Hey,
I am have been in very prominent Yeshivot for a while and have a severe problem with this issue. I don't remember the last week that I didn't masturbate or the last bein hazemanim that I have not looked at porn on a daily basis. I have a lot of hasmadah, learn all the sedarim, but late at night or during the breaks I have often looked at stuff on my phone and masturbated in the bathroom or shower. I am known as a shtark bochur but I felt so empty the rest of the day that this is who I am and its hard to live with myself - here I am investing so much time in learning and I am such a sick pervert. I just started with guard your eyes as a friend referred me to it and i am hoping that this will be the first bein hazemanim where i at least dont look at porn and hopefully dont masturbate. I put the web guard on my phone but i often looked at things that arent officially porn but close enough to get past it and turned it off very often so it didn't work and before yom kippur i took internet off my phone because I saw how sick I was and can't be trusted to stop this behavior and really need to separate completely.
I got involved in this around age 13 and am now in my early 20s and single. I am thinking about shidduchim etc, and I cant believe anyone would want to marry me if they knew. I am such a screwed up person and need help. How could someone be in the yeshiva system and masturbate daily??? How can he be happy in a marriage? With some support from a good friend of mine, I have gotten to a streak and today if all goes well will be day 8. But its bein hazemanim now and its so easy to access all this stuff and its only been almost 24 hours and i have been clean so far but have such urges now its very hard and need help. i put on k9 filter but i know the password so that doesn't help. i want to put on webchaver but it costs money and its going to be awkward explaining to my parents what it was for because they are the ones who get the credit card statements and look over every charge...... thanks so much everyone and hopefully i will have a great bein hazemanim.... its going to be tough, and the yetzer hara is getting stronger by the day...
on my laptop though in yeshiva i have a blocker which i dont know the password to so that is not a problem but still i can masturbate without the porn....
thanks and please leave support or feedback or advice to help me .... thanks!!!!
bein hazemanim is so long and i have so much time by myself as my siblings are at school and parents at work...
i have such a strong urge now just to go on to a porn website and jack off.... help!
also i have good keshers with some rabbeim but i feel i would destroy everything i have gained and built in regard to reputation if i talk to them about it, or even let them know even some of the extent of the problem

Hey. Im 15. I know you may not want to take advice from such a young teenager but I think you should listen to what I have to say. Many people your age have this problem. They are just too embarrassed to admit it. Ive had and still have this problem form 14 till now. I have full internet on my computer and I am still trying to figure out a way to get K9 filter. But trust me, your reputation wont get ruined if you talk to a rebbe about this. If anything the rebbe will respect you for telling him this since you had the courage to do it. I am probably second smartest of a grade with 80 students in it and I told my mashgiach about my problem. He doesnt think less of me, rather he kind of looks up to me now. Trust me, you should tell your rebbe.

Welcome Package for Newcomers

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
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Hi,

@goodjewishboy613
GYE can save the password of your k9 filter, email the Filter Gabai at filter.gye@gmail.com
he will set it up for you remotely.

good luck

@sonofhades96
email the filter gabai he will get you a k9 license and set it up for you free of charge.

good luck

goodjewishboy613,

why have you posted it 2 times?

www.guardyoureyes.org/forum/index.php?topic=4589.0

613,
Welcome!  Stick around long enough to get well.  Whatever it takes.
You're a good learner, and a fine bochur, who has this one weakness.  This is too common.  You desperately want to do something about it, because you don't like the emptiness and double-life.  You refer to yourself as a "sick pervert."  I assume this means you're not exactly thinking about Mesillat Yesharim while you're doing the aveira.  You have strong urges.  One thing I noticed absent from your post was how your shmiras eynayim is when you're just out and about, on the street, in newspapers and magazines.

There are several aspects to this addiction, and you need to address each one.  There's what you see, what you think and fantasize about, and there's the physical urge.  The physical urge results largely from the first two.  It's almost impossible to fight the physical urge.  Your only hope, therefore is to vigilantly guard your eyes and your thoughts.  Intercept sights and fantasies early.

"Man has a small eiver.  Feed it and it's hungry, starve it and it's satisfied."  But feeding it includes sights and fantasies.  So the stronger your commitment to guarding your eyes and your mind, the easier this whole thing gets.

What to do bein hazmanim?  Obviously, get up for an early minyan and learn.  Help your mother.  Only use a computer in a room where there are others, like bringing your laptop into the kitchen.  Stay away COMPLETELY from any computer that's in a private space.  Don't even go into the room.  There's tons of good reading right here on GYE.  Read the handbook, read and post on the forum.  Learn what proven recovery techniques are, choose one and commit to it.  Let go of lust.  This isn't about fighting lust, it's about giving it up and avoiding its triggers like the poison they are.

Hatzlacha,
Alex

WELCOME! Stick around.  We're here for you my friend.

By no means am a professional in this category, however, my personal struggle is exactly as Alex states, a battle with triggers.  For myself the very computer which is used daily is a huge trigger that has been a war to me.  Everyone on this site has their own experiences and stories that can help you immensely if you let them into your heart.  We are all here as a means to be accountable to someone, whether we know them or not, as if they were our closest friends whom we could confide in.  The 90 days chart is a visual representation that can give us a goal to strive towards.  Stick around and when you feel and urge drop by this site and read a few stories or helpful hints.   

          hey it sounds like we are in the exact same boat i am in yeshiva for quite some time now and am a good shtark guy. I have had this problem for close to 10 years now. I only started this 90 days chart and this GYE site 2 weeks ago. Everything you wrote could have came directly out of my mouth. it really sounds as if i wrote it.
          I am going to need the most chizuk I can to stop bec. I know I cant do it alone like Ive tried in the past. So far though this website has been really helpful. I think you should get the daily emails and sign up for the chart. Another thing I can suggest (eventhough I am new too) is that you always read this website DAILY if possible. Because you are pumped up and excited in the begining of this journey then its easy. But within 1 week or 2 weeks the excitment fades and we starting getting much more urges and lose focus. THat is when the chizuk is needed most. And i thought that I can just come to the site when I got urges and then it will just help me. But in no way is that true, it has to be before hand. If you wait till you are in the battle then you already lost it. Because after that our yetzer hara tells us anything to make us do it. 
        I was going clean for 2 weeks which i am pretty sure is my record (i know its terrible) and then last sunday was tough. But i fought through it and got out of the house for the whole day so I wouldnt have a chance to think. I should've read some posts of handbook material then. Then monday was a disaster the whole day my ming was on acting out but i was strong. then I watched a KIDS movie by myself and i thought of course it wouldn't do anything bec. its a kids movie but something triggered and I just wasnt thinking straight and I even said "oh now is when I am supposed to go on GYE to help block out the mind and what not" but my yetzer hara was much too strong and within minutes i was done for.
so what my point is: we need to be prepared before were stuck and maskim, bein hazmanim is for sure the hardest part for us. my mhalach is to try and stay busy, i learn after davening and then i make sure to have plans. I want to stay with friends or family members at all times of the day. to barely give myself time to think.
            Another great tip I heard from ssomeone is to realize that this is our NUMBER 1 top priority. if we know this then everything else falls the way side. If maybe i think I need to be somewhere or do something that might contradict fighting the yetzer or is going to be detrimental to my goal, then you just gotta say it doesn't matter, because this is more impt. THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING RIGHT NOW.

hatzlacha rabbah
from a  bochur to another bochur

Steve, that was perfect!

Let me share this from a thread you may have missed:

milehashem wrote on 27 Sep 2011 15:17:

Welcome to this site. there are grandfathers, rabbainim, mageidgai shuirim here. This is the YH of our dor.

Follow this link tzaddik www.guardyoureyes.org/forum/index.php?topic=4581.0

also Reb Tzadok writes there is a connection between being able to connect deeply with Torah and the Yetzer of ariyois


Trust me, my heart goes out to you.

Dear goodjewishboy613,

There are a lot of pratim to this problem, and everyone is different. But they all boil down to our habitually using lust, and it is always because - in the moment - we feel absolutely sure that we need to.

There are a lot of pratim to recovery from this problem, and everyone is different. But they all boil down to not using lust and learning that we do not really need to. The problem is that if I am an addict, I do need to use lust and masturbate. So, it boils down to using G-d, for I need a daily reprieve. If I am an addict, then I must use lust and sex in some way. I have lost against lust, for I cannot control and enjoy it the way most other people apparently can.

Accepting this - if it is true about me - is the narrow bridge I must cross in order to be sober today. But I have no other option, so I do, be"H. And he has given me a reprieve for many years so far, even though I am a sick man.

I do not know if any of this applies to you. I do not know if you are an addict, at all. Maybe you know. The only benefit to accepting that you are an addict is if you really are one. If you are not, then it's just more foolishness and self-pity.

I want to go through your post and give feedback based not on mussar or any wisdom, but based only on my own experience with my own sickness and my own ongoing recovery. Thanks to Hashem, I also lived for about twenty years having to masturbate every day, or at least practically every shower, and know the pain of being lahut acharei this sweet shtus. I know what it is like wondering how in the world I could ever be good, or even 'OK'. For years and years I was sure that I would take these deep, dark and dirty secrets of mine to my grave and that one day I'd be in that box and knowing that they are being maspid the wrong guy! It is certainly a special hell.

But please consider what your words mean to me:

1- calling yourself a sick pervert is fine - if you really mean it. But if you are just trying to put yourself down, then it is silly and damaging.

A truly sick person gets help. He does not whine for long. He goes to a doctor and takes medicine, gets surgery, whatever. He goes to any lengths to get better.

Are you ready? Or do you still just want to beat yourself up? Does a person beat himself up over having lung cancer because of his smoking? Or does he get frantic, desperate and get help no matter what the cost?

The fact that you are unwilling to go to a rebbi means to me that you just want to whine, not get help. It means to me that you just want the luxury of beating the hell out of yourself. Still. Sex with yourself is just another luxury, then, so why not? If you are such a loser, then who cares? This is not a recovering person's attitude.

You are in good shape - if you use what you see to get help. But if you just hide behind a username here on GYE, you are still just playing around, it seems to me, and do not really mean what you are writing.

And pain is no barometer, either. I have had pain galore from my addiction. Only when it got bad enough that I needed help, did I start getting better, and stay sober one day at a time. Not just 'holding on for one more day at a time', but actually taking the difficult but simple steps necessary for me to get sober and recover one day at a time.

If you hate me for saying this then only you lose, but go right ahead.

I really hope you start getting the help you need.

B"H

Dear Yeshiva Bochur,

I am also a Yeshiva Bochur. A baal teshuva . I learn in one of the top yeshivas, and no one knows that I come from an unobservant family. In order to adopt the lifestyle that I now live, I had to drop many things that I was totally in to. Some were smoking tobacco and marijuana, fooling around being close with girlfriends, immodest videos and pictures, and many other habits that I was very involved in. I still have struggles with seeing girls and have to always be careful not to allow myself to fall into old taavos, but I'm just here to tell you: I understand you. You're not the sick person you think you are. In Chassidus we learn that each Jew has a literal part of Hashem in him, a G-dly soul. The root for this teaching is in the works of the Arizal. This soul is your true identity, no matter what you may do, your G-dly soul remains the pure part of Hashem that it forever will be. So know, just return to what you are. I would say that my piece of advice to you is this: Whatever was, was. Now say to yourself: No matter what I've been through, Hashem loves me. I know that he just wants me to turn to Him for help, and be what I truly am--a prince.

I am davening for you and I am sure that you will have tremendous hatzlocha.
Tracht Gut Vet Zein Gut!!! [Think good and it will be good!]

Bachor we would love to hear more from you.

Btw everything Dov writes is with deep love.