Human being wrote on 06 Dec 2022 21:09:

human being responded to Jackthejew
Exactly my point. CBT says that our thoughts influence our feelings. But where did those thoughts come from? Hint: feelings

STEP 1- In primary I was bullied for no reason.
STEP 2- I started feeling really really scared and ashamed.
STEP 3-. I started constantly thinking, Why do I deserve this.(Thoughts about  my shame I had as a 5 yr old)  What's wrong with me? Maybe there's something wrong with the way I look? The way I act? Ok there ,must be something weird about me. I must look really unattracted and gross.  I must be a real nerd. And i started constantly thinking (thoughts about the danger i was in) Why do I deserve this? What's wrong with me that this is happening to me? why does he want to hurt me? why doesn't anyone come to defend me? why doesn't the rebbi chap he's beating me up? 

In other words my FEELINGS of shame and ANGER demanded a justification and I had to understand COGNITIVELY why the heck I deserve to feel shame or fear. Because when we experience feelings, we search cognitively for the reasons we feel a certain way. And when we can't come up with the cognitive reasons to explain our feelings (in my case shame and danger), AKA when we cant process our feelings-we have no possible way to cognitively wrap our heads around it it gets stuck in the brain as unprocessed feelings (AKA trauma) 

STEP 4- Once we have an unprocessed feeling (a trauma) that is "stuck in feeling that way" because we never processed it, we then have the thoughts that those feelings cause playing over and over in our heads. (about shame -why do i feel this way?What's wrong with me? Maybe there's something wrong with the way I look? The way I act? Ok there ,must be something weird about me. I must look really unattracted and gross.  I must be a real nerd, i must be crazy. About fear- why in the world do i feel this way? I must be in danger. I must watch out. i must be hypervigilant. Is that guy dangerous? That guy on the Plane might blow us up, )
In other words, when the feelings are still there, the cognitive thoughts that stem from the feelings, remain. 


STEP 5- Therefore- Any feeling that remains as a trauma, because it is still inside you, will continue spewing forth thoughts that may no longer be relevant. Telling yourself that your thoughts aren't rational don't work, because the producer of the thoughts is still producing the thoughts. The feeling of shame and fear I had as a 5 yr old are still inside my head saying "beware of any older male". Telling myself that my thoughts no longer make sense, wont really help.

​How do we heal those faulty cognitions? By healing the feeling that is causing those faulty thoughts and perceptions.

Now we get to the main point. The jealousy and sexual desires. -feelings lead to thoughts that leading to feelings. For ex: "I wish I had his bike" "I want to have his big house". - And then come feelings of jealousy. In this scenario, we must ask ourselves. Where did those thoughts come from?
And when we search deep, the answer almost always is.....feelings.

This is what's going on:  For ex: A feeling of low self worth, a feeling of anger, a feeling of shame. Thoughts are then created of hay "if i had that guys car, maybe i would feel more respected" or "I'm so angry that my partner got the promotion. I wanted it really badly. But maybe if i would have a car like "plony" I wouldn't be so angry"  or "I feel so ashamed that I'm pulling in so little money for my family, if only i would be able to have "plonys" bike for my own kid"

In this scenario, working with the thoughts, will not do anything unless we understand why we are having these thoughts! if we don't know that low self worth or anger or shame is creating my thoughts which then go on to create the feeling of jealousy, no matter how many times we "CBT" our thoughts and tell ourselves "hay its not your bike its 0 shychis to you"  it will not help. Because our problem is not cognitive! We know its 0 shychis to us yet we still crave it for underlying reasons of low self worth and shame.

Now comes the part about sexual desire.  Sexual desire is like trauma-except it can never be taken away. Our sexual desires are inside of us no matter what. (unless we chemically castrate ourselves) So regardless of what we tell ourselves, We cant just erase our desire for something sexually. even if we say "this has 0 shychis to me sexually", What we now can do is avoid is avoid sparking our sexual desire, but it doesn't go away! That's just not how our neurobiological brain works. its like a trauma. "its stuck" if you don't have sexual desires, its because your 6 feet under. Our body's produce hormones whether we like it or not! And those desires will.............
.......cause thoughts.....which will cause .....feelings.......thoughts........feelings......thoughts.

In other words the sexual desire, is stuck in us just like the feeling in trauma. And therefore the trauma itself wont heal cognitively, because its still there! Same with sexual desire, you cant talk to it cognitively and destroy it. Because....... its still there!  But we definitely can work on not triggering that desire.



There is one option to remove "alt feelings" completely rewire our brain and rewire all our memories and experiences using the neuroplasticity of the brain. But in order to do that, we must follow the entire trail back from feeling to thought t feeling to thought to feeling to though to feeling, and resolve all of our feelings, and completely change all our memories of all our sexual experiences, that would take years and years of emdr, and that is only if a person reached the stage were he is absolutely certain where his "alt" desires came from. ......Anyways anyone who gets there, good luck
But there's a reason conversion therapy doesn't work.

Cordnoy responded to the topic
Hopefully the adults in the room are smart enough to know which posts to take to heart and which to discard.

Godspeed to all

"jackthejew" post=389060 date=1670363426 catid=19
Human being wrote on 06 Dec 2022 21:09:

Jackthejew responded to human being
CBT recognizes much of sexual deviancy not as hardwired into the sexual drive, but as sexual, (or even other desires)" distorted through a filter of trauma", for example BDSM, which is often about a desire for a feeling of control on both of sides of the equation. So if the trauma can be identified, not all feelings of sexual experience necessarily need to be changed, rather the attitude of needing control can be worked on, and then the sexual desire won't be tinged with the desire for control that causes the end result of sexual attraction in that way

Eerie responded to the topic
Ok, ok. guys! Let's all calm down a little bit, there's a little too much heat, I fear. Everyone of us had his baggage, his past, his education, the things his rebbe, therapist, etc. told him because he felt it would work for HIM. We are not the American Academy of Psychologists here, so we'll leave the academic questions for now. And please, my dear friends, if I can ask, next time when we argue, no insults please. First of all as Yidden we are enjoined "lo soni ish es amiso". Secondly, many of the people here are suffering from many different things, and when they are made to feel childish we are hurting them in a very real way, be they anonymous or not. So please, I urge you all to think very carefully when posting an argument. If you are concerned that someone may wrongly influence the people reading here, post a respectful response. If you feel that is not enough, ask a Rav. Being hurtful just isn't the way. My friends, we are here in GYE, fighting for Hashem, fighting for our families, together, holding hands, helping one another get to the top! Keep on smiling and share a word of encouragement.
Love y'all!
Eerie​

Human being responded to Cordnoy
I won't take your post to heart, because a smart man named cordnoy once told me, 

Why should one get insulted from the text and opinions of some anonymous, pajama-clad, basement-dweller, missin'-teeth, foul-odored, pot-bellied, winston-smokin', soap-allergic freak? Who really gives a damn? And if someone does care, then go ahead and say somethin'! Yes, some folks are shy.

We disagree on much! But you have definitely helped me be able to tenaciously stick up for my beliefs, while getting hit on all sides. So thanks.
Many of your beliefs are really bothersome to me, but you as a person are bothersome to no-one.

Human being wrote on 07 Dec 2022 21:42:

Human being responded to Jackthejew
I couldn't agree to you more. As I said many times before, we are in agreement that 'alt' desires are of nurture (trauma, neglect, abuse) origin and not natural. (at least in the overwhelming majority of cases) A great example is the example you shared. BDSM. In which we are in agreement. That healing the trauma (feelings that are stuck unpossessed) that caused the 'alt' desires (in this case BDSM and a need for control) bring a person to be able to move foreword in life towards a more normal sexual experiences and desires.



What I believe we don't agree on is something very simple. I would like to argue this point out to come to the truth.    

There is cause and affect. The cause of trauma, results in the affect of having behaviors, (including sexual behaviors), and thoughts (including sexual thoughts) that are unhealthy, unwanted, and morally wrong. You focus on the affects of feelings/trauma. I am focusing on the cause which is feelings/trauma. CBT is what you quote your "mehalech" from, because CBT is a behavioral therapy. (Hence the name Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.)  The starting point of CBT "aka the problem that is the focus" is the behavior. Yes CBT branches off from the behavior and can explore more in depth, but the focus is on the behavior and the thoughts causing the behavior. 



Problem with your "mehalech" is, Or any behavioral "mehalech", is that you are not addressing the FEELINGS ​that causes the twisted beliefs or causes the behaviors.  My point is here, and this is where it all begins. Feelings are the cause of thoughts and behavior. ​Thoughts are also an "affect" just like behavior. The cause is feelings. Which leads to twisted cognitions, which leads to twisted behaviors.



That's why when you write above  "So if the trauma can be identified, not all feelings of sexual experience necessarily need to be changed, rather the attitude of needing control can be worked on, and then the sexual desire won't be tinged with the desire for control that causes the end result of sexual attraction in that way"



My response is, that is not how the brain works. We don't just identify a trauma (which is feelings) and then "poof" out goes the faulty thinking and behaviors. We need to do 2 things in order to lead healthier sexual lives. A) Heal. Not identify. "Identifying" is something we do with behavior. NOTfeelings.. We can identify our bad thoughts and behaviors (like in CBT) and teach ourselves that, are thoughtsaren't true (or they are twisted).Yet, Even if we cognitively know that our beliefs are twisted and where they originate, none the less we will still have the same sexual challenges/desires regardless! They will not change by simply knowing.



It takes healing our feelings behind the faulty beliefs, thoughts and behaviors to actually change the structure of our brain. Because the origin of thoughts and behaviors are feelings, and not the original way around.  (Yes and its true once we have faulty thinking/behavior it causes new feelings. So thoughts that originate out of feelings can cause new feelings. Which can cause new thoughts, which can then cause new feelings etc. But if you ask, which one came first? The chicken or the egg, "its feelings.")



Here is a nice article that explains emotions vs cognitions, and their order of sequence. It is in the next post.



www.futurelearn.com/info/blog/thinking-and-feeling-whats-the-difference#:~:text=In%20the%20primary%20case%2C%20in,hierarchical%20and%20a%20chronological%20sense.

Here is an article on what comes first. Emotions or thoughts.

Thinking and feeling: what’s the difference?

Professor Mark Solms is the lead educator on the University of Cape Town’s free online course What Is a Mind?. Here, he discusses the difference between thinking and feeling, and the role that instinct plays.

The distinction between thinking and feeling (cognition and emotion) is obviously a fundamental one in relation to what the mind does. One of the themes that I’ll develop in What Is a Mind? is the notion that feelings present problems. That is, they represent needs; they represent demands upon the mind to perform work.

Feelings make us aware that something unexpected (or something unpredicted or something uncertain) is occurring. When I say that feelings represent demands upon the mind to perform work, what I mean is that they represent demands on thinking. The work of the mind is thinking.

Thoughts are ways of dealing with feelings

In the primary case, in the standard situation, feelings come first. Thoughts are ways of dealing with feelings – ways of, as it were, thinking our way out of feelings – ways of finding solutions that meets the needs that lie behind the feelings.

The feelings come first in both a hierarchical and a chronological sense. A little neonate (newborn mammal) has no thoughts to speak of, to begin with; it is a little bundle of feelings. Thinking derives from learning, that is, from experience.

The apparatus for thinking then works on the material we have internalised, from the solutions we’ve experienced, as to how our needs can be met in the world. These solutions are, of course, initially provided by caregivers. (That is why parenting is important.) On this basis, thinking gradually develops and teaches us how to manage our feelings – how to solve the problems that feelings represent.

Thinking can become very elaborate

Once that has happened, though, thinking can become very elaborate. To mention just the most obvious case, a thought, which has developed in relation to a particular feeling, can be re-thought.

If that thought is activated from thinking itself, it can, in turn, reactivate the feeling that goes with it, especially if it’s a thought (that is, a problem-solving process) that has not properly mastered the feeling in question. That will reactivate the feeling. So, later in development, thinking can make feelings come second. But that’s a derivative process, once a mature thinking apparatus exists.

Thoughts are internalized experiences

We must remember that thoughts are just an internalized version of our perceptual experiences of the world. All thoughts, as distinct from feelings, have a perceptual format that is derived from sensory images. (This applies also to thinking in words.) They are internalisations of our experience of the world; what Freud called the “reality principle”.

So when we are feeling our way through a problem using thoughts, we are, as it were, feeling our way through a virtual form of reality, feeling our way through representations of reality.

The function of thinking, in this sense, stands for reality. It’s a virtual space in which we can work out, in the safety of our minds, what to do in relation to reality, before we actually put solutions into effect. In short: thoughts are interposed between feelings and actions.

Thinking and doing overlap

There is also an important overlap between thinking and doing in the world. One consequence of this overlap is that we might, in our doings in the world, avoid certain situations and certain places – for example, dizzying heights – because they make us feel something untoward (in this case, fear): “I won’t go there because I know that if I go there, I’m going to feel scared.”

That’s what the thought is doing, that is the work it performs. It guides what you do and don’t do in relation to feelings that arise from virtual actions. That’s one of the ways in which someone might develop, for example, a phobia. There are all sorts of complicated mental gymnastics that we get up to on the basis of the processes I’ve just described.

Thinking is a refinement of instinct

This leads me to the topic of instincts. We do not have to work out our own solutions to all of life’s problems on the basis of experience. In addition to what we work out for ourselves, and what our parents teach us, we also have certain in-built solutions to problems of universal biological significance.

These solutions apply to things we cannot afford to learn from experience. For example: “I wonder what will happen if I jump off this cliff?” The answer to that question would be the very last thing you learn. Thank heavens for instincts!

But there are many, many problems that cannot be predicted by evolution (what happens if you poke your finger in an electric socket, for instance) and for these problems we need to learn from experience. The in-built solutions are too general and crude.

There are more problems in the world, by far, than there are instincts. So the instincts need to be extended and elaborated, to cope with real-life situations in all their complexity. For that reason, thinking not only interposes itself between feelings (in general) and actions, but also between instinctual feelings and the automatic responses they would release. Thinking generates more nuanced action options.

So – in general – thinking develops in order for us to manage feelings (and the needs they represent) in more flexible ways than our in-built instincts provide. Thinking is a refinement of instinct.

Hi HB! Hope all is swell... I'm trying not be insulted that you didn't like my title for this thread..Just kidding! keep posting, my friend! And keep up the streak; very impressive!

Human being wrote on 07 Dec 2022 21:07:

Sorry for not reading the entire thread. Its just way toooooooooooooo long and not easy for me to follow.
I think that if your not yet married, being on the Balei batim forum wont add you any good and maybe even the opposite.
Please ask yourself if you were listing to the chusen & kala shiurim out of curiosity or just pure lust ?
Some sex addicts are sadly lusting and feeding there addiction here on GYE.
Talking about your own struggles and hearing about people that are in the same struggle as you, are very healthy, but hearing married guys struggles when you never experienced the feeling of a wife skipping mikva or alike.
time Will come b"h and you'll join us.
Meanwhile work on preparing yourself for marriage and rewire from all your fake knowledge about intimacy.
Porn is not played in the bedroom or in real life. 

doingtshuva wrote on 08 Dec 2022 01:11:

As i explained, I'm impulsive, especially sexually. The root of this is not lust, but rather immpulsivity. I'm impulsive to do things that are sexual because I have eroticized shame. So it is a mix of impulsion and desire for sexual shame.