Ilyas is twenty three. It happens late, usually after one in the morning, usually on a night when he has been awake with nothing to do.

The hour afterwards is the same every time. He sits on the edge of the bed. He makes tawbah, and it does not feel like it lands, so he makes it again. He looks up whether his fast counts, or whether his salah counts, and reads three answers, and none of them settle it.

By about three he has arrived somewhere fixed. It is not that he did a bad thing. It is that he is a fraud, and everybody who thinks well of him is wrong.

The following evening he is tired, low, and alone at midnight, carrying that. The fastest thing he knows for making that particular feeling stop is the thing that produced it.

Nothing in that description is about willpower. Look at where the loop actually closes.