Hi, I've been a long-time lurker, and have read and enjoyed the posts here for many months. I realised in the last few days that a passive engagement with the community just doesn't help, so I want to take the first step and reach out.

This is something I have struggled with since my teens (I'm in my early 30s now), and no amount of vow-making or prostrating myself before Hashem and begging for relief has helped. I so desperately want to change how I live, reconnect - rediscover, really - my Yiddishkeit, and live in an honourable way that adds something to the world.

Welcome! congrats on making the step and posting, you've already seen how they greet people around here 
so just relax, soon someone's gonna show up and break open a bottle of woodford!
lichaim! reb feivel

Dear Feivel,

Welcome to our community, you have finally come home!

GuardYourEyes (GYE) is a vibrant network and fellowship of Jews of all affiliations, struggling to purify themselves and break free of lust related behaviors. For the first time, there is somewhere to turn to for help in these areas. 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!
 
In the last couple of years, the GYE network has helped roughly 1,000 Jews get back on a path of
sanity, self-control and healing and has touched the lives of thousands more. GYE has become known throughout the Jewish world as the number one address for dealing with these challenges which have reached epidemic proportions. 

The tools of our recovery program were developed with guidance from the best experts in the field, such as Rabbi Dr. Avraham J. Twerski, and through the personal experience of hundreds of Jews who successfully broke free. We use a unique approach that recognizes that there are many different levels in these struggles.

Our network is comprised of a website, a pulsating forum, phone conferences, daily Chizuk e-mails, support hotlines, therapists, live 12-Step groups and a program of recovery for all levels of this struggle/addiction.

All our work is free of charge and we zealously protect the complete anonymity of all our members.

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

1) See the "GYE Program in a Nutshell" (Right Click the link and press "Save Link/Target As" to save the PDF file to your computer) that can help you quickly identify at what level of the struggle you are at, and which tools and features would help you most at your particular level.

2) Install a strong filter (see this page for more info). It is hard to break free of this while having all the garbage within a mouse click away. 

The filter gabai at filter.gye@gmail.com will hold the passwords for you. We also highly advise installing "Reporting Software"

such as webchaver.org to give you some accountability.

3) Join the daily

Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day.

4) Join the 90 Day Challenge. Scientific studies have shown that it takes 90 days to change the neuron pathways created by addictive behaviors in the brain.

5) Post away on this forum, where hundreds of yidden like you exchange chizuk and post logs of their journey to recovery. You will internalize that you are not alone, and you will learn the techniques and attitude that work for so many others.

6) Join our free anonymous phone conferences, led by an experienced sponsor.

7) If you need more general guidance, write to GYE’s helpline at gye.help@gmail.com or call the hotline at 646-600-8100.

8.) Download and read the "Guard Your Eyes Handbook" (a hard copy can be purchased for cost price over here). 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, "The 20 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!

The second part, "Attitude & Perspective", detail 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…

Our souls cry inside of us, but we have accustomed ourselves to block out that cry. Today we can begin to be who we really want to be.

We are here for you.
www.GuardYourEyes.org
GYE E-Mail Helpline: gye.help@gmail.com
GYE

Phone Hotline: 646-600-8100
Help us help others: Donate Here

Welcome Feivel !
Thanks for joining the kehilla.
How's it going?
And what are you doing (to get better, that is)?
Alex

WELCOME!  I look forward to hearing more...  The first steps are the hardest.

shalom reb feivel,
kol hakavod for signing up. looking forward to hearing more from you
wishing you much hatzlocha
zs

Welcome on board.  hope you get everything you need from here.  Relax, read the handbooks, post away and join us on the journey to life.
Hatzlacha in all things GOOD.
chaimyakov

Thanks one and all for the warm welcome. As you'll all no doubt appreciate, it was a hard first step, and I apologise for just blurting stuff out and not really giving any background information. Here's my story:

I first got into P*^n (and it's wicked cousin m@$---n) when I was a young teenager. Not being really "cool" I leapt at the chance to be accepted by my peers and their older brothers, when I showed an interest in the stuff. Magazines were given, and things developed from there. I started living a secretive life with these magazines (the women in them represented all the girls I wished were interested in me, but weren't).

This was in the mid-90s, and then, of course, came the internet.

Oy.

Getting my own computer was both a blessing and a curse. Long hours were spent in the privacy of my room, late at night, discovering the many sites available to quench a growing desire. My social life remained limited, the girls I admired in the "carbon world" remained unattainable, and so the comforting chats and pictures assuaged my feelings of hurt and loneliness.

Things marched steadily on downward, and after a death in the family I decamped from the familial house and moved to Europe.

Free from the constraints of family, friends, and acquaintances, I gave full rein to my secret online life, which soon enough spilled into the real world - with disastrous consequences. Fortunately the worst is just the crushing shame of having fallen so low and being unable to pull myself out of the mire.

Things carried on the same way for quite some time, at the real low point I said to Hashem that I didn't need him and that I'd be fine to pursue this dark life alone. I am now terribly afraid that having once turned my back on Hashem, that he will turn His on me. I know, on the one hand, that this is most likely not the case, but still, He seems so distant.

To round the story off, I ended up (despite all this) meeting a woman and getting married. I schlepped this burden of guilt with me into the marriage, knowing all the while that I had to change my (inner) lifestyle (on the outside I'm softly-spoken, somewhat conservative in dress and ideas, a typical mensch). And here I am today, grappling, helpless, alone (not only in a foreign land, away from the family and friends I was so eager to leave, but spiritually as well).

feivel wrote on 27 Jan 2012 09:41:

Feivel dear, there is no such thing as turning one's back on hashem. hashem is life. if he drops his hashgacha for one second the whole world goes right back into nothingness automatically. there are a lot of fancy kabbalistic ways of saying this, but let's say it straight, hashem doesn't like or hate anyone. every jew is a chelek elokai, a piece of hashem- so to speak, and we can't drop him whatever we do. we are him.
feivel wrote on 27 Jan 2012 09:41:

DON'T INSULT US FEIVEL!

ISN'T THAT RIGHT CHEVRA?

TZ is right.  Hashem is closer than we can conceive.  And so are we.  Give it your best shot and take things slowly after all we didn't get where we are overnight so recovery will also not be an overnight journey.  The important part is for us to do what we need to live our recovery.
Hatzlacha in all things GOOD.
Have a great Shabbos,
chaimyakov

Feivel,
Thanks for sharing more of your story.
I (and I think many of us here) can relate to feeling disconnected from Hashem, choosing the dark side instead.  Because ultimately this disease does pull us away from Hashem.

Fortunately, recovery gradually reopens the door and lets His light shine in to our lives.  In fact, He is the most important part of our recovery.

So now that you've shared your story, what's your plan for recovery?

feivel, your honesty is precious... thank you!  You are not alone.  We are all in this together.

Have a wonderful shabbos!

feivel wrote on 27 Jan 2012 09:41:


Dear Feivel,

Though you leave the exact behaviors you engage in in your habit to the imagination, I guess I understand firsthand what you are referring to. Right or wrong, I can say that what you describe so poignantly describes an inner pain that I relate to very much. As far as I am concerned, the 12 steps were written for a person with the exact issues you describe. But I am sure there are harbei shluchim laMakom. It is cute that your program stalled in the 4th step - it is the first action step in the program. Everything else is really just talk. I mean no criticism of you, at all, for I have the same problem! 4 is the first place where we are asked to really do anything different than we have always been doing...and then comes 5, which is scary to those who are really not wanting to get any better, for fear of - of - actually getting better! It's where everything starts really happening (if we just do the work). So it took me over a year to get started with my sponsor on it, too! I almost gave up and dropped it all, in the meantime. Gevalt...what I have now, and what I had then....hard to imagine the tragedy had I not been moved forward by Hashem's Chessed.

It sounds like you are getting kicked in the behind in some way right now, and waking back up into recovery. If so, you'll be OK commensurate with how much you put into it. You are not alone!

Hatzlocha in your recovery from this problem and into the good life!

Thanks for filling us in, Feivel.

I'm wondering, though:  What do you plan to do now about all this?

(By the way, G-d gives us plenty of chances).

--Elyah

just to elaborate a bit on my previous post
there was once a concept on gye [actually it's probably still going on- i haven't checked that thread in ages] known as Feel The Hugs
what that means is:
leis asar panui minei. there is no place empty of hashem, he fills everything, so, if you're totally enveloped by someone, what does that mean? that he's hugging you! any pleasure you feel, is a hug. and even while masturbating, the pleasure is from him
so can you pinch somebody, as he's hugging you?

ROCK ON