Hi, everyone on the Guardyoureyes forum. I’m a new member to the forums, but I am a daily reader of the Chizuk emails. I fell on erev Yom Kippur, ironically after tashlich and kapparot, but I went to the mikvah and felt spiritually strong during Yom Kippur. After about 9 days I just fell during Sukkot and decided to take the giant leap and join the forums (my Yom Kippur resolution).

Originally, I joined the Chizuk e-mails because they offered me inspiration and a sense of anonymity without being involved with the forum. I tried to track my personal 90-day wall of honor chart and after several fall in a short time span, I ripped the chart up. Later, I tired again, this time I started with Ben Ish Chai’s yartzeit. I thought that in his merit, I will try to be clean for the full 90 days. I fell almost every third day, yet, learned 3 things from these failures by way of counting days on the 90 day chart. 1) I needed to stay clean for my own merit and not for any tzadik. 2) I needed to take small steps. Since I fell about 3 days give or take, I needed to make small oaths/pledges to make 3 days (by going one day/or urge at a time. 3) I needed to mark off the completed day at the end of the day before retiring for bed, rather than an hour or so before.

Currently, I am trying to implement Dov’s posting (I think it was before Yom Kippur or Rosh Hashana) which was the need to change how I live. I found out that in reality, I am not addicted (or I think I’m not) to viewing p-rn. I use p-rn as a stimulus to act out but in reality before I even watch p-rn, I start off watching non-tznius videos on a popular video site and then I get tric

Dear GiantLeap,

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!

Maybe we should start with small steps, instead of giant leaps? 

Many people come onto the forum thinking they are not addicted. But as Rabbi Twerski once said, "if the young man isn't addicted, why doesn't he just stop?"

It doesn't matter what the behavior is, masturbation, viewing improper images, or whatever. The common denominator to all these behaviors is an addiction to the "rush of lust". You will learn more about this in the handbooks (see links below).

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!

Loads of luck. Writing about yourself might be hard but it is well worth it. It will do  you wonders.

Welcome Tzadik,

You've come to a great place may hashem guide you in the right path

Welcome!
You're going to be so happy that you joined the forum!
You're a part of the family now!
Keep those posts coming!
We're all in this together and we're so happy you've taken that "giant leap" to join us!

Thanks everyone for replying to my post and welcoming me to the community. I have been a daily reader of the chizuk email (the shmirat eynaim and daily chizuk) and downloaded the handbooks which are great! I also joined the 90 days online chart; today is day 3 of my journey. GUE, Im taking this journey day by day with a commitment to reach 3 day intervals. Shortly, I will be posting some insights and replies to other posters.

Bye for now  ;D

Welcome.  Thanks for jumping into the forum.

Giant,

welcome to the forum!
looking forward to hear more from you.

Giant Leap posted this on the Open Journal thread, but Im not sure how many will notice it there. GL, hope you dont mind me copying it here too. Its too important an issue to gt lost in the shuffle!

I have a question and I would like to have some imput from anyone. My question is, does trying to be shmirat eynaim/habrit somehow correlate with anger or getting angry often? Does anyone experience this? Well, today I got in an argument with my mother over something insignificant and I don't really know how it really began. I know I'm at fault. I just feel so edgy and easily angered when trying to be holy in this respect.  It's killing me. I studied some Chassidus and basically I learned that my soul element is made up of the "fire" characteristic meaning easily angered and temper that isn't calmed quickly. So you can see if my supposed correlation is true, it's a volatile mix for me. I know humility and crushing my ego is what I need to work on but it's so hard and at the time it's causing pain to me and everyone around me. Insignificant arguments that are blown out of proportion. I don't know anymore, I guess I need a shrink!

Forgive me if this post doesn't make sense or has too many errors, I'm writing on my phone because I left somewhere. Upadate: Since then, I made up with my mother. But still any comments are greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Giant Leap

My guess is that you dont need a shrink, and you definitely do NOT need to crush your ego. You need to BUILD UP your ego!
Very very few addicts (or anyone in the world nowadays) have real ego problems. Most suffer from low self esteem which manifests itself as pretend gaava. Because we are so insecure internally, we hide that fact from the world and ourselves by acting the exact opposite. Check out statistics, and you will learn that a huge majority of bullies have no self esteem.

My advice is to learn sefarim which will help you learn who you really are - a tzelem Elokim for whom Hashem created the world. And once you can really appreciate the gadlos within yourself, you will start seeing other people in a different light too, and your interpersonal relationships will begin to improve.

Because you cant do "v'ahavta lereicha kamocha" until you get the "Kamocha" right!

7Up wrote on 19 Oct 2009 08:59:


i thought we have low self esteem BECAUSE we're gayvadik?

7Up wrote on 19 Oct 2009 08:59:


For example Imi Morati?

habib613 wrote on 19 Oct 2009 09:09:



I think we have low self esteem because we dont appreciate our gadlus. Moshe Rabeinu was the biggest anav in history davka because he appreciated who he was. No one who speaks to Hakadosh Baruch Hu face to face can possibly consider themselves garbage. He knew his level, knew he was higher than the rest of the Am. Davka because of this knowledge he was able to lead. Davka because of this he was able to stand up against Dasan and Aviram, Korach etc without wavering that "maybe they're right and I should hand it over to them"

The anava comes in for comparitive purposes. Compared to the others in the nation, Moshe knew his place was to take charge and lead. Thats when he looked to the left. BUt when he looked to his right, he saw Hashem, and had no problem realizing how very very small he still was compared to Him!

I think Rav Twerski writes a lot on self esteem - or lack of. Worth reading

sturggle wrote on 19 Oct 2009 09:15:


Never heard of that one before!

7Up wrote on 19 Oct 2009 09:20:


So...,
I think you're joking around,
and since I am interested to know,
if you have specific sefarim in mind,
what they might be,
I am going to spell this one out...

You, 7Up, Mom, Imi Morati/Morasi,
mentioned "sefarim",
and I, Sturggle, am wondering
if you may be so kind as to give an example
of which sefarim you are referring to.
I think others might be interested to hear as well.

Thank you,

Sturggle