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.
Possibly it might help to accept that your conflict is not unusual, professionalism is an attempt to limit the chaos of human thought into a narrow channel but it is only an attempt. Understanding that emotions from arousal to repulsion are natural and have evolved specifically to overcome attempts to suppress them is important. Expectation and acceptance of errant thoughts is a way to nullify their potency and manage their weight on your actions. Those thoughts that flit in and out of your mind are in the minds of everyone around you, and always have been and were in the minds of the owners of those butts. The chaos does not escape our minds not because it is not there but because it does not fit into the world we have made. This essential goodness of fit to the world of a conscious well mind is what limits the stream of unlimited options coming unrelented from the subconscious.