Here's a big, warm hug and a heartfelt Bracha.

Don’t let it pull you down, take it up as high as you can!

This feeling of vulnerability could open your heart this Rosh Hoshana to ask Hashem to help you overcome this once and for all.

חזק ואמץ

Fell again!
Hashem! I have nothing to offer to you, But, a לב נשבר, Please get me out of this situation ASAP because I can't take it anymore and things are to complex for me to manage on my own.

true_self wrote on 19 Sep 2023 15:13:

Sorry to hear about your fall, your broken heart is so evident. the Baal Shem tov writes that a לב נשבר  is the key to open all the gates in heaven. 
I would point out that we NEVER have anything to offer to hashem, even if we do manage to stay clean. One of the main keys to success in thins struggle is to come to the realization that without Hashem we're truly powerless. Sometimes the pain of the fall can help you build a new foundation to build a stronger self by working on creating a real connection to Hashem. 

Another point is that sometimes it's good to stay with the "post fall" feeling. On one occasion, a child who was deathly ill miraculously recovered. The parents went to their Rabbi, the Netivot Shalom, and asked what they should do as a payback to Hashem. Should they either donate a Sefer Torah or should they donate money to build a new shul? The Rabbi told them, “For now, don’t do anything. Stay with the feeling that you owe Hashem.” Naturally, we don’t want to feel indebted. We want to feel like we paid back so we don’t have to feel like we owe. But when it comes to Hashem, no matter what we ever do, we’ll never come close to paying Him back. And in fact, the best way to serve Him is to feel indebted. I think it's the same in this struggle, sometimes we try to pay-back to Hashem after we fell, but we can never pay anything back - it's all from Hashem.

The world is full of temptations. If we want to hold on to lust, we will have endless opportunities to continue lusting at every turn. We will be fighting a losing battle by constantly trying not to look at things that we do want to look at so badly. Instead, the real trick to success is to learn how to let go of the lusting altogether. Instead of fighting it head-on, we need to simply let go of it.

As someone who is working the 12 Steps once wrote:

"Today, the fight is much easier for me. When I have urges, I admit powerlessness, acknowledge that Hashem is the only One that can - and will - help me, and I ask Hashem to remove the lust from me. I am frankly surprised by how much better this works than fighting the urges head on".

DavidT wrote on 19 Sep 2023 17:44:

That story is with a positive feeling. Many times these negative feelings are really the YH making us depressed, and are in fact a cause of sin themselves. If we were able to bottle that feeling of "why did i do this" on the other hand. The reality that its just not worth the momentary pleasure. Well, thats a bottle I would pay for! But I have never found a way to do that...

bright wrote on 19 Sep 2023 18:55:

Good point! Research shows that we're better able to resist temptation when we feel good, not bad. Our research also indicated that not all bad feelings are equal when it comes to undermining self-control. For example, when we asked subjects to anticipate guilt instead of shame, it made them eat more cake. Guilt, it turns out, carries a triple whammy: It concentrates thoughts on the temptation rather than on self-control; it makes you generally feel bad, weakening resistance; and it heightens the expected pleasure from being bad, which makes the temptation more tempting.

It is important to understand the difference between charata= healthy guilt & regret, as opposed to yiush: shame & despair.
Guilt is about what a person did, and it can be a constructive feeling in that it can lead one to Teshuvah, to take corrective action. Shame, however, is what one feels he is. In other words, guilt is “I made a mistake”, whereas shame is “I am a mistake”. If one feels that he is inherently flawed, that he is made of “bad stuff”, there is nothing he can do to change that. With guilt there is hope of improvement, but not with shame.

There’s a simple test we can do to know whether we are being motivated by healthy guilt/regret or by shame/despair. If we see that we want to get right back up and find ways to strengthen ourselves again, then it’s a sign that our “bad” feelings are those of healthy guilt and positive regret. If, however, we feel that we just want to give up, then it’s a sure sign that we are experiencing despair and shame, and we must quickly find a way out of these harmful feelings before they lead us to a vicious cycle of continued falls.

DavidT wrote on 19 Sep 2023 20:07:

Thanks!
This sheds light on what I'm going through so many times including now.
My question is, At some point the vicious cycle comes to an end, does that mean that after a certain amount of falls we decide that we can't be in despair anymore and we finally change to healthy guilt and shame??

I have never been able to, personally, at least not until out of the situation... But I would love to hear if others have. In general, I found looking back just led to more sin. See chidushei harim on vidui on yom kippur....

bright wrote on 20 Sep 2023 12:38:

Lot's wife was fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah with her family, Lot’s wife turned around and looked at what she was leaving behind when they were specifically warned “…Do not look behind you…” 

It signifies that we should always be looking ahead at what we can accomplish and not stay stuck by looking behind us - as you've mentioned. 

As one of my rebbeim put it, "Only cows keep looking backwards not people".

The Ramban says that part of vidu is חרטה על העבר, I guess that it needs to be in the right proportion, Or as I once read (can't remember where) that when a person is still in the mud of the sin he shouldn't focus on the sin rather look ahead to the future (as you guys mentioned) but after a while when he's truly ready to do teshuvah and it wont pull him back down, that's the time for חרטה על העבר.

true_self wrote on 21 Sep 2023 15:59:

Of course, but gotta come from healthy place, which isnt here.

Day 7 - bH I'm clean for one week and did not have any major urges, but in the last 24 hours the urges are rising, last night I dreamt of inappropriate stuff and that I was trying to watch porn but couldn't get to it, Shmiras einayim yesterday started well in the morning but was terrible the rest of the day, today it started OK but not great.
I believe that I have the strength to stay strong while this surge is passing.

All the best.

true_self wrote on 27 Sep 2023 10:50:

I believe so too.
You've prove yourself in the past .
YOU CAN DO IT!

Dear True_Self,

You are a superhero for being able to get up after such a fall and continue fighting! It takes tremendous strength but you're doing it with full force. Wow!

Keep it up! Hashem sees every once of effort you're putting into this. Nothing goes in vain.

Hashem loves us more than we can imagine and if He put us in a certain situation or sent us a certain challenge, that means that we have a strength and tools to overcome the challenge and rise above the tide.

You're wonderful! Take all that energy and direct it to your wonderful wife and kid.

May you be blessed,