Day 33

My wife had a go at me today about our financial situation 

Came awfully close to masturbating my brains out
Multiple times

One thought that went through my mind then may be beneficial:
It will take multiple falls to relieve this
I will still be stuck financially then
My wife will not change her attitude 
I will feel even worse
And, I will not enjoy the fall at all
It will just give me the feeling that I'm free, that I can do as I wish 
But at the same time I will still feel the stress and burden of having to pay the bills
And I will be depressed as I do it and afterwards 

I am now realising that this thought process signals the progress of recent months
Both, that it comes up in my mind in times of nisayon and that it was a real detterent (and least at 33 days, I doubt I would have held back on day 10)

And while I hope and pray that my finances will be simpler and that I should not have these nisyonos, I thank hashem for revealing to me in such a clear example how great I can and will Iy"h go on to be

excon wrote on 23 Jan 2021 23:22:

What's a clean movie?

(Too scared to post this so I’ll put it in parentheses, After I did the last post I was nichshal more until my friend came from the bais at which point I called him and changed code... I went and got a massive cup of frozen yogurt for dinner, and now feeling withdrawal from not watching more zachen. Oyyy it’s like drinking sand, doesn’t quench the thirst.)

Welcome. You're in the right place.

First of all please take time to read through the GYE handbook.  No two people are the same, everyone has a slightly different set of circumstances, but we all share this problem and since we share the problem we can share the solution too. The book is written in a general way so it can apply to everyone. I found it helpful to really think about what the book was saying and how it applied to me and my own life.

This is a very common problem nowadays, you're far from the only one to deal with it. The word addict gets thrown around quite a lot, but most people who struggle with this issue are not addicts, just normal people with a normal yetzer hora. Which is good. Some people have come to realise that they really are addicts because their situation got gradually worse and worse despite working on it. When I say worse I mean, in frequency, severity or just feeling worse after every slip. If that is the case we may need more than GYE, which most people find to be therapy or SA or both. But I wouldn't jump to that conclusion about you. Many people have overcome this challenge right here on GYE using the tools in the handbook.

So stick around. Keep posting, keep reading and keep on trucking.

Hi guys! Good morning! 

Yes, I'm all chirpy, cause...one day at a time!

I have a theory. When I iniinitially joined GYE, I worked on discipline and control. I learned to value good and despise bad. I learned techniques and tricks. I learned to recognize what's truth and what isn't. I was really shteiging and I slowly worked my way up to close to 180 days. The I got comfortable, became complacent, and..  

Then I fell.

Immediately I invigorated myself and committed to a taphsic, knasos, punishments and kabalos. All fired up for rectifying my bad choices, but I continued to slip and fall no matter how much my savings account depleted. Did it help alot, yes - not always is a person willing to pay $500 for a peek, but nothing in me was changing. It was like locking an alcoholic in jail. He may not have access to any hard stuff, but as soon as he breaks loose he's gonna be sucking dem stuff down. I believe the term is dry drunk. 

What I gotta do is change my mindset back to what it was initially. No more can I answer desire with "too expensive" or "you said Hashem's name in your shvuah", It's gotta come from me. Me not wanting it. Me, my heart and brain, not that other animalistic part.

I must start to work on yiddishkeit as a whole. Davening, learning, yiras shamayim etc. It's gotta become an "I don't want" instead of "I can't". 

How long will it take? What steps exactly to do? What new practices to accept? I'm not sure yet, but it will be done.

I have faith in myself. I really do.

Dear GYE community,
I know I posted in a different post a tiny bit about myself, but I wanted to introduce myself here on this forum with a little more length.

With the tremendous help of Hashem and this wonderful website and its members, I have made it to 90 days. I had tears in my eyes when I clicked the "I'm still clean" button and saw that I made it to 90 days.

A little about me:
I went to public schools my whole life. Everyone around me my whole life told me everything was הפקר. I was surrounded and bombarded by the worst of the worst. At some point, I was exposed to Torah, and I decided I wanted to live a life of halacha. When I found out that watching shmutz was אסור, I was [miraculously] able to stop cold turkey. I said to myself, if it's prohibited, I won't do it. However, even with time, I was unable to stop the הוצאת זרע לבטלה aspect of this sugya. This pained me greatly. My will power was unable to conquer this battle. I felt like my tshuva was incomplete. No matter how many rabbis I spoke with nor how many books on the topic I read, I was unable to win the battle.

This Rosh Hashana, I decided with total commitment that I am not going to die before doing tshuva shleima and that now is the time because I don't know how long my life will be. I signed up on GYE and told myself, "I'm going to do it; I'm going to finally do tshuva shleima". Today I made it to 90 days, and I'm going for a lifetime, one day at a time.

I want to say a few points here about how I made it through the 90 days despite many near falls. These are some of the things that I know helped me, in no particular order:
1. I stopped thinking of this issue as principally a spiritual problem, but rather principally as a medical problem, i.e., addiction. This helped me to not feel eternally doomed and sad, but rather like someone who had a medical problem that could be treated. This transition in mindset was inspired by reading Dr. Twerksy's book Addictive Thinking, which I highly recommend. In that book, he describes an alcoholic who called him at 2 am saying he desperately needed a drink. Dr. Twersky relates that at that moment, he understood that only an addict can understand an addict's thinking. This is one of the many tremendous things this site provides—understanding from others who are in the battle.

2. This one is huge: I read someone's post here on GYE's that winning this battle is two fold. You obviously have to stop looking at immorality. He went on to say though that you also have to stop fantasizing. What I didn't realize until I read his post is that the yetzer hara always made the latter seem 100% muttar to me. I am confident that this is why it took my so many years to get clean. You simply have to shecht the fantasies by diverting your mind immediately. Do not repress. Divert. Just start thinking about other things.

3. Daven. Daven. Daven. If you're not davening to be disgusted by violations of רצון ה׳, how do you ever expect to be disgusted by violations of רצון ה׳?  I began davening a minimum of three times a day to desire nothing in the world but to do רצון ה׳, and to be absolutely disgusted by even the thought of violating רצון ה׳.

4. Guard your eyes in public. I trained myself to instantly close my eyes upon seeing any shmutz in public. This is quicker than turning the head.

5. Immerse yourself in the halachos of these topics. Every night for many weeks I would chazer right before going to bed the Tur and Beis Yosef on the issur of הוצאת זרע לבטלה.
Chazon Ish זצ״ל says that you cannot succeed in keeping a certain halacha when push comes to shove and it's difficult if you haven't immersed yourself in all its fine details for many hours and with great effort. I would focus on each word of the Tur, Beis Yosef, and Shulchan Aruch, saying them slowly to myself. Ingrain the prohibitions deeply within yourself. Develop a LOVE and FEAR of the halacha.

6. Make good friends and good chavrusos.

7. >30 minutes of high intensity cardiac exercise at least 4 times a week. This helps blow off a lot of steam.

8. Daven. I'm telling you, you have to daven. This is an impossible battle without siyata dishmaya.

9. Don't ever think that because it's hard and uncomfortable that you should give up. Nothing that is worth doing is easy. Nothing. Be willing to fight to do what's right even though it hurts.

Thank you to all who post on GYE. I would not be where I am today without your inspiration.

If I may question this whole concept of counting days...
If we use it as a tool to change bad habits, that's great. But the count is in no way an indicator of the person. 
You can be at day one and be much better off than someone that's on day 1000 ... 
My humble opinion is to really rethink the way we use and view these counts... 

Feel free to agree and disagree 

"EvedHashem1836" post=368336
date=1620706409 catid=19

Maybe others will disagree w my eitzah but...don't worry about it. Keep on going from where you left off

Went to therapy. Was nichshal again.
Entering the gym now to work out.
Gonna try calming down.

Day 17
I think I'm starting to come around to long term battle/ODAAT mindset. Also to the idea of hopefully not but potentially having slips and falls along the road.

This perspective may not work for everyone but if I were chas v'shalom a sex offender and created my own fences which I could tear down if I really wanted to (even if I had partners, support groups etc.) and there was temptation constantly in my face (and let's say there were no cops) would anyone be surprised if I fell? I think they would be amazed that I lasted this long And then to get up, brush off and keep on trucking? That feels almost L'Maalah min Hateva

Are we that different, really?

This may be demoralizing for some but I actually find it refreshing. The mishna in Avos admonishes 'don't believe in yourself until the day you die'. R' Pincus mentions that they found in the Kabbalos of the Atler of Kelm 'not to be a complete Rasha'. All this to say that even those who aren't addicted have the potential to fall to the bottom...how much more so those of us who have already tasted forbidden pleasures.

I think the other aspect is that there is a part of me who says 'but aren't I cut out for better things than constantly fighting this yetzer hara of arayos (or P&M in my case)'? And I think the true answer is...no! This is my tafkid now. Perhaps prior to this it didn't have to be a focus but it does now. Not to say other things in my life don't have high priority but I imagine in Shamayim in my goals for the year, P&M are gonna be there in the top 3 or 5 for the rest of my life along with being nice to the wife and kids (and torah learning, davening of course)