Hey everyone. 

I guess i'll give a little background about me. I'm in high school (i'm 17) but i go to a secular, private school and i am more observant than the rest of my family. I've been making the transition over the past 5 or so years to living a more observant lifestyle, and after finding out that my family used to be chasidic, I find a deep connection with Chassidus, mainly through Chabad.

However, like many other people on this site, I have slip-ups when it comes to shmiras aynayim. boruch hashem, its not to a point where its unmanageable, but the fact that these slip ups occur is enough cause for worry at least in my own life. I like to think its something normal for a teenager to do, but i still know its something that needs to stop.

i've tried taking measures but i find that the time i'm most inspired to do so is only after the fact or a slip up has occured. i've installed filters and i'm reading through (and trying to live out) the packets from GuardYourEyes, all of which are helpful.

but at the same time, the results aren't 100% and i would love to say that i see the end of the tunnel, but i'm really not sure.  any tips?

Dear teenagehelp,

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!

Hey TeenageHelp,

First of all, you can't even begin to realise how fortunate you are to have decided to seriously work on these problems at such a young age. Many of us only changed at later stages in our lives (myself included) because our lives had been wrecked, and it literally became a case of do or die.

By breaking free from these addictions now, you are in effect laying the foundations for a future life that will be filled with happiness, rather than bitterness, anger and regret.

However, as with all good things, you must work for them. The Ancient Greeks once said that, "The Gods sell us all good things at the price of our labour." This case is no different.

Persevere, have faith and never give up and you will succeed even if it takes years to accomplish. However, don't let the thought of having to climb a mountain discourage you; take it one step and one day at a time. Even if you fall, don't be upset, just forge on and keep on going. There is no general who never suffered any losses or reverses in his career.

Also, this forum is a great place to post questions, pick up chizuk and for camraderie with the other members of 'God's elite commando unit' (we do like to fantasise).

Anyway, TC and KUTGW!

DesertLion
 

Wow. I am so inspired that you have taken the first step in this war whne you must be bumbarded with struggles in this area all the time given your background.  Hashem is definitely vewry proud of you.  This is an uphil;l battle, and like all battles, there will no doubt be falls.  Those falls are natural, but the yetzer harra weants most for you to get down and out after you fall, to feel disgusting and hopeless.  But look at everyone here as a slap in the face to the evil inclination.  Do you think hashem is the slightest bit dissappointed in us, or is He UNBELIEVABLY PROUD regardless of our falls, that we continue to try and forge ahead, even if its sluggish sometimes.

U are way ahead of the game for jumping in at such a young age.  I did not jump in to fight this battle until 28, but thank Hashem and thank Guard Your Eyes and everyone on this sight, I have bli ayin horrahh been clean for close to 2 years now.  THANK YOU HASHEM!!!

HAVE TUNS OF LUCK and stay positivie. Equally as important to stay away, is to stay positive even after a fall.

hatzlacha Rabba and much success.

Chasdei

P.S. I do not check often on the sight, but I will check in on your progress blin neder. keep it uyp

Like I said to someone else your age here, TAKE ADVANTAGE. You can nip it in the bud right now and avoid all the problems that the rest of us had to deal with. Most importantly, you will actually LIVE through your late teens and early twenties, precious years when we're in our prime, if we aren't slaves to the lust machine. You aren't living while you serve the demons of lust. They control you and confuse you.

BTW, are you a junior or a senior? If a senior, are you going to Israel after high school?


Stay strong.

First of all i want to tell you how amazingly brilliant you are for choosing to work on this problem now, instead of c"v at 34 when the whole family is wondering why mommy is suddenly so upset at daddy.
The problem does not go away by itself, and I can't tell you how much I envy you for making this decision at 17. You are saving yourself an unbelievable amount of stress later on.
That being said, you have to realize that H-shem does not ask of you to BE perfect. He asks that you do everything in your power to listen to the torah.
Your job right now is NOT to be 100%. Your job is to make sure that you are keeping the things which make you fall out of the way.
Take a step back, think of yourself as another person, and ask yourself "Are you making sure that there is nothing in your life - that you can remove, that causes you to stumble?" and answer yourself honestly.
If you can honestly answer yourself "Yes" then that is your 100%.
The main thing for you is the preparation for the nesayon, and not the nesayon ityself.
Our job is not to overpower the Y"H. It's to deny him entrance into our homes to begin with.
Yes we also need to know how to fight, because he can theoretically attack us even outside our homes.
But the vast majority of nisyonos are ones that we could have avoided in the 1st place.



Hatzlacha rabbah!!

Welcome to the forum, Shlomo.  It was very brave of you to come here and post for help.

Good luck!

  --Eye.

Hello, fellow teenager here!

Keep it up! This is the right fight, and it's worth it.

Welcome!

I just want to thank everyone for input. Every single post has been extremely helpful and i'm happy to report another clean day  ;D i guess now that i'm getting back into the thick of school and working and other stuff, hopefully this will go hand in hand with Torah study to fend off my Y"H. once again, i can only say thanks and i'll keep this updated 

i am a chabad (not lebavitch) chassid (if you want to know what that meens, i could tell you) and i am 15. something that helped me soooo soooo much is learning tanya. truthfully its best to learn with a chavrusah who knows it, but if you not able to, its still helpful to do it yourself. because of it, i am 4 days clean!

Hey shlomo wassup?? Check out the handbooks and read around the site, theres so much to be learnt. In the meantime Rock 'n Roll Holy brother!!!

bad news. i fell. i just wanted to post here to see what tips i could get. i know its not an excuse and i dont want to make light of the situation, but i fell before i even knew it was happening. i immediately looked through the GUE guides for anything that would help right the situation and see what i should do. luckily, i've worked to get over that sadness and depression, trying to inspire within me a new resolve to serve Hashem with more effort and simcha, and this Shabbos helped.

At least for me, i think one of the issues is that, being in high school, my schedule is sometimes completely full with homework and work and then other nights i'm completely free. for the most part, i find i can fight off my yetzer on the nights when i'm free but theres the occasional slip/fall. do you guys have any tips on time management on the nights that i find that i have more free time?

thanks again for all the posts and i'll work to make you all and Hashem proud.

Ouch! Sorry about your fall, but it happens to the best of us. Yes, and not surprisingly, the Y"H doesn't give us an advance notice of 3 weeks regarding his arrival. He pounces - without warning. I mean what would you do if you were the Y"H? Remember, he does things in a way that he will be most successful.
For those who have been clean for a long time, the reasons we succeeded were - time arrangement, filters, avoidance of triggers, not being alone with a computer, not using it past a certain time, and other methods of prevention. Yes it would be wonderful if we could just develop ourselves internally to a point that all these precautions would not be necessary, and we were strong enough to withstand all temptation in all situations, but needless to say that is not living reality. Our job is not to become something other than human, it's to serve H-shem with this human here. This human who has weaknesses, and inclinations towards bad things, and is fully capable of doing them - dispite his full knowledge that they are wrong and hurtful.
What all this means, is that if you want to work on being clean, and staying away from p**n, the active work is NOT to be done at night when your alone and battling with the urge. The work is to be done NOW when you can avoid that situation of danger in the first place.
I wish you a lot of hatzlacha

KG

kollel guy- thanks for your great post.

i guess i just have one question that i still need help with. you mention time management, but how exactly does one go about doing this? i know it all depends on one's schedule and other personal factors, but do you have any tips on how i could go about managing my time better? thanks

also, i've noticed that even though i installed a filter on my personal computer, i have the power to essentially turn off the filter because i know the password. would anyone be willing to be the key-keeper, chavrusa and be willing to help me out and keep me out of trouble by simply holding on to the password?

and finally, although i havent tried or experimented with it yet because its a concept thats new to me, but i would like to try hisbodedus as a technique for elevating my mind. like i've read, i'd most likely do it for a set time each week or day, but i feel like i dont know enough to get started. any help?

thanks for the help

GYE has their very own filter gabbai. Its essential. as long as we hold onto the password it dont mean anything. He can be reached at filter.gye@gmail.com

Keep on truckin my boy. Although you fell your doing great!!!