Overcoming a sexual trauma

Part of the reason we as women can't fully feel during sex is because of trauma. A trauma can happen when we have not been able to complete an action, e.g. where we could not flee, fight back or cry for help. If you experience an assault where you cannot escape, the body will freeze and activate a protective mechanism - and that protective mechanism can last a long time after the traumatic event. In fact, as long as you allow the body to express the unresolved feelings, sounds and actions that it could not express during the traumatic event.

You can also experience "the little traumas" if you are repeatedly unable to tell your feelings, needs and wishes to others. Joy is usually the only emotion that is seen as something good. Anger and sadness are the forbidden emotions. Not giving anger and sadness a place as forms of expression is oppressive and can create trauma in our body because they pile up as unresolved emotions. If one suppresses one's feelings and needs and does not communicate them to others, then we cannot complete our action or what our inner self wants us to do or say. We therefore find it more difficult to feel ourselves if we don't make room to just be ourselves and feel our inner landscape.

When we are continuously exposed to minor traumas, e.g. by suppressing our own needs, it can produce a numb pussy. Perhaps you have time and again allowed someone to do something to you, even if you didn't want to, e.g. a gynaecologist, midwife during childbirth or the touch of a lover or body therapist. Instead of speaking up, many simply check out their body. In some situations it is also the only option, e.g. during a birth.

A trauma most often creates shame and disgust - decidedly disgust for the body, the pussy and sex. It is a historical shame that almost sits in every woman's DNA, because there are so many women throughout time who have experienced sexual trauma. Shame has prevented us from being fully present in our pelvis. We are more in the head and the intellect.

If you feel unworthy and ashamed of a trauma, then you will not feel worthy of receiving pleasure either. You must be able to relax in order to receive, and in order to receive you must feel safe. To feel safe, you need to be able to express yourself completely.

Shame and the fear of intimacy and being fully present in our body and with our inner pussy creates tension, numbness and pain. It is easier to become numb than to revisit the small or large traumas in our lives. If numbness is your experience right now, that's okay. Remember that your body does this for a reason. She's trying to protect you. We are not always quite ready to open up, so take the time it takes to peel away each layer that you are ready to meet and process.

If you've had a yoni massage from a partner or a body therapist, feelings may come up, and there doesn't need to be any history. It is the body that feels. So it is important to feel everything and express everything. It is important to be seen and recognized as an emotional being who can express all kinds of feelings.

To overcome a trauma, it is about gaining control over your body and your pleasure. Set limits for yourself, your lover and with the gynaecologist.

In order to overcome a trauma and regain control, you also have to revisit the trauma. At some point you have to confront what happened to you, but only when you feel completely safe and don't want to be re-traumatized by it.

So the first thing you need to do is find a way in which you don't feel overwhelmed by the sensations and feelings that were encoded in your body by the trauma.

When we feel a trauma from the past, it is not like an ordinary experience of a memory, but rather it is an experience of physical reactions in the present. The fuel for post-traumatic stress syndrome is in the emotional brain. Contrary to the rational brain, from which we express thoughts and ideas, the emotional brain expresses itself in physical reactions: nerve-racking sensations, palpitations, shallow breathing, heartache and the characteristic body movements that denote breakdown, rage, stiffness or defensive reactions.

"Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than fear, everything shifts"

- Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD, The Body Keeps the Score

Our rational brain can understand why we feel the way we do, because we have experienced a trauma that has caused us to be numb in he yoni or experience pain or find it difficult to surrender fully to an orgasm or love. Gaining an understanding of why you feel the way you do will prevent you from completely surrendering yourself to the traumatic sensations and emotions. In order to overcome a trauma, it is necessary to get a balance between the emotional brain and the rational brain, so that the emotional brain does not take over. This can be done by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to become friends with what is going on within us.

Breathing exercises:

Learning to breathe quietly can help relax your nervous system, even during times when you are reliving painful and unpleasant memories. When you consciously take a few deep breaths, with special focus on exhaling completely and pausing before taking the next breath, you will find that you can handle your emotions from the trauma much better. When you breathe in and out, you can think about the role your breathing has in relation to nourishing the body. Imagine how your breath cleanses you, nourishes you and makes you feel fully alive and present in the moment.

2. Meditation and mindfulness:

Reestablishing contact with the body is important because trauma causes the body and mind to shut down, and the traumatic feelings and sensations freeze in the body's memory. It is therefore important to get in touch with the frozen, stagnant energy in the body, so that you can again feel alive inside. Meditation and mindfulness can be used and help to relax the nervous system, so that you do not re-traumatize yourself so easily. When you re-establish contact with your body and the sensations and feelings from the past, you must proceed quietly. You have to re-program your nervous system for safety and must therefore be able to tolerate what comes up. By practicing mindfulness, you can gain a better understanding and acceptance of the sensations and feelings that may arise, and you can better understand that they are only temporary and ever-changing. If you can't be in the sensations and feelings that come to the surface, take a break and come back another day. At that stage, it can re-traumatize you further, which does not benefit you in overcoming the trauma.

3. Dance, yoga and massage:

In the process of healing yourself sexually, it is important to know that it does not have to be hard, tearful and traumatized all the time to make your body feel pleasure. It doesn't have to be that you have to go through the trauma to feel pleasure again. In fact, it is important that you not only focus on the trauma, but also on giving your nervous system and your body a break and permission to feel pleasure. Eg. pleasure by dancing sensually, practicing yoga, massaging her breasts or touching other parts of the body. It is important to have sensual contact with the whole body, right down to the feet and up to the head, because it is not the touch of the clitoris in itself that creates sexual pleasure, but the contact between the head, body and pelvis.

Thanks for reading, beautiful goddess!