Whether you’ve slipped or you’re in a full-on relapse, it can be challenging to figure out how to get back on track. Getting yourself back on track can seem hopeless, enabling you to just give up entirely on your recovery. It can also encourage old coping mechanisms like lying, keeping secrets, and rationalizing things to yourself.
The days and weeks after a relapse are extremely delicate and critical. Right after you slip up and make a mistake, it’s easy to fall back into old patterns. You can even feel like you’re completely starting over, which can make all that work you did seem pointless. However, if you can be honest with yourself, reframe the situation, and gain understanding of your behavior, you can build a plan that will make it even more likely that you’ll have future behavioral successes. This will then create openings to rebuild your relationships and move towards the life that you want to live.
Get Your Recovery Back on Track Quickly
Some people will say that what you do right after you slip up in some kind of a way is the most critical step in getting back on track. What this means is if you mess up, you need to immediately go back to the plan and put it into action. When you don’t, you’re much more likely to justify a behavior that will turn into old, problematic behavior patterns. For example, you could just justify a little online flirting or looking at a dating app to yourself. However, if this violates boundaries in your relationship, it’s likely a slippery slope to increased problematic behavior.
Don’t underestimate the possibility of making a mistake.
Create a plan to includes ideas of how to get on track quickly after there is a problem. You’re going to be resistant because that’s just what we do when we fall into old patterns. Plan for your resistance. Find people who will push you while also being supportive.
Emotional Reactions to a Sex Addiction Relapse
With a mistake naturally comes some negative emotions. Shame, frustration, sadness, fear are likely emotions that you’ll experience after you relapse. However, these emotions can also tank your ongoing recovery. If you fight to keep negative emotions at an arm’s distance away, the distress levels don’t go away but rather often intensify. In fact, struggling with tolerating these kinds of emotions is highly correlated with problematic behaviors. Unfortunately, we can’t live a life without them. In fact, these emotions actually can be gifts. Therefore, although it’s not fun to work through these emotions, you can walk away from them wiser and better able to handle similar situations in the future.
Therefore, you need to manage negative feelings with 2 mentalities. First, you need to help yourself cope with what has occurred by sharing how you feel and getting support. This will help you cope with the feelings themselves. On the other end, you need to learn to identify and trust negative feelings. This doesn’t make them easy to deal with. However, it does give you the perspective that the feelings and emotions themselves aren’t your enemies.
If you get stuck, consider finding a sex addiction therapist.
If you find this part of your relapse prevention plan to be a struggle, therapy can help you navigate these feelings.
Remember Your Past Recovery Successes
After relapsing, it’s easy to forget about past successes. You can get very all-or-nothing about this. I see this in our sex addiction therapy with clients, but also I can just see it in my day-to-day life. I really think this is human nature in a way. Think about it. How many of us have tried to change how we eat or exercise, and then just give this up entirely after a weekend of old patterns? All of the sudden, you can believe that the efforts you made were pointless and you just resort to what you did before you tried to make a change.
These loops that we can get into can create a lot of frustration, which can overshadow what you have learned. They can also make it so you ignore the knowledge that you have.
It’s important to watch out for “all-or-nothing” thinking when coping with a relapse. For example, it’s easy to label the situation a complete failure. However, if you were trying before, this isn’t a complete failure. Keeping this in mind will open up room for you to keep yourself from getting reactive and making poor decisions.
Retrace your steps to find where you felt most successful.Then, do more of that! This sounds simple, but it’s not easy because that emotional pull will try to sabotage you.
Immediately after a relapse, the most critical thing to review is your relapse prevention plan. Something in the plan did not work when you relapsed. However, you don’t want to necessarily discard the entire relapse prevention plan, because parts of it may have worked as well. Therefore, you need to view the time after a relapse as an information-gathering period. Use this time to reassess the effectiveness of your relapse prevention strategies and change them as needed.
Use Positive Self-Talk
It’s natural to start shaming yourself after you relapse. The self-talk you can use can become really self-depreciating, which will facilitate more relapses. Catch negative self-talk and replace it with positive self-talk. This will go a long way in keeping you on track and preventing ongoing problems.
Embrace Honesty and Build/Enhance Your Team
Although succeeding can improve your self-esteem, it also comes with expectations. Therefore, it’s challenging when we fail because we have to let go of the successful image we have of ourselves and that we want other people to have of us as well. True connections come from allowing people who are close to you to know about your failures. Letting people in this way can lead to your personal growth and the growth of your relationships.
Being honest is another thing that sounds simple, it’s not always easy. Yet in the long run, honesty is what builds and rebuilds trust.
Remember, you’ll need people to help you on your journey. I call this building your team. Your team may include professionals like therapists, physicians and psychiatrists. It also can be support groups. Of course, you’ll want some of it to be family or friends. These people can be honest with you, while reassuring you that they have your back and will support you during the struggles.
Revising Your Relapse Prevention Plan
Your plan will need to be updated. That’s ok. This will be an ongoing process. Identifying what parts of your plan let you down and the parts that worked will be critical moving forward. You can then get feedback and work on the parts that failed.
Watch out for self-criticism. It’s ok to critique your behaviors, but be cautious about treating yourself poorly. Just because you fail does not mean that you are a failure. You still have had small victories that you have earned, and nothing can take those away. These successes will mean more in the long run when you give yourself the best chances of success.
Set up realistic, new goals and interventions.There will be ongoing trial and error along your way. However, you want to track what’s working, how you know it’s working, and what you can do to counter problems. Think of the interventions you need to help you ensure that you’re holding to your commitments.
Moving Forward
Relapsing from an addiction that seemed like it was under control can be frustrating and scary. If you use the time right after a relapse to reflect, you can amend your relapse prevention strategies. This will help you move forward with a plan that is less likely to run into problems in the future. Through this process, you can rebuild honest relationships with your friends and family, build on your self-esteem, and learn how to work through your emotions.
By reframing your relapse as a learning opportunity and embracing the necessary changes, you can get back on track and continue your journey towards recovery. Remember, every setback is a chance to gather valuable insights and strengthen your resolve for the future.
If you’re looking for a therapist to help with sex or porn addiction, contact us now to see how we can help.