When I was stuck in my addiction days, I consumed a lot of NoFap content.
I eventually got to a place where I thought that focusing on porn, or focusing on not watching porn was resulting in me relapsing more. I started to shift my focus to other things. Exercise, seeing friends, work etc And the truth is I did manage to reduce my relapses.
But, I would always eventually go back to porn. The fact that I was continuing to relapse meant I still had a problem. And the problem was big. I could never fully trust myself. The inability to whole-heartedly trust myself led to lower self-esteem and had a very deep impact on how I showed up in every area of my life. For example, I only chose to leave my 9-5 job and go all in on running this business once I'd rewired my brain correctly and felt 100% confident that I'd never return to porn.
To get here though I had to start by facing my own reality. And I had to realise that continuing to relapse, even less frequently, was still a huge problem.
Nowadays, my standard for myself and my understanding of addiction has entirely shifted.
2 months into 2025, I haven't chosen to engage in compulsivity once. But this is no achievement, this is to be expected now I've rewired my brain. It is choosing to engage, even once, that leads to people wanting to do it again and again. Relapsing creates the desire.
I appreciate this sounds scary and there will be a lot of resistance to this, but the good news is I know every single person reading this can rewire and change their brain correctly.
To stay stopped for good, it is essential to understand the reality of what relapsing does. It is not an isolated incident, it is signing up to be back in your addiction indefinitely.