B"H had a great week!

Going well b"H!

DeterminedtoWin wrote on 23 Aug 2021 20:19:

Great.

Keep up your great work.

Had a fall a couple days ago. B"H I was able to get back up, fix a few things with my filter, and keep going strong. I have had a good couple days since. Be"H it should just continue!

Still going strong b"H!! 

B"H I'm having a solid aseres yemai teshuva! Be"H it should only continue!

Thank you again to GYE and everyone here for this amazing resource! This has really been a game changer for me in the last bunch of years.

Gmar Chasima Toiva to you all!

Chasdei Hashem I am still feeling strong and in the drivers seat!!

I wanted to share with the oilam a post that I responded to someone else's thread with, as I am curious to hear people's thoughts about this. Also, this may be helpful for others. Please let me know what you think.


I can totally relate to pretty much everything you put down. I too have had times where I felt like I'm doing everything and it still keeps coming up, no matter how much I filter I always find something else, that my life is quite manageable even with the "sprinkles" thrown in, and that the more I focus on it by immersing myself in GYE and keeping tabs with my "buddies" it only makes it works and definitely makes me feel worse. I also experimented with taking a break from the whole GYE thing and seeing if I could just live my life.

One thing that has been a game changer for me was taking a whole different approach. I came to terms with all that. I am no longer aiming for clean streaks (although they do feel great when I have them) as that has been causing me a lot of anxiety and pressure, and shame when I would eventually mess up. I now am focused on kind of what you were describing, which is living my life as I would like to be living it. I gave in to the idea that no matter how much I filter there will always be more to filter so when I do have a slump and find something new, once I rally again, I pick up the phone and ask them to add it to my blacklist. I don't tell myself anymore that this will be it or that this has to be it, rather that this is all I can do right now and when I find more stuff later, I can always add that too.

(I really tried filtering as much I as could though, I only have internet at work, no smart phone, heavy filtering, and I can’t even search with any search engine and can only type in direct links. I still need internet for my work, and I know may people need the search engine for what they do. I am forfeiting a lot even work wise with this move but b”H I am able to pull it off so I feel it is worth it. I gave in to the fact that if I do have any access to any “sprinkles” it is going to happened sooner or later. They can be pretty pathetic sometimes with such strong filtering but the taiva monster will take whatever it can get.)

This approach has really helped me overall. I assume that I will fall again in the future, but I am not worrying about it right now. I have whatever I can blocked for now and will take it as it comes. I use GYE when I feel that it will be helpful for me and leave it when I feel that it won’t be. I let go of the pressure of having to have amazing streaks of being clean, keeping up with the postings, and keeping in touch with the GYE community all the time.

Yes, in the beginning GYE was a life changer for me as it gave me the sense that I am normal, a hero, and that I can get out of this. I never would have been able to get to where I am today without GYE. Now that I have gotten all that, I am free to live my life as I chose. I am no longer shakua in all this and no longer thinking and worrying about it all the time. As a whole, I am a very different person who has whole different relationship with this taiva (this has also been a major game changer with my wife, chasdei Hashem!) and am no longer as scared by it. Usually, I can stay in the driver’s seat and let the niggles of taiva come and go as they inevitably do without making a whole thing out of it. When I do have a rough patch I can get back up, whether on my own or with the help of the GYE resources, and continue living my life as best as I can in the way I truly want to be living it.

I not sure if this makes any sense and this all may sound counter intuitive. It kind of goes against a lot of the GYE philosophy and I am aware that I may be wrong here. I for sure don’t recommend this approach  for everyone but I have found this to make a world of difference for me. I would love to hear feedback from you or from anybody else here and am happy to clarify anything I wrote that is unclear.

Either way, may Hashem bless you with whatever you need to get to a place of being able to live your life with a sense of freedom and satisfaction living how YOU truly would like to be!!

-Determinedtowin

Many of your points really talk to me and I can relate to them.

Clean streaks are also quiet stressful for me. To me, the optimal idea of clean streaks is that it should be a natural result of having shifted your mindset from ‘I need this’ to ‘this is not something I do’. Of course there are benefits to pushing yourself to have a clean streak including building your confidence of ‘yes I can’ and getting into the habit of resisting the temptation, but I don’t believe that the number of days should become the dominant factor of your success. It might become an all or nothing game, where a fall after day 89 means total failure even though it clearly isn’t. And as you relate, this as a result can induce many feelings of shame and guilt.

I can also relate to your so-called ‘sprinkles’ where even after having a good filter, I might still find ways to find arousing content working through the filter (albeit not straight-out porn). Whenever I can, I will block those individual pages. It isn’t feasible, though, to do so for the whole internet (unless you're whitelisting). Once again, shifting mindset is the main focus over here. From ‘I need to look at that’ to ‘that person is just a superficial image whom I don’t know, will never know and who doesn’t and will never care about me – so not worth it’.

Regarding being constantly connected to GYE, I do think that every person is different but many might find hanging out over here too much, to be triggering and I can understand that. This is something very individual. I do agree with you, though, that thinking about this inyan the whole day would for sure not be recommended. Instead, keeping yourself busy with good things will go a long way in shifting a person’s focus away from this and help him overcome this nisayon.

Personally I still fall quiet often regarding masturbation (even though I've B"H made great strides in shmiras eynayim) and therefore I don’t know myself what the ‘perfect’ path is. But I do feel that allowing myself to be relaxed (not to be mistaken with frivolous) around this can give me more clarity and peace of mind and can absolve a lot of the unnecessary guilt. As I mentioned for me it’s all about shifting mindset. I’m still figuring out the exact ‘how’ of shifting mindset like what are the practical steps for someone to go about that and I’m open to suggestions on this as well.

All in all, to me, your points seem very valid, and at the end of the day I believe that it all comes down to the individual. 

Thank you very much for sharing your perspective.

The points brought up by both of you are valid and show the thinking of healthy minds. In response to a few comments about masturbation being different than pornography, there is no question that that is true. It is a massive accomplishment to stop using tecnology to poison one's eyes and mind, even if one still masturbates on occasion. In addition, b'ezras Hashem, the longer one stays away from shmutz, the easier it will be to stop masturbating.