The Survivor's Guide to Sex

by Staci Haines

  When I first started focusing on recovering my sexuality, my vagina and pelvis felt like stone. I would get an image of dried, cracked earth that nothing could grow in. I imagined watering it, loosening it, and making it more flexible. The more I moved and tried to feel myself there, the more I touched myself and tried to become friends with me again, the more that image changed.

  Stephanie

  Your Body

  Many survivors have a difficult relationship with their bodies. You may struggle with body hate, feeling that your body has betrayed you or that your body is an unsafe place to live. Having a body at all may be a problem for you. You may struggle with anorexia or bulimia, or feel you are over- or underweight. Many survivors use food as a means of coping with their emotions, while others have a difficult time feeding themselves at all. Since your body was touched or used during the abuse, a difficult relationship with your body is often one of the lasting effects.

  Sometimes survivors do not like their bodies because the body is where pain lives. Getting in touch with your body can also mean attending to the trauma that is still held there.

  I always felt like my body was his. It wasn’t mine. It had betrayed me and now it was his ally and my enemy.

  Maggie

  As you consider your relationship with your body, especially your sexual body, examine who taught you about your body. Where did you pick up this information? What makes this opinion so valid?

  I know that our relationships with our bodies run very deep. It is not like you can say, “Oh, okay, I decided I want to believe something different from what I was taught, so now I feel differently.” Changing your relationship with your body and sexuality is a multilevel process. First, you must look at what you do believe and who you learned that from. Is this who you want to have say over your relationship to your own body? If you were to write the script of your relationship to your body, what would it say?

  Next come the practices to support this. What can you say to yourself that supports the relationship you want to build with your body? What is a small step in that direction? A medium and a big step? You might start by writing down the script you’d like hold as your truth. Then tell one trusted friend that new story. Tape it to your bathroom mirror so that you see it and read it daily. Let other people in your life know that this is the new relationship with your body you are creating. Ask them to see you in this new light.

  The same somatic practices that helped you discover a sense of internal safety (see chapter 1) will help you create a new, more loving relationship with your body. Martial arts, yoga, dance, sports, meditation, and other embodiment practices that bring your attention to the sensations in your body are also powerful allies in helping you release the trauma that has supported your negative relationship with your body. You may need to walk through shame and guilt, and begin to place your rage and anger with your perpetrators instead of internalizing it as self-blame. You may need to face the grief of loss and betrayal that hating your body keeps you from feeling. What is it that you are most afraid to let yourself feel? If you were to build an empowering relationship with your body—including your sexual body—what emotions would come up? How can you begin to move toward your feelings?

  The Body Hug

  This exercise can greatly assist you in learning to know, accept, and even like those parts of your body you have learned to hate. Practice this any place on your body where you feel targeted, were abused, or dislike your body.

  Find a calm place to sit or lie down. Relax and deepen your breathing, expanding your belly and your chest. As you lie there, bring your attention into your hands. You can rub them together to warm them and bring energy into them. Put love and acceptance into your hands. To do this you can think of someone or something you love and feel warmth for. Then place your hands on whatever part of your body you have chosen to work with. Gently let your hands rest there, or stroke that part of you. Bring loving-kindness into that part of you.

  Your mind will probably go wild, ticking off all the things you feel are wrong with that part of your body. You are too fat—look at that!—you are too skinny, you’ve got stretch marks, you sag, your skin is bad…

  Write these down if you need to. What are the feelings underneath all that chatter? What memories are stirred in this part of your body? Note these, then return to your breathing and your accepting touch. Keep coming back to the warmth and care in your hands. Try this for five minutes.

  Being in my own body and liking me there is one of the hardest parts of my recovery. I hate it when people say “just love your body.” That sounds so trite in comparison to what I am dealing with in here. I am taking a step at a time in accepting me, and finding small bits of pleasure in my body. That part is cool.

  Danielle

  You can now develop a powerful relationship with your body, with living in your own skin. You can learn to appreciate what was perhaps never appreciated, to respect yourself in the ways you were not respected.

  Sex Guide Exercises

  1. What three life experiences most informed your relationship with your body and sexual body? These may be positive or negative influences. Consider family and community, abuse, social and cultural influences, media, sports or athletics, art and performance.

  2. What part of your body do you have a difficult relationship with? Your stomach, breasts, hips, thighs? Get out paper and crayons or markers and draw that part of your body. It doesn’t need to be a realistic rendition; just draw your impression of that part of your body. What does the image have to communicate to you? What does that part of your body need or want?

  I did this exercise with a woman who drew her genitals and pelvic region. Large parts of the initial drawing were black, squiggly lines marking up the page. Other parts of the drawing were nearly blank, as if this part of her body did not exist. As we worked, over time, she continued to draw images of her pelvic region. As she faced the trauma to this region of her body and welcomed her pelvis back into her life, the images changed. Bright colors started showing up in the drawings, and the area became more contained, less chaotic. The later drawings were both calm and fiery, very vibrant.

  3. Get a mirror, and find a comfortable place and a time when you won’t be interrupted. Look at your genitals. What do they look like? Identify your labia, clitoris and clitoral hood, vaginal opening, perineum, and anus.

  4. What else might you like to learn about your own body, sexual response cycle, or capacity for orgasm? Choose one thing and start exploring.

  chapter six

  Masturbation and Self-Healing

  Self-Loving

  Masturbation is touching yourself sensually or sexually—regardless of whether or not you have an orgasm. Masturbation is good for lots of things. By touching yourself, you can learn what turns you on and what leaves you cold. Not only will this enhance your sexual enjoyment, it is the most important information you can give to a lover.

  Masturbation is the center of my sexuality now. I have learned that I turn myself on, that I am responsible for my own pleasure. This has been so liberating for me.

  Anna

  Masturbation is good for your health, too. Studies show that masturbation reduces stress and helps you relax. Also, regular use of your PC muscle keeps it in shape, increasing orgasmic pleasure, supporting childbirth, preventing incontinence, and in some cases reducing menstrual cramps.

  Through masturbation you can explore your sexual responses, play with your fantasies, try out sex toys and safer-sex gear, expand your erotic repertoire, and build a positive relationship to own body and sexuality. You can have fun getting off, too!

  Any trigger that gets set off with a partner will also show up in masturbation. When you masturbate, you can practice handling these triggers. Masturbation will help you learn in your own bed, through your own experiences, that your sexuality is yours, and that you are not “damaged” or “bad.”

  A Bad Rap

  Masturbation has gotten a bad rap; it has been ci
ted as the cause of insanity, blindness, impotence, hysteria, and other unrelated mental and physical symptoms. As recently as 1995, Dr. Joycelan Elders was asked to resign from her position as U.S. Surgeon General because she recommended masturbation as a form of safer sex.

  Most of us have been taught from an early age that touching ourselves “down there” is bad. We are shamed out of self-exploration. We inherit a sex-negative view of masturbation that moves us away from a sense of pleasure in our own bodies.

  It seems utterly sick to me that I was not supposed to touch myself sexually, but my father was allowed to do whatever he wanted to. Shouldn’t that be the other way around?

  Liz

  Yet, nearly everyone masturbates. The Kinsey Institute reported in 1990 that 94 percent of men and 71 percent of women masturbate to orgasm. Masturbation is a healthy part of sexual development in children and a healthy part of sexual expression for adults. Fetuses have been noted to have erections and genital swelling in the womb, and infants discover that touching their genitals feels good. By two most toddlers are masturbating, and as they age, they become curious about others’ bodies. All of this is part of a child’s natural development.

  What better way to develop sexually than to masturbate? Masturbation gives you a full range of choices about your own body and pleasure, and it puts your sexuality back into your own hands.

  Your Keystone to Healing

  Having sex with yourself is your most powerful recovery tool. Through masturbation you can practice all the components of sexual healing and recovery. You can practice being embodied, feeling your body move and come alive. You can work through triggers and face intrusive memories. You can discover where your body is frozen or unfeeling as a result of the abuse. And through masturbation you can practice being present during sex.

  I didn’t really know how to masturbate. I just knew I wasn’t suppose to do it.

  Once I finally learned it was okay, I realized that this was the best way for me

  to learn about my sexuality on my own terms.

  Roslyn

  I have worked through a lot of my abuse through masturbating and fantasy. I re-created abuselike scenes in my fantasies, having them turn out differently than the abuse did.

  Marie

  Masturbation can help you explore the ways that sexual abuse has affected your sexuality and sexual expression. You don’t have to wait for partner sex to bring your emotional responses and triggers to the foreground. When you masturbate, you’ll find out exactly where the effects of incest and molestation landed in your body, emotions, and thinking.

  I learned to slow down and not just go for the orgasm masturbating. As I began

  to pay closer attention, I saw the entire cycle of my sexual “stuckness.” I begin

  to get sexually aroused, begin to feel excited, and then get a wave of shame: “I

  am not supposed to be doing this.” I keep masturbating, and the next wave is

  guilt: “See, I do like it, so I did deserve the abuse.” If I can keep breathing and

  touching myself, the grief and the sadness under the guilt and shame come up.

  Usually then I cry. I get farther each time, though. I used to stop at the shame,

  and just shut down. I feel like now I am unpacking that guilt and shame from

  on top of my sexuality and feeling the deeper levels. I am freeing myself up.

  Stephanie

  I would start to masturbate and then feel a surge of guilt. It seemed that as soon as I felt pleasure I felt guilt. This was all about the incest.

  Rosa

  If the sexual abuse affected you in a way that makes you fear sex, masturbation offers you a slow and safe way to discover your sexual self amid the wreckage of abuse. Masturbation can assist you in moving from sexual repression to sexual expression.

  I hated all sex. Masturbation didn’t even cross my mind. I was relieved when my husband didn’t want to have sex. Only after our divorce did I feel safe enough to wonder about my sexuality. A girlfriend gave me a book on sex that talked about masturbation as something healthy. I tried it. That was really the beginning of my healing.

  Evelyn

  If you have attempted to deal with the trauma of sexual abuse by becoming compulsive sexually, masturbation will help you to learn about boundaries and to heal the pain that drives the compulsion. Here you can practice paying attention to those feelings that say “stop here,” or “I’d like to pause here.” Stop when you feel those impulses. What is it like to feel and act on your own boundaries?

  I had sex with everyone. I thought that being sexual would get me acceptance, would allow me to finally fit in. I kept doing this after I knew it was only hurting me. It is only recently that I have stopped. Now I’m trying to find my own likes and dislikes, my own boundaries. Being sexual with myself is helping me do that.

  Lenore

  Want to stretch the envelope of your sexual expression? In masturbating you can try out what would be too scary with a sexual partner. You’ll discover parts of your sexuality that were hidden under the rubble of incest and molestation. As you become more confident in your self-exploration, you will be better equipped to communicate your desires to a sexual partner.

  But I Don’t Want to Masturbate

  For some survivors, masturbation is linked to sexual abuse. One survivor I worked with was found masturbating by her grandfather; this was used as the justification for molesting her. Her enjoyment of masturbation “proved” that she “wanted” it.

  He came into my room when I was six. I was touching myself and smelling my

  hand. I liked the smell of my vagina. This was the first time he molested me.

  He said girls who like that are dirty whores, and he’d just treat me like one

  too.

  Daren

  Some survivors don’t want to masturbate at all. Some women have cultural or religious reasons for not wanting to masturbate; others just don’t like it. Healing is all about consent and choice. If you don’t want to masturbate, you don’t have to.

  But before you decide not to masturbate, I encourage you to explore these questions: What emotions come up when you masturbate or even imagine masturbating? Do you experience self-blame, shame, guilt, rage, or grief? Is this also how you feel about the abuse? Is this how you feel about sex in general? Make a list of all the reasons you don’t want to masturbate. Are you making your own choice, or is the abuse deciding for you?

  Feelings and Triggers

  For many survivors, masturbating brings up traumatic emotions. You might feel like your emotions will overwhelm you. The odd thing about healing trauma is that you may feel like you are going to die, or that you will be swallowed whole by your emotions, but you won’t. As you let yourself experience these emotions, your tolerance for feeling them will increase. You will feel them and then they will pass. Feeling emotions is a large part of healing them.

  I’m too triggered by sex to even masturbate. I feel so ashamed and dirty. I don’t want to do to myself what my mom did to me.

  Carolyn

  When I masturbate I become obsessed with coming. I get uptight and manic. I want to come and then get out of there.

  Naomi

  For many survivors, feeling sexual pleasure brings up shame about having experienced sexual pleasure during the sexual abuse. Many survivors were purposefully brought to orgasm during the abuse.

  I get turned on, I feel guilty. I get turned on, I feel guilty. It is like this predictable cycle. What I know now, though, is that if I keep going through the guilt to the other side, it doesn’t last. I feel turned on again. I am getting to really know that it is okay for me to be turned on.

  Liz

  Rage and grief are also common emotions for survivors when masturbating. You might feel these emotions every time you get turned on. If you feel like crying or raging during masturbation, go ahead. What are you grieving about? What are you angry about? Grieve for your losses. Get angry at your abusers. Hold yours
elf tenderly through this.

  Sometimes when I masturbate, if I get really into it I get so angry I want to kick something.

  Pam

  I cry when I masturbate. I cry when I have an orgasm.

  Danielle

  Intrusive memories or images of the abuse may surface when you masturbate, too.

  Lots of my memories have come while masturbating. I guess I feel safer being alone and relaxed, and they tend to come up.

  Debbie

  Once and for all I wanted to kick my father out of my head while I was masturbating. There he’d be again, his face and his dick. One time I stood up and yelled at him. I said, “That’s it, get the hell out of here, you are not allowed here anymore. Get out!” He only came back once more after that, with much less force. Now I can intercept him at the door with a clear “no.”