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Underlying reasons

Sunday, 13 May 2012

Someone wrote on The Forum that he had overcome his addiction and was doing good, but he requested help now that he was working in an enviorment with non-Jewish, young women and felt he was again in danger of slipping back into his old ways. In response, a Frum psychologist wrote as follows:

It's amazing to me that in this day and age, on a board that seems to be dedicated to helping people deal with real issues there is no mention whatsoever of the need for psychological examination of the underlying causes for an addiction. It's wonderful that you have accomplished so much on your own but from your post it does not seem that you have examined the underlying reasons that you look at women in this way. My guess would be that it has something to do with the relationship you had with your parents when you were growing up, and I know that that sounds cliched but in 20 years of counseling I have found this to be the most common underlying cause of unhealthy psychological needs.

I disagree with those who say "The problem isn't so much your feelings of lust, but your being in a place which stimulates this type of sinful thinking". If being in a normal work environment causes you to have fantasies to the point that you feel you can not put them aside despite the fact that you are "happily" married, then you need to sit down with a FRUM psychologist and start figuring out why this is happening. It is ridiculous to think that you can run from deep seeded psychological issues - such as letting go of a good job etc... The issues will just come out in a different way - they do not disappear without working them through.

One of the ways in which R' Wolbe z"l explained the idea of a bigger person having a bigger yetzer hara is that this may only be the case if the way that person dealt with the yetzer was by suppressing it and not dealing with it - so of course the suppressed yetzer hara gets bigger and bigger and therefore becomes more and more dangerous...

There's much more to say but I'm out of time...

Hatzlacha Rabbah!