endofmytether wrote:
@Dov, it seems like your words carry weight around here so I read your response a couple of times. I appreciate your warm words and caring advice.
Can you clarify a few things for me?
You
put yourself out of your misery by getting yourself to a good therapist as soon as possible
, this sounds like I definitely need a therapist.
You then
Opening up to a therapist about your feelings and thoughts will help you become ready for recovery, if you need it at all.
1) Does this mean that perhaps I dont need help and reading the SA white book will be enough? What is the point of the therapy if I dont need recovery?
2) Where do you see that I think too much? (You are probably right)
3) What kind of therapist would you advise, a sex addict therapist or a general one?
Thanks a lot for your time and response!
Ditto here to the guys who responded to you on #2.
Asking the question that "maybe then reading the White Book might be enough?" shows you still want to do this all by yourself in your own head. I understand 100%! Because I spent over 20 years there sweating and crying it out till I found something else that actually works. So, if you have the patience to read it, here is my best shot be"H at clearing up a few basic biggies - not being any smarter than you, but just becs I've been through the murk (in quintuplicate!) myself:
This may seem harsh and opinionated, but I suggest that the main reason most of us are where you are right now in this lust-mess, is this: our very best thinking all on our own. It is by far the main thing that got us here -
not our penises, hormones, the porn, the 'accursed internet monster'...none of 'em of course got up and attacked us. Our choices to use them (and use them we did!) was developed, complicated, and perpetuated by our private, secret, 'ingenious', sick
thinking.
The secrecy (we prefer to call it 'privacy') that you and we all painstakingly maintained, has made it as easy as possible for us to
continue doing the very same things: porning, masturbating, rolling in the terrible pain of the (private, secret) shame...all as we get lonelier and lonelier. It sucks. No wonder many of us us feel so liberated inside when we finally start posting here - even though most of us are just using fake names! Our terrible loneliness is
finally being broken! It's a mechayeh, isn't it?
But breaking the loneliness is of course
NOT the solution itself. It is just opening the bathroom door - and yet not walking out. "Hey! You still can't learn Torah and daven in there, buddy, yer still in the bathroom!" ...But the door
is at least
open! 'Walking out' is done by taking the actions of recovery, itself.
That - not more information - is what makes the difference. Even
Torah information will not save us. Now, how to walk out of that bathroom...hmmm...
The guys who wrote the SA White Book and AA's Big Book all discovered that
we cannot think our way into right living - we can only live our way into right thinking. There are real steps that are necessary for us to
just do. They are not done in the mind, but are actions. If we
do them, we get better. If we just think about them, we are not doing them, and nothing happens over the long term. Zero. Back in the bathroom.
I am not sober today because of my
intelligence. In fact, my intelligence is what
got me twisted into a sweet, frum, sincere yiddeleh with a raging porn and sex problem that just got worse and worse over the years! [Please refer to my post called The Nuclear Reset Button for more on that topic. Thank you. :) ]
The only reason I am sober is because I had
hurt enough to be machniyah myself to reality, accept it, and chose to take action accordingly. 'Leiv nishbar' does not mean 'being sad'. Rather, 'leiv nishbar' means
hachno'oh to the painful and often not-pretty, Truth. It is the best state to be in, as the s'forim say, and it is not sad, at all! In 12 step recovery we have a word for that state:
Surrender. It's beautiful. And for an addict, it works a whole lot better than pretending we will eventually win the romantic battle against the yetzer hora or the internet or against whatever we are wrestling with. As the Kotzker used to say, "When all you do is wrestle with muddy people, you get very, very dirty
even if you win."
And even though I have none of that pain any more at all, I am still a leiv nishbar (on most days). My hachno'oh allowed me to start setting my 'genius' aside 16 years ago and
actually take direction from other sick people like me
who were sober and to actually do the work. That is, to work the 12 steps with other real live sex drunks like me. And I am better for it, one day at a time, and so is every department of my life, b"H. And if I can let Hashem take care of me and be sober today, then anybody can do it.
That's why I am
here on GYE working my 12th step with you (sharing recovery with a new person) instead of on my knees desperately masturbating myself to a sweet naked image or with some hooker in my car - as so may here (and not yet here) are, right now.
****************
Now, I never said 'you are an addict,
endofmytether' (I do not even know your name, so how would I address you, anyhow?
![](https://guardyoureyes.com/components/com_kunena/template/default/images/emoticons/new/wink.png)
) and certainly not everybody needs the 12 step Programs to recover. But going to a therapist is one of the ways to find out if
you do and to get help, in general. I hope that you do that be"H. You are a sensitive and intelligent guy whose heart is certainly in the right place - you will eventually do what you must to save your marriage, sanity, good life, etc.
But I suggested to you in particular,
endofmytether guy, to go to a therapist because your history and writing tells me that you are not ripe for recovery right now. That is not an insult at all. I am allowed to be honest, right? I believe that if you went to a 12 step recovery meeting right now in person, it would be very brave...but I feel that you would quickly think your way right out of the room. 'These guys are too sick, too good, too old, too weird, too nice, too frum, too goyish, I think I figured it out and can quit this and do it on my own, or I am different than him or them, etc.' You are looking for ideas to enable you to fix
yourself. And that will not change because you wish it to be so, or agree with me. This is just the way you are, and the way you have been for many years already. It's not changing so fast, and certainly not on your own, chaver.
It doesn't work that way. As Chaza"l say: "ein chavush matir
atzmo mibeis ha'asurim." Relying completely on your own brain to guide your recovery is exactly putting the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse. It will not work. If it could, then you woild never have gotten this screwed up in the first place! Right?
So. Hatzlocha doing the right thing. Post here as much as you like, it is a very good thing for many of us to do. But my heart tells me clearly that you will find the menucha you seek with any 'information' you will get from GYE, reading the Torah, or lehavdil from reading the SA White Book. As many good points that you have, you are clearly still a mess, quite frankly. But you will find your menucha in taking real actions of change and growth with real people. Do it, for a change.
...get it? "do it - for a
change"...heh?? Cute, no?
- Dov