unanumun wrote on 15 Jan 2018 15:53:

i think there is a huge difference between learning mussar and mussar sedorim and working on living it
mussar and chassidus is all about self awarness not shuckling and crying or singing over a sefer

Sometimes mussar can help. For me there were times I kept to a clear mussar schedule and I was fine with porn and acting out until a few weeks went by and I slowly slipped out of the mussar Seder. Particularly, often the reason would be for the same stresses and pressures that led me down the path of escaping to porn.

I myself never went to a twelve step meeting and didn't work through the steps in a clear answer systematic way. I have been clean thought since I joined gye (I think it's going on 4 years now).
However, what I learned here was to acknowledge the fact that my escape (and bad habit or perhaps some sort of addiction) was the solutions to my problem and not my problem.Understanding addictions and how the twelve steps helps, opened up a new way of looking at things. I definitely read through the twelve steps and put lots of thought into them. Especially the first few steps.

After being clean for a few years and retrospection, I think that perhaps yes I would've been able to stay clean had I learned mussar every day. And then I would have been able to live my entire life fighting this yetzer hara, perhaps winning more perhaps not but definitely through fighting for the rest of my life.

What I really needed was to understand my self better, understand my marriage better, understand the idea of giving to my wife in our intimate relationship and not taking. What I needed as well was to be exposed to raw honesty. (the kind that was basically demanded from gye members back when Dov was hanging around) to be honest with myself about where I was really holding what was really bothering me and what I really needed to do to change.I am not sure I would've have ever gotten that through learning mussar.  And I am pretty proficient in many of the classic mussar sedarim.  Perhaps if I had joined a group of mussarnicks (but that would've never happened).
Yes there are plenty of people who just have tayvas nashim on some level and by learning mussar they are able to keep it in check. But someone who is living a frum life externally but behind closed doors escaping to porn, obviously has a deeper problem than tayvas nashim. Had he learned mussar properly until that point, perhaps he wouldn't have ended up in such a place. But by the time someone reaches such a place (whether it is the age of 9 of the age of 50 ) there are deeper issues that need to be dealt with.

Once he picks up the yesodos of addiction and recovery and puts in the hard work to fix the main sources of his problem, then yes he can probably go back to learning mussar and know how to apply what he is learning to what he actually needs in life.(Sorry for the long post. I have a lot of catching up to do)

wow! thank you for  this answer, i was just  getting nervous from what i was reading from some posts which were written here as if there was something deficient in musar or something, i think that point should be made that if the sefarim are not working the fault is in him!(me!)what i mean to say is the view is that addiction is a sickness and go ahead and learn c"h instead of taking antibiotics or chemo ,but what im hearing is  the 12 steps are basicaly things that are found in the musar sefarim ,why wold someone say"musar is poisen for me?"  " i wont get any benefit "true, the Torah IS compared to a potion of life or a potion of death(zoche sam chaim, lo zoche sam maves) but thats not to scare us off and not take it ,its to tell you to search how can i be worthy to be zoche?is it so hard to be zoche ?does one need to be a tzadik to be zoche?dont think so, never heard THAT,. if someone opens their heart before learning a sefer musar , thinking "i want to be  a mentsh that my Neshama is in control of the body, and not the body being in control of the Neshama, i DONT WANT lust ,tayva, i DONT WANT tremendous wealth , i DONT WANT vain glory ,that i should find approval in the eyes of men even though it might not be so pleaseing in Hashems eyes,these things come from my animalistic nature the body , and im not an animal , im a Neshama inside  a materialistic body and i essentialy want to do His will ,and not the bodys will, and this Holy sefer is going to instruct me how my Neshama can take control over the body AND THEN he learns the sefer,i think that will have a tremendous impression on the person and will work .im not belittleing the 12 steps and those who need them (maybe i  also do )it be litaraly saving lives!not to mention saving people from destructive behaviors like molestation C"V or C"V prostitution,far be it for me to give people bum advice especialy from the fact that im not a Talmud  Chacham ,never finished a mesechta in my life (yet), not a posek etc.just a yid who it was drilled in his head that musar ,or even sifrei  chasidus(im  a litvak) CAN change a person , just the problem is that theyre not working the sefarim right ,SO WORK IT RIGHT! DONT GIVE UP ! you dont give up on the 12 steps, dont you think that our sefarim deserve the same amount of respect! i think that there is alot more to say but ive got to run .thank you tzomah for the validation.

Before I joined my view on pornography was that it's a good thing but I'm not allowed to do it. I don't know if I'm thinking about it now more than before, but that's for sure that now sometimes when I'm thinking about it I think of it in such a negative way... So it's actually a good thing that I'm thinking about it... I'm looking on it as it is a bad bad ugly thing that my body is addicted to. Just like drugs. So I think to myself, "are you really going to give in to that ugly thing?? You're smarter than that!". Obviously this is not always the case, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.
Besides, I think there must be a difference between thinking about women and all porn (aka ****) concepts, and thinking / talking about pornography & masturbation. When you mb you're not thinking about masturbation... When you watch porn you're not thinking about porn, you focus on what you see (yes you do...).

I hear what you and lion king have to say, and well put,  I have no regret joining ,but ,if I can explain it well, before I got into gye,i had a life with learning Torah ,Chesed, a regular yeshivash life, PLUS, i had an issue with lust ,mast******n,but now after I was getting more into  gye ,I feel  these lust things have become more of an issue and now I had an esek with lust,PLUS I learn TorahChesed etc..could be because im more aware that the issue that I had before could develop  into a fullblown addiction .not clear.

I think there are 2 kinds of people 
1. People who maybe once or twice a month struggle with shmiras einayim those should come to the site once to see that if they don't take care of their problem it could lead to addiction, install filters and continue their life....
2. And then the ones that struggle non stop with masturbation or pornography (whether you want to call him an addict or not) usually the reason why a lot of us are constantly on this site is because we belong to this group.

And you are right it might cause us to think about sexuality more but the goal is to shift and think about healthy sexuality and what it should really be and why Porn is soo bad for us and causes such deep fake beliefs on sexuality and i think one of the reason's we constantly fall is because we try too hard to not think about sexuality something that unfortunately we cannot control so i don't think there is a problem of thinking too much about it we just have too change from thinking about lusting all the time too thinking all the time about how terrible this addiction is. Do you dear friends agree or did i miss the boat?

Just my 2 Cents
 Love Yankel

@youcan very well said you are absolutely right you seen to understand people pretty good......let me go check the PM and respond sorry for keeping you waiting 
@markz on the ball as always!

youcan wrote on 14 Jan 2018 18:24:

as they say ,it takes one to know one:smiley:

Markz wrote on 14 Jan 2018 18:52:

Markz, you are so so right. I am very very powerless. But the good news is that i'm working on it. I just got in touch with one of the big people here on gye & i'm in therapy. i feel like i'm doing my best in my currant situation. (not that i'm happy with the results so far, but even though i'm powerless, i'm not hopeless).
let's wait a week & see if something changed.. this will be a week of hard hard work - with hashem's help of course!
Thanks markz, i really appreciate it!

youcan wrote on 14 Jan 2018 18:24:

Rock bottom is the way up for many of us. "I am powerless" is an expression of bottom up

Youcan if you're stuck for a long time on day 4,5 hitting powerlessness can help you to if you so wish. And if it helps, Rabbi Twersky in last week's parsha explains that learning Mussar works can bring one to rock-bottom and get the Trucking engine started (he talks about pharaoh - not trucks...)

Hey! I see that yankelthefighter still has an unread pm from me......

I think I disagree (you let me know..)
You are a really good quality & powerful person, who also has a big ego (usually comes together, especially with what you went through), so could be you used your talents not only on the right places. So you can work on this if you want, to use your talents only in the right way. This is a thing every person has to work on with his natures. Every מדה you can use in both ways, our work is, as the rambam says to get on the דרך הממוצע.

I will check out your old account of course... I'm also in the middle of reading your thread & thinking how to reply...

But let me tell this again; you are very powerful! I think you already had a positive impact on many gye'ers.

youcan wrote on 14 Jan 2018 17:34:

@youcan let me share with you a little secret you are right one of my qualities is i act powerful, i have done a lot of great things in my life because of this quality but it has also gotten me into a lot of trouble when i had my power struggle with my parents and principal in 9th grade it was this quality that kinda made things get to such bad levels, and it was this quality that prevented me from reaching out to help in my struggles until now. btw i have 2 GYE account's the 1st one my username was yankelthefighter but trying to fight to hard with this struggle just caused me too much stress and as such i kept falling as such i started fresh with a new username iampowerless only once i realized that this addiction is terrible and i'm powerless and i need to reach out to hashem and others in my struggle because as powerful as i might make it like i am in regards to this struggle i'm powerless!! That's the answer behind my name

Lots Of Love Yankel!

R Yankel, right when I read your first post I saw that your very powerful & you prove it to me over an over... I don't know where you got that name (impowerless) from...

R gevura, my wife or even friend is not a good idea for me as I mentioned, it's too easy for me to get them to open things for me without suspecting. Also I shouldn't have access to the email address associated with the filter account cuz I can request a new password etc etc..... (On the PC we have now at home temporarily, we have k9 and the email address is my wife's GYE email to which I don't have access)

Good idea Yankel. 

BTW in order for K9 (and probably most other filters) to be effective, you can’t be the admin on your computer. So if you want to be safe have your wife/friend/TAG guy change the password on the admin account (that’s usually the first account you created when you first set up the computer) and create a separate user-level account for you to use.