Questions on Resolving Trauma and Sexual Fetish

For most of my life I have had a sexual fetish for women with big bellies also known as pregnancy fetishism and fat fetishism. For context I am a 24 year old male. I know that this fetish has its origins as an early childhood trauma response of mine that had somehow turned a neutral body part into something of a sexual symbol in my mind. This fetish has been a mostly negative psychosexual experience not due to rejection of it but simply because of the limiting effect that it has had on my sexual psychology to an unhealthy and damaging degree. For most of my life I could only ever get sexually aroused to this fetish. Because of this it has played a part in preventing me from having normative sexual attraction in my teenage years and has had a part in preventing the forming of intimate relationships that I could have had as a teenager and young adult. This inner block, this trauma within me is something I would very much like to heal and resolve so that I can come to a much healthier place sexually and psychologically.

I can remember at what point in my life when this fetish was formed. This psychosexual fixation was originally formed in my psychology between the ages of 3 and 4 years old. At the time my household was a very stressful environment. During this time my parents’ marriage began to start to deteriorate and the two them having intense arguments was a regular occurrence that I can vividly remember. Additionally my older cousin who was 19 at the time was living with us due to issues with her immediate family and she was pregnant at the time. And to top things off my grandmother was living with us as well as she had recently had a stroke and was being cared for by my mother. I did not have my own room at the time. There was always a lot of stress and tension in our home due to the many issues that I listed. At the time this was not an optimal environment for the fragile psychology of a 3 year old to be living in. However these circumstances persisted for over a year and a half. I believe that it was in this stressful environment that created a trauma in my developing child psychology that would have something to do with the formation of the fetish.

Now that I have described the stressful environment that I was living in when this fetish formed I want to go into the things I believe contributed to the formation of the fetish. I spent a lot of time around my older cousin. I would talk with her a lot and watch TV with her often. I remember I was fascinated by her pregnant belly and the fact that there was a small human in there growing. At the same time I also remember being disturbed and somewhat scared at the notion. For my 3 year old mind at the time there was something very incomprehensible about the notion and idea of pregnancy. I remember when I would touch her belly I would feel a combination of fascination and disturbance. Although I do not remember any negativity from her, I when I think back to the time I was around her it does not evoke positive feelings. Additionally at the time my mother had significant digestive issues the primary one was severe bloating. I will explain why this is relevant in a bit.

Because my household was a stressful environment at the time I remember I would always turn towards either my mom or my cousin for safety and security. They were always kind to me and made me feel comforted no matter how turbulent things got. The thing is both of them had distended bellies most of the time during this period of my life; my mom with severe bloating and my cousin with her pregnancy. My current best guess (and please feel free to tell me if I’m wrong) is that during all of the intense arguing and stress that was going on in my home at the time it was too much for my developing child mind to handle and thus my body mind complex had a trauma response to all of it. And so somehow the two people who I went to for safety and comfort were mixed into that trauma response as they offered a sort of “safe haven” from it all. My child mind latched onto them as symbols of safety and somehow a specific part of their bodies, their bellies became imprinted as a symbol of safety and security in my developing mind. I’m not sure of the exact origin of the fetish as I do not know exactly how a big belly on a woman became objectified, sexualized and ultimately fetishized in my developing mind but it is the best estimation that I have. This is the part of understanding this fetish and its formation that I feel is missing. I know that it is a result of a trauma response and trauma is not always overt most of the time it is subtle. I also know that it is a coping mechanism that has something to do with love and safety and that I have been subconsciously using it for a kind emotional regulation. I just wish that I knew what exactly caused my young mind to symbolize and sexualize bellies into a fetish.

After the situation in my home improved the fetish went dormant in my mind for years until I entered puberty and hormones and sexual impulses started to emerge. And it was in my early teens that I began to sexually engage with the fetish. I knew from the very beginning that this was atypical in a negative way; that the overwhelming majority of guys do not get sexually excited to this. However I did not have any awareness to do anything about it until 2018. In 2018 I decided to make an effort to stop relying on this fetish for sexual pleasure and to instead be able to be sexually turned on more by physically fit women, women in skimpy clothing, bikinis ,etc.; basically more typical things that would sexually arouse the average male. And so I went about reconditioning my psychosexual neural pathways in this way and after about a year and a half of doing so it was a great success to the point where today I can orgasm to normal non-fetishistic stimulation. I can finally get sexually aroused to what the majority of men would agree is typically sexually attractive.

However there is one thing that has still not been resolved. Ever since the formation of this fetish I have had a kind of physical and emotional tension within me. I would like to make it clear that this tension is NOT sexual. And even though now I am able to be sexually aroused by more normal non-fetishistic content I still have this tension within me. This physical / emotional tension in my body is strange in that can only be relieved when I sexually engage with and orgasm to this belly fetish. Before puberty this tension was so faint that it was barely noticeable but whenever I saw a pregnant woman or a woman with a big belly I would feel it. And after puberty when I would exclusively use the fetish to orgasm the tension was there but was in the background. Now however that I orgasm to non-fetishistic content and I don’t use the fetish frequently I can feel this mysterious tension build up and it is a sensation that has been consistent. It is not pleasant. This tension usually takes about a month to build up and the only thing that seems to relieve it is engaging with the fetish. I know that this cycle of building up of tension and release through the fetish will continue to arise within me until I resolve the trauma that initially created this fetish in my mind in the first place.

The reason I know that the fetish is an emotional regulation coping mechanism is because ever since puberty whenever a significantly negative event has happened in my life I have used the fetish as a means to reassure me that life will be ok. (And yes I know that people use masturbation as stress relief all the time, that’s not what I’m talking about.) Even though for almost two years now I have been getting arousal and been able to orgasm to more normal non-fetishistic stimulation it does not serve to calm me down when emotionally stressed. It only serves as a sexual pleasure release. It is only when I engage the fetish that I am able to be very quickly calmed and reassured during times of significant stress. I am not completely sure why this is but I assume that it has something to do with the association that my child mind made between my mom and my cousin (both of them having distended bellies at the time) being symbols for love, safety and security. I literally do not find my fetish sexually attractive anymore ever since I have reconditioned my neurology to be aroused towards non-fetishistic stimulation. It does not turn me on. In fact when I think about it it’s normally a turn off for me since now I gain arousal from more typical stuff. Also I don’t use the fetish unless I am under emotional stress or am using it as a mechanism to release that physical emotional tension that I described earlier. These are the only times that I engage with the belly fetish it because it seems like release through the fetish is the only way that those tensions will be released from my body and nervous system.

I want to make it clear that I am in no way saying that sexuality should ever be repressed or denied. It exists to be expressed. I am not a religious person and would never agree with repressing sexuality. Sexual energy is extremely powerful and its expression is a healthy thing. However if it is being expressed in a way that hurts yourself or anyone else in any way then the damaging way that it is being expressed must be addressed and resolved. In my case my fetish while I believe it to be a trauma response meant to protect my younger psychology in some way it has been primarily detrimental to my psychosexual health for the past 10 years. As I stated earlier it has prevented me from having normative sexual attraction in my teenage years and has had a part in preventing the forming of intimate relationships that I could have had as a teen and young adult simply because I could almost only get significantly sexually aroused to fetishistic stimulation until about two years ago. Before that I only ever could get sexually aroused primarily to fetish content. It bothers me that I could only ever orgasm to pregnant or bloated women until I reconditioned my neural pathways to be able to become sexually aroused to more standard sexual stimulation. I have only been able to experience a mostly normal sexual arousal response for 2 years out of the 24 years of my life. This fetish in my sexual psychology limits how I have perceived sexual arousal to that of partialism and objectification, instead of being sexually aroused by the whole person in a more encompassing way. This hurts and while I have made progress and am in a much better place sexually now, than I was before I started sexual reconditioning back in 2018; I still need to discover, heal and resolve the trauma that caused my mind to create the fetish in the first place so that I can permanently relieve this physical and emotional tension within me that I have lived with for the past 20 years and so that I can finally have a completely normal healthy sexual psychology.

I have thought about going to see a sex therapist or a trauma therapist in order to resolve this. I have gone to therapy in the past for prior depression so I am not at all averse to the idea of going to sexual therapy or trauma therapy. If anyone knows of any books, websites, or other resources of information on the subject of how sexual fetishes can relate to trauma and psychosexual development and how one can resolve them in a healthy and holistic way please let me know. Additionally if this post would fit better in another subreddit please let me know as well. Thanks for reading, any advice or insight is appreciated.

Submitted May 30, 2021 at 12:07AM

For most of my life I have had a sexual fetish for women with big bellies also known as pregnancy fetishism and fat fetishism. For context I am a 24 year old male. I know that this fetish has its origins as an early childhood trauma response of mine that had somehow turned a neutral body part into something of a sexual symbol in my mind. This fetish has been a mostly negative psychosexual experience not due to rejection of it but simply because of the limiting effect that it has had on my sexual psychology to an unhealthy and damaging degree. For most of my life I could only ever get sexually aroused to this fetish. Because of this it has played a part in preventing me from having normative sexual attraction in my teenage years and has had a part in preventing the forming of intimate relationships that I could have had as a teenager and young adult. This inner block, this trauma within me is something I would very much like to heal and resolve so that I can come to a much healthier place sexually and psychologically.I can remember at what point in my life when this fetish was formed. This psychosexual fixation was originally formed in my psychology between the ages of 3 and 4 years old. At the time my household was a very stressful environment. During this time my parents’ marriage began to start to deteriorate and the two them having intense arguments was a regular occurrence that I can vividly remember. Additionally my older cousin who was 19 at the time was living with us due to issues with her immediate family and she was pregnant at the time. And to top things off my grandmother was living with us as well as she had recently had a stroke and was being cared for by my mother. I did not have my own room at the time. There was always a lot of stress and tension in our home due to the many issues that I listed. At the time this was not an optimal environment for the fragile psychology of a 3 year old to be living in. However these circumstances persisted for over a year and a half. I believe that it was in this stressful environment that created a trauma in my developing child psychology that would have something to do with the formation of the fetish.Now that I have described the stressful environment that I was living in when this fetish formed I want to go into the things I believe contributed to the formation of the fetish. I spent a lot of time around my older cousin. I would talk with her a lot and watch TV with her often. I remember I was fascinated by her pregnant belly and the fact that there was a small human in there growing. At the same time I also remember being disturbed and somewhat scared at the notion. For my 3 year old mind at the time there was something very incomprehensible about the notion and idea of pregnancy. I remember when I would touch her belly I would feel a combination of fascination and disturbance. Although I do not remember any negativity from her, I when I think back to the time I was around her it does not evoke positive feelings. Additionally at the time my mother had significant digestive issues the primary one was severe bloating. I will explain why this is relevant in a bit.Because my household was a stressful environment at the time I remember I would always turn towards either my mom or my cousin for safety and security. They were always kind to me and made me feel comforted no matter how turbulent things got. The thing is both of them had distended bellies most of the time during this period of my life; my mom with severe bloating and my cousin with her pregnancy. My current best guess (and please feel free to tell me if I’m wrong) is that during all of the intense arguing and stress that was going on in my home at the time it was too much for my developing child mind to handle and thus my body mind complex had a trauma response to all of it. And so somehow the two people who I went to for safety and comfort were mixed into that trauma response as they offered a sort of “safe haven” from it all. My child mind latched onto them as symbols of safety and somehow a specific part of their bodies, their bellies became imprinted as a symbol of safety and security in my developing mind. I’m not sure of the exact origin of the fetish as I do not know exactly how a big belly on a woman became objectified, sexualized and ultimately fetishized in my developing mind but it is the best estimation that I have. This is the part of understanding this fetish and its formation that I feel is missing. I know that it is a result of a trauma response and trauma is not always overt most of the time it is subtle. I also know that it is a coping mechanism that has something to do with love and safety and that I have been subconsciously using it for a kind emotional regulation. I just wish that I knew what exactly caused my young mind to symbolize and sexualize bellies into a fetish.After the situation in my home improved the fetish went dormant in my mind for years until I entered puberty and hormones and sexual impulses started to emerge. And it was in my early teens that I began to sexually engage with the fetish. I knew from the very beginning that this was atypical in a negative way; that the overwhelming majority of guys do not get sexually excited to this. However I did not have any awareness to do anything about it until 2018. In 2018 I decided to make an effort to stop relying on this fetish for sexual pleasure and to instead be able to be sexually turned on more by physically fit women, women in skimpy clothing, bikinis ,etc.; basically more typical things that would sexually arouse the average male. And so I went about reconditioning my psychosexual neural pathways in this way and after about a year and a half of doing so it was a great success to the point where today I can orgasm to normal non-fetishistic stimulation. I can finally get sexually aroused to what the majority of men would agree is typically sexually attractive.However there is one thing that has still not been resolved. Ever since the formation of this fetish I have had a kind of physical and emotional tension within me. I would like to make it clear that this tension is NOT sexual. And even though now I am able to be sexually aroused by more normal non-fetishistic content I still have this tension within me. This physical / emotional tension in my body is strange in that can only be relieved when I sexually engage with and orgasm to this belly fetish. Before puberty this tension was so faint that it was barely noticeable but whenever I saw a pregnant woman or a woman with a big belly I would feel it. And after puberty when I would exclusively use the fetish to orgasm the tension was there but was in the background. Now however that I orgasm to non-fetishistic content and I don’t use the fetish frequently I can feel this mysterious tension build up and it is a sensation that has been consistent. It is not pleasant. This tension usually takes about a month to build up and the only thing that seems to relieve it is engaging with the fetish. I know that this cycle of building up of tension and release through the fetish will continue to arise within me until I resolve the trauma that initially created this fetish in my mind in the first place.The reason I know that the fetish is an emotional regulation coping mechanism is because ever since puberty whenever a significantly negative event has happened in my life I have used the fetish as a means to reassure me that life will be ok. (And yes I know that people use masturbation as stress relief all the time, that’s not what I’m talking about.) Even though for almost two years now I have been getting arousal and been able to orgasm to more normal non-fetishistic stimulation it does not serve to calm me down when emotionally stressed. It only serves as a sexual pleasure release. It is only when I engage the fetish that I am able to be very quickly calmed and reassured during times of significant stress. I am not completely sure why this is but I assume that it has something to do with the association that my child mind made between my mom and my cousin (both of them having distended bellies at the time) being symbols for love, safety and security. I literally do not find my fetish sexually attractive anymore ever since I have reconditioned my neurology to be aroused towards non-fetishistic stimulation. It does not turn me on. In fact when I think about it it’s normally a turn off for me since now I gain arousal from more typical stuff. Also I don’t use the fetish unless I am under emotional stress or am using it as a mechanism to release that physical emotional tension that I described earlier. These are the only times that I engage with the belly fetish it because it seems like release through the fetish is the only way that those tensions will be released from my body and nervous system.I want to make it clear that I am in no way saying that sexuality should ever be repressed or denied. It exists to be expressed. I am not a religious person and would never agree with repressing sexuality. Sexual energy is extremely powerful and its expression is a healthy thing. However if it is being expressed in a way that hurts yourself or anyone else in any way then the damaging way that it is being expressed must be addressed and resolved. In my case my fetish while I believe it to be a trauma response meant to protect my younger psychology in some way it has been primarily detrimental to my psychosexual health for the past 10 years. As I stated earlier it has prevented me from having normative sexual attraction in my teenage years and has had a part in preventing the forming of intimate relationships that I could have had as a teen and young adult simply because I could almost only get significantly sexually aroused to fetishistic stimulation until about two years ago. Before that I only ever could get sexually aroused primarily to fetish content. It bothers me that I could only ever orgasm to pregnant or bloated women until I reconditioned my neural pathways to be able to become sexually aroused to more standard sexual stimulation. I have only been able to experience a mostly normal sexual arousal response for 2 years out of the 24 years of my life. This fetish in my sexual psychology limits how I have perceived sexual arousal to that of partialism and objectification, instead of being sexually aroused by the whole person in a more encompassing way. This hurts and while I have made progress and am in a much better place sexually now, than I was before I started sexual reconditioning back in 2018; I still need to discover, heal and resolve the trauma that caused my mind to create the fetish in the first place so that I can permanently relieve this physical and emotional tension within me that I have lived with for the past 20 years and so that I can finally have a completely normal healthy sexual psychology.I have thought about going to see a sex therapist or a trauma therapist in order to resolve this. I have gone to therapy in the past for prior depression so I am not at all averse to the idea of going to sexual therapy or trauma therapy. If anyone knows of any books, websites, or other resources of information on the subject of how sexual fetishes can relate to trauma and psychosexual development and how one can resolve them in a healthy and holistic way please let me know. Additionally if this post would fit better in another subreddit please let me know as well. Thanks for reading, any advice or insight is appreciated.