Hey,

       For starting shidduchim its a case by case senario. Women both jewish and non-jewish think of porn in all forms as cheating. Whether you tell her or not is a whole other sugya but even if she doesn't know it's still impossible to give your full devotion to her as a husband while living this double life and she will definitely pick up on that bc women are more emotionally in tune than men.



    I am also 22 and single. I started porn and masterbation at age 12 but BH I've been clean for 11months minus 1day. This question is something that I think about alot aswell. I would recomend calling HashemHelpMe when you feel comfortable (took me a while till I called but 1000% worth it) and ask him about it.



    On another note I would like to recommend a few tools to help with this nisoyon.

• Of course there's the flight to freedom videos

• Urge surfing 

• And my personal favorite which I think is extremely useful is the concept of ODAAT- One Day At A Time.



Keep on Trucking, One Day At A Time!!

whywatch wrote on 29 Sep 2024 00:50:

Wow so I guess I'm not the only one,
I had the same issue I'm 2 weeks clean with no thoughts but I already know that shabbos is my major cue, and so it was that I woke up this morning and for the first time in 2 weeks I had imaginary movies playing in my head the entire day, every time I closed my eyes {even in middle davening, seuda, nap, etc.} I saw porn scenes playing in my head.
Id also love some advice, but I can say this much, first thing I did moitzei shabbos was text my mentor rabeinu HHM, second thing was listening to a urge surfing audio imagining the porn star as the twigs and leaves swimming along with the waterfall, there was a separation between me and the waterfall so when the twigs and leaves came closer and got bigger it didn't trigger me to strong, than it eventually fell down the waterfall along with the current and completely vanished.

Now I'm not saying that it's not going to come back, but at least there's a separation between me and the waterfall {aka urge} and hopefully it'll help me cope now and serve as a good practice for the coming shabbosim and yomim tovim

Iy"h we'll all get out of this together, hatzlacha and kesuva vachasuma tova

gibor1836 wrote on 26 Sep 2024 00:32:

"Watching the videos but trouble implementing the exercises."
Can totally, one hundred percent, relate to that. I can't say that I really stuck with many of those techniques, but one thing that I found helpful was practicing the techniques outside the time of an urge. To give an example, say you want to use urge surfing. So set a time and practice that on whatever non-sexual urge or feeling you're feeling at that time. It's much easier and it becomes a more habitual response you can pull out of your pocket when needed.

I'm very curious about that book as well. Someone said he was gonna review it but has yet to come through. Alas. 

Attractive women at work. Mmm, yeah. That's a problem.

I wish you had asked questions I had answers to, instead of just problems I also have. Some people will say humanize them. I never quite figured that out. Some people will say think about how terrible they are. I also never quite figured that one out either. 

Here's what I've tried that wasn't helpful: blaming them, stewing on it, feeling resentful against Hashem for putting them in my way.

Here's what I've tried that was helpful: not getting hung up on what I see at work and putting in the work on lust generally without focusing on this one specific area.

Hatzlacha and keep on truckalating

Bright wanted a discussion about mental health and these struggles so I am posting everything that worked for my negative moods, many of them caused by bipolar disorder. I listed what worked in my experience but different things work for different people. Journaling and behavioral activation which I am going to write about came from education outside of GYE.

The negative emotions for which I am going to write solutions that worked for me are depression, anxiety, anger, stress, fatigue, and boredom.

1.       For depression, exercise and socialization helped. A third thing that helped me a lot was behavioral activation. I made a list of all the possible things I can do in my free time. I made the list as long as possible, and I write everything I can think about regardless of whether it is something that I will really do in the end and regardless of whether I think they can be effective. Afterwards I choose 2-3 things from the list that I love to do the most. I keep a journal of my mood for every hour of the day which includes my specific mood from the emotion-wheel on the Flight to Freedom program and its intensity from 1-10.

I investigate by doing these activities while writing down my mood also in the hours before and after doing these activities. I do these activities a few times regardless of whether they made me feel better or not. After doing them a few times I check whether my mood became better after doing them. In the beginning it can sometimes only be a subtle difference. If they made my mood better, I continue doing them and if not, I replace them for other activities on my list. It is important to be an investigator because when someone has clinical depression it makes him feel that there is no way out of it and his efforts are futile. Therefore, simply investigating as opposed to testing and proving is the way to go.

Eventually you will find a number of activities that you enjoy. Keep doing them and eventually you won’t be depressed. I used this technique for clinical depression and it worked. The way it works is because people who are depressed generally withdraw from society and regular functioning which feeds the depression which causes more withdrawal and they are in a depression loop. Behavioral activation gives a person a positive feeling which triggers more behavioral activation which triggers more positive feelings.

Very often at the beginning you have to force yourself to do these activities and it may even feel like they will make your mood worse. The real measure is how you feel after doing these activities a few times and not how you feel before doing them or after doing them once.

It is important not to do these activities instead of your regular daily functioning like work, learning and davening but rather do them in your free time. I am writing this because these activities made me feel so good that I lost some of my interest in working.

2.       For anxiety, exercise and Urge Surfing help. A third thing that helps is journaling. There are two types of journaling that I do. One is when I have severe anxiety sometimes to the point that I am about to have a panic attack. I don’t have the composure to process anything. I write down what happened and all of my raw emotions exactly as they are with all their severity without leaving out any details. This can lower my anxiety from level 9 which is just below a panic attack to level 2-3.

There is another type of journaling which I do when I have mild to moderate anxiety where it isn’t as severe and I am able to process my emotions. I journal what happened including my emotions and then I use CBT to look at what happened objectively from the outside how it would look to someone else who doesn’t have the negios that I have and how other people involved experienced what happened including their personality and psyche and how they deal with what happened. For those who aren’t familiar with CBT, you can learn about it on the Flight to Freedom program. Essentially what I do with CBT is equivalent to what my therapist would have done in a therapy session.

3.       For anger, exercise, Urge Surfing and journaling helped. My anxiety and anger were often intertwined because when I had anxiety it would usually trigger people around me which led to anger.

4.       For stress, exercise, discussing it with someone and Urge Surfing helped. I have had to use Urge Surfing a few times a week for this.

5.       For boredom, escape, and distract helped. Sometimes all I need was to leave the house and I would figure out what I was going to do once I was in the street. I usually either went to shul or to visit a relative. At other times finding something that I enjoyed doing helped a lot.

6.       For fatigue, Stop, Distract and SOBER worked. SOBER is good for fatigue because it is short.

Nowadays, I don't usually have negative moods anymore but this only happened after going through an intermediate period since joining GYE of doing these exercises faithfully. I haven't had clinical depression since joining GYE and the things I wrote for depression were done before this period.

bright wrote on 20 Sep 2024 17:18:

Did I mention urge surfing? I'm not sure I remember what it is

richtig wrote on 20 Sep 2024 04:54:

Im really sorry for what you are going through and went through. From our brief conversation it seems to me that to some extent you bravely turned your pain into self transformation. That is really inspiring and special. I agree and love what you wrote. I would add that another difference with us "running from hell" is that the way to deal with triggers may be different. If I am very depressed or angry, doing something like urge surfing may only help temporarily because the real problem is the anger or sadness. It can be worthwhile to do just to get out of the desire state, but for me at least, it needs to be followed up with some work to change my negative state.

By me bipolar sure was the root cause. My struggles weren't coming from lust at all. I posted a lot about my struggles with bipolar and how I treated bipolar through tools on GYE and other tools to avoid M on the following thread:

https://guardyoureyes.com/forum/19-Introduce-Yourself/329691-bipolarmzl

With the help of these tools I was able to overcome my negative moods and with new medication and everything GYE gave me I don't have depression or anxiety anymore which were my reasons for struggling with M. I have hypersexuality when I am manic. I haven't had mania since a while before joining GYE and I hope that I don't have severe mania ever again. If I would have severe mania I would try journaling and Urge Surfing. I think this should make the mania more bearable even for someone who doesn't get hypersexuality.

Since 41 days of my current streak I have low hormones but I still used all the tools for my symptoms the same way I would have if I still had sexual urges because of them. For instance, I did Urge Surfing exercises and my urge was my negative mood even though it wasn't sexual anymore.

I had sexual PTSD because of bipolar and my wife's behavior. I posted about it once to get it off my chest but I deleted it after a few days because it was very personal and the 4 people who knew my story could have identified me. I also posted a few of my beliefs about intimacy that developed because of my wife's behavior. They were refuted on the forum and I learned the healthy approach to intimacy. I still have PTSD regarding work and davening and it is very debilitating but regarding sexual PTSD I fully healed. I used the forum instead of psychotherapy and it was very effective. I still have my therapist but I didn't need him for this part of my PTSD. A long post from HHM about bedroom life also helped set things straight and helped me heal.

Day 24:
Thursday

Today I was going through the lessons of flight to fight freedom and I was up to the lesson regarding urge surfing- part of the lesson was to think of an urge and let it pass. I started to think of an urge and it was horrible I felt like I was getting caught in a trap and I had no where to go. Right away I stopped thinking of the urge but I can still feel the grips on me- I called my mentor who told me that there is not one way to get over this addition rather there are multiple paths to get to freedom. I felt upset with myself on how can I let myself to start thinking of an urge. Baruch Hashem the urge level decreased and I was able to continue with the day.

(Sorry I am posting this late. I was away with family)

Thanks for your reply! Yes, I have started the flight to freedom program and really like some of the tools I found, like urge surfing. I have started skimming battle of the generation, there is some interesting stuff in there for sure. 

I am not dealing with any sexual struggles other than Porn, but just that by itself is a huge problem for me.

hundredbrachos wrote on 16 Aug 2024 15:14:

Congrats on hitting chai! Keep on trucking to chayim and beyond.

Excellent question. 

I'm not sure I have an answer, and I'm definitely no expert in the F2F program tools. I thought CURE was just a tracking exercise to help you get a handle on what in your life triggers you and how you respond. What happened, how did that make you feel, how did you respond, and how did that response make you feel. Then you need to do the hard work of deciding which responses make your life better, setting up your life to avoid urges as much as practically possible, and implementing different responses instead of the ones that have negative effects (as you said). 

So the broader question is how to respond to urges without using up all your willpower? Just saying "NO" sometimes works, but isn't really sustainable long term for most people. I'm not an expert but I'll share some things I've learnt and tried that seem to work for me.

Urge surfing - just sit and accept that you have an urge, that it's not a "bad" thing to have an urge but you don't have to give in to it. Often that alone will let the urge go. If not, then sitting there and davening is pretty darn powerful. Ask Hashem to help you live the life he wants you to live. Reaching out and connecting with a chaver (or anyone) and sharing how you're feeling is a very powerful tool as well (but admittedly difficult sometimes). Many many people have had hatzlacha with reframing the urge as an opportunity to become close to Hashem and embracing it as a joyful opportunity to not act out. 
There are small, easy things to do as well like just distracting yourself with something kosher. 

Willpower and self-control are finite resources. Just saying "NO" a.k.a. white-knuckling uses a lot of willpower and burns out (for most people. There are exceptions to every rule except the rule "do what works for you".) Additionally, you're not changing anything - you're just not doing the thing you want to do because you don't think it's good for you.

But the types of responses listed here don't use up nearly as much willpower. It's hard to not do what you want. It's not so hard to wait a minute, or pick up the phone. On top of that, these responses have added benefits. Connecting to someone honestly is dynamite to lust. Davening in response is a potentially life-changing connection to Hashem. Reframing an urge as an opportunity to become closer to Hashem and embracing the joy of not acting out is a while different life. 

Hope this was clear and answered your question. (Happy to schmooze about any of this if it wasn't clear. PM me for my number or email to the address in my signature). KOM100BAT!

Checking in,
the train ride came to haunt me last night, but managed it by filling my needs with something else, by feeling my masculine strength and urge surfing. 
There are urges, but I think what do I want to do, if I'm making a decision on what action to make, what is it?

redfaced wrote on 04 Jul 2024 14:35:

Look, I asked; I implored, but I'm not going full Parev mode and enforcing my request. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

chosemyshem wrote on 04 Jul 2024 14:32:

Can I pass it up Thompson?

redfaced wrote on 04 Jul 2024 14:31:

@Redfaced  I feel your pain. (I'm not so good at urge surfing)

thompson wrote on 04 Jul 2024 13:43:

Oh, I am so tempted to reply with an 'I feel your pain ". It almost hurts not to. But I know I wont explode. Gonna go do some urge surfing.

Like you said Lets get clean and have some fun. You will see ( I have high hopes for you) That the fun gets funner and and funner yet, the longer you are clean.