Hi everybody. I'm a teenager who has been fighting with the urge to act out for the last couple of years. I always say I'm going to stop but after a week or two I give in again. I'm tired of it. I don't want to be this monster behind closed doors anymore, I just want to be plain old me. It's really killing me everytime I give in. I want to stop so badly but I don't seem to have enough push. I feel that with support around me and thinking in the back of my mind that I will let people down if I give will really help me stop. I just need a little extra push and then I think I will be able to control myself. I tried to join the 90 day journey but I never got the confirmation email so I will just start here. Please help me in my journey to control myself for 30 days first and then we will work from there. I will hopefully post my progress a few times a week. Thanks.

hey there first off kol hakavod for posting
I wish I had the courage to come clean when I was a teenager
I would have saved myself alot of wasted time and pain
you've allready made the right first step!!!

staying clean is not easy BUT being good is
what do I mean - if you spend all day every week worrying about the next time you will fall it is very hard to succeed
you need to start by reconnecting with hashem in a new and more powerful way than you ever thought possible
look at the handbooks that are on this site
But then you need to start speaking openly with hashem about what makes you desire the shmutz that out there
if you think its only about physical desire/urges---your wrong -- it s,much more than that
the desire comes from the will to be in control and a high level of focus on yourself ( yes we are all selfish) but
the more you focus on others and helping them
the more you realize that you are here to serve hashem and his goals rather than you own the closer you will be to getting better
talk to hashem let him know that you cant do it without him
let go of the need to statisfy yourself and realize that you are here for helping hashem to help others
try to teach a shiur or do some chesed for someone who needs you
you be surprised how much this helps you control the urges
keep posting
A

listen to aa.
he's one of the educated newbies
and welcome!

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!