Moving Past My Trauma

When I was a child, I had a lot of stress and depression going on in my life, brought on by a few different things, including dealing with ADHD at a time when the world still didn't quite know what to make of it or how to deal with it, being quite introverted and not having many friends, and being bullied at times.

When I reached 13 - 14 years old, I discovered that it felt good to touch myself and that it had a positive effect on helping me feel better and relax. Later during a stake conference, I heard a speaker talking about something called masturbation and calling it "evil" and a "sin". When I heard that, at first I thought, "what is masturbation?" Then it just kind of dawned on me, "could it possibly be this thing that I've discovered that helps me feel better? It's evil? How? Why?" A couple of years later as internet access became more commonplace in many households, I also began viewing sex videos. They aided in the masturbation and helped me briefly escape from the stress and depression in my life. I began hearing things being said during church conferences about how sexual sin, including masturbation or viewing sexual videos, is "next to murder", which exponentially increased the amount of shame, depression, and self-hatred that I was already feeling toward myself.

Later in High School, during a particularly low and downtrodden moment in my life, I made the decision to disclose these habits I had to my then girlfriend, after which she dumped me, which sent me spiraling into even more depression. 

I decided to go on a mission with the desire to better myself. During that awesome experience which I still treasure to this day, I had nearly succeeded in stopping the behavior completely, only to have reality come crashing back down within months of returning home when I "relapsed". 

From then on into my adult life I spent many years (more than 10) trying as hard as I could to repent and stop the behavior, constantly feeling intense shame and anguish, occasionally even entertaining thoughts of suicidality. 

Thankfully, I married a woman I met at BYUI who was capable of expressing understanding and sympathy toward my situation, as she herself would occasionally read erotic romance novels, so she didn't experience the same kinds of negative aversions toward sex or sexual behaviors that many women in the church tend to, which frankly is something that I feel Very lucky about.

I mistakenly believed in the idea that my habits would disappear after marrying my wife, because we would be having sex instead. I quickly learned that this notion was ridiculous, because the years up to then had been spent developing a compulsion for the behavior whenever I felt bad, which was often. My wife and I were taught the idea of "sexual addiction" by people and resources in the church. At the time, the idea made sense to me, because if I am unable to stop a behavior that I want to stop, isn't that what "addiction" refers to?

I attended the church's 12-step addiction recovery program. I felt that the meetings were generally a good experience, if for nothing else then because it was great to see that I was not alone in my struggles with these issues.

However, as I continued to work through the program and follow its steps, I started to feel like following these steps weren't actually having any kind of noticeable effect on my habits, or their frequency. I started to think to myself, "I don't really resonate with the idea that I'm an 'addict'. A lot of these steps don't really feel like they apply to me. There has to be something else going on. There has to be a better way to treat and think about this."

When I came upon Natasha's podcasts, Mormon Mental Health and Mormon Sex Info, I learned about how peer-reviewed science and research shows that masturbation is completely normative sexual behavior and shouldn't be thought of as evil or sin or "sexual perversion".

I also learned that the addiction model which I had been taught by the church in regards to my behavior with masturbation and sex videos was not backed by peer-reviewed research or science and that "addiction" was an improper way to frame what I was experiencing. I learned that "addiction" usually refers to something that causes people to obsessively continue a behavior, sometimes for several hours a day, which would cause problems in people's lives, like missing work or neglecting other duties in their day-to-day life. This was certainly not the case for me, and I learned that in fact it was not the case for the majority of people who masturbate and/or view sex videos.

I learned that it wasn't sex videos' fault that I would sometimes use them to feel better, but instead it was the fact that I likely had undiagnosed trauma and depression which hadn't been properly treated by mental health therapy. It was because of those that I had been compulsively turning to masturbation and sex videos for all of these years.

I also learned that it is possible to find and use what is called "ethical pornography", which is filmed by studios that take extra steps to ensure that performers are being paid, they aren't being exploited, they're being inclusive in their performers' demographics (ex. including all races, sexual preferences, gender identities, and body types, etc), and the filming is being done in spaces where the performers feel safe.

Upon learning these very important things and discussing them with my wife, we now enjoy a much better marriage relationship. There is much less shame, secrecy, and feelings of betrayal between us. We've come to an agreement where we now strive to only use masturbation and sex videos in the bedroom, with each other. This "sexual contracting" in our marriage was also something that I learned about in one of Natasha's podcasts and it has been very beneficial for our marriage relationship.

After my wife and I were able to successfully work that out, a lot of the taboo, trauma, and shame has been removed, and I've actually found that the behavior which I had previously been engaging in at least once a day when I was a teenager has now decreased dramatically in frequency.

Given the above facts from my personal life, I can only assume that it would be entirely against the church's best interests to punish someone who passionately advocates for research and learning that helps people, and speaks out against thoughts, ideas, or practices which actively harm people.

I fear that if Natasha's membership council ends with her excommunication, the church will be implicitly signaling the following things to both church members and non-members:

- The church and it's leaders value strict obedience to beliefs or ideas regarding sex which have been found to be incorrect or outdated over seeking out correct information based on scientific research and data.

- The church does not recognize the field of sex therapy or the science and research which the field provides as legitimate.

- The church will continue to erroneously cling on to old values, ideas and practices in the realm of sex or sex education, even in the face of new research or data which refute those.

Taking a look at the church's past, both you and I know that the above items simply aren't true. Here are some examples:

- The church learned that electroshock therapy, which was once used at BYU in an attempt to "cure" homosexuality, is inneffective and abusive, upon which it quit it's practice.

- The church has more recently learned that other forms of conversion therapy are also inneffective and abusive, and has outlined in the church manual that it denounces its practice.

- The church has been accepting of scientific studies which have found that homosexuality is in fact not a choice, but something inherent in a person's humanity from the moment they are born.

- Pamphlets and other resources for distribution to youth which address the law of chastity have begun to no longer make any specific mention of masturbation.

Given the above examples as well as dozens of others, we see that the church is of course capable of accepting new and correct information, even if it sometimes doesn't match what it has previously taught. My understanding is that this is one of the ways in which the doctrine of continuing revelation is made manifest.

Thank you very much for reading this, and God bless.

• Anonymous