How sex workers healed me

TLDR: bisexual man, who was deathly afraid of sex and suffering from overthinking due to religious upbringing and bullying, ends up asking for help from sex workers and therapist. Both help him get his mojo back because therapists and sex workers are just awesome people.

Hey. 30M here, started seeing sex workers at 29. Felt compelled to write this up after seeing a post on r/sexworkers.

Despite not sharing the same circumstances, I resonated with it, as I've also found myself in a difficult place, emotionally speaking, and it was thanks to sex workers and my therapist that I was finally able to heal.

As for the common factor between that thread, and my experience... We were both deathly afraid of sex. For him, it was due to a violation of trust and safety from one of his partners.

For me... it wasn't just one thing. It was years of conditioning. Mainly bullying that killed my self-worth, and religious indoctrination that led me to believe that certain topics were more worthy of study and that emotional well-being was a tool that had no place in a good christian's life, for we should suffer for "the greater good", even if that suffering lead nowhere. Social conditioning that made me believe that "men" should not do "certain things" because it's not manly, thus limiting my emotional and conversational range and behaviour.

At least that's the most likely read, because I will never know for sure what exactly caused my fear to start, especially since I remember being so curious about sex from an early age (which I can safely attribute to not only me being curious, but also bisexual). But at one point it began to form, probably a result of some snowball effect that gradually got out of hand when paired with social expectations of your late 20s and poor emotional self-management. Fortunately I'm doing much better now.

Anyways, the symptoms of this fear would eventually leak into other areas of my life and cause havoc. My interpersonal relationships started to suffer. Not because of my behaviour, but because I... just couldn't believe my friends wanted to be with me anymore. My professional life took a hit too. Not because of my behaviour, but because of my deeply ingrained belief that I... was nothing more than a sad sack of shit that couldn't do anything right.

Paired together with a nasty period in my life where my mental health hit such a deep low... I ended up forgetting who "I" was. As in, I no longer knew what I wanted, or what I was feeling. All I knew was that I was not ok. I was working the worst job ever, had lost my faith fairly recently, and something awful happened within my closest friends' circle. And having finally come out to my friends (and some of my family), I was now facing the challenge of dating, as a bisexual man.

I decided to do something about it. I went to a therapist.

But some stuff just cannot be achieved within the confines of a therapist's room, or within the pages of your journal, and soon I found myself again a prisoner of my own thoughts and confusion, not being able to do something as simple as turning off my brain and just trust the process, my own feelings and my gut.

So, one sunny summer afternoon, in a middle of a nervous breakdown... I bit the bullet and booked my first appointment. The first of many. And it was one of the best decisions I had ever made.

Since then almost 2 years have passed. I've been with several escorts, and their kindness and patience is nothing short of unmatched. I've learned a lot from them, and even befriended a few! The things they taught me, the life stories and moments we've shared - from letting another sex worker's cat come into the bedroom and play with the little guy, to laughing about how absurd and difficult anal prep can be - the way they helped me figure myself out, how they let me be at ease and the way they lifted me up... I have no words to describe how grateful I am.

With time, my fears, insecurities and overall brainfog started to erode altogether. And with that came the will to change. I had to quit my job, so I switched to something simpler. Applied to a different course too. Started socializing more (mostly due to my current job), taking more risks, focusing on my hobbies (played song covers solo for the first time publicly!), learning to truly be with people. Became more self-assured and trustful of my instincts.

I spoke with my therapist shortly after seeing benefits, and while he was initially worried about it, he saw how I was making a lot more progress and started to include these visits as part of our discussions, as a way of exploring what I was feeling. Having someone to talk about it was very important too, as well as someone that could help "decoding" what I was experiencing.

In other words... I started to heal. I slowly became more self-assured. Got my mojo back. And I got the answers I wanted. All thanks to these wonderful ladies, who assured me that I have nothing to be scared of. Who taught me that I can be myself, with no fear. Who showed me that just because I've been sold a massive lie... there are still some things that are still true, and that I, just like them and everybody else, also deserve some good things, and to live free, rather than enslaved by prejudice and misinformed ignorance. We have enough of that going on currently, we don't need any more of it.

It is possible there are some errors in this post, or things that seem a little "too much". I'm sleepy and have been rewriting this post, over and over again. Feel free to point out anything that sticks out. The bottom line is that I really, really am thankful