second. Your brain would only send out one signal and not as of today when it can send out multiples, because there is a huge number of porngraphic content out there.

 

If you're having trouble defining your boundaries for what is acceptable and what isn't, do it like this.

If you touch yourself, reset.
If you don't touch yourself, don't reset.

If you notice you end up touching yourself after you watch or play certain content, stop consuming that content.

It is NOT the end of the world if you M. The goal is to stop being dependent on PMO, but it's a learning process. It's trial and error. One more wnak is not going to kill you, or undo all the progress you have made. You are learning to put together a resilient lifestyle, that's what you're working on, not abstaining for an arbitrary number of days in a row.

 

So you're good.

So next time, ask yourself if it matters if it was a sexual display. If it doesn't, don't go back to confirm. You're still ok though. Just don't M and you're good.

 

i think u

you seem to know very little about what this entails...

 

well said

 

Thank you, always nice to get some positive feedback on my thoughts on things!