Dear members, I'm yoish.you guys probably don't remember me,as I posted only once in the past. My story basically goes like this: I'm 21 years old and learning in yeshiva. In the past few years I've had many psychological disorders such as anxiety,depression, and bipolar disorder. Amidst all the he'll that I was going through at that time, I also discovered masturbation I used it very compulselively to relieve and numb all the pain I had from my psycho-emotional problems there were many days where the only thing I had to look forward to was my next cigarette and my next masturbation fantasty. I became a sex machine. B"h I've almost completly recovered from my psychological and emotional problems. I've reached the milestone    of returning tovyeshiva starting last year and progressing this year as I type. However, I just can't get rid of my cumpolsive fantasies and masturbation which has been with me for so long. I just can't seem to break this distructive habit. It's kind of like someone who was I'll from surgery and needed painkillers for a while. And even after he's fully recovered from his illness, he can't get rid of his dependecy on painkillers and therefore ends up using them in an unhealthy. Well I've recovered from my main illnesses but I just can't get rid of my masturbation and fantasy my compulsive behavir is destroying my yeshiva life and driving me into depression and into chaotic states of mind. I really need your help to get me out of this pit and back to normal life. Thank you for reading my post. All the best, yoishy

yoishy,

welcome! thank you for posting and telling us about yourself!
i can relate to what you're saying and i know that others here can as well.
thanks for joining the ranks! from here, we move forward together.
take a look around the forum, see what pieces of advice people give and people receive.
i'm sure plenty will be coming your way soon enough.

kol tuv,

struggle

Yoish wrote on 08 Sep 2009 06:41:


Wow.  If you've overcome all that, I think you'll overcome this one too.

Dear Yoish!

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...

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.

Make sure to read them, they contain a wealth of information on beating this addiction! And I'd love to hear your feedback on them...

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!

Wecome, Yoish!

You've definitely come to the right place!  Three quick tips you may find helpful:

1.) Just concentrate on one day at a time.  If necessary, concentrate on one hour at a time.

2.) Don't try to push away improper thoughts.  It rarely works.  Instead, try to fill your mind with good thoughts.

3.) Getting to 90 days is an investment for a lifetime.  Do whatever it takes to get there.  GYE has countless tips to help you make it.

And, thank you for helping me reach post # 500!

HEILIGEH YOISHY

I AM NO DR.

I AM A TRUTH TALKER

SOME TIMES TUFF AS NAILS

USUALLY NOT

WELCOME ABOARD

YOU "WILL BE HELPED"

IF "YOU" WANT TO BE

ITS NOT EASY BUT... BUT.. NOT IMPOSSIBLE

OK TELL ME TZADDIK

CAN YOU GO A HALF HOUR

YES!!

YOU CAN ! I KNEW IT GOOD

DONT FALL INTO THE TRAP OF

(HERE IS A NEW BARDICHRV PHRASE)

THE TRAP OF BIG PICTURE-ISM

A FEW MONTHS AGO I WAS KEEPING A CHART OF 15 MINUTES

HELLO TZADDIK 15 MINUTES

YES ITS TRUE

GO!

GET BACK TO ME IN AHALF HOUR!!

CLEAN!!!

YOU ARE A TZADDIK

bardichev

Yoish -

Welcome aboard -

You are 50% recovered once you sign up here for the right reasons.

The other 50% is tough but you can do it.

I was sick for 3 years before I found this place without ever going more than 3 weeks(and that was once) without falling...

Now I am on day 28 checking in here every day and actually looking forward to it.

Please post away and let the members here take you straight to the Kisei HaKovod

ninety

HEY HEIIGEH 90DAYS

K

U

T

G

AND HARD

W

b

Dear Yoish

This is a wonderful place.

You will see a tremendous ahavas yisroel here.

you will see how so many here will rejoice,be extremely happy as you try to pull yourself out of the struggles you face and will celebrate every small step you take towards leading a healthy and productive life.

alot of the things you describe are more normal than you would think,even the chaotic states of mind that you mentioned.never panick.no matter how severe it sometimes feels like,and I mean both the fantasies themselves and the depression related to it, it can eventually go away and it will go away.

it may be hard to believe this but many who have never believed that they could recover did recover-and you will too

Take time and Read the forum

like struggle said there is alot of good advice all over the place here and certainly alot of it will benefit you.

Hatzlacha & Beracha

Hey yaall, yoish here again. Thanks for all the responses. You guys all talk about one day at a time. I've heard this many times from many people. I've tried it quite a few times as well. But say, I went through the  chaotic battle of not masturbating one night before bed and just going to sleep clean, the next day I become even more desperate for sex or porn and I usually end up loosing myself in middle of the day and just binging on sexual fantasy or porn and all that stuff. So I'm very often telling myself to just do my nightly masturbation in order to prevent the sexual chaos the next day. I kinda think of it as "thereputic or preventative medicine" so what do I do about this kind of stuff? Great night comrades, yoish

Yoish, we all thought that once. All of us addicts thought that by giving in, we were just "preventing" worse things and "keeping the Yetzer Hara happy"... HA. That is the biggest lie. Chazal say, "There is a small limb in a man... the more you feed it, the more you need it". Get to 90 days clean and beat this addiction before it kills you first. It's either you or him, but if you keep on giving in, you'll never keep him happy and you'll never get enough.

As the saying goes: "Once is too much, 1000 times is never enough".

Read this story for some inspiration.

Be well!