Episodes

Philias: Diapers, Age Play, and the Psychology of ABDL

You’ve definitely wondered why some grown adults like to wear diapers—so let’s get into it. In today’s episode, we rip off the velcro to understand the world of of ABDL (Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers) and uncover the diverse desires and expressions within this often misunderstood community. From the psychological and emotional aspects to the truly prolific amount of gear options, we explore what draws people to this kink and how it can be a source of comfort, coping, and even healing. With the help of researcher B. Terrance Grey, The Usual Bet podcast hosts and age players Sophie & Chloe, and veteran kinkster Benny, we also tackle the tough stuff like shame, stigma, and navigating relationships. So grab your favorite sippy cup, settle in, and join us for a judgment-free journey into the heart of this fascinating community.

Video version:

Diapers, Age Play, and the Psychology of ABDL

You’ve definitely wondered why some grown adults like to wear diapers-so let’s get into it. In today’s episode, we rip off the velcro to understand the world of of ABDL (Adult Baby/Diaper Lovers) and uncover the diverse desires and expressions within this often misunderstood community.

Resources from B. Terrance Grey:

Resources from Sophie & Chloe:

Resources from Benny:

Citations and further reading:

TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:00] Ashley: When an adult wears diapers in a TV show or movie, it’s meant to signal one of three things. One is that they’ve lost their dignity, either because their health is deteriorating, or because someone’s forced them to play the part of a baby. In the 2005 comedy thriller Bad Girls from Valley High, A curse makes three hot teen girls start to rapidly age, forcing them to wear diapers to cope.

[00:00:29] Ashley: And in one episode of The Simpsons, the alcoholic putz Barney is seen handing out flyers for a baby furniture store in a diaper and baby bonnet. A passerby actually tells him, you sicken me, before his diaper falls off and blows away. He chases it and then turns the corner to see his own mother. Pop culture teaches us that wearing a diaper as an adult is the ultimate humiliation.

[00:00:55] Ashley: Another reason characters might wear a diaper is for deception. There are countless cartoons where the villain dresses up as a baby in order to get pity from the hero, usually resulting in their own loss of dignity when they’re pampered and coddled like a baby against their will. In the Jetsons, it’s a jewel thief.

[00:01:15] Ashley: In Looney Tunes, it’s a tiny bank robber. In the 2008 Batman animated series, it’s crime boss Babyface trying to bust out of jail. According to pop culture, dressing as a baby is a great way to fool people into being nice to you. The final major reason a grown adult might wear diapers in TV and film is that their mental health is suffering.

[00:01:38] Ashley: In Spongebob Squarepants, the ornery Squidward gets hit in the head and regresses to a baby like state as a result. In Rugrats, Tommy’s dad Stu falls off the roof and Does the exact same thing! Again, pop culture is there to let us know that adults who want to be babies have mental health issues. But there’s a large, diverse group of adults who like to dress up in diapers, who are mentally sound, aren’t trying to deceive anybody, and don’t consider diapers humiliation.

[00:02:13] Ashley: Or do, and like it that way. And today, we’re going to find out why diapers are appealing to them, the many different desires and expressions within this community, and how a diaper is sometimes just a leather collar in a different form. I’m Ashley Hamer and this is Taboo Science, the podcast that answers the questions you’re not allowed to ask.

[00:02:57] Ashley: So to get some basics out of the way, the name of this community of people who like wearing diapers is an acronym, ABDL. Adult Babies and Diaper Lovers. Sometimes written as Adult Babies slash Diaper Lovers.

[00:03:11] Grey: ABDL is a diverse community of adults. who enjoy wearing diapers and or role playing as babies. On the DL end of things, it is often sexual.

[00:03:22] Ashley: That is, for people who are more in it for the diapers themselves, it’s usually because they get sexual gratification from some aspect or aspects of wearing, feeling, seeing, and even hearing the crinkle of a diaper.

[00:03:35] Grey: On the AB end of things, there it becomes a little less like what you Your listeners might imagine they enjoy dressing as babies and role playing as babies.

[00:03:45] Grey: This may involve pacifiers, stuffed animals, etc. Now, interestingly, they may separate conventional sexuality from baby play. They also might embrace the role or enjoy the humiliation and loss of control.

[00:04:00] Ashley: That is B. Terrance Grey, an amateur researcher and the creator of the incredible ABDL resource UnderstandingInfantilism.

[00:04:08] Ashley: org, which has been going strong for nearly 30 years. Grey performed some of the first demographic studies of the ABDL community through his own web surveys, and has published in several academic journals. And as Grey said, this community is diverse. It’s not like there are adult babies and diaper lovers and that’s it.

[00:04:29] Grey: They’re often discussed as two ends to a spectrum, but it is a continuum. The mode for the community is actually to be mostly DL.

[00:04:39] Ashley: Interesting. So like, what you mean by that is like, on that continuum, everyone’s pretty much into diapers but not as many are into like the ageplay part?

[00:04:48] Grey: Most are into diapers.

[00:04:49] Grey: Some aren’t into the ageplay. Yeah.

[00:04:51] Sophie: ABDL is that term that you search. It’s the term you see. And it’s interesting because a lot of people don’t identify that way anymore. I remember when I first got into the ABDL community, it was a thing that you had to identify. Either you were an adult baby or you were a diaper lover and there really wasn’t other options.

[00:05:10] Sophie: Nowadays we have relationships, um, like DDLG. which is Daddy Dom Little Girl, um, or CGL, which is Caregiver Little, and you see a lot more people identify as littles or bigs or caregivers these days. Yep. Oh, for the reference, I identify as a little. Me too.

[00:05:28] Ashley: That is Sophie and Chloe, cohosts of the podcast The Usual Bet, an 18 and up age play podcast that focuses on ABDL topics.

[00:05:37] Ashley: The name refers to the bet the co hosts make during every episode. Whoever loses has to wear a diaper on the next episode. One reason that many people in the ABDL community don’t use the term adult baby is because not all identify with a baby type character. Some roleplay is slightly older. Toddlers, or even primary school kids.

[00:05:59] Ashley: Rather than littles, people with that older identity sometimes call themselves middles. Which brings me to the first question you might be asking. Is this a pedophile thing? As you might imagine, that is a question people in the ABDL community are used to, and very ready to answer.

[00:06:20] Sophie: This is like, Ageplay 101, first thing you gotta talk about, first thing you deal with, Ageplay, kink, ABDL stuff is 18 Yeah, adults only, no minors.

[00:06:30] Sophie: We are adults. We consent to the things that we are doing. We are playing with this concept of being younger and fitting in this space, and we have to follow specific rules. Rules with consent that go along with that is with any kink. You need to set boundaries. You need to set your limits. You have to be responsible for your own actions, and that’s not something you can unilaterally depend on with a minor because they can’t consent to these things.

[00:06:58] Sophie: We have zero interaction with minors and I think like it’s, it’s one of those things that the ABDL community is extremely vigilant about because of associations. Realistically hypervigilant. Yeah, and the way that the public perception has always associated these two things together. Mm hmm. We do so much to do our best to draw these lines very, very firmly that this is not an acceptable side of this.

[00:07:26] Chloe: Absolutely. Um, I also think it’s important to note, like, the attraction stuff. It is not too Childish things. It’s about being put in the position of, like, a childish situation of, like, having limits put on you, or constraints, or things that take away your autonomy. It’s BDSM. It’s, it’s like a power play.

[00:07:45] Chloe: Give and take. It is not, oh, I find childish things attractive or something. It’s, oh, I am embarrassed to have been put in this situation. I, I have lost power. by being put in a situation and I think that’s where you go back into that traditional like dom sub power play stuff and that’s where a lot of the sexual aspects are.

[00:08:05] Sophie: A majority of age play in ABDL is just kink with a really cutesy filter over it. That’s, that’s really what you’re playing with.

[00:08:16] Ashley: This isn’t true for everyone in the ABDL community. Not everyone gets off on humiliation or anything you’d find in BDSM. There are as many ways to be in the ABDL community as there are people, and how it looks in one person’s life or bedroom may be completely different from someone else’s.

[00:08:34] Ashley: ABDL also lends itself to a lot of different kinks. Looking at you, furries. So the limit is truly your imagination. But for some people, the humiliation and shame of being an adult wearing a diaper is a real turn on.

[00:08:51] Benny: One aspect for a lot of people, and myself included, can be that this is relatively embarrassing, right?

[00:08:57] Benny: Anything having to do with, like, bodily needs, and especially bathroom related needs, is something most adults, and I’m certainly one of them, find embarrassing to interact with other people about, or even just with ourselves.

[00:09:10] Ashley: That is Benny, who’s a member of the board of directors for an event called Twisted Trist, which is a sort of summer camp for kinksters, and a former manager at the Chicago BDSM club Galleria Domain 2.

[00:09:22] Ashley: He also identifies as a little.

[00:09:25] Benny: But then when we kind of push past that humiliation aspect, it can be like deeply connecting between people. So when I get a chance to play with this with other people, the experience of changing someone else’s diaper, somebody changing mine. Sort of being interacting with that on an ongoing basis feels really intimate in a way that can be like a little bit invasive, a little bit caretaking, or a lot caretaking.

[00:09:47] Benny: Um, all of those different emotional aspects are important to me.

[00:09:51] Chloe: It’s comforting, um, it’s cute. I like being cute. It is a great coping mechanism for, like, stress or, or anxiety or all those things. It’s a way to take a step back from the toils and stress of daily life and, like, enter into a safe, comfortable space.

[00:10:10] Chloe: I think all of kink offers that in its own way, um, and this is a very straightforward way and my

[00:10:19] Sophie: I think like, ageplay and ABDL is a very cutesy way of stepping into that space where a lot of other kinks, you know, focus on other elements of submission and stuff. HBlaze still does that in a lot of regards.

[00:10:35] Sophie: You still have to be dependent on someone or, like, fall into the submissive category, this, this role where you aren’t in charge of things, and it’s very freeing to let someone else have control or, you know, be in situations where even you can kind of baby yourself a little bit sometimes, too, where you set up a situation where you don’t have control over that or you, you can get through difficult things a lot easier.

[00:11:19] Ashley: What about diapers themselves? They’re big, they’re awkward, they get heavy when they’re wet, they make a sound when they move, they make people walk funny. What of that could possibly be appealing? Well, for a certain person, all of the above.

[00:11:36] Benny: I like the A lot of the physical sensations associated. So, I really like plastic backed disposable diapers as my preference.

[00:11:44] Benny: The smooth plastic under my fingers is really good. The sensation of, like, thickness and warmness and, um, If you’re wearing a really good quality diaper, you kind of can’t forget that it’s there. Uh, right, like it’s a little bit of like a constant reminder of something going on with your body. And then the, the joke I often make, but I, I, it’s true, is that I think most people like the idea of something warm, wet, and squishy around their genitals.

[00:12:11] Benny: Right, like that, you know, just from a purely sort of physical perspective that can do it for some people, and I guess I’m one of those people.

[00:12:20] Sophie: Diapers are really core to this kink, foundational for this kink, and both Chloe and I are into this aspect of this kink.

[00:12:29] Chloe: I think I’d equate it, uh, if I can like equate it to a different kink.

[00:12:32] Chloe: It’s kind of like a collar, right? Like, Like, Functionally in terms of like what it does in like terms of the like power dynamic and all that.

[00:12:40] Sophie: Yes, you’re wearing this because this shows your status. This puts you into this position, this lower submissive position. Yeah. On top of that for some people or even just some of the time, Diapers are just comfortable.

[00:12:58] Sophie: They’re nice, they’re comforting, they bring a sense of, of just peace to it. Childishness. Yeah, it’s kind of like going to bed in your favorite pajamas, you know? Um, there’s just this serenity to them sometimes. that for whatever reason really vibes with, with me and with other people in the community.

[00:13:22] Ashley: But diapers were meant for babies who can’t control their own bodily functions.

[00:13:28] Ashley: Like, when you change a diaper, it’s because it’s full of pee or poop. Do adults in this community use them that way too? Not all, but most do.

[00:13:38] Benny: Most people pee and most people don’t. We use the mass. instead of poop. Uh, not everybody does, but that’s the most common. People will say like peeing and messing.

[00:13:48] Benny: Messing is less common, but certainly not uncommon. And it is less common, but not uncommon to wear, but not use. So the, the overlap between water sports, playing with urine and playing with diapers is pretty high.

[00:14:03] Ashley: Next question. Do people have sex in the diapers?

[00:14:06] Benny: Yes, people definitely have sex in the diapers.

[00:14:09] Benny: It’s, um, can be a little bit complicated. So, if you put a hole in a disposable diaper, you are wrecking the integrity of what is holding everything together, right? So, people have done some very creative things to try to make that less of a disaster, or you just lean into the mess and be like, this is gonna make a mess.

[00:14:28] Benny: That’s also fine, too. Uh, there’s lots of hand stuff for a lot of people, cause getting hands. Hands are toys or vibrators or whatever inside of diapers. Strap ons go outside them really nice. There’s a huge variety of ways to do it. If you can think of a way to make it work, someone has done that. But yeah, people definitely have sex in diapers.

[00:14:46] Benny: There’s also, I think slightly more common, is sex or sexual play as a part of a diaper change. So the diaper’s coming off for a reason. that make sense in context. And then we’re gonna like do some kind of sexual play as a part of that process and then often then put another diaper on. That’s a pretty common one because of the the context just sort of makes sense there for people.

[00:15:10] Ashley: When we come back, we’ll explore the other supplies a well stocked age player might have, we’ll uncover how people get into this kink in the first place, and we’ll see the darker side of shame. Stay tuned.

[00:15:30] Ashley: Diapers aren’t the only piece of gear many people in this community wear to get into that baby-ish headspace. In fact, to this outsider, A BDL may be the kink with the most and most ornate supplies and gear that I’ve ever come across. You don’t have to have all, or even any of this stuff to participate in ABDL, but for someone who has the budget, the sky is the limit for what you could buy.

[00:15:55] Benny: Yeah, I would say pacifiers are probably the second thing people buy. People go for diapers first and pacifiers second, generally. I mean, lots of variation. But, there are a huge number of pacifiers available out there now too. They, they got inexpensive to produce. And so, there’s a wide variety, lots of different designs, lots of solid colors.

[00:16:13] Grey: More common items include pacifiers, bottles, nursing bottles, and stuffed animals.

[00:16:20] Benny: And sippy cups and bottles and all of those kinds of things as well are available and being sold and people will make and sell like cute rattles and, you know, baby blankets styled like baby ones but that are bigger. Just kind of everything you can think of.

[00:16:37] Grey: Clothing is also commonly present. It would be affected by individual tastes of course.

[00:16:43] Benny: Some people just want the diapers and they wear their adult clothing and they’re just the the diaper lover side of it or kind of minimalist. Others want a whole wardrobe of cute pajamas and onesies and rompers and dresses and all of that kind of stuff.

[00:16:56] Benny: Onesies in particular, and by onesies I specifically mean like a shirt that snaps at the crotch, and that people use that word to mean lots of different kinds of products. Sleepers with feet and whatever, but like, specifically I mean the ones that snap at the crotch. Those tend to be particularly popular because they help hold diapers in place.

[00:17:15] Benny: Um, so they’re like a functional thing as well as being, uh, adorable.

[00:17:18] Grey: Now, one notable item is sissy clothing, and that’s something we should be aware of. Because depending on the individual, they may dress as a very girlish baby, as a way to express their identification as a girlish baby, and others on the other end of the AB subspectrum might enjoy being dressed as a very girlish baby to amplify the humiliation of being not only a baby but a girl.

[00:17:48] Ashley: There are boy babies too, of course.

[00:17:50] Benny: For my little self, he can really lean into boycotted colors and boycotted, you know, stuff. And so for me, that means leaning into having a lot of, like a lot of blue in his wardrobe, things like that. And then a really strong attraction to boy characters in media. So I like Sesame Street a lot.

[00:18:10] Benny: Uh, Bert’s my favorite character, that sort of thing, right? And, and when I see other people playing in a more masculine space in the ABDL sense, and there are many, it’s not unusual, it does tend to be those sorts of things. It tends to be leaning into, you know, bright colors that focus a little bit more on blue, characters that they identify as being more male coded, and there are luckily lots of products.

[00:18:34] Benny: You know, there are some companies that are doing a really good job of making sure that they’ve got Gender diverse kinds of products available, uh, diapers and clothing and stuff like that. And then, if you’ve got a sky high budget

[00:18:45] Grey: They may even have custom furniture. Custom furniture is quite expensive and difficult to source.

[00:18:51] Grey: It also requires sufficient space to have a room with the custom furniture. So it’s quite rare, but many ABDL individuals would like to have a custom nursery with their custom furniture and a layout that might extend to quite a large range of items.

[00:19:14] Ashley: So how does a person start doing this kind of thing? Is it from childhood? Is it something you get into when a partner introduces it to you? As with most things ABDL, the desire can be planted in all sorts of ways.

[00:19:28] Grey: Some may have a lifelong desire, they can’t tell you when it started, but they would have either realized it at some point or just accepted that it was always there, seemingly.

[00:19:42] Grey: Others may have been, as adults, introduced to a practice and found that they enjoyed it. Two groups would initially have separate demographics. The first group, which has a paraphilia or a predisposition if it’s not sexual. They do tend to be male. They do tend to have early ages of onset. They also tend to be white and in the western culture.

[00:20:07] Grey: However, that might be strictly a cultural thing. The second group that may have simply experimented and found that they enjoyed. Those in contrast tend to be more women. This too might be a strictly cultural thing at Department stores, back when there were department stores, you would be able to get footed sleepers in infant sizes and women’s sizes, but not men’s sizes.

[00:20:31] Grey: In so many other ways, society tells women that it might be okay to be a princess as an adult, then they would a male.

[00:20:41] Ashley: In fact, a common belief about the ABDL community is that it’s nearly all men. That’s something that seems to be changing. More women, both cis and trans, are joining the community. That doesn’t mean that women weren’t into this historically.

[00:20:56] Ashley: Instead, it could be a sign of changing social dynamics. As Benny told me, ABDL internet forums used to be toxic places for women, and the community is gradually learning to treat them better. It’s the story of a lot of online spaces for women. It just seems like ABDL got the memo a little later. But either way, according to research, men are more likely to get into diapers and other ABDL proclivities early in life, while women are more likely to discover it later.

[00:21:24] Ashley: But even for those who get into it early, results from Grey’s original survey suggest it’s probably not from birth.

[00:21:31] Grey: The particular type of diaper that an ABDL individual fantasizes about will lag by about five years relative to the type of diaper that they may have been raised in.

[00:21:44] Ashley: Lag? What do you mean?

[00:21:46] Grey: The type of diaper that And ABDL might fantasize about would be the type of diaper that a younger person, five years younger on average, would have been raised in. This suggests a postnatal formative component. This doesn’t mean that, uh, the desires were necessarily caused at an average of five years of age, but that there is maybe some later stage that occurs there.

[00:22:13] Ashley: Got it. So, say, that possibly If they were five and saw babies wearing those diapers, that’s the diaper they thought about. They didn’t think about the diaper that they themselves had on.

[00:22:26] Grey: It is rare for adults to be able to remember their own infancy, so they may be reconstructing their own childhood from what they observe in the community.

[00:22:38] Grey: Now this is one aspect that makes the ABDL community interesting scientifically, because they do have that clear postnatal component. With other orientations and paraphilias, they could arguably mainly genetic or prenatal.

[00:22:53] Ashley: This is super cool! I mean, most kinks don’t involve any specific objects from that far back in a person’s life, so ABDL is unique in that scientists can potentially point to something, in this case a specific type of diaper, that gives some hint as to when the interest started.

[00:23:11] Ashley: For Sophie and Chloe, they both felt like a desire to be a little had always been with them. Here’s Sophie.

[00:23:18] Sophie: Even before I was 10 years old, I remember wanting to always be the baby when we play house. Um, I remember having a little brother who is significantly younger than me and was in diapers and I would, like, Be jealous of that.

[00:23:36] Sophie: I remember being jealous. I remember having my younger sister’s toys and like wanting to play with them and stuff. So I think I’ve always been into this. It didn’t really come about to being like, Oh, this is a thing. Like this is a thing other people are into. Um, until I was maybe 13 or 14 and I was just talking to friends my age on the internet, because that’s That’s how the internet was back then.

[00:24:03] Sophie: And it kind of grew into Like, I want to role play online as kind of being younger or like being treated like a five year old. And it just kind of developed from there. And I didn’t really learn about the ABDL community or this kind of bigger picture until maybe my mid teens. And then I did my, you know, Best not to engage with it, because no minors can kink.

[00:24:28] Sophie: Um, we always make jokes of like, oh yeah, we were into baby stuff, but like, when we were 18 and no younger. Um, but that’s not inherently true. It’s just us trying to draw that, that fine line. Uh, I do think this is something of, you know, It’s always been a part of me. It took a long time to accept that and it took me even longer to appreciate and love that part of me.

[00:24:48] Sophie: Mm-Hmm. .

[00:24:50] Chloe: Um, honestly, I have pretty much the same story, like impulses at an early age, like wanting to be this way. Not understanding, not understanding myself. A lot of self hatred and like shame that went along with that and taking the greater part of my like adolescence to understand this and start to accept it before reaching.

[00:25:11] Chloe: 18 and no younger, and, uh, like, joining the community.

[00:25:15] Ashley: For Benny, the discovery came later, but it fit like a puzzle piece into things he was already doing.

[00:25:22] Benny: Playing with age aspect of it goes back to sort of my earliest understandings of relationships and sexuality. Uh, so even as an adolescent, I was sort of experimenting with those ideas.

[00:25:32] Benny: Um, but in my early adulthood, as I came into the kink community, I discovered, uh, that diaper fetishes were a thing. Uh, and something about that really jumped out for me. So, some people find this out about themselves quite a bit younger. Uh, but for me, it was in my very early adulthood. So, I sort of got exposed to that idea and was just immediately fascinated, um, and felt like it connected quite strongly with the, um, the play that I was already doing that had to do with vulnerability and youth and intimacy in, uh, in slightly humiliating ways.

[00:26:04] Benny: Aspects of that really kind of all resonated, uh, and so I started giving diapering a try, uh, when I was in my very early 20s and, uh, I have never walked away since.

[00:26:14] Ashley: Chloe and Benny are also representative of a pretty sizable demographic in the ABDL space. Trans folks. For that community, there’s a lot to like about age play.

[00:26:25] Ashley: For one thing, diapers can be really freeing for people with gender dysphoria.

[00:26:30] Chloe: It removes, like, the genital region, like, uh, that stuff, all the dysphoria tied up in that, and just totally removes it from play.

[00:26:37] Sophie: It’s a gender unifying garment. And, um, that can be really, uh, a boon. Depending on how comfortable you are with your body and stuff.

[00:26:47] Ashley: But even more significantly, most trans folks didn’t get a chance to have a childhood as their gender. And being able to relive that era, even a little bit, can be really therapeutic.

[00:26:58] Benny: One is that I’m a transmasculine person and I didn’t get to have a boyhood. So getting to experience myself as a little, as an adult, allows me to have a boyhood that I otherwise didn’t have.

[00:27:11] Benny: And so my little self tends to lean in really hard on like very masculine childhood things in a very stereotypical way that isn’t necessarily how I actually view the world as an adult, um, but is sort of the way a toddler might view gender. And it allows me to Access. sort of emotional intimacy and caregiving in a way that I think I did have as a kid but many people just don’t remember, right?

[00:27:36] Benny: So we get to bring that feeling of what we like want that experience of feeling nurtured in that kind of way and bring that into adulthood in a way that we that many people don’t get and well you know once we’re older than pretty small children.

[00:27:56] Ashley: However, it’s not all smiles and sippy cups. Where there’s shame for fun, there’s often shame for real. And ABDL is no different. In fact, feeling ashamed for these interests is so common that there’s almost a formula for how the struggle plays out. The binge purge cycle.

[00:28:18] Grey: One thing that ABL individuals might experience as they grow up is the desire to be normal.

[00:28:28] Sophie: You realize life would just be so much easier if I didn’t like this, if I didn’t have an, if I didn’t have an urge, an internal thing that I couldn’t control, if I could just control it and make it go away, then my life would be so much better.

[00:28:43] Grey: They might not realize that perhaps normal is only pretending to be what people define as normal and try to quit cold turkey.

[00:28:53] Sophie: The amount of times I’ve thrown away everything I own because I’m like, I’m not doing this. I’m done with this. Yeah.

[00:29:01] Grey: They get rid of all their ABDL paraphernalia and try to oppose their practices.

[00:29:06] Grey: This comes with a lot of negative feelings because while they’re trying to not be themselves. This puts them in a really bad place to change any practice.

[00:29:16] Chloe: And then you build impulses and desires because you’re oppressing yourself and then you binge again.

[00:29:22] Grey: Those desires slowly build like water behind a dam until something finally breaks.

[00:29:28] Grey: Now this break wouldn’t be just an engagement in practices. It would be an extreme engagement of practices, complete in moderation. Something that, you know, They engage in sharply, and then suddenly regret. This starts a cycle over again. They suddenly regret, they try to quit cold turkey, and the pressure starts building again.

[00:29:52] Chloe: That shame, that self hatred, I think it really comes from Societal expectations, right, of what you should be, who you should be, what’s normal, and a lack of understanding of why you feel that way, and like, why you have these urges, and a lack of empathy for yourself.

[00:30:10] Grey: The best way to break out of the cycle is moderation.

[00:30:14] Grey: Try to work out a moderate level of practice that you can stably be comfortable at. Depending on your life situation, you might be able to increase or decrease that to better comply with your living situations. your lifestyle, but it’s important to gain that stability through moderation first. Otherwise, you’ll just be going through a cycle of extreme trying to quit and extreme failing to quit, which gives rise to trying again and failing again.

[00:30:51] Ashley: A big part of the shame is a lack of understanding by friends and loved ones. Trusted confidants who spilled their deepest secrets, family members who teased and laughed at them, Friends who turned it into a running joke. Part of the reason for this mini series is to show that we’re all human and that we all have reasons for liking the things we like.

[00:31:12] Ashley: Understanding that is powerful. Ignorance actively harms people. If we’re all more understanding of everyone else, There’s a better chance they’ll be understanding of us, too.

[00:31:24] Chloe: I can say I have not had a binge purge cycle in probably close to, like, almost a decade. Not a decade yet, but, like, we’re getting close to there, like, I am at a point where I love myself, I love who I am, I love what I do, I love the things I’m interested in, and I think anyone can get to that point, and I, I really hope, like, And people maybe hear this and listen to this and think, Oh, you know, I’m not there.

[00:31:50] Chloe: So maybe I can get there and reach out for, for community, for, for like companionship and just understanding.

[00:32:04] Ashley: Thanks for listening. Thank you so much to Sophie and Chloe, Benny, and B Terrance Grey for talking to me. Sophie and Chloe’s podcast is The Usual Bet. And if you want a deeper dive into what ABDL is all about, I highly recommend episode 100. Kimmy is my favorite part. There is a link to their show in the show notes, or you can just search the usual bet wherever you found this podcast.

[00:32:28] Ashley: B. Terrance Grey runs the website understandinginfantilism. org, where you can find both his research and the research of the late, great Brian Zamboni, who is responsible for the most significant research of the ABDL community in medical literature. Taboo Science is on YouTube! If you like consuming podcasts that way, click the link in the show notes and subscribe to the channel.

[00:32:50] Ashley: At the moment I record this, I am 70 subscribers away from being monetized, which is a big deal! Your follow would be a big help. We have two episodes left in this miniseries. Next up is a kind of kink sampler platter before we hit the final boss kink. What’s vor? Is financial domination a thing? What’s up with wet and messy fetishes?

[00:33:14] Ashley: I hope you’ll tune in. I won’t tell anyone.