23-08-2014, 10:50 AM
Hi all,
I'm a 42 year old male and picked the moniker Candace because 1) I love the show Phineas and Ferb, 2) she's red-headed like me, and 3) her purpose in life is to bust (her brothers). One of the ways the show speaks to me is how horrible Dr. Doofenshmirtz's parents were to him and how that turned him evil. My mother didn't give me any facial mirroring as an infant and as a result my mirror neuron system didn't develop properly. This meant the amygdala never received the calming input it should have during social situations so they never felt safe to me. She also hit my legs with sticks to get the desired level of obedience. She tried spanking at first but couldn't inflict enough pain that way. One of her ways of bonding with me was to take me on walks in the woods where I would help her pick out new sticks to replace the ones she broke on me. Little wonder I developed avoidant personality disorder.
In junior high things got worse. I became attracted to girls, but was convinced they were all horrible monsters inside like my mother. And their touch was as distressing as having bugs crawling all over me due to the mirror neuron system defects. So this is about when the autogynephilia began. I did some cross-dressing while masturbating from age 22 until 32, when I purged the stuff while packing for a move. I always had to get them off ASAP once finished. I wouldn't even unhook the bra I was in such a hurry and so disgusted with myself.
Hmm, having written all that, now I can see why my shrink said she didn't know how I survived my childhood.
When I was in grad school and met my classmates wives, I was stunned to discover that women could be nice human beings. But there was no way I could ever touch one. Even just observing affection made me cringe (at their neediness, in disgust, or in fear of their loss of control). In my early 30s, one of our workplace lunchtime amusements was for the older women to give me a hug and watch my blushing response. I knew they were being nice and that this was friendly teasing, but my brain couldn't handle it.
At age 39 I did EEG biofeedback (neurofeedback) to try to get rid of the mold VOC sensitivity I acquired from mold exposure at that workplace. (It wasn't moldy enough to hurt a normal person, I'm just hypervigilant due to the neglect and abuse I suffered, so more sensory stimuli get past my brain's attentional gating.) It got rid of the anxiety component, but left the muscle tension and water retention component. And the exercises to train coherence in the mirror neuron system fixed it! The first thing that happened was after seeing a forlorn kitty in an ASPCA ad, I felt like I was that kitty and sunk into deep despair for a week. Yanking those mental wires out may have spared me pain as a child, but the pain apparently had to be dealt with eventually. Then I was numb for a week, and then I started getting euphoric dopamine pulses whenever I observed affection. I would rewind the DVR over and over for some kissing and cuddling scenes that in the past I would have cringed at. I also don't dare watch movies at the theater anymore because I'll cry at just about anything emotional. I was a wreck when they killed off Brian in Family Guy.
But I still felt like my actually touching someone would be as catastrophic as touching a hot stove, so it was off to cuddle therapy where in three months I advanced to spooning in underwear and touched boobies for the first time. I now get my touch fix by going to cuddle parties. Dating, however, has been extremely demoralizing: in the past two years I've had only three first dates and no second ones. I had become infatuated with all three, so the rejections were crushing. The third was in June with a bi-transwoman, so before the date, thoughts of AGP returned to me, figuring she might be into that. The rejection made the AGP worse, since it now feels completely impossible that I'll ever find someone.
Other trivia are COGIATI score -235 (feminine male) and my index fingers are significantly longer than my ring fingers (ratio = 1.11 right (dominant), 1.07 left ). Holy crap! I've looked at some papers and that is literally off their charts, except for one that had a large sample size so it had a tail in the distribution for me to fit into.
So, my goals now are to observe, learn, mull things over, and enjoy reading your stories. Any trial with PM to probe for mental effects would have to wait until "winter" (I'm in Southern California, so we don't actually have real seasons.) when there's less mold VOCs about, since I'm concerned that estrogen might increase mold VOC sensitivity.
I'm a 42 year old male and picked the moniker Candace because 1) I love the show Phineas and Ferb, 2) she's red-headed like me, and 3) her purpose in life is to bust (her brothers). One of the ways the show speaks to me is how horrible Dr. Doofenshmirtz's parents were to him and how that turned him evil. My mother didn't give me any facial mirroring as an infant and as a result my mirror neuron system didn't develop properly. This meant the amygdala never received the calming input it should have during social situations so they never felt safe to me. She also hit my legs with sticks to get the desired level of obedience. She tried spanking at first but couldn't inflict enough pain that way. One of her ways of bonding with me was to take me on walks in the woods where I would help her pick out new sticks to replace the ones she broke on me. Little wonder I developed avoidant personality disorder.
In junior high things got worse. I became attracted to girls, but was convinced they were all horrible monsters inside like my mother. And their touch was as distressing as having bugs crawling all over me due to the mirror neuron system defects. So this is about when the autogynephilia began. I did some cross-dressing while masturbating from age 22 until 32, when I purged the stuff while packing for a move. I always had to get them off ASAP once finished. I wouldn't even unhook the bra I was in such a hurry and so disgusted with myself.
Hmm, having written all that, now I can see why my shrink said she didn't know how I survived my childhood.
When I was in grad school and met my classmates wives, I was stunned to discover that women could be nice human beings. But there was no way I could ever touch one. Even just observing affection made me cringe (at their neediness, in disgust, or in fear of their loss of control). In my early 30s, one of our workplace lunchtime amusements was for the older women to give me a hug and watch my blushing response. I knew they were being nice and that this was friendly teasing, but my brain couldn't handle it.
At age 39 I did EEG biofeedback (neurofeedback) to try to get rid of the mold VOC sensitivity I acquired from mold exposure at that workplace. (It wasn't moldy enough to hurt a normal person, I'm just hypervigilant due to the neglect and abuse I suffered, so more sensory stimuli get past my brain's attentional gating.) It got rid of the anxiety component, but left the muscle tension and water retention component. And the exercises to train coherence in the mirror neuron system fixed it! The first thing that happened was after seeing a forlorn kitty in an ASPCA ad, I felt like I was that kitty and sunk into deep despair for a week. Yanking those mental wires out may have spared me pain as a child, but the pain apparently had to be dealt with eventually. Then I was numb for a week, and then I started getting euphoric dopamine pulses whenever I observed affection. I would rewind the DVR over and over for some kissing and cuddling scenes that in the past I would have cringed at. I also don't dare watch movies at the theater anymore because I'll cry at just about anything emotional. I was a wreck when they killed off Brian in Family Guy.
But I still felt like my actually touching someone would be as catastrophic as touching a hot stove, so it was off to cuddle therapy where in three months I advanced to spooning in underwear and touched boobies for the first time. I now get my touch fix by going to cuddle parties. Dating, however, has been extremely demoralizing: in the past two years I've had only three first dates and no second ones. I had become infatuated with all three, so the rejections were crushing. The third was in June with a bi-transwoman, so before the date, thoughts of AGP returned to me, figuring she might be into that. The rejection made the AGP worse, since it now feels completely impossible that I'll ever find someone.
Other trivia are COGIATI score -235 (feminine male) and my index fingers are significantly longer than my ring fingers (ratio = 1.11 right (dominant), 1.07 left ). Holy crap! I've looked at some papers and that is literally off their charts, except for one that had a large sample size so it had a tail in the distribution for me to fit into.
So, my goals now are to observe, learn, mull things over, and enjoy reading your stories. Any trial with PM to probe for mental effects would have to wait until "winter" (I'm in Southern California, so we don't actually have real seasons.) when there's less mold VOCs about, since I'm concerned that estrogen might increase mold VOC sensitivity.
