by Staci Haines
I hold my breath and tense up around my chest. Then, internally, it’s like I am running around looking for a safe place to hide. My adrenaline starts pumping.
Jeanie
I make the muscles around my pelvis and genitals really tight when I am afraid and start to space out. This usually goes along with holding my breath.
Jennifer
You may find that you have little or no sensation in a particular part of your body. It may feel blank, numb, or void. This is an area to pay attention to. It may hold old tension and trauma from the abuse.
I have this idea that I don’t have genitals. There is a brain part and a body part, and the body part, particularly my genitals, is detatched.
Terri
I can hardly focus on my lower back and ass. I can stay there for a millisecond, and then I realize I’ve checked out again.
Rona
The Trigger
What caused you to dissociate? Can you trace your experience back to the moment where you started dissociating? What did you want to get away from? These questions may seem unanswerable at first. You may think, “I don’t know, it just happens.” You can learn to notice, however.
I was masturbating and realized I was checking out. I stopped and tried to see when I started to go away. I realized that as soon as I began to feel sexy and move my hips, I felt a wave of shame and then wanted to get away.
Stephanie
Usually, dissociation is a move away from some overwhelming or uncomfortable sensation or emotion. Your body registers a feeling you perceive to be dangerous or threatening and helps you remove yourself to safety. Now that you are an adult and engaged in a process of healing, you are no longer in danger, however much you may feel afraid. Feeling these emotions and moving toward these sensations is your path to healing and having your life and sexuality back.
By learning what happens in your body when you dissociate, you can come to know the intricacies of how and when you check out. This then gives you options for how to check in again. Eventually you can learn how to notice dissociation as it is happening and not check out at all. You can develop a habit of bringing you back to yourself over and over again. You will find that you return more quickly and easily with practice.
The Road Back: Healing Dissociation
While dissociation helps you survive sexual abuse, coming back into yourself allows you to experience the full spectrum of being alive. Returning to your body lets you be there for sex. If you are not present, how can you feel pleasure, connect with your partner, or even know what you want?
For a long time life felt safer if I was in my head. I didn’t want to feel my body
or my feelings because it was too scary and out of control. Too much of the
abuse would come up. I fell for this guy, though, and it was so hard to feel him
deeply. I couldn’t feel much sexually and it was hard to stay there for it. I knew
I loved him, and I couldn’t stand not being able to feel more. Finally it became
worth it to me to learn how to be here.
Jeanette
Tracking
As you begin to notice the various ways you dissociate and what that state is like for you, you’ll probably find a pattern or rhythm to it. You may find a consistent response in your body that lets you know you are on your way out. You may also find that when you dissociate, you say things to yourself, like “nothing matters anyway” or “I am worthless.” These patterns become recognizable and thus easier to notice and work with.
Review what you have discovered about your own dissociation. What are the sensations in your body that go along with checking out? Notice again the places in your body you are dissociated from, areas that are blank, numb, or frozen. What do you tell yourself when you go away? What sends you out? Begin to track your own route of dissociating.
Here are some examples:
First I hold my breath. I lose track of most of my body and can only feel my head and shoulders. My thinking gets really fast. It is like I start to run around inside looking for a safe place to be. The world outside of me disappears and I get very internal.
I get tense all over, but especially in my shoulders and through my pelvis. My breathing is shallow, and I start to try to be really good. I kind of lose myself and pay attention to reading other people…What do they want from me? How should I act? I lose the internal sense of myself and get very other-focused.
My body will feel like it is something attached to me or not mine at all. I look down at myself and do not relate. I feel hazy or like my head is swimming. It is kind of scary. I notice that what triggers me is usually some emotion that gets too intense. It can be anger or pleasure.
My arms and neck get very tense. My jaws, too. I also get angry and annoyed at everything. I just want to push things and people away. I want it all to get away from me. It is like I want to get rid of all internal and external stimulation…have everything stop.
Knowing your own dissociative states lets you recognize where you are. From there, you can learn to come back. A wonderful friend of mine once said, “To heal, you first have to become intimate with what is.” Knowing what you are like when you check out is doing just this.
Returning
Noticing that you are checking out is half the battle. Watch for your own signals, particularly those sensations that let you know you are going away. Once you notice, drop your breath low in your body, down into your belly. Breathe. Reassure yourself. Tell yourself everything is going to be all right. Invite yourself back.
Get up and move your body. Increase your blood flow and heart rate by swinging your arms or shaking your legs. Bring your focus back into your body. If you can’t feel a particular area of your body, rub yourself there. Bring the feeling back into you. Notice your surroundings. What color are the walls? Who is in the room with you?
Then bring your focus to your emotions. What are you feeling? Say this out loud: “I am scared” or “I am sad.” Do you need to tell someone what’s going on? Do you need support? Believe it or not, you will survive your fear, anger, pleasure, and grief.
Emotions show up as sensations in the body. When you feel shame, what physical sensations go along with that? What about guilt? Or pleasure? Or love? What is it like to feel the emotion instead of making it go away? To embody, you must build your tolerance for more intense sensations. To have an embodied sex life, you must learn to face the feelings you needed to turn away from in the past.
Last, watch what you are thinking. Are the messages you are telling yourself soothing or empowering? Or self-denigrating? Often we are hard on ourselves as a way of avoiding feelings of anger, hurt, or fear. It may seem easier to be cruel to yourself than to face what others did to you. This internal cruelty helps to keep you dissociated. If you find you are speaking harshly to yourself, try telling yourself something neutral (“Breathe. It’s okay. I am going to be okay.”) or even positive if you can get there (“I’m worth it. I can do this.”)
Embodiment Practices
Most important, consciously practice being embodied. Dedicate time to it. Working with dissociation is working with re-embodiment. You can increase your tolerance for the rushes of shame, pleasure, anger, and love that once sent you into dissociation. This is a process of building your capacity to be present for your sensations and emotions.
FIVE MINUTES:
Practice noticing the sensations in your body, including your legs, arms, and genitals, for five minutes each morning. What do you notice? Which feelings and sensations are easier for you to tolerate and which are more difficult? Notice where you want to turn toward a sensation and where you want the sensation to go away. Stay as long as you can with the ones you want to get rid of.
BELLY BREATHE:
Notice when you hold your breath or breathe very shallowly. Stop and breathe deeply and regularly again. Breathe down into your belly so that your stomach and chest move. You may notice yourself not breathing fifty times a day. That’s ok
ay; in fact, it is great that you notice. This is how you will retrain your automatic responses.
MOVE YOURSELF:
Physical activities such as walking, biking, and swimming are helpful in the practice of being embodied. This is physical activity not for exercise, but rather as a practice of getting to know your body more intimately. As you move, bring your attention to your sensations and senses. How do your arms feel? Your legs? How about inside your chest and stomach? Is it warm or hot or cool? Do you notice a twitch? Do you feel relaxed?
BODYWORK:
I encourage anyone healing from sexual abuse to engage in therapeutic bodywork. This is not massage to work your muscles, but bodywork that serves to open the frozen or armored places in your body. Therapeutic bodywork attends to the emotions as well as the body, allowing you to come back into your body and live in it gladly. See the Resources for information on a variety of therapeutic bodywork styles.
EMBODIMENT PRACTICES:
Centering practices, such as martial arts, yoga, dance, and some forms of meditation, can help you build your capacity to be in your body. Again, this is not about pushing yourself physically, but rather about developing a place of centeredness in your body and an awareness of your body. You can learn that being relaxed and being empowered can happen at the same time. Being embodied and being safe can exist simultaneously.
This might sound strange, but I’ve been learning that if I stick around to feel both my body and my heart, I’m not going to die. I thought that I would.
Roslyn
Coming back to our bodies can be terrifying, mostly because we have come to associate being in our bodies with danger, pain, terror, and betrayal. Who would want to be there? In the past, dissociating was an excellent survival strategy to get away from the abuse. The difference now, however, is that the abuse is over, and along with pain, anger, and loss, we get to feel pleasure, delight, ease, and connection.
I can notice when I start to hold my breath or feel a rush that once would have been too much. I relax in the moment now, breathe, feel the sensations, remind myself that it is okay to feel. I am here with me. Then I am back. I do this during sex!
Maggie
Talk About It
Talk with others survivors about what it is like when they dissociate. It can be very useful to compare notes. They may recognize something in their pattern of dissociating that you haven’t noticed in yours.
My girlfriend started noticing me spacing out during sex before I would. She’d ask, “Where are you now?” I was surprised. I didn’t realize I had gone anywhere.
Janie
Often, your intimate partner will notice that you are dissociating before you do. If your partner is not aware of your dissociation, it’s important that he or she learn to recognize the signs that you are checking out. Try talking to your partner about dissociation now; it’s easier to talk about it when you are not in the throes of it, making it easir to bring up when you are triggered.
My husband and I had to find a balance between him checking in with me and him interrupting the flow of sex. Sometimes I had to tell him to shut up and quit asking me if I was present. I think half of my annoyance, though, was him bringing me back to the present, which was a much scarier place to have sex from.
Sally
Sex Guide Exercises
1. Explore what being dissociated or “checked out” is like for you. What happens in your body when you dissociate? What do you say to yourself internally?
2. How can you recognize this state for yourself? How could a partner or friend help you recognize it? What would they sense or see in you when you dissociate?
3. What do you have to gain by living an embodied life? What do you have to gain by having an embodied sex life?
4. List three ways you can begin to re-enter your body, or re-associate. What embodiment practices are you willing to take on regularly?
chapter four
Self-Denial
Self-denial is not behaving in accordance with your needs and desires. Self-denial is brushing your wants under the rug over and over again, not putting in your two cents’ worth, not asking the world to include and adjust to you, too. Self-denial is not letting you be you.
I know what I want sexually, but I am too afraid to ask or say. I feel like I am imposing. Like I am not supposed to have needs or desires.
Hannah
Being sexually abused as a kid teaches you that your needs and desires are unimportant and that your body and sexuality exist for someone else’s use. Abuse tells you that your boundaries are wrong—or at least ineffectual. After childhood sexual abuse, many survivors are left feeling little or no permission to have desires, needs, or boundaries, or to take up space.
I don’t assume I deserve anything, really. I adjust to the room I’m in and the people I am with. I think I am always watching for how I am supposed to act so that I won’t be hurt again.
Mimi
Sexual abuse tells you that you are not supposed to be delighted and fulfilled. You may feel guilty when you feel pleasure, thinking that you must be bad or that your pleasure denies someone else theirs. Shame, self-blame, and suffering become familiar, and pleasure and fulfillment become suspect.
As a survivor, you may find that you deny or minimize your sexuality altogether. Or you may find that sex is all you think you are good for. Respectively, these are called sexual aversion and sexual compulsion.
All I want to do is get sex away from me. I do not want to have sex or to be sexual. I think that the world would be a better place if sex did not exist. I could feel safe then.
Amy
Sex is what I know best. It is the way I know how to interact; sometimes it seems like the only way I know. When I want comfort, I have sex. When I am lonely, I have sex. Sometimes when I am hungry, I have sex to try to deal with it. When I just want to get to know someone as a friend, I find myself in bed with them. Sex has become my interface with the world.
Maggie
Many therapeutic models still pathologize sexual aversion and compulsion as types of “dysfunction.” This framework says that something is “wrong” with you, instead of as seeing your sexual strategies as creative means of survival. Whether you’ve leaned toward sexual avoidance or sexual compulsion, you’ve done whatever you needed to do to survive. These choices were intelligent at the time. They were survival-smart. Congratulate yourself.
Survival Is a Powerful Act
Survivors often have a lot of self-judgment about their own sexuality. You may be angry at yourself for avoiding sex for so many years or pissed about how many times you have had sex when you needed something else instead. It can be hard to accept our own survival strategies. Recovery asks us to hold the contradiction of having acted in ways that have hurt us while we were attempting to achieve some kind of self-preservation.
Whatever you did to survive sexual abuse, to be able to go on, is powerful. If avoiding sex helped you to stay safe, that’s okay. If you had sex when and with people you did not want, that’s okay. Nurture both self-compassion for your past choices and responsibility for taking care of yourself now.
I knew that I didn’t want to have sex with all the men I was having sex with, but I didn’t know how to stop. I would tell myself, “Not this time, this time I’m not going to have sex with him,” and would find myself in bed with him. I was so hard on myself for doing this. It felt like I was permanently flawed.
Melanie
I felt ashamed after a while that I wasn’t interested in sex at all. It seemed the entire world revolved around this thing I couldn’t relate to. I sometimes felt superior and at the same time damaged—like what is wrong with me?
Laurie
Sexual Aversion: Who Needs Sex, Anyway?
After my grandfather started molesting me I became hypersensitive to anything sexual. I couldn’t make him stop, but I sure as hell was not going to let anyone else touch me. I became rigid and afraid of anything sexual.
Marianne
> Many survivors attempt to manage the intensity of emotion, triggers, and memories that can come up during sex by avoiding sex altogether.
It took me a lot of healing to get down into what drove my disinterest in sex. I knew it was related to the incest, but I only got it in my head, which wasn’t allowing me to change much. Finally, I connected to the feelings of it all. Being sexual and opening sexually revealed to me the devastating pain and grief of the abuse. Keeping sex out of my life for the most part was helping me avoid all of those feelings. To be sexual I needed to also feel the impact of the abuse and heal there.
Danielle
