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It should be noted that though work therapy sometimes is very useful, the deluded person can become very lazy. While in delusion he could easily pray and do prostrations for hours, recovery from this state can be accompanied by strong relaxation of will, melancholy and laziness to the prayer and physical work. Archimandrite Ambrose (Yurasov) tells a story about a deluded woman who arbitrary increased her payer rule to 1000 or more prostrations every day because of conceit. She was concealing it from her spiritual father. When the spiritual father revealed the delusion through her hidden anger and petulance, she no longer could execute even her initial smaller rule of prayer and prostrations, she could not fast at all and even could not read morning and evening prayers.<ref>{{Ru icon}}[http://lib.eparhia-saratov.ru/books/01a/amvrosii/amvrosii1/156.html Archimandrite Ambrose (Yurasov). Questions about Faith and Salvation. 156. How do people fall in delusion.]</ref>
Regarding the opposite form of prelest, which is associated not with the excessive zeal but with the lack of it, the delusion of carelessness, Schema-archimandrite Abraham (Reidman) notes<ref name="reidm1"/> that everyone should remember that a man can change and everyone, due to carelessness and self-justification, can quickly and unnoticeably change to their opposite. To prevent that, we need to gain a skill of self-restraint, in the first place, for the Jesus prayer. St. Anthohy Anthony the Great names<ref>{{Ru icon}}[http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/?Dobrotoljubie/dobrotoljubie_tom_1=5_5 Sayings of St. Anthony and about him. 5. How to increase the zeal?]</ref> several means of increasing the zeal to virtues and fighting with carelessness: inner means include rememberance remembrance of death (i.e. living every day as the last day), thinking about the time after death, fear of God; external and more advanced means include: feeling of sweetness of living with God, love to God, love to do good and according to God. Elder Ephraim of Philotheou writes in a similar way that "you can fight with carelessness using constant prayer, with mouth and mind, with the rememberance remembrance about possibility of sudden death, about the tortures of hell, the Heaven etc. We need to enforce ourselves to our spiritual duties and especially to silence and prayer".<ref>{{Ru icon}}[http://lib.eparhia-saratov.ru/books/06e/efrem_svatogor/advice/35.html Archimandrite Ephraim of the Holy Mountain. Fatherly CouncelsCounsels. Ch. 8. On carelessness, fear, cowardice, betrayal and apostasy.]</ref>
Nevertheless, even with Divine and human help, as Saint [[Ambrose of Optina]] notes, "It is easier to turn every sinner to repentance than to bring a deluded person to reason".<ref name="ambr"/>
