Do you know what 17 days means!!!?
It's hard to remember the last time I was even half of that. You've broken the yetzer once you surely do it again. hatzlacha

Yossi.L. wrote on 16 Sep 2011 20:00:

wow thanks never though about it quite that way thanks for the support

yedid nefesh thanks for being there but i also need to be there for you. so keep in trying and its never to late to fix our problems hatzlocha

Tryhard -

You are an inspiration, for caring so much about this!  Just think about how proud HaKadosh Baruch Hu is of you for wanting so badly to improve yourself!!!

Keep going, and remember - each moment that you are clean is a MAJOR success!

WTS

this is true but the pulling is not going so easy my whole look on p&m needs to change some for me to be completely change so keep the ideas coming

I think your view on P&M will be more likely to change only once you've got a good amount of time clean. What you've got to do is realize that you are giving yourself fake meds and ignoring the world around you. You're living a fake reality.
What I've been doing is telling myself that doing P&M is gonna make me miserable b/c it's gonna distract me from all my priorities, it's gonna distract me from my relationships with friends and family, it's gonna make my mind go wild and cause all sorts of mental havoc.
I'm not willing to do it even once b/c then there will be nothing stopping me from doing it again. In fact, my desires will be stronger the more I do it and the habit will be more ingrained with every time I give in.

kiddush hashem
what do you do when it just pops into your head. i have to say most of the time i dont think it out

I have two general fences: don't look, don't think.
Generally, I don't go through my whole cheshbon of why I don't want to do it. It's lengthy and mentally demanding. When the thoughts come, I just push them out. I tell myself "I know that I don't want to do this. I've thought this out many many times and know that it will be damaging for me. The fact that I want to do it now is gonna pass and doesn't reflect what I really want". Then I distract myself. If that's not enough, then I have to do an actual cheshbon.
Usually I come up with something like: "I'm feeling like I want to do P&M. This is b/c I am feeling restless and bored. But that's just my body urging me to do it. I don't want to do it. So let's calm down. I'll do something relaxing to get rid of my body's urge."
When your realize that it's not you who wants to do it, rather it's an urge that's coming from your dissatisfaction in your current situation, you can deal with it by treating your problem in the correct way. Acknowledge that you have an issue and solve it, instead of burying the issue inside and making yourself feel good with P&M.
You haven't told me about your specific issues. Are you an obsessive thinker? How's life in general? What do you do specifically when you act out?
I have OCD and I have to deal with obsessive thinking and anxiety which compound this issue manyfold. I have experience in mind control to deal with this.

why cant you just say NO NO NO, no expalations & no arguments just point blank shooting!

Shmeichel wrote on 21 Sep 2011 11:15:


That works very well sometimes. Other times I get a response "YES YES YES".
The problem is that my mind says "what do you mean no? do you have an explanation or are you just saying no for no reason?"
As I write this, I see the absurdity of the argument. Of course I have all the explanations in the world... Because my mind is so wild and obsessive, I might have a harder time than most people in this area. My mind is very very active. Very analytical, constantly calculating, judging, interpreting.
It's a huge advantage and a huge disadvantage. As I said, I'm working on training it and reigning it in after so many years of Hefker...

i know what you mean, i can relate to that sort of struggles, nobody has it easy
i was once in a superstore i overheard one of the staff talking to his freind telling him that he thinks that he has the thoughest job in store, his freind answerd him that he was just gona say that on himself, and now he can see that everybody thinks that his experience is the worst, i learnt a lesson for life

It's not so much about fighting the battle when it's already in progress; it's about preempting the battle with early preparation so that there won't be a war at all.....you have to set gedarim.