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Craving Touch


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#1 searching

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Posted 09 December 2015 - 12:44 AM

If this can't be posted please let me know if you can send me an answer another way...

 

I was inappropriately touched (molested on a smaller scale) when i was about 12… i've been to therapy and for the first time years later i opened up about it and started healing… I stopped therapy before i was completely ready and was left with a few questions.. 

i find  myself now more than ever craving touch. i want to feel the comfort and sensations that it provides… 

i don't expect it from others (coz it would be to an unhealthy and inappropriate level) and i have healthy boundaries now. but instead i myself will try and create those sensations for me… almost like self abuse (don't think i can explain that further…)

does it have anything to with my past experience? is it wrong? unhealthy? I'm so confused from myself… whats making me crave touch to such an extreme level and should i be stopping myself from feeding into it? 

Please answer asap 

 



#2 taon

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Posted 13 December 2015 - 07:35 AM

No one seems to comeby here much anymore, but I 'happened' to come by and see this post. There was someone someone with a similar experince on the old site, but not applicable advice. Can you see this therapist again to discuss just this/



#3 searching

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Posted 14 December 2015 - 11:18 PM

yeah it's been quiet here i actually posted this quite recently thou..

so i am actually working on getting back to therapy but i wanted to hear from the moderators here… hear it from a more jewish point of view and if anyone hear knows about this topic to explain it a little to make things clearer… 

thanx for answering 



#4 taon

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Posted 16 December 2015 - 11:40 AM

I dont think the other Moderator's are around now. You can email Rabbi Shapiro, rabbishapiro@baismedrash.com, though he may or may not be avaiable to go through and answer emails right now.  Looking into it more, it does seem unfortunately like a commom but overcomeable side effect. As for the Jewish view, i would think its another battle, another thing that must, and can, be fought and pushed down and defeated. I found this

 

 

MODERATOR Posted - 30 December 2000 0:15

Monty,

It's true, you are not alone. It's also true that although this happens even in the frum community, it happens a lot less than in the secualar world. The theory that Jews just don't talk about it as much has already been disproven in scientific studies. Much of the data is collected in Rabbi Lawrence Kelleman's "Permission to Receive". Even regarding addiction, different cultures get adicted at different rates, and Jews, in general, are the lowest. The thing is, the more we integrate into secular culture, the more we accept secular values and secular attitudes and therefore we lose our cultural advantages over other people. For interesting literature on this see http://www.lindesmit...ry/grpeel6.html and http://www.peele.net/lib/sociocul.html

It is clear that our values have a tremendous effect on our functionality. The more we stray from the Torah as a society, the more messed up, as a society, we will be.

Monty, what happened to you was terrible. But you can beat it. I know others in your position, and they did survive. When something happens to you like that, it's not just the fear of others that haunts you (this depends a lot on age and I don't know how old you are), but its the fear of yourself. Many people in your position are scared of themselves "changing", and some do change. Maybe they become more promiscuous, maybe they feels new Yetzer Horahs that they never before had.

And of course you ought to go for professional help to try to undo the effects of your experience. But.

But you can help yourself too. You can do for yourself what the shriks can't because the shrinks don't understand a neshoma, shich you have, and which is going to help you here.

Listen, Monty, our feelings and behaviors are divided into 2 types:

(a) what we cannot control, and
(B) what we can control

Here's the rule: How good or bad we are depends completely and totally on catagory #2.

Hakol bidei shamayim chutz m'yiras shamayim. Everything is done by G-d except your choices. What you cannot choose is not your responsibility.

Again; Whatever happens to you that was not your choice you are not responsible for.

This includes our feelings, desires, attractions, and appetites. Sometimes we purposely strengthen our Yetzer Horah, like when a person goes mized swimming and gets lewd thoughts, he is responsible since he chose to be there in the first place.

But whatever we desire that we did not choose to desire, whatever we want that we did nto choose to want, whatever we feel that we did not choose to feel, whatever we are attracted to that we did not choose to be attracted to -- that's from Hashem. It's not even part of us, meaning our soul. It's part of the Yetzer Horah.

Having a yetzer Horah is fine. It doesn't matter what flavor the Yetzer Horah is - vanilla or more exotic - it's still there from hashem. And as scary as the Yetzer Horah is, when we look into it and say "My gosh! THAT's me????" you need to answer yourself ,"No, it's not me, it's my Yetzer Horah."

What we can control, usually, are our actions. So if this incident leaves oyu alone and doesn't effect you, Boruch Hashem, but if it does, you need to remember this: It can only affect those parts of you that you cannot control. That's not you. It can affect your feelings, your fears, your desires. And no matter what those are, they are not you. They are the Yetzer Horah. these feelings, fears, appetites do NOT makes us more or less holy.

Holiness, goodness, righteousness, means by definition our choices. if we did not choose them, then they do not affect our status in the eyes of Hashem. Even if your non-choice feelings change, your holiness is not diminished in the slightest.

Your job is to continue to choose to fight the Yetzer Horah and say no to bad and to say yes to good. This means what you DO, not what you feel or what you want. Please understand this.

I know someone who was molested very harshly. Very. It freaked him out. he survived because he lived with the realization that the only things that changed in him are his feelings and his desires. And all that means is new "nisyonos" in this world. OK, so we try to undo the nosyonos, that's fine. But since he didn't let whatever happend to him change his BEHAVIOR, he survived very well.

He understood that we don't identify with our desires or appetites -- that's not our identity. We identify with our CHOICES. Anything else does not effect our identity at all.

That's the rule that you need to place before you always: If it's something we did not choose, it is not us. It does not become part of us. It does not affect our identity. We can try to get rid of it, but regardless, we are what we choose. Everything else is just part of the darkness of this world, like sticks or stones. We see them, we feel them, but they have nothing to do with us.

I don't mean c"v to minimize the pain or the severity of what happened to you. When I say you can survive it is not because what happened to you is not big. Rather, it is because no matter how big or how evil or awful or firghtful it was, you, as a Tzelem Elokim, with a soul that has the power of Hashem Himself, can beat it. My words are intended to imapct on your understanding of yourself, not on the nature of tragedy that happened.

 

I'll see if I can find something more.



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Posted 16 December 2015 - 05:16 PM

Thank You Thank You Thank You!! 

i just read through 6 pages of the link you sent and it was very helpful and informative

I'm hoping i can get back to my therapist coz the more i read I'm convinced its not as simple as i would like it to be

And it sounds like spiritually and this meets where every Rav will agree that the only way to go about healing is

with professional help...

Thank you for linking me to that and i hope to read through the rest of it… its good to know others had similar experiences



#6 Morgenstern

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Posted 18 December 2015 - 05:31 PM

You should have hatzlacha, Searching.