I don't recall where, but I think that I remember seeing that there is a direct Connection between Gaavah and these issues. .

Gaava is not just thinking of myself as the greatest gift to humanity. A falsely inflated ego is gaavah.

Seeing my friends ZemirosShabbos & Dov post that they want to do something for me makes me happy. Why? Is an inflated ego taking no part in that good feeling? If I were to search within myself with complete & brutal honesty I should admit that it does.

Gravity is brutal. It doesn't have any pity...it just does it's thing - when someone falls and hits their head it is astounding how pitiless gravity is. It could be a sweet innocent child, and old, defenseless person...it doesn't care. As one who has had a limb shatterred on the ice, I (and many people) have come face to face with this fact. It's just a shocking feeling, that 'wham!', and we tend to be in...well - shock about it, when it happens, R"l.

Death is just the same. When it's over, we are all alone with the 'unvarnished' truth about ourselves. The truth is just as pitiless. Like gravity and brick staircases, the truth about us just 'is'.

Hashem has put some degree of sheker-acceptance - or 'varnishing' in our makeup. It protects us from the plain truth about our limitations, our ignorance, and lack of understanding, so that we do not get hit with it all at one time and go nuts. ('lo sirosham maheir, pen tirbeh alecha chayas hasodeh') Most people can go through life with a generous helping of 'varnish' - it makes the trip - even yiddishkeit - easier.

But addicts are not like other people. We abused the 'varnish' too much. So it seems to me that we do not recover until we give up a bit of the stuff that normal people need. We need to face our gayva as it relates to the way we see other people, the way we fantasize about our ability to overcome things that cannot be controlled, like time, other people, and for us - lust. Our gayva can the chief cause of our depression because the overinflated expectations we bear for ourselves to be like "this rosh yeshiva", or "that tzaddik" cause us to be so incredibly disappointed with ourselves that we puke when we look in the mirror.

I, and many others I know, could not start to accept recovery until we gave up the inflation. The gayvo - just a little tiny bit. It's alie, and lies are toxic for addicts like me, it seems. Not so for normal people. For them lies are not toxic, just 'not pretty'. Even if they are on a high madreigo.

It is not because of a 'high madreigo' that I need to be free of lust and start outgrowing my lies and self-deception - rather, it is precisely because I am so low, weak, and sick that these things cannot be tolerated by me. If I use them I will continue to suffer terribly because I am ill.

May Hashem help us all out.

Sorry for the rant, but you mentioned our gayva problem and it rolled out....

Does that make you happy at all? 

Yupp gotta be lust free just to get to first base

Not the other way around


Right rebbe?

B

bardichev wrote on 10 Feb 2011 00:09:
Well, I certainly won't get anywhere if I am still feeding it. So I agree with you...but sometimes yadah v'gitah bo'in k'echod.

Putting those two things together may not work so well:
How can I help you overcome your pride?

Get off your 18 wheeler and onto a tricycle!

Even that sounds like an insult in context - none meant.

The only way I can help anyone esle to overcome their pride is by overcoming my own. And I cannot do that myself. If I could, I'd just be full of pride about that anyway!

...and the opposite - If I keep on telling myself "I am but dust", I may end up with no self esteem.

For my pride, I should look at where I've come from, and for my self esteem look at what I am capable of doing.
My guess is that there are more seforim on this then just about any other topic.

As I posted before, in my case (and in the case of many other men I know) my own pride is the source of most of my depression. Inflated and silly self-expectations - mostly based on my take of mussar schmoozes of very well-meaning Rebbis and s'forim - is the direct cause of disappointment in my heart. It is true.

And as far as self-esteem is concerned, I feel that working on self-esteem has no place in recovery, at all. It's just completely unnecessary for me, and very distracting when it is an avodah in itself. 

Feeling great about myself comes from realizing (usually after the fact) that I really am with G-d and mentchen, that I really am sober, and that everything really will be OK with me in the end with Him running the show...for a change.

Spending even a minute on better self-esteem and feeling good about me, distracts me from really caring about being of use to others. It actually strengthens the very same self-centered muscles I was exercising on the bathroom floor with the dirty magazines. There is certainly no need for more of that. And - tempting as it may be from a 'hashkofa' perspective - I need not twist my brain into a pretzel in order to figure out how to do them both...I'd rather leave my self-image to Him, period.

My 2 cents.

lookingforwisdom,
I came across something that I found quite huge on the topic of procrastination.

While searching for something very different, I came across "passive aggressive behavior" and procrastination is one of the symptoms.

All the 'official' sites I found that deal with 'normal' psychology don't really say much about it. To sum them all up: These are the symptoms, there is no known prevention, there is no real cure.

So where's the link?
A slightly unorthadox site had a bit more insight and pointed out why I have been struggling with this and how it has the same roots as my lust addiction.
Sorry, I can't post the link to the article, because there are some serious triggers on the page (how ironic).

They said the problem starts when one is afriad to express their emotions or needs to their parents / primary care givers. (hey, that's me).
Some scenarios: The family doesn't attach much importance to our needs and thus makes us feel like a burden, "just another mouth to feed".
We may be given the message  that we were an inconvenience, or too demanding, or didn't deserve whatever it was we were requesting. And if our parents were outright angry with us, yelling at us whenever we straightforwardly expressed our wants, the very thought of continuing to voice them may have filled us with anxiety.

How many of us addicts can say that our relationship with our partents is totally open and we can discuss all our feelings with them? I assume there are quite a few of us that have had issues in that department.

So what happens? We end up changing the way we make our feelings heard.
Today, I found myself procrastinating - I'm punishing my boss for putting me in an emotionally difficult situation.
We avoid confrontation, delay things, make excuises, sabotage.
Rather than tell someone that they are hurting us in some way, we turn their behaviour back on them, deep down hoping they'll feel the way they make us feel.

Procrastinating is one way of deeling with the anxiety of our work not being good enough. Rather than facing someone who may have a negative response to our work, we delay the work or try put it off all together.

ToAdd

I can defenitely idenetify which each and everything said, that article defenitely hit the nail on the head. Understanding whats going on helps in figuring out how to deal with it but the bottom line what ever situation we're in we were put there form above (talking about those parts that were really out of our hands) now our job is to pick ourselevs up from there and do avodes hashem from there wether it's fixing our procrastination, taking care of our lust addiction these things are on us

Dov- what you just stated a moment ago was so simple, yet so powerful! Pride and unrealistic expectations are definitely a part of what perpetuates an endless cycle of acting out and teshuvah. I've been so focused on mussar and nullifying the ego, to the point where I've actually strengthened it by being so self-involved. To  Add- thanks for starting this post, and thanks everyone for contributing...its all shedding light in the dark crevices of addiction.

Dear chassid84,

What you wrote:



Is so profound. Yet so often we are blind to it.

You are a chossid and though I know little about chassidus, it seems to me that the entire point of chassidus is about being aware of the real Power of Hashem working with you and through you in your real life. The true ikkar of our avodah is in divrei reshus, it seems.

Invite Hashem into your divrei reshus in a humble way. Not to the extreme, and not to be "a kodosh". Just to be with Him, cuz we are. Stay with friends who you can talk these things with and don't be merachek your lust recovery friends once you think you have 'outgrown' them. The humility will keep you in recovery till you pass on from this world and you will find that all your days will have been lived in recovery. (Sound like a familiar mishna?) And you will shed the weight of this struggle. It's probably too big for you, anyway.

Hashem will help.

Just keep working on honesty and opening up and not feeding the lust. Real life has nothing to do with feeding lust, ever. And that is the same truth for addicts who are yidden, chassidishe yidden, yeshivishe yidden, and even for goyim. No difference in this prat, at all.

A big thanks to everyone for adding their insights here.
Reading these latest posts made me think that the very first parsha after the giving of the Torah is mishpotim.
The very first step in our relationship with Hashem is in how we treat each other.
It's not building the temple or priestly vestments or self purity - it's about returning your bull to your neighbour when it goes wandering off.

Why does this site work?
Because we're not afraid that if we say "I'm an addict" to everyone here that we'll be punished for it.
It works because we all care for each other.

We all have a bull that tends to go wandering off.
Here I've learnt how to put up a fence to help prevent it from going off but sometimes it does, and you guys are always here to return it.
Let’s harness that bull and get it ploughing the fields.

[Not sure where that all came from.]

ToAdd

yes - the mind,body and soul are ALL inter related!

what we eat, what's eating us, what we think about, how we act - whether we act out, or act upon..
Procrastination - comes from acting out...its the in ability to focus, and move forward.

yes, other health problems are also created by how we act, what we think about, etc

general rule of thumb...

7 White foods we tend to eat, which we need to avoid:

milk, white flour, white rice, salt, white potatoes, sugar, and white lies.
better to eat nuts and seeds, and raw foods.

Also since recovery is already a bumpy road... better to avoid the 7 Seas (7 C's)
Cola, Coffee (caffine), Cake, Candy, Control, Criticism, and Condemning

When you;ve had enough of the emotional rollercoaster:

YELLOUT: DIE C's!

(DI- SEAS...disease... then you'll know you are on the path of recovery)

dov.ii