Pidaini wrote:


Thank you for this.

Just to share an incident. One day my son came home in a bad mood. When i asked him what happened, he said 'oh, nothing", which to me meant to me basically "abba, i am not interesting in sharing this with you."

That made me realize the message i am giving (to myself) when i am reluctant to talk to MY Abba about something.

just one more thing. You wrote to let out your deepest thoughts to Hashem. i never had difficulty in talking to HaShem about my teefe and heilige zachen. my problem was involving Him in my shmutz, lust and my other petty problems!

chesky wrote:


Yes, that is what I meant, my deepest thoughts that I wouldn't want to ever be dug up. I spoke them to HIM and it really made a difference.

sometimes on yom kippur I can do it
mostly I just wanna ignore it with Him

hopefully this year, I could get HIm more involved... now that im 120 days free...except for one doozie in the middle

cordnoy wrote:


why davka on Yom kippur? why davka when you are clean for 120 days?

for up until now, I couldn't face Him with this too much
I knew I wouldn't really change, so why involve Him in a hopeless battle?
Now, I could honestly face Him
we can have a dialogue perhaps

Cordnoy,

i totally relate to your attitude. For me it was a big part of my addiction.

Basically, God is black and white, out to punish us and will not talk to us unless we are clean. He cannot relate to our problems and certainly is not interested in our shmutz. I can go on and be more dramatic, but i think that I have made the point.

Cordnoy,

It took me a long time to learn and not on my own, that I ain't do G-d no favors by being clean, that He loves me unconditionally and that He cares about me. And if i am still alive, clearly i must be worth it.

I don't need no Y"k or 120 to speak to Abba. No, I am a powerless human being who cannot be sober and sane for even one day without His help.

Baruch Hashem, today is day 23. Working on Shmiras eynayim and looking forward to trying out Dov's 12-step call starting on Sunday.

Does anyone have any good source of music? It helps me stay in the good mood. But with all the rock-sounding "Jewish" music, I don't really have a good source of music to listen to.

boruch Levine is good

chesky: I hear all your words; I just don't feel it
is He watching over us? Of course
Every second? definitely!
Is everything for our good? that's a loaded one!
yes, He is a Tov and Meitiv, but there are onshim as well, and heck I deserve it; my family doesn't, but I sure do.
So why should I think that all that is happening is for my good?
And besides, who is the "me"? my guf? my neshamah? as a matter of fact, "who da hell am I anyway"?

toker.fm
(site is undergoing maintenance now but usually there are a choice of streams to listen to)

cordnoy wrote:


They say around here that it's no good to think so deep. Just be happy, live your life the best you can, trust in Hashem that He'll do His best - and that's quite a lot. One of the best tools that were ever developed is "Hesach Hadaas" - whenever the mind starts getting overloaded with such complicated questions, just change the channel and try something more simple.

תמים תהיה עם ה' אלקיך
Says Rashi:
התהלך עמו בתמימות ותצפה לו ולא תחקור אחר העתידות אלא כל מה שיבוא עליך קבל בתמימות ואז תהיה עמו ולחלקו


Hatzlacha

MT

All of us here are basically frum people, who learn Torah daily, daven 3 times daily, give tzadakah, say tehillim daily, etc. But we are still "acting-out"! How could the mussar and chassidus and gemorrah not help us? The methods are all there! How is it possible that simply "getting even frummer" has not worked for me and thousands of frum people who REALLY TRY?

I think the answer is that the solutions spelled-out in the Torah are intended for regular, mentally-healthy people. The Torah lists the solution for a mentally-healthy person who is struck by "ruach shtus" or his YH, or has a strong will to do an averah - whatever you want to call it. For these people, the Torah lists specific actions and ways to overcome it.

But - these solutions have NOT been ENOUGH for me. I am an ADDICT, I have a mental disease called an ADDICTION. This is a medically-diagnosable mental disease, this is not the "ruach shtus" or the YH that the solutions in Torah are talking about. This is an entirely different problem with similar symptoms to "ruach shtus."

Cough is a symptom of both common cold and lung cancer. Our "acting out" is also a symptom of both "ruach shtus" and a fatal brain tumor called ADDICTION. Drinking cough mixture will temporarily relieve cough caused by both cold and cancer - but long-term effectiveness of this treatment will be very different.

We can't even fathom starting our long-term recovery without getting our symptoms under control first - and this is why we necessarily need the Torah-based "must get frummer" approach. It is a must, without which we can't keep our head above the water to breathe. But it is not the long-term medical solution that is necessary to treat the disease itself.

If I continue to hope that "wishing really hard" and getting frummer will keep my addiction at bay, I am no different from a schizophrenic who hopes that "wishing really hard" and getting frummer will keep his illness at bay.

Yes, it turns out I have a mental illness and no-one (including myself!) was aware of it until 30 minutes ago!

OK, how do I treat it?
I don't believe that therapists or pills can cure me. I will try the 12-step calls starting on Sunday. What else is there? Does anyone have any other treatments that are aimed at treating the problem, not simply the symptoms?

Or do you think that constantly treating the symptoms with Torah will keep the disease at bay, even without directly treating the source of the symptoms?

What do you think?

12 steps are good
a therapist can help
not sure about the "getting frummer" part
avoiding triggers would be a good start
a serious commitment to turn around one's life is necesary

im not gonna delve into the whole addiction/aveirah/acting out business, but i am not convinced that our sickness or whatever you call it does not go into the regular ruach shtus category; perhaps an elevated one

In other words:

If schizophrenia causes one to constantly eat treif meat, can we say that learning hilchos kashrus and increasing yiras shomayim will help schizophrenic cure his disease?

How is our problem different?

While I feel inadequate to answer this question, some thoughts do come to mind.

First of all if a schizophrenic is eating treif due to their illness then I think they have a chiyuv to go to a psychiatrist to seek proper help. In fact, even if their illness was not causing them to do any aveiroh at all they would still have a chiyuv to seek proper help.

Second, if you can get a hold of R'Twerski's book ''Self Improvement? - I'm Jewish!''. In it he addresses this exact point. He basically says that a true torah lifestyle would be the best possible lifestyle, but it has to be 100%. Halfway measure avail us nothing. If a lock has a code 6-1-3, you can't open it with 6-1-2. The 12 steps is completely in line with the proper torah perspective and therefore it should be embraced by frum jews as part of torah observance, not shunned as an alternative. This is my understanding of what he said.

Torah does not simply 'treat the symptoms' as you put it. Living a proper torah-true life is living life the right way, which is what the entire program is about. 12 steps is part of that. It's all about living life the way Hashem intended.

Speaking of Rabbi Twersky, it's kedai to mention that in today's edition of the weekly Homodia (English), he started a new series on addiction.

In this first piece, he defines 'addiction' as when one has a bad habit which he tries to control and is unsuccessful. Simple.

He goes on to say that many addicts manage to overcome their addiction on their own (he uses the example of addicted smokers who stop cold-turkey and remain stopped). However, many addicts cannot do it on their own and need outside help (such as 12 steps).

So to me that means that probably most people (if not all) on GYE "are" addicts. But some can manage it on their own and some cannot. (I know this goes against what many believe...)


MT