I don't think you can control your emotions by paying attention to your emotions, but you can create different emotions than the ones you have created so far by paying attention to your inner thoughts, the ones that the untrained don't know are there. By the time you feel emotions it's too late to control them.

As far as the spiritual causes, those have to do with the opinions or positions that you have created over decades with your physical actions as well as reading, etc. that have to do with who's a good person and who is not (such as perfectionism to mention a well known one.) Those rules are even more difficult to crystallize out of your head and are what people refer to as longing, spiritual addictions etc. And also difficult to change without some skills.

As far the chemistry goes, it's well known now that the brain can manufacture chemicals as a result of its activity. The chemicals go away when the brain activity changes.

tiefster88 wrote on 10 Jul 2018 11:03:

Must be a different edition of the big book, or perhaps it's a different book altogether.

Godspeed!

You can learn not to be controlled by emotions by paying attention to them and recognizing that they are just producing sensations in our body and that we don't need to do what they are trying to tell us to do. Instead we can just allow them to be to be there and they will eventually die down on their own.

This is what I'm referring to: Page 100

"Assuming we are spiritually fit, we can do all sorts of things alcoholics are not supposed to do. People have said we must not go where liquor is served; we must not have it in our homes; we must shun friends who drink; we must avoid moving pictures which show drinking scenes; we must not go into bars; our friends must hide their bottles if we go to their houses; we mustn’t think or be reminded about alcohol at all.

Our experience shows that this is not necessarily so. We meet these conditions every day. An alcoholic who cannot meet them, still has an alcoholic mind; there is something the matter with his spiritual status. His only chance for sobriety would be some place like the Greenland Ice Cap, and even there an Eskimo might turn up with a bottle of scotch and ruin everything! Ask any woman who has sent her husband to distant places on the theory he would escape the alcohol problem.

In our belief any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself he may succeed for a time, but he usually winds up with a bigger explosion than ever. We have tried these methods. These attempts to do the impossible have always failed.

So our rule is not to avoid a place where there is drink- ing, if we have a legitimate reason for being there. That includes bars, nightclubs, dances, receptions, weddings, even plain ordinary whoopee parties. To a person who has had experience with an alcoholic, this may seem like tempting Providence, but it isn’t.

The big book and the other books teach us how to live life, and yes, if one learns to live life properly, he might be able to enter a bar, and what is wrong with that? There might even be some who can drink a l'chaim or two.

Thank you for typing that, I have never read the big book.

However comparing going to a nude beach for a sex addict and going to a bar for an alcoholic is not really a logical comparison, because alcohol does not enter the drunk's system when he sees the bottle. So I think one has to be careful when drawing analogies from sex to substance abuse.

mzl wrote on 10 Jul 2018 14:27:

And perhaps one needs to be careful when contrastin' as well. Experience trumps all thinkin'.

Just to put this into context and reply with my own experience, this means for me that i sit here typing this from a completely unfiltered computer. IM sitting 'in' the bar.
But this doesn't mean that i can have a couple of l'chaims..
I personally cannot lust or porn like a gentlemen, it leads me to censored places.

I get the metaphor. It's a very helpful metaphor. I was just pointing that it's not exactly the same thing because the consumption mechanism is a little different.

Being around my wife for me is like being in bar for an alkie for sure.

I agree with both of these comments. Somebody who is on the level of spiritual fitness that the big book is aiming for should be able to have unfiltered internet without even having the craving to look at anything.

The fact on the ground however is that I don't know if I met anyone the whole time I was in SA who was free from lust. Even people that I met there who had been sober 30 years still suffered from lust cravings from time to time. Maybe thats due to being around ones wife or the availability and closeness of lust or maybe it's just they way we are wired physically or spiritually.

That is probably why many sponsors help their sponsees with techniques like noticing their triggers and learning to "let go" which in mindfulness would be similar to urge surfing.

Even given that there are going to be cravings with lust addiction I still agree with the big books point that  "any scheme of combating alcoholism which proposes to shield the sick man from temptation is doomed to failure. If the alcoholic tries to shield himself he may succeed for a time, but he usually winds up with a bigger explosion than ever. We have tried these methods. These attempts to do the impossible have always failed."

Trying to escape triggers is not the solution because there will always be triggers for lust. The solution is to learn how to deal with the inevitable cravings. 

It would be so much easier to be on the level that many AA people get to where they just don't have cravings any more. It seems like in SA that is more of a long term goal. In the short term we probably have to be realistic about the fact that we are going to suffer from lust cravings and learn how to deal with them best, whether it be through surrendering them to Hashem or urge surfing.

I also saw on Shabbos the Pri Tzaddik asks "Why is parshas Mattos after the story of Bnos Midyan? What is the connection between that terrible story and the halachos of nedarim?

He answers that after the fall due to lust with the bnos Midyan which led to avoda zara. klal yisrael needed a powerful measure to protect from lust. This was nedarim. These allow us to build fences which have the full force of Torah law. 

These days my tafsic neder is one of the main factors which keeps me from acting out most of the time. Before that I used to act out almost every day with maybe a week or 2 of clean days here and there. At this point I am managing to stay clean  months and only acted out for a couple of days in between. Although what I want is to be free from acting out all the time and be able to deal with my cravings.

This is the way I look at it the tafsic acts as a substitution to 2nd gear for me. I don't manage this all the time but this would be the ideal for now. And that is why I am writing here. To try and get things clearer for myself ;-):

• In 1st gear I notice my cravings as they come up. What do they feel like in my body?  What are they trying to get me to do? and Why?
• In 2nd gear I decide that I am going to surf them out because lust is not going help anyways and its just going to make me feel worse afterwards and also I don't want to lose hundreds of $ because of my tafsic, also it's going to separate me from Hashem, at the time of doing the aveira.
• In 3rd gear I surf the craving using R.A.I.N and while doing so I daven to Hashem to take away the craving. I do this until the craving dissolves. I notice how even though the craving was very uncomfortable and I felt like I was dieing a little, if I don't act out I don't die and eventually the craving is gone and I am way happier than I would have been had I acted out.

Once again, p*** doesn't fit in life the same way that alcohol does. Alcohol is legal. It's sold in grocery stores. P*** is by definition forbidden.

To me the critical consideration is "if I attempt to protect myself from A, B and C, will it work?"

With alcohol the answer is no for most people. With p*** the answer is yes for most people.

It's a practical question. Keep away from the things which you can consistently keep away from. Defeat the others.

In my case I don't actually watch p***. My addiction has always been to just nudity.

It takes very little for me to get triggered. Just a pic of a woman with the skirt above the knee could do it. or even if the skirt is below the knee. actually even if its all the way to the floor.

I don't really see how I could keep away from triggers.I think I need to learn how to deal with them.

tiefster88 wrote on 15 Jul 2018 17:06:

How true!

tiefster88 wrote on 15 Jul 2018 17:06:

That made me think of a statement in an article I recently read:




The full article is:
Stories Off the Daf - "Positive Reinforcement"
www.dafdigest.org/Zevachim/Zevachim%20089.pdf
Wednesday, Jul 11 2018

What type of mindsets get in the way of forward movement and make us feel like we have gone back to square 1?

Doubt- To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to using immobility as a means of transportation. Doubt is the fixed mindset. "I doubt that I can do this." That's immobility and it feels fixed because we aren't moving. 

When we move in a direction even if we aren't sure it's the right one, how does this compare to not driving at all? Even if it's wrong we learn that it's the wrong direction. 

If we sit there and doubt and wonder "Oh, I don't know, I don't know", we will never know anything for certain because we aren't learning anything. We aren't exploring. Moving in the wrong direction might be OK if we are in a growth mindset. 

We might not be making progress as fast as we want to. Let say we fall and act out after a few months sober. But if we are working, then we are mapping out the territory of our minds in the process and that one step backward might not be so backward after all. We will be on the lookout to look out for similar dead ends and detours in the future. We will be less likely to do those again. We are actually learning. We are actually growing!

See if you can bow to "failures" and "mistakes as learning opportunities. See if you can learn something from then so that the seeming "failure" or seeming "mistake" is actually a movement. Even if it isn't the direction you want to be going in at the time. See what you can learn. Bow to it as a teacher and see what happens next.