One thing that porn addicts are more-than familiar with is this concept of hope and despair.

The hope that comes from the initial excitement of starting their porn recovery process.

And the complete despair that comes from breaking down a week later, when their urge to watch porn becomes unbearable and they decide to relapse.

A cycle which seems to repeat time and time again.

What I want to do in this article is explain the dynamics of this cycle.

As well as explain how you can put it to an end.

If you think about the key thing which defines these types of cycles, it’s really a combination of expectation and emotion.

Expectation being our understanding that, “This is the correct thing to do moving forward, and of course this time will be different”.

Emotion being that push which convinces us that what we’re experiencing must be true.

After all, positive emotions never lie, right?

And when you combine those two factors together, what you get is a cocktail of mania so strong, that nothing we do or say can convince us otherwise.

We’re excited. We’re motivated.

In part, because we’re feeling so low that we couldn’t possibly think of anything better than to actually do something to change.

So although nothing has actually changed in that moment, we feel as if something’s changed.

We feel as if we're already there.

Even though it’s just our emotions making us feel that way.

And even though nothing has actually changed in terms of meaningful actions to actually develop self-control and healthy coping mechanisms.

Then what happens is that these emotions eventually fade as the hype dies away.

We find ourselves vulnerable since those very emotions which we’ve relied on are now telling us that we really want to watch porn.

And then we relapse and start and whole charade again.

Perhaps the most common example of this is when we use something like fear to try and motivate us.

We fear the consequences of that feeling of failure if we were to relapse. We fear not achieving our life ambitions due to the effects of porn on our life.

Fear which inevitably becomes craving, which becomes fear, which becomes craving, and I’m sure you get the drift.

So what’s the alternative?

The alternative is to develop proper self-control over our mind.

The kind of self-control that allows us to dictate what we think, how we feel, as well as detach ourselves from these aspects so we don’t take them personally.

The kind of self-control you may believe is impossible.

After all, you may be under the impression that what you’ve been doing this whole time has been ‘self-control’.

When in actual fact, chasing our emotions in this fashion could not be further from actual self-control itself.

Self-control is not reliant on how we feel in any way.

So anytime we pursue any actions or behaviours based on emotion, we essentially train our minds to embrace this instability.

And over time, we eventually create this habitual understanding that our emotions are truly representative of what we’re capable of.

As opposed to this idea that our mind is in control of our emotions.

Hopefully this article helps you better understand exactly what happens in our minds when we pursue this cycle of emotion.

In terms of moving forward, I highly recommend checking out our range of comprehensive NeverFap Practices which are designed to help you regain control over your mind.