I really need help, i have been stuck in this for years, im 19 and i begin when i was 13, i want to repair all my damages, but first i need to stop, i tried several times, but its really difficulf for me, but now im gonna make this step, but i cant do it alone

Look around and see all that is good in your life. B"H you found this site when you did and aren't finding this later in life. Have faith that, with help, you will overcome your struggles. Have hope!

Rabbi Zelig Pliskin's book titled Growth Through Tehillim has a really nice passage that concerns feeling grateful for what one has. His suggestion was to try and write out 200 things one is grateful for. Although it sounds like a lot, haven't we already had 200 meals in our lives, or woken up 200 days in a row!

Struggles with SA is tough, but please have hope! What are you trying right now to help stop, e.g., 12 steps, phone conferences, filters, time limit on the computer, etc.?

How do you think the Mesillas yesharim would advise you to help you stop? Where does your problem fit in the pages of his book?

Dear chaver,

Your experience in working hard on kedusha and control of the power of bris and tayvoh is clear. And it is beautiful that you can still come forward and admit your challenges. But can you clarify what your main or most common, or most upsetting problem behaviors are, of late? Something might be 'making' you come forward davka now - can you say what it might be?

If you do not feel comfortable doing this on the forum, or fear that it would be inappropriate for whatever reason, you can certainly PM me.

Hatzlocha rabboh,

Dov

Hope is a must, that i'm lacking
I read a book of Rab Zelig Pliskin called "The Gateway to Happiness", it helped a lot some time ago, but when i realized that i fell so many times, i just can't be happy regularly.
Right now i begin the 90-day journey, i enter the partner program, i have the k9 filter in my laptop and just enter the forum. I want to go to the Mikvah regularly not just before Shabat, and i want to say Tikun Haklali every day, and i have to do more things to repair my damage.

It says in the first chapter of the Mesilat Yesharim that there's a lot of influence (Yetzer Hara) that takes the men away from HKB'H, and that's gonna be the greatest battle, the test of your life, were you will have to decide between the good and the bad. Pgam HaBrit is the worst sin of the Tora, therefore the men has to win this battle for his sake, and for his live. Losing this battle is losing your life, it means that you are giving away many good things just for some minutes of pleasure that is never going to be enough. The problem is that when you are an addict, the bad influence always intimidate you to fall. I didn't study all the Mesilat Yesharim, but i really want to, is a must too.

I think one of my problems is that i hang a lot in my room, there's a point that i get bored, and i start to have bad thoughts, sometimes i'm surfing in the web, and i'm reading news that have prizut, and when i see images i have to think twice, because if i don't i just fall easily. I had the ways to enter porn sites but now i have a filter, i hope that i will control myself because filters can be useless if i found another way to see bad images.

Another problem is that i get depressed very fast, after i fall i cannot see someone, i hide myself in my darkness, subtracting help, then i realized that i have to stop, and i wake up, but some time later i can easily fall again.

I read some of Breslev about depression, it helped me too, but then the memory of been pgam so many times it destroys me. But in a way before my depression was worst, now i'm trying to rectify more than been depressed.

It seems to me that you have way too much time on your hands.

It also seems to me that your own thoughts are your worst enemy. Quit thinking so much. You talk of G-d and Tikkun, but really I think you are just running the show yourself and not really for G-d. Sorry but the way you are so totally absorbed with you and your tikkun haBris and your tremendous guilt and your happiness or depression - it is all about you.

And real life - even your own life - is not about you. It's about doing and leaving the rest to Hashem.

Wrapped up in our corner and isolated with our 'precious' guilt, struggles, Teshuvah and self-improvement, your best friend will always end up being your penis. That's just the way it is.

Let go and get busy living with G-d, chaver. Not with yourself. This takes us professional thinkers lots of practice and lots of help from others.

Hatzlocha tyereh yid!!

Dear Brother,

See Shaarai Teshuva (near beggining) that for someone who is set in a path of no good (that means us), teshuva does not begin with charata and vidui, which are the basis for all the tikunnim of the pgam that you mentioned, ther'e all trying to fix the avairo. Rather, says R' Yonah, one must start with completely abandoning his misdeeds, what here in GYE is called recovery.

Now is not the time to get stuck in the past or worry about the future, that'l just glue you to yourself as Dov said, instead try to grow and change until you are truly clean and sober. For this read the handbooks for info. and hang around the chevra for advice and applications.

This is what I've been trying to do.

All the best,

Chaim

Hi there MY,

Welcome!

dov wrote on 03 Sep 2012 03:35:


Suggestion: Make a daily habit to spend 5 minutes (perhaps first thing each morning) talking to Hashem privately, discussing your problems, promising to try your best, and asking for his help.

Hatzlacha

MT

The biggest problem you and I have with growing up and seeing that the world and Life are actually not only and all about us, is that we simply cannot believe it. It is actually apikorsus to our egos. Dressing up self-obsession in religious clothing is certainly one of the reasons they are called "b'godim"...vehameivin yovin.

May Hashem protect me and all us types from self-obsession and self-worship, for it is the very engine that drives our self-pleasuring by secret porn use and masturbation.

Hi mesilatyesharim,

I don't think you should be concerned about repairing the damage. First, be concerned about turning off the unwanted behavior for the future.

You are right that depression is an important component. You can treat your depression successfully by reading Feeling Good, by David Burns. It has been around for thirty years and has sold four million copies, and has been clinically proven to cure depression as effectively as therapy and medication. You also need not fear this external influence on your yiddishkeit. Think of it as the Mesillas Yesharim for Dummies. You learn to argue with your automatic thoughts, you learn to control your yetzer hara.

Regardless of whether you take that advice I also want to tell you not to waste your time trying to do this all by yourself. Certainly you are free to just try your best, but you sound as if your aspiration is to really be clean (as in the Mesillas Yesharim) of this averah. Therefore I advise you to use all the available means and to use them to the fullest, because the result will depend greatly on whether you apply the tools properly.

One tool you have available is the twelve-step program. This program can definitely keep you sober. You have to go to the meetings and get a sponsor right away etc. Compared to where you are now, and even online forums, it is like night and day. Airing out your dirty laundry in front of other people puts a tremendous wind behind your back. It's not a bed of roses, but it works.

Another approach is cognitive therapy, which includes reading Feeling Good, which will also cure your depression. Basically the difference is that there are no meetings and no sponsor, and there need not be a therapist. In the twelve step program you accept that you have a belief that you are powerless and you surrender it. You go to meetings for the rest for your life. In cognitive therapy you accept that you have a belief that you are powerless and then you go about changing it by changing your behavior and then empirically measuring this and putting the lie to your belief of powerlessness.

It's basically the difference between the nazir and the Mesillas Yesharim. Just as the nazir stops himself from sinning only because of the fear of retribution, the 12-stepper keeps surrendering because of the fear of embarrassment when he goes to the next meeting. The guy who is putting into practice the M.Y. enters into an accounting, as the sefer says, and he constantly weighs pros and cons.

thanks each one is really helping me, thank you for the comments
You are right how can a man try to fix the damage if he did not stop yet.

First i'm gonna put all my effort to abandon this bad behaviour.

Dov you are right, masturbation is a selfish act, you are just satisfying yourself, you are receiving "pleasure" but you are not giving anything good to anyone, while a mitzva is the opposit, you are doing something not to yourself, just for G-d and your fellowman.

If you see what I wrote you as my effort to give you a reason to stop masturbating yourself, then you got me all wrong. There are plenty good reasons for us when we do not feel the desire - and no good reasons at all when do. That's not my point.

I am trying to suggest you consider that your real issue is not your masturbation, yetzer hora, aveiros, or practically any of the things you wrote about, at all. So fighting them would then not help you. I am suggesting that your main problem is probably self-centerdness. You are not alone in this. Most of us types have a romance with focusing on improving ourselves, finally being fixed, finally fixing all the damage we caused, doing Teshuvah gemurah to clean our neshomas all up...all are great ideas, in theory. But they are all poison for many people with a chronic lust habit. We ignore the fact that all along since day 1 we have been doing exactly that - trying to stop and become true kedoshim...and where did it get most of us? It kept us masturbating and got us exactly where we are today.

So why try the same thing and expect a totally different result? But thet's exactly what we do.

Instead, I am suggesting that instead of focusing your entire mind and effort on keeping your zipper up and your eyes controlled, you consider making your entire focus on taking actions to grow up and on helping other real people. Start with Mom and dad, sister and brother, friends in Yeshivah, etc. And not to gain a madreigo - that's old, familiar, selfish and self-centered stuff for people like us. And not "to embody the ratzon Hashem and attach ourselves to Him in true deveikus" - all that is kavshi deRachmonah and high drama - that stuff is likely more suited for people who are not prone to hiding and using porn to go off and masturbate themselves. Let's stay humble, face the facts, and grow up together, here.

I suggest just trying to do for others simply because it is what makes you and me mentchen. Derech Eretz kodmah laTorah. If a person who is prone to the trash we addicts love so much is focused on the basic simple stuff, he will have a good Elul. If he seeks deveikus and Tijjun....well, he will be in the mud and not even realize it. Only a mentch can be an eved Hashem.

If you agree with what I share here, then consider it OK that this might take you a few months - it certainly will not happen in just a few weeks! It might take till around Chanukah to gain real true change. Not a bad deal, I say! Real change is precious, no? So that would mean that this Yomin Noro'im will be observed by you as a mentch...and not as a 'kadosh rom venisa' (who has a 'little porn and masturbation problem on the side') like it was last year and the years before...hmm.

If that sacrifice is just too religiously ugly or too hard for your ego to bear, then I 'wish you luck' growing up. Trust me - I know the ugliness and the ego, too. You can do this.

Hatzlocha, chaver! You are not alone!

- Dov