Hi Yosef Hatzaddik, @chancy is the posek on urge surfing, so I'll let him pasken, but to me it looks like you really got it! Keep inspiring us all with all the amazing work you are putting in!

@Yosef Hamelech
You are getting it! Once you actually do it a bunch of times, you will understand it clearly and see what i mean thats it not what YOU are but a small part of your brain. 
To clarify, i spoke about 2 different ideas. 
1 is Urge Surfing, thats for when the desire starts burning, just to watch it rise and then fall like a wave, not too deep stuff.
2 Diffusion, this is where you learn to stop thinking about the desire as a part of you that you want, but rather learn to know what YOU really want and the desire is just something that your addicted brain wants because of some neuroplasticity that will weaken with time as you stop using those pathways. Its harder work but a game changer for people like us. 
And no, that problem i had 2 days ago went away BH, but im in more pain now, look at my post called Perfectionism and Addiction for more info.

Bh celebrating a week clean.
Been having a lot of images moving through my head recently, but bh I'm being very careful to not get caught up in them (which is actually doing wonders in how many less urges I have). It's getting a bit annoying though to constantly have to remember to not keep thinking about them, but what should I do. I guess it just takes time for my mind to forget all the stuff that I've seen over the years, and the more that I keep ignoring the thoughts, the more natural it'll become, and the less often the images will stop by to visit my brain.

My dear friend Yosef the Mevakesh!! Im a newcomer here and im so impressed with your honesty and determination!! Maybe I'll a thing or two from you..last shabbos (yisro, the week of aseres hadibros no less!!) i fell once...no twice...no thrice...no four times!! Im not trying to set a record here or "mutarize" anything, but you should just know how much of a struggle this for ALL OF US!! one of my biggest issues was thinking im the only one and im one of the 36 hidden reshaim etc etc..but we're all just good yidden fighting the final battle before mashiach.
I just want to share something with you (trying to keep it short because i know I have a hard time reading long posts!!) 
In the Novardok yeshiva (which was known for emes above all else) someone asked the rosh yeshiva (i think i was the alter, not sure) to point out the best bochur in the yeshiva. Who was it? not the biggest lamdan, not the biggest masmid, not the one with the longest clean streak, but the biggest MEVAKESH!!
Keep up the fight!!

Yeshayahu 41:6 wrote on 19 Feb 2023 23:27:

First of all Welcome to GYE! You're doin gr8 that you keep getting up and fighting. KOT! Secondly, thanx for the beautiful post.

I just wanna say something along the same lines as you said. When I was choosing a GYE username, like prob lots of us here whose names are Yosef (If this is enough info for you to be able to identify who I really am than good job Mr. Super Genius Detective Person!) I wanted the name Yosef Hatzaddik who was the shpitz person to fight in this area, but of course that username was already taken..... I thought for a sec and chose the name Yosef Hamevakesh and didn't think much of it.
Since then I can't even begin to tell you how many times I would be down about falling, and I would feel hopeless, and I would just start talking to Hashem about my feelings (I do this a lot). One thing which pretty much always gives me a boost is I remember- רחמנא ליבא בעיא- Hashem wants the heart (loose translation). So I tell Hashem, that even though I fell, and I'm very far from BEING CLEAN like a Yosef Hatzaddik, I WANT to be clean, I'm Yosef Hamevakesh, and that's what you want from me. I may find that at this point in my struggle it's pretty much impossible for me to be completely clean, but I still crave it, and it doesn't bother me because being a mevakesh (with a normal amount of work) is the only thing that Hashem really wants from us, and the end results of what we do isn't necessarily in our hands. Btw, if I remember correctly, the bochur in the story that you brought down turned out to become the Steipeler Gaon zt"l (apparently being a mevakesh can go a really long way).
Looking back, I'm very happy to be blessed to have chosen such holy username, that's a constant reminder about who I really am and what serving Hashem is all about

I had a small win (but of course a big deal) today. I was going somewhere but changed the way I was going in middle to a little bit of a less convenient way to avoid seeing things that were arousing me. I'm not such a tzaddik'l that I do this often, but today I bh had the strength to do it.

Your thread is such a chizuk. It's amazing that you're dealing with this before marriage. Hashem will help you to overcome it completely. I enjoyed your post about being Yosef Hamevakesh as opposed to Yosef Hatzaddik. I love that, that's such emes

Yosef Hamevakesh wrote on 20 Feb 2023 15:31:

You call that small win?!?! I call that HUGE win!!
You have known idea what went on in haven when you made that detour today… hope you davened for something then or if you didn’t yet you still can!

yosef my brother, i overcome something today too. who knows if your "small win" got the ball rolling and ended up helping me as well..

Yeshayahu 41:6 wrote on 21 Feb 2023 03:41:

Could be it was a kiyum of the passuk "איש את רעהו יעזרו".......

And in response to @Geshmak! Yes. I did daven.

Celebrating a year since joining GYE!! I would like to ramble a little bit here, so plz bear with me (gonna be a bit long, but hopefully worth it).......

Like probably many of us here, after struggling for a bunch of years, I expected all my problems to come to an end as soon as I joined GYE. In fact, I think that it was sometime in my early GYE days that I got my only clean streak to date which was over 30 days. When I fell, I was utterly disappointed and I thought that I had failed. If being on GYE isn't enough to make me stop, then what is? I would keep falling as often as I did before I joined, and until recently, I really thought that I was hopeless.

What I didn't realize, was that the fight isn't about the streak, or how many times you fall. If you fall that doesn't necessarily mean that you failed. Even if you keep falling, that doesn't mean that you're not growing. The way I understand it (this is from my personal experience, but I'm guessing that it's more or less the same for most people in this area), the first steps of growth need to happen in your head.
• You have to stop thinking low of yourself just because you're struggling more than you would like to. You didn't choose to have this struggle, it was given to you by Hashem so that you can grow and become closer to Him.
• You have to understand that the fight isn't an all or nothing (I had a very hard times with this, as prob many of us here who have some perfectionist tendencies do). There will be times where you will fall, but that does not mean that you shouldn't fight for today. Todays victory strengthened your fighting muscles, and the victory will be yours forever, and it doesn't make a diff if you fall in the end.
• You gotta stop thinking that just because you have an urge, it means that you're gonna fall. This thinking is something that we build up over the years of giving in to our urges, and we sorta default to falling when we get an urge. If we realize that a big part of the urge is just exaggerated illusions of pleasure that the brain is feeding us because it wants the feeling of porn/masturbation, but it's not an actual real need that we have, we can overcome the urges much more easily, and then they'll start coming less often.
• And I think that at my stage, so far the best piece of advice that I can give anyone, is that you can avoid probably close to 90 percent of the urges that you'll get from keeping your thoughts clean. I can't stress this enough. When you see something, or when an image pops into your head, you may not be used to ignoring it, and it takes practice to master, but as long as your not already in a state where you're actively lusting and craving these things, it's not THAT hard to not keep thinking about it. Once you dwell on an image, you start fantasizing, which makes you crave more and more of it, until you can't hold out anymore and feel like you need to watch porn or release all the images by masturbating. At the end of the day, the root cause of most urges are the fantasies that you're having. I'm NOT telling you to say that you'll never have any bad thoughts again; I'm just saying that every fantasy that you have brings you closer to falling, and for every thought that you're carful not to fall into, it's a huge win and will help you immensely.

If y'all don't mind, I wanna put my 2 cents in here. To anyone who's new to GYE, hang in there. It can be a long road ahead of you. You may not come completely clean right away, or you may be clean for a little while then fall right back to where you were before, but either way you gotta just keep pushing forward one day at a time. Stick around GYE and you'll eventually pick up the tools that you need and the formula that's perfect for you. It can take time to find what works for you. You're on the right path & don't think that you're not growing just because you don't see it yet.
In the beginning, I posted on the forums but to be honest, I didn't find that it helped me that much, but now, after sticking around, I can tell you, that honestly, the back and forth, and the support that I've gotten on the forums has helped me a lot. It got me to really think about certain stuff and helped me to understand them much better. It just took some time for this tool to start working for me.
There are certain concepts which you may need to hear over and over again from diff angles, until you hear it in a way that resonates with you, and only then it clicks. If you don't give up, and instead keep your eyes open, you're bound to eventually come across something which will get you to understand them.
A big tip that I can give, is to have someone who you can call whenever you have an urge or even when you need a simple boost in the fight. This can literally do wonders (Thanx Reb HHM for being my guy!). It'll help you gain prespective in the fight, and give you strength to keep fighting.
I don't think that I'm completely done with my personal struggle, but I can't even begin to tell you how happy I am that I stuck around, and didn't give up. You can't compare where I'm BH holding now to where I was a year ago. And trust me, I didn't think I was getting anywhere for most of this time, but looking back, now, it's a lot more clear how I did grow.

I'm very fortunate to be a member of GYE, and have grown from it over the past year. I hope to be able to stay here and continue growing and being part of such a holy group of people who are fighting the YH head on. The very fact that we're here, on this site, is a testament to what our true desire is. We want to be clean!! We were chosen to be on the front lines fighting for kedusha. We have to put in our effort, and trust that Hashem knows what he's doing, and will bring us to the point where we belong. That's what Hashem wants from us; nothing more, nothing less. Be"h this mesirus nefesh that we're putting in should be a z'chus for us to ultimately win over this YH, and be zoche to bring & greet Mashiach very soon.

Wow wow, you knocked it out of the park buddy! I read every word of your "ramble" (btw, i get the same feeling when im posting, like im not really in control and its not making sense and my thoughts are tumbling out one on top of another. Reminds me of a story but I dont want to ramble:wink: )

Yosef Hamevakesh wrote on 21 Feb 2023 21:50:

This is gold! 
Every newcomer should read this.
YH, your an inspiration to myself and everyone else who follows your journey.
Much continued hatzlocha!

Great post Reb Yosef!
I feel exactly the same. It takes time to start seeing results. But if you really want to learn and are willing to endure, you can get so much better by sticking around and reading and interacting with others. 
plus the Flight to Freedom program is amazing for everyone. 
keep up the good work, we need everyone’s wins and triumphs!

Celebrating 30 days of no porn, and 2 weeks of not masturbating!!

I don't see any significant difference yet in how I view women by not objectifying them, but I guess it'll just come with time.

I had a pretty serious urge over shabbos (although nothing too major) while I was waiting to fall asleep for my shabbos nap (so not a great time to get up and go walking or schmoozing), but BH I was on my guard (I get urges at that time a lot), and I was able to remind myself that the urge isn't real it's just a mirage, and even though it didn't really get much easier for those few minutes, BH I was still able to keep clean with that in mind.

Btw I did try to "surf" the urge by paying attention to where I felt the tension in my body, and the fact that there was this fantasy floating through my brain that was driving me to feel like I needed to masturbate. I also tried to keep in mind that it's okay to feel like this, and I don't actually need to masturbate. I honestly didn't feel that it helped me at all. At most it helped give me a little bit of awareness to the context of what I was dealing with. Maybe I just need more practice to get the "surfing" right, or maybe because the urge wasn't that big, I didn't have much to "surf" with. Idk. Either way I'm gonna be"h keep doin what I'm doin.