I'm new here...hey everybody! Quick background-married with kids, but the battle's not yet over folks! nothing fixes these addictions but sweat and tears-I grew up with terrible childhood, growing up with depression as my reality. Started this addiction in various forms as early as i can remember. It led to stealing and other undesirable things as well, we won't mention the obvious. Never gave up, but fell 10 trillion (approximate number) times. Let me tell you, there have been many times that iv'e been clean, thank G-d, but in the back of my mind, if things in my life have gone rough, then i've always resorted to this as an escape. B"H went for therapy long time ago and woweee was it good for me, but friends, you gotta know that even therapy doesn't always fix everything; but it gave me tools to continue on my own. Now I joined GYE (applause) because started getting into depression again. I'm depressed bec. I feel very lonely where I live, and don't belong anywhere. I need chizuk bigtime; I have that yuch feeling in my mind for those that know what i reffer to (it takes one to know one) and i know that even with my g'darim, etc., i gotta get out of my sadness. Depression can happen to anyone-in fact, it even happens to me (haha). I am very into torah learning and into avodas hashem, but this sadness is really no good for me, and it's taking me down more and more. Already spoke to Gedolim and therapist about issue, and know whatI need to do, but problem is that it's not advice that i could just do tomorrow-and so day by day, i'm really sad, and falling. I still am fighting with mikva, tikkun klali, etc., but my sadness is still there and prevailing. What I need is a sense of belonging and more contact with friends (i have friends, just no one lives near me, and everyone's too busy to get tog.- meanwhile i'm suffering!). Today i tried to give myself chizuk by typing out my hard life story and where i came from, but that just made me more sad, and then i fell. So i erased the whole thing and instead typed a list of the good things im my life. It helped, but of course not enough. I gotta hang in there. In my old days when my life was like a holocaust, i used to say a quote that i picked up which gave me chizuk-"it aint about how hard you can hit-it's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward"; and with that, my friends, i'm gonna try to move forward-tzaddik90

You takkeh are a tzaddik

Drop me an email and I can give you my number to call and shmooze if you need.  Nothing fights sadness like connecting with others who have been where you have.

Hatzlacha

I feel your pain. I've suffered through depression my whole life, but I, like you, am trying to continue on -- there's no other way  .  By the way, I love your sense of humor.  You made me laugh a few times when reading your story.  I'm new here as well and found this site, and its members (including Jooboy) to be of tremendous help.  Stick around the GYE guys and life will get better. 

With you been there, done that, happen to feel that way this second too (I am a professor of Yuch)

But I can't be moping and concentrating on me....  I have the zechus to welcome you aboard!

The Heilige Guard is in the US on a fundraising trip, but if he was here- he would definitely give you a Shalom Aleichem that goes something like this:

Dear Tzaddik,

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.

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.

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!

I'm here for you, and so is the whole gang/chevrah/chabeerah/shteeble... whichever definition makes you feel at home...Welcome!

Elazar Ben Durdayah

Tzadik

Herr ois

Tishma

Listen up

You are in a bad place

I'm giving u the keys to my truck

You can put it into drive

Put the pedal to the metal

And move forward

And move forward we can

I have a whole team of people here

Who are pushing pushing pushing forward. Every single dingle day

Or we can stay stuck in the past

We can cry

We can blame

We can pul hair

Wanna hop along for the ride??

If u do,forget what was

Forget how and why youu fell


Just move along

Flowing water needs no chlorine

Let's ride!!!

!bardichev

Bard says it all in his Bard-like way

Welcome tzadik90 - welcome to the family.

hi tzadik90!
welcome to this holy great and happy place
i think you will like it here
keep posting
get to know the people here
it will do you a world of good
behatzlocha
zs