I learn full time, I am 23 years old, married for a little over a year, and have a brand new little baby girl :)l. I guess my addiction with porn started when i learnt in Israel first year BM, as crazy and sad as this may seem, I was in an environment where this was the social norm and I did not have a particular issue with myself with being addicted. Anyway, it continued through Beis Medrash and now since Ive gotten married to my amazing beautiful Eishes Chayil it has inexplicably gotten steadily worse. My wife has no clue and i know if I continue she will learn of my cancer and she will be broken. I cannot describe the influence porn has had on every aspect of my life, but when I see in so many different situations how I react differently, I understand that the influence is unfortunately not limited to what i can see. What i do see is the more i do this, the more i dislike myself and then the more i guess i do it and the more it affects my life (.......confidence, learning, friends, and marriage) and I am drowning in this nightmare, I am not sure where to turn but I feel like I must stop before I find myself. . . . . . . , but how? Please help me. Thank you for taking the time to read and care about my problem.

Dear Determined,

On your own, it may not be possible to stop.  But, with the proper support, you can do it.  Once you stop these behaviors for around 90 days, things will, IY"H, be quite a bit easier, although, most likely, you'll still have to take daily measures to help you stay clean.  So, you may want to ask yourself, do I want the hardest part to last 90 days or 90 years?.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself.  Let's first give you an official GYE welcome.
 
Welcome to our community! Once you've arrived, there's no turning back. Everyone here will just grab a hold of you and pull you up, up, up!

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.

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.

Let me tell you a little about the two GuardYourEyes handbooks. They lay down the cornerstone and foundation of our work, and they make our network much more effective and helpful for people.

You see, until now, people would often get "lost" when coming to our website, not knowing what tips and techniques to try. For example, a beginner wouldn't jump straight into therapy or 12-Step groups, while on the other hand, someone whose addiction was more advanced wouldn't be helped by the standard tips of "making fences" putting in "filters" etc… So it was essential to develop a handbook which details all the techniques and tools to dealing with this addiction in progressive order. Now with these handbooks, anyone can read through and see what steps they've tried already, and if those steps haven't worked, they can continue on through the handbook where the steps become progressively more powerful and "addiction-oriented".

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.

Note: You might want to print them out to read away from the computer. Keep in mind though, that if you do this, you won't be able to click on the many web links in the articles. But you can always come back to them later. The truth is, it's anyway good to go through the whole handbook once without clicking on links, just to get an overview of all the tools available. Once you did that, you can start again from tool #1 and read each tool through more carefully, click the links and study each technique and assess whether you have tried it fully yet or not…

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

Note, that there is an updated version (February 2011) of the GYE Handbooks, which combines both Handbooks into one.  Therefore, I have removed the links below, and substituted the link for the new version.

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…[/size]

May Hashem be with you!

The advice that I would give you is try not to get too down on yourself. Thats exactly what the yetzer hara wants. When you are depressed about a fall, you are an open target for the yetzer hara because you don't feel like fighting anymore. I know it's not easy but try to stay positive. Other than that, stick around GYE. Get to know the guys over here. Read up about the addiction. Work the steps if you feel that you need to. Things will eventually get better. Success might not come right away, but you'll see after time, how you're slowly getting better, so juts keep working on it. Keep us posted!!! Have a great shabbos.

Welcome to GYE Briar.

1. Deleted.
2. Deleted
3. Deleted
4. Deleted
5. Deleted
6. Deleted

Hope you have a pleasant Shabbos.

Welcome determined23!!!  MAZEL TOV on the baby girl!!! 

Here you will find many people that are willing to help out each and every person.  Those that reach out are the most attended to, so don't be shy when it comes to posting (as you can see from my esteemed colleague Me3). 

Looking forward to many more posts from you,
Rising Up

Have a Great Shabbos!!!

Welcome Determined23,
Determined23 wrote on 04 Mar 2011 17:07:


Without even knowing where to turn, notice Hashem has "turned" you to GYE.

Here you will find understanding guys who've been there done that. Here you can post anything your heart needs to say...once and for all. Here there are rebeim, clowns, melamdim, roshei yeshivot (yes!), strugglers, jugglers and fools, truckers, beginners and oldsters--and we're all in the same boat...uh, truck (please see Bardichev's thread. He'll probably come check in soon). 

Soon you will feel close to Hashem again.  Like you wouldn't believe.  Soon you'll find yourself not being so self-conscious.  Soon you will want more to do for others, more to do Hshem's will. 

Your sobriety matters to us all.

Hatzlocho.

mazel tov!

welcome.

pull up a seat..
read some threads..

post.

post again.

join a phone group

post again.

remember to smile, and look forward...


dov.in.israel (aka. Dov.ii )

Welcome to the club

Stay here

Be open

Be honest

Read

Post

Stay involved

Keep on truckin

B

determined,

sorry im late
im the slower one around here

your recovery and life matter to me too,
pleast post your face off and enlighten us with your pearls of wisdom and despair
share with us the good and the bad

And, when you feel comfortable, maybe we can figure out why you go to this shmutz to feel better-what's hurting you that you need this medicine?
and do u have a filter?
reading the gye handbooks were a grrrrreat (kellogs box) start for me
learn here how to live happier and healthier, and you'll cut that shmutz right outa your life

wer'e all here, the whole family
tz