I am starting therapy for pedophilia

Tomorrow I am going to see a psychotherapist about my pedophilia. My goal is not necessarily to change this part about me, but to hopefully expand. I am a non-exclusive homosexual pedophile/hebephile. While I am sexually attracted to both adults and children, I am worried that I am only romantically attracted to children, although I am not yet 100% sure. I have a feeling that my romantic attraction to kids has to do with emotional expression issues. Something related to avoidant personality disorder. Kids are not as emotionally threatening. I am hoping that the therapist can help me to identify certain things in my past that would have made me steer towards children. Hopefully if I can identify those things and continually work on them, then I will one day be able to form a romantic relationship with an adult.

I'm glad that you're looking to get better - it's a start. I don't have any of the "issues" that you have (in quotations as issues, in a sense, are not issues as nobody is perfectly normal). I have many problems with myself, and I'm working to get better as well.

Good luck!

mazeoflife wrote:I am hoping that the therapist can help me to identify certain things in my past that would have made me steer towards children.

Your therapist may also ask you to put the past behind you and forget about it...

rainbowstar wrote:Your therapist may also ask you to put the past behind you and forget about it...

There isn't a therapist worthy of the title on this planet who would say that.

Any therapist worth his/her salt will look for things in the patients past that their SUBCONSCIOUS can't put in the past and forget about.

Then... rather than tell them to forget about it, they'll work on helping the patient to live with it and move their lives on positively.

Guys, there is no such thing as therapy for pedophilia in America. It's all forensic now. I would have recommended against this move had I seen this comment earlier. Unless you are being required to attend by the powers that be, I would strongly recommend against this. In the past twenty years, psychologists have been compromised. Frankly, I have spoken with very few who have the slightest inkling as to what is really going on here. American psychology is dead. It has gone the way of liberalism. Both have died long since.

Graveyard76 wrote:

rainbowstar wrote:Your therapist may also ask you to put the past behind you and forget about it...

There isn't a therapist worthy of the title on this planet who would say that.

Any therapist worth his/her salt will look for things in the patients past that their SUBCONSCIOUS can't put in the past and forget about.

Then... rather than tell them to forget about it, they'll work on helping the patient to live with it and move their lives on positively.

In Non-Violent Communication and Compassionate Communication it's a dictum that: "We don't think much about the past"; or for spiritual counselors like Tolle: "I don't have much use for the past". Least of all would NVC have any use for a made-up abstraction like the "subconscious". Person centered psychologies and also Gestalt therapy make an issue of staying in the here and now and not drifting off into what was.

Anyone who discounts the subconscious mind, and our pasts contributing to who and what we are today, is either being wilfully ignorant, or just doesn't understand what some people have to go through.

Seriously. How much easier would life be for people who've gone through all sorts of crap, if they could just selectively edit their personal history?

Graveyard76 wrote:Anyone who discounts the subconscious mind, and our pasts contributing to who and what we are today, is either being wilfully ignorant, or just doesn't understand what some people have to go through.

Seriously. How much easier would life be for people who've gone through all sorts of crap, if they could just selectively edit their personal history?

That addiction to the idea of a self identity is one of the hardest addictions to overcome; it's incredibly liberating to let that go.

You think people should shed their self identity? Really?

Have you heard of Zen?