This weekend was my first time ever posting on a forum, i posted in a mini gye community but I wanted to get this out onto the main forums hopefully get some etzah.

I have been struggling with hz"l since i was about 11. However even before then, without really knowing what I was doing, I was engaging in acts to stimulate myself in this way for as long as I can remember. I can distinctly remember engaging in these acts all the way back to preschool. As a preschooler I distinctly remember during naptime in school, it was a coed preschool, I would stimulate myself during naptime and peek over at the exposed stomachs of whoever (boy or girl) was sleeping next to me as i did this. I didn't know why I did this, again all I knew was that it felt good and for some reason it felt even better when looking at people's exposed skin.

In 1st and 2nd grade I remember being pretty compulsive with these habits, i distinctly remember a 1st grade teacher once quietly asked me during class to stop stimulating myself (she whispered it in my ear, she didn't announce this to the class). I also remember one time in 1st grade when I had a friend sleep over and I did the same think I used to do during naptime in preschool, I stimulated myself while looking for any of his exposed skin while he was sleeping.
I would do a similar thing when my 2 cousins, who were both girls my age would come over and the non jewish neighbor's daughter as well, I would always suggest "playing doctor". This game was basically the same thing as i did during naptime in preschool. I would "examine" their stomachs and stimulate myself. 

Then basically from about 3rd grade up until i would say 5th grade these habits were totally forgotten about. Maybe because I switched schools and I was so preoccupied trying to make friends and get comfortable, idk why these habits stopped but somehow they did.

I guess it was 5th grade the habit returned. We had a desktop upstairs in the house and when no one was around I would look for inappropriate pictures of women. It wasn't porn per se but it was extremely inappropriate nonetheless.Then in 6th grade, my older brother left to yeshiva in E"Y which meant I got to take his desktop into my room. This is when I started to view actual porn and unfortunately began real hz"l.

From here on out I guess the story becomes more standard. The first time I watched actual porn and violated hz"l it was an erev shabbos and I can still remember how disgusted i was with myself and made up to never do it again. I barely lasted a week, I remember the next erev shabbos I was back watching the same thing again with hz"l. Throughout middle school this developed to the point where by 8th grade this was practically a daily ritual. In 8th and 9th grade I would often violate hz"l with other boys my age. I was averaging hz"l more than once per day by 10th grade.

Finally, In 10th grade i discovered GYE, installed a filter and bichasdei hashem i somehow made it a month clean.
It has been 5 years since I discovered GYE, and yet, since then I have never succeeded in getting anywhere close to that month clean that I achieved in the beginning.
My struggle has developed to a point where I am constantly pushing off my responsibilities in school due to hz"l and sometimes even miss minyanim in order to engage in these acts.

Every so often I get inspired to begin the fight anew and every time within 2 days to a week, i fail and end up right back to my starting point.

I have been trying the taphsic method now for at least 4 years with no results. I often try to wiggle my way out with loopholes and try to reason with myself that certain situations where outside the specific scope of the neder or other foolish denials. Ultimately the taphsic method has only resulted in me not keeping my nedarim all too often. This has had catastrophic results on my yiras shomayim because it cemented a feeling that what i do b'nister doesn't really matter as long as I seem frum on the outside and shteiging in seder.

I really just don't know what to do anymore. I have tried for so many years to quit and just can't seem to make any progress. 
I have thought about joining some of the phone conferences but I just don't see when I could possibly have the time. Unless I were to cut my nightseder but unfortunately this would come with a major stigma, to someone who doesn't know the situation all they will see is a bum who never comes to nightseder. (Although maybe that is something that could be necessary despite this stigma.)

Is your masturbation habit tied to watching porn or looking at pictures?
Or you just masturbate?
(asking bc I think it makes a difference in your request for eitzos)

Hey Coldturkey,

Nice post, a couple thoughts. 

I think you should stop doing the Taphsik method. You mentioned it has not been working and has been making you feel guilty, plus sometimes it has lead to nederem not being fulfilled. If Taphskik is not working I think you are much better off leaving it and trying something else, especially when all it has done is lead to guilt. Since guilty feelings, as we can all testify, can lead us to falling again. Check out the GYE handbook for other tools you should try instead. 
guardyoureyes.com/ebooks/item/gye-handbook

In regards to the phone conferences, maybe your schedule does not allow you to listen to them live, but you can listen the recordings at your leisure. 

Going cold turkey would be great, however it is not an all or nothing. Fixing this problem overnight would be awesome, however if it takes time that is still much much much much much better than never fixing it. I think it could be argued that it might be easier to focus more on having constant improvement than going cold turkey. (please see tool 8 cutting down: guardyoureyes.com/the-gye-program/20-tools/item/tool-8)

Also just so you know, I think psychology text books list it as very common for preschool kids to stimulate their genitals. Just in case you felt that you were the only one who has, you should know it is very common. 

Hatzlacha!

I think your absolutely right I need to try this method again. I don't think I really gave this method a fair chance on previous attempts. I found in the past I wasn't clear with myself what my short term goals were and I never locked in on a clear obtainable goal, I was too far off the mark for what would be a feasible goal.

I guess just as i'm thinking out loud here, I'm thinking that in the past possibly what was preventing me from setting more reasonable goals was that there was conflicting feeling that from a religious perspective, how could I justify acting out once every few days. How could I set up a system where I will be accepting to do aveiros on a regular basis?
I see now that this logic is flawed because while I am accepting doing aveiros, (this is totally not pshat but im trying to highlight the idea) but maybe this is almost like an aveiro lishmo. These aveiros are ultimately for the purpose of defeating this yetzer horo completely so maybe there is some truth to this thinking.
[But then again this is totally not aveiro lishma because that is only applicable if it is hatzalas klall yisroel like by yael and sisra and possibly only al yiday ruach hakodesh, [nodeh beyehudah, maharik, tos' in nazir] etc.] 

While this isn't necessarily aveiro lishmo per se, I think if this is the best way to fight the yetzer then that's all the justification i need.

@bear,  ​I will try this. Thanks

Hi Welcome! I and many other GYE members have also been in a very similar situation as you are now, where we kinda tried a few different methods and got nowhere! And what helped a lot of us out the most was connecting with others who have been clean for some time and chatting with them on a pretty constant basis and have them guide you through all the hard bumps along the road to sobriety!



 Lots of Luck Yankel!

coldturkey wrote on 26 Feb 2018 18:17:

Hi,
Just to clarify I am obviously not advocating doing avieros. I agree the best response and maybe what is required is to go cold turkey. What I am saying is that if you Chas Veshalom do not go cold turkey you should take a step back and notice improvement. For example, if I never go to minyan but this week I went to minyan most days, I should be optimistic because their is improvement. This is not saying it is ok that I was not at every minyan, what it is saying is that going to some minyanim is better than none, and I am heading in the right direction. If I would have a mindset of all or nothing than I would view the week were I made it most of the days as a failure instead of a sign of improvement. I believe this is part of the philosophy of "one day at a time", it can be overwhelming to say I will never sin again, rather it is much easier to focus on just today and take whatever I can get. Maybe this is part of the idea of "Tephasta Merubah Lo Tephastah". On a similar note, if someone wants to become a lawyer if he will think of all the work he will have to do for college, lsat, law school, bars etc he will be overwhelmed. Rather he should just take it one step at a time, and only focus on what he currently has to do. Same thing by us, might be better to think of just trying to make it through today, than trying to think I will never do it again. Granted the ultimate goal of the student is to become a lawyer and our ultimate goal is to completely stop, though I think in both cases it is most productive to mainly just occupy oneself with the task at hand.

This is how I think I see the situation. Granted I could be wrong, and have a different position right after I submit this post. 

What do you think?

Ok so this is an interesting discussion about what exactly is the mentality of the "conquering ground" and the cutting down technique.
Is the idea that in reality I should try to stop completely right now in this moment and to put in the same amount of effort everyday, and then just not to get upset about falls that were within certain times and look back at the progress.
Or perhaps, the idea is that i am not trying to go cold turkey as a short term goal whatsoever. That I only need to fight extremely hard during those times that I am trying to "gain territory" in, but during all other times, i should just give into the taivos and not try as hard to fight back.
I think that certainly this isn't a matir to act out during those times that I am not currently working on, but rather it is a mentality that those falls are not my concern, they are out of my nekudas habechira at this moment and therefore i shouldn't fret over them.

coldturkey wrote on 26 Feb 2018 03:56:

maybe miss a minyan for a conference call instead?

Could be I should do that, more likely that Seder would need to be what gets cut down though. When do the next call cycles start?
Also, how do I know if I need to turn to SA, I was in a state of mind where I was admitting that I was totally helpless and this was totally out of my bechira to fix. But now, my mentality has shifted a little bit, while I still think completely stopping is beyond my nekudas habechira, however maybe it is within my ability to cut back on how often I act out, and maybe slowly this will move my nekudas habechira to a point where I can fight this struggle head on, is this an unreasonable position given that no tools have been working for me thus far? 

coldturkey wrote on 27 Feb 2018 18:46:

I cannot commit to completely stop forever, and truth be told, I don't even wanna do that. (Lustin' is way too much fun.)

I also can't commit for today (although it is one of the 12 daily renewals).

I could try to make the correct decision right now. I won't click on the kesermalchus website.

Very relevant to this topic. 
Check out this Chizuk Broudcast by Rabbi Frand, titled "Take what you can". 

guardyoureyes.com/GYEFiles/MP3s/gyeboost/GYE%20Chizuk%20Broadcast_58%20-%20Rabbi%20Frand.mp3

I found this idea incredible. 

This is such a great chizuk. The approach of fighting one minute at a time is an incredible tactic that allows us to fight without bogging ourselves down about the future if we know we will fail. I really appreciate that you shared that, thank you very much.

I am just trying to work out how exactly to apply this mentality to the cutting back approach.

Perhaps the mindset is that this "fight for present" without trying to think to much about the future is that instead of fighting for today, i will be fighting for this week. "I don't care that I may not be able to keep up this goal of only acting out 2 times next week, but this week I will meet this goal!" And maybe eventually after just making the goal this week, I could realign my targets on only once per week but that this will only come about through many fights which are each only for this week and not the next. 

And then i guess even within every week the same idea should play out by the day. "I don't care that I may act out tomorrow and will miss my goal for this week, today i will make sure I am strong and staying on pace."

Personally, ODAAT, one day at a time, never really appealed to me. I didn’t like the idea of living for today, everything I do all day is for tomorrow.
I mentioned this to someone, and he said you don’t understand what it means to live ODAAT. He tried explaining but I still don’t think I fully understand.
What did I do instead?
OWAAT, one week at a time. This spoke to me a lot, and is a nice amount of time to set some good goals and work with. So yeah I think that’s a good idea. If you’re doing OWAAT, then look at the whole week and make goals for it, not individual days. And don’t worry about the next week till it comes.
This has worked for me the past few weeks.

HakolMilimala wrote on 28 Feb 2018 05:58:

Interesting idea. I'm curious what that guy meant that you don't understand what it means to live ODAAT. From what I understand you're not changing the ODAAT concept. Like you say don't worry about next week til it comes, that's how I understand ODAAT; don't worry about the next DAY until it comes. You're changing the segment of time to focus on. A week gives you a nice chunk of time to work with and set achievable goals I guess. That correct?

Thanks for sharing, I might start doing that. I also feel a day is too short lived to achieve meaningful goals.

One day at a time has nothin' to do with goals.

God speed!