1) Traveling and staying away from home this week
2) Purim this week
basically, a big week for me, when it comes to staying clean.
Travel has always triggered me one way or another.
And Purim, in previous years it was always a time of acting out.
Heres to hoping bs’d things go well this this time around

of course I can’t just hope and throw my hands up, time to plan, hmmmmm...

Opportunity is a big trigger. Make plans to check in with someone every so often.  That will help keep you on your toes.  Make sure to stay busy as well.  Do you have people that you have been meaning to call?  An old friend?  A relative?  Make a point of calling them.  It will also help keep you grounded.

Remember us as we are rooting for you and waiting to hear only great news from you
report back with success

Have a great and clean purim

HakolMilimala wrote on 26 Feb 2018 05:28:

I think many masturbaters or addicts are know-it-alls to a certain extent, and that's what gets us in trouble. We think we can just figure ourselves out. But what we are really doing is shying away from being honesthone truthfull.  Just a thought.

Anyway glad you enjoyed. If you liked that one I highly advise listening to all his talks. They are what keep me going on this journey.

Made it back to yeshiva in one piece bh!
Thank you so much Hashem for holding my hand over the past few days and guiding me to a kosher experience.
Thanks to all of you who offered your kind words of encouragement. I thought about you in a few moments of weakness.
When I got back to yeshiva, I felt legit out of it! Extremely hard to sit back down and learn! In the past, if I had time off from yeshiva and I acted out/did things that I don’t do anymore, then it would be hard for me to learn and I would assume it was because of my sins. 
But for the most part, i don’t think i sinned too terribly this time. Obviously, what goes on in my mind/thoughts always needs work. But my behaviors were good bh.
Why then, do it feel so hard to get back into the yeshiva schedule and learn? I have a couple theories let me know what you think please.

Maybe it’s non-learning related. Even if I was involved in secular work, after a few days vacation, I would need a few days readjustment period?

Maybe this has what to do with the mussar vort, that if you don’t run for Torah, it runs away from you (heard this once, if anyone knows mikor, please share). As a result, even though I was pretty clean, I definitely didn’t do close to my normal amount of learning, and as a result, the Torah has ran away and I have to fight to get it back?

maybe this is because when I’m not in yeshiva, I am even more so inside my mind, and less living. Constantly analyzing my own actions in the context of my surroundings, analyzing how others perceive me. Maybe when I come back to yeshiva, it’s just hard to get out of my mind and sit down and do what I have to do?

as you can see, I’m kinda grasping at loose-ends so please help me out here.

I never had much of a sipuk in learning, and always felt like you describe after returning to yeshiva. I had always attributed it to your first theory that it's just hard to get back into it after being away, just like anything else. There's a reason Mondays are universally hated Eventually you settle back into the routine. But perhaps there is more to it, especially if in your situation you do generally get joy out of learning...

Good job of staying in 1 piece ,cleaning up people shells isnt all its cracked up to be.

Regarding feeling out of it -just wondering how much did you learn over the break ? if not too much ,than it makes sense to feel out of it , if you did learn a lot ,than someone wiser than me will have the  answer.

keep on doing awesome!

i-man wrote on 05 Mar 2018 03:59:

Not too much learning, and so you say it makes sense.
I can agree with that.
The question is why does it make sense?
In life, you can link cause and effect, often quite easily.
But I want to get real self-awareness, because for me, that can lead to me being honest with myself.
In order to do this I must understand why the cause causes the effect.

Hi HakolMilimala,

Welcome back! You are awesome. Keep on inspiring us.
Your first theory totally makes sense. There is an readjustment period to every aspect in life.

One of the unwritten rules in sales, never cold call someone Monday morning.

Regarding a Mekor for the running away from torah, I think it is a Yerushalmi in Brochos 68a: 

As an aside, I think you're overanalyzing yourself. For me it is not healthy. It is fine for me to know there is a cause and effect, without knowing the why. Are you by chance a scientist? Do you understand the why for everything else in life?
Be well, May you have much Hatzlocha in all areas of your life.

[quote="]But I want to get real self-awareness, because for me, that can lead to me being honest with myself.
In order to do this I must understand [i]why [/i]the cause causes the effect.[/quote]
I don't understand, please enlighten me. In order to be honest you need to understand what is causing you to do something, and why it is causing it???

As an aside, in answer to your question about learning. Just to throw a theory out there (which you seemed to imply anyway). In the past you would attribute your non learnig to your sinning. Now that that has been removed you don't understand why your not learning. But it is quite possible that there always was something else, which is why you are not learning (and possibly caused your acting out too)

Hakolhevel and lionking, thanks for the posts.
Let me explain. I don’t mean that I have to know why the cause causes the effect. What I really meant was that I have this very big open box of what th box is called “taking a break from yeshiva,” and when I say I’m trying to figure out why the cause causes the effect, I mean that I am trying to find what exactly the cause is.

After that explanation, im sure you can agree that knowing what the cause is surely beneficial. If I know that it’s simply removing myself from learning, then I can know for the future to stay better committed to my learning.

and Hakolhevel, about there being something else to this story, I think there definitely is. And I’m aware of one thing that’s making this difficult and really burning me up right now. I’m longing to connect with someone on a deeper level emotionally. Someone that I can share my emotional pain with, and someone that can feel comfortable sharing their emotional pain with me.
I had this for a few years when I used to speak to girls, but as I’ve “shtarked” out, I don’t have this. There is one girl that I was very close with who I haven’t talked to in two years and I have never missed her more than tonight. I can’t text her now. Now she’s married. And either way it wouldn’t be the right thing for me, right? 
Im so lost when it comes to this area, because there is not one boy in the world that I can really open up with in this emotional and raw way.
And I don’t have the right relationship for this with the women relatives in my life.
Im not in Shiduchim yet, so I push myself to just stay single and keep it all locked up inside for so long. And when I leave yeshiva, this gets brought up again, because I often meet people that I long to connect with, and because I see other people who have this beautiful connection in their life. What am I supposed to do? Just go through another couple years of hel* without an emotional partner.
This is the real rut that i get into every once in a while, and this is one I don’t know if even therapy can really help me with this one.

So instead of having a real emotional connection with someone, I turn to the anonymous gye forums.
Next best thing I guess.
Lets hope it cuts it.

please, legends of gye forums, if you’re super wise, and way older than me, and have way more life experience than me, and think you can help me with this rut, please do reach out.

And if you’re wondering why I don’t just go and get married:

I push off marriage because I want to feel like I have earned it, like I deserve it, like I didn’t buck the system, like I was man enough to do it the real way, and because besides like feeling that way for myself, I want others to look at me that way. I don’t want to be too weak. The guy that couldn’t make it, so he had to get married young. I want to make it through these single years strong. And of course I want to grow a lot more as a person and in my learning first.

Is that a worthwhile reason to not pursue my natural drive?

I think so, but then I’m in a rut.
Two options, neither a good one. What a life.
And I never want to put down the system, but this is absolutely a product of the system I’m in, no matter how necessary it is. If I had open contact with these girls I was close with, I would not be in this rut. When I spoke to them, I was very happy, and it was very emotionally fulfilling. Now I long for that feeling.

and this is overkill now, I’m gonna go to sleep and wake up in the morning, force myself back into my schedule and push all these thoughts out of my mind and keep forging on. A solution or a band-aid?

Thanks for the clarification, I understand.
I truly feel for you.
Sleep well, Hatzlocha!

HakolMilmala, you verbalized what many people feel. The inability to share that deep emotional pain with most of our friends. Take the issue which brought us all here. Would we go over to a close friend and say "I really am struggling with masturbation. Its out of control. I am doing it numerous times a day with the following erotic scenes in mind....I need help."? With rare exception, the answer is a resounding "definitely not!"  Those of us here that have suffered from depression/anxiety and the like know very well that "hell" of silence. Suffering while putting on "the show". Complete lack of emotional support. or even financial help - as opposed to someone with a "real" medical issue who the whole community rallies behind.   For me, GYE was the refua. I found people i could call up and even meet who i could share 100% of my human shortcomings. I could get out in the open the horrible extent of my lack of sexual control with all its gory details (of course being careful not to trigger others). I could finally say the words masturbation, pornography, sex, erection, ejaculation, etc..... And i could share the depression and anxiety it all produced. My suggestion - pick up the phone and call some of the chevra here that will understand you and let you vomit out all your raw emotional pain. You will iyh experience catharsis and will be on the road to recovery. Hatzlocha buddy.