MBJ


For sure.

cordnoy


I didn't write anything about waging battle. If anything, I wrote about getting and staying out of the arena.

Stay busy with positive things.

Do something nice for your wife, just because.

cordnoy wrote:

I agree that you can't enter the ring with the yetzer hara/addiction, because they are just too strong. That is well and good for my actions. But when it comes to my thoughts, then they are bringing the fight to me. What you said is exactly the problem, I can't win every battle like that, eventually I will wear down and lose.

That really was my question. I know how to stay out of the ring on my computer the street etc. But how do I do thst within my thoughts?

A related frustration. I believe that self control is a muscle, the more you excersize it the stronger it gets. But like your body has diffetent muscles and exercising your srms won't make your legs stronger. So to getting a measure of self control in one specific thing doesn't really help for other things. Every little derech for me to debase myself is its own struggle. Boy is that exhausting. But that is why we are on this Earth.

Gut yomtiv to all.

I know what used to work by me.
When a thought entered, I would need to say that this isn't good for me.
After some time, it became a habit.
i'm not able to do that now, but it's my goal.

b'hatzlachah to you!

I am having trouble getting back up after my fall.

I am starting to read the white book again. It is amazing how much it resonates with me. I am beginning to see in myself the toxic thoughts. The grudges, the hurt feelings, the episodes and conversations and what-ifs i am constantly replaying in my mind. They are just as bad as any sexual fantasy that I have. They lead me to reach for my drug to escape. I am beginning to see now that that is what recovery really is. Baruch Hashem.
It seems like everytime I fall I learn a new depth of my disease and see that my previous battle ground was really not the real one. It is like I am an advancing army goong layer by layer through my defenses. Except every layer is further entrentched and more fortified.
Each new layer makes me rip out a bigger and bigger part of myself to get healthy. It hurts so much. So empty. All my old "friends" are going away.

Great insights, MBJ. I'm not an advocate of the idea that falling is good for us, because we learn each time (not that that's what you're saying, necessarily). If, somehow, an addict started recovery and never fell from Day 1, I'd pitch my wagon in his direction every time; he's figured out something we're not getting. But, unfortunately, he's a theoretical ideal, and we, here in the pits, are the reality.

So, as I've discovered with my recovery, the process is necessarily nonlinear. I can't fathom it working any other way. Until you fall, make a mistake, analyze the mistake, and get up again, the process is just academic, just books and forums and conversations with other addicts. You're using second-hand data, and our brains don't prefer that kind of information.

Therefore, dread the falls, and avoid them with every fiber of your being, but if they happen (IF, not when), pounce on that learning opportunity like the answers to a Calculus exam lying on the floor. Before the teacher notices ;-)

MBJ!
Great stuff in your realization.

b'hatzlachah

Hey MBJ thanks for sharing I can relate to that alot!

Btw I heard a great line: I learnt so much from my mistake I feel like making another one!

Hatzlacha!

TalmidChaim wrote:


Well put

"To learn from our own mistakes is practical and helpful.
To learn from the mistakes of others is shrewd and wise."

MBJ,
You've done it and you can do it again. I am so encouraged by your perseverance.
May HKB"H redeem us from our own anonymous golus!

Hi MBJ!!!

Thank for that insightful post!!!

So powerlessness is pretty basic for me to understand. Powerless means for me, not that I have no control at all. I just have no control once I start. Meaning taking that first sip can end in nothing, or it can end in a giant fall.
Either way I am powerless to control the outcome once I start.
I do have the power to not take the first sip. I have the power to close the bottle at the first whiff of lust.

But what is surrender? What am I surrendering? Who am I surrendering to?
So I was reading the white book and now I think I understand. I used to think I was surendering my lust. But that just doesn't work for me. After all don't they say that one of the mistakes is asking G-d to take it away so we don't have to. Removing lust has to come from us, we have to want it.
So what I understand now is that I am surrendering the right to do the bad though or action. I say to myself or to my higher power, I have no right or entitlement to this thought, feeling, or action. It could be lust, resentment, anger whatever. But I acknowledge that this thing does not belong in me. I am not entitled. When I make that acknowledgement, it become much easier to let it go.
In other words the surrender doesn't make it go away, the surrender allows me to take it away.
This goes back to the realization that shocked me early on, that I will not die without sex, or porn, or masturbation. By the same token I will not die without lust, fantasy, anger or resentment. That surrender is such a freeing beautiful thing. I was just in a tough spot, so I surrendered several thoughts and actions even multiple times as they kept repeating themselves. It was so incredibly liberating. It just made me smile.

Interesting. What role do you think phone calls play?

hwhap@gmx.com wrote:

?

MBJ wrote:


Hey MBJ, I have been reading your thread. There's a lot of good experience here.

I was struck by your post above about the mental energy. It really resonates. As for me, when I am off the wagon it's the worst, I feel like life is the stuff between the sexual thoughts.

When I am on the wagon it's very different. There's a strong incentive to really engage in life. There are times when I sit down and work on something and put some music on, and I emerge three hours later and for a few seconds I feel like a normal guy, because for a while it was all out of my mind. I also think that without some low-caliber sex thoughts to fight off I wouldn't be on my toes when the big one hits.

At a deeper level, I felt better about it when I realized what's really going on inside my head. For a long time I thought about my life and even with all the masturbation and the porn I didn't understand why I should have such a hard time with it compared to other men. Then I realized that the relevant factor is the interpretation that I give to sex. For me we are always talking about someone abusing somebody else. That is how I understand it in the back of my head. When I see certain kinds of shoes that's what I think about, although I don't readily acknowledge it. When I look at it that way it means that my whole life I have experienced seemingly normal sex in a way which is highly immoral and even criminal. When I look at it that way I am overwhelmed by the evil that I imagined I was perpetrating. No wonder I am the way I am now.