Make us feel – Gender and relationship rehabilitation

Erin Snow

Sexualization occurs when we assign character or quality to someone or something other than ourselves. Usually, this is another person we are sexualizing. Instead of seeing them as a whole human being, we see them as a sexual object from or from which we may stand out or experience sexual pleasure. We don’t know who that person is, but rather in sexual behavior, sometimes romantic, all of the physical and psychological traits assigned to them, we find attractive in another person regardless of reality. Then we follow and be fascinated by physical, sexual and emotionally.

All teenagers and adults engage in this behavior. This is part of who we are. In fact, we are evolutionarily personal. If not, we would not mate and reproduce and our species would no longer exist. That is, sexualization can sometimes escape tracks and cause problems in our lives. Most commonly, if/when we start Make our feelings.

When I say we “make our feelings gendered”, I’m not saying that it’s literally. I mean, we have an uncomfortable thought or feeling, we distract another person’s sexual behavior from our own thought or feeling. In this regard, make our feelings the same as ours. We experience some form of emotional discomfort, so we don’t want to feel it, so we engage in some kind of pleasant activity (diet, drug use, gambling, spending, consumption, video games, sexualization, sexualization, etc.) to distract ourselves and escape psychologically.

When we are sexy about our feelings, we use sexual arousal and sexual fantasy to self-soothe or dissociate. Sexualization has become a psychological coping mechanism. It may even become our coping skills. Whenever we feel physically or emotionally uncomfortable, we make the worldly and discomfort around us gradually disappear, albeit for a short time.

Often, we learn to use sexualization as a form of emotional regulation in childhood, especially if we experience childhood trauma. This trauma can be from neglect to emotional abuse to physical abuse to mental abuse to sexual abuse to anything else you can think of. If we as kids, we don’t have healthy people and we can seek consistent and meaningful support, we will see it elsewhere. Most of the time, we turn to food, reading, video games, addictive substances, gambling or sexual fantasy. It can be said that anything that takes us out of our mind.

Sexualization is a means of emotional escape. A girl was bullied at school but felt she couldn’t trust her parents to respond with proper support, so she went to the room and fantasized about the boy she was obsessed with. A boy was underperforming in a test or team trial and thought his parents would react with proper support, so he sneaked into the garage and looked at porn on his iPhone. If a child is exposed to porn, sexually abused with a friend, or experienced sexual abuse, the use of sexualization as a coping skill can even begin during puberty.

Over time, sexualization can become a certain way for individuals to escape emotional distress, turning to any form of emotional discomfort again and again until suddenly habitually any form of emotional discomfort – a coercion that the individual cannot control. This makes our feelings a serious problem. We go from being healthy to being sexualized and experiencing as a way to control depression, anxiety, stress, unresolved early life trauma and unmet emotional needs.

When this happens, our lives focus more on sexual fantasy than reality. Basically, we turn other people into sexual objects because it makes them safer. If we are seeking emotional or psychological support from them, they will deprive them of the power they can hurt us. When we lead sexual behavior, we feel more controlled and vulnerable. If all we are looking for is sex, they cannot meet our other deeper needs, because we will never give them the opportunity to meet (or fail to meet) those needs.

Unfortunately, as we keep sexy about our feelings, we lose our connection to the world and the actual characters. We lose the ability to connect and maintain intimacy in meaningful ways. Instead of exist Partwe become Apart from. Worst of all, we don’t have a deeper need to feel loved, supported and connected. We avoid trying to meet these needs. This makes us deep inside, even worse for ourselves.

Invalidate our sensibility. We don’t feel like eating it. Drinking, taking drugs, spending, gambling or gaming is not to avoid our feelings. The health related to our feelings is Feel them and share Be with safe, understanding, and supportive people. Whether it happens in the therapeutic field, in a 12-step meeting, in some other support groups, with a close friend, romantic partner, having a spiritual guide, or with someone else, it needs to happen. Otherwise, we will continue to escape our feelings through sexualization (and other escapist behaviors), and we will never feel verified, wanted, loved and truly connected.

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If you or a loved one is struggling with sexual, pornography, or material/sex addiction, seeking integrity can help. In addition to residential rehabilitation, we offer low-cost online workgroups for both male addicts and male porn addicts, which is a new rehabilitation. Click here for information about our Sex Addiction Working Group. Click here for information about our Porn Addiction Working Group.