May I humbly suggest reaching out to a friend?

Day 44 ב"ה

simchastorah wrote on 07 Nov 2024 14:43:

IMO has zero to do with "forgetting the actual misery". I had a huge bad fall Sunday as well after 15 days. But M is a real drug and our brains get something from it, so remembering the misery wont help. What I have done the last few days was run (on the treadmill) for over 30 min and fed my brain that good drug in a kosher way. Totally get how u feel. I have a strict filter, yet with iPhone I have some get around that I need to figure out how to block.

Day 45 ב"ה

Why should remembering the misery not help? Even if our "brains" get something from it, if the misery is worse than the pleasure why wouldn't that help?

simchastorah wrote on 18 Dec 2024 05:39:

Because addiction and endorphins are way stronger 

I have many times had bad falls which leave me feeling terrible, and afterwards have no tayvah to fall for some period of time afterwards, be it days or weeks. My feeling during these times is that I am so aware of how bad it is to fall that it outweighs whatever pushes me to fall.

From this I deduce (open to being wrong, but this is where I'm coming from) that having clarity about the terrible feeling is indeed enough to overcome the 'addiction', but there is a 'forgetting mechanism' which makes long term clarity about this difficult. But if the bad feeling alone is not enough to overcome 'addiction' and 'endorphines', why would it be effective even for a few days or weeks?

As you said.  It may work for the short term. But not the long term. Remembering the misery is not the same as feeling the misery.  

simchastorah wrote on 18 Dec 2024 11:25:

I actually agree with this 100%. I do think the obsessing and thinking about what u want to do is where u have to catch yourself. Once I fall into that there is no point of return or at least 99% of the time. Personally I started running again after my last fall Sunday and I really find it a gamechanger.    

simchastorah wrote on 18 Dec 2024 11:25:

My friend,
Did you have a chance to read the bit I shared from Rabbi Naftali Horowitz explaining Rav Dessler?

We have wants/desires and we have a will. We also have the ability to ignore, or as you say - forget, what we know and even what we want in the face of something else that we want. We can pull the sheet over our own eyes against all logic.

In the short-term after a fall, is it a choice between giving in & the terrible feeling vs not, or the tayva for it is weaker in the first place?

It is possible that even knowing how we will feel afterward is not enough to stop us from making bad choices in the face of momentary desire.
Telling yourself "don't do it" all the time is draining on the will. Having clarity about the terrible feeling will help you during the stage where you are still being logical. I don't think that alone is enough though. Once the tayva is there, and logic threatens to depart, you want a will that supersedes the weighing of options. The default state is a positive life. When the urge is really pulling, you can toss regret on the scale, but otherwise try to have a mindset of 'I feel good to be doing the right thing'. The Battle of the Generation can help to acquire this mindset.

Hatzlacha.

I read it at the time and I went back now and reread it. It is a good piece and worth thinking about.

To sum it up: the determiner of man's actions is not the victorious party in the struggle between two conflicting wills (tayva and reason) but rather the person himself who stands between them and decides which 'identity' to assume.

However I'm not sure why it's a point in favor of a positive 'botg' type approach vs a negative approach. (there may be many other arguments to support the botg, and I do find the book helpful, and like vekham said, experience shows that the negative approach doesn't work well long term). But I think the Rav Dessler argument applies equally to a positive mindset approach. What is being said in that article as i understood it is that in the end of the day no matter how strong of a pull/reason/drive you have to do the right thing, YOU can still choose the wrong thing, and twist your perspective to justify it. So if for example I would encourage myself to attain great levels etc like suggested by botg, if I wanted to fall I could still twist my perspective and say I will become great later, or I have already fallen so many times and I'm still planning on becoming great, let's do this fun thing now, because I'll still be able to become great after etc

simchastorah wrote on 18 Dec 2024 15:07:

For me, there is a more surface level of what I want, and there is a much deeper level of who I am.

Maybe I'm not able to articulate it so well, but it's not about using the positive approach to outweigh the negative, it's using the positive approach to associate with that identity and make it not really a choice at all. 

I once heared from the R"H Harav Bruss, "כיון שעבר ושנה בה נעשית לו כהיתיר" that שנה בה can mean "sleep", so he said, if someone sins, he feels terrible about it and dosen't ever want to fall again, but he fails to make a serious plan of action going forward, and meanwhile he manages to fall asleep, he'll sleep the bad feelings away from himself, than it'll become כהיתיר which dosen't feel bad at all, he'll forget the bad the feelings and quickly revert to the sin.

I'm not here to tell you what does or doesn't work, everyone finds different stuff helpful, but IMHO refraining from sin because of bad feelings, as you say your self, fades away, but if you can train your brain to act out differently when faced with an urge, that doesn't fade, thats a fundamental change, and to the contrary, you'll have to remind youself the "good feeling" of giving in to the urge, in order to let yourself fall, not the "bad feeling" of after the fall.

KOMT!!! and keep us posted.
With love Akiva 

Too many deep ideas here, Im getting a headache. 

I think I understand what SimchesTorah is saying as it helped me in the past as well. 
After a fall, the brain is clean of lust and the pain is real. If you allow yourself to feel that pain you will be able to make a strong resolution to stop. 
In the days after, sometimes the brain is still calm and you are again able to reiterate how much you DONT want to fall. You still feel the pain and you are able to fight the lust with logic and pain together. I understand the the brain is addicted to those chemicals and still wants it. But just like any other animal we are also programed to avoid pain. 
The problem is that we lose those precious moments of clarity after a fall and we dont internalize the pain. We want to run away and forget it. 
SO when the lust come back, we only remember the pleasure and not the pain. 

This worked for me time and time again.

OF course exercise is great!

simchastorah wrote on 18 Dec 2024 11:25:

Oh boy. I feel like I just heard Dov's voice softly whispering "buuuuuulllllllsh******t". If you want a good schmooze, call him up and run that theory by him. In the alternative, read the nuclear reset button post.

Basically, I think I agree with Chancy, but I'll write it out in case we're saying different things. The nature of giving into lust is that the only thing that seems to quiet it is giving in. During that post-fall time you're not clean because you've somehow become aware of the problem and can "overcome addiction with the bad feeling". You're clean because you've briefly satisfied the chemicals in your brain. When the addiction/chemicals/urges/whatever you wanna call them build back up - you'll be right back in front of that screen.

Of course, this serves to reinforce the deep down idea that the only way to solve this problem is to give in. It's an absolutely vicious self-reinforcing cycle. 

Let me reiterate. You're not clean after a fall because it's a moment of "clarity" where you "see the light" and can "stay strong". You're just sitting in the trough of the wave. And the next wave comes and washes you away.

The only real way out is to stop giving in with or without "clarity".

And I'm not saying you can't take advantage of that trough in the wave to start putting in work. But I am saying that any freedom you feel in that time is a complete and absolute illusion.

chosemyshem wrote on 18 Dec 2024 21:39:

And if you wanna hear those words (and worse) loudly, just give me a holler.