Drat! Fell again!

What happened to me? I was fully on my way to ninety and now it's like I can't get through a day. And the irony is that the rest of my spiritual seems to be picking up...????

recalculating route...

See Reb Dov's post from today over here: rehab-my-site.com/guardureyes/forum/index.php?topic=463.135

You know, sometimes it's just time. I've kind of been ignoring GYE for a bit now, at least in terms of me and what not. Because I feel like B"H so many of us have managed to walk through to ninety days. It hasn't been that way for me. Two steps forward and ten back. I've recently began very expensive therapy, and while I've seen results in all areas of my life - I haven't been able to be clean for more then two days at a stretch. I feel deeply depressed - learning twelve hours a day while begin involved in this kind of garbage.

I've been begging my therapist to let me go to a phone 12 step group, but he's adamant at this point. I'm at wits end. But I decided that my self-imposed isolation isn't going to help anything, so I'm back. I'm going to keep posting. I'm not going anyway until I'm done. I owe myself that much.

Todays' fall happened in slow motion. I got depressed about the state of my marriage (which, ironically, is clearly improving) over some stupid comment my wife said. I then went to a chabura that had it's location changed but no one cared to tell me about. I wandered around, in a depressed funk, knowing exactly where it was going to end up, but having no choice, like some sort of a sick bystander watching a tractor trailer about to run over a stroller but unable to do anything about it...



But I'm not leaving this time.

Now that cry2Tatty is back, it's only natural that Kanesher would come back too! YES!  ;D

Let me quote your friend from a recent post:

Rule number one is, don't get into a fight unless you've already accepted that you will get hit... The goal isn't to not get hit but rather sometimes the goal is to win and more often, the goal is just to stand up and fight for what you believe in and what is right, even if you know you won't win; To fight for justice... and you WILL get hit... Each black eye is a witness to your stand, and each fat lip is a monument for justice, and each scar is a gold medal for courage... Take pride in them!

You have chosen to fight... you could've run, but you didn't.... you have said ENOUGH to the addiction and to the "yetzer hara" and to the world that shoves lust in your face at every turn... As long as you always get up at the end, you have accomplished your goal. Wear your scars with pride...

So lets go! Last time I checked, there was a revolution going down here at GYE... Viva La Revolution!!

So you are bruised and fed-up. But you could have chosen just not to fight and ran away. But you didn't. You're going to therapy, paying lots of money, spending precious time on it, posting on GYE, etc... And you are feeling the punches! BRAVO! At least you aren't the coward that the rest of humanity is.

One day, all that Torah you learned will pull you through - and higher than you can imagine. It's like a spring, ready to recoil once you remove that blockage. No wonder you're so frustrated now! The more Torah a person has in him, the more that spring is coiled and BEGGING to burst forth.




Hashem put those words into your mouth. You need to get off that Tractor trailer!! Dov uses the following metaphor: Often as frum Yidden who are keeping Torah and Mitzvos while acting out on our addiction, we are like someone riding an 18-Wheeler tractor trailer that is careening out of control! Instead, we need to get off the 18-Wheeler and get back onto a Tricycle again; simple, slow, safe and real.

Forget about 90 days and work only on TODAY. (And do that, each day, for the rest of your life).

Did you see today's Chizuk e-mail - "The Sinking Feeling"? That seems to happen to you a lot...

Also, if you can't join Duvid Chaim's calls yet, you can at least browse through his very nice e-mails to his "Chevra" in the new board I created for him just yesterday. For the first time, everyone can feel part of the group, even if they aren't on the calls!

Maybe if you don't speak up, you can rationalize that you're not really "joining" the calls.

Kanesher, see this article.

Thanks guard. I finally figured something - and this I believe is based on Dovian Metaphysics - that after two days I always get overconfident. Go figure. I realize I've been switching between "I'm so addicted there's nothing I can do" and "foo....now it's just a matter of time". The 12 steps place, that we realize that we are always vulnerable is a bit of a challenge for me. Hence, like Dov said - a little success is dangerous, and a little failure.

I'm addicted. I always will be. It doesn't mean I will always act out. But it means that if I let go of the simple things that help - like meditating, listening to an ipod full of inspiring songs and keeping it with me, or giving shot out on the forum - like an epi pen - like the manic depressive who drops his meds because he's better duh...because of his meds.

And I've spoken about watching all this unfold in slow motion, and now I realize that as an addict my bechirah isn't after I get depressed and watch things hit the wall - my bechirah is the very instant I feel that depression and that need for comfort, the slightest bit of unbalancedness, the poor poor me I deserve toe escapeness - even if I'm not near acting out, but if I leave it alone then it will - I can't stop it later. I need to stop it then. I need to start realize where I'm going and take out the epi pen.

I can't live by halves anymore.

That's a really wise approach. I was also  yo-yoing between thinking -  "a) I'm not as badly  addicted like the people on this site." This hubris caused me to let down my guard which led to my falls which led to... thought b) -  "I am soo much more addicted  than the people on the site. How do they string together 90 days when I can't string together 2?" The truth  is likely somewhere in between- you might be  addicted but it is  nothing that can't be beat. Just keep your guard up and don't let go of the strategies that work on the whims of some positive emotions

Kanesher, you're starting to soar!

Its noce to have you back Kanesher.
Youve been missed.

The hardest part of therapy, is the pain which digging exposes. Remember, most addicts are using the addiction as a bandaid over the pain within us. The escape and comfort may literally have saved our lives at times. Not to mention our sanity.

A festering, infected wound will not heal simply because we cover it with a plaster. The infection digs deeper and deeper, while the bandaid gets bigger and bigger. Therapy entails removing that bandaid, and healing the wound once and for all. AND THAT HURTS. Not only is it hard to look at all it, but healing it entails painful procedures after such neglect. Dead tissue needs to be cut away, strident antibiotic medications need to be applied.

And you wonder why you didnt just stick with the bandaid. Sure, it still hurt underneath, but nothing like the surgery hurts!
And worst is yet to come: All you want to do is get a nice white bandage and cover up the hole so at least you dont have to see it 24/7. But the doctor says 'nope'; I want you to leave this open to the air, because this way it will heal quicker.

So many buried, festering wounds are currently being dealt with in therapy. Off course you want to re-cover it with the bandaid called addiction. Davka when the pain is worst we want to avoid it.
But stay strong. "Bite the bullet" as Kanesher would say.
Because eventually, the wound WILL heal b'ezras Hashem, and the apin will dissapear.
And the scar which remains will always remind you of the war you won.

Rebbetzin have you been listening in  on my therapy sessions? It's odd how  I never connected my abusive past with addiction during all those years - now it seems like a no brainer.

It's odd, indeed, to live in the Yeshiva world and know of deep cesspool that exists beneath it of child abuse, spouse abuse, corruption and evil, addiction and pain - and so many are totally unaware of it- I remember a letter in the HaModiah blasting Rav Twerski some weeks ago...gotta love the rose tinted glasses...

One day at a time for now, one day at a time....

You mean this one?

Rage ATM wrote on 12 Nov 2009 16:11:


Yeah, Guard, that's the one. But Rage, the irony is worse than that.

Jerks like make the sick institutions and the sick families that make sick people. Jerks like him are the one's who brush off kids who tell him about abuse from a rebbe/parent/teacher, Jerks like him tell woman struggling in there marriage because there husband is abusive "if only you would be more machniya, then your marriage would be perfect" or tell the 11th grade girl I know of who was raped by the guy who she boarding at (told this by a Rav!) "well, you dress that way, so you brought it upon yourself..."

Guard , Twerski and the rest of this band of brothers are cleaning up after jerks like him.

Ultimately, I hope we all recover - and we're all in different places in society. If we really want to fix things, we've to go after the causes - soul stealing political correctness (a shrink who works in yerushalyim told me that most of the shalom bayis problem he sees is from guys who had their lives stolen from them because they were never ever allowed to leave learning and instead became losers in the coffee room), unchecked abuse without a system to identify them and separate them from their victims and get them help, and stupid stupid shallowness and materialism and consumerism that makes marriage a means to take and not to give.

My dream is that we'll make an underground fellowship to clean things up. Make things real.

Rage, become a DA and go after these guys. You got my vote.