I'm that anon that sent you a whole ass essay about coping with "problematic" kinks a bit over a week ago. I'm glad you found it comforting on some level. Learning to cope with the ugly parts of the human experience is hard, and many people will hate you for allowing the ugly parts to exist rather than trying to erase them and unfortunately many people don't seem to understand that things like kinks are not a good indicator of morality. There are places and people that can understand and accept you though, I promise. I feel for you here, and I hope things go well in the future.

I'm gonna try to say this as clearly and comprehensibly as possible as someone who has trauma derived sexual interests and has both been in therapy for 5+ years now and has been passionate about learning about how this stuff functions for,, basically as long as I was aware of it. Also I am not coming off of anyone any time soon on account of I've already gotten far too much harassment over the results of being abused as a kid.

You do not "get rid of" any sexual fixations. The brain does not work like that. Your only options are trying to suppress or ignore it, which has been proven multiple times over to only cause further distress and does not work to get rid of it, OR you can accept whatever weirdness your brain has developed and find the lowest risk/safest way of coping with it. This is often ugly and somewhat unpleasant, but the catharsis is often necessary. I despise fandom purity culture for demonizing people who have fixations they did not ask for and are coping via fiction, which is, for the record, one of the healthiest and safest ways to cope when done correctly.

To use my own experience as an example; I was violently abused and lightly groomed under a christian context for my entire childhood and into my adolescence. Like I was exhibiting ptsd symptoms by age five severe. One of the more so-called "problematic" results of this is that I have a particularly violent sexual sadomasochistic streak. My brain created a direct connection between pain/fear and arousal to cope with what I went through. This is not my fault. Being aroused by seeing my partner afraid is not something I ever asked for. I tried to suppress and ignore it for much of my life and it only made me increasingly angry and aggressive in every day life. What finally actually helped me is being able to explore this stuff in the context of bdsm relationships and dark fiction.

The catharsis of a sadomasochistic kink scene or creating/consuming content reminiscent of what I went through has done more for me to recover from trauma than anything else.

With this I have been able to reinforce that what happened is not my fault, was in fact that bad, and has not somehow ruined me as a person.

I want you to listen to me and understand that having a fixation on abdl does not make you a predator, it does not make you a bad person. Literally nobody and nothing is "unproblematic". You are a human being. A strange mammal running on strange instincts in a strange world.

My recommendation for you is that you find a kink aware therapist to help guide you into finding healthy outlets. If you can't find/afford one, then please at least try different ways of getting your feelings out of your head. Art. Writing. Consuming content. Maybe even approaching the actual kink scene. Just don't let it fester.

It's unfortunate that this affecting you the way it is, but I promise there are options that can help you cope, that it can get better, and that this does not make you a bad person