Ashamed but need to post about this... (TRIGGER)

Ashamed but need to post about this... (TRIGGER)
S

survive75

Registrant
I have been struggling with this for a few weeks now and am ashamed to talk about this stuff, but I need to post about this.

I have been dealing with the issue of needing violent male "fantasy" in order to get off... hell, that was what brought me to MS in the first place. It is something that I am very sickened by and ashamed of. It is something that I have not been able to reconcile within myself because how can these horrible things turn me on? It is something that I think is a twisted after-effect of the SA. It is something, however, that I cannot rid myself of for fear of being in my body during sex and fearing that I'll never be able to come again.

More recently, after the breakup with my girlfriend, I have been struggling against the temptation to act out these fantasies that I've had for as long as I can remember. I'm not gay, have never been with a man sexually (not including the SA) and have no desire to do so for sexual reasons. It is more about replicating the abuse and humilation and degradation. The acting out has been limited to cyber and phone sex with men I meet online. It is always talking about them being violent with me either physically or sexually. It is something that I am truly, truly ashamed of after it happens, but in the moment, the compulsion to prove that I deserve abuse wins out.

I have always said that the issue I have with these fantasies is that it's not that they are bad necessarily, but that I need them in order to masturbate or have sex. No matter how hard I try to keep them out, they always creep into my head. If it was something I chose to use once in a while to make things different, that would be one thing. But the need for them is what I hate.

So, I am really unsure of where to go with this. Do I accept this as part of my sexual abuse and just let it continue? Do I just allow myself to enjoy the immediate rush without thought to the consequences after? Do I continue to hate myself in between the compulsions or just push it away? Do I continue down the path to possibly meeting someone in real life until things get to the point of real physical and psychological damage?

I don't know what to do with this. Or where to go with this. I just know that some psychotic part of me is controlling all of this... or maybe it's a conspiracy of parts joining together to create the ultimate self-sabotage. I'm sorry this is so fucked up... I just don't know where to go with this. Any thoughts?
 
Sean
I know EXACTLY how you feel, I have struggled with unwanted fantasy since ??? for ever it seems.

My fantasy was ( is still a little bit ) giving another guy a bj. It's that simple.
It's something I did as a boy, and I ended up acting out my fantasy as a man. Like yourself it has nothing to do with being gay, and everything to do with the dysfunctional thinking our abuse causes.

Firstly, don't beat yourself up over it when it happens, the power of the compulsion is huge and we can't beat it everytime. If you do beat it praise yourself, but if you don't - treat it as a 'neutral' event. Just say to yourself "hey, it happened" and move on.

Also, the main power of any fantasy is the secret nature of it, and telling your fantasy should greatly reduce the appeal it has for you, it takes the mystery out of it. So tell your therapist, tell us, and the more you talk about it the more you'll begin to think "that's just a crazy fantasy"

I'm the first to admit that what I've just said sounds easy, but it isn't unfortunately. It's a lot of hard work and dissapointment.
But eventually it seems to pay off, if I use my old fantasy now I end up with a right arm like Popeye :rolleyes: Fantasies of giving bj's just doesn't have an erotic connection any more for me. But sometimes I just have to try.
The big difference for me is now I don't care about it any more, I don't let myself feel guilty about it.

Remove the guilt and shame, and the rest will surely follow.

Dave
 
Dear Sean,

For starters, please STOP the voices that are telling you you are evil, disgusting, shameful and all that. None of what they are saying is true. Don't buy into their crap.

Don't let these negatory thoughts stand over you and dominate you just like the rough takers in your fantasies. They are ghosts. You are flesh and bone.

What if, in spite of all of the things that they are saying, you are really just the opposite, and you just happen to like sex. What if sex was just the smallest least significant part of you, and all that you have yet to discover about yourself, was the greater portion?

I share your story. At one time in my life, I constantly conjured up that scene of being put upon. Why not? To feel is the strongest part of being alive, and my perp made me feel an experience that I had never felt before, up to that moment. It was a baptism of experience that should be thrust on no one,but alas, so many fall prey to its clutches. This incredible feeling should always be a choice; a decision made by each individual. I lived many years, just to recapture the intensity of that moment in life, and I did it like you, through fantasy, and later through other substances and processes. Thank Whoever I woke up and found freedom.

Finding MS, you have begun of journey of letting go of these presumably needful things. You may need them for a little while longer, but soon, with the aid of all of the brave ones here, and one by one, these chains will fall away.

I will enjoy watching you unfold into freedom.

Be well my little suffering brother,

Ron
 
Sean,

I do not have these feelings, these fantasies. But of course, I am probably abnormally 'nonsexual'. However, a friend of mine, he has done very similar as you. And he has discovered on his own that it makes him feel less again. That it puts him back into feelings of being abused again. So he does not do it anymore. How he stopped it, I do not know. Whether he would do it again, under more stress, I don't know. I do know that there are many others here who have suffered similar 'addictions'. I hope that the responses you get from those people will help you. What is most important that you do not hurt yourself or others, and that you can feel good about yourself. That is most important.

Leosha
 
first, there are several theories as to why this turns you on. one says that it is an attempt to get control over what happened during your abuse. some part of you wants to go back there and relive it so that you can gain control of it.

another says that fantasies of being abused are actually repressed desires to abuse someone. in other words you want to go back and abuse your perp the way he abused you, and it comes out in a mirror image fantasy.

one thing i've learned is that fantasies are fine, and heck living it out is okay if that is what you choose to do. the guilt you feel stems from judging yourself, more than the actual act or fantasy. many people live such lives free of guilt and shame. there is nothing immoral about liking this, even living it to a degree if it is what you enjoy and choose to do.

our turn-ons are almost hard-wired. i found i could work on how i felt about myself, but i had to accept that the things that turned me on were likely to always turn me on. i had to realize liking something didnt mean i had to act on it, and understanding what was driving it helped to make it less powerful. the same things that turned me on before therapy still turn me on, and will always turn me on, but i dont have to feel guilty and ashamed. it's okay that they turn me on, as long as i feel it is okay. does that make any sense?
 
I am sorry that you are struggling with this and I wish that I had some great advise for you but I don't. I have been struggling with this for quite some time now and havn't found any miracle cures. All I do is keep fighting the fantasies and hope that one day they will lesson and go away. I wish you the best of luck and if you find anything that works to get rid of them please let me know.
 
Rather than shameful, I think it is admirable that you've been able to put this out in front of all the guys here.

You know that I've had similar experiences and have similarly struggled with them.

I think that it is helpful to write/talk about it, get it out there. My experience is that doing that helps disempower it some.

Even more important for me, has been the beginning of a gradual process of ending the secretiveness.

That single thing has been the most powerful negative force in my life. I have been surrounded by and enmeshed in secret-keeping my whole life, not only in reference to the SA and other kinds of abuse, but in practically everything.

I feel fear of discovery, shame, guilt about all sorts of things that, I understand now, are not things that might not usually result in those feelings.

For instance, I feel guilty about taking vacation from work though I have the days and that is what they are there for.

I feel that I am being sneaky and shirking work, procrastinating, betraying the trust that fellow workers have placed in me.

I have similar feelings about the violent fantasies that I have and the compulsive behavior that seems bound to follow from them--being sneaky and secretive, procrastinating about working to end it, hopeless about being able to ending it, betraying the trust of my partner and myself.

I know, beforehand, that I will have those feelings after and, now, sometimes, even during but feel compulsively drawn to the release, the time-out from the anxiety that dominates and disempowers me.

There is no doubt in my mind that all this is just more garbage left to me by my abusers. I curse them for it but that gets me nowhere.
 
Sean,

You're not alone in this. I've been thinking about this too. Wanting to act on it. It's not just the wanting SEX all the time (once again, I'm screwed up royally in my sexuality, so I'm attracted to women and men), but wantit to be raped, violated, used. The fantasies turn me on, and disturbingly enough, images from my abuse.

I'm ashamed to admit it. I'm ashamed to WANT it. But I've come up with a few theories, the most powerful one being that I was tought that this was "love," and there would be a "reward" after enduring the abuse, like being loved properly, being paid attention to, etc.

So, for me, the SEX was intermingled with what I thought "LOVE" was. And that was wrong. I still succomb to the images, but admitting I have them and knowing WHERE they come from, the allure of them, it's making it easier.

Have you ever gotten the giggles in a church, temple, mosque, funeral home (long story, don't ask!) and tried to resist them? What happenes? You end up laughing your @$$ off all the more, and louder to boot.

The same thing with these images, fantasies, and urges. They gain power the more you try to shove them back down the rabbit hole. When you confront them and try to find out WHY you have them, they lose an incredible amount of their power.

That isn't to say you WON'T have them again, but you'll start to have CONTROL over them, not the other way round.

It may be an oversimplification, but I do believe this is why I have them, and it's a little easier to gain control of the fantasies and the urge to act on them in real life.

I'm trying to replace the destructive with the good. I may have a chance to have some good, old-fashioned, caring INTIMACY soon, and that will go a long way to replacing what is abhorrent with is caring.

Or, I may not be ready for it, but at least I'm thinking I'm WORTH it.

And there will come a time, Sean, when the good stuff will again start winning out over the toxic s**t the evil abusers have left you.

Peace and love,

Scot
 
Dear Sean,
as you can see your issues are pretty common among us. At least you are not alone.
What can I contribute to this topic?
Well, maybe we are dealing with similar issues but the real answer is extremely individual. At the end it will be up to you to find solution. Sharing experiences is really good thing and might help us all for better understanding of ourselves.
I have those kinds of fantasies for very, very long time. I hate them and at the same time couldn't get rid of them. Even now, when I consider myself much more mature and wiser, sometimes I still have the same problem. I concluded that my sexuality is in some unfinished stage. Not so long time ago I broke all relationships that I have with really great girl. The kind of a girl that I won't meet anymore in my life I am sure. I couldn't hurt her by telling her that if I need to be sexual I would need really bad scenario in my mind, the same sex scenario in which I would like to imagine that I am treated like an object without any emotion. So I decided that I dont want to have any kind of relation based on lies even the price is really high.

Also, I could not identify myself as a gay person. This idea was some kind of taboo for myself.
But as this taboo was greater my fantasies were more and more attractive in my mind.
Finally, few months ago I started to accept them as something natural for me. I can tell that my addiction to them is gradually becoming less and less, even I think that they would never totally disappear.
And after I analyze myself more and more it is clear that there is great chance that I am more gay than heterosexual and that I do not have real choice than accept this fact. Finally, thanks God, I don't care anymore what would other people think about me.
What is depressing me is that I would never know what would be with my sexuality in case that I didn't have SA experience. Everything regarding my sexuality is related to it, which is really depressing.
At the moment I am at the new, fresh start. It is really too early to predict would I be ever ready for any kind of relation. But even small positive chance is so exciting for me and I might feel like tiger that finally found way to his jungle.

Ivo
 
A couple of interesting points have come up here. firstly quite a few people have said that although they have worked towards ridding themselves of their unwanted fantasies, they now more or less accept that the fantasies are likely to remain with them, BUT, on their terms and without the double helping of guilt and shame. Reading this thread I certainly think this applies to me, I said previously that my old bj fantasies are still with me sometimes, maybe more than I like to admit ? but now I have abandoned the guilt and shame that came with the fantasy for so long.

If you take notice of all the research that's done then the majority of men use fantasy and masturbate, we're not alone in that. And it's always a danger that because we've been abused and suffer many undeniable problems we can also find problems where none exist,or at least attribute problems to the abuse that have their roots elsewhwere, and this could be one such instance I believe.

Fantasy is ok, it allows us to use our imaginations and gain some simple pleasure, do we feel guilty or ashamed about fantasizing over winning the lottery ? no, we dont. So is a sexual fantasy just down to the guilt and shame ? I think that most of of our problems as Survivors dealing with fantasy are down to these two legacies of our abuse.

How many people are out there fulfilling their fantasies with their partners ? or at least using fantasies in a 'normal' manner ? millions of people.
And what are they doing that we're not ? feeling guilty and ashamed is what.

However, that does create a problem if what you're fantasizing about is illegal, dangerous or maybe immoral and there is a possibilty of acting out hose fantasies, so fantasies of that nature should remain fantasies. As should ones that contradict our chosen lifestyle.
I've been married for 30 years, and remained faithfull for the whole time in the sense that I've never willingly strayed and had any kind of emotional or sexual fling with another person.
"But you acted out Lloydy ?" yes, I did. But the driver was the uncontrolled fantasy allied with the 'need' for degrading myself. My self esteem was non existent, and I sought ways of keeping myself at the bottom of the food chain so I acted out.
The need for degradation was in itself 'guilt and shame'.

But although I still use the same fantasy sometimes, I use it on MY TERMS, I now have control and know for sure that I will never act out again.
And I'm sure that is due to not feeling guilty about it, I might not like it when I'm not under the influence of it, like now, but as long as it's inside my head and I can turn it on and off at will then I accept that. The thing I couldn't turn on and off was the guilt and shame, I had to learn to do that by searching through my deepest, darkest thoughts in therapy, and figuring out that my abusers were the guilty and shameful bastards.

Dave
 
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