Episode 7 - Sex and Trauma

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hi, this is Dr. Todd. Welcome to another episode of the Dr. Todd Podcast. In this episode, we will be discussing how experiences we had while growing up may be causing some problems in our sexual lives as adults. Early experiences in life, especially repeated ones involving shame, rejection, or abuse, can shape how we relate to our own body, how we experience sexual desire and emotional intimacy as we become adults. Because how we experience and express our sexuality is heavily tied to our core sense of self, how our brain processes emotion, and patterns of connection that we learned early in life. Anything that damages our sense of self, dysregulates our emotions, or exposes us to toxic relationship patterns while we were young will have a major impact on our sexual lives as adults. So in our conversation today, I want to discuss some of the common ways those childhood experiences, some of those negative childhood experiences can show up in adulthood. So the first has to do with shame around sexual desire or our body, our sexual body. If we were shamed when we were very young, right, particularly for uh the way that we feel or our curiosity or we were shamed about our body, we may have internalized this idea that our sexual desire or our sexual interest or our physical body, uh, particularly as a sexual being, is bad or somehow wrong or impolite. And so in adulthood, what that how that can express itself is feelings of being guilty or wrong for wanting sex, difficulty enjoying pleasure without experiencing anxiety, or uh even disconnection from our body during intimate times, such as like wanting to avoid sexual touch or kind of numbing out. Uh, another way that that can kind of manifest is again over-policing or being very, very judgmental about our own thoughts or fantasies. Another area that our early childhood experiences can impact our sexual lives as adults is this fear of intimacy or vulnerability. And this is particularly true if we were made to feel very unsafe or if we had experienced some kind of sexual assault or sexual abuse. So, as adults, this can show up in a number of ways, right? One is avoiding emotional or sexual intimacy, kind of pulling away from relationships as we get closer or deeper, um, just preferring casual or detached sexual encounters, uh, or just kind of feeling shut down, emotionally shut down or absent during sex. Another way that we can be affected in in adulthood from our experiences as a kid around our sexuality has to do with our attachment patterns in relationships, right? And what I mean by attachment is as kids, we form certain emotional bonds with our parents. And if all goes well and we form secure bonds, we experience that closeness as being safe and nurturing and uh and that we can always turn to a loved one for support. And if we're distressed, they will be there to comfort us. But when we experience abandonment or we experience harm in our attachment relationships as a kid, in adulthood, um, we will oftentimes feel a sense of anxiety with closeness. And that anxiety, that anxiousness during sex um can show up as kind of a fear of rejection, um, difficulty setting boundaries, constantly needing, you know, sex to you know, for reassurance. It's like um, you know, if we don't have sex often enough, does this mean that you don't love me? So let's have sex so I can I can feel reassured that you still love me and that you're still here, can also show up as just kind of emotional distancing, minimizing your own needs, um, you know, the just that discomfortness with closeness that we talked about. And in more extreme circumstances, when we grew up in uh in households where that attachment relationship was very disorganized, where sometimes, you know, the parents were very, very there and loving and effusive in their praise on us. And then at other times they were, uh they attacked us or were very shaming or physically or sexually abusive. So all of a sudden we get this kind of disorientation toward uh toward attachment relationships. And that can show up uh, particularly in sexual relationships in adulthood, as what are what are called kind of push-pull dynamics. There's kind of this uh I hate you, don't leave me kind of thing, or not being able to differentiate um safe situations from dangerous situations. Um, and actually somebody who is safe, we may experience fear of them, and vice versa. Another way that um our experiences in childhood, particularly our attachment relationships or experiences with emotional trauma, can show up in adulthood, is the level of our interest in sex, kind of our sexual appetite. So some people who um who have experienced um, you know, some challenging relationships or trauma in early life can become very hypersexual as adults, where it's like they want to have sex all the time and everything orbits around sex, very, very uh hypersexual. And on the flip side of that is somebody who is very sexually avoidant, right? And the uh the difference between those two, obviously between you know patterns of behavior, right, is that um somebody who is hypersexual oftentimes um will be using sex for a sense of validation or emotional soothing. And somebody who has kind of the avoidant side, there's going to be more of an aversion to sex or kind of some emotional dissociation during intimacy. And this kind of models that anxious versus attach uh versus avoidant attachment style that um you know we've we've touched on a little bit in in previous episodes, and we'll be talking about a lot uh a lot more in the future. But in an essence, when um when we do not have a secure attachment with our parents, a good emotional bond with our parents or with our partner, we will tend to fall into one of two categories. One, either that we experience a lot of anxiety about that sense of disconnection and we will tend to pursue, or we will become avoidant where we want to avoid closeness, emotional closeness with other people. And that just shows up as this within our sexuality is kind of a hypersexuality or an avoidant. And it's important to remember that neither one of these are not necessarily flaws. If you are like hoardy and thinking about sex all the time, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a sex addict or that you're broken or sick or bad or wrong, right? Uh, it just means that that was an adaptive response that your brain engaged in uh due to some uh some experiences that you had during childhood and your brain's way of trying to adapt and trying to trying to get needs met that were not met in childhood. And it's kind of the same thing with avoidance. You know, when we kind of look at that uh avoidance side, if we take that even one step further, one of the things that can happen in adulthood when it comes to sex is that uh there are some people who go into complete dissociation during sex. And this is particularly an issue with people who have experienced um significant or repeated sexual aggression or sexual abuse, sexual violence uh while they were growing up, or frankly, even in adulthood. One of the ways that the brain tries to protect itself is by going into a dissociative state. So it just kind of checks out from whatever is happening in the moment. And so what that can feel like as an adult is that you may want to be sexual with your partner. You may have a good sexual appetite and uh and a lot of sexual desire. And the moment that clothes start coming off and that sexual touch starts happening, there's just something where all of a sudden it's like you're physically present, but you just kind of mentally go somewhere else. Um you may experience sudden numbness. Uh, and sometimes it's it's just emotional numbness, sometimes it's physical numbness, particularly in the sexual parts of ourselves. Um and you may have a real difficult time staying engaged or connected. And that can be really, really frustrating and demoralizing when you are you want to be uh sexually intimate with your partner, and then that dissociation starts happening, right? And I just want you to know that um that is not because you're you're broken, right? It's that is the brain's response to a trauma history that is unresolved. And so in order to, in order to kind of get over some of that stuff, we just need to um to do some work on some of the PTSD stuff that may be happening that is causing that disengage and disengagement. Another thing that can happen, uh, and this is particularly true when we don't have uh good parental engagement in our lives. So if we don't have like kind of consistent parent parental presence where we feel, you know, where we feel approved of, where we experience safety and affection and all of that, then um we come into adulthood oftentimes kind of with some confusion around issues of love and sexuality and safety and all of that. And so we will tend to link um sexual behavior um with kind of validating our own sense of self-worth. I think we kind of touched on some of this stuff a few minutes ago, and um and or maybe may feel a sense of like I'm afraid of losing somebody, and so I will engage them in sex, or not being able to differentiate uh kind of dangerous situations or dangerous sexual situations um with ones that that are not. And so we may be attracted to people who um you know who are uh we should be afraid of or situations that that should be raising some red flags and they just don't, because that kind of that learning who is safe, learning what situations we should be afraid of never really didn't really develop very well. And so in adulthood, uh we can kind of conflate some of these things with um, you know, the the needing to cling on to people and uh and feeling obliged to have sex in order for to not to lose somebody. You know, it's it's interesting. When I was um when I was early in my career, my previous professional life, I was a chiropractor, I had a woman who um who had fibromyalgia. And fibromyalgia is a is a fascinating condition that we'll talk about in another time, but um she she talked about uh getting feeling like her husband didn't love her enough. And so she got a she got a boob job in order to keep him engaged with her, in order to not lose him so that he would be more sexually interested in her. And then he left, and and the she was just absolutely emotionally devastated, and that's when a lot of these physiological symptoms of fibromyalgia showed up. But this is just kind of an example of some of the ways in which um we will use our sexuality to try to get somebody, keep somebody, because we are so terrified of being alone and we so much need to feel wanted and feel validated. It's very easy to judge that woman or judge that dude and say, oh my God, what's wrong with him? But I think it's really important to understand what was what was really happening there. And in her situation, she had such a poor internal sense of self. And she felt as though the only thing that was valuable was her own sexuality. And in order to in order to make herself more sexual desired sexually desirable, she got this boob job and then was rejected even though she had done that. And then she was just emotionally devastated and started having a lot of physical symptoms of fibromyalgia. So I think the bottom line here is that our experiences that we had as kids, not only traumatic experiences like being molested, abused, raped, things like that, but also um our relationships with our parents, the feelings of being safe and validated and okay, um, have a huge impact on how we experience our sexual lives as adults. And so um when we when we look at kind of like what is like bad sexual behavior, what is good sexual behavior, um you know, it it that that becomes a very complicated question because we should really be looking at um variations of sexual behavior as being part of a part of a normal and healthy continuum, but also uh as being a result of a lot of experiences that we had growing up. Just because somebody is hypersexual, just because somebody is very sexually shut down, just because somebody is interested in kink, just because somebody is very vanilla and very controlled in how they express their sexuality, or are very conservative in how they express their sexuality, or if somebody is extremely sensual, or if somebody is very, you know, kind of gets shut down or dissociates during sex, it doesn't necessarily mean that there's anything wrong with you. All of these things are simply the brain's way of trying to get needs met, whether that's we dissociate and shut down to try to remain safe when we have experienced sexuality as being hurtful, whether we have experienced abandonment and being invalidated, and we use sex as a way of trying to validate those feelings. I think we need to get out of the judgment business out of all of this, right? And stop using words like, you know, um, those things are pathological or we should somehow try to just get over them. I think that a better approach is to understand why we're doing those things. What are some of the underlying issues, you know, whether it's the need to feel a sense of validation, the need to feel valued, the need for a sense of safety or belonging or connection or whatever that is, and address some of those needs so that we can be more intentional with how we show up in our sexual lives. Because when we are being triggered by stuff that happened in childhood, then we are not the active agent in our lives when it comes to our own sexuality. Whether we are somebody who just absolutely loves sex and could have sex every day, or somebody who is much more conservative, that's fine. But if if you know, if if our uh sexual appetite or our uh our being sexually shut down is the result of kind of trauma triggers, then we are no longer the active agents in uh in engaging in our own sexuality. Our trauma is in the driver's seat. And that's the piece that we want to address, that I think is important to address, so that whoever we are, however we view ourselves as sexual beings, however we engage in our sexuality, what we like to do, uh, we can just do that from a place of choice rather than being compelled by uh by trauma. So uh uh in future episodes, we'll talk a little bit more about specific things that you can do in order to try to heal from uh from some of those previous traumas. But I think it's just important to get out of the judgment business. Don't see your sexuality or some of the things that may be distressing to you about your sexuality as necessarily a character flaw or that you are somehow bad, sick or wrong, right? I think the more important thing is to be viewing these things uh just as the result of stuff that happened earlier in life and some of the adaptive mechanisms that our brain implemented in order to help us get through that and try to get our needs met in some way. So I hope you enjoyed this conversation or found it useful in some way. And I will, oh, be sure to hit that subscribe button. That would help me a lot. All right. All right, we'll see it in the next episode. Bye bye.