I'm 19. and I have been dealing with SSA since puberty. Wanting the best book on the topic, I looked around and settled on this one:
Shame and Attachment Loss - The Practical Work of Reparative Therapy
It was a Godsend.
It was published in 2016, and the Author, Joseph Nicolosi sadly passed away this year. before you get the book you can watch some of his videos to see if his ideas click with you. this is a good overview of his ideas:
Its taken several months to work through some issues, but Things have gotten better for me.Now I just have occasional homosexual thoughts. the hard part is when you stop caring about gay sex, your coming to face with other conflicts, like being angry at your parents and stuff. or being really upset about your life.
You really have to take it one step at a time. When I went through puberty I had some obsessive things that became homosexual related fetishes, some are embaressing to mention, but one was a obssesion with really short hair and masculine looking millitary hairstyles on men(and a compulsion to have it myself). The sexual part had gone down so much, but now that its mostly out of the way I am back at where I was before, all these fetishes, they could get sexual but mainly they are an obsession. Everything goes back to trauma. My dad gave me haircuts when I was younger and he would always make a big deal about our haircuts "I really need to give you a haircut". and he would say "You don't want to look like a girl". It became an obssesion because I felt like to be a man you had to have a good haircut, and I didn't feel man enough. So for any obssesive thought, howeaver weird or embarrasing it may be, there is usually a reason for it. Like you at one point I was fantasizing about men in suits. I still don't know what caused it. probably I saw successfull men(who dressed like that), and so I was jealous of them and wanted to take that obtain that masculinity i saw in them through sex.
When you are able to face the illusion and the problem, you can move into greif and compassion for yourself(for example: having short hair makes you manly. I am not manly without it) you learn that those shallow things are not what make you a man. You are born a man. you can then mourn the fact that when you were little, people didn't support you enough in knowing you were a worthy member of your gender.
opposite sex feelings you have to be patient with too, because if you never had them, it might be because your mother uncomfortably imposed physical closeness with her upon you, and so the fear of boundry violations keeps your feelings for women shut off, as well as your mother being hard to please(so you are afraid other women will act like your mother). I have had very little feelings for women my self. I have them on rare occasion, but its so uncommon I sometimes don't believe the feelings are real. I am facing this right now, I know the relationship my mother had with me was unhealthy in some ways, so I've had to emotionally disconnect from her. I don't know what to do now, because I'm afraid of the unhealthy relationship resuming. I know it would be bad for me.
Also be warned. Even after you are able to face your ssa and overcome them, life is still really tough. Life doesn't get easier just because your free of SSA. it can get harder because you don't have all that sexual stuff to distract you from it.
The main thing is to have another guy to talk to, so you know you are not alone. and you can learn from people that have gone through similar struggles. and your main enemy is shame, when your feeling your not good enough, or you are bad, then your homosexual attractions might go way up.
I find that writing youe emotional experiences of the day in a journal helps you move through them.
If you have any questions about my experience I would be happy to share.
I may have shared too much, and not all of this information may apply to
you but I plan to have a general intention in my prayers for people struggling with homosexual feelings and addictions.
I hope this helps.
and I pray that God will help you.
Joe
