bright wrote on 14 Aug 2023 18:53:

Well said. If you resist a thought, it will persist.
I absolutely agree that approaching lustful thoughts that pop into our mind [against our will] as a non-alarming entity and simply moving on from them is highly effective. I do this regularly. It does take practice to not get scared and alarmed by lustful thoughts and to simply disengage and move on, but it is highly effective. Thank you for writing it out.
In light of this, I hear the he'ara about "sounding the alarms". I suppose what I meant about sounding the alarms on that occasion is that I was beginning to drown and my usual attempts to move on were on were not working. I can't entirely remember all the circumstances and why this would be. Maybe moving on would have worked if I had been more calm and not wanted to fall as bad as I did at that time. I don't believe I was sounding sounding my alarms to think more about the thoughts and fight them, but rather to gather grit and motivation to simply not collapse at that moment.

Day 782:
I've been experiencing some negative emotions over the past two weeks. I think chief among them is frustration. Frustration is such a toxic emotion. I'm trying to stay positive but of course it's an avodah.

Hashem, please help me to make it through these turbulent waters. I feel like a small boat in a big sea. Hashem, please help me to see that You are guiding me every step of the way. Help me to not turn to addiction. Help me to turn to You alone.

Day 800:
Baruch Hashem!

Good to see you,  5u...

Day 909:
Baruch Hashem, I'm still shteiging! Thank you, Hashem, for helping me to beat this addiction for 909 days and counting using all of the tools that you have endowed me with to do so and thank you to my friends here on GYE for your continued support! I have been soaring in my Avodas Hashem over the past several months and have attained new heights in my learning and davening, among other great new developments in life.

Remember that lust and fantasy are the root of the whole addiction. If you slaughter the root cause, the entire snake will die. If you just attack the symptoms, you are setting yourself up for failure.

Wowwowowow!

Chazak U’Baruch

Dear 5U
I am happy to hear that! BH! 
I would love to hear from you what tools you use to fight the root cause. 
Of course I know that just working on Porn and Masturbation is not enough. You would be white-knuckling.... 
Of course I also work on not having or maintaining a fantasy or wallowing in lust. 
However, I still dont know how to not have fantasies or  lust? I have a very fast perception and my mind will go there instantly before i have a chance to not think. 
Any Ideas or advise would be very helpfull indeed.  

chancy wrote on 07 Mar 2024 19:40:

There is of course a lot to say about this. I don't think the reality is that in long term recovery you will never or even almost never have a fantasy or thought of lust after being where we have been in our past. Rather, lustful thoughts and fantasies will likely enter our minds on occasion still (certainly a lot less frequently than before, though), and I think a lot of recovery for me has been reprogramming how I react to these occasional thoughts of lust in the immediate few moments of their entering my consciousness. When I first started my recovery and was still in the throes of addiction, the entrance of a lustful thought into my brain meant that I was "doomed to masturbate because I have no choice now, it's inevitable, there's a thought of lust in my head, I have to masturbate at one point or another now so I may as well get it over with now." This, of course, is patently absurd to the recovered mind. There is nothing farther from the truth. This is classic addictive thinking. You absolutely NEVER "HAVE to masturbate." That is what we are convinced of, though, בשעת addiction. Now, though, 909 days into recovery, when a thought of lust enters my stream of thoughts, I usually have the maturity and experience to realize that this is nothing more than a thought. I can usually genuinely and calmly think to myself, "Huh, okay. That's a lustful thought. Anyway, I have things to do now. Let's move on.", and I just let myself move on without forcing the thought away and without checking to see if the thought is still there five minutes later. I simply let my mind relax and move on. It was by no means always this easy for me to move on from such thoughts. But this is ultimately central to success. The more you can relax the mind and simply let yourself slip into your next productive activity, the better off you will be.
There is really so much to say here and I don't have the ability to write down much more write now. This is a start. Please let me know if this was helpful for you and if you would like me to elaborate on something more.
I really wish for you the best. May Hashem help us all in our continued recovery.

Thank you for your reply. 
I am of course working on the same thing. I am BH able to move on, but the thrill of the first second that the thought pops into my head makes it hard for me to keep doing it for long. 
I get upset, thinking why do I have such lust? why cant i be normal and not think about this? I m not interested in that now! In short, im still fighting them, im afraid to simply let them go because what if i stop fighting and they actually sink in? 

chancy wrote on 07 Mar 2024 20:36:

Thank you for your response.
1. Don't get upset at yourself when you have lustful thoughts that you didn't ask for. This is actually a very important first step. You need to have compassion on yourself. When a lustful thought enters your mind that you didn't ask for, have compassion on yourself. Realize you are human. Do not attack yourself. If you asked for it or were פושע (no filter, went were you shouldn't have, etc.), that's a different case and I don't want to talk about that case now. Let's focus on the case when you didn't ask for the thought. Have compassion on yourself. It's okay. It's just a thought. Just move on. It will go away when you let go of it.
2. You say you are still fighting the thoughts. That's the problem. Stop fighting the thoughts. This is not a battle with thoughts. It's just a release of them from your mind. You just need to let go of the thoughts and move on from them. It's like someone holding onto scalding-hot metal bars and screaming in pain and the onlooker is saying, "Just let go of the bars and you'll be okay!"

You are fighting your thoughts. Don't fight them. Just let go of them. And don't beat yourself up for having lustful thoughts if you are doing everything you can to limit your exposure to sexual content of all types. If you are still exposed to such content in any way, you have to immediately eliminate that exposure. That's פשוט.
Does that help?

Dear GYE friends,
I am now >1000 days clean. Baruch Hashem!
I want to reiterate the same things I've been posting about for the past several hundred days. See my past posts for this content.
Keep up the good work to all here on GYE who are working on these inyanim.
You are important.
Take care.
P.S. Dam Hayomi of Mishneh Brurah with Dirshu begins Hilchos Shabbos today. Join!!!!

MAZEL TOV!!!!!!