Hi I have had gradual succsess in recovery so far.I still feel very held back not naturally myself,like very protective.I  hope someone understands what i am feeling acause I am  not sure myself.I have a heard such good things about the twelve step program.Could you please help me understand and get rid of these feelings and better understand how to get involved with the 12 steps.

The 12 steps are excellent but not for everybody. Someone walking in sober is not a great candidate for the 12 steps to help. I think you need to clarify more what your experience and issues are for people to help you.

Mechazek, live SA meetings can do you damage if you are not a real addict. Check out this page to see where you are holding first.

Welcome Mechazek!
I don't have much information to go on here, but I will tell you that I was much wilder in my younger years.  Today, I'm sure anyone who meets me would say I'm pretty conservative.  Unfortunately, letting go meant getting into undesirable things.  So now it's harder to let go.  It's not necessarily a bad thing.  It's the new, mature me.  I've always been pretty serious by nature, just careless sometimes.  Remember too, that the chitzonius determines the pnimius.  So if you're reserved, you're reserved. 

Blind Beggar wrote on 13 Jun 2011 17:19:


BB -though you may be right about the live meetings, there is enough literature about the 12 steps that would give one at least an outsider's view of what they are all about, even though one might certainly find it difficult if not impossible to 'work' the steps on their own.

One could peruse the Big Book or the White Book, 12 and 12, and at least get an idea of what the 12 steps are. There are also the phone conferences.

Mevakesh: Are you familiar with the twelve steps themselves (they are quoted in the GYE handbook)?

E

I can just share my own experience.  I didn't know anything about 12 Steps or GYE or anything. 

After more than 20 years of addiction to lust I finally admitted defeat and that I was NEVER going to get over this problem myself.

I looked up SA on the web went to a meeting and with the magic wave of a wand I'm cured!!!

Just kidding

But my life has gotten increasingly better and better in the last year and a half which is no doubt due to SA.

I'm not sure what kind of damage could come about from going to a meeting and I certainly don't mean to argue the point but I am by not means a low bottom addict.  I had one primary addictive behavior at the time - looking at porn (without touching myself).  However, I was about as crazy as could be from it and it was ruining my life.

SA meetings have really opened the door to recovery for me and I (and my wife) are so tremendously grateful for this gift of Hashem.

TFLMS

Welcome Mechazek.  There's an awful lot of info on this site.  And consistency from a bunch of Yiddin is not likely.  So take a breath and ease into what's going on here.  I'd suggest checking out the Handbooks which someone will very soon send you a formal welcome letter that spells out hwere to get stuff.

Meantime, easy does it.

Welcome.

Maybe you want to tell us a little more about yourself?

1daat wrote on 14 Jun 2011 04:58:


That's smart.

--Eye.

And here's the official GYE Welcome Package:

We're all in the same boat here. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama   Once you've arrived, there's no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up with them!

GYE Program in a Nutshell: (Right Click the link and press "Save Link/Target As" to save the PDF file to your computer).

'Guard Your Eyes' offers a unique approach to helping people by recognizing that there are many different levels in the struggle for "Shmiras Ainayim" and "Shmiras Habris". After studying the experience of hundreds of religious strugglers over the past few years, we put together the suggestions and recommendations that we feel are best for the various levels. We divided the tools, features and services that GYE offers into 8 different levels. This "GYE Program in a Nutshell can help people quickly identify at what level of the struggle they are at, and which tools and features would help them most at their particular level.

Here are some quick things you can do to help you jump straight into recovery:

1) Make sure to install a strong filter. It will be almost impossible to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. See this page for one good filter option, along with instructions on how to install it best – and give away the password to our "filter Gabai"… See this page for another 20 (or so) filter ideas and information… We also highly advise installing "Reporting Software" such as webchaver.org to give you some accountability, because filters alone are usually not sufficient and they can often be bypassed.

2) Join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day.

3) Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change a neural thought pattern that was ingrained in the brain through addictive behaviors. Did you join the 90 day chart on-line? Sign up over here.

4) Post away on this forum! You will get tons of daily Chizuk and support. This disease can't be beat alone. It works best when you get out of isolation!

5) GuardYourEyes also offers many free anonymous phone conferences where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See www.guardyoureyes.org > Tools > Phone Conferences for many different options. Our conferences are taking place every day, morning, noon and night… Joining a phone group would be a tremendous step in the right direction for you and help you learn freedom from this addiction. Not only will you learn the secret of the 12-Steps – which is known to be the world's most powerful program for beating addiction having helped millions world wide, but the daily call will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

6) If you need more general guidance, write to our e-mail helpline at gye.help@gmail.com or call our hotline at 646-600-8100.

7) Download and read the "Guard Your Eyes Handbook". This handbook outlines the GYE approach in detail, and makes our network much more effective and helpful for people. The handbook has two parts:

A) The first part, "Attitude & Perspective", details 30 basic principles to help us maintain the proper attitude and perspective on this struggle. Here are some examples: Understanding what we are up against, what it is that Hashem wants from us, how we can use this struggle for tremendous growth, how we can deal with bad thoughts, discovering how to redirect the power of our souls, understanding that every little bit counts, learning how to bounce back up after a fall, and so on and so forth…

The second part, "The 18 Tools", detail suggested tools and techniques, in progressive order, beginning with the most basic and fundamental approaches to dealing with this addiction, and continuing down through increasingly earnest and powerful methods. No matter what level our addiction may have advanced to, we will be able to find the right tools to break free in this handbook!

thanks all you guys for taking the time to reply to my post.I want to explain my feelings a little better to you.I was definetely a very serious addict for 18 years i had addiction in my genes.boruch hashem the last five years I have gradually,from level to level furthered myself away from acting out through intense therapy and constant disclosure to my wife which by the way was so powerful.but i still find that I am very not real with myself,If you would ask me how i feel about something I will take everything into consideration exept how I really feel or think about it.I cant really finish anything i start.tiI feel like i am allways reacting instead of proacting.I allso have a very hard time getting close to people ,having real TRUSTING relationships.

Mechazek,
I too am not a very trusting person.  For me, I think it stems from growing up with parents who weren't very emotionally available because of their own issues.  It didn't help that they were hitting me, either.  You have been in therapy for a number of years, so I guess you have dealt with your underlying issues.  Moving forward, acting in a trusting and loving way, saying trusting and loving things will help awaken the feelings.

One downside of modern psychotherapy is they're always putting such a premium on how we feel, getting in touch with our feelings.  To the point that if we're not so in touch, there must be something wrong with us.  In my humble opinion, what you think about an issue is how you feel. (Boy I'm gonna get flack for this)

My therapy was addiction based.All about the triggers and eitzos how to fight the rascal.

Addiction based therapy can be really helpful.  I believe by your own experience you've proven to yourself that it's helpful.  But it hasn't really solved the problem from the inside out.  Therapy is helpful.  I had way too much of it.

You have done an amazing job of being honest with yourself.
    mechazek wrote on 14 Jun 2011 17:41:


You are clearly so determined.  Hashem will keep helping you.

As to the other things you are concerned about

mechazek wrote on 14 Jun 2011 17:41:


I disagree that you are very not real with yourself.  Look at the profound honesty of the issues you put in front of yourself to now address.  These are matters that require deep insight and being real with oneself, IMHO.

Not finishing things you start.  I'm going to rule out ADD, as I'm sure you and your therapist have looked into that possibility.  So how about looking at that from the point of view that the yh wants you to feel bad, depressed, without joy, so that you come to "H B'li simcha?  If you think about looking at it in that way, then it's just another yetzer problem.  And I think you might consider treating it like you would treat the lust.  Apparently you are powerless, in your mind to finish things.  So, nu, daven for help.  Finish little things. Baby steps.  Ask for help to finish little things just for today.  No more.  Finish brushing your teeh, getting dressed, finish davening, finish benching, finish taking a nap.  Just start proving to yourself that you can, indeed finish things, and don't skip rungs going up the ladder.  Take it easy.  Take it a tiny bit at a time, one day at a time.  The yh comes to tell us that we'll never finish this, it's too overwhelming.  Better we should go look at shmutz and then feel bad.  That'll breakup our attachment to Him real good.  Don't let it take you down.  Just do little things at first.

I think both knee-jerk reacting and proacting can be good and bad depending.  Knee jerk reacting is good when we feel safe and can let our hair down (those of you that have some).  It's bad when we're possessed by the yh.  Proacting is good around planning things that need to be planned.  Bad when we're so obsessed about how to proact that we hobble ourselves like the centipede trying to figure out which foot to put in front of the other.  You clearly understand that reflexive reacting that leaves your sense of bechirah out of the equation is a yetzer problem.  So how about taking an approach that is not based on looking into your personal history for answers (useful though that may be), and try something that attacks the problem with here and now action that leads to transcending the yh, whether its about lust, finishing things or whatever.

About getting close to people.  Besides that this will come of itself as you get and stay sober, always reaching out to "H, and helping others, my experience has been that the problem with trusting is that I'm scared people are going to see through me and see that I'm inadequate or inferior or that I have a deep down dirty secret that I have to always be on guard about.  As you keep working on your sobriety, the addictive self involved and self destructive compulsions, as you no longer need the drama of falling and doing mournful T'shuvah over the fall (as if we don't have enough to beg forgiveness), as you expand and extend your involvement with other lust addicts, perhaps not just in this virtual world, but maybe first on one of the phone meetings, and then perhaps to a real SA meeting with real live peoples, as you DO little bitty steps at a time, one day/hour/minute at a time--follow the Handbook would be my suggestion--you will find that you feel better and better about yourself, you will feel closer to Hashem than you ever thought possible, you will no longer have a secret life, and you will no longer see other people as "things" that can hurt you, shame you, etc.  As we come to understand that the objects of our lust are real live people with real lives and real pains and joys of their own, as we stop "objectifying them", we also learn about not objectifying others in general.  We come from a place in ourselves that holds God's hand, and we mostly want to be of some help, humor, feelgood to others.  You'll see.  Work an accountable, modest, involved with others program, and you'll see for yourself.  You will start becoming a new person right away.

Whew. 

:-).. Maybe TA (Typing Annonymous) is another option here.. :-)

yuk yuk  Point well made, well taken.  Got kinda carried away there.