I've never told anyone about this, but I experienced strange sexual thoughts when I was a child. Is this normal?

[ladyheartfiilia]

So, when I was a child, around the age of 10 or so I believe, but possibly as early as 6 years old, I experienced sexual arousal whenever I viewed someone being tied up and their mouth covered. At the time, I'm sure I didn't realize what I was feeling was arousal, but now that I am older (28) I am able to look back on it and recognize it for what it was. To be clear, these feelings came up most often when simply watching childhood movies. One that comes to mind is in Quest for Camelot when the main character, Kaylee, is tied up and thrown in the back of a carriage. Another one I remember is watching Hercules and having those feelings when Meg was tied up by Hades. I'm even fairly certain that I at one point, or a couple of times, tried to reenact that someone was tying me up and taping my mouth shut in order to cause those sexual feelings again.

I believe that I grew out of this around the age of 13 or so. Now, as an adult at the age of 28, I don't feel aroused by the idea of being tied up or gagged at all. If anything, it makes me uncomfortable and I'm not keen on allowing anyone to try this on me because the thought alone is a huge turn off and even gives me some feelings of anxiety. I always thought it was weird that I would have those thoughts and feelings as a child and I just don't get why. But I've been too embarrassed (or maybe ashamed?) to tell anyone about it, not even a therapist. As far as I'm aware, nothing happened to me to cause those feelings, but to be fair there's a lot about my childhood that I don't remember or that is quite hazy.

So, is this normal? Or is this a sign of something else?

 

[IveryKeys]

Please realize that memories like this are easy to confuse over time. We know that as you access memories you may change them little by little. This has been proven time and again in the old "what color shirt was he wearing" trials. In these you may witness someone do something then be called upon to provide color of shirt. You may also be asked to describe the color of the stripes on the shirt. The mind trick of course is that there were no stripes on the shirt, yet the majority of people will proceed to describe the stripes! You may have had dreams or something like a subconscious stimuli in which you were aroused, but to be aroused by something like this as a child is fairly unusual. As an adult I applaud your disdain for such things, much of the sadism- masochistic attraction comes from a need to feel in control or a need to be controlled. Forget about these issues, for now, but if they are causing you enough trouble you do not think you can deal with it yourself, you might want to talk to a counselor. If anyone ever wants to role play theses types of games with you, just state you are not comfortable with these types of games, and they should understand. If not, walk away...
Good luck to you,
Ivery

 

[Phoenix]

I experienced similar at age 8, but in my case, I was fantasizing while lying in bed at night about being restrained in response to my feelings of arousal. I had no exposure to any viewing materials of this sort, I just apparently was imaginative. Idk, I think sometimes sexuality begins early...