You can love your partner, trust them, and still notice that, during intimacy, your body seems to say: “No.”
You may experience tension, fear, detachment, reduced desire, difficulty relaxing or saying “no”, or difficulty understanding what you yourself actually want.
Especially if you experienced sexual violence or serious violations of your boundaries during childhood or adolescence.
And then it can be very easy to start thinking:
“There is something wrong with me.”
But often this is not about weakness or about “not knowing how to be close to someone”. These may be responses of the mind and body that once helped protect you and that still activate automatically today.
And these responses can be worked with.
As an EMDR therapist, I can help you process traumatic memories, triggers and automatic responses that are still activated during intimacy.
As an IFS therapist, I help you notice the parts that feel afraid or ashamed, avoid, control or “freeze” feelings, and gradually create a greater sense of safety within.
As a sexologist, I can help you understand how past experiences affect desire, arousal, pleasure, your relationship with your body, boundaries and your right to choose.
And as an IFIO couples therapist, I can also work with how these experiences affect the relationship: distance, refusals, hurt feelings, misunderstandings and the couple’s intimate life.
The aim of therapy here is not to force yourself to “react normally”.
It is to gradually regain the sense that:
my body belongs to me;
I can choose;
I can say “yes” and I can say “no”;
intimacy can be safe;
and the past does not have to control my sexual life today.
If you recognise yourself in this text, you do not have to begin therapy by sharing a detailed account of the past. You can start with what is happening for you now: fear, tension, difficulties with intimacy or your relationship with your partner.
