Not going to offer many details on the where or how, as I don’t intend to dox myself, but suffice it to say that I will continue touching butts for an extended period. I don’t like feeling aroused by the act. These people placed trust in me. Trust that I mean them no harm and that I am safe to be around. I can certainly be both while aroused, but I’d rather not have to deal with this.
I’d prefer not to dissociate through work, but I can’t find another way to contextualize my experiences in a way that doesn’t leave me frustrated until I get home.
As an asexual person, my flabber is so gasted reading through these comments. I truly have never even considered that any of this is a possibility.
Anyway, good luck I guess OP. Now I will proceed with my life with even more anxiety about having humans touch me.
That’s gotta feel like being a fish, unaware of the water around you.
Don’t worry it’s mostly harmless reactions. Like feeling hungry when you see someone with a bacon sandwich. You wouldn’t steal that person’s bacon. That person’s bacon is safe from you. But damn if you’re not hungry now.
Edit : some people would steal that bacon. But people who would actually do that don’t usually last long.
We aren’t really socialized to have uncomplicated unsexual fondness for butts, etc, so take comfort that most people would struggle in your position, and that socialization is something that can change with time in it right environment. As long as you cultivate the right social setting at work, you probably don’t need to make any big changes, since those will happen with time.
Alternatively, you could pivot to other butt touching career, but that’s a decision best made with your partner.
Think about preventing repetitive stress disorders.
Nothing shuts down the sinful thoughts* quite like OSHA regulations.
(*not actually sinful)
That would certainly help my posture, during. I’m using this one immediately. I just hope it doesn’t ripple elsewhere
Time. It just takes time.
I washed bodies and wiped butts for twenty years. Most of the time, my patients were not on my radar anyway, as I’m hetero and the vast majority were men. Among the women, I’d say 3/4ths were elderly enough that they were well beyond my upper range even now that I’m middle aged.
But there were a few, in the early years, that were very attractive. Of equal or more importance, when I transitioned to home health instead of facility care, family members of patients would sometimes not only be attractive, but assume that I was perfectly safe to be naked around, or even request contact that would be considered intimate to some degree or another.
It really, truly, didn’t take long for my inner switch to just stay in the off position at work. By the time I was thirty, I had family members of patients outright put moves on me and it would take multiple attempts for me to notice because my switch in my brain said that work time is work time, not happy penis time.
It did take seeing a goodly double handful of goodly handfuls before I adapted though. Butt, if your job requires more frequent contact with bodies you’d be attracted to, it’ll happen faster than it did for me in terms of time. More exposure to the experience starts dialing down the sexuality of it. Oh, you might find some arousal on occasion even after years, but it’ll be occasional and you’ll develop the ability to ignore it.
Short term, it’s the same as any stressor you face at work. Identify it, control your breathing as you accept its presence in your mind, and allow that control to filter it out. And it will. It’s a basic meditation technique that’s infallible assuming the ability to breathe with control, and enough practice. The more you control your breathing, the more control gets spread to the rest of you.
Possibly it might help to accept that your conflict is not unusual, professionalism is an attempt to limit the chaos of human thought into a narrow channel but it is only an attempt. Understanding that emotions from arousal to repulsion are natural and have evolved specifically to overcome attempts to suppress them is important. Expectation and acceptance of errant thoughts is a way to nullify their potency and manage their weight on your actions. Those thoughts that flit in and out of your mind are in the minds of everyone around you, and always have been and were in the minds of the owners of those butts. The chaos does not escape our minds not because it is not there but because it does not fit into the world we have made. This essential goodness of fit to the world of a conscious well mind is what limits the stream of unlimited options coming unrelented from the subconscious.
One time I did see one patient that was exceptionally attractive so I just kinda shoved it down for a while. I did have a bizarre dream (don’t remember any of the details other than that it involved that patient and was bizarre). Then I had to clean their bathroom real fast when they had to move rooms and I no longer found them attractive. Problem solved. Dunno if that helps in your situation. Maybe look into more about how intimacy coordinators in the TV/Film industryhandle things? They gotta handle people who are actually like. HOT.
Kinda feels like you need to find something else to do, if I’m being honest. If you can’t push it aside, then you are getting sexual gratification in a non-consensual way.
I mean, I can and have pushed it aside. I’d just rather have to push nothing, if you follow my meaning.
Fair enough, and honestly it’s to your credit that it bothers you. If it keeps happening, it might be worth talking to a therapist, or a supervisor if your field has that kind of support. This is aparently common enough in hands on professions that there’s guidance on it. And if it never eases up, it’s okay to decide the job isn’t the right fit.
