When we escalated to something extreme for example TS and extreme fetish pornography, and then start to “notice” people that would fit within that category and start to get aroused just by the sight of someone or something that triggers pornographic / fetishistic behaviors in our brain, what happens in the brain during that process? I hope this makes sense, basically what I want to know is that for example when I escalate to gay porn as a straight male, and then “notice” men on the streets that LOOK like the ones I saw in the porn videos, why is is that we get aroused just by the sight of those people? No emotions or feelings involved, like as if it happens automatically in a split second. Why is that? What happens in the brain?
Classical conditioning. When you experience things together you create a connection between the neurons associated with them. The more often you make this connection the better it works. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_conditioning
It all comes back to PMO addiction, all of that. Fix the addiction and your brain will return to normal thoughts again. It takes a while, this isn't a 24hr fix, it's months. But when you consider how much time it took for you to get where you are, a few months is a small price to pay.
Pretty straightforward explanation. As others above me have said, you've conditioned yourself to become aroused by those things. You could theoretically condition yourself to become aroused by things not even sexual, something ridiculous like car tires or palm trees, if you really wanted to. The human brain is malleable to a fault.
Thank you for your response. So, in my case i have seen a fetishistic act being done to someone else during kindergarten and that particular act involving overweight people had become my only sexuality. I remember as a young child (even at 13-16) not only consuming tons of straight fetish content but also „noticing“ overweight men and immediately fantasizing about them doing Fetishistic stuff to me. If I would have never seen that during kindergarten ( can also be classified as a trauma/unprocessed trauma), i would never have developed this paraphilia towards overweight people doing this particular act in the first place. Meaning i would be completely sexually „healthy and normal“ ( normal attraction towards normal sized women). But my brain thinks anyone that’s overweight and could do this stuff to me is „attractive“ when in reality they are not. My brain doesn’t care about gender really. I want to know if I can abstain long enough and don’t engage in this behavior and continue my life as someone who is „healed“ or pretend to be healed, until my brain stops associating overweight people with that particular act? My only concern is that this is so deeply rooted because I’ve had this since kindergarten and it had been my only sexuality so far, what are the chances of healing? I have read about it all, repetitive compulsion, why we develop paraphilias as a result of trauma and I am confident to say that I have identified and „processed“ some of the emotions associated with this fetish, but what are the chances of me healing when i stop involving and stop identifying myself witj this fetish. Will i eventually stop „noticing“ those people and start to find normal women attractive? And what if this had been m only sexuality so far? How does my brain know what else to like?
I’m not an expert but based on my understanding of neurology you can’t completely eliminate a connection but you can continuously weaken it. The less often it is used the weaker it gets. I imagine it could be effectively zero but you can’t remove the past. There is most likely more processes involved other than conditioning though. Our minds operate in a way that is meant to keep us away from danger but the methods don’t always work well when applied to our modern environment. Things like trauma can cause maladaptive behaviour you will need to discover where it comes from and learn new ways to cope.
I know where it comes from and what exactly happened. But I feel so anxious and scared of never being able to change I think that the sadness and eke negative state I am in is fueling those thoughts and those pathways. I don’t even know if it’s OCD that makes me „notice“ those people or not. But definitely there’s a lot that’s wrong in my brain. Now that you know my current situation, how would you approach this like what should I do? I turned to god at this point idk anymore. All I want in life is a girlfriend, a wife and kids.
The thing is I have a Fetish that is heavily fueled by porn of course but I had it ever since childhood even before porn so I’m confused whether or not I’ll be able to get rid of it to have normal intimacy with women
