Hello everyone, Just wanted to gauge how you all manage to keep yourself in a good mental place with all this going on with your body. Let’s face it, it’s incredibly demoralising. I find that I’m ok when I don’t think of it, but if I see something that triggers it, I can be on a downer. It’s funny how in this day and age things like bodyshaming are really not appreciated, but it feels like in tv shows or movies if someone has ED it is always treated like a big joke. I seen a post on Twitter recently where a girl said the worst thing you can do is “develop feelings for someone before you sleep with them and then you find out they have ED,” and basically all the comments were laughing emojis and people saying they feel sorry for her.
Hi I see that no one replied to your post in February. You are right, of course, that ED is treated like a joke in tv shows, movies and the social media. You called your thread mental health, and the reason must be that you find that your ED and the reactions that people have to it are really unhelpful for your mental health. We all have a self-image of ourselves, and very many people lack self-esteem. They feel that they are too fat or that they are stupid or that they are ugly. I am very successful professionally but have always had imposter syndrome, in other words thinking that actually I am no good and just lucky. And then there is ED. I wrote a piece under Porn Addiction called The Truth about Porn and ED to try to explain to myself why there is a link between porn and ED. And of course having ED damages one's self image. It makes it difficult to look for a partner or to explain to a partner if you have it. I guess it depends how badly you are affected. The psychiatrist Aaron Beck invented cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and he argues that the fundamental reason for depression is negative thoughts (for example a poor self-image). If your mental health is genuinely badly affected, why not read Feeling Good by David Burns, a manual on CBT. Just reading the book has been found to be helpful in dealing with negative thoughts.
