Thank ZS I'm trying and knowing people r out there who care makes a real difference. Thanx 4 being there for me I really appreciate it! It gives me chizuk. I try to be very honest because I understand that, that's the only way I could get out. I also feel that so much of this problem is hidden in our community most if us feel that we don't have a place to turn so now when I have the opportunity to share I have a place to turn I feel that it's my obligation to be honest. Hopefully my sharing will be a help to som1 else. Unfortunately I'm in this situation if I could be help to someone else I think that's not only making the best of a bad situation but actually lifting it up to a positive.

welcome aboard boobusy im glad you found this site and started posting im finding it very helpful. it good to know im not alone and there are others out there with the same problems and history this is a fight that we cant fight on our own.
please post as much as you want on this thread we are all in this togather and you came to a place where people really care and really want to help and more importantly understand you

Gosh what to do when wherever I turn there's something to look at? Yes there's taivah pulling me all the time. I have to run around for work a lot so I spend a lot of time on the road and there's beautiful women all over and most of them are dressed suggestively. Its lonely I'm running around on my own and only get to Talk to some shkutzim. What's a guy to do???? Driving around on my own seeing all this ( I never know how much I actually "look" till recently its like second nature). So I see something and that's a trigger or hear somthing that's a trigger or just that lonely and down feeling that's a trigger. (Sometimes seeing something and knowing I can't have and will never have it triggers a downer). Then it triggers me to want to turn to porn either its just the taivah and I want t"get off". or maybe its just getting out of realty for a little bit? Who knows?
I just thought I should post.
Please respond to this post I could use all the chizuk I could get.
Thanx
(Also posting on "breaking out" "I'm falling" tread

Can you call a friend while on the road? Listen to a shiur maybe?

It is truly amazing how much you look now that you are conscious of it right? I was totaly shocked at myself and how bad I was.

Just try to keep yourself sane, try to keep your mind occupied by other things, that is what I do when I am sitting on the train. Mind occupied, eyes not where they shouldn't be. Remember the first look is on G-d the second look is on you.

good luck. Keep strong

Dear oyvey (but I mean the real you of course, not your fake name),

MBJ wrote very good advice, including "Try keeping yourself sane" - but I am here to share that if it is still failing you, then it is time to see that you can't keep yourself sane because your own brain, body, and heart is the very problem itself! I am not name-calling, just observing. If you are still suffering and really plotzing for a way out, then please hear me out.

Your situation is so common among us, 'oyvei'. So I looked back a couple of posts and saw what I wrote to you around Shvu'os time, and see that it addresses what you are hurting about so much, here. You call what you need 'chizzuk' - I do not believe you need any chizzuk.

'Chizzuk' for a situation like yours is like giving a man five bucks when he is poor, sick, and out of a job. He smiles, is grateful...but will his life change at all? Probably not. He will eat for another day, that's all. Only the one who helps him get a job is really helping. The others are just delaying the inevitable. That's nice...but not really what the fellow needs. And maybe it's even worse. For delaying the inevitable is practice at being satisfied with a fsamiliar false sense of security. The opposite of accepting responsibility. OK, ok, enough abt that...sorry.

So instead of 'chizzuk' I suggest changing the way you do things...not just the way you struggle with your lust for the images of the women you see, but changing the way you live - just a little bit. I wrote you above that opening up to real people and involving real people you meet on a daily basis (using their real first name and your real first name, of course) is one way to make this real. If you do not do anything like that, but just stick with this virtual posting thing with a virtual name, and never meet a real person who is like you and join forces to focus on real life, you will finally be answering your own question.

Living and struggling inside our own little heads is a surfire way to keep getting the same garbage experience of every summer. Like losing blood all summer, lusting again, controlling it and limiting it, 'distracting ourselves from it (so we do not have to really open up honestly to anyone else chas vesholom!)

Here is some math: The pretty girls everywhere - they are real, their bodies are real, their voices are real...but is your forum-posting as real as your experience with them is? No, it cannot be. If you are not even seeing any real recovering person face to face, nor speaking to any real recovering people on the phone directly and personally, then it is not as real as these women taking your attention away. So why would you imaging it should work? How will it be an effective 'chizzuk' against something that your own body sees and feels? I think not. It's like hitting a charging bear with a willow reed.

GYE and this forum are indeed powerful tools! I do not deny that. But if you say you are still sufferring, then it is plain to see that you need a higher level of emess. The comfort of your own private mind is not working for you. There are safe people here you can talk to on the phone or meet over a coffee for a morning chizzuk talk before going out to work. I do that frequently and it helps all those who do. I do not go through my day struggling, because I live on a different basis. The fantasy and images of the women are even less real than my recovery is! Cuz I recover with real people.

Finally, you say all you have "is the shkotzim to talk to." I know many shkotzim who do not go around drooling over the pretty women and do not struggle through the day with these issues - because they are in recovery as I am. My spomsor is a sheigitz. So?

Better you should find a real, sober sheigetz to open up with daily, than have the brain of a confused holy Jew to guide you! Our own brains are the worst neighborhoods, you know....

Try it, chaver. I am not criticizing you, MBJ, or anybody. Just sharing what you may need to try, that's all.

- Dov

Dov
With all due respect you speak like the king of the jungle.
I appreciate the fact that you over came a lot and have been sober for years and I congratulate you on that. But that doesn't mean you have all the answers and what worked for you is necessarily what will work for someone else.

Dov Rocks!
his truth is painful, yes
sometimes it's a bit sharp
and may sound all Rough and tough, but there are mountains of truth behind his words, but he has a lotof experience, basicaly we can try to use his success to build our own strategy.

and of course everybody needs chizzuk

I need chizzuk to wake up
to daven
to work
to not do dope
etc.
but that's not the only thing

that's the bells and wistles, the oil in the engine
but we need a full tank of gas too
and that is a good battle plan.

remember OV XXVII,
Hashem created you
he brought you to were you are now
and he will help you get out of the dump (quagmire, swamp, cesspool etc...)
But he wants to see you doing all you can to do it yourself.

Oyyvey27 wrote:

If you have been reading a lot of dov, you will see that he frequently admits that he is simply sharing what worked for him, and it may not be for everyone. At the same time, he sees many here trying to use "chizzuk" as their primary tool for recovery, when it clearly is not working. Sometimes, he tries to wake people up a bit, but it is not out of ga'avah at all.

In fact, the first step to recovery is essentially humility. Coming to the realization that you do not have the power to stop and must rely on a higher power.

Oyyvey27 wrote:


I did not get personal with you and did not say "you speak like _____" . What I did do, was say some uncomfortable things that may aaply to you, and may not. Life is short, 'oyveyy', so can you dan me l'kaf z'chus? Maybe then, you will see past the stuff you might not like and we can learn from each other, and maybe not.

I do not have all the answers, for sure, and may have failed more than most here. But failing a lot does give some experience that can help others, and I believe that is Hashem's greatest gift to me in this life (after my wife and children), so far. My being a pervert in recovery has helped many people and that makes me and my wife very grateful to G-d who is far better to me than I deserve.

Now, every single suggestion and idea I wrote to you above may be completely wrong. Yet I do believe all I wrote to you with my whole heart and try to live it and share it one day at a time.

I sincerely hope that you do what actually works for you, be"H.

But one thing to qualify that hope:

How does a person really know what works for him or her? If is agreeable?

I have learned that when many people (maybe not you at all!) say "I am not comfortable with taking that action", or "oh, that plan does not work for me" - they really are just afraid. Going out of their comfort zone. Afraid to try something new and different. We generally prefer to remain using the only tool they believe they can use. Of course, if our tools were working, we would not be posting here on GYE...

Unfortunately, the tool they have been using (whatever mussar/hashkofah/self-control/psychology idea set that 'agrees with them' is the very thing that got them in this mess to begin with and using it has been digging them deeper into trouble. They just do not see that yet because they have not been confounded by enough failure... yet. So should I stand by an focus on being Mr Nice-guy? Pat on the back and chizzuk? "Yeah, You CAN do it!" - same thing as always but just more sincerely is the answer? I doubt that's the way. Thinking and 'inner work' without taking real actions (or taking real action that is totally private so that the isolation and secrecy can persist) are common ways many people (including me but maybe not you, seriously) stay in the same mess for a lifetime. When the rebbe Reb Mailech wrote #13 in the tzet'l kotton, he knew what he was talkign about - and he was not even speaking to addicts!

Every single person I know in recovery is shocked that it is actually working. Cuz we'd never guess it. The actions of recovery go against our very nature...that's why they work. Cuz real change has to go against our nature or else it isn't real change, at all, but just more of the same comfortable struggling and hoping. This is precious to me. I fyou disagree and see it as stahm nahrishkeit, I respect your right to an opinion 100% and have no desire to argue the point.

So, if I suggested something to you that is truly wrong for you, please accept my apolgies. And even if it was right for you but not yet because you have not sufferred enough to need it, please accept my apologies as well. But I take risks for recovery and say/write some things the way that rebbe teitched 'al levovecha' - "put things on your heart even before you are ready to let them into your heart - because one day the heart will open and they will fall in!" (But I what I said is just plain wrong, then I pray it never falls into anyone's heart, c"v!)

And if anything I wrote was insulting, I apologize for that, as well. Though if I did, please let me know so that I might not do it to the next guy.

Thanks fellow Jew (whatever your real first name is), and hatzlocha!

Dov

mr. emunah wrote:


Y'know, reading my post to 'oyyvei'...noticed the ending where I wrote, "I am not criticizing you, MBJ, or anybody. Just sharing what you may need to try, that's all." Hmmm....

But I'm posting to you here cuz you wrote, "Hashem wants to see you try what you can," and I agree, but want to fram it a little differently. You may like it.

The Kotzker asked people, "Where is G-d found?" They told him all the normal, true answers, like "m'malei kol almin v'soveiv kol almin," and "m'lo chol ha'aretz K'vodo," etc. And he said "Nah!"

Then he said, "Herr tzich ein: Hashem is only found where people let Him in!" (He said that last part in Yiddish, too, but I don't know how to say it:( )

Another little hakdomah: Hashem knew Avrohom avinu was going to do the akeidah. So why make a 130+ year old man schlep across the wilderness and then up to the top of a mountain?! Perhaps the kashya sounds a bit balbatish, but hang on.

OK.

I'm with you 100%, Emu! But it is not only that 'He wants us to do all we can before stepping in'....it's even more than that. Perhaps He knows all these things but wants us to open up by taking real action. Taking real action is always a sacrifice of the self. He wants us to open up - He does not do that for us. And our taking real (uncomfortable) action is one of the few ways we really let Him in. (That's why the 12 step drunks of AA focused on action but admitted it is really 'an inside job'. They saw that real recovery means the addict bears full personal responsibility for his actions and recovery. Only he or she can let G-d in. Or, "ein hadovor tolui elloh bee," as R' Elozor ben Durdaya put it.) Perhaps this is why the ikkar of all avodah (as the ShaL'oh hakadosh writes) is korbonos. Sacrifice is surrender - it is what it is really all about. Letting Him in is our part - then He does the rest if we remain open and surrenderred. That has been my experience and the experience of my recovery buddies so far.

Sure Avrohom had it in him! But only by taking the action would bring that out of him and change him into a different man than he was before he actually did those things. And it did. So Hashem let him do it all before stopping the akeidah.

So it may be that taking real actions is the only way people really 'let Hashem in'. Good intentions and even good madreigos and yir'ah, are not very much by themselves, and Hashem is not found there (at least in this Olam ha'asiyah).

Make any sense at all?

Exactly.

Really? If all that makes sense to you then I would suggest a full psychological battery...

Just following Lazer Brody's advice...
"where the Brain kicks out, Emunah kicks in."