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Miss Laura
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Default Mar 07, 2020 at 01:44 PM
  #1
Hi guys,

I'm uncomfortable writing this as I'm embarrassed. If you want details please PM I'm really ashamed but really need help.

How do you open up re this to a therapist re this?
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Default Mar 07, 2020 at 11:32 PM
  #2
Hi Miss Laura,

Please excuse me if I have misunderstood your question but my command of English is not very good sometimes.

I think any good therapist is aware of how mysterious the human brain is and the many common and uncommon ways it motivates people.

I would think that if the human brain can motivate people in millions of different ways towards millions of different things, that this would apply to fetishes too.

So I would think a good therapist would be understanding and compassionate more than perhaps other people.

A famous neurologist once remarked that the human brain seems to have a mind of its own.

I find that opening up to a therapist is quite difficult regardless of the issue so I can certainly feel for what you might be experiencing. I have agonized in my own life about sharing embarrassing information with a therapist.

To me the human brain is quite enigmatic. Why does it give me these thoughts and not others and at this time rather than another time? Why does it cause this stream of thoughts and feelings but not others? Why does it have certain desires rather than others and so on.

None of us were allowed to choose the brain we would have in life. And none of us were allowed to choose all the stuff that brain acquired in life.

Many great people in history have had very strange ideas and desires, fears and hopes and so on. It did not affect their self-worth and may in some cases have actually helped them in what they accomplished in life.

I know my poor words must be very pathetic and inadequate to what you are enduring. So very sorry.

Hopefully others here will prove to be more helpful to you than I have.

I wish you only good things and especially peace! -- Yaowen
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Smile Mar 08, 2020 at 06:25 PM
  #3
Well... ultimately I think the only way to do this is to do it. As someone wrote in a post I read on another website: "Rip the band aide off & let the healing begin." But I do understand your concern.

I'm an old man now. But one of the issues (among others) I've struggled with my entire life was gender dysphoria. I never breathed a word of this to anyone until, around 20 years ago or so, I decided to talk about it with a therapist. (My situation was a bit different from yours, I presume, since I was seeing this therapist for the first time; & it sounds like you've possibly been seeing yours for a while.)

Anyway I was just too mortified to bring the subject of gender dysphoria up in person. (This was a lot of years prior to Caitlyn Jenner.) So, in advance of my appointment, I wrote him a letter. On the day of my first appointment the therapist asked, of course, why I had come to see him. I mentioned the letter whereupon he reached into his file drawer & pulled out my letter still in the sealed envelop. He then opened it & read it as I sat there squirming & feeling thoroughly embarrassed in a dozen different ways.

I'll spare you the details with regard to where my experience went from there. (It wasn't far.) But I recount this experience as a way of telling you I know, or at least I think I know, something of how you're feeling. Writing that letter did not turn out to be a highly successful approach in my case. But it might possibly be a way to break the ice, as the saying goes, for you. Another option, if you write a blog or a journal, might be to give a relevant part of that to your T to read. However, in the end, you simply have to pluck up the courage to throw open the doors & windows & let the sunshine in.

One thing I think is helpful is to come to the realization that, whatever type of fetish it is you have, there are no doubt lots of other people who have it as well. It's a great relief when you realize you're far from alone. So if you haven't looked around on-line at fetish-related forums, that might be something that would be of help to you. I know, in my own case, I lived for decades believing that I must be the only person in the history of the world that had been saddled with the burdens I carried around. It's only been within the past... oh... 12 to 15 years or so I've gradually come to realize that none of what I've dealt with is in the least exclusive to me. (As Plato, I think it was, supposedly said: humankind has not had a new idea since we first walked out of the cave.)

One thing I would caution though is to be a bit careful about this. If you know your T well & have confidence in her / him, then all should be well. However therapists can be as closed-minded & prejudiced, or just plain ignorant, as anyone else. It is within the realm of possibility that the response you'll get from your T may not be what you expected... either for good or for ill.

I don't know if this will be of any help to you, but here are links to 4 articles, from PC's archives, that I thought might be interest:

6 Ways to Open Up and Talk in Therapy

5 Ways to Prepare for a Difficult Conversation

Tips for Talking About Tough Topics

Effective Conversations About Difficult Issues | The Emotionally Sensitive Person


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"I may be older but I am not wise / I'm still a child's grown-up disguise / and I never can tell you what you want to know / You will find out as you go." (from: "A Nightengale's Lullaby" - Julie Last)
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Default Apr 11, 2020 at 08:02 PM
  #4
For a therapist, look for someone who is trained in Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and has experience with sexual health issues, you can find assistance through sex addiction anonymous websites/support group as well as zocdoc depending on state/country. When setting up the meeting put it blandly, you want help working through a fixation and identifying ways to manage the behavioral aspects stemming from the fixation. Fetishes are nothing to be ashamed of as everyone has one, the goal is managing it in a healthy way, so as not to cause harm to yourself and others through behaviors that may manifest from an uncontrolled fetish.
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