(WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS EXPLICIT REFERENCES TO CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE, AND OTHER SEXUAL REFERENCES)
For many of us with sexual abuse trauma, our first “knowledge” of sexual stimulation, eroticism, or any kind of sexual experience, was likely to be frightening and most likely confusing. It is painful, not to mention distasteful to think of eroticism and childhood in one sentence. The very idea of eroticizing children is unbearable. But the truth is that stimulating even a young child in certain body parts will be arousing in some way, and for some even pleasurable. It is unbearable to even consider this. The fact is, however, that certain body parts, like the clitoris for example are bestowed with an uncanny number of nerve endings. According to the International Society for Sexual Medicine, the human clitoris is composed of over 10,000 neurons, although it does not specify the age of the person. Messing with that or other erogenous body areas of anyone, including a young child will be in some way arousing, and for a young child especially, more stimulation than that under-developed little nervous system is designed to process in its customary way, which is of course precisely the definition of trauma. So clearly from the start, any incident of sexual stimulation of a child is an “overwhelming experience,” and categorically traumatic. This means that the child starts out with wires crossed. The accompanying emotions may vary, and generally do, as many of us know from our own or our clients’ experience.
I remember when I was a teenager, freshly starting college, and certainly no stranger to sex by then. I volunteered with a community organization in my college town, that visited the women in the County Jail. I can’t remember if we facilitated support groups or brought books and discussed them, or what we did in there. I spent two hours each week locked in with the women in conversation. Early on, after I had only visited a few times, the women were all introducing themselves, and one woman said “I am a ‘sex-change,’ I used to be a man.” I had never heard of that before. Actually, I had heard of something similar, the “castrati sopranos,” somehow curiously, talked about by my dad when I was pretty small. This was the practice of castrating young male singers before puberty in order to retain singing voices equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto, begun in 16th Century Italy. I had not thought about this again until that moment in the jail. My reaction was identical, a full body chill went through me and I was terrified. I had no idea why, but I was haunted, especially being locked in for rest of the session. I had nightmares for some time, afraid to do my next shift in the jail, afraid that she would still be in there. I never saw her again, but I never forgot it.
Now that there is a growing awareness about transgender and all manner of non-binary sexualities, I am terribly ashamed to have reacted that way. I take seriously the mandate as a therapist, a sex therapist and a human being, the mandate to educate myself about a whole world of sexuality that I was ignorant about. I have made mistakes in my language, sometimes in cases where a parent has gently corrected me, sometimes less gently by an angry client. But my point is that trauma skews reactions, assumptions and feelings for a long time to come. Duh!! And I do hope my recounting of this story does not hurt or offend anyone!
Neglect
Many mistakenly believe that explicitly sexual trauma is the sole cause of sexual “problems” and if there is no known history of sexual trauma, one must either fish for it, or has no “excuse” for the difficulty. I answer with a resounding NO!! Sex, as we know, involves a delicate balance between sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal. The sympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system is arousing, the parasympathetic is calming. Harville Hendrix, founder of Imago Relationship Therapy describes this as Safety and Passion. We must feel safe, i.e. relaxed in order to enjoy sex, and we must feel some level of excitement in order to have a pleasurable experience. Without the balance of both, sex is no fun at all. Even mammals in the wild know this. They will stop their sexual activity immediately if they perceive a predator in the field, drop and run.
This means that neglect which involves a profound over and/or under-arousal of the nervous system of the child, particularly a young child, is categorically dysregulating, thereby destabilizing of any kind of balance. The failure of mirroring and reflection, the absence of feeling seen and known, the experience of nothing results in an under-stimulated little brain. In turn, as we know from neuroscientist Ruth Lanius, “the withdrawal, loss or absence of the mother is experienced by the infant as life threatening.” It feels like lethal danger, pitching the young nervous system into hyper-arousal. The entire nervous system may be thrown off balance and in effect dysregulated, which can of course show itself in any aspect of the function, including of course the delicately balanced system of sexuality. In any gender.
In our work as Neglect Informed therapists, we will encounter sexual challenges of many a stripe, including perhaps in ourselves. Again, no need to probe for overt sexual trauma, or dismiss or minimize the problems in its absence. For years I tried my damnedest to cross pollenate between the trauma and sexuality fields, as the trauma field seemed to have a narrow focus around the explicitly sexual. Now at long last it is slowly happening. Please join me in bringing a neglect informed perspective to sexuality!
Healing
I first trained in couples work in 1998, when I discovered Imago Therapy. After firing five therapists and wasting untold quantities of money, time and hope, my husband and I landed there and got some help. I am infinitely grateful. I knew I wanted to study and practice that because it works. One aspect of deep attachment work, which is so central both to my own work and my own journey, is the attachment relationship with the therapist. It is in effect where I learned or became capable of authentic attachment that I have since been able to replicate, filling my life with wonderful relationships. That was never true before. So, the relational aspect of trauma and neglect healing is perhaps its most powerful aspect. One of the ironic and assuredly frustrating aspects of that relationship is that if successful, we become able to fly away from therapy; often and certainly in my case after a very long time, by design, we lose the person! How weird is that?
What I discovered in Imago, and in deep couple’s therapy for trauma and neglect, is that partners can heal in therapy while learning to attach, and take the healing relationship home when they finish. That is another reason why I find couples therapy as so potent and rewarding a venue for healing the core attachment wounds left by trauma and neglect. And certainly, the optimal place to work on sexual difficulties. Invariably both partners bring their own share of dysregulation to the mix, and there is never only one “problem child.”
I can’t completely neglect the bombardment, certainly in the US, of this madly dysregulating season of consumerism, congestion and pressure to have an idyllic family to be with and lots of money to spend. Sadly, much if not most of the world has neither. But we all have a body, and I can certainly wish calm and comfort and joy to all. Best wishes to all and a desperate wish for peace!
Today’s song:
