What a cool down is for

If one is happening right now

Nothing on this page needs reading in the next ten minutes. The numbers at the foot are free, they run at any hour, they are not run by us, and you do not need a plan before you call one.

If Fold'em is on the phone, SOS is the screen for this. It opens from anywhere in the app and asks nothing of you: six calming tools, everybody in your circle whose number is on this phone, and the helpline for your country. Nothing on it can change your block, end your term or open an app, which is deliberate, because a crisis screen that could unlock something would be the worst possible place to put a control. It closes when you press I am calm, and nothing else on it closes it.

There is a home screen widget whose whole face is one tap to that screen. It reads no data at all, so it can never show a day count, a status or anybody's name, and it offers a face without the word on it, because what sits on your home screen is a decision about who else sees it.

What a wait is actually for

An urge passes. That is not encouragement, it is the working assumption the whole design rests on, and it is the only reason a delay is worth anything: if the wanting were constant, a wait would only postpone the same decision. Because it is an episode, a wait moves one decision out of the worst hour and into an ordinary one.

So the friction here is deliberately in the leaving rather than in the using. Nothing asks you to argue with a screen at midnight. What happens instead is that the fast route stops existing, and the slow one is available whenever you want it.

The waits, and what each one counts from

You ask inside the app, and the request goes to the server rather than to a switch on the phone. Nothing about the block changes while any of this runs.

With a keyholder who approves: at least 72 hours, counted from the moment they said yes. Approving is only ever done in person, by standing together while you scan a code carried on their Wallet pass. There is no approve button on any page, in any email or on the pass.

With a keyholder who keeps the lock: nothing changes, you are told with no reason attached, and you can ask again after 48 hours.

With a keyholder who says nothing: seven days, then fourteen. If a request sits undecided for seven days the server approves it on its own and records it as though you had no keyholder, which starts a wait of fourteen days rather than 72 hours. So an early exit never depends on somebody answering. It just takes longer when nobody does.

Without a keyholder: fourteen days, counted from the moment the request is written down. The wait is the whole of the friction, it runs on the server, and every app and site you sealed stays sealed for its entire length.

One more, for completeness rather than as a suggestion: if the subscription lapses, a window of 72 hours starts and the server then flips the release. It is the fastest way out the product has, and a keyholder is sent a letter carrying the date. The exit request in full.

Nothing opens by itself

At the end of any of those waits, the server marks a release as available and stops there. Your phone keeps every shield applied and shows you that the release exists. The apps open when you take it, through a control that confirms first, and taking it is what ends the term.

That last step is deliberate, and it is the part people are most surprised by. A clock that opened your apps at the end of a countdown would put the moment back inside somebody else's schedule; a release you take puts it back in yours. The release is held for thirty days, and if you never take it your protection simply carries on.

Why somebody else is in it at all

Because a wait you can cancel is not a wait. The server holds the deadline rather than the phone, so its own clock is not an input, and a keyholder is what makes the fast route cost a conversation instead of a thumb. What they hold is narrow: one answer, when it is asked, and no way to start your term, change its length, shorten a wait or cancel one.

What this page does not claim

Nothing here reduces an urge, and none of it is treatment. Waiting is not a technique for feeling better and this is not advice about how to. It is a mechanism that makes one decision slower, and the organisations at the foot of this page do the other work. If the urges are getting more frequent rather than less, they are the call worth making, not this page.