How To Get Rid Of A Foot Fetish

The give-and-take 'fetish' comes from the Portuguese feitico, pregnant 'spell', which in turn comes from the Latin facticius, pregnant 'bogus' or 'made up'.

Someone with a fetish has sexual interests so deviant that they seem bogus or made up.

Fetishism is indulging in a fetish, and a fetishist is a person having a fetish. Fetishism belongs to a category of sexual behaviors termed paraphilia, from the Greek para, meaning 'beside, aside', and philos, pregnant 'loving'.

Paraphiliacs indulge in sexual beliefs that is abreast the norm. Fetishism is a type of paraphilia where the fetishist derives sexual pleasure from objects or not-sexual body parts.

Anything that tin get fetishized is referred to every bit a fetish object.

Although 1 can have a fetish for whatever object or a non-sexual body part, clothing items are the nearly mutual type of fetish object.ⁱ

Other common fetish objects include:

Feet
Hair
Shoes
Leather
Latex

Fetishes are not limited to inanimate objects and torso parts. Any stimulus (information) that tin be sensed or thought about tin develop into a fetish. As well things and non-sexual body parts, activities, images, concepts, or situations can also get fetishized.

Sexual preferences vs. fetishes

A sexual preference is not the aforementioned equally a fetish. Sexual preferences are specific ways individuals seek to sexually gratify themselves, commonly with a sexual partner. A fetish or a kink may or may not involve another partner.

Fetishes tend to be stronger and more deviant than sexual preferences.

Most people have standard sexual preferences. Some have specific fetishes. Very few have a fetishistic disorder where their fetish overtakes their sexual preferences and causes them significant distress.

About who accept fetishes tend to have harmless fetishes that don't interfere with other areas of their lives. They do not require indulging in their fetish to get sexually aroused. Though they study fetish sexual activity as more satisfying than non-fetish sexual activity.^two

On the extreme end, people with fetishistic disorder demand fetishism to get sexually aroused. They may not be able to feel sexual arousal in the absence of the fetish object.

fetishistic disorder curve — Very few fetishists harm themselves or others.

Harms of fetishism

It's not difficult to see how over-reliance on a fetish object for sexual gratification can create problems for an individual.

It may foreclose them from forming a healthy relationship with a partner who doesn't have the same kink.
A fetishist'due south partner may feel that the fetishist is more into the fetish object than into them.
Indulging in a fetish tin can have tremendous time and free energy costs. Fetishists may spend a lot of time searching for and buying their fetish objects.
Most people see fetishists as weird or aberrant, and this causes feelings of shame and guilt in the fetishist.
Some fetishists may indulge in illegal activities or borrow upon the rights of others to pursue their fetish.

What causes fetishism?

Many explanations have been put forth to explain fetishism. Permit's dive into a few that make the most sense:

ane. Learned response

If people are not biologically wired to find objects sexually arousing, then information technology must be a learned response. Learning by classical workout is the all-time and the most widely accepted explanation of fetishism.³

If you're new to classical conditioning, here's a ane-paragraph summary of how it works:

When two events happen together, our brains link them to each other. This is because our brains are associating machines. We associate co-occurring things then nosotros can learn the human relationship between them.

Yous must have heard of Pavlov's dogs.

Pavlov's dogs salivated (biological response) when presented with food. When he rang a bell and presented the nutrient simultaneously a few times, the dogs associated salivation with the bell.

Then, when he rang the bong without food, the dogs salivated.

Salivation (biological response) got paired with something that doesn't typically crusade salivation (ringing a bell).

Sexual arousal is a biological response too. If something causes sexual arousal that doesn't typically cause sexual arousal (fetish), nosotros can reasonably assume there's some classical conditioning going on.

Fetishes tend to develop in childhood and adolescence when people offset explore sex and sexual arousal. Many people tin trace the evolution of their fetishes to their earliest intense sexual arousal experiences.

When they outset experienced sexual arousal, something in the environment got paired with the biological response and adult into a fetish. Such that exposure to the fetish object led to sexual arousal afterwards.

Many fetishes stalk from cartoon characters which isn't all that surprising since children spend a lot of time watching cartoons.

In babyhood and early adolescence, our brains are highly impressionable. Whatsoever learning by classical workout occurring during this time may go deeply ingrained into the psyche.

The fact that near any stimulus tin develop into a fetish is explained well past classical conditioning. How the stimulus gets paired matters.

This is why people tend to have unique fetish objects. Some may go aroused past the appearance of a fetish object, while others go aroused past its texture. It probably overlaps with how they were first exposed to their fetish object.

On tiptop of all this, behavior that gets rewarded gets repeated.

If a fetishist indulges in their fetish and gets aroused (reward), the fetish feeds itself. So, fetishes are a lot similar habits and addictions.

two. Past unmet needs

Adolescents find themselves in many situations where they get sexually angry but tin can't reach sexual satisfaction. This creates psychological tension in them that can persist into adulthood.

For example, if a boy liked a girl with ginger hair in schoolhouse just couldn't pursue her, this desire may get stuck in his psyche and develop into an unmet need in adulthood. In developed relationships, he may adopt ginger-haired women or inquire his partners to paint their pilus ginger.

Sometimes a fetish may help the fetishist satisfy a non-sexual unmet demand. There's this guy who liked being tied to a ternion. Upon introspection, he realized that information technology helped him experience cared for. His parents physically abased him as a child.

Which takes the states to our adjacent point:

three. Re-enacting trauma

Traumatic experiences make people feel powerless. They feel they tin can't command the source of their trauma.

This feeling of a loss of control over their source of trauma can force them to endeavour and regain control over it later on in life. They may do this by re-enacting the trauma in safer situations, such as having sex with a trusted partner.

For example, if someone was physically abused as a child, they might similar getting physically abused during sex. They're re-creating their childhood trauma in a rubber infinite and so they tin can get a risk to process it.

How to get rid of a fetish

If you experience your fetish is harming you or those effectually you, you might want to minimize its hold on your life, if not get rid of information technology completely.

1. Unlinking

If your fetish is a classical conditioning response, you can unlink your fetish object from sexual arousal.

To do that, you can simply resist the urge to indulge in your fetish the side by side time y'all're exposed to your fetish object. When you don't give in to the desire, you'll make the urge weaker over time.

Eventually, thinking most or getting exposed to the fetish object may no longer produce the unwanted biological response.

You can too reverse it and try to pair sexual arousal with normal sexual stimuli. Through fantasizing, you can train your mind to get aroused by normal sexual stimuli.

2. Aversion training

You pair your fetish object with something disgusting or fright-inducing. It's recommended you do this in a controlled environment with a counselor or a therapist.

iii. Cognitive approach

The cerebral approach to overcoming fetishism involves using your own thoughts of shame and guilt. If y'all're ashamed of your fetish, you can think things like:

"What volition my colleagues think when they get to know most my fetish?"
"What will my spouse or children think?"

Shame is a powerful emotion and prevents a lot of people from doing a lot of harmful things.

Get realistic about your fetish's fourth dimension, energy, and relational costs, and you lot'll run into that the costs outweigh the benefits.

4. Alternate processing

If your fetish stems from childhood trauma, you lot can find alternative ways to procedure your trauma.

For instance, reliving your trauma in the safe space of a therapeutic setting can help you process it. And so can talking near it to a trusted romantic partner or a friend.

5. Counter-intuitive arroyo

If your fetish stems from a past unmet sexual demand, y'all may be able to become over it past indulging in it more than.

The Zeigarnik effect seems to play a role in the development of fetishes. It states that we keep thinking almost unfinished businesses.

Part of the appeal of fetishes may come from how difficult it can be to indulge in them. A lot of fetishes stay in the realm of fantasy and never materialize. So, fetishes tend to accept this 'out of reach' quality that makes fetishists obsess over them.

If y'all indulge in a fetish easily and often, the unfinished business organisation in your mind becomes a finished business. You may find that your fetish no longer holds the same amuse afterward y'all've normalized information technology.

References

Wiederman, M. W. (2003). Paraphilia and fetishism.The Family unit Journal,11(three), 315-321.
Rees, G., & Garcia, J. R. (2017). All I need is shoe: An investigation into the obligatory aspect of sexual object fetishism.International Journal of Sexual Health,29(4), 303-312.
Hall, Thousand. C. North. (2000). Fetishism.

Howdy, I'1000 Hanan Parvez (MBA, MA Psychology), founder and author of PsychMechanics. PsychMechanics has been featured in Forbes, Business Insider, Reader'due south Digest, and Entrepreneur. Experience gratuitous to contact me if you accept a query.

Source: https://www.psychmechanics.com/how-to-get-rid-of-a-fetish/