Hi all,

What a crazy year it has been for me. It all started on a great Emunah Spark, which got me doing some real good Teshuvah, which included Hitbodedot for an hour a day, going to the Mikvah at least once a week and reading and studying as much Torah as I can. I was on such a high and much was due to Rabbi Lazer Brody on his personal web blog and translation of Rabbi Shalom Arush's books on Emunah.

But then I fell.....Maybe I was rushing in too quick with everything, I don't know. All I do know was that when I picked myself up again, it didn't feel as good as the first time, But I never gave up hope and I continued to long to get closer to Hashem.

The came the most current fall, which was terrible and lasted for a pretty long time. All the while, I was thinking how can I rid myself of this poison, this addiction. I felt like a heroin addict needing to have my "fix" every day in order to function properly. But somehow my yetser hara was super strong and I felt powerless to defeat him to the point where I had practically given up all together. I felt so alone as if there was no one I could talk to. I made the mistake of telling my wife of my addiction the first time around after I had cleaned up my act, but my wife, May G-D bless her pure and innocent heart, just though I was weird and perverted. I don't blame her, as it's hard to understand someone's addition unless you're an addict yourself. So when I fell, I was all the more so ashamed of myself.

But all along, I have had this burning sensation to clean up my act and return to my "glory" days. So when I found this site, I knew this was my calling, my shoulder to lean on, my braces to straighten me up and Hashem's divine assistance.

I hope please G-D that I can finally help myself.

As a river of tears flow down my eyes while I am sitting here typing these words,  I am so so relieved to know that I am not "weird" or "perverted" and that there are others out there just like me, struggling. Others that know how hard the struggle is but don't give up and keep trying no matter what.

Wow.....what a relief it is to get that off my chest!

May G-D grant us all strength to get closer to him and to control out Yetser.

Have a Shavuah Tov everybody,

Joe

Welcome, Joe !

No, you're not weird or perverted. But most women can't understand our drives, so to them it sounds weird or perverted. Hey, I personally think an obsession to shop is weird and perverted, but I keep my mouth shut when I'm with a female shopaholic. 

And to get philosophical - even if you were "weird or perverted" it wouldn't make a difference. Of course we all want to "fit in", but each person is a complete world by themselves. So even though some of us aren't like the other 95% of society, is that so terrible ?

It sounds like you found the right place here, so keep on posting, read as many postings as you can, and of course the two handbooks which are available on the main webpage.

Shavuah Tov !

Welcome - and realize that with hashem's help, you can get to the point where yes, you may have urges, and yes, you may be addicted...but you don't act on it, and you grow, and become more and more of a giver, and less selfish.

The fact that you've been working for so long is inspiring - keep it up!

Hi Commando and silent battle, thanks for the kind warm words of encouragement. I have a good feeling this time around and have found some great inspiring material posted on the forum, which i hope to implement immediately.

Joe,

Many of use here identify with your experience.  I heard someone who is clean from his addiction (which by the way was about 10 times worse than that of most of us on GYE) for over 25 years that we are not bad people trying to be good - we are sick people trying to get healthy.  For me this is very important.  My addiction wants me to view myself as bad and worthless and befitting of all the terrible things my addiction wants me to do.

Welcome and enjoy the journey!!

I would add one point - inspiration is good - more than that, it's necessary. However, it's not going to get us well. We've all been inspired plenty, and it hasn't helped us in the past. We need to change - our actions, and perspective, our lives.

That is, if we want to survive.

Hi Jooboy,

I hear what your saying, although when I think about myself, as ashamed as I was, I don't think I felt as if I was bad or worthless. I felt more like I was sick and needed help and was really jealous of other people that don't have the addiction. I remember thinking about every other person I would see something like "why can't I be like him? He's def not going to go home and waste hours of his time looking at porn in front of the computer. He'll probably do something worthwhile at home and have the same satisfaction that I get (probably even more) without the porn".

Sometimes I wonder though why do we have it so hard, for example why can one person go the mall totally completely unaffected and others (like myself), find ourselves rolling our eyes all over our heads just trying to look anywhere but straight ahead. I mean ok if this is our tikkun, then as some put it, we have it easy knowing what our tikkun is, but then again do we really know what out tikkun is? We can only pray to Hashem and hope that this is it.

Speaking of which, now that I'm "back in" I truly find the best way to overcome my addiction at least, is implementing tool # 2. As difficult and annoying as it is, I realize the less i look at other women, even by accident, the less thoughts wander through my head and trust me, Bli ayin hara my head can really wonder sometimes So I am def ready for this journey to sobriety.

Silentbattle - Hey there, I agree with you, inspiration only goes so far. I remember hearing tons of amazing stories where I though to myself "how can I ever even continue doing what I'm doing after hearing that" and BOOM the next day I'm back on the routine "fix". So yes, I agree, we surely need to change our lives around and please G-D we shall be strong! G-D Speed!

You know, the guard-ian of this site is off trying to raise funds so we can all keep posting away etc. If he WERE here, though, I bet he'd offer you a great big welcome with a great big welcome packet. That packet is hiding under the 'announcements/ welcome new members' thread and has the text I'm about to paste here, in his name.  B'hatzlacha in your journey!
___________________________Dear Friend:
Welcome to our community! Once you’ve arrived, there’s no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up, up, up!
Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here.

We get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You’re worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and post away on this forum. You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can’t be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week… This would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps – which is known to be the world’s most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

You see, until now, people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, a beginner wouldn’t jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while on the other hand, someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn’t be helped by the standard tips of "making fences" putting in "filters" etc… So it was essential to develop a handbook which details all the techniques and tools to dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now with these handbooks, anyone can read through and see what steps they’ve tried already, and if those steps haven’t worked, they can continue on through the handbook where the steps become progressively more powerful and "addiction-oriented".

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won’t be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it’s anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not…

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook

This Handbook details 18 suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And no matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude

The Attitude Handbook details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth…

May Hashem be with you!

Whoa. My apologies. What I pasted in, I thought included HYPERLINKS but it seems to have only plain text.

I'll try to fix this tomorrow if I can.  My heart was in the right place; my tech skills were lacking. Sigh.

Hey, Joe (isn't there a song that goes like that?)...

Welcome to the club. Everyone here is very, very special, including yourself. Everyone here has struggled deeply with difficult things and, you know what? Everyone here, including yourself, is much better for it, has become a better person for it and has contributed beautifully to the world for it. This, again, includes yourself.

It is important to realize that we cannot choose the circumstances of our lives as they are now. These circumstances are already here. What we can do is modify our approach. Through this, we can live. I read a qoute, not sure from where, which states, A man is where his thoughts are. However we got here, here we are. Rather than bemoan our circumstance, let's find a way to approach it in a better way. The very fact that we find our past actions abhorrent is a proof that we are on the right track. Would a complete rasha find his actions abhorrent? Simply accepting our past actions as missing the mark is proof that we love the mark. And it is precisely from here that we have an opportunity before us to transcend our past.

We can come back. We can find our way home. And part of this way home is a transforming of our past errors to merits. This is a gift from G-d to all who return to him wholeheartedly. This is a very good position to be in.

What I am saying is that we shouldn't be jealous of the next guy, whose secrets we don't know. And, even should this other persons struggles be of a different nature, hence our wishes to somehow be able to trade with them, the above statements regarding our unique position should be enough to warrant one keeping his own bag of tzuros. We truly are unique individuals and have a unique contribution to make in this world that none other but ourselves can make.

There are plenty of tools on this site. And plenty of advice. There are also 12 step groups that can help. I found the handbook on "attitude" very helpful. It's important to keep your head up... and keep on trucking. 

Hey! I and everyone here wish you the best on this journey. We are all very glad you made it here. That alone is a great step. Hatzlocha rabbah!! 

Oh. I remember now. The song went, Hey, Joe... what are you doing with that gum in your hand? Yeah. That Joe must have been a big fan of Wrigley's chewing gum. Or maybe Big Red. Wait a minute. Those aren't kosher, are they? Okay. Maybe he was a big fan of Bazooka from Israel. Hmmm. Bazooka? Wait a minute. It isn't "gum", it's "gun". Sheesh. So, the line guys goes, Hey, Joe... what are you doing with that gun in your hand? And, of course, he is referring to the 60 gibborim that surround Shlomo haMelech's bed: Behold! The couch of Shlomo! Sixty mighty ones round about it, of the mighty ones of Israel. All gripping the sword, learned in warfare, each with his sword on his thigh, from fear in the nights. Shir haShirim 3:7-8.

teshuvahilaah wrote on 01 Jun 2010 06:00:

Hearing this point of view always brings tears to my eyes. It's SO true. Wow. Thanks.

The idea is taken from the words of Reish Lakish, found in Yoma 86b.

Its funny looking at my old posts and reminiscing about the past......when I though it could only go uphill from here. Well as further down the road and as lost as I am, I'm here because I truly believe as commented by teshuvahilaah and quoted by Briut:

teshuvahilaah wrote on 01 Jun 2010 06:00:


I want to come back. I want to find my way home.

Sounds good - what can you do to change the patterns?

well i'm looking for an SA meeting in my area which trust me, is a very bold step for me!