Physical Intimacy After Sexual Trauma

Content warning: discussion of trauma and sexual assault

Sexual trauma is one of the most harrowing experiences someone can go through and unfortunately, it’s far too common. Sexual trauma can be caused by any kind of non-consensual sexual experience; including rape, sexual assault, sexual harassment, and childhood molestation. Given that trauma is subjective, it is up to the individual to determine how to define their experience. On average, there are 450,000+ survivors of rape and sexual assault every year in the United States, a number which is likely underreported. Survivors of sexual trauma frequently struggle with PTSD and are more likely to abuse drugs and alcohol to cope. Experiencing sexual trauma has the potential to upend someone’s entire life, not least of all their sex life. Trauma responses can range from sex repulsion to hyper-sexuality. There is no one timeline or coping strategy that will work for every survivor of sexual assault so the most important part is to respect one’s own boundaries and to move at a pace that feels comfortable. There’s no obligation to return to consensual sex but for those who want that, healing is possible, even if it is sometimes challenging. 

Common obstacles to resuming consensual intimacy may include negative body image, flashbacks, and PTSD. If it’s accessible to you, work with a trauma informed therapist to facilitate your healing process. Embrace Sexual Wellness offers therapy to address sexual trauma concerns and you can learn more about our services here. In the meanwhile, the following tips and resources can assist your healing process. 

General Tips

• Identify your specific triggers and boundaries to understand what your healing process should work to address

• Move at your own pace

• Explore intimacy solo before partnered 

• Test out different coping mechanisms for trauma healing such as talk therapy, mindfulness, and medication 

• Reassociate intimacy, touch, and sensuality with positive connotations

• When returning to partnered intimacy, be in constant communication

Body Image 

• If your body image has been affected by sexual trauma, it may put you at risk for self-harm or disregard for your own safety so it is vital to address as soon as possible

• Surround yourself online and in real life with a diverse community of body positive or body neutral people, especially on social media

• Understand that you deserve peace and to feel worthy. You deserve self-compassion

• Resources

  • Health At Every Size Community Resources 

  • My Body Back

  • The Body is Not an Apology by Sonya Renee Taylor

  • Sex for One: The Joy of Self-Loving by Betty Dodson

Flashbacks/PTSD

• Test out different coping strategies for flashbacks to see what works for you; if you have access to a mental health professional, develop coping strategies in conjunction with them 

  • Try grounding strategies 

  • Talk it out

  • Try mindfulness exercises

• Remember that healing is not linear and there is no wrong way to heal 

• Seek out therapy. If it’s not accessible to you, check out our mental health resource roundup

• Avoid drugs and alcohol

• Acknowledge small victories

• Resources

  • Flashbacks | RAINN

  • Flashbacks - Herts Rape Crisis and Sexual Abuse Centre

  • Survivor Network - Flashbacks

  • Post-Traumatic Stress and Sexual Trauma

  • Flashbacks during Sex

  • How My Partner Reacted When I Had a Flashback While We Were Having Sex 

Reintroducing Intimacy

• Start out by working up to solo intimacy. This could be a warm bath, taking sensual photos, reading erotica, and/or masturbation, along with anything else you might want to try

• Determine your triggers and boundaries and communicate them to partner(s) when applicable

• Have an emergency plan in case you become triggered in everyday life or during sex to calm down and prevent from spiraling 

• What feels pleasurable might change after sexual trauma. Remain flexible in your thinking about what pleasurable intimacy looks like

• When attempting partnered intimacy, constantly communicate with your partner(s) about how you feel, what feels good, boundaries, and whether you want to keep going

• Resources

  • Developing Hot + Healthy Intimacy After Sexual Trauma 

  • Reclaiming Sex and Romance After Assault 

  • Sex After Sexual Assault: A Guide for When It’s Tough

  • A Guide For Survivors Of Sexual Harm

  • Having Healthy Sex after Sexual Assault

Reclaiming Sexuality

• Masturbation can aid in reclaiming a sense of control and ability to experience sexual pleasure

• Both hypo- and hypersexuality are normative post-trauma responses 

• Read articles and books to guide you through reclaiming your sexuality. Good book options include 

  • The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

  • Dear Sister: Letters from Survivors of Sexual Violence edited by Lisa Factora-Borchers

  • The Rape Recover Handbook: Step by Step Help for Survivors of Sexual Assault by Aphrodite T. Matsakis

  • The Sexual Healing Journey by Wendy Maltz

  • Healing Sex: A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma by Staci Haines 

• Talk about shame, obstacles, concerns, and intimacy through with a consenting friend or, ideally, a mental health professional

• Be patient and kind to yourself

• Resources

  • Reclaiming My Eroticism After Sexual Assault

  • Reclaiming Sexuality and Desire 

  • How I Took Back My Power After Experiencing Sexual Trauma

Regardless of your experience or post-trauma response, you deserve to heal, reclaim your sexuality, and enjoy sex again (if you enjoyed sex pre-trauma). Your experience is valid and please give yourself grace as you navigate the complex feelings associated with healing trauma. Build your support network, read up on healing strategies, and be patient. If you’ve tried healing on your own and you need more support, contact us for trauma-informed therapy.

Sexuality Professionals Series: An Interview with Casey Tanner

Embrace Sexual Wellness is conducting a multipart spotlight series of interviews with sexuality professionals. If you missed the previous ones, check them out on our blog. For the third installment in our interviews, we spoke with Casey Tanner (she/they), owner of The Expansive Group.

Casey Tanner is an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist who combines evidence-based research, queer affirming care, and pleasure activism to cultivate powerful relationships. Specializing in gender and sexual diversity, she partners with individuals, relationships, and institutions to expand limited mindsets, foster courageous behavior, and empower meaningful change around gender and sexuality.  After several individuals, couples and businesses sought out Casey’s guidance in making cultural shifts around gender and sexuality, they started The Expansive Group to better meet the growing demand.

Sex therapy is a type of psychotherapy focused specifically on sexual health, function, intimacy issues, and feelings, among other topics. While all sex therapists are formally trained, many but not all are officially AASECT-certified professionals. Typically, though not always, sex therapy is temporary, to address certain issues. Through sex therapy, you can learn to express your concerns clearly, better understand your own sexual needs and better understand your partner's sexual needs.

What inspired you to pursue your career path? 
The life-changing experience of talking about sex and queerness with my own therapist.  This space wasn't available to me until my early 20s and, for so many, is never available.  I wanted to become the space that I needed growing up - everything I do is, in some ways, a love letter to my younger queer self.

How does your field differ from that of other sexuality professionals?
My field (the intersection of therapist, educator, influencer, and consultant) is brand new!  While it's based on best-practices and evidence-based research from each of those individual fields, the combination feels like a new story that I'm writing every day.  There's no (updated) guidebook on how to balance the confidentiality ethics of being a therapist with the nuance of being an educator/influencer.  One of the more unique parts of my job is working with companies who want to do a better job around gender neutral language - I think of it as a sort of large-scale therapy for businesses!

What is the most rewarding part of your career?
Receiving feedback from my audience, students, or team that the space I'm creating means something to them. I get a lot of feedback that folks haven't seen anything like this before, and that really validates the "why" behind the work.

What's the most misunderstood thing about what you do?
That being a gender/sexuality professional means I have my own relationships and identity figured out. Surprise - I don't!

What's the most common question you receive from others about your career?
People often ask me what "queer sex" is. I usually respond with, "queer sex is intimacy that expands beyond the binary - it challenges our ideas on what is or isn't sex, what is or isn't normal, what is or isn't allowed."

What advice would you want to share with aspiring sexuality professionals?
To the extent possible, choose supervisors with a sexuality/queer background. I think direct supervisors are more important than the workplace itself, so don't silo yourself into only working in sexuality-focused practices. If you're able, do an administrative internship with a therapist or educator before graduate school so that you have a great letter of recommendation when it comes time for practicum applications.

If you had to describe your work in one sentence, what would you say?
I expand folks' ideas of what healthy sexuality looks like to include more diversity and more pleasure.

Thank you to Casey for taking the time to share their perspective. We encourage you to find Casey on social media and her websites, linked below.

• Instagram: @queersextherapy

• Website: theexpansivegroup.com
  

4 Important Subjects Netflix’s Sex Education Aced in Season Two

If you’re a sex nerd like me, you have undoubtedly been watching Sex Education, which just released its second season on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it, get to it! It’s a smart, charming series surrounding Otis Milburn, a teenager at an English high school, who uses the wisdom passed on from his sex therapist mother to help his classmates with a variety of sexual topics, in exchange for a small fee. As you can guess, it’s not always that simple and Otis must come to terms with his own sex life and all that comes with it. 

Season Two has featured many great, unheralded sexual topics through its cast of characters. These are the four topics I’m totally pumped they covered this season.

*Warning, spoilers ahead*

1. Sexual Trauma Episode Three

Aimee, the caring but often naïve classmate of Otis is riding the bus to school as she always does when a stranger publicly masturbates and ejaculates on her pants, causing her to get off the crowded bus. Thinking of it nothing more than an annoying way to ruin a great pair of jeans, her friend, Maeve, urges her to go to the police station and file a report. Once Aimee realizes that the situation she experienced was sexual assault, her attitude begins to change and symptoms of sexual trauma emerge. Aimee becomes terrified of the bus, repelled by physical touch, even with her partner, and confides in her friends for help.

With the prevalence of sexual assault affecting over 80% of women in their lifetime, talking about sexual trauma is more important than ever. It is also common for survivors of sexual trauma to experience physical symptoms such as difficulty sleeping, feeling disconnected from one’s body, loss of control, as well as increased depression and anxiety. Young women are particularly at risk, with current estimates indicating that 1 in 5 college-aged women will experience sexual harassment on campus. While the reality of these statistics is stark, it is important that survivors of sexual trauma can get connected with the care and resources they need. To learn more about how to support survivors, checkout the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline, and a local hotline. 

2. Asexuality Episode Four

Florence, the a-bit-out-there star of the school production of Romeo and Juliet begins receiving pressure from her classmates to try to sleep with Jackson, the heart throb college bound jock turned thespian co-star. It is then that Florence realizes that she doesn’t just not want to have sex with Jackson, she doesn’t want to have sex with anyone. When she describes her feelings as “surrounded by a huge feast of everything I’ve wanted to eat, but I’m not hungry.” Dr. Milburn explains the concept of asexuality.

Asexuality is a sexual orientation that refers to a person who does not experience sexual attraction. We are so glad that Sex Education is increasing the visibility of asexuality, particularly because asexuality can be misunderstood and underrepresented in media. People who identify as asexual may also experience romantic or sensual attraction. Sexuality exists on a continuum and there are nuances to what each individual may experience. To learn more about asexuality and the ACE community, checkout The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), the world’s largest online community providing wonderful resources on asexuality. 

3. Douching Episode Six

When Anwar, the snobby but sexually vulnerable classmate of Otis, begins exploring anal sex with his boyfriend for the first time, he becomes anxious when he questions the cleanliness of his anus. He makes up an excuse to not proceed with the encounter, then asks Otis if he knows anything about how to douche.

Douching is the practice of cleansing and washing the body, in particular the genitals. The word douche, in French, means to shower -- a natural translation. Most commonly, people discuss the practice of vaginal or rectal or anal douching. Anal douching is commonly practiced to eliminate bacteria in the anus, which makes some people feel more comfortable before engaging in anal sex. Some experts warn against anal douching due to the possibility of injury and because certain cleansing agents can interfere with the electrolytes in the body by removing healthy intestinal flora that otherwise promote healthy gut health. If you are going to douche, make sure to educate yourself on the risks and engage in safety practices.

4. Vaginismus Episode Eight

Finally, in the season finale, Ola and Lily have finally begun exploring their feelings for each other and attempt digital penetration. It is then when Lily reveals to Ola that she suffers from vaginismus, which makes her vagina “like a venus fly trap.”

‘Closing up like a venus fly trap’ may not be the best clinical description of vaginismus, but for some, the spasm-like response resonates. Vaginismus is defined as the recurrent or persistent involuntary contractions (spasm) of vaginal muscles that generally results in distress and pain during sex, specifically with any type of vaginal penetration. Sexuality education, pelvic floor physical therapy, and sex therapy can be effective treatment options for vaginismus. Vaginal dilators, which were also showcased in the episode, are often incorporated during pelvic floor physical therapy to help strengthen vaginal elasticity. While not thrilled that Lily was experiencing physical discomfort during sex, I am pleased to see that vaginismus is being brought to the forefront.

I  love a show that normalizes very, well, normal sexual issues, behaviors, disorders and methods and brings them into the consciousness of the open public. Sex Education is not only funny, entertaining, sweet but also very accurate and important toward breaking sexual stigmas and learning how to talk about topics that affect us all. Way to go Netflix!