Does suppressing sexual fantasies and urges simply not work?
Let”s say you have sexual fantasies about things you shouldn”t do or about people who are unavailable. When do sexual fantasies occur to you and what do you do with them?
Contents of the article:
One of the most common responses people give to unwanted thoughts is to actively suppress them. This may work in the short term as a means of reducing the number of such thoughts, but unfortunately it is not a very effective strategy for clearing them from your mind. You”ll find that this kind of thought suppression will simply make you think about it more in the long run.
Sexual fantasies come true?!
Read also: Are our sexual fantasies related to personality traits?
Dr. Lechmiller studied the sexual fantasies of more than 4, 000 Americans for the book Tell Me What You Want. Fantasies that people report. That”s why.
There is a lot of psychology research that supports the idea of a “rebound effect” after thought suppression. In a nutshell, the less you think about something, the more similar topics pop into your head. A new experiment published in the journal Sexsexresearch clearly shows that repressed thoughts constantly appear in the conscious and subconscious mind.
Three large studies have compared the extent to which sexual thoughts stand out among religious and non-religious teenagers in Israel. The results showed that secular teenagers who constantly had sexual thoughts and fantasies ended up being much less concerned about the topic than religious youth, and carefully suppressed such desires.
So avoidance and suppression are ways that simply don”t work in this context. And the results tell us that avoidance is not a productive or healthy way to deal with unwanted sexual thoughts.
