How to overcome shame of past actions?

This is the first time I've ever told anyone about this.

Basically I had this fetish which I haven't indulged properly for over 4 years, but to this day I still carry the weight of my past actions....

I developed a fetish in my teens, I'm not sure how it developed or when exactly. The fetish is for smelling a girls anus especially if it's a bit dirty. While that may sound funny to some, this use to drive me into a wild frenzy of lust at the thought and fantasy of it.

I didn't have any outlet for this activity except fantasy, so at some point I figured that I could finally live it out to some degree by just finding some girl somewhere and bending down and sniffing her butt in public basically. I did this several times, maybe 10 times or more. Sometimes pretending to drop something and then while picking it up I'd sniff her butt.

I'm deeply ashamed of this to this day. I stopped all of this 4 years ago and would never do it again, but back then I was out of control. I'm finding it hard to this day to understand how I could have done this. I mean I'm a normal guy apart from having done this stuff... I can't seem to rectify my past actions and my current self. I keep getting flashbacks and part of me still feels like a monster/crazy-low-life-pervert for doing that stuff. I can't believe the sneakiness of it... it's completely contradictory to my normal and present self.

How can I put this behind me?

Maybe by accepting that you're human? And that being sensible, responsible and moral. Can easily co exist with being sneaky and creepy. That you are still a "normal" guy even having done what you did. "Normal" is a vastly over rated term IMO.

You're not a monster. You're a fetishist not a pervert. I don't like using those words of anyone. Because people DO do out of character things. [Just check out all the religious people / politicians / others who get caught out doing "abnormal" things.] And in terms of harm to others. This was very very low on the scale.

Is the difficulty that you're not sure how to trust yourself? That at the time you convinced yourself that this was reasonable. But now you see it differently?

People do what we do in response to feelings and in persute of needs.

What feelings and needs were alive in you at that time?

http://www.rabe.org/downloads/Feelings% ... tories.pdf

Who said you had to be perfect and not make mistakes? Humans are imperfect, and we all make mistakes that we wish we could take back.

But we can't, can we? Time travel doesn't exist..we can't go back and fix it, no matter how hard you try, your past will always be there. But it will only bother you if you let it. There's no reason to stress yourself out about it when there's absolutely nothing you can do to fix it. All you can do is change how you act in the future, which you say you haven't done anything for four years. So there is no reason to hold on to all the guilt you have.

I gather from your post that none of the women involved in your fetish activity were aware of what you were doing, so they weren't harmed. You yourself, however, have suffered the unfortunate consequences of shame and guilt.

There is this important fact about fetishes: We fetishists did not choose our fetishes. They came to us unbidden, most likely when we were very young and probably unaware of any aspect of sexuality except perhaps to understand that boys and girls are different. If we are fortunate, we can control our actions to the extent that no one complains about us, and that is exactly what your situation is.

It seems to me that self-forgiveness is possible when you recognize that you are in charge of your actions and that you have taken steps to avoid the behaviour that troubles you and in fact could get you in serious trouble if you were to repeat it. But who among us hasn't done something that we regret, and have never repeated, and never will repeat? We could continue to shame ourselves, but there is ample room for self-congratulation, too.

Your fetish is not evidence of perversion or mental illness. It's a sexual activity that is not common, but I can assure you that some of my fetishes are even less common, and even further outside what society considers to be "normal" behaviour. But fetishes cannot be classified as "good" or "bad". They are simply aspects of our personality that we have to deal with. They may cause us a lot of personal anxiety and shame, but far worse things happen every day on this benighted planet.

Other