So now let's look at the root cause. Obviously, conditioning
does play a role. But it isn't the main role and it doesn't. It
doesn't explain the majority of fetishes and of sexual behavior
that is caused by something else and don't completely ignore
conditioning because it does cause a lot of your feelings and
your associations. And that has an indirect effect. But as I
say, let's explore the root cause. Firstly, let's actually
break down this fetish and look at what parts cause aroused,
look at where the pleasure is actually coming from. Before we
look at what causes that pleasure. So, infidelity,
obviously cheating is the main part of this fetish. There's
also an element of inferiority, which I think is universal. I
think it is an essential part of this fetish. And if it isn't
really there, then it's not the same fetish, but maybe it's just
optional, and sometimes additional humiliation. I mean,
infidelity is humiliating enough. But there's also some
element of verbal humiliation sometimes, too. Those are the
parts that cause arousal. Okay? If you take away those parts,
then it's not the same fetish, and it isn't arousing anymore.
So why do we find those things? Arousing, okay, generally, you
can distill that down into feelings of inadequacy. So, the
idea of infidelity that's only really painful because it makes
you feel like you're not good enough. It makes you feel bad
about yourself. It makes you doubt your self worth being
cheated on is such a painful thing. It's probably the most
painful thing you could experience, possibly, but the
reason why that's painful is because it makes you feel
inadequate or not good enough. Inferiority also quite literally
does the same. And so I kind of simplify this as, as turning
feelings of inadequacy. intersexual pleasure. The
eroticized ation of inadequacy, right making inadequacy become
erotic, instead of being painful, that actually becomes
pleasurable. But why? There have been a number of attempts to
explain this, one of the most popular ones is to protect us
from those feelings. So the brain turns these bad feelings
into pleasure to protect us from feeling them. Another one is
that it helps us to escape from bad feelings about ourselves the
pressure to be good enough, by feeling pain, the pain of
humiliation draws our attention away from all these things. Roy
Baumeister calls this the burden of selfhood, the idea that being
a person is a burden. It's a lot of responsibility, right, we all
have lots of different an image to uphold standards to maintain,
we have too many things to the cause a lot of pressure, there's
a pressure to be good enough. And to escape from that. We can
do that with pain. Another idea is that it's a way to affirm
ourselves or to kind of for validation, which is by
confronting our deepest fears, we temporarily overcome them.
That's what happens by reenacting them in a safe
environment where we're, we're kind of, in a way, consenting in
a way. I mean, that's what happens every time you
masturbate, you are doing it consensually. We temporarily
overcome them anyway, that's the point by reenacting, we overcome
them. And that is validating, right that when it's our deepest
fears, and we're confronting them and overcoming them, we're
temporarily finding a lot of affirmation of our self worth.
Doesn't really matter which one of those is true, by the way,
and we can't, we can't actually test this. This isn't something
that we'll ever know the answer to, because you can't test these
theories directly. You can test them indirectly. And they have
done so with that self affirmation theory. And that is,
the theory that has the least holes in it actually does
explain all of sexual desire, not just fetishes. So that's
probably the most likely one but it doesn't matter. It doesn't
really matter which one of these is true, because they're
explaining the same thing. They're just different ways of
explaining what's going on. And it doesn't matter which
explanation you look for because they say the same thing that
fetishes turn pain into pleasure for some reason. Okay. So a
quote here that I found from a former dominatrix who says, I
used to get people coming to me for spanking and caning because
they'd received corporal punishment at school, often in a
completely on erotic context that ended up eroticised the
experience as a means of processing the discomfort around
it. So that's a situation where pain is being turned into
pleasure, someone's pain that they've had that they've
experienced in the past that's caused Some sort of deep rooted
emotional feelings or fears of that happening again. And that
is being eroticized turned erotic, turned into sexual
pleasure. sexual fetishes are the brains attempt to work out
trauma woundedness, or some other associations from the past
quite big words, quite harsh words. But I think you get the
point of that. Hidden within your core erotic theme is a
formula for transforming unfinished emotional business
from childhood and adolescence into excitation and pleasure.
Now, childhood is a very important time in our lives,
because that's the time when we are forming our initial ideas
about the way that the world works and the way that we are
and the way that we fit into the world and bear everything.
That's when we learning the most in childhood, we're learning
about everything, our eyes are wide open to the world. And so
we're very vulnerable during that time and very
impressionable, very easily impressionable, anything that
happens in childhood has about 10 times the amount or the the
effect that it would have if it happened later on in your life.
Because when we get older, we kind of we know how things work,
we get a bit set in our ways, we already form our beliefs they've
already formed long ago, and we kind of just, we don't learn as
much anymore as we do in childhood, when which is when
we're forming our initial ideas about those things. And if those
ideas make you feel like you might be somehow inadequate,
then that pain, that pain is what gets turned into pleasure
later on in life, Adolescence is kind of the same, because that's
when we're first learning about sex, and about our sexual
experiences. And, and those ideas that formed during those
times are as important as in childhood. So anything that
happens in those times when we're the most vulnerable, the
most impressionable that has a larger effect. And it's good to
look towards those times. If you're examining yourself, it's
good to look towards those times to kind of get an idea of, of
your own inner pain, and fears and feelings. fetishes form as a
way to protect us from that same emotional pain to disconnect
from the pain and turn it into pleasure, we can be protected
from the hurtful feelings it may trigger. So same idea really. So
to summarize this, essentially fetishes form, firstly, from
deep rooted fears and emotions. And secondly, a general not
feeling good enough. Now, to explain that, I would have to go
into the self affirmation or validation theory in a little
bit more detail. The idea about pleasure is the pleasure forms
as a an evolutionary survival mechanism, really pleasure is
what drives us to engage in behaviors that benefit the
survival of the human race. Okay, so the reason why
chocolate is pleasurable, or cake is because in you know, as
a long, long time ago, those calories would have been
beneficial to our survival, we needed them. Okay, we needed
them to survive. So we find a lot of pleasure from high
calorie foods. For that reason, it's a survival mechanism. One
of the reasons why we find pleasure from sex is because
that benefits the survival of the human race, obviously, we
need to find that pleasurable so that we have some sort of drive
to engage in it. Now, fetishes are also a survival mechanism.
What they do is that, through this self affirmation theory or
this validation theory, they let us know in some way that
whatever fears that we perceive to be in the way of our
survival, whatever feelings that we may have about ourselves and
about our ability to act in this world, we can overcome them,
through fetishes. And by doing that, we kind of affirm that we
are good enough to survive and to pass on our genes by
overcoming these fears, these emotions, these obstacles in the
way of life, we get a sense that we aren't good enough anyway.
Those are all the result of past experiences, okay, these fears
and emotions and this not feeling good enough. Now,
generally, I
believe that there's not feeling good enough actually underlies
all fetishes, okay, and it doesn't have to be necessarily
not feeling good enough. It can just be doubts about your
ability to be good enough, and everyone has some sort of doubts
or fears about not being good enough at some point. And that I
believe underlies all fetishes, but particularly, it's these
deep rooted fears and emotions that we know underlie the
specific fetishes. So someone with a fear of powerlessness
would have eventually develop some sort of fetish around the
concept of powerlessness, either by being made to be powerless
themselves, which would be a fetish for being tied up by
cups. Or one of the other ways that this can be eroticized is
by acting that upon someone else, which is kind of sadism.
It's the sadistic angle of making someone else feel
powerless. And that would be another way to overcome these
fears and emotions. But generally, fetishes turn pain
into pleasure, okay? Now instead focusing on pain, what you
should do is to first focus on pleasure. So find the particular
bits of pleasure that arouse you pinpoint them, and then identify
the pain behind them. It's a very individual thing, because
different people find different things arousing, right? And
particularly when it comes to this fetish. There are so many
different elements, elements that you might find arousing. I
mean, some people get more aroused by the humiliation
aspect, they might, there might be some sort of element of small
penis humiliation that's quite common or some, some people get
off on denial. You know, I've definitely there's some sort of
thing about chastity that kind of overlaps with this fetish.
And anyway, different people find different things arousing,
you need to find the specific things that arouse you, that
turn you on. Okay, pinpoint the exact things that turn you on.
And then look for the pain behind that. So see if you can
take that, that extremely pleasurable, orgasmic
experience, okay? And try and see that as someone else would
see it, try and see that in a different light, see it from the
perspective of someone else, and then take it out of the sexual
context. And just imagine it in real life. Okay, so if it's
about chastity, then it's about denial. Really, it's about being
denied sex, try and see that just in life connects with the
pain behind that. And that's a good way of identifying your own
individual, deep rooted fears and emotions and beliefs. So,
for this fetish, the project fears or fears of infidelity,
promiscuity, or of female sexuality, sluttiness, that can
be quite painful for some people, humiliation, inferiority
being excluded, sometimes male competition, denial, any other
part of the Fetish that would usually be painful, is where you
should look to identify the pain that is being turned into
pleasure. And by doing that, you will understand your own sexual
desires in a lot more detail. So I generally refer to all of this
as subconscious inadequacy. Everything can be kind of
distilled down to this. The root cause of the Fetish is the pain
that the Fetish involves. So look for the pain, and then kind
of see what if you can apply that to your life and see if you
can apply that to the pain that might be inside of you. So maybe
it's a fear of infidelity, more than most people, the lack of a
sense of security in relationships. Sometimes that's
caused by fears of female promiscuity and sometimes it's
called by sexual insecurity, fears of having low sexual
ability, attitudes towards penis size, or even just general
insecurity. Sometimes, a lot of this can be created, just by
watching a lot of porn. Porn makes you place a
disproportionate emphasis on sex, you start to see women more
as sex objects. This makes you care much more about a woman's
sex life, you place a lot of emphasis on their sex life and
much less on them. You start to think that sex is very
important. You worry about being good enough at sex, and
especially when compared to your partner's previous lovers.
That's a lot of pain. You worry so much about your partner being
unsatisfied with sex, or you know, secretly wanting more than
you and I'm considering leaving you because of sex. It's hard to
imagine that sex might not matter that much to them. Right
that might be quite at contradiction to your fears, and
your feelings and your beliefs that are inside of you. It might
be contradictory to imagine that sex might not matter that much.
And truthfully, if we're being serious, I mean, women really
don't care as much about sex as men. And I'm kind of only really
talking to the straight males who are watching this. But
that's true men focus on sex at the expense of the rest of the
relationship. to a ridiculous extent, if a woman complains
that the man doesn't spend enough time with her, the man
thinks that's code for not lasting long enough in bed. I
mean, we do really have a lot of a lot of insecurities that can
be caused by porn. Do you think that all women want to be
submissive, for example, and he doubt your ability to be
dominant? And do you equate that to being good enough? That's
another insecurity, which can cause fears of sexual
inadequacy. And that can be caused by porn to some men are
particularly aroused by the element of small penis
humiliation. Sometimes I get emails from people who don't
hesitate to tell me in the first line of their email that they
don't actually have a small penis, but they do find that
arousing. Well, that's because you don't need to have a small
penis to get aroused by small penis humiliation, you just need
to have the fears, feelings, thoughts and beliefs, the fear
of someone having a small penis the concept of someone being
humiliated for their penis size. That is what's the that's the
pain that's being turned into pleasure. And that can just come
from the belief that penis size matters a lot, as opposed to the
belief that your own penis is small. It's caused by resonating
with pain around the idea of having a small penis, which you
can do even if you don't have a small penis. Similarly, someone
who does have a small penis but doesn't really care that much
won't get aroused by the concept of small penis humiliation
because they don't have that pain, which fetishes turn into
pleasure. Okay, fetishes often don't have anything to do with
us. They're to do with our fears and feelings, which are often
completely unrelated to our real lives. And they're occasionally
completely irrational. That's what I'm going to talk about in
the next section. Some sometimes saying all of these sort of
things can be caused by porn generally, or by different
things that you go through in your life. Start to question
exactly how they formed. If you do have any of these, and like I
say, it's gonna be different for everyone. Some people have fears
of neglect being excluded. Emotional abuse, verbal abuse,
do you feel excluded in life? Do you feel different from everyone
else? Do you feel left out? Do you feel left out when you
masturbate? For example? Do you have shame around masturbation
and sexuality? Do you feel like you're, you're alone
masturbating at home while everyone else is having fun and
having sex? That's how some people feel. And obviously,
that's a very painful topic. That's an area of a lot of pain.
But of course, you know, the truth is, everyone masturbates
people with this, this fear and this feeling think that
masturbation is wrong, and that they should be doing something
else. They haven't accepted that it's normal to masturbate. And,
you know, I get a lot of that that's very common. So, you
know, they make these negative interpretations where, in their
mind they become a loser simply for masturbating? Do you have
any thoughts like this? If so, start to question, a fear of
betrayal, or breaking trust, again, more than most. So if
you've been cheated on in the past, then obviously that's
going to create this, this fear, if you have had some sort of
experiences of having your trust just broken them again, that's
what can cause being aroused by that perhaps a fear of male
competition or of emasculation. And just a fear or sense of not
being good enough, which causes and facilitates all other fears.
That's the important point that I want to make, okay? All of
these different individual fears are only really around because
of a general sense, or a fear of not being good enough, just as
you are. That's what kind of creates all these individual
fears, because you kind of look for the outlet for that
you look for the excuse for that. So that's going to be the
focus of this course. For now. What I want you to do is to
start to question these things. Firstly, start to look at what
exactly it is that you find arousing, because that's the
first step. Look at what turns you want the most. Okay? Then
connect with the pain behind that. Really try and, and, and
feel that pain, feel it from someone else's perspective,
because otherwise, it's just going to be arousing, right
feeling from someone else's perspective. And then take that
pain out of a sexual context. Look at it just as the pain in
life, not just in that sexual scenario. Once you've really got
a clear image of that pain in life, then you can start to to
examine that in more detail, you'll naturally start to
question it. Start to question how rational All it is start to
question how much it makes sense. And that will generally
kind of eliminate those things. And it's also useful to see if
you can find how that might have have been caused in the first
place. If you can examine your past experiences, see if you can
examine what makes you feel that way. And then that will
generally break it down. So that's how you deal with these
individual fears that determine the direction of your fetish,
but like I say, generally, all of this is caused by this
underlying fear or sense of inadequacy, and that's what
we're going to be examining in this course.