As an incest or intrafamilial child sexual abuse (ICSA) survivor, as well as the founder and community organizer for Incest AWARE, I know all too well of the necessity we have as individuals and communities to learn and practice expressions of healthy sexuality. Below, I've included some information that I've learned from my personal journey as a sexual assault survivor, as well as through my work as an anti-incest liberation agent about sex healing. Please, note that the information about healing sexuality provided below is not meant to be used to replace clinical and medical support and has been gathered through peer-to-peer support networks.
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What Is Healthy Sexuality?
Often when people talk about healing sexuality they are referring to sexual actions and behaviors. However, healthy sexuality actually encompasses so much more than just sexual activity. Ultimately, sexuality is about relationships. It includes all the ways in which we relate to ourselves and each other including our beliefs, our bodies, our interests, our gender identities, our sexual preferences, our self-perceptions, as well as our abilities to communicate, build relationships, and experience intimacy with others.
Everyone’s sexuality is unique to them. All sexual expressions between consensual adults deserve to be celebrated and respected. Unfortunately, many have experienced forms of relational and sexual trauma that have negatively impacted the ways they relate to themselves, others, and the world around them. Healing sexuality is an important process to recover, reclaim, and receive safe connections again to feel healthy and fulfilled. A number of sex healing practices exist to support people who have been harmed by sexual trauma.
Why Is Healing Sexuality Important?
Sexuality includes so much of what makes life wonderful and meaningful. A secure sense of self, the freedom to define gender and express sexual preferences, intimate connections with others, the pursuit of pleasure, open communication, and a deep understanding of safe sexual practices can enhance health and happiness for everyone. Often however, the opportunity to experience these exciting elements of life can be interrupted by mistreatment. All forms of sexual trauma can negatively impact people who are harmed, disconnecting them from themselves, their bodies, and the desire or ability to interact safely with others. Alternatively, healing sexuality provides the victim or survivor opportunities to engage in safe relationships once again with themselves and others on the terms that work best for them.
What are the types of sexual trauma that may require sex healing?
Due to the fact that sexuality is so broadly defined, there are many types of trauma that may require victims and survivors to practice healing sexuality. The definition and social understanding of sexual abuse types vary depending on location, country, and laws. However, below are a number of examples. Some people experience one of the many abuses listed, while others may experience multiple harms that compound to create complex trauma.
Rape
Rape happens when someone is forced into sexual acts without their consent or against their will
Stealthing
Stealthing occurs when people agree to have sex with a condom, then the condom is never put on or is removed without the other person’s permission.
Sexual Assault
Sexual assault includes forced sexual touching or activity without the consent of the other person like unwanted kissing.
Child Sexual Abuse
Child sexual abuse is forced sexual activity against a person under the age of 16-18 depending on the ages of marjority and consent across states. It often involves threats, grooming, manipulation, and intimidation.
Incest Abuse
Accord to Incest AWARE, incest “is the sexual abuse of a person by a family member: a primary caregiver including a stepparent or foster parent, a sibling or cousin, or someone else considered family like a nanny or close family friend.” It is can also be a type of child sexual abuse if the victim is a child.
Assault by Penetration
Assault by penetration is the insertion of any object besides a penis into a person’s vagina or anus without their consent.
Sexual Harassment
Sexual harassment includes sexual behavior that makes someone feel afraid, upset, offended, scared, or humiliated, or is meant to make them feel that way to assert power over them due to sex and gender expressions. This includes workplace misconduct or catcalling on the streets.
Spiking
Spiking happens when someone puts alcohol or other drugs into a person’s drink or body without their knowledge or consent.
Indecent Exposure
Indecent exposure is also known as flashing. It includes non-consensually showing someone else private parts of the body.
Cyber Flashing
Cyber flashing is a form of indecent exposure that occurs online or over other digital platforms or text messages.
Genital Mutilation
Male or female genital mutilation or 'FGM' includes any procedures that change or cause injury to the genital organs for non-medical reasons and/or without the consent of the person.
How does sexual trauma impact healthy sexuality?
Sexual trauma at any age can violate both the victim or survivor’s relationship with themselves, others, community, and institutions, and may negatively impact their capacities to express and experience healthy sexuality.
No one except the person who harmed is responsible for the abuse. However, many victims and survivors will feel shame or fault for what happened due to societal patterns that have historically shamed and invalidated them. This can make victims and survivors question or doubt their own experience. If the sexual violence occurred at a young age, the victim and survivor’s identity and sense of self can become shaped by the trauma. All violence, especially repeated forms of harm, has a negative impact on the brain and body of victims and survivors, making healing sexuality important for a fulfilling life.
Adverse childhood and community experiences can cause the brain’s structure to develop differently or change due to too much trauma. Even in instances of safety, the brain will often experience emotional or visual flashbacks or triggers, flooding the body of victims and survivors with stress hormones that can contribute to long-term health challenges and autoimmune and heart conditions. Emotional regulation can prove challenging to victims and survivors, especially those without support. Some will experience body dysmorphia and manage disordered eating. While others will turn to easily accessible, but harmful treatment methods or coping mechanisms like substance use and self-harm. Suicidal ideation remains common among sexual assault victims and survivors.
Healing sexuality can also be challenging after sexual violence due to the inability to trust and maintain positive relationships with others. Often victims and survivors choose to isolate from social circles due to the lack of awareness and support by friends, family, peers, and professionals. Healing from sexual violence, including sex healing, can be a long, arduous, and intensive process that requires competent and culturally-affirming forms of care that honor the unique experiences of individuals due to their racial, cultural, ethnic, historical, and intergenerational backgrounds. With the lack of trauma-informed people and professionals, as well as the expensive healthcare system, victims and survivors may feel or be alone as they navigate healing sexuality. The criminal legal system rarely sides with sexual assault victims and survivors, leaving them without government funded victim compensation and the people who harmed free to reoffend.
Expressing and experiencing safe sexual relationships can be difficult if a survivor has only ever experienced sexual acts through violence. Sexual abuse can be so common in family systems and communities that it is considered to be normal and not taken seriously, even though the consequences can impact a survivor for a lifetime. However, healing sexuality is available. Many forms of sex healing practices can help victims and survivors experience safe relationships with themselves and others.
Where can survivors begin in healing sexuality?
Healing sexuality begins for victims and survivors of sexual violence by restoring safe relationship with self, others, and their communities. Here are a number of ideas to pursue sex healing:
Self-Love
Victims and survivors can begin healing sexuality through self-love practices. Although feeling love toward oneself may be difficult, learning self-care rituals can help restore a safe relationship with oneself. Self-love means honoring, listening, and learning about oneself. Being curious about one’s needs, expressing them, meeting them as one is able, and asking for support in the ways one is not able. Self-care rituals depend on preferences, culture, and resources. They can include journaling, quality time with loved ones, physical activities and exercises, being in nature, reading, writing, listening to music, traveling, etc.
Establishing Friendships
Friendship is a great place to start practicing healing sexuality as it can be an equitable form of relationship. Without the obligations that come with family or the pressures that may arise in romantic relationships, friendship allows people to practice building trust, safe communication, and sharing quality time together at their own pace.
Strong Boundaries
Whether with family, friends, or colleagues, work or recreational responsibilities, boundaries can help victims and survivors better navigate safety and live peacefully within their environments. Learning to understand, communicate, and hold boundaries, as well as surrounding oneself with those who are able to respect them, is an important part of the process for healing sexuality.
Clear Communication
Clear communication is a great skill to practice so that others understand your desires, wants, and needs. Regardless of context — at work, at home, out and about, or in the bedroom — communication can help people better understand and respect each other and aid in sex healing.
Sexual Empowerment
Everyone gets to explore their sexual interests and identities for themselves with other adults who share mutual interest and consent. There are a number of sexual orientations, identities, expressions, and lifestyles to help victims and survivors discover what they find pleasurable or harmful. Healthy sexuality can look like no engagement with sexuality at all, self-pleasure practices, sexual play with one person, or many people. Throughout the process of healing sexuality, preferences for sexual expression may change and evolve.
Pacing Healing
Healing sexuality at one’s own pace is important to honor the needs of the brain, body, and being during the recovery process. Sexual trauma can have physiological, psychological, neurological, and emotional impacts on the victim and survivor’s experience of themselves and the world around them. Unlearning and relearning through sex healing will take time. Trying to rush through healing faster than the body can manage may cause retraumatization so finding a pace that works is an important part of healing.
Professional Support
Seeking professional support to heal sexuality is another great option. There are a number of forms of therapy — neurological, psychological, and physiological — to teach victims and survivors how to reconnect with themselves, discover their preferences, and lead lives aligned with their values and desires. Often these therapeutic models occur in a one-one-one setting.
Group Support
Others may enjoy healing sexuality in a group context instead of one-one-one. Peer-to-peer or professionally facilitated healing circles can offer a sense of solidarity between those who share similar experiences, as well as be a place to meet new friends or sexual partners.
Share Your Story
Sharing one’s own story through speaking, writing, song-writing, spoken word, or any other means available can also support sex healing. Often sexual violence happens behind closed doors. So sharing the story publicly offers the opportunity for others to witness the harm done and invite the community into the healing process. Be sure to find safe spaces to share, as there are many people who will continue to side with people who harm and deny the validity of victim and survivor narratives.
Safe Partnership/s
If you are interested in partnership in any form: roommates, a single partner, multiple partners; building trust slowly and assuring mutual interests will be important for victims and survivors. Safe relationships can be a great way to experience corrective experiences: or new moments within relationships that help to heal or override the trauma from past relationships.
Healing sexuality resources
A number of organizations offer resources for healing sexuality after sexual trauma. You can search for a therapist of a variety of different types of modalities and look for sexual abuse support groups at Psychology Today. Here is a list of the best online sex therapy programs. The “me too.” Movement also has an extensive list of resources to aid victims and survivors of sexual violence.
Incest recovery resources
If you're seeking support to heal specifically from incest abuse, you can review organizations doing Incest AWAREness work who belong to the Incest AWARE Alliance, then reach out to the individuals and organizations directly to learn about services.
For further information, please review the following resources:
If you're seeking anti-incest related consulting for yourself, your project, your business, or your organization, please review my services page and reach out to me to say hello!
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