Healing From Sexual Abuse & Trauma Resolution Modalities
It is said that 1/4 women experience some kind of sexual abuse in their life time and I don’t know if I could share so passionately about this topic if I didn’t have my own history with sexual assault and disempowerment.
I don’t wont to go into my story right now, but I will say that once I started to own up to it, gain awareness to how it was affecting me and decided to seriously do something about, I was finally able to relationships, my sexuality and actually my whole life started to take shape.
I’d also like to mention that I’m not a trauma resolution specialist. I personally like to focus on sharing practices with clients that help create a new sexual story, and start to rewire the brain to be open and receptive to pleasure again. Deep diving into past experiences and trauma clearing is important as well, that’s why I’ve created this blog post on various psychological and physiological trauma clearing modalities.
Another point to mention is these modalities and are only some of the ways that you can work with resolving trauma. There are many paths to the top of the mountain, these are some of the ones that have worked for me and I’m sure that by diving in yourself you’ll start to find the perfect solutions that work for you as well.
So what is Trauma: Rachael Maddox describes it as an “embodied hangover of an interpersonal violation experience.”
I believe it’s really important to note that trauma is an embodied response to a certain event or experience. In nature, animals use shaking or sounding to release remaining fear-charged energy after being chased by a lion. Humans however, don’t commonly have these tools and store this traumatic response in their bodies.
What this means is that people who have experience trauma, are often on high alert and seeking out signal that will activate this bodily response (it’s a natural defense mechanism). The problem being that often what people are interpreting as dangerous actually not, it’s simply a projection from our past experience.
Here my top modalities for clearing stored trauma in the body both psychologically and physiologically.
Regular psychotherapy:
Setting yourself up with a safe, neutral space where you can talk openly about your experience is a game changer. I believe that investing in our mental health is a no-brainer, regardless of our past, and having a professional support while you’re process big emotions can help solidify major shifts emotionally.
New Zealand has free mental health care for anyone who has experienced any kind of sexual abuse. https://findsupport.co.nz/about-acc/about-the-sensitive-claims-unit-2/
Somatic Experiencing:
SE is a complimentary modality that focusses on the regulation of the nervous system giving clients to opportunity to complete and resolve the body’s natural response to a traumatic experience by focussing on the bodies sensations instead of the articulation of it.
https://traumahealing.org/about-us/
Dance/Movement Therapy:
Dance therapy is thought to promote healing by encouraging self-expression through the body. The benefit being that your can express and move emotional and stored energy through the body without have to revisit past traumatic experiences or continue to go over and over it in talk therapy.
“the body says what words cannot” - Martha Graham.
In New Zealand you can see a movement therapist 1:1, ACC could fund your classes if you’re covered under sensitive claims, or you go go to any of the regular dance classes host around the country. Search for Five Rhythms, Ecstatic dance, Movement Meditation in your local area and give it a go!
Educate yourself:
Knowledge is power! By educating ourselves on what trauma is, we empower ourselves with awareness and tools to stop it from sabotaging our future. here are my favourite resources for learning about trauma:
https://www.thetraumatherapistproject.com/podcasts/
https://mastinkipp.com/blog/
http://rachaelmaddox.com/
http://besselvanderkolk.net/index.html
Specific Podcast episodes I love:
https://soundcloud.com/evyanwhitney/ep-18-sexual-liberation-after-trauma
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/pleasure-power-self-care-for-your-pussy/id1456549010?i=1000437447697
https://soundcloud.com/evyanwhitney/ep-17-secret-bad-girls-sexual-trauma
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/self-love-sexuality-after-sexual-abuse/id1456549010?i=1000439959482
https://player.fm/series/the-hungry-for-happiness-podcast/ep-112-understanding-your-trauma-with-katie-brauer
https://player.fm/series/sacred-guidance-with-stellamuse/self-care-for-depression-dark-times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuEAUbIdVHc
http://hungryforhappiness.libsyn.com/podcast/ep-103-trauma-healing-with-mastin-kipp
Lastly, you can also listen to a podcast episode with a friend of mine on self love and sexuality after sexual abuse.
I hope this has helped!