A TRULY CHOSEN SEXUALITY

****POSSIBLE MAJOR TRIGGERS****
****Explicit Language****
This post is the follow-up to the previous, "Fantasies that Include Abuse," (See just below this post) and carries the same warnings. You may find this particular post very triggering, and explicit.

Please take gentle care:

“If you become aroused only by imagining (or acting out) fantasies of violence, rape, incest, or humiliation, and you want to change these linkages, it is possible to unhook the connection between pain and humiliation and sexual excitement. It is possible to overcome your conditioning and create an authentic sexuality that does not rely on images derived from your abuse or fantasies that you want to leave behind.

Making these changes, however, is difficult. It is hard to relinquish strong, ingrained behaviors that have been linked to feelings of arousal, power, and control, particularly when these behaviors have become habitual or compulsive. Reliable methods for getting turned on or having orgasms are hard to give up. To stop a persistent pattern of sexual arousal, a strong intention is essential, but wanting to stop is not enough. The only way to break your dependence on unwanted patterns of arousal is to commit to deep healing work that deals with the core wound beneath the compulsion. If you do that, over time you can alter these patterns and experience your sexuality in a new and truly chosen way.

Changing the Tapes:
Saphyre’s Story

When Saphyre started working on incest, her only way of getting turned on was through rape and sadomasochistic fantasies. After years of acting them out, she decided that she wanted to get rid of them.

I don’t believe we’re born with our sexuality that way. I knew I had to start from a place of not feeling guilty about the fantasies, in the same way that I stopped feeling guilty about the incest. They were both coming from the same place. Letting go of the guilt was really important. But I wanted to take it further than that. I wanted to stop having them.

I started masturbating more, paying attention to exactly what the core feeling was that made me come. The characters could change, the costumes could change, but what was the core feeling? It was “I’m totally overcome by passion. I’ll do anything you want.” It was the only way I knew how to deal with my passion. I couldn’t afford to take responsibility for it without being overpowered.

I kept working with those fantasies until I could really identify that feeling. The next step was learning to isolate the orgasm, the passion, the intensity, from the fantasy. I had to undo the programming. It was hard to separate the two. I didn’t have any support. I was doing this in isolation. I didn’t know what the outcome would be, and I wasn’t even sure of what I was doing, but I wasn’t about to wait till someone came along and told me what to do. I had the belief that I could change.

It helped for me to feel that I deserved to have passionate feelings, and that they didn’t have to be linked to those fantasies. I came to the point where I really understood that they weren’t my fantasies. They’d been imposed on me through the abuse. Once I separated the fantasy from the feeling, I’d consciously impose other powerful images on that feeling. And gradually, I began to be able to have orgasms without thinking about the SM, without picturing my father doing something to me. I reprogrammed myself and could have the same intensity of feeling.” (The Courage to Heal)