It seems rather ironic that during the last few years, internet pornography addiction has become a growth market for hypnotherapists helping individuals let go of such an addiction, doesn’t it?
Well, it does seem very ironic to me, because today I am asking a question about whether internet pornography is actually an incredibly powerful hypnosis learning programme.
I mean, anyone watching porn is in a deep state of hypnosis, that is some trance state they are in, fantasising, letting their mind go to all kinds of places… Hypnosis proofessionals know that learning is amplified, experience is amplified with hypnosis and trance states… So is this massive increase in online pornography consumption actually benefiting anyone in any way… You just know I want you to think so, son’t you?
Let me explain further…
When my parents sat me down at that tender age to tell me where babies came from… And when they sat me down to help me understand what was being taught in biology classes at school… They omitted some stuff.
i am guessing all parents and human biology teachers miss out the important stuff about sex… Like how to really do it. Like how to actually enjoy doing it… And so on…
How do we learn the actual process of having sex? I mean we get told what bits need to go where… What conditions need to be present for the essential stuff to happen… We get told the business end of the process, don’t we?
What about the subtler stuff? Style. Technique. Fun. Enjoyment. My biology class never dealt out the Kama Sutra as a text book… Instead we got books with test tubes that we did childish (yet still hilarious) graffiti on… We drew faces on the sperms in the stuffy, clinical test book and some more, even more naughty things…
My teachers or parents, and none of my friends, colleagues or peers teachers or parents actually mentioned this other stuff in their cautious spiels about the birds and the bees.
Even sex education classes do not tell you about feeling confident in sexual circumstances, what makes things enjoyable and fun — at least, not when I was twelve. When I did hear rumours of what went on in the bedroom i would often say “Seriously?! Ugghh! Gross!
I think I’d have felt uneasy getting a sexual style lesson from my parents or any other relative if I am honest.
As with generations before us, just about all of us learned in the most private way possible how to do it, generally with only one other person present at a time, and usually in the dark, without mirrors.
With the passing years, people continue to refrain from comparing notes on this with friends. I have been tutted at by friends wives for daring to raise such a subject in casual conversation or during dinner parties! I know couples professionally and personally who do not even discuss it with each other! This is the person you should feel most comfortable with in the entire world!
In this modern world, we tend to be comfortable talking in depth about anything and everything else — recounting our intimate experiences of childbirth, illness, ultimate joy and ultimate sorrow — but on the sights and sounds and choreography of sex, we go mute.
And so it goes on. You don’t tell, I don’t tell, everyone spares each other potential major-embarrassment… Whatever form that might come in…
What is it that motivates us to keep quiet? What keeps us quiet? What would cause that embarrassment? And how utterly archaic are those causes? You know what? I bet I lose a couple of readers today for daring to raise this subject… I bet a person or two tuts at me discussing it here on my blog.
“Tssh… Eason’s supposed to be a hypnotherapist… Where’s the discussion of that?!”
Well that is coming up.
Do we keep silent about our sexual performances simply because we don’t want to shock or be thought inappropriate? Or is it that we don’t want to appear to brag? Is it that we fear being labeled promiscuous, “too” avid, “too” transgressive, “too” desirous? Or do we fear being mocked as timid, backward, retro, dull? Which, in our minds, is worse?
I work with large numbers of people who experience performance anxiety. Hypnotherapy is a truly remarkable therapeutic approach for unlocking and letting go of such a disorder. Performance anxiety expands beyond the performance itself. That’s one reason for our silence. Others are cultural. Talking about such personal subjects is offensive: That’s how most of us over a certain age were brought up. There are possible religious undertones too in certain societies that forbid such openness about sex.
So it was fascinating for me to read about a new survey revealing that increasing numbers of teenagers are learning how to have sex from watching internet porn.
Bingo!
A TV program that aired here in the UK on Channel 4 last month covered the study of 14-to-17-year-olds, in which nearly nine out of ten participants said they had viewed graphic images online. Oh yeah… That one out of ten is lying I reckon!
Nearly one in five customarily viewed such images more than once a week. This article in the Daily Mail states that many female participants in the survey said they felt “pressured into stripping on webcams for their boyfriends.” It also states: In one frightening confession, a girl of 15 told how her friends performed sex acts on webcams, replicating what they had seen on the internet or TV.
One-third of the participants described porn as “a good thing,” though “good” in what way was not specified. Many male participants said they share pornography at school, typically on mobile phones and computers.
Now this world these participants live in is a very different world than the one in which I grew up.
Sure, porn existed back then as well. My mates and I passed around friends and older brothers’ copies of very well thumbed magazines!
But I’ll venture to say that most girls, back then, didn’t. Even so, the pictures in those magazines were stills. The huge difference between now and then is that in those days we didn’t have free and easy access to sexual moving pictures. We couldn’t study those scenes, replay them, freeze-frame them, or listen through headphones and memorise their soundtracks to practice-makes-perfect, later, the way kids practice gymnastics or their favourite popstars dance routines or a musical instrument.
So can you see how I am starting to suggest that the mindset entered into when watching ornography is one of a heightened learning state — that is hypnosis!
I blogged before about this being a form of self-hypnosis. It really is.
I wonder what the long-term effects will be… Of today’s youth having unlimited access to video porn?
Is this a good thing? Hypnotically learning how to do things in that department? or are there issues of making sex into something else? God forbid it should ever turn into fun! Where does the line get drawn at what is learnt? Roles understood? I think the development of this online access has massive rammifications across modern society and how things change over the next couple of geenerations could be construed as better or worse I suppose…
