Sexualising Negative Emotions Is a Way To Cope With Them

As an introduction to this post I’d like to state that one should be really careful when analyzing sex as the complexities of this domain often shift in unpredictable ways.

The Psychology of Sexual Fantasies

What’s your secret sexual fantasy?

Is it one where you are being dominated?

Or are you the one who dominates?

Maybe it’s something in public, or maybe it’s a need to lose control while having sex.

No matter what your fantasy is, the truth is that we all seek compensation through our fantasies. And many of us are sexualizing our negative emotions, as a way of coping with them.

Let me put it in simple terms. We have all experienced negative emotions like anger, fear, shame and guilt. But often, when we do, our brain tries to find ways to cope with them, because after all, those negative emotions are making us feel unpleasant.

One way our brain does this, is by wanting to run away from those feelings. Running away from your feelings can look like overcommitment at work, it can look like being obsessive with the order of things around you, it can look like an innocent glass of wine with friends, and another one, and another one. In other words it can look like any substance or behavior that will make us “forget”.

Another thing my brain does to run away from negative emotions, is to make me want to scuba dive.

And now you might ask, how is this relevant to my sexual fantasies? Well, you see I had this fear of dark waters since I was a kid. I use to look at the sea and when it was sandy and clear, everything was fine. But when I was looking at the sea and the waters were dark, I use to feel fear, and I didn’t know why.

Your brain is using sex to replace pain with pleasure

So I tried scuba diving in an attempt to overcome that fear. And you see that in many people, for example, who are scared of heights and try skydiving as a way to move past their fear. More and more psychologists even suggest that most dare-devil activities are often undertaken as a denial of the fears attached to them.

This is what we call “counterphobic reaction”, which is basically a response to a negative emotion that instead of running away from it, you run towards it, actively seeking it out, in the hope that you’ll overcome the original negative emotion.

And what this does is that it triggers a response called “reaction formation”, where we start to enjoy the activity we threw ourselves into, in order to overcome our negative emotions.

So this activity, the one we use to be scared of, now becomes associated with a positive effect. And when we associate something that was unpleasant, with a new experience, that is pleasant, then we eliminate the previous patterns of negative effect.

Me, for example, I certainly enjoy scuba diving and I’m not afraid of dark waters anymore, because of the positive association I made of a fun day out with friends and exploring something new in an environment I use to be fearful of.

In other words: Our mind is always looking for ways to replace Pain with Pleasure.

And that’s the exact same process we follow when we -subconsciously- want to overcome negative emotions through sex.

Sexual expression of anger

Let’s see an example and talk about anger, since anger is such a powerful emotion that all of us have felt, and that is often linked with sexual behaviour.

When we are young and we experience things like rejection, bullying, or even lack of affection from our caregivers, this may lead to intense feelings of anger. And as we explained above, we might try a subconscious strategy of sexualising anger in order to cope with it. Some, for example, might masturbate with certain fantasies or want to have sex when they experience a similar level of emotional intensity, such as when they are angry. That’s an attempt of making anger more bearable thought a pleasurable process.

Sexual expression of fear

Fear is another example, and fear may be sexualised by risky behaviour while having sex. Like having sex outdoors for example where one can be caught. Again, it’s the same process of running toward the feeling that makes you feel unpleasant, in an attempt to overcome it by making it feel pleasurable.

Sexual expression of guilt

Shame is another negative emotion we tend to sexualize, where many of us form sexual scenarios that can be traced back to our early age when certain events made us feel shame. For example, people who have this irresistible urge for sex, this compulsion, have some sort of shame they usually try to overcome through that behavior.

The non pathology of sexuality

Just a note here, there’s no need to feel any guilts if you have felt this way. There’s no need to feel that something is wrong with you if your fantasies or your sexual life have these traits. Sexualising negative emotions is not a pathological process and it should not be associated with any pathology. It’s just a way your brain has to make unpleasant feelings more bearable.

Also, sexualising negative emotions should not be associated with sex offenders. Sex offenders are driven by other factors as well, such as sociopathy.

And on that note, enjoy the process of sexualising your emotions as much as you can! Hit subscribe if you liked that video and click the bell icon be notified when my next video is up.

I’m Dimitris and I share insights and tools on how to design a well-lived life.

And don’t forget to always question, everything (but leave some space for transcendental sex!)