Hi everyone I am starting tonight a 30 day challenge of staying clean.

I will post every day my status. my challenges, my battles and my feelings.

Let’s see what result of such a journey will bring.  

In case you pop in here and you see I didn’t update yet for a day or 2 - cuz I might forget, pls reply with a comment so I will get a notification reminder to update. 

If you wanna be kind leave me a Beracha and wish me hatslacha. 

Thanks, much love
yuyu, 

Before I begin my “journey to journal” I wanna make it clear: I am journaling in public and everything I write is thoughts and feelings straight from my heart without being censored, so you might agree or disagree with some of the things or you might have comments. Please feel free to comment.



And now to my dear diary/journal:



So what brought me to start a documentation journey is after a new fall tonight. I feel guilty. Very guilty.



Hmm.. the very so called mature adult in me is knocking me down right now saying that I am only doing it to still my guilt. Maybe. Maybe I only do it as a means of covering up but I still wanna do it. 



However I know that tonight the fall came as a result of feeling toooo confident in myself that I can stay strong and not fall for the Narishkeiten but ye ye or yu yu.. when I started seeing these shmutziga ugly pictures in an instant I was down on the floor. I fell.



Stupid me Who can not fall by walking down a cliff?? Naturally gravity pulls you down!!! How stupid and dumbfounded must one be to believe that walking down a 100 ft cliff is possible without being harmed?? 



so here’s the guilt. Or as you may call it Chrata. 



I wanna start again because if not I’m a looser. I don’t want to be a loser. Who wants? As long as I can still pick myself up I will. I am going to try again. never gonna give up!! I am a fighter!! I can!! Yes I can!! And I will!!

I disagree. 
You trying - and managing to walk up a cliff. 
Also, you did not fall the full 100 feet. At all. 
You just fell into a ditch but on the height where you are and you most definitely still retain each and every step of the climb that took you up those 100 feet. 
Congrats on the great attitude, brush yourself off and now go to step 101 up the mountain of purity, bliss, serenity, happiness and freedom.

You can and will get there, just keep up the great attitude

Thank you starting, kind words. Kind words. Much love to you my friend. 

Day #1

Good morning my dear journal I feel and I sense today might be a hard day for me.

I feel lust coming up.

I just walked in the street and my eyes were trying to get a glimpse of that woman.

I failed to resist but then I caught myself and looked away, is that a victory? Perhaps. A small one.

how will I know I won’t fall but really fall today? I feel so fragile and weak to fight this powerful urge to sin. But I know I am not allowed to. So there’s a tremendous battle going on inside of myself.

Hashem please help me to stay clean. Lower the flames of lust in me. Maybe I don’t deserve it because I’ve sinned too much but still I ask you and I beg you. Pls be on my side against satan. I want to be good. I want to be clean. It is now in the morning I have no idea how my day will end up but you, I beg you Hashem please make sure to keep me clean. I am giving over to you the battle. It’s not mine. It’s yours. You know better than me how to fight. Ish Milchama. You fight against the satan. Kick this unhealthy and unworthy lust out of me. Help me to channel the lust to my wife. Be here with me. I am putting myself in your hands.

ok pulled it through till here. Now I watched a krav Maga video and felt big lust about the women there, and the way she was dressed, it kind of got me. I should of be more careful about videos that can trigger me

HASHEM HELP ME. I DIDNT MAKE THIS LUST, I DIDNT CREATE IT, YOU DID. HELP ME. 

Taking now lunch. I hope nothing will happen and hashem is gonna protect me spiritually.

DAY #2 

Fell in battle. The battle went for 3 hours and each hour I pushed it for another hour until I fell. It was a bloody battle. I fought, I fought like a mad lion. But at one point weak and exhausted I put down my fire and surrendered to the enemy, I went to watch horrible stuff. Didn't MB, but watched horrible stuff. Believe me, it's horrible. 

Am I lost? will I ever get rid of this?

I am bleeding. Nasty battlefield. Very nasty. 

I am crying. 

Horrible stuff. It seems like everytime I fall the damage goes deeper and I am looking at more terrible things than before. 

Before you sin you feel like you cannot survive without it, afterwards you feel like you cannot survive with it. 

How can I do this to my wife and children? why am doing this? why? does anyone know why? if I feel so horrible afterward than why am I falling when I know that I am going to feel awful?

I feel very guilty about what I did. I wanna go pray mincha now but I feel like Hashem is not interested in my tefilas, how can I look him in the eyes? 

DId I damage my soul now? will the damage stay forever? can I do Teshuva? what is my plan going forward? 

Hashem help me. 

A wounded soldier in the battlefield

Feeling very depressed. Regretful. I feel so embarrassed to look in my wife’s face, know this feeling? 

Over the last few hours I’ve thought a lot.

What is my strategy moving forward? I don’t have one yet.

I try not to act with pure emotion now, because emotion tells me to feel bad feel guilty and then feel like you are already safe because you feel bad and you will probably not fall again ever.. because you did teshuva.. right? 

What a scam. 

It is as if now I can go out to fight again.

How stupid.

How can I win if I have no strategy?

I will definitely have a new lust attack tomorrow or the day after. I mean, once I feel like I’m a big Tsadik again then a lose is predicted! Because I have limited weapons. I’m out of bullets. It is ignorance to stand up and go back to the battlefield without a plan in place.  

Hashem send me clarity please!!! 

I am new here and don't have much helpful things to say because I have not yet gotten through and succeeded with my challenges, but all I want to say is I really relate to what you are saying. I have many of the same feelings often, and the struggle is very real. It's intense. So all I know is that we are in this together, and I can't wait to meet you on the other side.

I wish you much hatzlacha with putting together your plan. Please share when you have some ideas.

Let's do this.

@yuyu:

You definitely need a strategy. Someone has the quote in their signature "Insanity is doing the same thing again and expecting different results ".

Feeling guilty is helpful- but how long has that helped in the past? All the terrible feelings after letting loose fades.

Try to organize a plan for avoiding triggers like krav mega videos with inappropriately dressed women, and you must prepare a response to a lust attack already in progress. Be it physical or emotional or intellectual. You definitely can't keep hoping for miracles and then being upset when they don't suddenly occur.

I apologize for the harsh words. They are written out of pure unadulterated love for you, and a keen personal understanding of the never ending battle.

                                   Grant

Granty, first of all your words are words of wisdom, acuity, and clearity. No harsh stuff at all. In fact I wrote that I also think that I might be in danger if I dont have a strategy in place. I just wrote my heart out that I am at lost with coming up with a strategy. 

Maybe you can help me with that.  

yuyu wrote on 05 Nov 2020 15:54:

My pleasure.  Let's start with this. So far what has been your strategy? Just white knuckling and hoping?

DAY #3

So here I am at 6:00 pm and today I stayed clean. Bh. struggled here and there but overall was able to shift away from it. 

I made a promise today in the morning to Hashem that I am staying clean no matter what. 

Hashem help me to stay clean.

Also, I started reading "The battle of the generation". Pretty helpful. 

Today when I started feeling the edge of lust I shifted thinking about something that makes me really excited. Something fun. It helped me exchange the excitement of lust with the excitement of something good and real. 

Dear journal of mine, This holy Grant guy is waiting for a reply but I dont know what to answer him. You think its because I am in denial? or am I exhausted of the whole planing strategizing thing? perhaps both? I dont know. It feels like skipping it and pretending everything is good. 

But it is not good, because if I will not come up with something I can chas ve'shalom slip again. 

Hashem help me. 

You can start with something simple like making a list of the reasons why you wan to fight. You can share them here and the choshuve chevra can give you some advice about which ones are healthy and which ones are not.

I found that this is the first step, number one, to identify your "why" and number two, to get an objective opinion on which ones are healthy and which ones aren't as well as if perhaps you may need stronger motivation.

After you figure out your why, take a look at the various tools so that you can figure out how but first work on the why.

Once you have your why, you can work on a CBA where you weigh the pros and cons of acting out to clarify for yourself what you really want from yourself.

Keep us posted.

P.S. guilt although extremely motivating, tends to lead to cycles of being clean and acting out due to the anxiety from the guilt itself. This can become a never ending cycle unless you have some other clearer stronger and healthier motivators. A really good one is gratitude instead of guilt. Guilt leaves us feeling anxious, gratitude doesn't.

I think strategy number one for you is to once a day stand in front of a mirror, focus deeply on the eyes looking back at you, and tell that fellow in the mirror' "Hey, you are a really great fellow! You daven, you learn, you do many mitzvos, and you have the courage to deal with a tough challenge that most guys have but unfortunately can't face. Hashem will help you win. Stop defining yourself as a rasha and loser. You started this habit way back; without the knowledge of how bad it is. Have a great day!"   Do this until you start believing it - it is the truth buddy.

As an aside, there is no word in lashon kodesh for guilt. It is a christian concept. Charata is not guilt; it is regret - the very short term feeling bad about an action as a catalyst for teshuva. It does not mean carrying around a depressive feeling of guilt. Asham also does not mean guilt. Translating a korban asham as a "guilt" offering comes from "their" version of "the Bible".