by Aelaf Kebebu | Jun 5, 2024 | Anxiety, Connection, Counselling, Mental Health, Mental Health Disorder, Mindfulness Meditation, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Safety, Self Care, Therapy, Trauma
“On occasion, our bodies speak loudly about things we would rather not hear. That is the time to pause and listen.” Verny, Thomas R
Somatic therapy, rooted in the belief that the body is where life happens, empowers individuals to take an active role in their healing journey. It harnesses body techniques to strengthen the evolving dialogue between the client and therapist, fostering a deeper understanding of the relationship between bodily experiences and mental states. By focusing on a holistic perspective, somatic therapy cultivates embodied self-awareness, guiding clients to tune into sensations in specific body parts. This approach has been found to be particularly beneficial for addressing issues such as eating disorders, body image issues, sexual dysfunction, chronic illness, emotion regulation, disassociation, and trauma.
Breathwork in somatic psychotherapy
Breathwork, a cornerstone of somatic therapy, has a rich and diverse history in the realm of physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual healing. Its transformative power can alleviate psychological distress, soften character defenses, release bodily tension, and foster a profound sense of embodiment and tranquility. Somatic therapists employ breathwork techniques, from energizing the body for emotional processing to soothing and grounding hyperactive body parts, offering a hopeful path to healing and self-discovery.
Conscious breathing practices are used:
- to help couples and families to connect through touch
- assist in recovering from trauma
- to promote sensory awareness,
- and to access altered states of consciousness for healing purposes
What is disordered breathing?
Disordered breathing, a term often used in the context of somatic therapy, refers to a state where the physiology and psychology of breathing intertwine. It’s characterized by irregular breathing patterns, which can trigger anxiety or panic and disrupt cognitive processes like decision-making. These patterns can vary based on emotional states, with sighing, increased depth, or rate of breath often associated with anxiety and anger.
Irregular respiratory patterns could be associated with anger, guilt, or deep, weeping sadness. Hyperventilation associated with panic or anxiety creates lower levels of CO2 in the blood, often leading to decreased attention and mental impediments. Loss of concentration, memory loss, poor coordination, distraction, lower reaction time, and lower intellectual functioning are all associated with low CO2.
Feeling anxious: produces a distinguishing pattern of upper-chest breathing, which modifies blood chemistry. This leads to a chain reaction of effects, inducing anxiety and reinforcing the pattern that produced the dysfunctional pattern of breathing in the first place.
Body Posture: has also been cited as a factor in breathing efficiency and patterns. Somatic therapy tends to operationalize posture as a function of personality or character. Somatic therapists often note how one’s posture is presented when describing the emotional state. They track feelings and sensations in the body to help the client make sense of their experience in connection with their body.
What are some benefits of somatic psychotherapy?
- The body is not just a location for distress but also for pleasure, connection, vibrancy, vitality, ease, rest, and expansion. Somatic therapy could make this easier to achieve through processing and resolving difficult bodily experiences.
- Positive self-image: Somatic therapy can help clients feel a positive connection to their bodies and promote self-confidence.
- Positive body image: Somatic therapy can enhance body connection and comfort instead of disrupting body connection and discomfort by pairing difficulty with enjoyable sensations to increase tolerance.
- Enhance the body’s ability to experience and express desire by encouraging the client to Stay with and expand enjoyable sensations.
- Encourages attunement of the body and enhances self-care instead of self-harm and neglect.
- Provides a protective space where clients can re-associate with their bodily experience.
In conclusion, our bodies contain a complicated, unified, multilevel cellular memory system that allows us to be fully functional human beings, and attending to our body’s needs could enhance our overall mental and physical well-being.
If you are interested in somatic psychotherapy, please contact our Client Care Team to connect with one of our clinicians.
References
Stupiggia, M. (2019). Traumatic Dis-Embodiment: Effects of trauma on body perception and body image. In H. Payne, S. Koch, and J. Tantia (Eds.), The Routledge International Handbook of Embodied Perspectives in Psychotherapy (pp. 389-396). Routledge
Verny, T. R. (2021). The Embodied Mind: Understanding the Mysteries of Cellular Memory, Consciousness, and Our Bodies. Simon and Schuster.
Victoria, H. K., & Caldwell, C. (2013). Breathwork in body psychotherapy: Clinical applications. Body, Movement and Dance in Psychotherapy, 8(4), 216- 228. https://doi.org/10.1080/17432979.2013.828657
by Jonathan Hers | Apr 10, 2024 | Counselling, Therapy, Tips
How can I best prepare for my therapy session?
Good question.
It’s best to avoid this situation: you put in the time to book another therapy session, you pay the money (gulp), you put it in your schedule, on the day-of you get your notification reminding you of your appointment, you travel to the office, you wait in the waiting room, you are welcomed into a room, you get to the chair, sit down, get asked the question, “what would you like to work on today?” A silence follows. And then you answer: “I don’t know.”
This happens a lot and I’d like to suggest gently that this is not an ideal situation.
I do want to start with saying that even if this is you, don’t be too hard on yourself. I’ve started many therapy sessions sitting in silence not knowing how to begin… and yes I’ve uttered these words. At other times I’ve just wanted to update my therapist on fun life events or ask simple questions that I’ve been pondering.
Even more, simply by booking a session you are already getting the gears moving in the change process. There are six stages in the change process (pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance, and termination). By booking a therapy session it means that you are past the first stage, which is pre-contemplation. The change process has already begun simply by contemplating your situation, deciding that you could use some help navigating your way forward, and then reaching out for help. The fact of having booked an appointment is substantial!
And yet, this question still remains relevant: how can I maximize my time in therapy? How can I make this investment even more fruitful? How might I go about preparing for therapy?
You want to get the best bang for your buck! Counselling – a valuable, set-part space and time for growth – can be enhanced by preparation.
So, how might one prep?
I’ve got three things for you: first, ten questions to ponder. Second, three tips. Third, one general attitude to develop.
Ten Questions to Prepare for Therapy:
I read a quote that said, “the best answers begin with good questions.”
I’ve compiled a list of questions that you can ponder before your sessions that will enhance your time together. I’ve gathered them from personal experience and from other clinical counsellors who have given me their insights on how one might best prepare for therapy.
- Whats not working? What do I want different? How will I know if it’s different?
- What do I have a hard time admitting to myself?
- What gets in the way of me getting to where I want to go? Bonus points if it’s a repeat offender.
- What do I want to change about my life? Make sure it’s practical, measureable, and reasonable.
- How would I have to adjust my time each week to achieve this change?
- How might I sabotage my plans to make this change?
- What is my role in maintaining the problem I am wanting to address? What do I gain from its existence?
- What could we focus on today that would help me leave feeling like it was useful?
- What stuck with me from the last session?
- What is bothering me the most right now? Is there something I can do to fix it? How willing am I to fix it?
Those are some questions to ponder before sessions that will help you get started in the right direction.
Three Tips to Prepare for Therapy:
Here are some other practical tips that you could take in to help as well:
- Have an ongoing tab on your phone or in your journal of topics, subjects, challenges that you are wanting to explore in therapy. Whenever new thoughts or insights or feelings rise up that are relevant, write those down in your notes.
- Take ten minutes before each session to mentally prepare. This moment of thinking, mindfulness, and silence will help you settle into how you are doing and what is going to be most important to focus on.
- Finally, a helpful reminder is that every session is NOT going to be groundbreaking. This is normal. Just like regular life, lots of the time we are not on the mountaintop, we are just in the thick of it. Processing our mixed emotions, asking good questions, risking vulnerability in the presence of a compassionate other. Let yourself embrace the process of growth and transformation which does not happen overnight. I’ve heard some studies that suggest that it takes at least 5-6 sessions to start to experience deeper therapeutic gains and other studies that say it may take up to 40 sessions to achieve the changes you are wanting to make.
Therapy is a bold endeavour to self-examine the state of our lives, develop understanding, and hope for growth. I’m continually left in wonder, awe, and reverence at the courage of those enter therapy and display this level of humility, vulnerability, and courage.
AN ATTITUDE TO DEVELOP
I want to end with another fundamental of therapy that might help your mindset going into each session.
Bill Gates once said, “Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.” In the same vein, Richard Schwartz, a seasoned therapist, encourages all of us to develop an attitude of openness and receptivity to the many excellent teachers that we have in life. He writes, “I’m not talking about the gurus, priests, professors, or parents, although they can certainly help you learn your lessons if they’ve learned theirs. I’m talking instead about the difficult events and people that trigger you—your tor-mentors. By tormenting you, they mentor you about what you need to heal.”
This gets at a deep truth that undergirds therapy as a whole: within the mess of our greatest challenges, discomfort, or pain, is the potential for transformation and growth. “But wait, I want to get rid of those very problems!” True, we do want change and that involves hoping for peace and order. However, the way forward is often not what we initially expect. When we are able to befriend these tor-mentors we find our pathway to healing and growth. When a seed dies, new growth breaks through. After a field has laid fallow, will it be ready to be planted again. The treasure is hidden behind the guarding dragon. The promised land comes after the trek through the desert.
Think of the wise people you know in life, have they had an easy life without challenge or suffering? No, quite the opposite. These people persevered amidst great adversity. Navigated complex messy obstacles.
This is the posture that will also aid your therapeutic journey: edge towards facing the given challenges we have, the internal limitations we have to admit, confounding situations we are plagued with and from that place we attempt to develop a posture of receptivity to these tor-mentors.
Deep breath. This seems like a lot, and it is. And that is why we don’t do this alone! We need a safe companion for the journey. Therapists can prove helpful companions to enter into this journey of growth, resilience, and change.
If you’ve been on the fence about trying therapy, we’d love to hear from you. Starting therapy can be an intimidating thing – we’ve all been there. If this post is resonating with you, give us a shout and we’d be happy to sit down with you.
by Nik Stimpson | May 24, 2023 | Anxiety, Counselling, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Mental Health, Self Confidence, Stress, Therapy, Tips
Do you find yourself constantly worrying about every possible scenario that could go wrong? You’re not alone. Constant worrying, overthinking, and feeling out of control can take a big toll on your mental health and well-being. This makes it incredibly difficult to focus on daily tasks or enjoy life to its fullest. But there is a solution: Coping Ahead is an effective technique from Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) that helps you prepare for stress and manage emotions ahead of time.
Eventualities
When I was 19 years old I learned to pilot gliders (airplanes without engines, also called sailplanes). Before each flight, we would always go through our pre-flight checks, even if the aircraft had just landed from a previous flight. We would make sure all of the controls worked as expected, the instruments were reading correctly, and of other important things worth double-checking when you’re propelling yourself two thousand feet into the sky!
The very last step of every pre-flight check was to review “eventualities.”
Though it’s been many years now since I last flew, I still remember vividly what I would say out loud to myself at this step, time and time again:
“If a wing drops on the launch and I cannot recover, I will release the launch cable and land ahead. At a safe height and speed I will start to climb. In the event of a launch failure, I will release the cable and lower the nose to a recovery attitude, and gain sufficient speed before maneuvering. I will land ahead if possible. Otherwise, I will turn downwind, which today is [left or right] and complete an abbreviated circuit or find a safe landing solution. The wind today is ___ knots which means my minimum approach speed is ___ knots.”
Coping Ahead saves time and effort.
The reason for talking through these eventualities in so much detail on the ground is that you’ve already made all of your decisions in the event of an emergency. In an unlikely situation where the pressure is on and seconds count, you don’t need to waste precious time or mental effort deciding what to do. You’ve already thought it through, and simply must follow your plan.
And this skill isn’t just for pilots! In DBT, coping ahead is an emotion regulation skill that can help you rehearse strategies ahead of time to better handle stressful situations or uncomfortable emotions. By visualizing and planning out how you will cope with challenging situations in advance, you start to feel more confident in your ability to face them, boosting your self-esteem and reducing stress.
What’s the difference between Coping Ahead and overthinking?
Overthinking is a common response to stress that can be counterproductive. It is also a common feature of anxiety that involves dwelling on worst-case scenarios, often leading to a cycle of negative thoughts and emotions. It can be triggered by a wide range of every-day stressors or perceived threats.
On the other hand, rather than going in circles about problems, Coping Ahead involves thinking about solutions. It is a deliberate and proactive skill, rather than a reactive response that actually impairs your problem-solving abilities.
How do I learn to Cope Ahead?
If you want to learn how to Cope Ahead, there are some practical tips you can try.
- Identify potential stressors in your life, such as upcoming deadlines or social events.
- Plan coping strategies that work for you, such as deep breathing, positive self-talk, or seeking support from friends.
- Rehearse your coping strategies in your mind, visualizing yourself using them and picturing how they will help.
- Lastly, remember to take some time to relax and ground yourself. Well done!
If you are struggling with…
- Overthinking
- Low self-confidence
- Anxiety
- A sense of low control in your life
- Borderline personality disorder (BPD)
- Other conditions that cause intense emotional reactions to common life stressors
…then consider seeking support from a mental health professional. Coping Ahead is a skill that can be learned and practiced, and therapy can provide a safe and supportive environment for developing this skill. Contact our clinic to learn more about how we can help.
by Marcia Moitoso | Jan 26, 2022 | Counselling, Mental Health, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Safety, Therapy, Trauma, Trauma sensitive
Director’s note: The following article is written by our Registered Clinical Counsellor, Marcia Moitoso, in conjunction with Bell Let’s Talk Day. If you haven’t met us yet, you’ll find out quickly that we’re about being real. We’re all here because we are on our own journey, and want to help others on theirs. Marcia’s article is a very real, personal account of her own journey with mental health and trauma and how it led her to where she is today. I want to express my gratitude to Marcia for being willing to share her journey with others, and I hope you find it helpful. Please be aware, the article describes some traumatic events that may bring up some emotions while reading. – Andrew My Journey To Becoming A Counsellor
I came to a career in counselling as part of a long, arduous struggle with my own mental health. I want to share my journey with you as a way to show you that whatever you’re going through, you’re not alone, things can get better, and we’re in this together.
My Story
My story toward healing really begins at 20 years old, when I hit the lowest low and far more psychological pain than I could have ever predicted. Laying on the bathroom floor of the courthouse after a two-year court battle against the person who sexually assaulted me, I remember thinking this is it, I can’t imagine continuing to live at this point, how can I possibly keep going? Unfortunately, like many of us, I had been through a lot of sexual assault in my early years. I had always felt immense shame about everything that happened to me, believing it was my fault and so I never told anyone how I felt, kept it inside and instead coped with eating disorders, self-harm, and substance use. This last incident in my late teens was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. I couldn’t keep going like this, something had to change or I didn’t think I’d survive.
I wrestled a lot with the urge to give up and give in to self-destructive impulses. One part of me wanted to survive and get better, a second part wanted to give up, and a third part of me wanted desperately to change the world for other women like me. Frankly, that part kind of wanted revenge (or at least justice) too. I think that third part of me is the one that started to carry me toward healing. At this time in my life, I was learning about feminism, and while it made me confront some very difficult truths about myself and what had happened to me and what I was also complicit in, it made me get in touch with all the rage I felt, and my rage (though sometimes overwhelming) motivated me toward change.
It wasn’t – and still isn’t – a straight line. I remember sitting in my very first counsellor’s office week after week and refusing to speak. She was kind enough, she would recommend interesting female empowerment movies and give me little snacks. I liked her, I just wasn’t ready to talk, and I’d had years of learning to push all of my emotions way down and disconnecting from my body and myself. I wasn’t ready for her to change that. She gave me the notes I needed for extensions on my university assignments that I couldn’t write because the flashbacks were so overwhelming, and I was grateful for that. I don’t think I’d have graduated without her. At that time I also started kickboxing at a small gym that quickly started to feel like a family. I didn’t have to talk, which was important to me back then, but I could punch and kick and secretly cry my heart out. It was everything; I started to feel what powerful could feel like.
But as life goes, more devastations occurred that set me off balance and back into my self-destructive behaviours. I left kickboxing and withdrew into my own world ruled by fear and dissociation. My social anxiety got to the worst point it had ever been, and I lost the majority of my friends. This was another point where I could have lost myself completely, but I had managed to retain one friend who wouldn’t let me go despite the many times I disappeared and definitely let her down. During this time I had started to realize that my self-destructive behaviours needed to stop, but I was still unable to ask for help or admit that I had a problem. I got lucky though, one night at about 2am this friend of mine texted me asking if I’d want to go and travel South America for a year by bicycle. I wanted to get as far away from the place where I grew up as possible, so I didn’t even hesitate, I immediately said yes and with very little planning we got out bikes and just went.
The Ride That Changed My Life
Since that time I’ve tried to put my finger on just what it was about that year on my bike that was so healing. I think it was a combination of things. I finally really felt like I had a friend who loved me unconditionally (she also had no choice because we depended on each other for survival, traveling by bike with almost no money). I also started to feel powerful and connected to my body for what it could do for me for the first time, instead of focusing on what it looked like or what other people wanted from it. For the first time my body was mine and it was carrying me thousands and thousands of kilometres just by sheer force and will. I also learned to get in touch with my intuition and figure out which situations felt safe and which ones I needed to get out of right away. I experienced some luck, and happened to meet incredible people in every place I went who reminded me that people actually are fundamentally good and that those few who did some bad things to me are not an indicator of all of humanity. And bonus: I didn’t have access to my unhealthy coping means of choice, so my addictions started to fizzle away.
I met so many people from so many backgrounds, and heard their stories of devastation and transcendence, and slowly I started to share mine too. Hearing about the ways people make meaning from tragedy and find ways to survive and make life beautiful again after being in the absolute gutter of life was healing beyond belief. I learned that suffering is part of living and that it actually connects us to others. We suffer tragedies and then we find each other and we heal together. After hearing from these beautiful people in various towns, I’d always have a day or a few of riding my bike to the next place, getting in touch with my body and mind and processing everything I’d heard. It was in one of these in-between cycling times that I realized I wanted to become a counsellor. It was actually a need. I was in awe of how incredible humans are, and their innate urge to move toward growth and healing, and I wanted to be a part of that for myself and for others.
The Journey Is Ongoing
When I moved back to Canada, I spent several years in personal counselling before going back to school to become a counsellor. I was finally ready to talk and ready to continue the healing that had started on my trip. I knew I couldn’t do it alone, and I knew the triggers would come back now that the excitement of cycling from country to country was over. I’m endlessly grateful for the counsellors who helped me. I started in CBT to rework my self-shaming thoughts and my social anxiety, then I moved into somatic trauma counselling to learn how to heal psychologically through the power of my body, and then I continued the trauma processing work through EMDR. I still have sleepless nights with flashbacks but they’re few and far between now, and when they happen, I know how to ground myself, breathe through it, and look for my body’s wisdom to heal and do what it needs to. I still sometimes get urges to go back into those self-destructive behaviours, but I now know what to do with those urges rather than giving in to them. I’ve developed great friendships, thanks to my counsellors who helped me get out of my own way and soothe my social anxiety. And every day I get the massive privilege of walking with my clients on their journeys toward healing. I’m still a work in progress and know I will always be, and so I continue to work on myself, see my counsellor, and challenge myself to talk to friends and my partner when I need to. I’m endlessly grateful to the people who have helped me along the way, and continue to help me. We’re all in this together and we all have the capacity to grow and heal even if it sometimes really doesn’t feel like it.
I hope my story encourages you, and reiterates that we are all on a journey toward hope and healing. If we can help you on your journey, please 
by Marcia Moitoso | Nov 23, 2021 | Connection, Counselling, Love, Mental Health, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Relationship, Relationships, Safety, Therapy, Trauma, Trauma sensitive
This article talks about some skills and strategies to heal the traumatized part of your brain and move toward the intimacy you deserve. If you missed the last article about the ways that sexual abuse/assault impacts intimacy and sexuality, I’d recommend going back and reading that article before beginning this one.
Remedies
Every nervous system is a little different. What works for one person may not work for another. There are many options for healing trauma and developing a healthy intimate and sex life, so I encourage you to choose options that resonate best with you.
Shift Ideas about Sex
A good place to start might be with the ideas you and your partner(s) hold about sex. Often survivors of sexual assault hold negative beliefs about sex. These beliefs result from parts of our brains confusing sexual assault (violence) with sex (consent, pleasure, equality). The two are not the same, and we need to rewire our brains to reflect this. I recommend having a look at Wendy Maltz’s comparisons chart here https://healthysex.com/healthy-sexuality/part-one-understanding/comparisons-chart/. This will help explain the difference between ideas about sex that come from experiences of abuse, versus healthy ideas about sex.
You can continue to develop a healthy sexual mindset by avoiding media that portrays sexual assault or sex as abuse or talking about sexual attitudes with friends or with a therapist. You can also educate yourself about sexuality and healing through books and workshops. One book I strongly recommend is Come as You Are by Emily Nagoski.
Communication with Partners
This may be the most important recommendation in this article. You cannot have consensual sex without communicating about it. That’s true for anyone, whether they’re an assault survivor or not. Sex remains a taboo subject in our culture, even though sex is very normal and most people have some form of sex at some point in their lives. When things are taboo and not widely talked about and understood, people develop feelings of shame about the taboo subject. Shame lurks in the darkness. This feeling of shame or embarrassment or even just awkwardness keeps many people from talking about sex with their partners despite engaging in sex.
Consent is dynamic: It can be given and withdrawn at any time
All people, and especially survivors of assault/abuse need to be able to give and withdraw consent AT ANY TIME during a sexual or intimate act. Many survivors will experience flashbacks or triggers at various times through physical or sexual activities. Because they don’t feel safe to tell their partner to stop (often out of fear for making them feel bad), they will instead dissociate and push through the sexual experience. When you do this, you are telling your brain and body that what you feel doesn’t matter and that the other person’s pleasure or comfort is more important.
While it may feel frustrating to have to stop mid-sex or mid-kiss or mid-hug because something has triggered you, listening to your body will actually help the healing process go much faster. Each time you override what your brain and body needs, the trauma gets reinforced and the triggers continue to come back. Slower is faster when healing from trauma. This is something partners need to understand. If a survivor is saying no, it’s because they trust you enough to say no, not because they’re not attracted to you. Every “no” is sexy because it’s getting you closer to an enthusiastic, consensual “yes”
Understand and Communicate your preferences
In addition to understanding and respecting the need to withdraw consent at any time, it’s important to talk about sexual preferences. What feels good, what feels neutral and what doesn’t feel good. Communicate when something felt uncomfortable and explore together to find what does feel comfortable. When sex is approached with curiosity and exploration rather than rigidness and shame, it becomes increasingly safe and pleasurable for both parties.
The need to take a break
Sometimes survivors of sexual abuse and assault may need to take a prolonged break from sexual activity. This can happen when the individual is in a relationship or not. The break allows space to focus on healing and figuring out what feels good and what doesn’t without worrying about the anxiety of managing their partner’s advances. When you are ready to engage in sexual activity again, do so when you want it, not when you believe you “should.” You have a right to be an active participant in your own sex life. Communicate your likes and dislikes and give yourself permission to say no at any time.
How to Manage Triggers and Flashbacks
As mentioned above, some survivors will experience triggers or flashbacks during physical touch or sexual activity. Flashbacks and triggers are often thought of as images of the traumatic experience. But they can also be experienced as unpleasant sensations, or a lack of sensation, an experience of disconnection, or an experience of overwhelm. When this happens it’s important to stop whatever is triggering the flashback, i.e. stopping the sexual activity or the physical touch. When you have a flashback, a part of your brain thinks it is in the past when the trauma happened, You need to remind that part of your brain that you are in the present moment and that the danger has passed. Another word for this is “grounding.”
Grounding Strategies/Orienting back to the present moment
- 5,4,3,2,1
- Name 5 things you can see, 4 you can touch, 3 you can hear, 2 you can smell, 1 you can taste
- Deep breaths
- Breathe in for 4, hold for 7, out for 8 (or any variation of that where you breathe out longer than you breathe in
- Box breaths: in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4 (repeat 4 times)
- Stand up and move your body – get the adrenaline out
- Run on the spot, go for a walk, jumping jacks
- Watch youtube video that makes you laugh (laughter is grounding)
- Play a categories game
- Say the alphabet backwards
- Show these strategies to your partner and do them together
Once you’ve successfully grounded (and give yourself as much time as your nervous system needs for this, remember slower is faster), take some time to rest and find comforts. Your nervous system has just gone through a lot. It can also be good to think about what triggered you and to discuss with you partner how to change that in the future. You may want the help of a counsellor to determine this.
Counselling
Trauma counselling can really help you to overcome the impacts the trauma has on your life. You may also want to incorporate some couples counselling to help improve communication so that the two of you can work as a team on this.
There are 3 types of trauma counselling that can be beneficial. You may benefit from a mix of all three.
Top-Down counselling:
This type of counselling helps you to change the thought patterns and behavioural habits that have formed as a result of the trauma. You will learn to notice the emotions and to change the behaviours and thoughts that tend to come as a result of the emotions. Some examples of this include CBT and DBT.
Bottom-Up Counselling:
Emotions and survival responses are physiological. You may notice a tightness in your chest when you feel anxious, a lump in your throat when you feel sad, a pit in your stomach when you feel embarrassed, or any variety of physical manifestations of emotions. When we feel an emotion our bodies are automatically mobilized to do something with it. For example, if you see a grizzly bear, your body might instinctively run or freeze or even try to fight it. You don’t even have to think about it, your brain does it automatically! Your body also knows how to heal from the trauma, but often circumstances prevent us from being able to allow our bodies to do what they need to do. Bottom-up counselling approaches such as EMDR, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, or Somatic Experiencing can help you to process the trauma by mindfully allowing your body and brain to do what it needs to do to heal. This will also greatly improve your relationship to your body
Mindfulness Counselling or Practices
Through mindfulness practices you can train your nervous system (brain and body) to become fully present. You learn to notice when triggers are happening while keeping a foot in the present-moment so that you don’t become overwhelmed. With mindfulness you can learn to allow emotions to come and go naturally without being swept away. If you’d like to start mindfulness on your own I’d recommend starting with short 2 minute practices and slowly working your way up. Examples of mindfulness-based counselling include Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy and Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction.
I hope these tidbits can help you get started, or to continue on your healing journey. You deserve a healthy intimate life that includes boundaries, consent, pleasure and joy. Slower is faster; trauma takes time to work through, but it is very treatable, and you don’t have to do it alone.
Sources
Maltz, Wendy (2021). Healthy Sex: Promoting Healthy, Loving Sex and Intimacy. https://healthysex.com/
Nagoski, Emily (2015). Come as you Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life. Simon & Schuster Inc: New York.
University of Alberta Sexual Assault Center (2019). Sexual intimacy after sexual assault or sexual abuse. https://www.ualberta.ca/media-library/ualberta/current-students/sexual-assault-centre/pdf-resources-and-handouts/intimacy-after-sexual-assault-2019.pdf
by Marcia Moitoso | Nov 16, 2021 | Connection, Counselling, Love, Mental Health, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, Relationship, Relationships, Safety, Therapy, Trauma, Trauma sensitive
Note: This article speaks in broad terms about sexual assault and abuse. If you feel overwhelmed at any point reading this article, I encourage you to stop reading (or skip to the section on “grounding”) and allow your body to do what it needs to do to come back to the present. Whether it’s going for a brisk walk, doing some deep breathing, or calling a trusted friend. As this article will discuss, there’s no need to push yourself past the point of overwhelm. Healing can only take place with patience.
Many survivors of sexual assault face difficulties with intimacy and/or sexuality at some point in their lives. While this is a very common experience, it’s certainly not the case for all survivors. Traumatic events affect people in a variety of different ways dependent on each person’s life experiences and their unique nervous systems. This article will focus on the people who do struggle with sex and intimacy after traumatic events. It will show that even though it can feel really hopeless at times, there are some amazing ways forward to achieving a healthy and satisfying sex life. We have some powerful innate abilities to heal trauma, but it often takes patience, support and work to get there.
Understanding the Impacts
Sexuality and the Central Nervous System – Stress and Love
Sexuality is impacted by the emotional systems managed by a very primal part of your brain often called “the reptilian brain.” This part of your brain is responsible for stress feelings as well as love feelings, all of which have helped us to survive as a species. Stress and love are also the main emotions that impact intimacy and sexual desire.
Stress responses are the neurobiological processes that help you deal with threats. Your brain prioritizes one of the following three main components based on survival needs: fight (anger/frustration), flight (fear/anxiety), or collapse (numbness, depression, dissociation).
Love is also a survival strategy; it’s the neurobiological process that pulls us closer to our tribes and bonds humans together. Love is responsible for passion, romance, and joy. It’s also responsible for the agony of grief and heartbreak.
Common Reactions
When a person lives through a traumatic event, the stress response in their central nervous system (brain and body) often gets locked into survival mode. It has detected that there is danger and so it learns that it must always be scanning for any sign of danger. As a result, there are two very common reactions to sexual trauma that affect a survivor’s sex life.
- Sexual Avoidance/Difficulty Experiencing Pleasure
The main function of the central nervous system is to prioritize survival needs in order of importance. For example, if you can’t breathe, you’re unlikely to notice that you’re hungry until you get oxygen again. Similarly, although love is indeed a survival mechanism (bringing us together with our tribes), the brain tends to prioritize attention to stress over love because stress points to a more immediate threat: the possibility of another dangerous and violent act.
After a sexual assault, sensations, contexts and ideas that used to be interpreted as sexually relevant (like physical touch) may instead now be interpreted by your brain as threats. So sexual situations actually make your brain sound the “danger” alarm bell. Our central nervous systems confuse sex (an act of consent, equality and pleasure) with sexual assault (an act of violence and power over another). Remember, your nervous system’s primary function is to keep you alive and safe, so anything that feels in any way similar to a violent situation from the past will sound your brain’s alarm bell.
Basically, you may be experiencing love or desire, but your brain is still stuck on survival mode. This makes it almost impossible to experience pleasure, desire and closeness.
- Engaging in Compulsive Sexual Behaviours
Remember how love is also a survival strategy? It draws us closer to others and makes us feel whole. So instead of stress hitting the sexual brakes, some people get locked into patterns of feeling out of control sexually and having multiple partners. In this case, sometimes the innate survival strategy prioritizes closeness for that feeling of being whole; however, when this is a survival mechanism, it’s often happening from that “collapse” stress response, or a more dissociated place. People stuck in this pattern may experience a brief feeling of relief but may still struggle with the deeper components of intimacy.
- Additional common symptoms
- sexual avoidance/anxiety
- sex feeling like an obligation
- dissociation during sexual activity/not present
- negative feelings associated with touch
- difficulty achieving arousal/sensation
- feeling emotionally distant
- flashbacks/intrusive thoughts or images during sexual activity
- engaging in compulsive sexual behaviours
- difficulty maintaining an intimate relationship
- vaginal pain in women; erectile dysfunction in men
- feelings of shame
- negative beliefs about sex
This is a short list of reactions, there are many more impacts on a person’s sense of self and experiences in relationships. If you’d like to get a better sense of how your traumatic experiences may have impacted your sex life, you can have a look at Wendy Maltz’s Sexual Effects Inventory here https://www.havoca.org/survivors/sexuality/sexual-effects-inventory/
Remedies: Developing a Healthy Sex Life
This short article was just to give you an idea of some of the many ways that sexual assault can impact intimacy. These impacts sometimes show up directly after the assault and sometimes show up years later.
Stay tuned for the next article which will talk about some of the many ways to heal the parts of your brain that are impacted by the trauma and to help you to find safety and pleasure in intimacy.
Sources
Maltz, Wendy (2021). Healthy Sex: Promoting Healthy, Loving Sex and Intimacy. https://healthysex.com/
Nagoski, Emily (2015). Come as you Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform your Sex Life. Simon & Schuster Inc: New York.
University of Alberta Sexual Assault Center (2019). Sexual intimacy after sexual assault or sexual abuse. https://www.ualberta.ca/media-library/ualberta/current-students/sexual-assault-centre/pdf-resources-and-handouts/intimacy-after-sexual-assault-2019.pdf
