Sexual Shame - This is not an Anti-Christian thread

So you stop fapping, your health impoves, you become more confident, maybe you start working out, maybe you start eating healthy. You haven't fapped in quite some time now, you're getting your shit together. No longer do you see an addict in the mirror as much as a "Fighter". Superpowers right? You've become a person who pushes back.

That would be the opposite of shame. Where girls are giving you more attention, because you have accepted your nature, your shadow, the "taboo". Now that you have healthy boundaries you don't see yourself judging women for wanting sex. You're not judging yourself anymore. You haven't felt the need to shame for a while now. You feel normal and you don't know why you ever felt it wrong to appreciate Cathy's sex appeal at work for all this time. It's light. It's not porn.

Or you might be getting your shit together. Pride and all. Confidence is up. Maybe you meet someone at the bar, she thinks you're hot, she thinks you're charming...
You don't know what to do. Why? Something so natural, you want to have sex with her, but you feel ashamed of it. You're confusing sex with sexuality. You should escalate it a bit, maybe flirt a bit, at least get her number - you might be telling yourself. You are thinking it through rationally, you wash your hands at the basin. You come back and you either proudly hold eye contact or you don't. It's that simple. Maybe it's because you're just socially anxious. Maybe it's cause you don't look good naked. Idk.

But let's assume: You've been taught to be ashamed of your sexual urges/fantasies since you were little and now anything you actually want to do feels wrong. You are scared of making a wrong move - cause you always have been - BECAUSE even by thinking about a person in that way "you have already sinned." The idea of this sin has grown, evolved and changed your behaviour. You are the one who claims to not even really get any superpowers or whatever. You haven't healed your shame. You don't know how to act.

I want this thread to be spesifically about this issue, as far as we can manage. If you are gay for instance, your situation is a bit different but please try to keep the discussion geared towards healing shame. I get this is a religious moral issue I'm pointing out, but this is as much about feeling you have inadiquate social skills as it is about slut shaming. I don't want this to be about Christianity, I don't want to vent about ideology - I just want to invite people to think for themselves about what is called "shame based behaviour", unhealthy shame. To identify with shame. It's a moral issue. It's an issue where we are dealing with lies. It's an issue of life denial.

 

I think JP's facial expression is rather fitting lol. I must agree with nofap's honesty policy, you gotta admit to your feelings, all of them. It falls quite in alignment with JP quoted, "We feel ashamed of being ashamed, so we can be in denial of being ashamed" "Jeesh!" indeed! So yeah I fapped today, without porn. I was alone, but here's the thing. The last porn I watched was Kylie Page, am I gonna be shamed for saying how gorgeous she is? She's a dick wrecker lol and I don't mean in the context of this forum haha, she's smoking hot. I understand super stimuli. I understand porn is harmful - my addiction is harmful to me. But the point I'm trying to make is that if I've rebooted, I ought to be a more sexual person right? What does that look like? What does the stages moving to that look like? I'm an artistic soul so for me it would be artistic expression, I saw this video about Yogic Sex by David Deida. To make art out of the act of sex. That's more where my head is at.

 

Dancing? Drawing? Journaling? Doing shrooms and skinny dipping in nature? Talking to a person and then feeling how they don't judge you? Challenging your own standards or lowering some of them? Shadow work?- What fiddler's proposal comes down to for me honestly. Add new health challenges that are more attainable like working out or dieting? New hobbies?

 

Thank you Fiddler. This genuinely made me feel better, just to hear it from another human being.

I'm reading "Healing the shame that binds you" by John Bradshaw. I shamelessly downloaded it... Jokes! Very insightful so far. I might decide to comment more (in great detail with Jungian psychology included) on the religious issue later. "Shame is a soul eating emotion" - C.G. Jung. But for now I just want people to think, including myself.

Why God is important in Bradshaw's case, as he seems to be a Christian, is that healthy shame points out where our limits are - that we are not Gods. It's when shame becomes an identity that it becomes toxic. I think women probably feel a lot of body shame because of these Godesses in the media. I resonate with Russel Brand's opinion on celebrity - we treat them practically like Gods. People should not lower themselves so much, Celebrity? Really? Anyway, back to Bradshaw. The book opens with "And they were not ashamed" - Genesis. Adam and Eve were naked. Bradsaw points out that it's when they wanted to become more than, or more accurately, other than they were that they started to feel shame. This suddenly got a whole lot more interesting.

I'm editing this post like a motherfucker we should aim to self-overcome. But to avoid shame in doing so we must know our limits. We must understand that the most fundamental problems of life are insoluble and that they can only be outgrown - Jung again. I think it's an issue about strength, to be strong in every manner. But also, like Christopher McCandless quotes what he read somewhere, "I also know how important it is in life not necessarily to be strong but to feel strong, to measure yourself at least once, to find yourself at least once in the most ancient of human conditions, facing the blind death alone with nothing to help you but your hands in your own heads"

 

Pleasure man! This is all about food for thought for the community. I hope this thread stays alive for awhile at least.

 

I've felt inadequate for long time... So I want to tell a little story of where I found a hero inside myself.

After Highschool I dicided to study music performing. I discovered a few bands that changed my life like The Beatles etc.
since we got internet the year before. Musical expression was the ultimate for me and having a knack for it myself the
decision was quite obvious. I studied at COPA. The first half of the year went good for me, I killed Knocking On Heaven's door
by Guns n Roses the first Ensemble Evening where your parents would come and we'd do a big show. I sang and did the lead guitar part.
Anyway I was a very socially awkward kid, but then the 4/3 of the year came around. We got a Radiohead song to study, so obviously I YouTubed them... Blown away! Like what the hell is this? Woah. And then I listened to Creep. I couldn't believe the sheer honesty and ugliness this person was indulging himself in. I was hypnotised... by the time the part came where he was singing about how "She's running out" the woman is rejecting him, I could feel all the times in my past I got rejected. I was good looking, many girls wanted to date me, but I was filled with shame because of how my dad always made me and my brother feel like there's something wrong with us. Then at the part where hes sings "Runs.. runs.. runs.. RUUUUUUNN!!!" I felt possessed almost like a ghost gripping the bones in my arms and legs, I jolted, my hair stood up on my arms and the back of my neck. I felt what I was running from my whole life, dad never being there, struggling to make friends, covering up how I felt about myself so people would like me! I walked home after that in a complete daze. Everything looked different, the pavement was literally glowing. I felt liberated... paradoxically. I went to my friend's metal show that night, met a girl by the bar, charmed her, hugged her, danced with her, made out with her.

Let that sink in

I was high for 3 weeks after that. I decided that my highest value will forever be authenticity. I will live the honesty that saved me. So it's no surprise I'm an existentialist today. That same 3/4 of the year I won Best Written Song of the year and after seeing how Jack White does it on stage, I was inspired to win Best Vocal Performance of the year as well. Seek the truth no matter how ugly the feelings. Done.