Is Sexual Dissatisfaction Dragging You Down?

Is trauma from your past impacting you in ways that make happiness unattainable? Have you lost your desire for sex or intimacy? Are you still plagued by patterns and anxieties you thought you left in the past?

Perhaps on the outside, it looks like you have it all together. Although you’ve achieved the goals you set out to attain—a nice home, good career, stable relationship—inwardly something is missing. You feel unsatisfied in a fundamental way that’s holding you back from fulfillment.

Despite your successes, your life is impacted by unresolved trauma that’s still causing problems in your relationship. Perhaps you haven’t had an orgasm in years and struggle with intimacy. You may find it hard to trust your partner and may feel like you overreact to their behavior at times.

You may have grown weary and resentful of trying to set boundaries with friends and family members. Because it’s hard for you to express your needs to get what you want, you might feel taken advantage of and agree to things you really don’t want to do. On top of it all, you’re trying to work—and perhaps parent—during a pandemic that seems like it will never end.

You Feel Like You’re Not Living Up To Your Potential

Although your life isn’t in crisis, you wonder why you’re not experiencing joy. You may even feel guilty for being dissatisfied since, by anyone’s standards, you should be happy. But deep down you know you’re not living up to your true potential.

Fortunately, therapy for women offers individual counseling to discuss your concerns about sexual intimacy caused by trauma. Counseling for women can help you heal from the past so you can move into the future experiencing more pleasure.

As Women In A Patriarchal Culture, We Carry More Emotional Scars

For time immemorial, women have learned to adapt to an inherently patriarchal culture. Because of ongoing sexism and power-based violence, we experience higher rates of stress, depression, eating disorders, insomnia, and anxiety than men. Furthermore, a recent study found that Black women who have experienced more racism throughout their lives have stronger brain responses to threat, which may hurt their long-term health.

Wellness Culture Damages Our Mental Health

A lack of adequate sex education, combined with a culture that emphasizes female self-improvement over female acceptance, contributes to women’s poor mental health. The wellness culture we are immersed in is obsessed with the idea of women improving themselves.

Whether it’s our appearance, our health and diet, or our emotional lives, we are constantly being given the message that we should be “working” on ourselves, leaving us feeling as though we are inherently flawed in some way.

Past Trauma Can Impact Our Sexuality

On top of the unrealistic standards we’re expected to maintain, unresolved past trauma can impact our ability to express feelings—either feeling too much or too little—or cause physical pain in our body we may not initially relate back to the trauma. If we have a history of sexual abuse or assault, we may believe we owe our partner sex to maintain a happy relationship. This belief that we “owe” our partner sex may trigger memories of the abuse, making even consensual sex unwanted.

Even though women are resilient, when we try to move on from trauma and get over it on our own, it doesn’t work. We may be highly functioning and achievement-oriented, but being strong and doing everything on your own can lead to burnout. Worldly success doesn’t address the unresolved pain we carry.

When you are plagued by your past, you need expert guidance to explore the implications of trauma and learn how to overcome what’s holding you back. Therapy for women can provide you with that guidance, helping you resolve trauma and uncover newfound joy.

Therapy For Women Can Help You Discover Pleasure

Although you realize that sexual or racial trauma is holding you back, you may not understand the extent to which it impacts all aspects of your relationships. Because you’ve achieved success, you might not have paid attention to the ways unresolved trauma has prevented you from establishing intimacy and experiencing pleasure.

Counseling tailored for women allows you to address the issues that affect your expression of sexuality and ability to experience pleasure. Not only can counseling help you heal from past trauma, but it can also foster empowerment and improve your self-esteem.

We will establish a safe and supportive environment and ensure sessions move at a comfortable pace. By normalizing subjects you might not be used to talking about—such as sexuality, systemic racism, or sexism—we will give context to the challenges you’re having. Understanding the influences our culture has had on your experience is the first step in alleviating self-blame or shame.

What To Expect In Sessions

In our initial session, we will begin by hearing about your life today, and what your challenges are in the present moment. Over time, we will invite you to tell your life story. Hearing it repeated back to you from an objective and supportive third party will help you recognize the times when you faced challenges with resilience as well as point out any unwarranted self-criticism you are holding onto. We will not ask you to tell the details of sexual abuse or assault—whether or not we ever discuss the details will be your choice. By building a trusting relationship with your therapist, you will explore how trauma and family of origin issues have impacted your sexuality and relationships today.

If you experienced sexual assault or abuse in your past and want to enjoy sex again, we can help you reclaim sexuality and pleasure for yourself. With an emphasis on the mind-body connection, we will re-educate you about women’s sexual desire and help you create a path to pleasure that is created by you and for you.

The way your trauma influences your primary relationship may be complicated. Perhaps you find yourself in a double bind if your motivation to improve your sex life is for your partner’s sake. Even though your relationship is consensual, you might have lost interest in sex because you feel obligated to comply with having it for your partner’s sake. We will unravel the thoughts and feelings you have about sex so that you can reclaim it as your own experience and no longer view it through the lens of a power struggle.

An Eclectic Approach To Help You Flourish

We use an eclectic mix of modalities including, psychodynamic psychotherapy, mindfulness, trauma-informed Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), narrative therapy, and attachment theories and sex therapy. We focus less on technique and more on adapting our training to help you change negative patterns, realize your strengths, and live your potential so you can flourish.

You will learn how to change life patterns that are no longer serving you as well as how to set boundaries that will ensure getting your needs met. Counseling will encourage centering yourself in your life so that pleasure no longer takes a backseat. With compassionate support, we will help you experience the joy you deserve.

But You May Wonder Whether Therapy For Women Is Right For You…

I don’t think I need a sex therapist.

It may not seem intuitive to seek a sex therapist when sexual dissatisfaction may only account for a small part of your unhappiness, but we are trained to look at issues from a holistic lens. We practice systemic therapy, which means that in counseling we consider how your unique biology and psychology— in addition to your relationship, sociocultural, and family-of-origin history—all contribute to your overall happiness. Even if sexuality is just a small part of what you’re struggling with, we can help.

Things aren’t that bad—maybe I’m just complaining and should just accept my life as it is.

You deserve to be happy. If you’re resisting pleasure—either as a lifestyle or as a response to trauma—then you haven’t allowed yourself to be liberated from past events you are not responsible for. Even if you’re now considered “successful” by most definitions if you are missing the fundamental ingredient of pleasure, doesn’t your success feel hollow? After all, without experiencing pleasure, how can you truly be happy?

Most therapists don’t talk about racism, sexism, and other systemic oppressions. Why do you?

A popular catchphrase at our practice is, “It’s not you, it’s the patriarchy.” We believe that culture, context, and systemic oppression impact your life and relationships and shouldn’t be ignored or disregarded when examining the issues women contend with in their lives. In therapy for women, we aim to provide you with a safe space to explore your lived experience and help you recognize that nothing is inherently wrong with you. Contextualizing your experience serves as a beneficial starting point for further self-exploration.