Not going to offer many details on the where or how, as I don’t intend to dox myself, but suffice it to say that I will continue touching butts for an extended period. I don’t like feeling aroused by the act. These people placed trust in me. Trust that I mean them no harm and that I am safe to be around. I can certainly be both while aroused, but I’d rather not have to deal with this.
I’d prefer not to dissociate through work, but I can’t find another way to contextualize my experiences in a way that doesn’t leave me frustrated until I get home.
Time. It just takes time.
I washed bodies and wiped butts for twenty years. Most of the time, my patients were not on my radar anyway, as I’m hetero and the vast majority were men. Among the women, I’d say 3/4ths were elderly enough that they were well beyond my upper range even now that I’m middle aged.
But there were a few, in the early years, that were very attractive. Of equal or more importance, when I transitioned to home health instead of facility care, family members of patients would sometimes not only be attractive, but assume that I was perfectly safe to be naked around, or even request contact that would be considered intimate to some degree or another.
It really, truly, didn’t take long for my inner switch to just stay in the off position at work. By the time I was thirty, I had family members of patients outright put moves on me and it would take multiple attempts for me to notice because my switch in my brain said that work time is work time, not happy penis time.
It did take seeing a goodly double handful of goodly handfuls before I adapted though. Butt, if your job requires more frequent contact with bodies you’d be attracted to, it’ll happen faster than it did for me in terms of time. More exposure to the experience starts dialing down the sexuality of it. Oh, you might find some arousal on occasion even after years, but it’ll be occasional and you’ll develop the ability to ignore it.
Short term, it’s the same as any stressor you face at work. Identify it, control your breathing as you accept its presence in your mind, and allow that control to filter it out. And it will. It’s a basic meditation technique that’s infallible assuming the ability to breathe with control, and enough practice. The more you control your breathing, the more control gets spread to the rest of you.
While I can only hypothesize about what being a home health care worker would be like, it boggles my damn mind how other family members think it’s cool to just be naked with outside people there.
I can’t imagine being comfortable naked outside of being alone or with a partner though. But no matter what the internal dynamics are, when the care worker is there, how are they comfortable with that (outside of just being nudist in general)?
That’s what sounds crazy to me.
It can seem like it from the outside.
Thing is, there’s a lot of trust and some degree of habit. First, if someone is a nudist, you get warned before starting the case, so that’s not a factor in this. Most people aren’t stripping down day 1. Some do! But that’s largely because of trust too.
You get used to having strangers around and trust that they’re not going to cross any lines because most in home caregivers won’t. There’s always assholes and creeps in any job, and home health isn’t immune, but it isn’t super common because you’ll get weeded out.
Then, if the same caregiver is there a lot, they cease to be an outsider. Me? I was spectacular at integrating into a household with low friction. That, my wound care chops, and physical strength were my calling cards. Once a given caregiver integrates, people go back to whatever their default habits are. Nobody can be on 24/7, and staying on at home is even harder to maintain. So people get comfortable and if they’re usually casual about nudity, they’ll treat you the same as any member of the household.
The classic story I bring up is the daughter of one of my patients. First week or so, she was in makeup, hair did, dressed for public before I would get there. I want to say that it was day 10 that I rolled up and she’s back in her house robe, with only a tee shirt underneath, having climbed out of bed only when she heard my car crackle the gravel in the driveway. It was all business one day, the next it was Sleepover Sally a couple of days later, she stopped even greeting me at the door and stopped getting dressed at all until she’d had coffee and a shower. That was her real habit: wake up, coffee, bathe, then dress.
Wasn’t even a nudist, just slept naked and she was at home. My job was to make their lives easier, not bring external pressure into their safe place. She followed her pattern when we weren’t there, and stayed clothed when a caregiver would object, but it was something we were aware of before accepting the case.
Some folks just aren’t bothered by being naked around close friends and family. Others aren’t bothered by it around anyone at all, even if they’re not nudists.
And it was cool for most of us workers. The only time nudity even registers to most hands-on caregivers is when it’s weaponized or sexually presented (or both). I mean, on my end, I was there to see someone naked and do things to their body. The nudity was mandatory for most cases because you can’t wash someone’s ass if they have pants on. Not very well anyway. That there was extra nudity was like there being exotic pets in the house; as long as I didn’t have to pet their python, why would I care? The alliteration was for funsies, I actually like snakes and think they feel pleasant to touch.
But there were also plenty of people in your frame of mind as well. Hell, I had patients that resisted care in general and avoided accepting care whenever possible because they didn’t want to be naked with someone. A handful wouldn’t move past it no matter how I was.
What’s funny is that in my personal life, I’ve become very nudity resistant to medical professionals because they’re not on my list of “my” people. That’s despite knowing that no doctor gives a damn about seeing my junk. I just don’t like sharing my body with people I barely know; it has nothing to do with them, it’s about my body autonomy. I wasn’t always like that, it happened after the disability stick hit me.
Nudist here.
But wasn’t raised nudist. Became one as an adult. I have zero qualms getting naked in front of people (even large groups), whether I know them or not. But it was interesting going from someone anxious about nudity because I was raised in a society that’s really weird about it to being totally comfortable with it.
There’s definitely a sexual aspect to it, but over time that kind of diminishes. I"m assuming if I was raised nudist that sexual aspect would probably never have been there at all because there wouldn’t be an exhibitionist angle to it. It’s only sexual to me now when normal flirting/advances take place like they would in a regular, non-nude scenario. Hell, it’s become regular enough to me that I honestly forget I’m even naked half the time.
It’s one of those curtain getting pulled back things. It’s really strange to me now how seriously this society treats nudity. It feels weird, and silly, when I have to wear swimwear now. Like, why am I doing this? It’s stupid. Putting clothes on to get them wet? Getting out and sitting around with wet clothes on? Whose idea was this?
I can definitely see how some of the people you’ve interacted with can be comfortable being naked with you there. All my friends have seen me naked and I’ll walk around my own house naked in front of them sometimes. NBD.
Euphemism alert!!!
(sorry, couldn’t resist, but appreciated the read and information)
Well said and I loved your secret pun
Thanks ;)
It was a bit cheeky.
This is the right answer. They’ve already identified the problem and dislike the feeling, which is well on the road to flipping the switch. This is one of the reasons human services fields are difficult, you literally have to turn off parts of yourself that would normally feel and react to become a good professional.
Amen to that! Shoving parts of yourself into a box in the back closet of your brain is a survival skill that you either pick up quick, or burn out and leave the field.
Mind you, things don’t like to stray in that box, but the whole nudity bit is usually curled up like a cat in there.