BenTorah4L wrote on 27 Feb 2023 22:14:

Hi there. A great resource is the book The battle of the generation.  Send me a pm or email if you would like me to get you a copy. I read it every night and it has changed my perspective in this battle. 

best wishes 
vehkam

Hey, this is my first time posting here. I first came to this website about a week ago after a friend recommended it to me, and I felt somewhat lost because of all of the resources offered here. I am in AA and I am very used to a simple method of coming to meetings, getting a sponsor, and doing the 12 steps, so I felt super directionless when I came here. I read somewhere that a good thing to do is to get involved with people on the forum so I thought I would make my first post. I am a bochur in my 3rd year of Yeshiva, and I’m gradually growing in my yiddishkeit and in many other things. One thing that I have struggled with for years is Shmiras Habris and Shmiras Einayim which I didn’t even see as a problem for many years until I came to Yeshiva. Now that I’m here I am finding it to be extremely hard to stop doing. I am trying very hard to be consistent in my learning and emotional health but when break Shmiras habris it often throws me into a downward spiral. P is also a huge part of my issue, and i am fully filtered but when the urge really comes I lose all self control to the point where I will take friends computers without asking in order to watch P. There is also this shame that comes along with being 3rd year in Yeshiva yet still struggling with this. After trying to stop countless times unsuccessfully, I was recommended GYE and I have been navigating my way through it for the last week which I have been clean. I do the Progress report every week and I check in everyday on if I had urges. I also watched a few videos on urge surfing. I’m not sure what else to do… any help is greatly appreciated!

Thank you for your clarity. I saw a post of yours regarding the difference between 'urge surfing' and 'diffusion' (i think) and found that to be helpful as well. Any more clarifications from you would be very welcome

@Yosef Hamelech
You are getting it! Once you actually do it a bunch of times, you will understand it clearly and see what i mean thats it not what YOU are but a small part of your brain. 
To clarify, i spoke about 2 different ideas. 
1 is Urge Surfing, thats for when the desire starts burning, just to watch it rise and then fall like a wave, not too deep stuff.
2 Diffusion, this is where you learn to stop thinking about the desire as a part of you that you want, but rather learn to know what YOU really want and the desire is just something that your addicted brain wants because of some neuroplasticity that will weaken with time as you stop using those pathways. Its harder work but a game changer for people like us. 
And no, that problem i had 2 days ago went away BH, but im in more pain now, look at my post called Perfectionism and Addiction for more info.

Hi Yosef Hatzaddik, @chancy is the posek on urge surfing, so I'll let him pasken, but to me it looks like you really got it! Keep inspiring us all with all the amazing work you are putting in!

chancy wrote on 14 Feb 2023 16:11:

Thanx @chancy for elaborating. I  didn't respond right away to your post (I needed some time to think it over), but if you're still having a hard time like you wrote, I just wanna say that you're really a chizuk to me and many other guys here, and it'll give us all strengh to see you push through this nisayon.

I think that I'm BH finally starting to understand urge surfing. Here's what I was thinking.......
I get very strong urges because this is what I created for myself. These cravings are just this illusion that I'm imagining of me getting immense pleasure if I masturbate. The reason why these illusions are so elaborate is because I watched porn which hyper stimulated how i picture sex, and because my brain really wants the feeling that I get from masturbating (again), so it makes me imagine that it will be much more enjoyable than it actually is (like many of us, I don't even enjoy it anymore at this point.....). These intense cravings aren't something natural, they're something external that I created over time from acting out, by making my brain crave more and more of it. If I don't give in to the urge, it will go away because it's only a mirage, not actually a part of me that I need to fill.
With this in mind, all I need is to put in a little bit of strengh to take a step back from the urge and see it for what it really is instead of letting myself get overwhelmed and giving in to it. If I do this, the urge will just go away because there's nothing fueling it anymore. This will train my brain that when I feel an urge, it doesn't actually mean that I need to act out, which in turn, will cause the urges to get less and less with every time that I don't give in.

Urge Surfing is about feeling the urge and desire from a outside preceptive.
So lets replay your story from Shabbos, Il focus on the first fall, (the second one after a dream is harder because it more like watching porn, for me its actually more arousing because in the dream you were a part of the porn scene, so lets leave that for now).
Rather lets talk about the fact you were overwhelmed with desire in the bath room. 
The desire comes from your brain that remembers how good it feels to be aroused, just like a drug addict or alcoholic feels when they think of or see the alcohol/drug, there is a actual reaction in the brain, its not mental its physical! The brain starts releasing hormones that make you feel good and you crave that feeling, that pattern happens once you starts experiencing sex, its a part of us for some its bigger then others. 
The addiction to porn comes if your brain sees that you cant get enough pleasure from fantasy alone and you need outside stimulation, so you look and that completely overwhelms the normal functions and sort of like hotwires the pleasure sensors. I remember that when i gave in to porn, it was almost impossible for me to stop. Later i learned to actually stop while watching porn and just see how the desire decreases because the images never match up with what your brain wants, which is what causes the viewer to constantly look for other stuff.
However, if you stop watching porn, your brain will slowly give up on that, and will instead just give you these fantasies ether in dream or awake where you start craving that feeling, its an incredible high as we all know. But here is what you do.
1. Get out from where you are! teach yourself not to be lazy, you can change the whole thing in one second if you just get up and go between people, just go on the street, go to shul, anything to remove yourself from that situation if you feel you cant handle it right now. Not only will this help in the present moment, it will also help you train your brain that you can get aroused but you can unplug, your brain will start learning.
2. If you know there is nowhere to go, (its too cold and the shul is closed and nobody is in the house) learn to recognize that this desire is NOT part of who YOU ARE! its just an outside force that got logged into your brain and is hacking you, you have the power to not let him in and not let yourself get drawn into his fraud. imagine you go on the street and you see someone standing over a dead animal bent over, you go closer and you see he is drinking the blood from the animal.....(sorry for making you throw up a little but hang on). You start screaming at this guy "what in sams hill are you doing? you disgusting piece of whatever! and he answers you "i cant help it, i need this, makes me feel good this is part of me" I dont know about you but i would feel immense pity on such a person, he is stuck thinking that he cant help himself when of course he can! just stop doing it. its stupid. 
For some one that's not addicted its easy to see how disgusting it is what we do and how we can stop. but for us it isnt.
You need to start looking from an outside perspective and not from the eyes of an addict.
ITS NOT US, ITS A HORMONE THAT GOT USED TO THIS DRUG AND WANTS MORE!!! Do not give it more fuel to work with. Learn to recognize the outside force. step back and look at it from an outside perspective. the more you do this, the faster your brain will learn that this is not working anymore and will decrease the frequency and power or the desires. 
This is called diffusion- Which means to stop fusing (becoming one) with the thought. The more you give in to this drug the more  you fuse with it and you become inseparable. The more you learn diffusion the easier it will become to remove yourself and move way from that desire and to be able to see it as an outsider who can make a clear decision. 

I was thinking about it (and talking it over a bit with HHM) and it seems that when it comes to urge surfing, I gotta work on not panicking when they hit. When I get a normal urge or something even a bit stronger, many times I'll try to distract myself, or make a phone call etc. and it'll usually be enough; but sometimes, I will get a really really strong urge outta nowhere, and I feel like I absolutely need to masturbate, and the feeling is so overpowering that I can't think about anything else, let alone think about distracting myself, or releasing the tension with excersize. I guess what usually happens is that I panic, lose all focus, see no way out, and give in.

It sounds like I gotta internalize the point that @Eerie was making (and what everyone said in the past): Fighting the urge will only make things worse. What I have to do is pretty much accept it and not be afraid to feel it. Don't give in to the urge, instead do my best to distract it or release it in a healthy way; and it'll eventually pass on its own.

I think that I understand the concept pretty well, it's just that I guess, because I've always been too afraid to accept and live out  a massive urge before, it feels like it's just impossible for me to do. It feels like it'll take superhuman strengh to not give in, and I don't have that.

For now, I don't know how I can work on the urge thing any more than I am; but either way, I'm Be"h gonna keep thinking about it and continue being very careful not to fantasize at all, which as y'all have said, has BH been a huge step for me in the right direction.

First of all, my holy friend, you got 17 clean days! 17 days of shaking the world with your kedusha! And by your own admission, even your falls were not as terrible as things that happened in the past. So you are doing gevaldig! Give yourself a real pat on the back!
About urge surfing, I hope @chancy won't mind mind if I copy paste a piece he wrote last week that explained it so well:
the more you fight it, the more power you give it, and your brain will keep on coming up with ways to arouse you because it sees that you really want it...... 
What you can do based on my experience is to take a time out and take a few minutes to make a few things clear. 
1. You enjoy the feeling of desire and lust- its a fact that you cannot and will not change. 
2. You are normal and not sick, this has been the human condition forever! 
3. You do not want to use that desire in a bad way, obviously or you wouldnt be here on GYE..... so you know what you dont want.
4. You can understand where the feeling of desire comes from and you are ok with the fact that its there, since you cant fight it anyway, just make place for it. so you are not in a fight with the actual desire anymore, that would be like fighting with your left hand because you want 2 right hands..... its there, just accept that fact. 
5. Now you can decide what to do when you see something that arouses you. You can think, i know i have desire and i understand it and i cant fight it, however, i dont want the desire to carry me away and then i will do something stupid that i will regret, and therefore, i am moving on from the desire and not continuing to pour oil on it. 

I would add, on Shabbos there are also things you can do to distract yourself, you can take a brisk walk, go find a friend to shmooze with about something that's on your mind, or better yet, go find a friend to learn some Torah with. Hope something helps. remember my friend, we are war here with the YH. You took so much ground from him, you are amazing, and a fall means nothing more than that you fell. You'll be great, just stand back up, shake off the dust, and keep trucking! Keep posting and inspiring!

Yosefhamevakesh wrote on 11 Feb 2023 17:46:

A gut vuch! Your really making HUGE progress… BH! I’m so happy for you! 
You had small fall but many amazing wins!
You asked for advice… I was thinking to tell you to go do exercise to get the energy out but you wrote abt that yourself seems you know the tricks already ( for me it works wonders bh, it’s hard to get out and do the jogging but it feels so good afterwards) but you said shabbos you can’t do exercise… why not?? You can’t do the exercises like jogging biking etc. but why not go for a geshmakah brisk walk with a friend ( family member) or even yourself… enjoy the shabbos air!

הצלחה רבה!!

I fell over shabbos. Twice.
The first time, I was in the bathroom and then outta nowhere I got this huge urge to just masturbate. I was caught a bit off guard because I have been very careful with my eyes and thoughts since my last fall 17 days ago, and I literally don't think I had even 1 serious urge since then.
Afterwards, I woke up from my shabbos nap after an extremely arousing dream, and pretty much got overwhelmed with a huge urge and masturbated again.

Bh, I'm still keeping my eyes and thoughts clean. Also, both times that I did it, I wasn't really fantasizing about women, I just wanted the feeling of masturbating. I guess, that in a way, that's a good thing because it means that I'm really working on keepin my thoughts clean, which overall means less urges.

I still don't understand how I'm supposed to do urge surfing. When I have a burning urge, I need a way to get that energy out, and I don't think that I can just let it simmer inside (not that I think that I'll actually explode, it's just that sometimes, it's just too overpowering to not do anything with it).
I can't always find a way to distract myself or diffuse the urge (shabbosim can be harder because I'm not as busy as during the week; and I cant always just diffuse it, like for example when it hits me in middle of nowhere when I'm in the bathroom, or late at night when I can't excersize, or on shabbos, when I can't call someone).

When it comes to fantasies, I BH got much better at not getting caught up in the images and instead letting them just pass. But when it come to an urge, I'm still not sure how to let it pass. An urge is an overwhelming feeling to masturbate, not just a thought, and I can't really ignore an overwhelming feeling the same way that I can just ignore a thought (or maybe I could, it's just harder and I'm missing a technique). Plz advise.

Hello, 
One idea is to stop fighting the urges, just feel them for what they are and they will decrease. 
This is calld Urge Surfing- It means that when you get stressed and you feel an urge coming on, dont fight the urge! it will make it bigger. Just sit back and be aware of whats going on, your mind is looking for way out of the pain of stress and it giving you this feeling of pleasure, so look at it and know that this is normal and nothing will happen, the urge will come and go like a wave....... Just get into your head the following.
1. I dont want to take it any further, I will not fantasize, I will not touch myself or anything like that! 
If that is clear in your head, then just let the urge/wave decrease and your mind will get used to the idea that you are not making a big deal of it and it will slowly get easier. 

Yosefhamevakesh wrote on 17 Jan 2023 21:56:

This is exactly as I wrote above. It is always the images and the imagination. Always. I can't say it enough times. Failure to realize this point held me in chains for years. People do not think about this and do not realize it. The root of every masturbation, without exception, is a fantasy in the mind. If you move your mind on to another thought, you cannot masturbate.

When these images enter your mind, what's your initial reaction? Please respond to this post with your answer.

In order to get successful at urge surfing, you have to learn how to make your reaction to these thoughts be no different than noticing that a certain car passing you is yellow. You have to let lustful thoughts that enter your mind become like ordinary thoughts in that you don't focus your mind's spotlight on them, but rather just let them leave your mind and forget about them, just like you can't remember the colors of the cars that passed you today even though you did notice them. You can train your mind to see thoughts as passing waves. They come, and they go. You focus on what you want to focus on. The rest is gone. This technique can lead you to freedom. So often a person feels "doomed" as soon as a lustful thought enters his mind. "It's only a matter of time now before I have to masturbate!" WRONG!! That is literally falsehood! You don't have to do anything except let the thought leave your mind by moving your mind on to other thoughts. It's never "only a matter of time". That yetzer hara got me SO many times before I realized the שקר in that thinking.

5Uu80*cdwB#^ wrote on 15 Jan 2023 17:13:

I'm not sure if I'm fully understand the whole urge surfacing technique. I don't really physically have an urge anywhere in my body to observe, it's just these images replaying in my head and this craving to masturbate.

What I think I'm getting out of what I checked out on urge surfacing is that instead of getting caught up in the urge, I'm supposed to sort of observe it as a force that is telling me to do something, and if I accept it instead of fighting it, it will eventually go away.

I don't mind trying this next time, but I feel like I'm still missing something here, bec I usually try to not get caught up in an urge, but eventually, I do. I don't really understand how the observing part is supposed to work. Plz fill me in

Yosefhamevakesh wrote on 14 Jan 2023 19:56:

Hi Yosefhamevakesh. I have been in the situation you describe. For several years I was free of porn but continued to be stuck in the rut of masturbating multiple times per week. I was so frustrated by this. After all, I was so meticulous in guarding my eyes! The answer is simple: guarding your eyes is just the beginning. The rest of the journey to success lies learning how to move on from fantasies that enter our mind.

I want to zoom in on 5 words you wrote. I have bolded and put them in red above. You masturbated, but you did not look at porn while doing so. I thus want you to ask yourself the following question: Since you were not looking at porn when you masturbated, what were you thinking about while doing that act?

From personal experience, I can tell you that you must have been lusting about a girl you saw on the street or a video you have seen in the past. It is simply so crucial to realize that this is what is going on. It is the focusing on a sexually provocative thought suitable for masturbating to that enables each acting out. If you don't do this, you will not masturbate.

So what are you supposed to do? The next time imagery like this enters your brain, try what Hashem Help Me mentioned: urge surfing. You need to be able to see thoughts and fantasies as waves that will either come and go, OR come and stay because we choose to focus on them. By relaxing the mind and deciding to move on, you will be able to avoid fall after fall after fall. And an hour later, you don't need to check in on the thought and make sure it's gone!!

Urge surfing is really so crucial. Do not fight thoughts. Let them ebb as you move on with your life. Do not re-attend to them.