Sexual Repression and the Negative

[madelinemasoch]

Forgive me for opening up to you all in a public forum.

I feel all this pressure on myself to conform to things to which I never will, beliefs assigned upon me which I will never hold, foreign distractions floating around in the airspace which is at its core sacred and personal to me, and a toxic magnetizing pull to doubt my own beliefs and believe things which I doubt the most. These things manifest in the physical world and in the mental plane as a kind of imposition and I feel I have very little actual power and control over my own life, which I have had a grasp of for a very long time but never as much as I have in the last 18 months. I say this to clarify that this is not an issue relegated to the sphere of mental wellbeing.

I genuinely feel that I have something to offer the world in terms of what I have to say as an author. The beginning of one's writing career is probably the hardest part, because nobody believes in you yet, so you have to really buckle down and do your best to stay independent and focus on what you're actually doing rather than what other people might think or perceive you as doing. Nobody is going to do it for you because they simply aren't you. They're never going to "know how you feel" until they actually read it, and it isn't finished yet, so there's nothing yet to read. It's a conundrum and a paradoxical relationship to the outside world.

I know (because I've been reading the forums for a long time here) that this is a very sex-positive community, for lack of a better term, but I simply view that as inadequate to resolve the contradictions within my soul and within the external world. I've always seen it like this: you have to negate the negation, you have to destroy the tendency to negate and destroy all norms and standards by completing said destruction of the old ones (something liberal values come up short to do) and then replacing them with new standards, new ways of life. Nobody understood that the character of Eleanor from my old stories was the representative of that new world, the erotic revolutionary archetype and the mouthpiece of my themes. A lot of her dialogue lines were just restatements of my own beliefs. That's a gift and not an ill. I don't think people, especially people older than me, understand the world I've witnessed out there. Emotional sensitivity helps more than the intellect in picking up on these things, but logic is helpful in terms of analyzing and articulating it, even though too much of it can lead to detachment and a kind of plague of reason where its lies begin to invade your mind or become fetters to your creativity. The intellect must be submissive to the intuition if one is going to be a creative author. Sometimes it's better not to think in words at all (like me when I was a kid) and to simply feel it out, and this art of turning your feelings and visualizations into words is a powerful skill that takes time and energy to develop. This is something I have been doing for my entire life.

In a certain sense writing is exerting soft power over the present in service for the future. Forgive me for being a little bit blunt, but I think that if you're not writing to be transformative you're wasting your time, given that you are trying to make a career out of it. We already have enough novels that are merely products of the entertainment mill, and that is being outmoded by television, sports, video games, social media, and (most relevantly to this website) filmed pornography and neo-sex work like OnlyFans. This is why so many novels end up in the Kindle graveyard not selling well. We also have enough books that are primarily read for their literary merit. What we need is for authors to shoot higher, become transformative of the culture itself, which requires one to tap into something beyond the self, something deeper, something that is resonant and touches upon the heart and soul.

One unfortunate fact is that there can be diseases and corruption in the mind, in the heart, and in the body, and each can feed into each other. For example, the demons in my mind always contradict me and criticize me and try to control me, and this dulls my emotions and takes me out of my own body. It's the mental equivalent of being forced to look at a pile of shit. It's repression which causes depression symptoms like anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure from things that would otherwise be pleasurable for your particular personality. I just feel like I like in a context of limitation and that it seeps into my own psyche. If I'm not actively working out an idea I can't think clearly. I can't sit in silence and actually experience quietness any longer. It's been this way for a year and three months. There isn't a medicinal cure for this that I have experienced whether in professional medication terms or in recreational drug use other than alcohol, and too much drinking keeps one from actually writing, so it's unsustainable. Also, it can kill you.

All of the energy I pick up on in these noisy phrases is negative. It's always "stop" and "over with" and "not" and "quit" and "doesn't" and "never." It's always stultifying and repressive. It's always full of binary moral judgments and preconceptions that don't capture the reality of my experience of life and my personality. The mentality I would rather be surrounded by, especially in terms of sex, is one that doesn't impose a positive or negative quality on sex at all, ambivalent to the fact that the topic at hand is even sexual in the first place. No "good idea" or "bad idea" and no "deserving" or "undeserving." And certainly no "endings." We must have wills and aims that move beyond this kind of thinking and relating to the reality of our existence, one that is open and takes life to have a quality of innocence not in spite of but perhaps even because of its suffering. I find if you start to fall into the opposite mentality you become either hyper-restricted, repressed, and resigned or completely lost in the sauce and detached from even your own actions, either a ascetic or a nihilist. My philosophy is neither.

 

[madelinemasoch]

I see the mental poisons that others in my life are afflicted with even when they have no self-knowledge of them whatsoever and I seek to carve out and create the ultimate alternative to that because it directly causes harm to me and my own livelihood. We live in a world full of mistakes that need to be corrected. There isn't anybody better than a writer to demonstrate to people both the problems and the solutions to these problems, in a way that doesn't conform to preestablished ideologies even around things like sex and eroticism, both liberal and conservative kinds. In my opinion the commonality between them is the corrosive nature of Western individualism, the delusion of the self. This is both why people think they can harm themselves and others in the system of mutually-agreed-upon exploitation and repression, and that on the other hand they can traipse around and do whatever they want with no consequences to any of their actions and still go on deluding themselves into thinking that they're somehow good people. There is a complete lack of understanding of the reality of the oneness of the universe in this society. This is ironic because all eroticism is is a way of tapping into this oneness, through violation of the discrete individual being into continuous being. That's the entire reason why we wear clothes as human beings, so we can retain the illusion of discrete individuality so that we can go to work in the morning. The world of work is directly opposed to the world of sex. Not all sex is erotic, and in fact I would say most of it isn't. On the other hand, things that aren't obscenely sexual can be highly erotically charged, like staring at a pretty woman for an hour. (Just a tangent about my own distinction between eroticism which is interesting to me and sexuality which to me is a domain that has been corrupted).

I have gone out of my way to elaborate upon all of these ideas related to the question I am attempting to ask and in part so I can articulate what that question actually is. I think I'm looking for advice on how to relieve my repression and become more in touch with my own erotic qualities again. I spend too much of my time avoiding it. It's already come up for me in ways that I did not plan on or intend to happen, which demonstrates to me the reality that the repressed always returns as fate. I am tired of my life being so out of my own control. That actually makes it harder for me to feel submissive, sexually or otherwise, towards anyone. I even feel like all of my words have fallen out of my own control unless I write them down directly on the page. These demonic entities which I hear have twisted and stultified my inner landscape to the extent that even my favorite things have become "bad words to say" according to them, so to speak. How do I free myself of this kind of repression? How do I live, not in my own head, but in my own body, in my own reality again and not their horrible ideas of it? It's all been invaded. I'm too sensitive for this kind of thing. It affects me automatically, but I never let it actually control me, because I know it isn't true. I need to get back in touch with the energies that actually form my composition in a mental, physical, emotional, metaphysical spiritual way. I say this because I need to finish my new stories so I can make my return to publishing on this platform, as I've been planning the entire time I've been gone. So much time in the last ten months has been wasted for me and I can no longer stand to simply sit around and take this kind of existence for granted as if it somehow holds permanence when I know that there's more beyond it because I tap into it within the writing.

(I already have therapy in place and I'm not looking for that kind of advice).

 

[AwkwardlySet]

You've certainly touched on so many things and some of your thoughts are a bit obscure so it's not easy to give you a satisfying answer.

Most of all, you are not alone. Many among us feel the detachment from the world and civilization such as it is, from its values and hypocrisy. If I understand your situation properly, on top of that you suffer from gender dysphoria which certainly doesn't help. I can't begin to understand such a condition, but I can understand the rest pretty well as I share much of your disdain for the way things are.
The world as it is is meant for people who fall around the middle of the Gaussian, who conform to the norm most of the time. It has never been kind to idealists or to people who are outliers in terms of intelligence, morality, compassion, or emotional intelligence.

Without going too deep into my own philosophy and reasons why I am a pessimist when it comes to things changing for the better in any fundamental way, I can maybe offer you some advice.
The first is to find an outlet for your thoughts and especially for your emotions. Writing can be that outlet among other things, whether it's here or anywhere else. Just putting your thoughts out there where someone can read them can help relieve your mind. Talking with actual people who can understand you is even better but they are hard to find.

The second piece of advice is distractions. Distractions are an insanely important part of life, especially for a person who feels at odds with the world and the values of society. Distract yourself with books, movies, music, travel, going out, or whatever else that can distract your mind and soul. Discipline yourself so that you are allowed to think about the big things that bother you only when you write about them or when you discuss them with people who can follow you. Dwelling upon them in your head, over and over again is a sure way to drive yourself nuts.
Discipline is the key.

 

[SimonDoom]

My ears pricked up at the words "sexual repression" in the thread title, because I can relate to that. For whatever reason, I felt some of that when I was young. I was shy, modest, extremely self-conscious, and the sense of repression manifested itself into certain negative feelings and being judgmental about things I didn't understand. I've let go of a lot of that, and I find writing erotica to be a way of liberating myself from those feelings. My youthful feelings of repression and modesty have a lot to do, I think, with my erotic interests in exhibitionism and kinkiness.

To gain a feeling of getting control of your life, I recommend taking small steps. Set a small goal, accomplish it, and you will feel good about it. I get overwhelmed and depressed when I have too much to do. I'm a bad multitasker. So I focus on one small step, and when I get it done I feel good and I move on to the next one. That's what I would recommend.

I might also suggest reading about cognitive therapy. I know you're not looking for therapy advice but I'm talking about stuff to do yourself rather than talking to someone. Cognitive therapy is a useful tool to understand how bad feelings often are the result of mistaken beliefs we have about ourselves, i.e., nobody likes me, I can never get anything done, no matter how hard I try I will never succeed, that sort of thing. When you calm your mind and explore these beliefs and think about them rigorously you realize they are not true, and that realization can help set you on the right path.

Best of luck. Keep writing. In this forum, or by writing stories, whatever. Giving verbal expression to negative feelings can be a way of coping with them.

 

[lovecraft68]

Best of luck. Keep writing. In this forum, or by writing stories, whatever. Giving verbal expression to negative feelings can be a way of coping with them.

Why do you think I rant here from time to time?

When something is important to you, keeping it bottled up isn't just bad because it festers, but because its denial of your beliefs and in the OP's case your very soul and nature. Its giving the world a victory because you're afraid to express because society, religion, politics, etc...has oppressed you to the point you are no longer you.

We live in a time that claims to be 'progressive' yet demonizes and judges and divides more than ever.

In the end, the loyalty we owe is too ourselves. To live as we will, believe as we do, and speak on what we choose whether others agree or approve.

Few people in this world are truly free and that's because of the lemmings who cannot be free so rather than appreciate those who can be, they shout them down because that person being free makes them feel all the worse that they can't be.

jealousy is an ugly emotion and that's what drives people to put down others.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I'm unsure what to say beyond, as already noted, you are not alone. I mean that not only in terms of many of us having the same issues, but - perhaps more importantly - you are among friends here.

If I might be permitted, e-hugs, friend to friend.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Well you have a whole lot to unravel and I'm not about to sort through it all, but what sticks out to me as a starting point is that it very much seems to me that you worry far too much about other people's actions and choices. You want control of your life. So does everyone else. So let everyone else have their choices and you choose yours. Live and let live.

You don't like individualism, yet you are an individual who does not wish to conform. How is that not individualism? So in order to not conform you want society to change and you wish to change it through your writing. Well, that is an attempt to get everyone else to conform to you. Is that fair? I'm not trying to say that you are wrong or stupid or to put you or your ideas down in any way, but do you see the flaw in your strategy?

The individual is important. Individuality is the spice of life. If we all think and behave the same way, society treads a very narrow path and does not grow. Society has no beliefs. Society doesn't really make decisions. Only individuals make decisions, choices, have opinions and beliefs. Society's so-called values are simply the sums and/or means of all of the individual choices.

So change society by making your choice. It is the gift that you have. If you feel oppressed, remember that no one can stop your choice or change your beliefs. Likewise you cannot stop nor change anyone else's. However, people are changing constantly. How do we change? When we encounter energies and ideas that resonate with us, we adopt them into our own beliefs and choices. So put your ideas and energies out there, the stuff that you feel strongly and truthful about and it will resonate with someone or a few, or maybe many and they may adopt your ideas because they may find personal truth in them. And you might even make some friends. But if you try to bend people to your way, you will only find enemies and resentment because everyone wants to be free to be themselves, just like you do. So the golden rule and all that. Hope this helps and good luck.

 

[yowser]

There's a great deal of pain in your words, the pain of writers and those who reflect. I am on your side and I am sorry.

Two responses surface, neither of them solutions, since so many of the elements you mention are not 'solvable' in any meaningful way.

I'm glad you're writing, in whatever format, and like others, I hope you continue. One of the best coping (and instructive) mechanisms ever evolved.

Of course the details of your personal life remain yours, and I don't know them, but I think there may be some value in mental retreat. A recent book Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer, talks about the value of cognitive and emotional disengagement, in particular silence, as an approach to both stilling the often insane cacophony of the word, and rebuilding inner strength.

We wish you well.

 

[Belegon]

Most of all, you are not alone. Many among us feel the detachment from the world and civilization such as it is, from its values and hypocrisy. If I understand your situation properly, on top of that you suffer from gender dysphoria which certainly doesn't help. I can't begin to understand such a condition, but I can understand the rest pretty well as I share much of your disdain for the way things are.
The world as it is is meant for people who fall around the middle of the Gaussian, who conform to the norm most of the time. It has never been kind to idealists or to people who are outliers in terms of intelligence, morality, compassion, or emotional intelligence.

THIS can not be said too much. I'm a very outgoing, gregarious person who has plenty of touchpoints in the community. But the last year has been HARD. I never realized how much of my sense of being a solid part of the culture in which I live was dependent on my employment and the quick visits (usually less than thirty seconds) I shared daily with co-workers and clients. But, thanks to my current medical situation, I have not worked a single day since (I think) Nov. 9, 2023. This placed me in an environment which was necessarily limited in whom I was in daily contact with. I spent the first 35 days of that time in the hospital, which was extremely frustrating. I've always been a pretty active person physically and being confined to a bed and in a single room was very difficult for me. I did get some social interaction with my nurses and the administrators but it was never enough. They, after all, had jobs to do and couldn't sit and chat with any single patient.

 

[AG31]

I'm intrigued, but these posts are very abstract. Can you give some concrete examples of what you're wrestling with? I'd go try to find Eleanor in your stories, but, as I recall, you've deleted all your stories.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Of course the details of your personal life remain yours, and I don't know them, but I think there may be some value in mental retreat. A recent book Aflame: Learning from Silence by Pico Iyer, talks about the value of cognitive and emotional disengagement, in particular silence, as an approach to both stilling the often insane cacophony of the word, and rebuilding inner strength.

This strikes a chord with me. I have a great fascination for Zen, and for me, "stillness", the ability to quell restless thoughts like oil on turbulent water, is a skill worth developing, an attribute worth having. It's why there are many quiet moments in my stories - I'm writing the quiet moments in my life.

@madelinemasoch - I hope you find a quiet place, somewhere, somehow. Be kind to yourself.