sigh...sigh....nu....nu....if only
I started masturbating when i was 8 years old. i went to a so called orthodox jewish day school were we learnt at age 10 that it was normal. The way i found out it was assur was when a goy told me at the age of 16 that he heard from a rabbi that it is assur. from that point on, i have been on a constant inner battle with myself.

Today i am 25, so-to-speak religious (im actually a "chasidshe rabbi" with a black hat jacket and beard), married with children. I seem to always fall back into the pornography, especially when my wife isnt around. Today, my wife had to leave early to work and i was supposed to give a shiur in a yeshiva. Instead, after she left home i went on the internet and fell twice, one after the other. this is it. i have to change myself. Last time my wife went to work early the same thing happened! And i promised myself that this is never going to happen again! But i keep falling and keep promising myself but nothing seems to ever work!!! I have to find another way, and i hope this is it.

I tried to start up my own 90-day chart but im not revieving the confirmation email so im just getting more and more and more frustrated....i feel like the whole day has been one big waste

One thing is for sure, we are filtering the internet TODAY (g-d willing)

helpme,

first of all, it's very good that you're going to put a filter on. That's the most important step when first trying to make the change.
However, I can't emphasize enough how important it is that you do not have the password and that the filter is on a good setting. There are so many people on here who continued falling after installing the filter b/c they had the password or they didn't put it on a strong setting.
Nevertheless, you have to know that there is no magic solution.
Having a filter is never fool proof and if you want to sin, you can still do it.
Fixing this matter is going to be very very hard work. So get started!
The website has all the tools you need to figure out what to do.
Keep posting a lot on the forum b/c everyone here will have great advice for you.
You'll start by "taking" a lot and as you progress, you can start "giving" to others.

Love,

KH

I know that filtering is in no way fullproof, but at least it is a start... at times i feel the sense of 'waiting' until i am alone with the computer so i can... this way without the computer there wont be such a temptation every time my wife leaves the house!
but yeah...i need to make some other progress

read the handbook, now started to read the attitude handbook

Hi helpme -

Welcome to the forum. I agree wtih KH that the filter is the most important thing. A close second is coming to this site.

It hits everyone at some point that willpower and guilt are not enough to stop an addiction or even a terrible habit. You need to change as a person.

ninety

Welcome to our community, you have finally come home!

GuardYourEyes (GYE) is a vibrant network and fellowship of Jews of all affiliations, struggling to purify themselves and break free of lust related behaviors. For the first time, there is somewhere to turn to for help in these areas. We're all in the same boat here. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama  .  Once you've arrived, there's no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up with them!
 
In the last couple of years, the GYE network has helped roughly 1,000 Jews get back on a path of sanity, self-control and healing and has touched the lives of thousands more. GYE has become known throughout the Jewish world as the number one address for dealing with these challenges which have reached epidemic proportions. 

The tools of our recovery program were developed with guidance from the best experts in the field, such as Rabbi Dr. Avraham J. Twerski, and through the personal experience of hundreds of Jews who successfully broke free. We use a unique approach that recognizes that there are many different levels in these struggles.

Our network is comprised of a website, a pulsating forum, phone conferences, daily Chizuk e-mails, support hotlines, therapists, live 12-Step groups and a program of recovery for all levels of this struggle/addiction.

All our work is free of charge and we zealously protect the complete anonymity of all our members.

Here are some quick things you can do to help you jump straight into your journey:

1) See the "GYE Program in a Nutshell" (Right Click the link and press "Save Link/Target As" to save the PDF file to your computer) that can help you quickly identify at what level of the struggle you are at, and which tools and features would help you most at your particular level.

2) Install a strong filter (see this page for more info). It is hard to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away.  The filter gabai at filter.gye@gmail.com will hold the passwords for you. We also highly advise installing "Reporting Software" such as webchaver.org to give you some accountability.

3) Join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day.

4) Join the 90 Day Challenge. Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change the neuron pathways created by addictive behaviors in the brain.

5) Post away on this forum, where hundreds of yidden like you exchange chizuk and post logs of their journey to recovery. You will internalize that you are not alone, and you will learn the techniques and attitude that work for so many others.

6) Join our free anonymous phone conferences, led by an experienced sponsor.

7) If you need more general guidance, write to GYE’s helpline at gye.help@gmail.com or call the hotline at 646-600-8100.

8.) Download and read the "Guard Your Eyes Handbook" (a hard copy can be purchased for cost price over here). This handbook outlines the GYE approach in detail, and makes our network much more effective and helpful for people. The handbook has two parts:

A) The first part, "The 20 Tools", detail 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. 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!

The second part, "Attitude & Perspective", detail 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…

Our souls cry inside of us, but we have accustomed ourselves to block out that cry. Today we can begin to be who we really want to be.

We are here for you.
www.GuardYourEyes.org
GYE E-Mail Helpline: gye.help@gmail.com
GYE Phone Hotline: 646-600-8100
Help us help others: Donate Here

Welcome Reb Helpme!
Glad you're here and want to get well.
When the thoughts first come, start davening right away.  Intercept thoughts and visual stimuli early with t'fila, and with shmiras eynayim in all settings.
Keep us posted.
Alex

welcome brother helpme!
With G-d's help and this website you can make a miracle happen in your life. You found this site at 25! You are so lucky and G-d loves you.
I also wasn't receiving the confirmation email for the chart, so I sent an email to the guard  eyes.guard@gmail.com and he took care of it manually. Later it turned out that their emails were going to the Junk box, so you may wanna check that and put them on safe list.
Keep posting here, we'd love to know you better..

WELCOME helpme!  Hop aboard. We're all in the same boat.  Keep us posted on your progress.  There are loads of great people here.

Still haven't gotten a filter....im very lazy. one of my biggest problems is a day or two after 'acting out' i start thinking to myself 'that's it. never again. im a different person today' and then i forget about filtering, etc, and fall again into this cycle.
I was thinking what shevua to make if cv i 'act out'. To take an hour walk...i just dont have the time and for various reasons if i pledge money enough to hurt it will also do damages. So i thought about promising to write out 'I AM A JEW' 1000 times if i act out, cv but then realised that it might be a little too much so, for now i made a shevua that from now until rosh chodesh cheshvan if i 'act out', cv, i will write out 'I AM A JEW' 100 times.  8) Maybe after cheshvan ill change it to 1000 ???

With rosh hashana coming im very very busy (bh i dont have time alone with the computer) but since my first post i have been alone with the computer twice and, bh bh bh i didnt give in to my urges. the one time i really had a strong urge was last night when my wife went to a wedding and i looked after our daughter. but i decided to go onto guard your eyes website and read chizuk emails, etc. as regarding to setting up chizuk emails me and my wife have a joint email account so i will, imyh, create a new email account for myself and get chizuk emails. Nearly finished the attitude handook (20 out of 30 points read). The personal stories are just amazing. Especially this new book in hebrew about the rosh yeshiva (daily chizuk emails 400-450) its just.....wow.... im going to order a copy and have it in my bathroom for 'toilet reading' bli neder.

I have been contemplating on this website and...i...............................it just seems too good to be true that such a website exists!...its.......no words can describe how i feel greatful to Hashem that He revealed this website to me. it actually came about after seeing the clip on chabad info. i keep pinching myself (ceveyochol) to double check that this is really happening. and it is. im just lost for words.

helpme Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease help yourself and GET A FILTER. NO EXCUSES!  I only say that because I love you.  :-*

Yes, Reb Helpme, there's plenty of us out here.  And it is a wonderful dream inspired by Hashem and realized by Rabbeinu Guard Shlita.

Thanks for sharing your success with us.  Shteig on!  May these awesome days ahead launch you into a new life of sobriety, one day at a time.

Ksiva vchasima tova
Alex

I have been reading the attitude handbook during my free time (which i dont have a lot of) and it is really helping. I have been working on one of the techniques mentioned on the website: of a story of a yid that closed his pub to drunken goyim. every day the goyim came and knocked on the door to be allowed in. every day the yid said 'sorry we are closed' until slowly slowly less and less goyim would come and eventually the goyim gave up on coming altogether. so too with our minds the thoughts feel 'at home' in our minds r'l like the drunken goyim felt at the yid's pub and we have to make a decision that we are closing up shop. the thoughts have to find another home. every time i have a bad thought i immediately do this and it really helps me. not to mention every day praying to HASHEM that He help me today. Last night i had a dream of a person being offered all kinds of tasty ciggarettes and he was refusing, and the person offering gave up and went home. (i used to be a smoker and, bh, i quit 4 years ago.

With all that said and done, however, i have had two mikre laylas in the past week. For people like us is this something we should just ignore for now? I remember a story about the ?alter rebbe? that one Yom Kippur morning came to him a big Chasid who had a mikre layla on yom kippur night. the Aler Rebbe told him that he has to daven Yom Kippur davening as if nothing had happened the night before, that the satan wants him to worry the whole yom kippur about  the mikre layla. Would it be correct to assume that with people like us first we have to focus on not doing zera levatala beratzon before even thinking of ways to stop sheloberatzon?

btw thankyou all for all your support!

Absolutely.  The most important thing is to keep a positive frame of mind and not to dwell on falls at all (Here we call it KOT - keep on trucking).

Completely unrelated regarding the story you brought down I remember seeing that a mikre layla on Yom Kippur (where it was not brought on by improper thoughts) is actually a good siman.

All the best to you. By the way I know youve been putting off getting a filter. K9 is a completely free filter that you can download the whole thing shouldnt take you more then 10 minutes. google it.

Agreed.  Sounds like you're off to a very solid start.

An update....
The tishrei holidays passed by bh and were very meaningful, and bh bh there wasnt really so much of a struggle, i asked HASHEM to help me and BH He did. I davened with a lot of cavona to HASHEM on Yom Kippur to help me and take away my lust with some tears as well.

But all that is pretty normal, i guess, to go through periods of no overly strong urges. i had bad thoughts but i easily pushed them out using the technique of the Jew who denied entry to goyim into his bar...
A few days after shabbos bereshis, however, i was home alone and we...still...havent....gotten...a...filter :..... :-[... well anyway i had an urge building up inside of me throughout the day telling me 'youre going to be home alone with the computer etc etc'. The technique i had been using (namely to decide that my mind had new ownership and didnt allow entry to bad thoughts) wasnt effective because now it was a [i]feeling[/i] i had that was attacking me. an urge, not just a 'bad thought'. Now, what i would usually do is to tell myself 'nu, thats not wot hashem wants control yourself', start thinking mishnayos or tanya bal peh while deep inside knowing full well what i am going to do as soon as a im alone with myself. But this time i decided to try my new 'skills' picked up from this website. First of all i knew that if i do something i am going to have to sit down and write down 100 times 'i am a jew'. Second of all i am somewhere around the 30/40 day mark and i would have to start all over again. third of all i prayed to HASHEM. I told Him that 'All i want to do is what YOU want! But i have this lust inside of me that is trying to stop me! Please HELP ME take away this urge and let me serve YOU!!!'. I said tehillim under my breath, etc etc. And, this time i felt like it was working. I didnt have that feeling i usually had that despite all of my good thoughts  the moment i am alone with myself etc... I knew inside of myself that i am staying clean.
Fourth of all, when i got home the first thing i did was go on the internet and continue reading from the attitude handbook. After 3 or 4 minutes i already calmed down! That was it! BH! I couldnt believe it! As far as i can remember THIS WAS THE FIRST TIME I REALLY HELD MYSELF BACK FROM AN IRRESISTIBLE URGE. All the other times i had held myself back it wasnt such a big urge. the urge would grow and grow until i would reach the climax point and couldnt take it anymore. This time i reached the climax point and BOOM raise way above it!

In my innocence i truly thought 'thats it. ive conquered it.' But the next day i had the same urge, but BH im still holding strong. Its actually getting tougher but i feel that Hashem is making me stronger. There are times were i feel im going crazy! I guess ive entered into the real war!

Me and my wife have already decided to get a filter for the computer but its just a matter of deciding which one, etc. In the meantime i have your amazing website and HASHEM helping me along the way!!!!