I am hesitant to start a thread for myself for various reasons but I think I might be at the point where I can do this.

After a couple of false starts I have now been clean for a week. It has been years since I have gone this long. Finding GYE has the potential be a life-saver for me. I say potential, because I am in no way cured. I am addicted and every day I have to fight many times to not go to the sites I used to go to almost every day. As most of you know, it is very easy to fall. I am at a computer now and can close this screen and be at a different site in less than five seconds. (there are many ways to find what I need even with a filter)

I have been addicted for many years and my wife and kids deserve to get me back. I am pretty close to the bottom and need to get my life back.

What is amazing is that in less than a week I have noticed a pickup in my davening. Today is another fight and I am clearly suffering withdrawal. I have started talking to a therapist and am hopefull that will help me.

I have also found an accountability partner which is extremely helpful.

I am going to try and post here to keep me going. Those that have beat this addiction are role models for me. No one else can understand how difficult this is.

good luck, blessed...getting started is the hardest part (for me so far) because so long as youre still going back to lust your brain is chained and cannot think freely....push hard for a few weeks to break those chains and you will see that your vision will be vastly different...the world you see is actually upside down...

keep fighting
ratm

Blessed, keep up the good work.

Internalizing how easy it is to fall is crucial for sobriety. It keeps us away from doing the stupid things which leads to falls. We are not above, and may never be from those things. That is why we are all here. The sooner we realize this the sooner we can stop so many falls.

Blessed is his name .........................and BLESSED HE IS 

Welcome !!! Welcome!!

glad to see that u made it here and started your own thread where you can  keep a diary of your uplifiting journey

warmest wishes and prayers for your continues success

tremendous respect for your courage and perseverance

Noorah

Dear Blessed,

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...

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.

Make sure to read them, they contain a wealth of information on beating this addiction! And I'd love to hear your feedback on them...

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!

Hi Blessed,

I think I welcomed you earlier on elsewhere, but now you have a new name and have started a new thread, so a new welcome is in place.
May your davening continue to pickup day by day and HKB"H help you work through this.

I am halfway through another day and feel an urge to post. I have nothing new to say but need to be connected to this forum. GYE is my link to a new life.

I have been able to focus more on my davening and benthcing in a way that I havent seen for years. I have no idea if the connection between being clean and improved davening is just in my head or if it is something else but it is an amazing feeling.

Just a week ago I could barely make it through the whole bentching.

I was talking to my accountability partner today about my fear of falling. I know that falling is easy. It will take me just seconds to be on a site that will lead to a fall. If I fall, I do not know how I will find the courage to come back to this community and start over. How some of you find that courage is beyond me. The answer is obvious, yet difficult. I simply can't fall. I need to keep focused on the battle. Tonight is another night, another fight. I will win the fight tonight and worry about tomorrow, tomorrow.

Blessed

You write that you are in no way cured, but let me tell you that everyday day you move ahead is part of your healing progress.

If you stop then its like stopping on a treadmill, you try it for once only and never again.

Very clever of you, logging in to keep in touch. Remember, you take each day for itself and you will get far, NO DOUBT!

welcome, blessed!
i'm really impressed that you held a week by yourself- wow!
kutgw! (keep up the good work! took me weeks to figure out all the abbeviations from everyone's posts!)
Hatzlacha!

Today was difficult but I am just about done with another day. I think this takes me to 9 full days. I had a decent conversation with my therapist today. He said that I should realize that I may not be cured for years and need to realize that this addiction is going to be a long battle that needs to be constantly fought. While that is quite depressing (to think that I will be fighting for years) I know that this is my test and I need to overcome it.

I will have a lot of alone time tomorrow and it has potential to be an extremely dangerous day. I am going to need your help and tefilos tomorrow. The good news is that if I make it tomorrow I will not have an easy chance to fall for a few days. Therefore, if I make it tomorrow I will probably make it to 2 weeks. It is possible that I havent gone this long in more than five years. Kind of sad to say that but I am addicted.

The battle goes on.

Yeah, I love/hate it when therapists say that.
But emes is emes.
I think everyone born into this world has something to work on
that can take years and years,
and sometimes it can take that long to realize what it is,
B"H, we know what we're working on.
Forward march!

Much hatzlacha today and we are here for you!!
Tefillos and all...

Well, they say it gets a lot easier after 90 clean days!

Oh, and if you don't like to keep "fighting" it, you might join a 12-Step group and learn how to let Hashem take over for you...

(See this page for a 12-Step group starting this Monday).

Well I slipped a little tonight. I didnt fall, but I am slipping. I find myself saying "just once, whats the big deal? you have been clean for just about 2 weeks now, your not addicted and just enjoy it in moderation"

This is not going to be an easy fight. I need some new chizuk.

Blessed

We know from Chaza"l that this eiver koton gets weaker when we starve it. You did a terrific job for 2 weeks which means that you are advancing nicely. The YH obviously doesn't like it so he will try to distract you and let you destroy your work from the last 2 weeks. Of course you will start again after that but that will mean suffering again for 2 weeks to get to your present point.

PLEASE don't do it to your self!!

Blessed

On a more humored note, never rush to do what YH is telling you. Look in last weeks parsha, after chava was enticed by the snake it says in Rashi that she gave to all the animals to eat from the tree of knowledge so that they will all die eventually. Every animal had his share but the tortoise that came along slowly and wasn't running to sin got one of the longest life span, up to 400 year!. So tell the YH "ok I will do it but I don't have to run, let's do it next week"