Wanting things to change
While doing research in the midst of an ongoing sexual identity crisis, I came across this closed thread on paraphilia on a psychology website. I found out a lot of things about pedophilia and necrophilia and similar things that absolutely broke my heart. People afraid of themselves, people who love to talk to children but are terrified of hurting them, people thinking that they are freaks because of their specific fetishes, intrusive thoughts, and just a lot of people whose relationship with sex have caused them a lot of suffering. I've struggled for as long as I can remember with isolation related to my sexual identity, feeling alone in what I like and how I feel, and basically I want things to change. I want people to be able to seek help, to be happy with themselves. Even if a lot of paraphilia aren't "okay" and such, I hope people can agree that confining people to darkness and letting their paranoia and sexuality grow inside them until it causes issues for so many people is the worst way for these issues to be handled. I don't mean to condone sex crimes, but I think that some of them could be prevented in the future if people felt free to seek help and felt safe with themselves and others. We need to create a new mentality of sexual acceptance and empathy if we really want all the suffering to end once and for all. Creating this thread, I wanted to discuss with people what could be done to promote public awareness and make therapy and support groups more available to those who struggle with paraphilia. Also, if people want to share their stories with these issues, I really want people to feel welcome to talk about it. There's no judgement here, and I hope that I speak for everyone here when I say that.
@50storeyaviary I totally agree, there's such negative emotions surrounding one's sexuality and also mental health problems, it forms barriers where we can't express who we are and what we're going through. I also want things to change so that people won't be afraid and that they won't be judged for who they love or what they are going through. Your post comforted me so much because I suffer from intrusive thoughts which utterly terrify me and make me feel like I have no control over my own mind. However, I am hesitant to talk about it because of the negative emotions around it, I feel that talking openly about my intrusive thoughts would have other people calling me insane and wouldn't even hear me out, I do hope that mental health issues can be openly talked about without being called insane, and I do hope that people will be able to love whoever they want without fearing judgement.
@QuietMuse I'm sorry to hear that you've been having to bear intrusive thoughts on your own. I can only imagine how lonely that must be. I'm glad, though that this thred managed to be of some help. Most mental health professionals are trained to help deal with intrusive thoughts, and It's not insane or anything, and there are medications that might be able to help as well, but I understand if you don't want to do that.
