As I type, my eyes swell with tears.

I have so much to say, but right now can not afford more than just an introduction.

Firstly, I must say how happy I am to have found this site, I don't want to hide anymore. I need to know I am not alone in this.

I have had this problem my entire life and have recently been making huge progress on my own, but sometimes I stumble.

Right now my biggest problem is dealing with the withdrawl. The symptoms are driving me crazy.

100 steps taken, today one more...

Thank you God for all you have done.
Shema Yisrael Adon' Elo' Adon' Echod

Shalom  Alaichem Yosef!  Im also new here, I fear telling others of my past, but Im sure everyone here is accepting and loving. Hatzlocha raba!

Yosef,

Chazak Ve'ematz.

I have just joined myself after a 8 yrs of marriage living a lie and almost 20 yrs of abusing the bris.

It is so encouraging that there is a forum like this for us to share our thoughts, support one another and most importantly to know we are not alone in these struggles.

Take on day at a time and 'keep your eye on the prize'.

I know that together we can IY'H get through this.

Kol tuv

Haleivi

Dear ToAdd,

I am the admin of this forum. Welcome to our community!

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... The withdrawal is hard at first, but it gets significantly easier after 90 days if you can take this leap of faith. The handbooks (linked below) also discuss the withdrawal.

See some replies from Rabbi Twerski on withdrawal over here:
www.guardureyes.com/GUE/FAQ/FAQ36.asp
and here:
www.guardureyes.com/GUE/RTwerski/Void.asp

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 get cries for help every day, by e-mail and on the forum. Tzuras Rabim Chatzi Nechama    And that is why we created the GYE handbooks (links below). If you read them well, from beginning to end, slowly, and try to implement what you read, you will find the answers within them to enable you to completely turn your life around. You're worth it.

Also, join the daily Chizuk e-mail lists to get fresh chizuk every day, and 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!

GuardYourEyes also offers various free anonymous phone conferences, where you can join a group of other frum Yidden, along with an experienced sponsor. See this page for four different options. Our conferences are taking place daily, throughout the week... This 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 joining the group will be another way of GETTING OUT OF ISOLATION and connecting with others who are going through what you are.

One of our goals on GYE is to help people "hit bottom while still on top" so they will take recovery seriously. To explain better what I mean, please see this page. If you're here, it means you're already taking serious steps in recovery, so keep up the good work!

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. The lay down the cornerstone of all our work at GuardYourEyes. Before the GYE handbook people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, someone with a low level addiction wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences", putting in filters etc... For the first time ever, this handbook details all the techniques and tools dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now, anyone can read it through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook to the next tools, as the suggestions become progressively more "addiction-oriented".

We suggest printing out the handbooks and reading it them at least once. Then, we suggest going back and reading them again slowly on the computer, and this time pressing on the many links that are found in the different articles.

And the second handbook, called the "Attitude" handbook, can also help anyone, no matter what level of addiction they may have. Often people write in to us saying that had they only known the proper outlook & attitude that we try and share on the GuardYourEyes network when they were younger, they would have never fallen into an addiction in the first place! So we hope that through this handbook, many addictions will be prevented.

The handbooks are PDF files, set up as eBooks, and they have bookmarks and hyper-links in the Index, to make them easy to navigate.

Right click on the links below and select "Save Link/Target As" to download the handbooks to your computer.

1) The GuardYourEyes Handbook
This Handbook details 18 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. For the first time, we can gauge our level of addiction and find the appropriate tools for our particular situation. And 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!

2) The GuardYourEyes Attitude
The Attitude Handbook 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...

May Hashem be with you!

ToAdd wrote on 10 Jun 2010 07:14:

Welcome aboard. Shkoiach that you've been making progress on your own, and shkoiach for finding a place where you're not alone. In my view, conquering the isolation is SO important to conquering the problems. You've done a good thing. A very big, very wise, very good thing.

Mazel Tov.  YOU MADE IT!!!  You're here, you're safe, You're gonna be ok.  Some guys here will make you laugh out loud so hard.  Some will just love you, some will help you, remind you, suggest, encourage.  It's all here.  Spill your tears onto your post.  We are really here.  This is for real.  Hashem brought you here, it's not an accident.  Ask any of the guys here.

hoo notain la'yaef Coiach.

Dear Yosef you are not alone, no matter how bad you think you have become or what horrible stuff you have done and whatever ugliness you see in your own heart at times...you are not alone. I know that Hashem is with you 100% and loves you so much that he gave you this chevra and all the other fellow sufferers who you can relate with. You can crawl up and out of this mess, as long as you remember that you are crawling. Soon, with Hashem's help, you will will be starting to walk tall and getting some freedom from this garbage and pain. And the biggest brocha you can have (in my opinion) is to remember that on the inside you are still crawling before Hashem.

Labris habeit - keep your eye on the help of the powerful 'bris' between us recovering people, v'al teyfen layetzer! Learn how to not give lust the time of day. It will take time and patience.

ToAdd wrote on 10 Jun 2010 07:14:

Welcome to our special chevra! Sorry to hear of your struggle.  Feel free to share more about your history of acting our.  When u say withdrawal is it from internet * ? m*?
The key is to keep taking it a momement at a time and it will get easier,the longer u r away from the garbage.

hi toadd...

glad to hear you are TO-ADD.. me personally I never liked admiting I was an addict - so instead I decided I was an ADD-TIC..

love to add, seek out interesting gematria to help me progress... (and a touch of humor to help kep me sane..especailly bug jokes...just more of my ANT-TICS I guess )

I was pretty bad off - i was (or at least shoudl have been in the ) IICU -

internet intensive care unit.. I felt like I had an Internet IV in me... it was my life line.. shabbas was tough.. no internet..only problem was the internet was a band-aid for all the rest of my problems.. it was not helping .. it was only making things worse... like putting butter on an infection...


but you know what - you are just one attitude away from FREEDOM.. its just a decision .. to decide that you reached you breaking point.. and dont wnat it any more.

there are 12-step groups forming all the time.. there are sponsors avail..


learn HOW TO walk the path of FREEDOM!

let me know if I can help..

in the mean time - post..read..post some more..

lots of great stuff hear.

Dov.ii

(btw - do you know how many ants the landlord had?
TEN.

TEN-ANTS, get it?? )

Thank you all for your responses.

Until now I felt so alone with this, unable to tell my wife, my rabbi, my family.

Here's my story (perhaps this belongs in a different section):

One week ago, I found this website. I installed a filter on my PCs at work and at home.
I deleted my facebook account - not only a trigger for me, but also a total waste of time.
I created a username for myself - a translation of my Hebrew name: Yosef.
I started reading the forums, these were written by other people, but were my exact words, my exact struggles.
The first reply I read "Hello Friend", I burst into tears. There are people who I can relate to here, who I can talk to.
I took a walk, crying most of the way, tears of joy, tears of gratitude to God.

I’ve been having a hard time at work with one of my co-workers for the last two years. A huge amount of anger at this person, this woman, we’ve been at each other’s throats. It was really getting me down, this is not who I am. This was a huge contribution to why I started to change.
Two years ago (a bit before I got married) I was her friend and she liked the idea of modelling. I loved the idea of taking the photos, to have 100% control of the model. This is not just looking, this is making. We were making plans to do our first proper photo shoot and she backed out.
Now, I can say Thank God, but then, my biggest fantasy was crushed. I hated her.

I am a network administrator and part of my job is to monitor internet usage. A little while later she was bringing photos of herself in to work and using her work computer to upload them to those sites I now hate so much.
After a mutual but unspoken decision not to talk to each other, not even greeting each other for a few months, I came to realise the source of my issues. Layer upon layer was unravelled until I came face to face with my addiction. She is nothing more than a mirror of my own problems.
A couple of weeks ago I apologised to her and forgave her. Things aren’t 100%, but they’re at a level I can cope with. On a deeper level, I was apologising and forgiving myself.

I showed my boss how to view the internet logs – being a computer expert, no filter would ever hold me back, but if my boss can find out, I have a big deterrent at work.

I told my wife that I put a filter on the computers. There was one post in the forums I read where the person was totally afraid of installing a filter “what would I tell my wife?”– I understand those fears . I’ve lived with them for too long. We fear that people will judge us negatively and that this will hurt us – The one thing that will hurt MORE than telling them is if they find out themselves, and they WILL, eventually. I did not tell her everything, but I did tell her it was to stop me looking at things I shouldn’t and she knows what I mean.

Something I learned here is that this challenge is something that I was sent here to face. My name is Yosef – and now I know that I was given that name to give me extra strength in overcoming this. It is my lifetime task and I was given the environment which is best to face it, and the people around me who are best to help me solve it.

Originally I knew that this behaviour was bad – kind of like the way smoking is bad. So what? Everybody does it. It is so normal in society. Then, I read a book which had an odd chapter in it. This was not the topic of the book at all but suddenly, there was a chapter on the Kabbalistic effects of spilling one’s seed. I was no longer someone with a dirty habit – in my mind I became a murderer.
The guilt was unbearable. I immediately tried to stop. I could not. So I cut down. Instead of going all the way I would stop before climaxing. Instead of hard core images, I would limit myself to something softer. But it did not take long before I found myself tempted. I was starting to win the war, one battle at a time, but each loss brought so much guilt, anger and frustration. I could not face this alone. I tried to call a counsellor, but could not. Thank God I found this site. Speaking to a real person is a really big step, too big to take as a first step.

Where did this come from? I am a religious Jew (Ball teshuva). We don’t behave that way!

Finding out that my wife is pregnant gave me a deadline – I have to do this for my child. I cannot pass this down. My struggle possibly comes from my father. My mother gave clues to it although not mentioning it directly. I have never actually met the man.
If this does come from him, may every step I take atone for him – if it does not, may I be forgiven for even thinking so. I do not blame him, this is my challenge anyway, this is my way “to add” to the world by overcoming it. My tikkun.
I only have a couple of memories from pre-school: The day I discovered that nursery rhymes are not just words that rhyme but actual sentences and me trying to look up girls dresses and talk them into all sorts of stuff. I was probably 5 or 6.

Where did the strength come from to face this?
The strength did not come from inside – I am weak. I believe that every prayer counts and God helped in proportion to my cries.
One book that really helped me overcome the guilt, sadness and emotional issues that come with the situation is by Zelig Pliskin: Gateway to happiness. I would highly recommend it to everyone. It is not about addiction, but about learning the skill of being happy, so no fear of leaving it on your bookshelf. It really changed my life.

My advice to someone in a similar situation: You have to get it out!
First tell God – he knows anyway.
Then practice telling someone else. Alone, visualise somebody else, a friend, a counsellor, a rabbi, an anonymous chat partner and talk to them. It will be embarrassing, but only for a moment. The only thing that really gets hurt is the ego. It is only our ego that is telling others that we are above this behaviour. Our ego is lying to us.
If they truly care about you, they will only want to help. Picture them responding with kind words, because they will.
What is worse – telling someone you trust, or having a random person find out and who knows who they’ll tell? Imagine someone at work finding out. If your spouse finds out on her own, then it’s betrayal too.
How long have you suffered? The embarrassment of talking to someone for the first time is only temporary. I think the fear is so much worse than the actual chat.

ToAdd.

Dear Yosef - Thank you so much for that jewel. LaShem hayeshua - al amcho birchosecha sela! How wonderful it is to be a yid!!

ToAdd wrote on 10 Jun 2010 07:14:


Welcome...

It is refreshing to see that you can appreciate 'Huge Progress' despite sometimes stumbling....

One of the y"h's tactics is to make it an all or nothing....

But it is not so... NO ONE CLIMBS CONSISTENTLY STRAIT UPHILL....

The key is to appreciate every bit of progress...

Thanks

Where hast thou been, o' friend Tried-123?

High, jack!

dov wrote on 15 Jun 2010 04:01:


In Hibernation...
The cubs tell me summer's here...
I'm back out to play...

Can't wait to get back to those Dovirishy posts...

ToAdd, read your bio you posted and it is amazing the steps you have taken.  You made it to the right place.  Keep up the effort and let us know how you get along.