Stuffed animals: an underrated strategy
Yeah I’m fr lol let’s go
This works on a lot of levels so it’s important to understand all of the mechanics here. The first paragraph is gonna be about the immediate effect of a stuffed animal and the second is more psychological in nature, connecting to your trauma, history, and deeper needs
So first, what can a stuffed animal do for you, right here, right now? I propose that having one around can help with occupying your mind so that you don’t end up jerking off out of boredom. That, in my experience tends to be a major reason for undesired relapses, just this agony of not being able to sleep yet also not really having anything to do. Stuffed animals are really fun and you can do all sorts of things with them. Talk to them, nuzzle them, pet them, really do whatever :P. And another aspect too is that you can use a stuffed animal as a kind of silent partner in your journey. Tell it about your goals and it will listen. Its mere presence will be a reminder of what you want to achieve and what ideals you’ve set for yourself. I think even if you don’t explicitly set this as a core tenet of your practice having a stuffed animal nonetheless makes it harder to be as uncontrolled as you were before because there’s this sense of it being another presence in your bed. That too there’s this association of its smallness with childishness and well, you wouldn’t want to jerk off in front of a kid, right? And there’s also the sense that the stuffed animal will get lonely if it sees you right next to it while you don’t seem to care for it at all. Even if these aren’t actually natural effects, I’ve just made them hyperstitional effects through talking about them should you want to go through with this practice. Bwahahahahahahaha
Then there’s the layer of what a stuffed animal can do in terms of resolving the deeper problems that made you an addict in the first place. Lots of you likely struggle with loneliness and acute touch starvation. Having a stuffed animal around can help you not just through providing actual affective contact, but also through making yourself aware of your own body, its own boundaries and movements. Masturbation can be this really insidious thing where you feel like it fills your entire being with love and connection. When, in reality the only thing you’re touching is your genitals, everything else remaining neglected. There’s also a sense of psychological regression that you can get with a stuffed animal, one that’s in fact quite desirable. I think generally the rhetoric around this sort of movement is that it helps you grow into being a real man or something. But, equally important I think is connecting with your inner child, that part of you that was left behind with the intrusion of pornography into your life. So, in this respect it’s about allowing yourself to be small again, to remove pressure and to return to an earlier, more innocent state of being, even if only temporarily. Wherever you’ve kept them, your stuffed animals are still there, waiting for you to bring them out again. They will be ready when you are willing to accept them into your life, to grant yourself that sense of joy
So, will you give yourself the pleasure? You might see this post as overly idealistic. Perhaps, I’m just a stupid sensitive trxnny. But hey, if nothing else works, you might as well cuddle your stuffed animal and cry into it. That’s what I’m going to do. See ya!