M was a stress reliever for me. Today I use Urge Surfing and SOBER instead. Exercise and socializing also work.

Well. Didn't get around to having any conversations. Had a small fall Friday and was not in the frame of mind for any discussions.

Not really sure what my thought process was. I just wanted it and went for it. I think I got overconfident with my new work filter and let my guard down.
Moving forward:
1) recommitting to reading TBOTG daily
2) updating my work filter with the blocked sites on my home filter (anyone know if I can export a list of sites from techloq and bulk block on a different account?)
3) practicing urge surfing once a day for two minutes

I also think I'm going to back off from the "90 day" count. It was stressing me out. I. Am. Clean. It doesn't matter how many days in a row I specifically have lined up. I was counting it like sefira and I think it was creating some unnecessary pressure.
So today is day one. Tomorrow will also be day one. That's as far ahead as I want to think.
[That being said, whatever day I am on is +32 clean from masturbation. I was going to say also +32 clean from 'hardcore pornography', but that is a meaningless distinction in every way.]

For stress, try exercise, socializing or Urge Surfing. All three worked for me.

I'm always impressed by someone who gets a good streak, falls, and doesn't give up but keeps right on trying to get better. Yasher Koach.

One of the main avodah's here is preparing  during the good times so we are prepared for the bad. So what happens during your "ruach shtus"? Do you have proper filters? Have you done the F2F program/practiced tools like urge surfing? 

Regarding exercise, I'm a lazy shlub so no real direct experience. I think people here recommend exercise as a way to help stop p&m. But hopefully someone else can chime in on the benefits. 

Excellent question. Avoiding the battle is most of the fight, but you need responses to urges too of course.

See THIS excellent post from Chancy:



There are some great resources on F2F to help with this too, primarily this one on urge surfing. Of course, the time to practice these things is when you are not triggered, so you can build the habit/strength/muscle memory to do it when you are triggered. 

Reaching out to someone on GYE or socializing can reduce stress. Try reaching out to the main mentor Hashem Help Me, Chaimoigen or Eerie. Exercise also helps a lot. A third option is an Urge Surfing or SOBER mindfulness exercise which you can get in the SOS section or that you can redeem with coins and download.

Checking in. Feeling pretty good today.

I feel like recently I've been going through this cycle. I fall, work through follow up urges for a couple days using tools I've learnt here (primarily urge surfing and distraction). Then I go through a couple easy days of cruising fine and things are good. But around day 7-10 I start getting urges again and at my difficult points I fall again.

The urges predictably pop up when I'm bored/overwhelmed/antsy at work with my unfiltered computer. The problem is I can survive work through and overcome urges for a couple days, but they keep on coming like waves at the seashore. I think the issue is partially that there are different types of urges. The first couple days post-fall are a desire for porn. I can work through that. The later desires are a desire to escape and seem to be much tougher and more persistent.

I've put on browser add ons to block as much as I can, but I cannot install a filter on my work computer. Although I'm aware that would be extremely helpful, I work with confidential documents at a non-jewish company. They would not go for a filter. And I'm too scared to ask. [Logically, I work on those same documents on my personal, filtered, computer. There should be no difference. But if I pointed that out, they would be likely to require me to use a work laptop at home which would be deadly. When I write this out I see it's very possible I'm wrongly justifying myself here. But I can't ask either way. My boss is not a reasonable person. (This is more justification)].

I think it's progress that I'm recognizing what's going on. And if you'd told me a year ago that I'd consistently be going a week clean I'd be delighted. But I know I can do better. 

So what's the plan? What am I going to next Monday or Tuesday when I'm sitting bored, antsy, tired etc. in front of my work computer and I don't remember my motivation and my fingers want to ease me, ever so gently, into hell just to escape work? 

chooseurname wrote on 02 Apr 2024 19:20:

Thank you Choosy ( I  need to think of a good nickname) 
That's something I've struggled greatly with for a long time as well. 
What i did is first, i blocked everything that's not kosher, even news and similar things, then i got a web chaver that sees everything i search. So the days of just searching for innocent! little things that i knew will trigger me a little and the YH was telling me are ok for now, are over. I cant do that anymore. 
Then, i also did something insane, even if i would fall CV and look at some really bad stuff which used to just completely overwhelm my brain  and the fight would be over before i know it, now i would just watch and then say "ok, you already fell %50 of the way, you don't need to actually masturbate anymore, let this be rock bottom" And " this is not so exciting, i've done this many times and while its great, nothing to lose my sh*t over! 
In 2 minutes of doing that, my desire would decrease drastically,
Funny thing is that for weeks afterwards i wouldn't feel that pull to watch porn, because once you are able to clearly and logically burst that bubble of losing control and you see that nothing will actually happen even if you watch porn. 
So Urge Surfing is great and eye opening because the lie that you are losing control bursts very fast. 

The next best thing is diffusion- where you will realize how small that part of you that wants to watch porn and masturbate really is. 
We are much larger then that, we have so many better things to do. 

chooseurname wrote on 02 Apr 2024 19:20:

One thing that has helped me fight in the moment was the GYE Shovavim text from Feb 15. It says: "Many people think that urges get stronger and stronger until you give in, but in reality, urges come in waves that grow and peak, before gradually subsiding. Urges almost never last more than 30 minutes, and usually much less than that."

It continued on, but for me that line was extremely powerful. I never knew that the average urge is going to last 30 minutes max!! Suddenly, the battleground has shifted. I felt so much more in control because this doesn't have to end in either failure or terrible agony for who knows how long. Now all I have to do is fight for a few minutes and then I'll be safe. 

This outlook greatly lessened my struggle and has helped me feel the freedom of having an urge and actually  being able to fight it instead of just giving in right away or saying to myself I'll just give in later.

chancy wrote on 02 Apr 2024 17:30:

This is an excellent explanation of urge surfing, and definitely something I need to work on.
Happens to be, when I'm deep in a bad spot I feel an urge and my hand jumps to open a site - I sometimes feel like I don't have the space to stop and think. But these days I'm doing better and have the time to stop and think through what you're describing. The tough part is 1) the YH likes to ease me into it - read this innocent article, just focus on that picture, search this. And like the frog in boiling water, before I know it I'm cooking. And then it's very hard to stop. 2) Even when I stop and make the cheshbon, sometimes it's hard to calculate straight and I come out that giving in would be better (not better, but just this once right now etc. etc. Plenty of rationalizations out there). 
But this is crucial. Maybe I'll read your post daily instead of the BOTG; it hit harder.

Shmuu wrote on 27 Mar 2024 04:02:

By updating the daily progress chart on the dashboard and by doing the Flight to Freedom program. If you do both of them consistently you will get enough coins to purchase the Urge Surfing and SOBER recordings pretty fast. It seems that you haven't done the Flight to Freedom program. I suggest that you do it. I couldn't have broken free without it. It is also worth regularly reading The Battle of the Generation which will give you the strength to win. Here is the link to the ebook: https://guardyoureyes.com/ebooks/item/the-battle-of-the-generation

I didn't write this in my previous post but I regularly read the book, and I was reading my list of cues and appropriate responses twice a week and updating it once a week when I had s***** struggles.

It usually requires a comprehensive strategy that is acquired over time in order to break free and it isn't usually a quick fix. Give it everything you have and you will eventually succeed. Keep on posting and sharing and keep on trucking.

Connection means reaching out to someone on GYE or elsewhere or to join a group of people, and talk or socialize, and Urge Surfing and SOBER are mindfulness exercises that you can redeem by pressing on the gold coins on the top right-hand side of your screen in GYE.

Amein. Thank you. Connection, urge surfing and SOBER. I hope to look into these 3. Currently I don't know what they are. Interestingly, last June I wrote a few posts on this platform. Starting around June 14th Hashem blessed me with at least 60 days of kedusha. It felt like it could have gone on forever. The most pleasant part about these 60+ days I remember being this wholesome feeling. These 60+ days were unique in that the urge to act out was also taken away, I felt additional Yiras Shamayim and I experienced good mental health. I remember listening to Rabbi Yarons 3 "movies" frequently during these 60+days while I did long distance driving. The movies were tikun habrit, gehenim, and Hashem took back his millions. I try to retrace my steps so that I could experience this again but it doesn't seem to work. Perhaps someone was davening for me back then. Perhaps it was someone on this platform. I don't really know. Although the approach used seemed to be very time consuming, it fit into my lifestyle perfectly. I would listen to the 90 minute audio of his 3 movies frequently while I drove. Currently I'm unemployed so I suppose I have the time to try a different approach. So the connection, urge surfing and SOBER is something I will look into bli neder. Thank you again for responding. 

It takes up a significant portion of my day. I am unemployed and I live with my parents and they don't have access to my computer. I would suggest that you at least incorporate Connection, Urge Surfing and SOBER. Once you are good at Urge Surfing and SOBER you can do them without the recording whenever you have free time and you aren't driving. SOBER can be effective even if done for only 3 minutes, as long as you are completely focused and free from distractions. You can also do it in bed before falling asleep. I also highly suggest that you journal the way I posted on December 31st when you have severe anxiety. You would anyway be forced to pause and tend to your health and this type of journaling was my most effective and quickest method for avoiding a panic attack. You can overwrite it and delete it if it is on the computer or shred it if it is on paper a short time after journaling and it will still have the same effect. If you have additional time you can incorporate exercise. Even half an hour once a week or 10 minutes 5 times a week can help a lot. Someone who is employed and has a family probably won't have the time to journal regularly and they may not have privacy. There are many people posting on the forum but I don't know how they find the time for it.

Thank you for the blessing. V'chein l'mar.

I learned through GYE how to highly regulate my mood through all the techniques I mentioned in my post. Although I joined GYE because of M, GYE was the best tool I ever had to heal from bipolar disorder. I have a therapist and I journal on Word in detail throughout the week everything I am experiencing that effects my mood or feels significant. I resolve 2/3 of my issues simply by journaling and the other third by sharing my journal with my therapist and discussing what I wrote. It makes therapy extremely effective and my therapist is having a blast because he has everything that is going on in my mind expressed clearly in writing. I journal when I have severe anxiety in a different format that I described in my post on December 31st. ​I frequently listen to Urge Surfing and SOBER audio exercises I redeemed with coins. I have a list of cues and appropriate responses from the toolbox and some additional responses that work for me and I already worked out well what to do in every situation. I had to update my list many times but recently I haven't had sexual urges and I already know the appropriate responses for negative moods without thinking. Posting on the forum is a form of Connection and it does a good job at regulating my mood.

I post my daily progress on the dashboard, including whether I had urges, the intensity and what I did to overcome them. At the moment I have a low sexual drive due to medication but I still have negative moods which are my urges when I do have a sex drive. Therefore, I write in my daily progress chart that I had an urge if I had a negative mood even if it wasn't sexual, and I write the mood intensity and what I did to overcome the mood. I then copy and paste what I wrote onto my journal so that my therapist reads it.

Before joining GYE I had panic attacks and now I can get anxiety but it doesn't lead to panic attacks, acting out or getting into a fight with anyone. I am very prepared and I use my techniques immediately when the negative moods surface so they usually don't have the time to develop into something serious. Occasionally my anxiety level is high due to having too many triggers at once but I live with my family peacefully because I don't get overwhelmed by it. I treat it on my own, sometimes with medication but usually with the techniques I wrote in my previous post until it dissipates. Since my mood is regulated the risk of mania is much lower than it was before joining GYE.

My intention when joining GYE was to treat M but as you can see I benefited from GYE more than I could have imagined in my wildest dream. I am forever grateful to Dr. Avrohom Yehoshua Twerski z"tzl for his input, to the GYE founders, staff and donors, and to the people posting for everything they have done so I can heal.