I read a post somewhere where OP was saying how they had experienced severe bullying as a child and as they progressed with therapy as an adult, their sexual kinks (all revolving around humiliation, degradation and the like) were starting to disappear, and they no longer felt turned on by the subject as they worked through their traumas in therapy.
That got me thinking… I know it’s a defense mechanism to turn pain into an idea of pleasure, but on the surface it just seems so illogical that the mind gets programmed to seek out what has harmed it in the past. Can anyone explain to me how that works/what’s the point of it?
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It sounds illogical because it kind of is…..by design. Your brain is immensely powerful at protecting you from traumatic memory. You might completely black out that part of your life, remember it differently, develop a personality trait that helps you avoid those situations, or even seek out that situation. Everyone is different.
It would only make sense to you if you went through it. People can have repressed memories of something that takes years to have that “aha” breakthrough that makes it make sense to them even though they’ve been on the right track the whole time.
The outside perspective is different. People like this didn’t just decide to be into whatever it is they are into. They probably have no idea why they are and might not even remember the event that steered them that way. As someone else has said, it could just be the brains way of assigning pleasure to something that caused pain in the past because you are less likely to remember/relive a traumatic event if the activity is reassigned to something “good”
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