this is my 1st post or anything on this website. i am 15 years old and i unfortunatly have not completly conquered this yetzer harah. but i have some tips that have helpped me.
i am chassidish (my chassidus is in between chabad and many other chassidus's to tell you exactly what i meen is not for this disscussion) but because of this, i try to go to the mikvah every day (i talked to some people about this and they think that you HAVE to be either a women or a chassid to use the mikvah) Going to the mikvah is for everyone!! many misnagdim go to the mikvah and i personaly when i go and do my dunks i stay under the water until i loose my breath just thinking about how i want to get close to hashem asking hashem to give me help and taharah. you can think of any prayer in the mikvah. hashem reads our minds he will hear you prayer.
also regarding the mikvah is, since i have been going since a really young age, i have gotton commfortable in the mikvah so when i take a shower before and after, i dont close the curtain (like many other ppl) i find that when i do close the curtain it help. why? because when i leave it open, i am like an animal. in chassidus the one of the names for the evil inside a person is call a nefesh be'hamis and animal soul. so when i close the curtain i am saying i do NOT want to be an animal i want my nefesh elokis (G-dly soul) to dominate me.

also, dont be alone!!! i have not been on this forum long, this is my first time, but it is helpfull to talk to somone you know personaly. i go to yeshivah high school it is a high school and it has a beis medrish of post high school students. it is amazing it has a college and an amazing semicha shiur (given by an amazing tzaddik) but i have talked to my rebbe and i have talked to our mashgiach and talking to someone in person (someone who really knows you) is extremly helpfull.

Dear withgdshelp,

I am the admin of this forum. 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!

It's great you found us at such a young age. This addiction can destroy a person the longer it is left to develop, but you are still young and hopefully can get out relatively quickly. Why do you have access to the internet? Is there a way you could simply stay away from the internet completely? And what do you struggle with, pornography? masturbation? For how long has the addiction controlled you? How often do you fall? What was your longest recent clean-streak?

For a boy your age, I particularly suggest reading the "Attitude Handbook". Please see the link below

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!

THANK YOU RABBAIENU

AIN HABRACH SHOREH ALA BIDAVAR HASAMU MIN HA-AYIN

VI-HAMAVIN YAVIN

b  (ALWAYS WATCHING )

Reb mnman - Welcome!

That's incredible that you've already been seriously working on this problem, and that you've joined us! You have my utmost respect!

And you're absolutely right - being alone is terrible, we should all find ways not to be...You're lucky that you have great people that you're close with that you can open up to!

absolutely beautiful. I def. get this feeling when I get into the water even in swimming. sometimes, jsut going in the water for some reason makes me realize how lucky I am to be alive, how fragile life is and how much I want to get closer to H'

I am almost 15. i will turn 15 at the end of march. i am glad to see someone my age here. i wish you luck! you can do it!