With confidence, you have won before you have started. - Marcus Garvey

The problem I lack the confidence.

HKB"H promised me and you - if one comes to purify himself,
he will be granted Heavenly assistance.  Obviously I don't really want it.

I've been struggling for months now and with movies and television shows that are streamed.

I think I'm finally fet up enough with myself.  (sounds familiar - unfortunately)

Addicted to tumah.  It's good to be normal. Empty and vain can feel good.  Yes - false good.  But still feels.

So I have to recall what I learnt in Bilvavi - if one wants to have a relationship with Hashem, one has to daven for that ratzon
itself to be strong.

But I think I'm calling on my hands and knees and I've hit a point that I've even embaressed to tell my therapist.  His advice
has been priceless, but part of the issues that I realize that  I face is that I'm just stam lazy.  Mesillas Yesharim - lazy, kvedus - fundamental that we all deal with.  

I haven't found access to real p*** on my computer, thankfully to k9 - but I can find pretty much everything else - so we blocked youtube, but I can get it on my phone when the yetzer is strong enough.  I can't find a filter for my phone but it's a
gishmack phone.  Not an iPhone - but an HTC.  I told my wife about this problem the other day as I fell.  

I want a phone with a keyboard and organizer - some cool features - but no wifi.  It's hard to find.

Argh.  
Help.
Got to real the manual again.
My rebbe just offered to be a webchaver to the whole kehilla.  It's a bit of a shomer - but not complete. but I got to advance some skills.

Argh.
Help!

Back on campus.  Not fun.  Thought I finished with this tumah years ago

Dear yankeld

Haba Letaher, Mesaiyin Lo. All we have to do is 'Pischu Li Pesach Kechudo Shel Machat, Va'ani Eftach lechem Pesach kepischo Shel Ulam' All we have to do is make a tiny effort, but a real effort, and hashem will open up for us the gates of Teshuva.  With that, I would like to 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!

As you will quickly learn on this site, an addiction is a disease on multiple levels. Torah and Mussar can't cure a disease. Not because they don't hold the answers, but because as long as the lust is in US, we can't SEE and USE the answers there. We need to stop banging our heads against the Torah and look inside ourselves instead. Once we face the truth about ourselves and begin to heal, Torah may be able to make our spiritual climb faster. But it is important to separate the Torah/Yiddishekeit track from the Addiction/Recovery track.

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...

Make sure to install a strong filter. It will be almost impossible to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. See this page for one good filter option, along with instructions on how to install it best - and give away the password to our "filter Gabai"... See this page for another 20 (or so) filter ideas and information...

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!

Thanks shemirateinayim
I'm no new guy around here though.
I've been hear for almost 10 months.
A silent observer.

As an 'outsider', can you tell me what can interest a person in following the forum here, if they can't even respond!!!!  Personaly that would be torture for me! 

How did you do it? and why?

*sorry but I was always wondering why there are over 100 guests, on a steady basis*

bleh.
that's all i have to say to that.
i first started posting when i came here.  i was strong(ish) for 90 days and I've been struggling badly since after channukah.
i think my wife's pregnancy has something to do with it - she's nauseous all the time, or at least when i'm interested- which can really frustrate a man as I'm sure many of you can relate.

any ideas for when this happens?

Bh i have expierenced this too. If we realize what real love is all about, that real love is about giving and not taking , i think its so much easier for us to deal with the situation.  because if we wanna give but the person doesnt want to take, then we dont give right?? Were doing it for the other person so we need to keep their interest in mind. These types of thoughts are what i run through my mind when im faced with such a dilemma!! Hatzlacha and wishing you the best.

I've heard that approach b4. The flaw in realizing that truth, is that one must bring himself to such a level of love. In order to acheive any releif, of help, from that train of thought.  if you simply cannot bring yourself, for the time being, to be that great of an ish chessed, then you are stuck being a grumpy *selfish* person.

How about someone from the 'married men' forum, give you an answer (offline).

Ultimately, your wife has zero to do with your addiction. Trust me, I've been there. Ask guys on this forum who have drop dead gorgeous wives and have "no" reason to really look anywhere - but an addiction is an addiction

yankeld wrote on 11 Feb 2010 14:23:


I can definitely relate. However, if you have the correct perspective you can take this period and enable a tremendous aliyah for yourself.  I can't go into detail now, as I have to run to seder.  But I can tell you that last year this time, when I started my sobriety, my wife was pregnant.  And she was very sick and nauseous. This meant no relations for four months. And this was very frustrating.  B"H, I am over a year sober.  Her pregnancy began a few months prior to that date, and I, too, like yourself was very frustrated. At first, it exasperated my addiction and was a catalyst for a major relapse. But then I realized I needed a reality check and my life totally changed instantly. 

Here is a quote from a post I wrote this past summer(click the link to see the post in full), which is a reflection on six months of sobriety and touches upon the issue you brought up. Feel free to ask more question:

"...A great zechus that Hashem has given me was that precisely during my days of sobriety, my wife and I had to remain abstinent due to uncontrollable circumstances.  My wife was sick for an extended period of time.  With my initial frustrations, I began to realize how much my perspectives on life and family have not been internalized and how selfish I have become.  Also, during this time, my wife was unable to handle most of the daily chores.  I had to help out much more as well as offer proper comfort to her.  After all, as much I helped, I was still away from home 12 hours a day in another city.  And taking time off was not a realistic option.  This meant learning to become sympathetic and expressing love and concern.  I began to understand that Love was not about romance but about caring.  It was about building an eternal bond of oneness with another, which leads to a natural sense of concern and care.  It is about giving not getting.  The more I gave, the greater I felt.  I transformed myself from selfishness to selflessness.  I was finally able top express my love to my wife for real.  And of course I always knew this.  But for the first time, I began living it. 

To Summarize: In the past this long period of separation would often lead to addiction and depression.  This time it lead me to sobriety and rejuvenation.  "

Hatzlacha!

-yaakov

shemirateinayim wrote on 12 Feb 2010 01:14:
Just for the record, although i may not have the dumb married sticker on top of my name, i am married. So when i wrote my post i was talking from expierence!!

yeh, I was wondering about that IT25?  i remeber you mentioning that you where married, and then I saw the sticker up there. What happened, GUARD doedn't hold of your kesubah???   












just kidding. You don't have to answer anything.

One good option is to get whatever type of phone oyu want, and have your service provider block internet access. I do that with verizon - then just let your wife have the password necessary to modify the account.

As an aside - scary story from a woman I used to be friends with - her son was not only accessing all kinds of filth, but in fact had contacted their cell phone service provider and set up a password so that his mother couldn't change nay of the settings!