Martin75
23-02-13, 12:25
Hello, I'm Martin. I'm not sure exactly why I'm posting this to be honest - in the sense of what I'm hoping to get from it - but I suppose this is in part a confession and in part a request for help. I imagine my specific situation to be a fairly curious one, but all the same am hoping there might be somebody out there who is dealing with the same sort of problems.
Essentially, what is bothering me seems to be a kind of psychosomatic disorder caused by feelings of shame. Specifically, the shame I feel after using online pornography to masturbate to. Just to be clear, I'm not talking here about anything even slightly out of the ordinary or unpleasant - just the "run of the mill" straight pornography you can find on any of the popular video sites. These days I use it very rarely - maybe once every 3-6 months - because of the odd effect it has on me, which is more or less as follows: to begin with, I feel my heart starting to race; then, I feel my gut tighten (it does so to the extent that in the days that follow an "episode" I am unable to have a normal bowel movement and feel stomach cramps). This is accompanied by a feeling of constriction in my throat (in fact my voice seems to raise a tone), and upper body, a sense of heat, particularly in my hands), pins and needles in my limbs, joint pains and a general feeling of malaise, irritability, and an inability to concentrate. The feelings generally pass after 3 or 4 days, but in the meantime, although not unbearable, they definitely affect the way I live, making me antisocial (I avoid contact with friends) and unproductive at work. I feel sure that the source of these espisodes must be some sort of conflict I cannot reconcile between my rational and impulsive selves: on an intellectual level, I dislike many aspects of pornography and feel it to be an unrewarding and damaging way of spending my time, but at a basic sexual level, I can't help but enjoy the stuff. To avoid suffering from the symptoms, I have learnt to go without porn for long periods by reducing my sexual urge (by having sex with my girlfriend, who I am very much in love with, or by masturbating without porn) but eventually I give in (often, for obvious reasons, if my girlfriend is away), and take a look. And when I do, back come all the problems I mention above, which I'm guessing are fairly typical of panic or anxiety attacks in general. As I say above, the symptoms tend to go away after three or four days, but recently (the last year or so) I have suffered from some kind of weird pelvic pain syndrome (diagnosed by the urologists I have seen as "prostatitis"), which I can't help feeling must be a consequence of the accumulated stress my body has been subjected to during these episodes. I expect the reasons I have this strong reaction to pornography are buried deep in my psyche and that the only real solution will be to speak to a psychologist and hammer out my sexual and moral "issues" with him or her, but I thought it would be interesting to post on this forum in the hope that someone might be able to give me some ideas or advice, or maybe even recognize these symptoms. Thanks, Martin
Essentially, what is bothering me seems to be a kind of psychosomatic disorder caused by feelings of shame. Specifically, the shame I feel after using online pornography to masturbate to. Just to be clear, I'm not talking here about anything even slightly out of the ordinary or unpleasant - just the "run of the mill" straight pornography you can find on any of the popular video sites. These days I use it very rarely - maybe once every 3-6 months - because of the odd effect it has on me, which is more or less as follows: to begin with, I feel my heart starting to race; then, I feel my gut tighten (it does so to the extent that in the days that follow an "episode" I am unable to have a normal bowel movement and feel stomach cramps). This is accompanied by a feeling of constriction in my throat (in fact my voice seems to raise a tone), and upper body, a sense of heat, particularly in my hands), pins and needles in my limbs, joint pains and a general feeling of malaise, irritability, and an inability to concentrate. The feelings generally pass after 3 or 4 days, but in the meantime, although not unbearable, they definitely affect the way I live, making me antisocial (I avoid contact with friends) and unproductive at work. I feel sure that the source of these espisodes must be some sort of conflict I cannot reconcile between my rational and impulsive selves: on an intellectual level, I dislike many aspects of pornography and feel it to be an unrewarding and damaging way of spending my time, but at a basic sexual level, I can't help but enjoy the stuff. To avoid suffering from the symptoms, I have learnt to go without porn for long periods by reducing my sexual urge (by having sex with my girlfriend, who I am very much in love with, or by masturbating without porn) but eventually I give in (often, for obvious reasons, if my girlfriend is away), and take a look. And when I do, back come all the problems I mention above, which I'm guessing are fairly typical of panic or anxiety attacks in general. As I say above, the symptoms tend to go away after three or four days, but recently (the last year or so) I have suffered from some kind of weird pelvic pain syndrome (diagnosed by the urologists I have seen as "prostatitis"), which I can't help feeling must be a consequence of the accumulated stress my body has been subjected to during these episodes. I expect the reasons I have this strong reaction to pornography are buried deep in my psyche and that the only real solution will be to speak to a psychologist and hammer out my sexual and moral "issues" with him or her, but I thought it would be interesting to post on this forum in the hope that someone might be able to give me some ideas or advice, or maybe even recognize these symptoms. Thanks, Martin