a couple days ago i found this website, the enviroment here seems like its a safe place to be.
well i'm from small town in the middle of nowhere. there arent too many orthodox jews here, so pretty much everyone know every and thier business. i go to school, looking for a job. when I'm done i plan to move somewhere like new york. I wanted to get help for my adiction, but i didnt want to get help from rabbi's and scholars in the community. felt too embarassed. after discovering this website and reding all the stories on here, i was happy to know that i am not alone. i've commited myself to losing (or at least deminishing) this addiction. 2 days so far...i have tried to stop before, learned to keep my mind busy. i read on here to keep my door open when i go to sleep. tried that last night and it helped alot more than i thought it would.

so here it goes.....

HEY, welcome!
you're very couragous for posting! kol hakavod!
GYE is the safest "home"- once you get to know us, you'll see, we're all family.
Hatzlacha Rabah!
and keep posting!

letakain21

Thanks for the words of wisdom - i greatly appreciate it

i read through some of the posts here and i can honestly relate some of the experiences people have had. which is sad to say that i had them.
but i am so glad i have found my goal in life, something that would change me to be the person that i have always wanted to be... thanks for believing in me.

Todah Rabah letakain21

Dear bavdc,

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...

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.

Make sure to read them, they contain a wealth of information on beating this addiction! And I'd love to hear your feedback on them...

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.

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!

Bavdc( ???),
Your thread name seals your fate for success.
You skipped the jibbidy jobbidy of this and that and went straight to the only real solution:
Creating a whole new you.
Stick with us and we'll help you do just that
And join the Duvid Chaim 12-step phone conferences.
They're awesome!

I'm so happy you finally arrived,
-Uri 

Welcome to the family bavdc!

Welcome to the BIG cyber family here in middle of the ocean of Taive.

After all is a small town less problematic, no?

You may consider yourself lucky compared to what others have to face in the big towns.

I am sure that by the time you get to NYC you will be strong!

Day 3
first off -

gaurdureyes: thanks for the info, i have already signed up for the daily chizuk and am checking out the site and the handbook slowly but surely. appreciate all the help. i am gonna do my best to try out all that everyone has to offer

uri: lol i'm glad you see right through, that was my intent, to create a whole new me. i will be defiantly joning a phone conference shortly. i dont want to miss an oppurtunity to grow now since i have discovered this wonderful place.

7Up: thanks for the welcome, glad to be here

G38: thats what you would think right! but compared to nyc (and ive spent summers in NYC before) to me it seems more problematic. I get bored easier out here, especialy when i have no school. i really want to go yeshivah and learn more, but i cant do that for the next couple years. I feel like if i was in a bigger orthodox community, i wouldnt have this to deal with. but i do see your point, big city, more thigs can happen.

So today I've decided that i'm not gonna get myself down. I have had streaks before, but it seemed like i knew i would fall at some point. this time i am putting on a proud face and keeping a positve attidue knowing that im doing this and not falling cause this time i have got support. today was pretty hardi in the moring, i was in class (i go to a coed school) and just looking at the bored i noticed something i shouldnt be focusing on and that got all kinds of thoughts in mind. i just closed my eyes, and started listeing ot the teacher and focusing on the toppic, but that didnt help too much. I couldnt focuse, i just had all kinds of imagees in my head and i wanted them out cause i know that the more i pictured them, the morethings happened that i didnt want to occur. 

so i guess my question is how can i stop the root of the problem which are these thoughts?

I just tried answering someone on this very question yesterday: Click here

thank you gaurdureyes!

I have too stopped watching inappropriate things and listening to inappropriate things - i understand its a slow process. i guess somethings i can not control, but i will try hard not look at not tziunt girls and things as i go through out my day. i always gotta try harder!!

Day 7

Today marks a whole week of being clean from bad thoughts, actions and intentions!! I gotta say shabbat went by pretty good! it was a good rest, i had a friend stay with me which helped. last night tho was tough - I've learned that if i dont need to be in bed then i shouldnt be in there, just leads to unnesassary things. i was having a tough time with some thoughts, so i decided to get my mind occupied. I came across this article from aish (below - i condensed it a bit, here's the whole article tho: ). I thought it was pretty relavent to my journey of fighting y"h and as well as to yours. i thought it was pretty cool. Let me know what you guys think...agree, disagree, whatever...

I am pumped for another day of lust freedom!!!

Raising Cain
A four-point program for succeeding in life.

by Sara Yoheved Rigler


I had looked at it many times, but had never noticed the gem embedded in it. It was like discovering that the design on the “Dr. Pipe the Plumber” magnet on my refrigerator was really a map leading to buried treasure.

The passage is the Torah’s narrative about Cain and Abel. Cain, the elder son of Adam and Eve, was a farmer. At some point he got the brilliant idea to bring an offering to God from his crops. He brought the worst of his produce. (As my 15-year-old son explains, “Why should he have brought the good stuff? He knew that God wasn’t going to eat it anyway.”

His younger brother Abel, who was a shepherd, imitated the idea but he brought the best of his flock. God accepted Abel’s offering and rejected Cain’s. This made Cain angry and depressed.

At that point, God spoke to Cain. This is the first communication from God to human beings post Eden. It comprises two verses in Genesis [4:6-7], and is really (how could I have missed it before?) a four-point program for succeeding in life.

“And God said to Cain: Why are you angry and why are you depressed? Surely, if you improve yourself, you will become elevated. And if you don’t improve yourself, sin crouches at the door. Its desire is to get you, but you can conquer it.”

#1. Your response to what happens to you is your own choice.
By asking Cain why he was depressed and angry, when God knew perfectly well that His rejection of Cain’s offering was the catalyst, God was pointing out that depression and anger are a choice. They are not the inevitable result of rejection, disappointment, or frustration. (In this article, I am not talking about chemically-based depression, but rather the mood of sadness that grips us when situations don’t go our way.)

Depression and anger are not the inevitable result of rejection and disappointment.Expressions such as, “He made me angry,” and “I’m depressed because I didn’t get the job” betray a false worldview. Human beings have free choice as to how they will respond to the events in their lives. Being rejected by the person you desired to marry or the employer you wanted to work for or the landlord whose apartment you were dying to rent can lead to depression, but only if you choose to let it. The other option is to take responsibility for and to work on your reactions. This leads to God’s second point:

#2. The purpose of life is to work on improving yourself to elevate yourself spiritually.
After questioning Cain’s poor choice, God tells him what he should be doing: If he improves himself, he will become elevated spiritually. Self-improvement thus becomes the Divine imperative.

Until this Divine communication, Cain may have thought that the purpose of his life was to grow vegetables, put bread on the table, earn a living. God lays it out straight: The purpose of human life is to improve yourself. This means elevating yourself spiritually. The alternative to getting angry or depressed is to work on improving your character traits, to learn to gracefully accept disappointments, without blaming or lashing out at those around you. This is hard work, which leads us to God’s third point:

#3. Life is a constant battle against your own negative inclinations.

God warns Cain that the force of negativity is “crouching at the door,” ready to pounce and attack throughout the day. Life is like a down escalator; if you are not struggling to go up, then you are automatically going down. Negative impulses such as hatred, jealousy, pettiness, resentment, and feelings of inadequacy or conceit try to get the best of you. Fighting against them is the challenge of life.

Recognizing that life is a battle against your negative inclinations means that you see life as a battlefield and view yourself as a committed warrior. The alternative is to see life as a dark alley and view yourself as a hapless victim caught by surprise by every mean mugger. (Negative impulses are muggers that try to rob you of your inner peace and joy.)

At this point Cain may have been at the brink of despair, worrying, “How will I ever overcome this host of negative inclinations? I’m a goner!” Thus, God’s fourth and final point is:

#4. You can succeed.

God assures Cain, “You can conquer the force of negativity. You can win this battle.” God understood that the human propensity to insecurity and fear of failure is vast. The spiritual 90-pound weakling will slither away without even bothering to fight. So God’s final exhortation to Cain was: You can win. Have the self-confidence to believe in the possibility of victory. You have what it takes to succeed in your spiritual life. You can succeed; you have the Creator’s word on it.

You have what it takes to succeed in your spiritual life. You have the Creator’s word on it.Of course, we know the next scene: Cain completely spurns God’s counsel, let's himself be overcome by jealousy, and murders his brother Abel. The Cain Message turned into the Cain Mutiny. But it didn't have to go that direction.

Nice article, nice points!