Glossary
The words used on this site, defined plainly. Community terms are marked as such; none of them is a diagnosis.
- Accountability partner
- One person who knows, whom you tell the truth to on a schedule. The single most protective arrangement on the path.
- Chaser effect
- The reported surge in urges in the day or two after a slip. A community term, not a clinical one.
- Cue
- Whatever starts the loop: a feeling, a time, a place, a screen. Rarely sexual; usually a state you want to leave.
- DNS filter
- A filter that works at the address-lookup layer, so it covers every app and browser on a device or network at once.
- Edging
- Deliberately prolonging arousal without finishing. In the context of stopping, it keeps the loop running and usually ends the same way.
- Flatline
- A stretch of low mood and low desire that some people report weeks into stopping. Community term; not a diagnosis.
- Novelty escalation
- The drift toward newer, more extreme or more numerous material as familiar material stops producing the same effect.
- Ritual
- The sequence of small moves between the urge and the act: the door, the tab, the search. Where the decision is really made.
- Slip versus relapse
- A slip is one event. A relapse is the decision, usually made in shame afterwards, to stop trying. Keeping them apart is a skill.
- Urge surfing
- Staying with an urge, attending to it in the body and breathing, until it peaks and passes on its own.