Captions: Reclaiming your Body - Consent as a Spectrum
Video: Relationship to Sex After Trauma - Jordan
Many survivors of sexual trauma feel that
their relationship to sex has been altered after abuse.
A lot of this has to do with the fact that
survivors feel disconnected from their bodies and they feel a general sense of loss of
agency in their life, in their body and in other areas in their life as well.
The result of this is that when survivors do experience sex, they can often feel muted or
it can feel uncomfortable or it can feel really triggering. So the process of mending
someone’s relationship with sex after surviving sexual assault, for example, has a
lot to do with re-establishing safety in the body and also finding ways to restore a sense
of power and ownership over your sexuality.
Video: Emotional and Physical Intimacy - Jordan
So when we think about intimacy, we often
think about either emotional intimacy or physical intimacy. So within the emotional
intimacy realm, we think about things like trust, vulnerability and closeness that we feel toward
other people within physical intimacy we think about things like touch or affection and sex.
The issues that come up in both of those types of intimacy are oftentimes related.
Our sex life impacts our relationship and our relationships, impact our sex life.
What we do through intimacy counseling is we look at the particular way that those two
pieces of intimacy interact with each other and understanding the that unique dynamic
that shows up for you can empower you
to make the necessary adjustments to have a more fulfilling, intimate life.