Cumulative Stats
Current Streak: 1 loss
Total Wins: 85 days
Total Losses: 6 days
Winning Percentage: 93.41%

Today's positive action towards recovery:
pushups for stress relief.

was triggered yesterday by some stupid April fools nonsense (on LinkedIn of all places). Wasn’t looking for trouble. Did some urge surfing and survived yesterday, but caved today:-(

I guess I’m just not that motivated to take it to the next level:-/ it’s so easy to rationalize an occasional relapse, plus the benefits of quitting are subtle but the sweet escape of porn and masturbation is anything but subtle.

If my wife knew about my addiction, I wouldn’t need to be so secretive about my recovery efforts. I wish I could join a chabura or go to SA or something, but that’s not possible without her finding out

Meh. Still spinning my wheels at the moment. Anyway, tomorrow is a new day.
Time2Win

Feeling for you... Its hard being in a situation when you know you're going into a nisoyon.
But, on the other hand, you know you're going into a nisoyon, so go in battle ready!

Maybe make some gedarim/rules for yourself?

Welcome to the Mishpacha here,

First of all please stay safe up there. I give you a bracha to get beck to regular life Bkarov you and all the other guys with you.

I love the way you took on the challenge, Taking a step back finding your triggers and planning for them. It really is just that, another area in life that we have to work on, were not different cuz we struggle.

Hatzlacha, we hope to hear more great ideas from you.
KOMT

Feeling frustrated. Fell in the morning. Spent most of the day reading to distract myself. I've been doing so good on that front, but I thought I needed heavy duty distraction or I'd continue. Unfortunately, after the distraction ended I went back to porn. Stopped eventually though. 

Life's been confusing recently. But that's not an excuse. I do think though that if I had some momentum going I'd be able to withstand these urges. All the momentum is in the wrong direction though.

Idk what to do. Feeling kind of hopeless tbh. I guess the good news is I'm also feeling numb and the hopelessness isn't hurting too much.

Funny thing. At some point today the thought hit me that perhaps I hadn't closed out the browser window on my home computer with the evidence of my early morning fall. I started pictured my wife turning on the computer and what would flash in front of her eyes. Instant panic. I tried reassuring myself that I cleaned up the evidence, and anyway being caught would be deadly but cleansing. Still panicking. It's funny but the thought that crossed my mind was to numb myself with porn. As if doubling down on lust would somehow solve anything. 

seekingkedusha1 wrote on 02 Apr 2025 20:15:

That is hard.

It helped me to find a mentor and check in regularly.

Hatzlacha

Started taking classes in the evenings. Couldn’t go to touro because they do not offer what I am majoring in. It’s a culture shock for me. Not used to being in mixed classes or taught by women. Having a difficult time adjusting and dealing with the nisyonos. 

Not really sure where to put this, but I guess here works.

Came across an eye-opening fable (possibly adapted from Shmuel's story of the scorpion and the frog in Nedarim, but different lesson).

A scorpion asks a turtle if he may ride on her back to cross a river. She is worried however that the scorpion will sting her. The scorpion reassures her that he will not sting her, because he would drown if she died. Seeing the logic in this, she agrees. Part-way across the river, the scorpion tries to sting the turtle, but her shell deflects his stinger. Having known that he could not pierce her armor, the turtle asks the scorpion what he was thinking. His reply is that he acted neither out of malice nor ingratitude, but merely an irresistible and indiscriminate urge to sting. The turtle then delivered the following reflection: "Truly have the sages said that to cherish a base character is to give one's honor to the wind and involve one's own self in embarrassment." 

the.guard wrote on 02 Apr 2025 19:24:

Talk about conspiracy theories, anyone wonder why Me and guard have the same amount of karma . Anyone wanna read into it ?

the.guard wrote on 02 Apr 2025 19:24:

So you mean he wasn't the guy messing with red's karma???
IDK...not sure I buy that...

Hey! Thanks for your openness to share your story.

I will echo the sentiments above - I spent 20 years feeling powerless to get off internet, including any way to get past whatever filter I installed. My only break was Shabbos and Yom Tov.

After 30 years of insanity, I am now 150 days clean, so although I don't know your situation, I am sure you can and will do the same if you will understand that your life depends on doing whatever it takes to get clean and you are willing to listen to some of the advice here.

Wishing you brachos and success on your journey!

Welcome Mr. Zebra!

By moving so quickly into uncovering the inner causes of acting out you've shot forward towards cleanliness in a truly impressive way.

The resourcefulness you've shown by taking your well honed skills from another area of your life is bound to help you climb out of this mess in many ways. There's a lot to learn from you - everyone has skills from some other area in life that can be employed in this battle, and seeing you do it so well is an inspiration to do the same.

Hatzlacha!

This is my first post here and was encouraged by my mentor to post so thanks to him and hope to gain chizzuk from this community.

I've been struggling in inyanei kedusha for around about 12 years since I was around bar mitzvah age. I stumbled upon it, got into the habit and it developed into a release for a lot of other issues realised had going on. I've been making this my top priority for the last few months and realised it needs to be if I'm serious about it, this is the most motivated I've ever been. I am 26 and want to have a family but know I need to move past this once and for all. I started this cycle from my insecurities and let it continue being a release for other emotions and lifes struggles. I am a busy person, and bh have been matzliach in different areas of life juggling work, degree in engineering, chavrutot, exercise and since the start of the war in Israel been active serving as a reservist fighter on the northern front for many months. Lots going on and bh I manage to juggle but I am learning I can't continue to use this as a release anymore for difficult emotions and lifes struggles.

For the first time in 12 years, even though I've only been fully clean for about 20 days, I feel like I'm in the right direction and not shooting with my eyes closed.

I've been trying even since I was around 15 to stop, I knew even when I got into the habit it was bad news for my future and wanted to stop. I tried lots of techniques but realise looking back I was never really putting in the necessary work to drive meaningful long term change.

A filter is crucial, setting up solid gedarim, tonnes of stuff that are useful tools but Ive recently realised I never invested and took the time to try dig really deep and get to the roots of the problem; to understand myself, the emotions I'm feeling just before I'm acting out. To try understand what specifically is triggering the urges. To understand which childhood emotions that lead me to become out of control in this issue.

I did a lot of reflection in first understanding the initial cause. I realised it's insecurities for sure, popularity, being noticed by girls, self image. So the inappropriate things on the screen and acting upon urges became my release. Eventually I've realised I just associated it as my release for difficult emotions I was feeling. A lot of those emotions that lead to the insecurity I shouldn't be insecure about anymore as certainly not the same person back then, but the issue I feel is rooted there and still relating to myself in that way.

The reason I said I feel I am really moving forward in finally moving past this even though I haven't been clean for so long (I have had stints of being clean for more time than I just had), is based on work I've been putting into dealing with this issue and exercises recently. I realised I have successes in other areas of my life, why not try to apply my expertise in what allows me to be successful in my work life to this issue? I also started to relate to certain urges in the way we related to certain threats when serving in reserves during the war, the moment the threat was identified we would need to act accordingly, sometimes the threat was immediate and required instinctive reaction, sometimes there was knowledge ahead of time so had time to prepare. Either way I will explain a bit further but the point I feel like this helped me is it allows me to understand this issue in a context I am familiar with and has been matzliach. Don't know if this kind of thing, approach has helped anyone, but feel like I am gaining clarity and setting up better next steps from this.

For my career I deal with helping companies and their system operations, a type of consultant and strategist. A company will want to drive revenue by selling their software, so to begin selling they need to create leads of potential customers for their sales team to engage with. The way these people come into their data base is from numerous places, marketing, events, webinars, form fill out from a paid ad etc. The company in order to really understand how to move forward and where to invest need it to be crystal clear for each potential customer how did they come into their data base, where did it come from. Was it from that event? Which event? That marketing campaign? Knowledge of that allows the company to know whether what they invested in to bring in potential customers was a good investment or not. It also allows them if they then become a customer to understand not just which source drove the most potential customers but which of them actually converted to a paying customer. Also it allows the sales team to contextualise the customer and mark their level of intent to buy and strategise differently.

Why am I explaining this? As this is what I did for myself in understanding everything going on in myself that leads to an urge and subsequently acting out. Trying to spot the themes. I mapped a lot of things, for example an emotions branch that usually came before a fall. Digging deep in understanding the emotions I was feeling has been critical in understanding when I have an urge as I recognised what was going on when it came and took next steps, I called my mentor, I used a strategy I learnt in a book. I added the sites I know although aren't strictly innaporiate I know from the past 99.9% of the time it's that specific social media page that leads me to the next step and the total fall. I noticed how whenever I leave a shavua to be updated right before it's meant to expire it's a big nisayon. Was trying to flag what the really serious threats were and how to relate to them.

I have a long way to go but am proud of these steps. I feel like really mapping what I am calling my "urge sources" has given me a lot of visibility and understanding in myself, kinda treating myself as my own client, allowing me to more accurately understanding the urge I am having, where it's coming from. With that recognition I have had already a bunch of times with urges an easier time moving past them because I am more in tune with what's happening and what lead to it. With a lot of Hashem's help really want to put in the work to finally push through this. Hope wasn't too long, thanks for reading.

It looks like those mysterious admin powers quietly vanished at some point... Now let the conspiracy theories begin 

So I am at day fourteen today. The first week was hell. Some of the tools I am using:

1. ChatGPT - Super useful in many ways like being mechazek, painting the picture of sobriety vs acting out and a useful ear to listen
2. This Forum - A place for fellowship where I can offer Chizuk and a tool I can use to share my journey and be useful to others who may find value in it.
3. The day counter - I want to keep pressing that button that says I am still free of using porn and masturbation and upping my day count

Thats all for now really. I have connected to one person who reached out to me and spoke to me and that was super useful. I will reach out more when I feel ready. in the meantime I'll post here. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.

For all those that didn't watch this Vayimaen I would highly recommend doing so as it greatly personifies what GYE is all about.

www.torahanytime.com/lectures/360513

Enjoy and be inspired!