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.

Hi everyone,
There have been ups and downs, good time and a bit bad times, (baruch hashem no real outright porn) in the last few months.
It is interesting how I have not gotten rid of the problem. However it is possible that it is not to be gotten rid of, and the urges are just a drive and need from the animalistic part of me, that has certain needs. I'm not referring to needs for marriage needs (I'm married for clarification), but needs of pleasure, calming hormones, and excitement.
Will they just be there, and I will just have to find substitutes and/or just hold myself in (read-urge surfing), feeling that it is fine not to get what I urge for. The motivation being just because that is what is expected of me, and I am Hashem's creation and servant?
Am I surrendering, or is this the reality of just having to live with?

eerie wrote on 16 Jun 2024 20:37:

I appreciate your continued support and confidence in me. I know how to distract myself and usually do a decent job.

I am going to try to explain a little without being too explicit.
I am going through a little of a challenging situation now. I can be standing in middle of Shemonah Esra and be hit with such a wave of arousal with the physical symptoms of being aroused. I don't even know if I am allowed to daven in such a state. I usually pause and focus on the brocho I am holding at, until the urge passes.

I fall asleep at night, only to wake up a short while later with such an intense urge. I generally end up distracting myself enough to be able to go back to sleep. Sometimes this repeats itself multiple times a night.

I know it is a situation I am going through now and I can overcome this but I needed support which is why I started posting again.

Thanks for the PM. I gave up dreaming about winning the lottery, sometimes I dream of somehow making ends meet!

Hi!
It's always nice to hear from you, and from all the others. Happy to hear that your vigilance on the street worked out, BH! I hope you appreciate the greatness of doing that
I'm sorry that the fantasies kept coming. Have you tried urge surfing? Have you tried distracting yourself? Well, I'm sure your wondering how you can distract yourself when you're laying in bed. I'll give you one idea: What would you do if you won the lottery and had a windfall of $200 milllion? The possibilities are endless, how many mosdos you'll build, what type of new way of helping klal Yisroel can you come up with?

My friend, may we all be zoche to only good!
Keep trucking, and keep us posted!

chosemyshem wrote on 28 May 2024 15:35:

I agree with all of this! I've learned a lot and read/heard many times that thinking about the problem too much is often a hindrance (maybe "obsessing" about a solution is different). Don't think of a pink elephant. 
On my introduction thread May 14 & 16 I wrote a bit about my personal history with this. I'm certainly not on the level to be obsessively involved with Hashem all the time. Lust and recovery aren't the only two options - perhaps there is something you are or could be interested enough in to make it a focus when not busy with daily responsibilities. 

Maybe I'll look into Google voice. I'm no small talker either, so we can either talk tachlis or share an awkward silence lol.

Checking in.

Lionfree raised a really great point tpday about "obsessing" over recovery. Which is something I've been thinking a lot about recently (obsessively so?).  

One particular kneitch about that I've been thinking about is in regard to connecting with other people from GYE. I think there are a few probable benefits to that. The most obvious is the positive benefits of being part of a chevra that's working on this (Rambam, cave etc.) and the more you connect to the chevra the more powerful the affect will be. CO has a theory about coming to terms with facing our hidden selves - if I understand it correctly, meeting people introduces our Hyde to our Jekyll and that is healing. (a la Dov's Captain Kirk post).

But I was thinking that one benefit is probably that talking to people involves you in recovery much more than anonymously posting on a forum. Talking to "real people" is very real (for lack of a better word) and involves you on a deeper level than doing a program, meditating on ideas like urge surfing, or interacting through posting. And it seems to me like the more you are involved in recovery the better a chance it has of sticking.
Here's a theory as to why "involvement" in recovery is crucial. Ideally, the best would be to be obsessively involved with hashem so that lust is naturally excluded. For those of us who somehow fall short of that level, we've got to be involved with something. Right now, that thing is all too often lust. So even forgetting about addiction/habit/learned responses, just saying stop lust is very difficult - this is something we are deeply involved in. But instead lchoira we can replace the involvement in lust with an involvement in recovery. 

This is speculative. But it sounds good to me and I'm trying to put my money where my mouth is. This is a long way of saying I finally set up a google voice number and please feel free to pm for it if you want to schmooze. Fair warning: I don't really do small talk well.

I have bipolar disorder so I an very familiar with anxiety and depression.

For anxiety I found exercise, Urge Surfing, SOBER and journaling as I described in the following post to be effective: https://guardyoureyes.com/forum/19-Introduce-Yourself/401159-This-time-for-real?limit=15&start=165#405970 You can download Urge Surfing and SOBER exercises by pressing on the coins in the top right corner of your screen. There also is an 18-minute Urge Surfing exercise in the SOS section that is very effective.

For depression I found exercise, socializing and behavioral activation to be effective.

Keep on posting and sharing and make friends.

I found exercise, socializing, Urge Surfing and SOBER to be good solutions to reduce stress. I found Urge Surfing, SOBER and journaling as I outlined in this post https://guardyoureyes.com/forum/19-Introduce-Yourself/401159-This-time-for-real?limit=15&start=165#405970 to be good solutions for anxiety. Although P&M give relief, they cause the negative moods to intensify later on and they add some new ones too, whereas the solutions I wrote have long-lasting effects and they can sometimes heal the stress and anxiety for good.

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?