Hello All,

My name is Struggla (not my real name obvisoly, but you can call me that here). Its been five days since i have not fallin. I live in the Midwest (of USA that is). I go to school, in a proffesional program. I have changed my life dramatically in the last few weeks to get myslef to where I am right now.
The name Struggla came from a song my Matisyahu. I look up to him and can really relate to him. I like this song very much, I think it has to do alot with my struggle through life with this addiction issue.

"Rise and never fall cause I been through it all"
This verse really stands out to me and thats my motto that I want to live by cause i have rising my judiasm and religous wise and all i wanna do is keep rising and never to fall cause i already know what thats like, no point in going back.

I'm 20 yrs old now, gonna be 21 soon. The 21 in my user name is part of the reason cause i'm gonna be 21 and another part is cause usually on average i can hold out for 21 days without falling. Hopefully by staying connected to the Shimras Ainayim website I can beat this addictive issue. Although right now I am not sure if I really am an addict or not - no worries i have my justification for this statement will prove later.

I rememeber the first time I had my sexual encounter was back in the old country - i am from central asia and i came to america when I was about 7 yrs old. My parents and my sibilings are very very traditional and i am also, but i was more raised here so I am also more americanized. Anyways, I was 7 years old when i discovered what masterbaution is. Now there was no porn or movies or hbo. It was just me exploring and bam, i found something i liked but Somehow I knew it felt wrong doing it. My initail feeling was proven to be correct because one day in the old country i decided to go sleep in the guest room when we had lots of people over. It was seperated from the rest of the house. As I started to masturbate cause i didnt know why, just cause it felt good. My mom walked in and saw me. She flipped out ofcourse and told me to stop and i asked me what i was doing. well i had no clue what was i doing. from that moment on i felt out of place, never really felt part of the group and society. Well its been awhile since that incident. I have been able to control myslef for certain periods of time. When I was in israel from the summer and went to yeshiva, i had no intetention of falling - maybe because i was in a religous enviroment. I was in Boro Park this past summer and the more time i spent there, the less i fell and more religous i became. And I wanna keep that feeling.

So why did I decide all of a sudden to keep this challenge? Well first of, i like the feeling of satistfaction that I am not commiting a sin and overcoming the y"h. The morning I wake up after not falling is a pretty good feeling. A feeling of accomplishment. Now for the real reason: I was standing at shul for nielah at yom kippur and asking Hashem forgivness and that I may do tshuvah for all the averim that i have done in the past life. A few nights before Yom Kippur I learned about what it means to do tshuvah and what is tshuvah gavora - the ultimate return to Hashem! Well picture this, i'm standing there asking Hashem for tshuvah and to be written in the book of life and yet I'm thinking that I ask for this every year and every year Hashem grants me life. EVERY SINGLE YEAR!! and what do i that in that year? I SIN! yes i do. so this year I am minimizing my sins. Hopefully i will come to a point where I wont be doing any sins, but thats practically impossible for any human being. This year I am going to better myself and become a better person. So here I am, changing myself. You know what else I realized, its not gonna be easy. No one said it was gonna be easy, but hey I have time. There are lots of changes I have made since then, especially in the last few weeks.

I should say that I wasnt shomer negaih (as u will see later) this makes masturbating a lot harder too. I am now tho and its been great so far. I have also stopped dating unitl I get this addiction settled away. I beleive that would be best. and also till i'm done with school which is gonna be awhile.

Here are some major changes in my life thus far:
-listening to kosher music: matisyahu, moshav band, our traditional music, etc
-watching kosher movies or shows or any tv ( i barely watch tv anyway with school in the way now)
-stopped watching porn (which i have not found to be a problem. I dont have a filter on my computer, i just dont go to those sites - what you guys think?)
-talking less to girls
-looking at girls less
-broke up with my girlfriend.
      Yes, I had a girlfriend. I know its not an orthodox thing to do but i live in a society where it is acceptable. She is from new york and she was also a struggla. We both seem to fit pretty well actually, but i would admit that i did get blinded by her beauty sometimes. Well we werent shomer nagiah and eventually we came to be shomer toghether. but still, we sometimes have some heavy intamite converstaions late at night. Anyways that led me to do things i shouldnt be doing. We broke up not too long ago (a couple days) and in some ways i am glad. Now i can focus on my set goal that i have set from yom kippur.

So thats my life in a nutshell (or a post haha). Hope to meet you all and here we go through this journey, hopefully it wont be a struggle though!!!!  :D

Struggla,

Welcome to the family!
We already have a member named "Sturggle" who is currently on a break because of college, but Im sure he'll welcome you when he returns.

Your story is very unique, while at the same time, so familiar!
Here,you will not be alone with this struggle.
Everyone here can relate.

Stick with us, keep posting and iyH we'll be celebrating 90 plus with you before you know it!

Hey Struggla, welcome to the family. Quite an interesting story you have there. But once you join its the same story for all of us. We want to grow against our adddiction fight off that Y"H and be there for eachother along the whole way. So we are really excited that youve joined our family. We know it can only bring to good things. R Guard is going to post for you the welcome package as soon as he gets on here. HEs the best!!!!!!!!!!

ha'am acharecha! the folk is behind you! sometimes it will seem that you are going it alone bt u should no we (the strugglas!) r all there 4 u

Welcome Struggla.

You'll find a place here where you can fit in just fine.

We're all strugglaing and growing together here.

Dear struggla,

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.

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!

Thank you for chizuk everybody! i greatly appreciate it. I feel at home already

Today is Day 12

Sorry Im not much of a writer. This is the first blog I have ever had. I havent had that too many tough moments, just one or two which i shoo away by thinking of soemthing else. I can honestly say I have no desire to look at inappropriate videos and images, at all and i dont even have a filter. I havent looked in such a long time (like 4-5 months) that i guess i'm getting used to it. Which I find is AMAZING! i can finally and honestly say I am starting to feel the difference of my past life that was filled with great desire, lust and such physicality! Now I do have the urge sometimes to "fall" but i do my best to change my train of thought and tell the y"h to go away and find something else to bother, not me! (and hopefully not anyone else - that be all of you strugglas out there )

I have also found that my ex-girlfriend had a very larger effect on me and the way I behaved inappropriately at night especially with or without her. I am not gonna deny that i didnt know that what i was doing was wrong, I was fully aware! But yet something drove me to do it. I am doing tshuvah for what I did, all the seed I have wasted and all the halacha I have broke being with her before marriage. Now that she is out of my head, so are the thoughts that came with her. I know see what the world is about. I dont want to be thinking about any girls right now, not my exgirlfriend, not the porn images, not the girls on the street. I want to think about how I can beat the y"h, focus on school, focus on becoming a better person and how i can better serve Hashem. thats what i need to do. "Girls are gashmiyas" as it is said in one of the songs by Blue Fringe. I dont speak yiddish, but I think gashmiyas means something bad and i can defiantly agree that they are! (especially at this moment when we are all trying to be fluttered with lust). I've decided not to date and hopefully this is a smart decision. I am a true believer of fate though so when i meet a girl, I start thinking maybe this is one. But i am young and i shouldn't be thinking this way. I have to give myself time to get to know me before letting someone else get to know me.

(As I understand that there are girls here as well, I do apologize if I have offended anyone - that was not my intention. Just wanted to share my thoughts on the matter that is effecting me at my current matter. Please do not take offense for what I have said, just needed to vent out.)

No offense taken by this 'girl'! No worries.

By the way, the word "gashmiyus" is hebrew for 'materialism / physicality', as opposed to "ruchnius" which means 'spirituality'
And its true.
Interaction with females at this point in yuor life can not lead to anything good unless you feel ready for marriage in the very near future.
You need to get yourself and life on sturdy ground before you invite a wife in to share your plot in life. Casual relationships will keep you from growing at best, and will quite likely cause you to backtrack at worst (and probably more realistic option)

This is the time in life for personal growth, at your own pace and according to your individual needs.

It sounds like you are really headin gin the right direction.
Keep climbing and letting us know how you are getting along!

Hey struggla,

You're a funny guy, you know that? Anyway, let's make it to 90 together buddy. I like you.

So here is Day 14.

I have been reading others posts and using thier methods which have been helping alot. Thank you everyone for all the support and ideas!

Last night I had a very very inappropriate dream. No I didnt have a fall, I am certian of that, I checked. This dream was so vivid to and I was doing something not kosher (with a girl - that i do not know or have ever seen). I woke up in early in the morning and noticed that this could lead to something I shouldnt be doing. So I got out of bed and walked around a bit until my thoughts and physical issues have passed. I was thinking of anything i could think of, school related, family things, money things and picturing my Rebbe in front of me and then pictureing Hashem in front of me - which all worked btw. I dont know why I had such an inappropriate dream and it just made me wonder through out the day and sometimes even go back to the dream. I dont know what it means. The worst part about is that I can not control my dreams. I can not control what i see in my dreams. I have been trying my best not to look at girls or even think about them. I do go to a nonJewish college with very few Jewish students, like 5 at the most who i barely see anyway. I do my best at trying to stop lusting and m*** and watching unkosher things (which i think i have been good at) but this was crazy. Hopefully it wont happen agian. I think this was a test by Hashem. Hopefully I passed

Hashem, I love you!!

struggla21 wrote on 19 Nov 2009 22:57:

Of course this was a test struggla. We are not responsible for waht we dream as long as we know that during our waking ours we are doing what we can. Im very happy that you made it. I see youve got a real interest in doing teshuva and for that Hashem loves you too! More than you love him, and more than you can imagine. Keep up the good work!!! Were all here for you.

Mazal Tov Struggla!

The yh is getting desperate. He sees he cant get you when you are awake and in control of your thoughts and actions, so with no other choice, he goes to dream level.
Trust me, he isnt happy about it! Such dreams simply show that you have natural sexual tension built up, and because you no longer allow release while awake, it escapes via the subconcience during sleep.
This is a victory!

KUTGW.

What a beautiful victory, Struggla!

Don't feel bad about the dream at all, even if you have an emission. It is not your fault. The yetzer Hara can't get to you when you're conscious, so he tries sometimes when you're unconscious!

It was a major test/victory for you though, because even the though the dream was totally not your fault, dreams make us want to think about them, and that can lead us to fall. The way you tried to distract your thoughts is truly inspirational!

Keep up the good work!

Yeah man,

Don't worry about dreams as long as when you're awake you don't press rewind.

MORE religious in Boro Park?

Odd.....



Never mind me and my irreverent humor. In fact, I don't even exist.



Now if someone comes along named STURGGLA, then I might go a little batty.....