Trauma and Sexuality: How to Listen to Your Body

Trauma, grief, fear, and pain all have a funny way of taking over your body to demand attention. When you are in a situation where you feel afraid you may notice that you become nauseous. Or when you feel stressed you may notice your shoulders feel tight or your hands feel restless. But have you ever noticed how it affects your sexuality?

A few years back I began to notice a sharp pain with arousal in my vagina before penetration or any touch would occur and I attributed it to my method of birth control. After consulting with my doctor I was able to switch to a different method of birth control but she assured me that the pain was not related to it at all. After months of using a new birth control, I continued to experience the pain. Thanks to this pesky pain, my sex life had come to a complete halt. This was devastating for my husband and me.  We went from not being able to keep our hands off of each other to my skin crawling at the slightest touch to my erogenous zones in less than a month.

Around the same time a traumatic experience, related to my sexual abuse, resurfaced when an allegation of sexual assault was made towards a very young family member. It sent me back to a time of vulnerability, fear, and anxiety that I thought I’d moved past. After speaking with a therapist I realized I needed to work through those feelings and many other traumatic experiences that I’ve ignored for most of my life and understand how they have affected me. But I still hadn’t made the connection between the pain and this experience resurfacing.

I set out on a search for a trauma-informed therapist who could help me process my traumas. I found an amazing therapist who recommended we try EMDR. EMDR combines visualization with bilateral stimulation to help the brain process memories that still hold distress and cause limiting beliefs. To be completely honest I was afraid I’d be getting hypnotized but after many sessions and a million questions, we began processing my traumatic experiences. We decided to begin with the abuse I experienced as a child. I sat across from my laptop, thanks to the pandemic, tapping my thighs rhythmically to activate the bilateral stimulation and maintain the connection with the world outside of my memory as I recounted my abuse. My therapist coached me through each journey back into my memory.  By the third session, the pain showed up again and my therapist began to walk me through the different ways trauma can appear in the body. I was in absolute shock. I never would have thought that the reason my sex drive had taken a nosedive was correlated to an experience I was sure I’d buried in the past. 

With the world moving a million miles a minute it’s easy to ignore what’s really causing our bodies to respond in a way we are unfamiliar with. It’s important to reconnect with what we’re feeling and how we can begin to heal. I’ve been on a journey to reconnect with my body while actually listening to the messages it sends me. And let me tell you, she has a lot to say. I discovered the creation of a safe mental space and words of affirmation as a way to move past the pain during arousal and I’m happy to say I’m back in business! I’ve also got into yoga which has helped me connect with my body physically. I often ignore pain, tightness, and believe it or not my breathing. Yoga allows me to take the time to understand and connect my breath with what I am physically feeling. But my never-ending curiosity left me wanting more. 

Thankfully Curious Fox is always there to lend a helping paw. 

Tantra student and teacher Adam Bee believes that when we surrender to grief and pain, we grow, we uplevel, we find a new plane of existence from which we can live in our bodies.

Open your mind to new experiences and options for healing. You never know what surprises await you!

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