It struck me when dealing with an issue with one of my children that she was acting out of pain, not spite. Often, we react to what people do as if they chose to do someting wrong or hurt us. But, if we take a step bakc to understand why they did it, we will have an entirely different reaction. (yes, i realize a person has bechira)

No one responded to my scenarios and said "what a rasha, doesn't he know that it's assur to be chovel b'atzmo, or that suicide is a lav". Our natural response is one of empathy. Although those halachos are true, but they never really enter our minds. We naturally feel for the person.

Our addiction (for many of us) is similar. We had pain growing up for various reasons. We turned to acting out to ease our pain. Yet, we blame ourselvs and think we are reshaim. We don't look at the bigger picture and have some compassion towards ourselves.

Finding a solution to our addiction presents a similar problem. Try talking to someone deeply depressed about the lav of suicide. You are not likely to get very far. The problem is not the issur of suicice. The problem is depression.

Our problem (for many of us) is not acting out. Our problem starts way before that and we must treat the problem, not the result. Trying to learn mussar etc. will have very limited success.

Dr. Sorotzkin gives an example. If someone speaks loshon hora. They should learn the halachos and mussar. But, if it is a chronic problem, they likely have self-esteem issues and have to put others down. In that case, we must adress the persons self-esteem, NOT the aveira of loshon hora.

Yaakov Avinu is "criticised" by chazal for the way he replied to Rachel when she complained of having no children. He said "Am I Hashem who prevented you from having children?" His response was 100% true, but wrong nonetheless.

How many times does one of our wives say something that bothers us, but she had a hard day with the kids and is on edge. We can look past the comment, and see that it was said from pain. Often, if we do not respond, she will later apologize realizing that she spoke harshly.

Acting out is an aveira, a severe one, it's true. But, for many of us, at least at this point, it is not very relevant, and only distracts us from the real work.

In any event, understanding the source of an action can help us both in dealing with ohters and with ourselves.

I hope this made sense (I realize I rambled a bit) and I didn't mislead anyone to thinking I had some big chiddush to share. Just something that occured to me.

gibbor120 wrote:


Great stuff Gibbor!

I loved the above line.

Just not sure if it should be 'do,' or 'does.'

me either. Hope the grammar gods don't strike me down

gibbor120 wrote:


if I were you, I'd be more worried about Rabbeinu Gershom......or......

Thank you, brought tears to my eyes in the middle of work.

I have been told this many times by my therapist along with stop being so hard on yourself. I had a hard time accepting it because my YH wearing the hat (and beard with peyos) of the YT would scream at me that it's a slippery slope and that I would end up c"v a liberal.

I'm still unable to find the balance, but letting go bit by bit of the need to hold onto the self-hatred showed it was a lot more productive. The slippery slope concern is real but for now I'm ignoring it. Just add it to the list things that confuse me.

cordnoy wrote:
When it comes to worrying, I'm able to multitask .

gibbor120 wrote:
One wife is enough of a multitask handful
WHOA - I'm only saying my experience ;^)

eslaasos wrote:


I moved the question to my thread.

Obviously, a person has to use his head, but only as far as making judgements about what to do. If a person has an illness, he will find out about several doctors, get recommendations etc.. However, a person (who is not a doctor) will not ask details about how different treatments work, and how does the doctor know that this one will work and not that one. The hishtadlus is to find a good doctor. After that point, you 'trust' the doctor, unless there are red flags or the treatments don't work. Then you look for someone else.

In the realm of recovery, many (myself included) have years of yeshiva training, know many chazzal and hashkafa and therefore have a hard time trusting someone to tell us do such and such.

Dov talks about many of them.

How can I write a first step inventory, isn't that the same as doing viduy on a chet berabim? The shulchan aruch says... I can't go an SA meeting, it's a chillul Hashem. Shouldn't I just learn mussar? Hashem loves me because I'm putting in the effort and that's the main thing. I just need to try harder. And what I think may be his favorite, I need to face the nisayon and overcome it, that is the complete baal teshuva the RMB"M speaks of.

Some of these are shealos, yes, but we will not ask anyone. "I know best"

Many times, it's just plain fear. Letting go, and following someones advice to "open up" to someone real and reveal all our secrets is more than a bit unsettling.

I can't tell you the mechanics of how some of the recovery principles work, and I like to know how everything works. I have some theories, but it's really irrelevant. My car takes me where I want to go regardless if know what spark plugs do or not. Understanding how recovery works is not really necessary.

At some point, I needed to trust someone. In my case, mostly dov. I joined the phone call, and tried to do what he said. I wrote out a first step inventory. I can't say "how" it worked, but I felt a sense of relief.

Sometimes we are taught to praise a person to raise his self-esteem. I would think admitting to doing some very embarrasing things would diminish my self-esteem, but it had the opposite effect, it increased my self-acceptance, and self-esteem. I was not afraid any more. I did not have to pretend. I could be real for a change.

When we do the steps, we may need to use seichel. But mostly, it's about being honest and humble. That's how I see it anyway.

All the sevaros bandied about are nice for a beis medrash, but not very relevant for recovery.

I hope I was somewhat clear.

OK, so one distinction I get is that we don't need to understand how or why certain steps (lower case "s") work; if enough people have found a mehalech that helps them it's worth trying even without understanding how it works.

But what about understanding yourself - do you have any thoughts on how to find the balance between a sensible amount of self-analysis and not overdoing it?

Thanks.

gibbor120 wrote:

Gosh darn it, now I have questions that need to be answered! Can you tell me the answer to all the above?

eslaasos wrote:
You have to use your seichel to figure that out

I really have no magic answer. sorry.

I'm sure you have seen people thinking things to death on this forum. It's usually a defense mechanism against "doing" something, and instead trying to figure it out "to help my recovery".

As Dov says "my very best thinking got me into this mess".

Try some of the dov quotes.

Shlomo24 wrote:
Muttar. Fell better now?

Disclaimer: I'm not a rav nor the son of a rav. Ask your own rav.

gibbor120 wrote:

maskim gamur

Can someone please explain if its a contradicts anything by understanding where the addiction comes from

I'm not sure what you mean.

I think it can be beneficial sometimes to understand if it came from some trauma, family issue etc. Either to address those issues and/or to take away the guilt and realize that there are things that led to it.

Besides not being a rav, I'm also not a therapist