Hello every1

a friend of mine suggested me to look at this site and i think i have just found a gold pit !!!
I dont feel comfi opening up about all my probs and storys at the mom. but would like to share certain probs.
i HAVE, HAD, and will be going through. I know there are other ppl who do really bad things bc life these days
is hard to go through without these struggles...but for some reason i dont believe any1 has fallen as low as i
have a managed to hide it this well which causes no1 to think there is a prob with me and not offering any help. I am a 19 year old yeshiva Bochur learning in Jerushalim, if you see me you will think im this happy, aidel,
cute and really frum bochur that maybe has a hard time to sit down and learn but for sure has no other major issues. Basically i have been oyver and most issurim relating areyes... It makes me sick and daven really hard that H' should help me out of it, i have been through things that even in the none jewish world is a no no...it started when i was 14 and i tried for 5 years and just keep falling back down and always deeper and it always causes more probs and im just building up a load on top of me that i think one day it will just crash and i will be forced to give up not to embarres  my fam. or just not maybe to cause other ppl
doing this sort of stuf... Its very hard to explain details there are things i would never want any1 to fiend out and thats y i cant speak to any1 about it. I would be so happy if som1 on this amazing website would take the time and try and save a fellow jew from giving up bc the things going on at the mom are really towards the top of an ice  berg and a battle that i can no more fight on my own...

thanks so much for reading and i really hope on hearing from som1 really soon

hi help!
welcome to GYE.
I think you'll find that many of us have gone through the same things you have, some to lesser extents, and some to more extreme.

Dov, a very choshuva person wrote to you when you posted before:
dov wrote on 30 Dec 2009 17:46:

may i also suggest that you take a look at this topic:
rehab-my-site.com/guardureyes/forum/index.php?topic=643.0
for the story of someone else who was in the same postion as you.

i have found that two of the most important things for my recovery (still ongoing) were reading and posting.
hatzlocha!

Hi wats up. as you spend more time here youll see that the last words you wrote are real gold. And thats whats gonna get you places.

soon enough guard will be here and give you the welcome package. There are many helpful tools there. But realize we are all in this together. We have suffered like you, some more and some less, but we are all here for the same reason. Take your time. Look around . Read different threads and get yourself comfortable. Youve probaly just made the greatest move of your young life. We are all nhere for you. And well be here for you, always.

Hi Help613,

First of all you should know that you have taken the very first step in getting into recovery. Opening up is the best thing you can do put yourself on the road to recovery. I am also a Yeshiva Bachur around your age so I know what your going through with people around you and what they think of you. I dont have to disagree on one point you made. People here have fallen much lower than you have I am sure. I can't say I have because I really dont know what you've done, but do not think that you are the worst person in the world. That is a ploy of the yetzer hara. He wants you down. When we are down we revert back to our old ways and its a nevber ending cycle. I hope your stay in the GYE Hotel is long and comfortable. There's a continental breakfast every morning. But seruiously this is one of the best places in the world for people like us to be and we shouldn't forget it. If you have any questions or you just want to chat email me at Yiddle2@gmail.com

Thank you very much for sharing with us,

-Yiddle

Dear Holy, Holy Jew , Reb Help 613:

You have indeed found a gold pit in this online community of Yidden just like yourself who have gotten involved in these types of aveiros and are striving to get clean.

You can expect the official welcome from the administrator soon, I'm sure.

You say that you don't think anyone has fallen as low as you. Reb Yid, no one is immune to temptation in these areas. I mean that quite seriously, no one- from the biggest Rosh Yeshiva to a poshuter Yid to a cheder teacher to a kollel fellow who sits and learns all day etc etc. You'd be surprised by how many fine upright Yidden can get involved in these things, be it fantasies, porn, masturbation, sexual misdeeds/promiscuity with either gender. You name it.

You're not alone. We're all in this together to get better, rid ourselves of these aveiros through a lasting teshuva, one day at a time.

You  no longer need to fight this battle on your own. You are armed with a group of kindred spirits over here at GYE behind you all the way. You are armed with a neshama, a cheilek Elokah mi'ma'al MAMASH, desperately seeking to do the ratzon Hashem.

Know that your charata alone on these past (or even continued) actions is very much a kapara, as is your very coming here to GYE.

If you feel like giving up due to past aveiros, that's the Satan talking. Every morning we become a bria chadasha when we arise. What you did yesterday, or even last night, is history. Focus on today and be b'simcha at the opportunity to start afresh.

This is a new beginning.

Much love!

Dear Help613,

What beautiful welcomes you've received already.  You've come to the right place!  Stick around, work the handbooks (more on that below), and take it one day at a time.

An official GYE welcome is in order, so here goes!

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.

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!

Dear Help613,

i too am a newbie, I just joined about two weeks ago, and this site has helped me tremendously already!!!

Here you will find single people, married people, black people, white people (OK OK maybe not so many black people, but everything else for sure ) but the common denominator is that we are all battling a particularly powerful foe, Dr. Y"H (aka Dr Evil), and when we battle him together we are much more powerful!

So browse around, find sometime to read some of the literature, feel free to start posting your feelings/struggles/ chizzuk for others and anything else you want.

For example, here is a random joke: "I spoke to a subliminal advertising executive, but only for a second ;D ;D ;D

Anyway welcome to a place that is filled with love for you despite us having never met you before. Please come on in, kick off your shoes, and make yourself at home!

Haba

welcome to our family!

Dear help613, I am the admin of this forum. Welcome to our community. There IS help and hope for you!! Have you ever heard of SA (sexaholics anonymous)? For someone who has fallen as far as you have implied in your post, this may be the best bet for you. Rabbi Twerski has consistently sent people to these 12-Step groups. There you will find a community of people just like you, and begin to really turn your life around. To someone who wrote to Rabbi Twerski about similar problems, here was his reply:

"Your case is not unusual. I say this because I can tell you what works and what does not work. Sexual compulsions come in a variety of ways, but the common denominator is that the person has a compulsion which he finds it very difficult to resist. He tries all kinds of ways (like you did) but nothing works, including marriage. This kind of compulsion is essentially an addiction. The only thing that works, in my experience, is participation in a 12-step recovery program similar to that of Alcoholics Anonymous. This is called either Sexaholic Anonymous or Sex & Love Anonymous. They have meetings everywhere, including Israel. You should be able to locate a meeting via the internet.

There are many excuses for not attending meetings. What happens if someone sees me? The bottom line is, if a person wishes to be cured from cancer, he'll do anything. If one wishes to overcome a destructive sexual addiction, nothing should stand in the way. Psychotherapy is the frosting on the cake, but the 12 step program is the cake. When you attend SA meetings, you may be able to find the name of a competent therapist. Many psychiatrists and psychologists have not been trained in addiction.
     
The particular type of sexual compulsion does not make much difference. A beer drinker can be as alcoholic as a whiskey drinker. The core problem is the inability to restrain oneself from doing something that one knows he should not be doing but appears powerless to control it. A number of religious people have been able to do with the 12 step program what they were not able to do with mussar (religious ethical texts). Perhaps this is because of the group support. We may learn mussar together, but we don't practice it together, which is what happens in a 12 step meeting. Read the books. There is a book "12 steps and 12 traditions" which describes the 12 steps. It's worth reading. Although it was written about alcoholism, one just substitutes the particular compulsion in place of "alcohol."
A. Twerski"

Welcome home my dear friend, once you stop here - you'll never turn back!
This is a place where people JUST LIKE YOU come looking for someone who can help them - out of a mess which they see no hope for,
AND BOY DO THEY GET THAT HELP!!
You come here and slowly leave your problem for the guy who was your past. The you of "from now on", will see things differently, and will gradually follow with cleaning up his actions as well.
Take some time to look around the site.
Read through the testimonials.
See how so many stories began and ended up.
I have found that one of the things that helps me the most, is the knowledge that I'm not the only yid with these problems, and that there IS a way out.
Read through some of the journals, see how there is a concept of a GOOD DAY and a FALL and a SLIP, and although these might not seem to be in the same categorie, in a way they really are.
Together, they make up the concept of a journey, and of a fight, and of a jew's struggle to fulfill the words of the Torah.
Take your time getting comfortable, it shouldn't take too long though, the olam here is very warm and accepting, and each one of us wants to do what he can to help you reach your goal.
And one day, when your 10 years clean of this, YOU will be here helping another kid who will remind you of yourself once upon a time.

Kollel Guy wrote on 30 Dec 2009 23:09:


You'll be helping others way before you're 10 years clean.  Indeed, helping others is the only way to achieve such long term sobriety.

Kedusha wrote on 30 Dec 2009 23:12:


"ask not what gye can do for you, but what you can do for gye"!

Welcome home!

Reb 613 - That's what I'm going to call you, because despite your difficulties, you care about doing what's right. That's clear from the pain in your voice, and the fact that you so, SO badly want to change. And for that, you already have my respect!

First of all, welcome! The more you become part of our community, the more we can help you. As you spend more time here, posting and reading, you'll hopefully be able to open up more and more, and that will help you fight these battles. Our goal here is to support you and help you grow and be happy, truly happy.

As Guard mentioned, SA may be an excellent tool for you.

However, let me point something out - as long as you assume that you'll fall, I can almost giarantee that you will. In your mind, picture of what happens when you're faced with a nisayon is that you fail. So, all you're doing is following that picture! You have to change that picture, and replce it with images of you succeeding and doing the right thing - avoiding discussions, in general, with married women, and if there's a woman in particular that you're close with, explain to her that though she's wonderful, you really can't be with her anymore - and because she's so wonderful and beautiful, even talking with her would be too dangerous.

Trust me, man - it might take some time, and a lot of effort, and major changes in the way you think - but you CAN do this!

Before you read this, I want you to realize something VERY important.
You are not "BAD". You are not a "big rasha". You are simply SICK. It's not the type of sickness which you go to the doctor in a white coat for, so it can be tricky to accept it at first. But it is imperative that you realize this, so you know what measures to take. Nobody would tell someone with cancer to "Get a hold of himself" or "Try harder". He simply NEEDS to go through the proper treatment, or he won't get better. That being said....

There are actually quite a number of people here on this forum, who's problems cannot be (at least largely) solved by simply installing a good filter. Each of them had to design a system which suited his specific situation. They make 90 day charts which instead of the standard rules, include their particular nisyonos, they get accountability partners who are in similar situations, etc. I'm sure Guard can fill you in on what you need.

As far as your nesayon with married women, well.... there's a thing called "Midah kineged midah". How do you think you will react if that would happen to your wife? That's of course besides the point. Your true incentives here are:
1) To stop something which is very wrong and which can ruin entire families, regardless of the price you will need to pay later.
2) To cure yourself of a taavoh which has overtaken you, and which does not let you live.
3) To recognize what your missing in your being and in your life, that you feel the need to do things hurtful to you and others.

There was a discussion a while ago regarding people with nisyonos that when they fall c"v, can seriously hurt other people. The majority felt that this site would be of little help to such a person. I would venture to say that you don't YET fall into that categorie. However be aware that you don't "grow out of" these things. The desires just get stronger with time. People who have been in your situation and did not take care of it, gradually found themselves seeking it out at every opportunity, and NOT BEING ABLE TO LIVE WITHOUT IT!! Your only way out is to nab it now. You are very fortunate to have found this site when you did.

Maybe for you, the best advice I can give is to steer completely away from any interaction with those people places and events which pose a threat to you. That's solving the problem from the outside.
At the same time, make sure to go through one of the programs here. Probably SA is the best thing for you. That's solving the problem from the inside.