Why Listening to Our Sexual Kinks is Beneficial for Our Mental Health.

Have you ever discovered that you had a sexual fantasy or preference you really didn’t want to accept?

Have you ever caught yourself being turned on by situations that went against your ideas of right and wrong? This experience can be unsettling, but it is much more common than we think. We are, more often than we would like to admit, turned on by fantasies and practices that aren’t necessarily in alignment with our ideas, convictions or even values.

Or, in short, we often would like to do things in the bedroom that we would never do in “regular,” everyday life.

So why are our sexual and non-sexual behaviors often so different?

We all have convictions, values systems, political ideologies, and all sorts of opinions. But a large part of our psyche, the so-called subconscious operates on a different, more primal level. This powerful part of ourselves understands pleasure, pain, fear, desire, but not elaborate concepts and ideologies.

Our subconscious, in other words, doesn’t give a damn about being “politically correct.”

Our subconscious is also largely responsible for the content of our dreams. Now, if we regularly have unpleasant, violent or degrading dreams, that probably means that something in our subconscious is not aligned with other parts of our psyche—a signal worth paying attention to.

But wouldn’t it be pointless to blame ourselves for having dreams that conflict with our conscious views and beliefs? Or to ask our subconscious to just shut up? We have a much better chance of restoring harmony by instead letting our subconscious express itself, which we can do by listening to our dreams, writing them down, analyzing them, and so on.

This same approach of listening to our subconscious and letting it talk is also valid with sexual fantasies or kinks. Our sexual fantasies send us powerful messages about the content of our subconscious, and ignoring these messages or trying to repress them isn’t generally helpful.

We are much better off letting these kinks and fantasies speak, looking honestly at them and, within the limits of self-respect and respect for others, acting them out. A key factor when we allow ourselves to openly express our “kinks” is consent: if we are going to have any sexual interaction with someone else, everyone needs to be fully aware and willing to participate.

Continue reading the full article on the Elephant Journal.

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