Porn Addiction Relapse & Recognizing Triggers

Top 5 Causes of Addiction Relapse

There are a million reasons why someone relapses, but addiction specialists agree that avoiding triggers-the situations and emotions that make drugs attractive-is half the battle. According to Elizabeth Hartney, a leading addiction specialist, the top 5 reasons that those struggling with addiction relapse are:

1. Stress: Stress is one of the top causes of relapse. While one can’t avoid all forms of stress, making lifestyle, relationship, and priority changes can help the recovering addict to avoid situations that spark tension and other negative emotions associated with relapse.
2. People or Places Connected to the Addictive Behavior: Being around people and places associated with one’s addiction can often push a person to relapse. For example, going back to a favorite bar may tempt an individual to pick up the bottle again. It’s better to avoid these temptations, especially in the early phases of recovery.
3. Negative or Challenging Emotions: While negative emotions are a normal part of life, those struggling with addiction often cite frustration, anger, anxiety, and loneliness, as triggers for relapse. Therefore, usually as a part of therapy, it’s essential to develop effective ways of managing, these feelings.
4. Seeing or Sensing the Object of Your Addiction: In recovery, even a slight reminder of the object of the addiction, such as seeing a portrayal of addictive behavior on television, can lead to relapse. While it is impossible to avoid such reminders forever, developing skills for managing any urges or cravings can aid in preventing relapse.
5. Times of Celebration: Most situations that can trigger relapse are perceived as negative. However, sometimes positive situations such as times of celebration, where alcohol or drugs are present, are just as risky. Avoiding such events or bringing along a trusted friend can assist in preventing relapse.

While relapse may happen for some and not others, it’s important to remember that relapse does not mean failure. Recovering from addiction is a life-long process of hard work and dedication to one’s program and recovery path.

Recognizing Triggers

An easy way to look at triggers is to think of them as synonymous with temptation. While you may not always be able to control whether you experience a trigger or a tempting thought, you do have power over whether you succumb to them. In other words, just because you’re tempted to do something you know is bad for your sobriety doesn’t mean you’ll blindly follow through on the urge. Learning to trust your ability to say no and surrounding yourself with people and situations that support you help to build the “muscle” of sobriety.

Triggers can include people, places and things; in general, anything that you associate with substance abuse and/or the compulsive behavior can be a trigger. This can include seeing or hearing something on TV about drinking or gambling; the sound of ice cubes hitting a glass as a family member gets ready to pour a refreshing soda; the smell of pot at a public venue; being around too many people, or being alone; not taking your medication and many, many more sights, smells, sounds, tastes, words, music — the list of possible triggers can seem endless sometimes.

Many self-help support groups use the acronym “H.A.L.T.” to describe certain triggers. The letters stand for Hungry, Angry, Lonely or Tired; for many, these are common situations that make it more likely you’ll use or drink.

What serves as a trigger for you may be completely different for someone else. However, these are some common triggers, according to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

• The anniversary dates of losses or trauma
• Frightening news events
• Too much to do; feeling overwhelmed
• Family friction
• The end of a relationship
• Spending too much time alone
• Being judged, criticized, teased or put down
• Financial problems; getting a big bill
• Physical illness
• Sexual harassment
• Being yelled at
• Aggressive-sounding noises or exposure to anything that makes you feel uncomfortable
• Being around someone who has treated you badly
• Certain smells, tastes or noises that remind you of your drug of choice

Once you’ve learned to identify your triggers, you can take the proper steps to deal with them effectively. For some, it helps to keep a list of coping techniques that have worked in the past — such as going for a run, calling a close friend or your sponsor, or “urge surfing”(imagine yourself as a surfer who will ride the urge, staying on top of it until it crests, breaks and turns into less powerful, foamy surf) — along with how you felt after afterward. For example, remembering the good feeling of exhaustion and inner quiet after a long run, or the sense of pride and power you felt after riding out the urge. It’s also important to keep a list of people you can call if triggers become overwhelming. That human connection in the moment may be enough to give you the support and encouragement you need to get through without giving in to the trigger.

And remember to share what you’ve learned with others in self-help support groups or group therapy. There’s great collective wisdom in the rooms of recovery and many opportunities to provide and receive suggestions for excellent coping techniques for triggers.

Signs You’re About to Relapse

 

How do I know if I’m slipping? If you’re asking yourself this question, it could be that you already suspect your recovery might be in jeopardy. Or you might just be a bit cautious. Either way, knowing the signs of relapse can give you the time to take proactive steps to avoid slipping back into using.
Here are 10 common signs of an impending relapse; you don’t need to experience all of them to be at risk. For some, a single trigger can signal relapse is on the way. The key is learning how to recognize the warnings and reaching out for support at the first sign of trouble.

10 Warning Signs of Relapse

1. Negative thinking. You find yourself regarding daily life as bleak and the tasks you need to do as burdensome. You feel like you have a great weight on your shoulders. Increasing feelings of hopelessness or negativity should alert you that you could be in danger of relapsing.
2. Easily angered or annoyed. It’s as if your nerves are on hair-trigger sensitive. You become mad, even furious, often without warning and increasingly over small things. This isn’t like you, but you can’t seem to pull out of it. Getting into arguments with loved ones and family members more frequently is another clear sign that you could be on the verge of relapse.
3. Complacency or overconfidence. After being in recovery for a while, it starts to seem like you’ve got it all down. You know what to do and begin to feel like you can handle any situation. As a result, you may let some of your regular recovery to-do items slide, for example, attending 12-step meetings or practicing self-care habits like healthy eating or exercising. If you find yourself becoming complacent or overly confident about your sobriety, you may need to reassess and reinvest in your recovery program.
4. Increased stress. Without the comfortable crutch of alcohol, drugs or a problematic behavior to smooth over daily aggravations or unexpected situations, you may find your stress level is at the breaking point. Worries about finances, performance at work and how your recovery may be affecting your loved ones can all take a dramatic toll, wearing you down and increasing the likelihood of relapse.
5. Skipping meetings. Not everyone needs to attend self-help support group meetings as part of their recovery. But if you’ve been in recovery for a period of time and you have found meetings helpful, after a while it may begin to seem tedious and unnecessary to keep going. Maybe you feel that you don’t need the regularity of meetings to keep you on course and that you’re perfectly fine on your own. That may in fact be true, but it’s worth paying attention to this tendency, as some may find it’s a short distance from cutting back or skipping recovery meetings to sliding into relapse.
6. Putting yourself in risky situations. If you find that you’re going back to your old haunts and hanging out with friends you used to use with, that’s a precarious situation — and one likely full of old triggers. So guard against thoughts of revisiting the people, places and things you associate with using.
7. Denial. Questioning whether you ever really had a problem or denying to others that you have a problem are both signs that you could be in danger of relapse. If others notice and comment on a difference in you, yet you continue to insist that you’re on top of your recovery, it may be time to slow down and reflect before you slip back into addictive patterns.
8. Isolation. Holing up in the house, refusing to see friends and keeping your distance from family members are troublesome signs of relapse. When you’re in recovery, you need sober, supportive people in your life who reinforce this positive path you’re taking. If you feel depressed, disheartened or angry or alone, instead of sitting home and feeling miserable, get out and surround yourself with people (or at least one person) you trust and with whom you can share some time, even if you’re not ready to open up about how you’re feeling.
9. Loss of interest in family, friends and activities. When problems start to mount and you feel like everything’s about to come crashing down on you, you may notice in yourself a tendency to withdraw from people and activities you once enjoyed. To safeguard your hard-won recovery, it’s important to talk about what’s bothering you, either with a trusted loved one, your sponsor, your therapist or counselor or a member of the clergy.
10. Losing hope. When life looks completely black and you feel a sense of hopelessness and despair, this is a critical warning sign of impending relapse. Take such feelings seriously and get help right away.

 Source: Internet

 

Huge Hug

How to Stop Masturbation 2

Masturbation is defined as the manual stimulation of the male or female genitals, not by sexual intercourse, designed to produce an orgasm. Masturbation is totally forbidden in Shari'ah.

One of the most humiliating problems that the constant male masturbator suffers from when he attempts to have sexual relations is premature ejaculation or the failure to maintain an erection. When a person is masturbating, he tends to reach his orgasm as quickly as possible but in sexual intercourse, he normally has to attempt to control his excitement which can impose a great strain on those who indulge in self abuse over a lengthy period.

Those who achieve insufficient satisfaction from sexual intercourse and return to masturbation or never give it up suffer a great torment. Sex life is empty for them, which leads to many more problems, marital disputes, divorce, etc.

Therefore, people who continuously masturbate lose out all round. The physical pleasure becomes reduced to a natural act like urinating or excreting and at the back of their minds there is an awareness that they are missing out on the real pleasures of life. No adult can honestly claim to masturbate without a guilty feeling of complete uselessness. Masturbation is merely an exhaustive rather than constructive undertaking resulting in nothing but total loss. Once orgasm has been achieved, there is nothing left except a feeling of complete emptiness.

Steps in overcoming masturbation

Be assured that you can be cured of your difficulty. Many have been, both male and female. And you can also be cured if you determine that it must be so. If you want to give it up, you need will power and determination. Rasulullah [sallallaahu alayhi wasallam] said, 'The Niyyat of a believer is better than the act.'

This determination is the first step. That is where we begin. Firstly, you must decide that you will end this practice and when you make that decision, the problem will be greatly reduced at once. But it must be more than a hope or a wish more than knowing that it is good for you. You must realize that this is a great evil and you have to want to give it up.

It must be actually a decision. If you truly make up your mind that you will be cured, then you will have the strength to resist any tendencies which you may have and any temptations which may come to you. Ask Allah to help you and give you strength and steadfastness to succeed.

After you have made this decision then observe the following specific guidelines.

Guidelines

1. First step is to realize that you are violating Allah's command and you are bringing upon yourself a life long destruction and harm.

2. Never touch the intimate parts of your body unnecessarily.

3. Avoid being alone as much as possible. Find good company and stay in this good company. Remember, an idle mind is the devil's (Shaytaan) workshop.

4. If you are associated with other persons having this same problem, you must break off their friendship. Never associate with other people having the same weakness. Don't suppose that both of you will quit together, you never will. You must get away from people of that kind. Just to be in their presence will keep your problem foremost in your mind.

The problem must be taken out of your mind for that is where it really exists. Your mind must be on other and more wholesome things. It is mentioned in a Hadith that a person is upon the way of his friend. (Bukhari, Tirmizi)

5. When you bath, do so as quick as possible.

6. When in bed, if that is where you have your problem for the most part, dress yourself for the night so securely that you cannot easily touch your vital parts so that it would be difficult and time consuming for you to remove those clothes. By the time you started to remove protective clothing, you would have sufficiently controlled your thinking and the temptation would leave you.
If the temptation seems overpowering while you are in bed, engage in something useful. The purpose behind this suggestion is that you focus your mind on something else. You are the subject of your thoughts, so to speak.

7. Never look at pornographic material.

8. The attitude of the individual has an effect on how easy it is to overcome. It is essential that a firm commitment be made to control this habit. The person must first realize the evil of this act. Secondly he must understand the reason for this behavior.

After these 2 steps, the individual needs to become sensitive to the situations and conditions which may cause a person to commit this vile act. Hence a person must guard himself from anything, which may trigger a desire for this act. By following these steps, a person gains the ability to gain victory from this act, hence the power to control this filthy practice is developed. Remember you need also a bit of will-power.

ADVICES

1. MAKE Duaa daily; seek help from Allah, this will strengthen you against temptation.

2. Follow a program of vigorous daily exercises. The exercise reduces emotional tension and depression and is absolutely basic to the solution to this problem. Double your physical activity when you feel stress increasing.

3. When the temptation to masturbate is strong, turn your thoughts away from the selfish need to indulge.

4. Set goals of abstinence. Begin with a day, then a week, a month, a year and finally commit to never doing it again. Till you don't commit yourself, to never indulging yourself in this vile act, you'll always be open to temptation.

6. Begin to work daily on a self-improvement program. Strive to enhance your strengths and talents.

7. Be aware of situations that depress you or that cause you to feel lonely, bored, frustrated or discouraged, these emotional states can trigger the desire to masturbate as a way of escape. Plan in advance to counter these low periods through various activities, such as reading a Kitab, visiting a friend, doing something athletic, etc.

8. Start frequenting the Musjid. Make it a daily practice to recite part of the Quraan. Find out about authentic books which you can read from your local Aalim.

9. Make a pocket calendar for a month on a small card. Carry it with you. Color the day on which you masturbate black. The calendar becomes a strong visual reminder of self-control and should be looked at when you are tempted to add another black day. Keep your calendar up until you have at least three clear months.

10. A careful study will indicate you have had the problem at certain times and under certain conditions. Try and recall in detail what your particular times and conditions were. Now that you understand how it happens, plan to break the pattern through counter activities.

11. In the field of psychotherapy, there is a very effective technique called aversion therapy .When we associate or think of something very distasteful with something which has been pleasurable, but undesirable, the distasteful thought and feeling will begin to cancel out that which was pleasurable. If you associate something very distasteful with your loss of self control, it will help you to stop the act. For example, if you are tempted to masturbate, think of having to bathe in a tub of worms, and eat several of them as you do the act.

17. Do not let yourself return to any past habit or attitude patterns which were part of your problem. Shaytaan never gives up. Keep a positive mental attitude and always stay on guard. You can win this fight! The joy and strength you will feel when you do, will give your whole life a radiant and spiritual glow of satisfaction and fulfillment.

Gay

Gay

How do these guys look?



Cause:
gay has come to be used as an adjective, and as a noun, referring to the people, especially to men, and the practices and cultures associated with male homosexuality.



Erotic plasticity, a term coined by social psychologist Roy Baumeister, is the degree to which someone’s sex drive can be changed by cultural or social factors. Changes can occur in numerous ways, such as what is desired, the degree of desire and expression in desire. For instance, the number of lifetime sexual partners, types of sexual encounters, desired sexual activities and desired partners are likely to change based on cultural and societal norms. Someone has "high erotic plasticity" when their sex drives can be affected by situational, social and cultural influences, whereas someone with “low erotic plasticity” has a sex drive that is relatively rigid and insusceptible to change. Whilst high or low erotic plasticities have respective benefits, neither should be considered better than the other.

What causes homosexual desire? (Very Difficult Question?)

If homosexual impulses are not inherited, what kinds of influences do cause strong homosexual desires? No one answer is acceptable to all researchers in the field. Important factors, however, seem to fall into four categories. As with so many other odd sexual proclivities, males appear especially susceptible:

1. Homosexual experience:

• 2. Family abnormality, including the following:

• 3. Unusual sexual experience, particularly in early childhood:

  4. Cultural influences:

  http://www.biblebelievers.com/Cameron3.html 

Remedy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Very Simple

OR

OR Again the Sight

WHAT?

Simple

"Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that will make for greater purity for them"

Lowering the gaze

The question is: Does lowering the gaze have any benefits to the human health? Scientific research and studies proved that repeated desirous looking at the opposite sex, and the ensuing need to fulfill the suppressed and unfulfilled desires, lead to many problems as serious as productive system diseases, such as the cognition of prostate, the sexual inability, or total infertility.

 Some social studies have also proved that, in western societies, not lowering the gaze leads to depression and other psychological disorders. Such studies also indicate that moral disintegration and sexual  promiscuity in those societies are some of the results of the inexistence of a religious doctrine or ethical and moral restrictions that regulate such a noble sense and channel it into what conforms to the human physical and psychological health.

The sense of sight is absolutely the strongest of the senses as far as responding to sexual excitement is concerned. Using this sense unconsciously and indiscriminately in looking at what arouses the desires simply means that its owner is wasting it unknowingly, and consequently is wasting his/her own psychological balance in vain and in no return except for an illusion of enjoyment and pleasure. The best remedy for the desirous looking at the opposite sex is to remember that God is always there seeing us all the time, and is watching over our deeds. Remind yourself that God sees you but you can't see Him, so where on earth could you be able to commit  a sin without being caught? Where would such a place be? Also remind yourself of God's (reward) forgiveness and reward for those who lower their gaze in fear and obedience of Him.

And guard the modesty

Get married soon