𝚅𝚊𝚛𝚕𝚞𝚜 on Nostr: I had scary/intense turn ons as a kid/teen. I thought I was uniquely fucked, thinking ...

I had scary/intense turn ons as a kid/teen. I thought I was uniquely fucked, thinking those fantasies made me a bad person. Already thinking I was a bad person made it easy to excuse abusive tendencies because "being abusive is inevitable anyway". It made me tolerate some forms of abuse because "I deserved to be treated poorly for those abusive behaviors".

Punishment based thinking did not prevent me from abusing others, it just made me more likely to accept being abused myself. Instead of actually learning to understand my turn ons, learning to communicate those desires, learning to regulate my behavior, any of that, I simply accepted I was doomed to be terrible. That the only "correct" way to deal with me was to give me a taste of my own medicine. Until I largely isolated, because I didn't know what else to do to protect myself/others from myself.

Punishment based thinking perpetuated abuse and offered no solution for how to improve.