How I got more comfortable with my intrusive thoughts
I have a lot of intrusive thoughts, especially in relation to self-sexualisation. At times they get so bad that they influence my behaviour. For example dressing a certain way to get more attention, feeling immense anxiety or pressure to look good, seeking out validation, etc.
In my first relationship I conflated these feelings for dissatisfaction in my relationship. Though I think in part this is still true, I think a lot of what went wrong and my desire for novelty was this addiction to attention and gratification.
In my most recent relationship I had a lot of anxiety about experiencing something similar. I was scared of finding other people attractive, or of experiencing this emotion again, and I realised that it did not happen to the same level as it did in my first relationship. Of course, I still had it mildly, but never to a point where I genuinely considered acting on those feelings. There were points where I would get anxious about it, scared of making the same mistakes as in my previous relationship, and it wasn't until I realised for myself that it was never about the relationship, but always about myself and self image, that that feeling of anxiety started to go away. I started telling myself what I was experiencing, which is that I was conditioned to want male attention, and that I am not actually interested in it. I started making deliberate choices to dress for myself, however difficult it sometimes felt, and recontextualise what it means to be attractive. It is not just being "hot", but I simply just want to feel beautiful sometimes. I still have the occasional feeling of wanting to be looked at, or wanting to be found attractive, but it never is from a place of sexualisation anymore, and simply one of admiration, the way I admire a beautiful girl when I see her on the bus.
When it gets really bad usually, I acknowledge when I am walking around that there are so many attractive people here that I simply do not notice, so that I humanise myself. People are busy with other things than just thinking about sex and how attractive people are, there are more important things in life than that. I realised for myself that as much as I enjoy pleasure and sex, it should come from a place of choice, not compulsion. So what I do when I have intrusive thoughts is to simply redirect them, recontextualise them, and question whether the thought is something I actually, genuinely care about, or whether I can recognise it as being intrusive and not an extension of who I am and what I genuinely value. My mindset became less sex focussed and more genuine. Sex became a pleasure as opposed to something anxious. Masturbation as well. It is why I do not respond to or seek out content anymore that feeds into my compulsions, unless I want to engage with it, but ultimately it still feels like a choice.
I let my thoughts exist because I can recognise them as compulsive and simply let them fade away. If I feel that they persist, I try to ground myself again by thinking of things I find important. I used to think about my relationship, but that is in shambles right now, so now I just think about Harry Frankfurt and his book "The Reasons of Love". I think about how I want to love myself, and that I choose to be in line with my desires, and the compulsive thoughts I have are not genuine desires, so I choose not to engage with them. I don't have a choice over what I think about sometimes, but I do choose how to respond to it, and that is the most refreshing thing to realise. I don't have to engage with the thought, I recognise it for what it is, or I recontextualise it in a way that I want to engage with it, and then I move on. :)
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