Coping Mechanisms for Unwanted Fetishes

Unfortunately there is not a lot of information out there, or encouragement - the establishment psychological community is very pro 'sexuality' /pornography.

Here are my thoughts:
1. Challenge assumptions.
Do you subconsciously think that there is no way to beat this and you're stuck with it?

2. Examine the root.
Sometimes just understanding where a fetish comes from helps to lessen it's affect on you.

3. Ask what is trying to satiate.
And see if there are healthy ways to satiate (loneliness, anxiety, etc)

4. Urge surfing.
Next time an urge hits, take a breath and describe the sensation. Where do you feel it? What are you experiencing?

This can help lessen the urges over time.

 

Maybe this is of no help to you or maybe this may help you. I’ve recently been into some mentally crippling fetishes of my own. I greatly reduced this through conditioning. I would watch the vanilla porn that I wished got me off, ejaculated to it, and then once I finished and went through the whole post nut clarity phase of post ejaculation, I would view said fetish porn. This has greatly helped me get through this and I’m very happy with my results. I feel that nofap postpones the fetishes until your eventual relapse to it. This way, and in my reasoning, gets in the trenches and removes it yourself. Just what helped me.

 

are you not worried that you are conditioning your brain to be able to keep watching porn post-release?

 

I think that a lot depends on if the fetish is natural or porn induced. If the fetish is porn induced, it is easy case when it comes to general mechanism, but still requires time and dedication. Nofap will fix it, points 2 and 3 mentioned by @ivanhoe will speed up the process. You want to remove unwated porn fetish or put it in the sleeper state when without porn it is unactive and you experience no urges connected to it.

The bigger problem are natural, early developed fetishes. If they are a big problem for you, I'll advice meeting with mental health expert with background in sexuology. Definitely do not watch fetish porn in that case.

I have furry fetish and I cope by sublimating it. Watching safe for work art or playing games is not triggering for me and helps me feel better about myself, but for others it might be triggering or reminding about the addiction. Some fetishes probably cannot be sublimated.

I am not gonna lie, I would be happy to have my kink as a part of my sex life, but only in a normal, commited relationship (so it probably won't happen). I think that if your fetish is not something extreme, disgusting or wierd (furries are wierd, or not, probably depending on a person) you might try to talk about it with your partner. It is very important to not start relationships because of fetishes or seek for casual fetish sex because it might lead to unhappy relationship or sex addiction. Acting upon porn induced fetishes in always bad because you are unnecessary reinforcing them. But if you have a fetish that won't go it is better to act on it if you can and you have problems with coping than trying to unsuccesfully cope with that.

 

idk, it seems to be working fine. Immediately after ejaculation, porn seems disgusting. Imagine stuffing yourself on cake and then trying to eat another slice when you’re already stuffed. It won’t taste like the first bite and you’ll come to your senses that you shouldn’t of ate any cake all together. I haven’t went to any of the porn I used to watch since, and I’ve never even so much as thought about it.

you know that feeling you get after you watch fetish porn? That gut wrenching feeling that makes you want to puke? I feel that all the time about it now not just post ejaculation to it.

I don’t watch porn post ejaculation for more than 30 seconds. Even when I’m typing up the fetish porn in the tab I get a sickly feeling. I don’t want to, but I do it anyways because I know this negative feeling is good for me. That’s how I should feel. I want to get in and out immediately and not stay because it’s disgusting.

 

True. Once you nut, is like disgusting.

I'm afraid tho, in using your method, of having the control of staying just in the kind of porn you wish to see. Don't know if I could do it

 

This is absolutely true to many cases and many of my "fetishes" were sexualisations of my issues and I relate to your story, but I think it is not true for all cases. Some fetishes start to develop early in childhood and they appear during puberty. My first memories that were signs that I will develop furry fetish were from the time when I was 5. I think that those early developed fetishes are just random things that brain for some random reasons considered erotic or connected to gender we are attracted to. There is no deeper issue that can be fixed here. However I think that in this situation we can say that a fetish is not a problem, but acting on it in destructive way is. Porn, sexting, escorts, dating apps etc., trying to act on a fetish can lead to a lot of destructive behaviours, but vanilla people might experience similar problems. When I achieved some degree in nofap I have realised that my early developed fetish is not fading, but I don't have to look at fetish porn. Similarly the fact of having normal sexual interests does not mean that normal people must look at porn.

 

I am finding a lot of help from the "Unwinding Anxiety" program I am studying.
It doesn't focus on fetishes but really it might apply to any behavior that is addictive in nature and seems harmful (binge eating, drinking, binge watching, PMO)


What triggers it. (when does it happen? Loneliness? Anxiety? )
What behavior
What reward

 

Then look for anecdotes.

If you like winning you have to know if the enemy can be beaten with conventional methods or not. Coping and curbing are two different things and you can cope on your own very well with things you can't curb. I don't know your case, so I can't try to relate to it, but I have realised that I was unnecessary trying to curb my attraction to furries without tools necessary to do it and it brought only self hate and defeat. Since I said "ok, it is not going to go away anytime soon, probably never, what can I do to preventing it from ruining my life" I did a lot of progress.

People on nofap often treat all fetishes like porn induced (I made the distinction, because they are easier to actually curb completely than "natural" ones) and the topic of therapy almost never appears. Everybody just assumes that you have to deal with everything on your own, while sometimes you need help, especially if fetish has deeper roots. I decided that I can cope without curbing, but I can understand that in other cases therapy may be only viable option, at least I don't know easy method to remove "natural" attraction.

I think that wierd fetish or attraction is not a sentence, you can minimise influence of it on your life. I hated myself for years and it took a really bad toll on my mental health. But I have realised that I don't have to seek fetish porn and I can recover from use of it. Every situation is different and may require different tactics.

 

I think you make an important distinction between porn induced versus naturally produced (although sometimes it can feel a bit like the proverbial chicken and egg, particularly if you had feelings in your childhood that were of a kink nature but weren't necessarily determining of your behaviour, but then you stumbled upon porn (even soft porn) and those feelings got shaped in particular ways). I think it is important to understand where your fetishes come from and if you've had them a long time and you struggle with having them then, yes, seeing a specialised therapist is the way to go and delve into the resources on these issues (lots of books etc.) that will help you to understand how these fetishes form and why you might have them. And of course support groups like nofap can help too. I think it is probably wise too to look at ways to act out your needs in a pro-social, healthy way, if you can, or even integrate your needs into your normal life and see how that plays out - it can be interesting to see what happens when you talk about your needs with a normal partner, who is ostensibly vanilla, and they may or may not be turned on by what you have to say, or you might find that when you start opening up about your needs with someone you really care about and have been intimate with you may find those needs are not so important after all or discover that those needs are not what you thought they were ... having to navigate one's own needs with the needs of others, particularly people who care about each other (not just random encounters with strangers), can be very liberating, but does also entail risk i.e. losing a loved one. Developing and sustaining emotional and sexual intelligence, building strategies overtime to learn how to talk about your needs in a way that won't, hopefully, scare someone away who you want in your life, is all part of the journey ...

 

To clarify those feelings were not shaped by porn. I stumbled upon kink related porn some time after puberty. Connetion between kink and girls was there before. That's why I think that this is not porn induced.

Speaking about therapists, a good therapist is supporting your goals (it is not obvious, sometimes they may push goals on patients), but it is up to you to set those goals. I think that setting a right, realistic goal and selecting the right methods to achieve it are crucial to victory. If you are on autism spectrum, you can't "cure" this, but you can be social and cope with with this quite well, depending on the severity, many people do this, it is quite similar with fetishism in my opinion.

I have very similar thoughts and fears about the case. I am not sure if I'll feel the need of kink in my relationships and I am pretty scared of ruining a relationship because of this. On the other side if you really care about each other, you should be able at least to talk about it. I don't want to push anything, I know that this is a delicate matter. If the other side will react with 180 degree change in attitude, it might have been shallow relationship all along. I am tired of situations when the other side is "loving" until they find something petty (I mean petty, I am not talking about kinks now) that ruins the ideal picture of the relationship. I don't think being able to share and act upon a kink would add that much sexually speaking, but it will give a lot of psychological security for sure.

"Kink positive" communities are a trap in my opinion. I had some online experiences through apps with furry community and bdsm/kink community and both were toxic in a bit different way. Making a whole lifestyle from kink and sex is not the healthiest idea. Also those people are often either not that sexually open (e.g. they are ok only with their own interests) or are so open that they scare less kinky people and most people seem hypersexual (furries). And finding anyone is absolutely not granted. I made some accounts out of curiosity without real intention of doing anything and I learned that it doesn't look any good from the inside. I think that dating with explicit intention of finding someone accepting some specific kink will lead to some wierd places that are better left alone. Hanging there felt a bit like being in a human zoo. Yes, those people are accepting. But also everybody seems to lesser or bigger extend detached from outside world, especially the furries. BDSM people more often have double life, but furries very often do not have a life outside this community. And I don't want to be stuck outside of normal society. On the other side with normal people you can't really know how they will react. And some things are probably too extreme and the only option is therapy.