Childhood The Urge To Masturbate

[Jade-]

Embarrassing topic but could use some help.

I will make a long story short.In childhood I realized at a very young age that masturbating helped ease the pain of swollen,torn and painful genitals from the SA.

That progressed to realizing it helped ease any kind of pain whether physical or mental.

I still get an urgent need to do it when dealing with any kind of pain.It's hard to fight the urge,but of course I do,especially in public.

The urge is so strong though it's hard to endure at times.I think that urge is also triggering too.

Anyone else relate to this? I did work on it in therapy but still struggle with it.Have you found anything that helps?

Or is it best to not try to fight the urge and just recognize it for what it is,accept it and work on trying to find other ways to self soothe?

 

[Muttly]

I have some similar issues. I'm still working on this. I think accepting it, so the shame gets less is important. I also think working on other coping skills is important. When I'm doing well I find I can also just wait the urges out sometimes and know I can helps too.

Thanks for being brave enough to post about this.

 

[Freemartin]

Uh huh, me too.
Haven’t found anything helpful, really. But wanted to say I relate.

 

[Jade-]

I forgot to add that it's not really a pleasurable urge I get. It's more of a painful one and masturbating feels necessary to ease it.

I am ashamed to say this but I have spent hours trying to ease it,and there's been times I have tried to an entire day...or night

 

[somerandomguy]

I don't think it's shameful. You found a technique that really helped you, so it's no surprise that you go back to it in times of stress or anxiety.

Me too. In times of anxiety and stress I feel compelled to masturbate. I've done better and worse at handling it. Sometimes both at the same time, it seems like.

You're very brave to bring this up. I hope it helps knowing you're not alone.

 

[TedWNY]

I’ll share a story I look back on and laugh at

At that same age I discovered masturbating would relieve anxiety and allow me to “feel” something.
Parents confronted me, given we were catholic and nothing was ever talked about, they handed me a book from the church on the subject and it was never spoken about again....I proceeded to masturbate with the book.
One of many times I thought to myself “I’m being raised by idiots”
We need to learn there is no shame in it and there are other tools we can use to release anxiety and help us to “feel”

 

[Jade-]

Thanks for the replies here,I appreciate it.

It definitely is helpful to know I'm not alone in this.

Maybe the next time I'm driving in heavy traffic,get really stressed out and have the urge I won't feel like such a complete freak about it.

 

[Wendell_R]

Been there! The balancing act is to recognize that masturbation in itself is fine, but when it gets compulsive, it can take over your life. I didn't really make much progress on this until I could recognize and heal all the hurts and fears that were/are stuck inside me. There's a reason you've used masturbation to escape and soothe--it's worked better than a lot of other things! A whole lot better than opiods.

Learning new ways to deal with stress is helpful. Learning what exactly you're stressed about is helpful, although that's a long and tough road. Keeping track of how much you masturbate is helpful to see where you are. For me, once a day is fine. More than that and I get compulsive.

The headache with masturbation isn't that it's wrong, it's that ultimately, masturbation doesn't heal that pain that you describe well, and when we are using it to deal with pain instead of exploring our sexuality, we can lose sexual joy.