I found this website about a month ago, but I fought joining it because I felt that I could beat this battle on my own. I realize now that I've failed enough and I need Help! I guess I will give you a brief History of how I got to this point.
When I was about 8 years old I caught my older brother masturbating. He was just a few years older than I so I think he was just experimenting. I was very curious about what he was doing so I started to try and masturbate  myself. This was when I began masturbating. A few short years later my friends and I were out exploring in a buddies back yard when we found a trash bag full of triple X magazines. I was so intrigued by the images I saw. I was only about 9 or 10 and I couldn't take my eyes off of these new images I found. We all took several magazines back to our homes and my pornography addiction began.
I was masturbating and looking at pornography for years without really ever thinking it was so bad. I always felt that masturbating was just a way relieving yourself. I would masturbate if I felt angry, sad, bored, or attracted to a female. It was some sort of stress release for me.
The only time I can ever really remember not masturbating and looking at pornography almost on a daily basis, was while I was in Boot camp for the military. I managed to go 3 months without even so much as thinking about it. Probably cause I didn't have time.
I recently have become much more frum and I have become part of an orthodox synagogue. I realize how harmful this activity is to my soul and to my connection with Hashem. I'm married to a beautiful wife and our sex life is great. But when she begins Niddah I have such a hard time controlling my urge for 2 weeks! I always fail and then feel so guilty afterwards. Sometimes after I fail I don't even want to daven that night, wear my kippah, or put on my tzitzit because I feel as though its a slap to the face of Hashem. I just want to lie in my bed and cry. After every time of masturbating I tell myself, "Remember how horrible you feel!" in hope that the next time I will remember that feeling and not take part in looking at pornography and masturbation. But when the time comes, those past feelings are almost washed from my mind until seconds after I've sinned. Anyways, I really need help. I want to stop so bad. I want to build a closer relationship with Hashem and I know that this is in my way. I want to know that I'm showing my wife love and respect. She deserves a husband that can be faithful to her in his mind as well. I want to be that person.
I'm looking forward to this program in hope that it will help me in the struggle.
Thanks everyone for being out there to help people like me.
Daniel

Dear Danielstruggle,

I PM'd you a response. In case you are not familiar with this site's features, you will find Personal-Mailing notifications on the email address you supplied GYE with when you registered.

With G-d's help, we will all be OK. Things will work out for you, as you plainly want the best for you and your family.

Daniel, welcome.  You are not alone in your story.  You've made the right move by joining the site.  The site has so much to offer you and help you get on track.  Lucky for you, your first introduction was from Dov who can really set you on a clear path as to what you need to do.  Follow his advice, stay close to the site, download the handbooks, get the chizuk emails and a partner and the upcoming new year with Hashem's help will be a great one for you and your family.  Hatzlacha.

We are here for you, dan.

Wow - it sounds like you've been struggling with this for a while. So first of all, feel good about the fact that you haven't given up!

I know that for myself, it works better to focus on good feelings than bad ones. In other words, when I'm tempted, I focus on how good i feel now - how good it feels to be clean. How can the yetzer hora tempt me with promised pleasure, when staying clean already makes me feel so good?! That's one method I use for fighting. (check this post out: www.guardyoureyes.org/forum/index.php?topic=1315.msg43785#msg43785 )

Welcome, and get ready to grow - you can grow, and what you'll come to realize is that this isn't something you have to give in to.

Aaaaand...here's your welcome package!


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...

Make sure to install a strong filter. It will be almost impossible to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. See this page for one good filter option, along with instructions on how to install it best - and give away the password to our "filter Gabai"... See this page for another 20 (or so) filter ideas and information...

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.

Before the handbook people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, someone with a low level addiction wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences", putting in "filters" etc... For the first time ever, this handbook details all the techniques and tools dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now, anyone can read it through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook to the next tools, as the suggestions become progressively more "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!

dov wrote on 26 Aug 2010 03:11:


Hey R'Dov, why does only he get to see it? It's not fair.
The point of the forum is that when you are mechazek someone else, another 10 people can see it and get chizuk too!