Hi i am a 17 year old boy who wants to serve Hashem to the utmost best.  I need to cut off my addiction to porn and masturbation and it is just so hard.  I guess what I need is some chizuk from others out there.

Welcome!!!!! It is great to meet you. You are definitely coming to the right place. B"H you are young. It is so refreshing to see someone your age with such determination to want to fix themselves. Stick around and meet some of the guys. Read the books. Keep posting. Let me tell you that you will make progress. It may not come in one swift moment, but you'll get there eventually! Keep coming back here. We're all here for you!

Welcome aboard. Consider your self lucky that you chansed upon this place at the age of 17. How many of us wish we would have seen the light at the end of the tunnel at such a "young" age? BE'H you will find the tools/chizuk/advice/support to help you in your fight in no time. Sharpen your weapons - it will be a tough fight! But the reward is proportionate to the fight and you will not regret it.

Pretty soon someone will post the classic canned response that will give you some links to start pursuing. In the mean time, feel free to share a bit more about yourself and/or the nature of your struggle (or dont if you dont feel comfortable).

O

Dear Eved Hashem,

Here is the 'classic canned' welcome that O was talking about...

Welcome to our community! Once you've arrived, there's no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up, up, up!

Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here.

Make sure to install a strong filter. It will be almost impossible to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. See this page for one good filter option, along with instructions on how to install it best – and give away the password to our "filter Gabai"… See this page for another 20 (or so) filter ideas and information…

We get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You're worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and post away on this forum. You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can't be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week… This would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps – which is known to be the world's most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

You see, until now, people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, a beginner wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while on the other hand, someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences" putting in "filters" etc… So it was essential to develop a handbook which details all the techniques and tools to dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now with these handbooks, anyone can read through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook where the steps become progressively more powerful and "addiction-oriented".

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won't be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it's anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not…

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook

This Handbook details 18 suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And no matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude

The Attitude Handbook details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth…

May Hashem be with you!

Elazar ben Durdayah

EVED HASHEM!
just saw u come in
good to see you!
please post your brains out and share with us your struggle, wisdom, and words of despair, and we will all team together to KO the YH
when u feel comf., like my brothermother friend Durdaya said, we can begin to explore why are we doing this....in response to what.....
Po*n doesnt grow on trees you know
and what tools do u think you can explore to begin to recover, and to block this filthy shmutz out of your pure life?
learn here how to live healthier, happier, and to be a more effective person and friend

keep a kesh w/ all of us and please post again
tz90, gye janator

Welcome!

Try the newly revised GYE Handbook - it contains everything you need to get started.

Hatzlacha!

www.guardureyes.com/GUE/PDFs/eBooks/Guard%20Your%20Eyes%20Handbook%202011.pdf

Hi Eved!!!!
Welcome!!
I love newbies who I can relate to!! I started last year at 19. Be open here. Post away! We've all been here. I guarantee you, you ca't phase us with anything that has happened. I find that writing from the start and giving a little background helps for yourself and others to help you out and lend an ear. If that's not your cup o' tea yet, you can just write about what's happening in your life now. We'll still be here listening.

-Mac

welcome !

just keep looking forward - one step, one second at a time.

3 seconds is the goal!

once you master this - work up to 5 seconds!

you can do it!

dov.ii

@Smart/Dumb

The Y"H is so smart!
Its amazing how he trains us to ONLY here what we want to hear.

Since you admit to only hearing the last 5 minutes...perhaps you'd like to put it into context and hear the rest?

We were talking about taking OWNERSHIP for one's own life.
For example - rather than going into work, with that heavy feeling of dread, and despair - and the fear of being beaten down (yet again) by ones computer...

we were trying to see things from a different perspective... how would the boss enter the building?
with a sense of :

I OWN THIS BUILDING..

greets the secretary
walks proudly into the office..

the air, the space around him is different.
Confident.
Expansive.
Gracious

How about the tennis star - walks onto the court with an air of I OWN THIS COURT.
acknowledges the fans for coming out to watch the game

even graciously greets the opponent for coming out - knowing that the opportunity will challenge the star as best as possible!

imagine how different life would be at the office, if you decided to take OWNERSHIP of your life:

how confidently you would walk inside the building
how confidently you would greet your (male) secretary

how confidently, and graciously you would greet your opponent, your computer...
how thankful you'd be to Hashem for bringing you to this point...for giving you challenges...and the oportunities to rise up from them.


had nothing to do with being social.
everything to with taking OWNERSHIP of your life!


thanks for joining us.
come earlier next tuesday. no extra charge.

dov.ii

;D