I cannot remember exactly when the first time was that I told a therapist about the fetish. I think that it was during the KH relationship aftermath. I had a pretty serious meltdown at that time, and it was the first time that I think I did therapy for real. I did not get very far with the therapy, and I cannot remember why I brought up the subject of the fetish. But it was difficult to discuss, obviously. My therapist was a woman in her 50s and I was never particularly comfortable talking to her anyway. To make matters worse, I recall having a dream in which the therapist was smoking. Not surprising from any sort of psychoanalytical or Freudian angle, but it didn't make it any easier. I don't think I dug very deep into it then.
Subsequently, I probably saw a few different therapists over the course of the years. This was usually for things related to my issues in relationships, or depression, or problems with motivation or direction. During a few of these therapy stints, the subject of the fetish was investigated further. But I don't think I ever got very far into it. It was uncomfortable to talk about with a therapist, and I wasn't sure what angle to even take. I wish I could remember better. I just know that I always felt like it was a secret that I would need to reveal for my therapy to be effective, but I would always dread revealing it because of the embarrassment. In reality, I probably have always placed too much emphasis on the dread and potential importance of it. Nonetheless, the fetish never went away and, in and of itself, never really changed much in terms of the place it held in my consciousness.
I do remember a period of my life where I thought that perhaps I could be hypnotized so that smoking would no longer be appealing to me. I never went through with it. Partly because I am afraid of being hypnotized, partly because I believe that I would be highly resistant to hypnotism, and partly because it just seemed kind of stupid to try to have a fragment of my existence eradicated. Ah, the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind. Maybe it would have worked. Maybe not. But I think it is best to deal with things, or not deal with them, rather than try to obliterate them.
I'll jump out of order a bit just to say that, along with writing this blog, I have rekindled the topic of the fetish and its implications in my current therapy. I have been going to therapy for several years now, in what I'd call "maintenance mode". I haven't been particularly depressed, and haven't had serious problems of any kind. But it's a kind of check-in. And I decided that maybe it would be a good idea to work on my thoughts and feelings around the topic in the therapy instead of just spouting off about it on the internet.
I really do hope that what I am doing reflects some type of serious work toward a real, healthy, and intimate relationship, where my past and my present are in harmony and balance. I have to believe that there's a good reason for doing this.
I've actually considered talking to a therapist about it, especially during the beginnings of my blog where I my repression had finally given way and I was being tormented with obsessive thoughts about smoking. I guess you could call it a mini-meltdown, but more I think it was my mind telling me I couldn't just ignore it and hope that it would go away.
ReplyDeleteI wish every smoking fetishist would chronicle his history as you have. I did, in less detail, on one of the boards a few years ago, and so have some other people. If all these narratives were compiled, they would make a good basis for an analysis of the fetish. It seems as if nearly every s.f.ist goes through the same kind of mental struggle you have. I certainly did. In retrospect, that seems natural, since the "wicked" aspect of smoking was partly its draw, and what I disliked about it kept me away from it (except in imagination) and only served to aggravate the fetish more.
ReplyDeleteI have strongly disapproved of some varieties of the fetish, but later embraced at least one of them. On one board I was censored for condemning it, and on another board, a few years later, for indulging it. The people who criticized me for the latter were making exactly the same arguments I had made on the first board! One side of me pursues this aspect of the fetish, and one side rejects it.
...just as, at the beginning, I alternately pursued and rejected the fetish as a whole. And I think both are natural responses. One part of me gives in; the other part holds out. And I suppose that will always be the case. Embracing it wholeheartedly isn't right for me, and neither is total denial.
The associations and implications that attach to smoking aren't any one thing; some of them are erotic, some decidedly not. For this and other reasons, I was embarrassed by my fetish for a long time. Now, at a more advanced time of life, I've come out to a few people, and the times have changed enough--e.g. in smoking being pushed to the fringe of proper behavior--so that it can reasonably be seen as a seductive temptation, and so the people I've told about my fetish (leaving out the one aspect of it that divides the s.f. community itself) take it in stride.
I'd like to be around in a couple of hundred years, to find out whether the fetish will still exist, and if so in what forms, or whether its expression on the web now will even be remembered.