anyone else w underage hypersexuality?

[isoboing]

im bug, 13yo, english speaking and hypersexual. i only now found this site (which is a BLESSING, might i add-). its very hard to get advice with this stuff as a minor, so im glad to have found this!!
as i said, im hypersexual. rather than being on the sex repulsed end of that, im on the sex positive (?) end. its.. very hard to find people with similar experiences, or people who are generally comfortable talking about NSFW topics. i stay safe, of course, and never interact with adults in sexual fashions.
overarchingly, ive found one person my age comfortable engaging in sexual conversations, which is my girlfriend.
i want to know what your underage, hypersexual experiences are, how you got over them, met friends comfortable with and interested in nsfw topics, or maybe if u wanna be my friend yourself!!
ive struggled with hypersexuality for my entire life, so im glad to have a safe space to reach out, interact, and talk safely about it<3

[Sam W]

Hi Isoboing,

We're glad you found us as well!

I'm curious as to how you came to view yourself as hypersexual. Is it just that you think about, or are interested in, sex pretty frequently?

I do also want to say that sex positivity and "hypersexuality" aren't actually the same thing. Sex positivity describes our mindset towards sex and human sexuality as a whole, one in which we're able to understand that there is no single "right" way to be sexual as a human, and that what is sexually appealing to someone else may be sexually repulsive to us, and that's okay.

[isoboing]

when i say sex positive, i mean that i dont view my hypersexuality as an inherently bad thing! i fit the criteria (intrusive sexual thoughts at times, high libido, sexual impulsivity, etc) but ive gotten better at controlling it and i currently more so view it as something similar to my autism rather than an illness. i believe hypersexuality isn't something bad in an of itself, i believe it's something to get the negative aspects of under control, and live healthily with it! ty for the clarifying question<3

[Sam W]

Got it, thank you for clarifying that.

So, I do want to push back a little at the idea that the things you're describing mean you're hypersexual. Because while they may be the diagnostic criteria for it, they're also describing the very common experience of being smack in the middle of puberty, especially the part about having a high libido; heck, at 13 you're only a few years into having a sex drive in any serious sense of the word (and that's before we get to the part about how making "high libido" a symptom of something is assuming that there's a threshold for sexual desire past which it's potentially "unhealthy" to go).

The same goes for intrusive sexual thoughts or sexual impulsivity. It's not all that strange for us to have random, or even unwanted, sexual thoughts, especially if we're at a point in our lives where our desire for or interest in sex is pretty high overall. The same goes for sexual impulsivity; our impulse control isn't always the greatest at 13, because our brains are still developing (that being said, plenty of adults struggle with impulse control as well; it's not a teenage-exclusive phenomenon by any means).

I don't say this to dismiss your experiences. But I think it's sound to proceed with caution when engaging with a framework that tips very easily into treating things that are just part of the variation of human sexual feelings and experiences as symptoms of a bigger diagnosis. Concepts like hypersexuality are really fraught in part because human sexual desire is so varied that we can't really set a baseline for what's "normal" in terms of desire.

EDITED TO ADD: Too, with any pathology, a clinical diagnosis is something that has to come from a outside provider like a therapist or psychologist, because we lack the objectivity to do that to ourselves, you know? Not to mention, pathology requires a pattern to observe, which isn't something we're likely to have at age 13 in terms of our sexual desire or behavior.

[isoboing]

i do understand that! i do have clinical suggestions that im hypersexual from licensed therapists, as well as a history of sexual assault resulting in the fact that i've been sexually active to a degree since i was 6 or 7. i definitely recognize that sexuality is such a varied thing, but i as well as many doctors that hypersexuality is most defined by if it affects your daily life, which it does for me.
this isnt to say im DEFINITELY hypersexual, but i have plenty of pointers to me being hypersexual. i do love discussing this stuff though! /gen

[Sam W]

Got it. So, our general stance here is that any therapists who are diagnosing people so young with already-questionable-in-the-field pathologies (both hyper and hyposexuality are contested and debated amongst sex therapists and other experts) are maybe not the most nuanced or knowledgeable on issues of sexuality, for the reasons I mentioned above. Too, those reasons I already mentioned, including the fact that the majority of 13 years olds are probably experiencing some significant effects of sexual desire on their daily lives, means that you're unlikely to hear from people your age with that same diagnosis here on the boards.

Too, I do hope that the therapists you've interacted with aren't referring to or treating "being sexually assaulted as a child" as the same as "being sexually active as a child." Being sexually active is about consensual activities, not things that happen to us as part of an assault.