NC for this.
My problem might sound a bit trivial but it's making me feel like shit, so I'm just hoping for advice from anyone who may have been through similar.
Basically, I have very poor self-esteem and I really hate my body - I've had depression, anxiety, eating disorders, episodes of self-harm etc over the years, and as a result I haven't had a relationship for more than 20 years. I haven't even had sex since then because the thought of someone seeing and touching my body is horrifying to me. I still have feelings of shame and disgust when I think about my abortive attempts to have a sex life at uni.
Anyway, for most of my adult life I've been on various medications that have completely killed my libido, so it has never been much of a problem when I was living alone, not dating. I just concentrated on being happy with my job, making good friends, having hobbies, and the rest of it.
But now I've been off the meds for a couple of weeks for the first time in a lot of years, and I'm being plagued by thoughts of sex all the bloody time. I'm perimenopausal so I don't think that's helping, but it's like I can't switch off. I've started having sex dreams about my male colleagues which is very much not fun for me!
I don't want to go back on the meds because I've worked hard at coming off them. I don't want to go out seeking sex because the body issues are still there and it would risk my mental health. I do see a therapist but she just tends to say that it's normal to have a libido and we need to work on accepting that. But it's so intrusive and I don't really want to have to sit in my quarterly appraisal trying not to think about the mad dream I had about my boss last night, which involved the basement of a nightclub and blindfolds... is there a way of dampening sex drive that doesn't involve prescription medication? Any meditation exercises or similar? I'm 42 but I feel like a teenage boy half the time.