Darn, lost my entire post.
Thanks for sharing this, OP. I have been having this issue the last month or so. The last 2 times I've detangled (in the shower, rinsing out conditioner, which has always worked for me), it looked like a hair massacre in my shower! My miracle, NG-melting conditioner, AlterEgo Energizing & Rebalancing, didn't work. The Knot Today a friend sent didn't quite do it. Finally, Keracare foam wrap, which usually detangles my hair instantly only worked a bit. I can't believe how much hair I lost and how bad it looks.
I never had this problem before -- whether using lye or no-lye, self-relaxing or professional, lazy or sticking to my routine. I think it's the combination of trying to stretch while also texlaxing. I used to texlax by cutting processing time, now I mix in conditioners and oils instead. I get pretty good results, especially in the back, the curl pattern is nice and it's consistent over about 10 months of using this method.
So I'm going to listen to my hair:
I'll relax when my hair wants it, every 6-8 weeks. It's thick and grows fast, especially now that the weather is warm.
I'm also going to process for another 2-5 minutes, to make sure I get my curls softened enough to last and not need correction. The hair at the crown, from ear to ear is the thickest and most matted, so it will get the most processing time. The top barely needs relaxing, so I'm already doing it last, for 5 minutes.
I thought it was interesting that the recovery technique above works with jherri juice. I had a curl in the early '80s and my hair grew like a weed with no breakage. That's even though I'm pretty sure they reprocessed the old hair every time. I noticed a few weeks back that the KeraCare foam wrap has glycerin ("juice") in it. I wonder if that's the lubricant they're referring to on the bottle? It feels like no other foam wrap, combs just glide through my hair with the Keracare foam wrap. I've been adding it to Chicoro's leave in spray, in place of glycerine, but I think I'm going to buy some jherri juice to mix into my leave in spray and maybe even to make the more disappointing foam wraps work better. My Keracare foam wrap is halfway gone (I've only wrapped sporadically since I bought it in December). I don't know when I'll be able to replace it.
Good luck, OP. Keep us posted!