I didn"t want to wait because i was afraid I'll end up not saying anything. Truth is it makes sense that I"m running away. Running from life or better yet running away from myself. I have what to run away from. I really am a failure and would rather live a fake life then face reality, because every time I tried facing reality I failed. We all do have some monkey in us and we act on whats comfortable. Life ain"t comfortable, or better yet I cant live with myself, so I dont. There is another way to deal with it, but I dont think you"ll approve. Its called suicide. Problem is It wont make things any better, otherwise I wouldve done it already. 
      People think of me as this great guy but I know the truth. I know there aint anything really there . Its a fake a fraud. I know this sounds like Im feeling hopeless, but truth is I am. I turned to oblivion because its so much easier, or better yet its the only thing I can do. After enough  times of being punched one tends to stop picking up his face. Its only natural you know. Im sick of this whole life. Sick of being who I am. Sick of pretending to be someone else. I dont even know if ill send you this ill probably just erase it. Its not worth it anyway. I guess it is because even the smallest hope is better  then none. Fuck whats the difference if theres hope if I wont go through with it anyway.
  Damn I do need help, but if I cant face myself how can I expect anyone else to. If I cant admit my reality to myself how can I admit it to someone else. Fuck this is so stupid maybe I should just jump. Ill tell Hashem I couldnt do it. It was to hard. FUCKKKKKKKKK....
  Truth is I am getting by this way. It didnt take away the problem, but its that other guy its not me. Ill split my parents into good and bad why not split myself. Damn I know this makes no sense but...........................................

wow...!welcome....

i would love to help you but i am sure its impossible for me cause it sounds that i gotta know u, like per example; to know whats the right proportion in your words, how much do you mean them, how much are you just tryeng to make a point but not really mean what you say, whats your backround, chasidish ,litvish baal tshuva, divorced parents, got banned from a yeshiva, your wife cheated on you.....

bekitzer...... for me its imposible to help you, but yes i can shmues with you...
but there is here ppl who maybe can! good luck!

Now that I"m a bit calmer Ill try to give some information. !st off, if you cant read my post it may just be because someone edited all "improper" words and it comes out a bit funny, lol.
  Im 21 years old. I come from a very yishivish home, and basically act that way myself. All my life I was seen seen as very smart and even gadol hador material.. Ive been in the top yishivos in America.  Started feeling depression year and a half ago. Have NO parental understanding in this, but my siblings are very close and I have Rabbeim who I'm close to as well.  Went through hell in the USA and America with this depression. Hell doesnt even come close to what its been like. Got very close to suicide a couple times. Been seeing different therapists throughout. On meds. Noone ever was able to bring any major progress, but together as a whole there has been worlds of progress between what was and now. Meaning I"m much much much better.
    Right now Im officially in yeshiva, but in reality I basically dont learn except for one seder with a brother at night.

  I"ve been messed over with sexual compulsions for probably 7 years. There was one time where i was clean for like six months, but thats it. Worked with therapist on ocd like symptoms and depression.
  Recently I"ve begun some sort of ebay business.  Today I was in therapy and was a bit down. I explained to the therapist that since the holiday buying rush is really over There is nothing really for me to do to escape to and thats why Im a bit down. Thats when the idea came up that maybe what Im  hiding from is really facing myself. I sat down to send the theropist the above letter because I was scared that if I dont do it now ill never do it.  I never ended up sending the email.
  EVERY WORD IN THE LETTER IS COMPLETELY SERIOUS.

HI AND WELCOME  ;D ;D ;D ;D

nobody is kooloi tov or kooloi rah- we are usually a combination of the two, and the important thing is, who do we WANT to be? if we want to be and do good, well we are 'good'

jewishfaker wrote on 24 Dec 2010 04:14:


i'll apologize for LVK. of course it's serious. and written from the heart.

welcome welcome and welcome.
its late at night now, so a bunch of the ppl are sleeping, so now you MUST come back tommorow to check your responses:)
you made the right choice by coming here. just by coming here, you have taken a giant giant step towards taking control. but it will only happen with work, and fun lots of fun, part of getting out of the addiction is by getting out of isoaltion, part of what we do on gye is have fun and grow together and take control of our lives.

this is a big big big site and easy to get lost. but as r nachman of breslov says. vehaikur lo lefached klal. the main thing is not to be scared.

thats very good that you have a chavrusa with your brother. i wish i had that zechus. anyways, have a goodnight!

welcome! you've definitely come to the right place. if there's one thing i know about this site, it's that every single person on this forum, in the GYE community, has your back and is willing to be there for you. we're all struggling, so join the community. i really hope that we continue to hear from you. 

Hi and welcome.

I can relate to your name very much and all of the 1700 members of this site have/had the feeling of being a Jewish Faker and thats why we are all here. With that said - you are not a faker anymore. On this site we are honest and share are real feelings as you have done. I give you lots of credit that you where able to come out in the open on this forum and say all that and that is step #1 to join the chevra here. So once again Welcome and you are apart of our Family.

Have a seat.

Make a L'echaim.

Post away all your thoughts.

We need brave guys like you on this site! Stick around and help us out.

At 21 I felt the same way not knowing were and what i am doing and what i want to do with my life. You are normal. You are right when you said "Its called suicide. Problem is It wont make things any better" That wont help anything. What will help you is that you have joined our Family.

Come in a meet the chevra.

Have a wonderful Shabbbos.




Your Friend - David.

Hi and welcome,

you did a good thing by coming here. it is a beautiful, good place. read up. shmooze. post your collection of jokes. get to know the people here. you will find people who struggle and deal with similar things that you deal with.
stay a while and get the feeling of what goes on here. you will be all the better for it.
here is a place where you can be honest and forthcoming without fear of judgment or criticism. be open and tell as much as you are comfortable with about whats going on in your life (anonymously of course).

have a great shabbos
zs

d_teddybear wrote on 24 Dec 2010 04:17:
Hey TeddyBear - What did LVK say that was wrong? I thought his post was sensitive and honest and sensible, personally.

Dear JewishFaker,

Welcome to the club of fakers! I am a card-carrying member, too.

Being a trained shrink (not) I may have one precious tidbit for you:

I'd bet one of your problems from the beginning was actually an inflated self-image. You were noted to be a wunderkind - 'gadol hador material'...maybe so. That's not relevant now, nor is it the point. But knowing that and thinking that while you were growing up, can be horrible poison. It makes acceptance of any kind of mediocrity impossible for us. That makes life hell - especially in a greenhouse atmosphere like a yeshivah.

Gevalt. You may come a long way yet. Just stick with good therapists and follow their advice. Consider your next steps carefully. If addiction is really your problem, or not, I wish you hatzlocha!

Love,

Dov

Thanks everyone for your kind words and wishes I really DO appreciate it. In reply to some posts I read: Although I didn"t take offense on lvk question, but thanks teddyBear for the apology, noone does like not being taken seriously.
  Anyways, what I meant when I said serious was not just the idea of my letter, but even more then that, the seriousness of my feelings going to the extent of suicide as I think I explained in my next post.
    In reply to Dov: First off thanks for responding. It feels good getting a response from one of the big guys  Regarding your post, you made some strong points (from the emails it doesn"t sound like i""m saying any chidushim ) In response: You do make a good point about the difficulties of growing up being seen as a wonderkind, but hey it didnt take a year in a half of therapy to figure that out! Difficulties don"t bring depression. Loss of hope can. Yes having to live up to an impossible image leads to continues failures, but thats failures against THAT GOAL. If the goal is changed seriously this shouldnt lead to depression. Thats because its not leading a life of failures, but an idea or assupmption that doesn"t work.
  Not living up to what you consider to be the lowest level does bring depression. Thats because ones ENTIRE LIFE is one big failure. As stated in the letter " We all do have some monkey in us and we act on whats comfortable." If we cant live with ourself how then can we NOT fall into depression. We can hide from ourselves, fake our reality, split it into different times, but it WILL come back to haunt us. A person can"t live his whole life covering up himself. (This is the same reason so many kids who were molested end up depressed on drugs etc)
    Your last comment about not knowing if addiction is the problem; Well I think I made myself ubundently clear in this post.
    EVERYONE SHOULD HAVE A WONDERFUL SHABBOS!
  PS What do all those coments about "doing a good thing by coming to this site" mean? Would just the actual act of posting here help???

Hi brother, I feel ur pain and relate a lot to what u have going through, ur questions if the act of posting can help, the answer is yes, when we write things down on paper, we can sort them through and see a better picture of what we really struggle with , but while its in our brain in adds a lot of pressure onto our already stressed out brains and luckily the paper is a very big savlen, u can write on him as much as u want and as harsh as u want, but posting on this forum can help u in a other sense too, & that is getting advice from over 1700 members and for each member there are at least a few who have gone through similar things and can possible help u sort things out in the right way, @ the moment I'm a little blank so I can't give u a ny advice really. But I can tell u to stick around us and make sure u get the right therapist,
Hatzlucha

Dear fellow frum recovering faker,  (amu"sh)

Very clear - it seems that you have had a taste of what I have heard many people report they have discovered in recovery: they need to adjust their goals to reality in order to have enough peace of mind to function. Happily, I have discovered that although I have discovered a tremendous amount of screwiness in myself under all kinds of rocks I put there myself, there is still tremendous growth to be had in this business. It is really wonderful. There is pleasure that comes out of the pain - and only out of the pain. Growing up sure is hard to do, no matter how old I get.

To me, your line here hits on the crux of my own recovery:




The only correction I'd opine is that actually, many people live their whole lives covering themselves up. It may not be pretty, but they seem to squeeze by. But addicts are different. We have a life of hell if we lie to ourselves, cuz life just doesn't work at all. Our own coping mechanisms - the ones that used to be our best friends - poison it and make it too unmanageable for us to tolerate. If we are lucky.

Then it comes time for us to take certain steps that change life into something we always demanded it to be: a wonderful thing.

And yeah, why not keep posting.

    Ok, her goes. I"m going to blabble.  I want to start a log and like a wall of honer for staying clean, I think it"ll do me good, but a couple problems.
  1-Practically speaking I don"t know how (shouldn"t be to difficult to figure out).
  2- This may sound weird, but what I"m scared of most is when that guy falls. The actual withdrawal is very difficult, but thats what it is, difficult. Falling to me is failure and I CANT FACE FAILURE ANYMORE. After a while of being in this depression thing whenever there was something that had a possibility of failure I just didn"t do it. I ran away from a specific time of learning. Even (I"m embarased to say this) putting on tiffilin became difficult because if I didnt put on tifilin Im a failure and I couldnt face that feeling of failure so It became hard to put on tifilin because I face the possibility of failure if I dont! Davening and especialy davening with a minyan was even worse for the same reason. I know it doesn"t make any normal sense, but its just the way it is. I"m looking for some feedback on that.
  3-Who am I that I should waste other peoples time by them responding?
    Hey, I know this sounds like I should see my shrink more often, but that didn"t work for the past year and a half so I gotta try other venues as well. lol. (In truth Ive never been so open with him. I know that makes therapy stupid, but please don"t dig it in!) In reality I"m a normal guy just........I think I just need some chizuk.......I don"t know..........

and


and


and finally



I am not a shrink, and certainly no expert on "you". Nevertheless, I can relate to every single thing you wrote that I quoted above. So I have a few questions and suggestions.

But first, I will say that I faced the same difficulty with putting on tefillin, with davening (and b'zman), and the general reluctance to do anything that had defined failure per time, quality, etc... It is chickening out on life. Nu. But we babies do that, and I am King Baby when I want to be, for sure. You'll give it up eventually, so no need to sweat it, I think. I do not feel sorry for you, just sharing I quit that approach naturally and without big resolutions or takanos, or anything else - it just started to look stupider and stupider, less and less attractive to me without making any special 'deep thinking sessions', till I eventually started to grow up and do the stuff that makes me feel better. It took about three years for me.

If you react to that by, "What!? Three years!? I don;t have that long!!!" - Well, then I'd say that's just an excuse to keep wallowing in childish and useless self-pity. Get over it and accept that you are messed up and it will take time - maybe three years, maybe one year, maybe three months - it is on His schedule, not ours. It's time we started to become open to letting Hashem take care of us. We (and you, and all [especially cerebral] frummeh yidden with these kinds of problems) have been trying our brains out to run the show and have obviously failed miserably. You have stated this plainly yourself. It is time we all stopped blaming Him and really started to humbly give ourselves to Him to 'run'.  But that's the 3rd step and I am getting ahead of myself....

Back to the above. Have you read the "member stories" in the back of AA? I suggest you do that. Much of it sounds exactly like you do. Let me know what you think after you do.

In fact, it can't hurt for you to read through the entire book AA, after you read the member stories. There. Another time-definition for you!  ;D

Much hatzlocha!