Celebrating 2 weeks clean bh!

Yosefhamevakesh wrote on 08 Feb 2023 18:44:

That's 336 clean hours... Amazing!
(I know we all have calculators, but every clean hour is another reason to celebrate) 

I fell over shabbos. Twice.
The first time, I was in the bathroom and then outta nowhere I got this huge urge to just masturbate. I was caught a bit off guard because I have been very careful with my eyes and thoughts since my last fall 17 days ago, and I literally don't think I had even 1 serious urge since then.
Afterwards, I woke up from my shabbos nap after an extremely arousing dream, and pretty much got overwhelmed with a huge urge and masturbated again.

Bh, I'm still keeping my eyes and thoughts clean. Also, both times that I did it, I wasn't really fantasizing about women, I just wanted the feeling of masturbating. I guess, that in a way, that's a good thing because it means that I'm really working on keepin my thoughts clean, which overall means less urges.

I still don't understand how I'm supposed to do urge surfing. When I have a burning urge, I need a way to get that energy out, and I don't think that I can just let it simmer inside (not that I think that I'll actually explode, it's just that sometimes, it's just too overpowering to not do anything with it).
I can't always find a way to distract myself or diffuse the urge (shabbosim can be harder because I'm not as busy as during the week; and I cant always just diffuse it, like for example when it hits me in middle of nowhere when I'm in the bathroom, or late at night when I can't excersize, or on shabbos, when I can't call someone).

When it comes to fantasies, I BH got much better at not getting caught up in the images and instead letting them just pass. But when it come to an urge, I'm still not sure how to let it pass. An urge is an overwhelming feeling to masturbate, not just a thought, and I can't really ignore an overwhelming feeling the same way that I can just ignore a thought (or maybe I could, it's just harder and I'm missing a technique). Plz advise.

Yosefhamevakesh wrote on 11 Feb 2023 17:46:

A gut vuch! Your really making HUGE progress… BH! I’m so happy for you! 
You had small fall but many amazing wins!
You asked for advice… I was thinking to tell you to go do exercise to get the energy out but you wrote abt that yourself seems you know the tricks already ( for me it works wonders bh, it’s hard to get out and do the jogging but it feels so good afterwards) but you said shabbos you can’t do exercise… why not?? You can’t do the exercises like jogging biking etc. but why not go for a geshmakah brisk walk with a friend ( family member) or even yourself… enjoy the shabbos air!

הצלחה רבה!!

First of all, my holy friend, you got 17 clean days! 17 days of shaking the world with your kedusha! And by your own admission, even your falls were not as terrible as things that happened in the past. So you are doing gevaldig! Give yourself a real pat on the back!
About urge surfing, I hope @chancy won't mind mind if I copy paste a piece he wrote last week that explained it so well:
the more you fight it, the more power you give it, and your brain will keep on coming up with ways to arouse you because it sees that you really want it...... 
What you can do based on my experience is to take a time out and take a few minutes to make a few things clear. 
1. You enjoy the feeling of desire and lust- its a fact that you cannot and will not change. 
2. You are normal and not sick, this has been the human condition forever! 
3. You do not want to use that desire in a bad way, obviously or you wouldnt be here on GYE..... so you know what you dont want.
4. You can understand where the feeling of desire comes from and you are ok with the fact that its there, since you cant fight it anyway, just make place for it. so you are not in a fight with the actual desire anymore, that would be like fighting with your left hand because you want 2 right hands..... its there, just accept that fact. 
5. Now you can decide what to do when you see something that arouses you. You can think, i know i have desire and i understand it and i cant fight it, however, i dont want the desire to carry me away and then i will do something stupid that i will regret, and therefore, i am moving on from the desire and not continuing to pour oil on it. 

I would add, on Shabbos there are also things you can do to distract yourself, you can take a brisk walk, go find a friend to shmooze with about something that's on your mind, or better yet, go find a friend to learn some Torah with. Hope something helps. remember my friend, we are war here with the YH. You took so much ground from him, you are amazing, and a fall means nothing more than that you fell. You'll be great, just stand back up, shake off the dust, and keep trucking! Keep posting and inspiring!

You wrote: "Bh, I'm still keeping my eyes and thoughts clean."  That is the stuff of heroes. A massive shift, and one that will b'ezras Hashem get you over the hump.

I was thinking about it (and talking it over a bit with HHM) and it seems that when it comes to urge surfing, I gotta work on not panicking when they hit. When I get a normal urge or something even a bit stronger, many times I'll try to distract myself, or make a phone call etc. and it'll usually be enough; but sometimes, I will get a really really strong urge outta nowhere, and I feel like I absolutely need to masturbate, and the feeling is so overpowering that I can't think about anything else, let alone think about distracting myself, or releasing the tension with excersize. I guess what usually happens is that I panic, lose all focus, see no way out, and give in.

It sounds like I gotta internalize the point that @Eerie was making (and what everyone said in the past): Fighting the urge will only make things worse. What I have to do is pretty much accept it and not be afraid to feel it. Don't give in to the urge, instead do my best to distract it or release it in a healthy way; and it'll eventually pass on its own.

I think that I understand the concept pretty well, it's just that I guess, because I've always been too afraid to accept and live out  a massive urge before, it feels like it's just impossible for me to do. It feels like it'll take superhuman strengh to not give in, and I don't have that.

For now, I don't know how I can work on the urge thing any more than I am; but either way, I'm Be"h gonna keep thinking about it and continue being very careful not to fantasize at all, which as y'all have said, has BH been a huge step for me in the right direction.

Beautiful!

Writing it out the way you did, or sharing it with another guy who is struggling, helps one internalize it. It makes one start believing in it. Keep it up buddy. You are a paragon of resilience. With syatta d'shmaya you will iyh graduate from all this soon.

Urge Surfing is about feeling the urge and desire from a outside preceptive.
So lets replay your story from Shabbos, Il focus on the first fall, (the second one after a dream is harder because it more like watching porn, for me its actually more arousing because in the dream you were a part of the porn scene, so lets leave that for now).
Rather lets talk about the fact you were overwhelmed with desire in the bath room. 
The desire comes from your brain that remembers how good it feels to be aroused, just like a drug addict or alcoholic feels when they think of or see the alcohol/drug, there is a actual reaction in the brain, its not mental its physical! The brain starts releasing hormones that make you feel good and you crave that feeling, that pattern happens once you starts experiencing sex, its a part of us for some its bigger then others. 
The addiction to porn comes if your brain sees that you cant get enough pleasure from fantasy alone and you need outside stimulation, so you look and that completely overwhelms the normal functions and sort of like hotwires the pleasure sensors. I remember that when i gave in to porn, it was almost impossible for me to stop. Later i learned to actually stop while watching porn and just see how the desire decreases because the images never match up with what your brain wants, which is what causes the viewer to constantly look for other stuff.
However, if you stop watching porn, your brain will slowly give up on that, and will instead just give you these fantasies ether in dream or awake where you start craving that feeling, its an incredible high as we all know. But here is what you do.
1. Get out from where you are! teach yourself not to be lazy, you can change the whole thing in one second if you just get up and go between people, just go on the street, go to shul, anything to remove yourself from that situation if you feel you cant handle it right now. Not only will this help in the present moment, it will also help you train your brain that you can get aroused but you can unplug, your brain will start learning.
2. If you know there is nowhere to go, (its too cold and the shul is closed and nobody is in the house) learn to recognize that this desire is NOT part of who YOU ARE! its just an outside force that got logged into your brain and is hacking you, you have the power to not let him in and not let yourself get drawn into his fraud. imagine you go on the street and you see someone standing over a dead animal bent over, you go closer and you see he is drinking the blood from the animal.....(sorry for making you throw up a little but hang on). You start screaming at this guy "what in sams hill are you doing? you disgusting piece of whatever! and he answers you "i cant help it, i need this, makes me feel good this is part of me" I dont know about you but i would feel immense pity on such a person, he is stuck thinking that he cant help himself when of course he can! just stop doing it. its stupid. 
For some one that's not addicted its easy to see how disgusting it is what we do and how we can stop. but for us it isnt.
You need to start looking from an outside perspective and not from the eyes of an addict.
ITS NOT US, ITS A HORMONE THAT GOT USED TO THIS DRUG AND WANTS MORE!!! Do not give it more fuel to work with. Learn to recognize the outside force. step back and look at it from an outside perspective. the more you do this, the faster your brain will learn that this is not working anymore and will decrease the frequency and power or the desires. 
This is called diffusion- Which means to stop fusing (becoming one) with the thought. The more you give in to this drug the more  you fuse with it and you become inseparable. The more you learn diffusion the easier it will become to remove yourself and move way from that desire and to be able to see it as an outsider who can make a clear decision. 

Duplicate post. See below.

chancy wrote on 13 Feb 2023 17:19:

What I'm understanding that your saying is that when I have an urge,
1. Go somewhere else, and that'll help with the urge, and train my brain that I don't need to give in to urges.
& 2. View the urge as an outside force that is telling me to masturbate. I created a chain that when I have an urge, I masturbate. And because I always gave in, my brain started craving the masturbation more and more with every urge. If I break the chain, and don't give in to the next urge, it'll train my brain to not need to masturbate with every urge. Eventually, the association in my brain between the 2 will be much less and then I'll be able to see how I don't actually need to masturbate because of an urge, the same way that someone who is not hooked sees it.

Pardon me if I'm not paying enough attention to what you're saying, but I don't understand how viewing an urge as an outside force will make it any easier for me to actually resist. I understand that viewing it like such adds perspective as to what is really happening when I have an urge and what I'm doing when I give in; and maybe this understanding should make it a bit easier to resist giving in. But at the end of the day, sometimes, the urge is completely overwhelming, and the craving that I feel is very very real. When such a strong urge hits, I don't really care that I'm self destructing, and that if I don't give in it'll help in the long run. All I want is to get the feeling of masturbating which I crave more than anything else in the world, and all reason goes out the window. You can't expect a heroin addict not to shoot up no matter how well he understands that he's feeding a chain of urge/give in. I don't think that the craving for masturbation comes anywhere near the craving for heroin, but I still don't understand why when in the heat of the moment, when I'm overwhelmed and lose all reasoning, I can really resist giving in.

Also, another thought, I think that last time I gave in, I remember that there was an element of fear that passed through my head. That I was sorta afraid to not give in to the urge or something (maybe "the fear of the unknown" cuz I never really resisted before). Not sure if that adds any perspective as to why I'm having a difficult time understanding this or not.

Let me tell you a story thats happening right now in my head and my body. 
I am on my longest streak in 25 years. And everything was going swimmingly since it started doing what i described above. 
Yesterday while im taking an online course, i was connected as part of the training to a workstation somewhere whoknowswhere.....
As i ws working on that computer, i thought hey, this doesnt have a filter! let me check to make sure. and of course i did and saw there is obsulutly no filter, here i am siting alone at home and im able to look at what i want to my hearts content! my heart was pounding of excitement adraniline was rushing thru me like a river. i thought i will explode. I waited one minute and since i have done this a million times, my brain was able to get back into shape very quickly and i was able to look at it from the outside, saying i know i dont want this and this is just something that my brain remembers from all the years i have done it, and i just moved on. The urge is still there. But its not near overwhelming becuase i saw it for what it is and its not stronger then my actual sensible brain. You ask about Heroin addiction, the same ouwld be true for them as well. What do you think they do in the rehab facilities and addiction centers, they teach them how to resist the urge. 

Let me continue my story, after yesterdays win, was very depressed not becuase of it, but im in a rut lately, so today in the morining i decided to go to the mikvah to purify myself and maybe get better. I knew its risky but i wasnt in the mood of listening to my sensible part. So i went/ Oh do i regret that decision!!! I gave my brain so much fuel! It was so stupid of me to go, I now have to fight much harder untill it goes away. 
Why am i telling you this? becuase i have learned a lesson, the less you give in the easier it will be. 
So if you think your desires are overwhelming, belive me when i say, they will stop being overwhelming if only you stop listening a few times. It will be very hard a few times, then it will be hard an then medium and then easy and sometimes the very hard part will happen again. 
My point is that if you want to win this  battle, you gotta get some tough skin and fight for a bit, no ohter way. It will get easier. Please belive me, ive been there and done that. and im writing this in middle of a huge struggle i have no idea how i will pass the day, but i know that i will not fall. 

Yosefhamevakesh wrote on 13 Feb 2023 21:37:

Chancy responded excellently to your first issue.  Regarding the other issue that you write - the fear, let me reassure you that to the best of my knowledge nobody ever died or took ill by not masturbating. There is no volcano brewing in your body that will explode if not released. There is nothing to fear. Hatzlocha.

chancy wrote on 14 Feb 2023 16:11:

Thanx @chancy for elaborating. I  didn't respond right away to your post (I needed some time to think it over), but if you're still having a hard time like you wrote, I just wanna say that you're really a chizuk to me and many other guys here, and it'll give us all strengh to see you push through this nisayon.

I think that I'm BH finally starting to understand urge surfing. Here's what I was thinking.......
I get very strong urges because this is what I created for myself. These cravings are just this illusion that I'm imagining of me getting immense pleasure if I masturbate. The reason why these illusions are so elaborate is because I watched porn which hyper stimulated how i picture sex, and because my brain really wants the feeling that I get from masturbating (again), so it makes me imagine that it will be much more enjoyable than it actually is (like many of us, I don't even enjoy it anymore at this point.....). These intense cravings aren't something natural, they're something external that I created over time from acting out, by making my brain crave more and more of it. If I don't give in to the urge, it will go away because it's only a mirage, not actually a part of me that I need to fill.
With this in mind, all I need is to put in a little bit of strengh to take a step back from the urge and see it for what it really is instead of letting myself get overwhelmed and giving in to it. If I do this, the urge will just go away because there's nothing fueling it anymore. This will train my brain that when I feel an urge, it doesn't actually mean that I need to act out, which in turn, will cause the urges to get less and less with every time that I don't give in.