Where is sexual trauma stored in the body?

When you’re on a path of sexual healing, one big a-ha moment is when you learn about how trauma impacts the body. You may have even read “The Body Keeps The Score.”

You finally understand why all the talk therapy isn’t working like you’d hoped, and why you’re still being haunted by flashbacks, freezing, or fear around your sexual self months years, even decades after the event(s) happened.

Where Is Sexual Trauma Stored in the Body?

The next logical question is: If sexual trauma is “stored in my body” where is it stored? And then, “How do I release stored sexual trauma?”

To understand how to work with trauma and the body, we first need to clear up a common misconception about trauma thats prevalent in the healing space, especially on social media.

Though it’s true that trauma impacts the body, it isn’t “stored” in the body like you’re some filing cabinet.

The lump in your throat when someone raises their voice isn’t “stored trauma” in your throat. It’s your nervous system responding to something in the present that reminds you of a pain from the last time somebody raised their voice.

When we misunderstand sexual trauma as being stored in the body somewhere, it easily causes us to go excavating, digging up and attempting to remove the stored trauma like tumors. Treating the body as a problem to be fixed, which only shuts it down more.

Imagine a friend who was always trying to push you to improve and change? Not exactly relaxing.

Your body’s responses are intelligent, not pathology. Your body is always working in service of your wellbeing and survival, even when it feels uncomfortable and is getting in the way of your ideal sex and intimacy.

So the question isn’t, “Where is sexual trauma stored in my body?” It’s, “What is my nervous system responding to right now?”

This doesn’t mean dismissing how the trauma impacted your body, it’s about honoring the body’s intelligence. This is a completely different way of relating to your body not as an enemy, but as a wise friend.

How do you release stored sexual trauma?

The goal isn’t to get rid of all your protective strategies, it’s to expand the menu of choices for your responses in intimacy.

How do you show your body and nervous system that intimacy can be safe?

What It Really Takes to Heal Sexual Trauma

Positive reparative experiences. In other words, experinces where you get what was missing from your past intimate experinces. Like being seen, heard, respected, attuned to.

This is how you wire new patters in sex and intimacy and go form protection to connection.

What many people don’t realize, is this takes more than talking, thinking and analyzing. To heal sexual trauma impacting the body we have to work with the body.

This experiential learning is exactly what we do in my private immersions.

If you’re ready for a guide on healing sexual trauma, learn more about working with your body.