Masturbation: The Feeling Behind the Feeling

Tuesday Pause™

Nearly nineteen years ago, I remember being in a bathroom stall masturbating.

I believed someone could see me through the crack in the stall. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. But, what I remember most is that the possibility of being seen didn’t stop me. I continued.

For years, I could have looked back at that moment and seen only the behavior. I could have called it lust, addiction, lack of self-control, or sin. Almost nineteen years later, however, I understand something about that woman that I didn’t understand then.

She was hurting. Badly.

Emotionally, I was in a terrible place during that season of my life, and although masturbation was the behavior happening in that bathroom stall, I don’t believe sex was actually what I was searching for.

I needed to feel something.

There was a feeling behind the feeling.

When I look even further back, perhaps twenty-four years ago, I remember being caught purchasing pornography. I was living with my cousin at the time, and when it was discovered, I felt an immense amount of shame. What I had been doing privately was no longer private. I was being exposed after this addiction had already been my dirty little secret since I was around thirteen years old.

Yet even that didn’t stop me.

That matters to me now. If shame were enough, being caught should have been enough. If fear of being discovered were enough, believing someone could see me through that bathroom stall should have been enough.

Neither was.

Perhaps the behavior was doing something for me that shame could not undo. And I think that’s the part of conversations about pornography, masturbation, addiction, and compulsive sexual behavior that we sometimes miss. We spend so much time talking about the behavior that we forget to ask what the behavior might be doing for the person.

My struggle with pornography continued for several years before I eventually experienced what, as a Christian, I describe as deliverance. But maturity, healing, and a greater understanding of trauma and human behavior have caused me to ask a different question about my testimony: Why did I need it in the first place?

Research gives us some language for that conversation.

In one study of 1,002 adults, difficulties with emotional regulation were directly associated with both compulsive sexual behavior disorder and problematic pornography use (Wizła & Lewczuk, 2024). Another study involving 806 participants found that people classified as hypersexual pornography users reported significantly more childhood emotional, physical, and sexual trauma, along with greater PTSD symptoms, than people whose sexual behavior fell within usual ranges (Gewirtz-Meydan, 2024). A separate study also found a significant relationship between early-life trauma and compulsive sexual behavior(Efrati & Gola, 2019).

That does not mean everyone who masturbates has experienced trauma, nor does it mean everyone who watches pornography is attempting to escape emotional pain. Human sexuality and human behavior are far too complex for that.

But for some people, sexual behavior may be doing more than providing sexual pleasure.

When someone feels lonely, ashamed, anxious, overwhelmed, numb, disconnected, or emotionally depleted, sexual stimulation may temporarily change their internal experience. It can provide escape, distraction, comfort, intensity in the middle of numbness, or simply a few moments of feeling different.

And when something reliably makes us feel different from what hurts, we can learn to return to it.

Sometimes we aren’t simply seeking pleasure. We’re seeking relief.

I was introduced to pornography when I was young, during a period of my life already complicated by sexual trauma. At the time, I didn’t have words like emotional regulation, trauma response, or coping mechanism. I certainly wasn’t sitting in that bathroom stall thinking, I’m attempting to regulate an unbearable emotional state.

I just knew I needed to feel something.

Sometimes healing gives language to experiences that survival could only give behavior.

Looking back helps me understand why shame wasn’t enough. Shame could tell me that I shouldn’t be doing something, but it couldn’t explain why I continued needing whatever the behavior was giving me.

Perhaps that’s why simply telling someone to “stop” doesn’t always reach what is underneath a compulsive behavior.

Maybe another question needs to accompany it: What happens inside of you before you start? Are you lonely, rejected, anxious, ashamed, angry, overwhelmed, or numb? Are you trying to create a feeling that is missing, or are you trying desperately to escape one that feels unbearable?

Those questions don’t excuse behavior. They help us understand it.

I still believe God delivered me from pornography. Understanding the psychological dimensions of my experience doesn’t diminish that belief for me. If anything, it has expanded my understanding of what healing meant.

God didn’t only deal with what I was doing.

Eventually, He began dealing with the woman who needed it. There was a wounded girl underneath the behavior. There was shame, trauma, a distorted understanding of sexuality, emotions I didn’t know how to name, and experiences I had survived without necessarily processing.

That has taught me an important distinction: Stopping a behavior and healing the reason you needed the behavior are not always the same thing.

Sometimes a behavior changes before we fully understand why it existed. Sometimes God brings freedom in one area while healing the person underneath it continues for years.

Today, I can look back at the young woman who felt immense shame after being caught with pornography. I can also look at the woman years later in that bathroom stall who thought someone might see her and continued anyway.

I don’t have to excuse either woman, but I also don’t have to hate her in order to acknowledge that what she was doing was unhealthy.

I understand her now.

She wasn’t simply chasing an orgasm. She was trying to change the way she felt. She had discovered something that provided relief, escape, sensation, or whatever she needed in those moments.

It worked.

Until it didn’t.

Nearly nineteen years after that bathroom stall, and even longer since those earlier experiences with pornography, I’m no longer asking only, Why was I doing that?

I’m asking: What hurt badly enough that being caught once didn’t stop me, and years later, the possibility of being seen still mattered less than the relief I was trying to find?

That’s the question beneath the behavior.

That’s the feeling behind the feeling.

And perhaps that’s where healing actually begins.

So friend, maybe there’s something you’ve spent years judging yourself for without ever becoming curious about what it was doing for you. Understanding doesn’t mean excusing.

It means becoming curious enough to ask: What was I trying to feel?

Or perhaps: What was I trying not to feel?

Call to Action

This week, pay attention to what happens before you reach for the thing you’ve learned to use for comfort, escape, relief, or distraction.

Instead of immediately judging yourself, pause and ask: What happened? What am I feeling? What do I need right now?

Write it down. You may begin to recognize a pattern between what you feel and what you reach for. And if what you uncover is connected to trauma, addiction, or pain that feels too difficult to navigate alone, consider allowing someone safe and qualified to walk with you through it.

Sometimes the first step isn’t simply saying: “I need to stop.”

Sometimes it’s finally asking: “What am I trying to soothe?”

And then beginning the work of caring for the part of you that still hurts.

Listen to this Weeks podcast Masturbation: The Feeling Behi… - Out Loud with Jante - Apple Podcasts

References

Efrati, Y., & Gola, M. (2019). The effect of early life trauma on compulsive sexual behavior among members of a 12-step group. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, 16(6), 803–811.

Gewirtz-Meydan, A. (2024). Traumatized sexuality: Understanding and predicting profiles of sexual behaviors using childhood abuse and trauma measures. Child Maltreatment, 29(2), 350–363.

Wizła, M., & Lewczuk, K. (2024). The associations between attachment insecurity and compulsive sexual behavior disorder or problematic pornography use: The mediating role of emotion regulation difficulties. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 53, 3419–3436.