Healing Sexual Trauma: 6 Tips From a Therapist

What Is Sexual Trauma?

Sexual trauma is any inappropriate sexual encounter that involves force, coercion, or consent that was not freely given. The trauma can be subjective–what one person considers traumatic may not be seen as such by another. Sexual trauma can happen to anyone at any time and place; it does not have to involve physical force or violence. The impact of this trauma, without treatment, can last a lifetime.

Impacts of Sexual Trauma

Untreated sexual trauma can lead to long-term physical and mental health struggles; it can impact sleep, emotion regulation, dissociation (which is when a person splits off from reality), intimacy (our ability to have close and meaningful relationships with other people), understanding your own sexuality in relationships, and our physical health due to poor immune function as a result of chronic stress. Many people who have experienced sexual trauma wait to seek treatment because they feel ashamed of what happened, afraid that people will blame them for what happened, and/or guilty about what happened.

The impacts of sexual trauma may include:

• Internalized sense of shame
• Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), including sexual assault PTSD
• Depression
• Gynecological problems
• Sexual disorders
• Eating disorders
• Low self-esteem
• Substance abuse
• Gastrointestinal issues
• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
• Dissociative Identity Disorder
• Difficulty maintaining romantic relationships
• Struggles with understanding sexual intimacy in relationships
• Cardiovascular disease

6 Ways to Heal Sexual Trauma

Healing from sexual trauma can be a long, difficult process, but it has the potential to bring light into your life. The first steps in your healing journey start with acknowledging what happened and progress to having the tools to navigate your day-to-day life with less panic, overwhelm, and fear.

Below are six ways to work towards healing from sexual trauma:

1. Acknowledge What Happened

It can be difficult to admit to yourself and others that you have experienced sexual trauma. Whether the narrative is that it was your fault, you could have stopped it, or you should have known better; the truth is that sexual trauma is never your fault. The longer you stay silent about your trauma, the longer you may stay in the victim mentality. This mentality keeps you believing you are powerless in your life. Acknowledging what happened to you will allow you to take that power back.

Ways to acknowledge sexual trauma:

• Talk about it
• Learn about it
• Ask for help
• Show yourself compassion
• Build a support system

2.  Understand Your Trauma Responses

Everyone responds to trauma differently. The severity and duration of traumatic responses can relate to age, gender, culture, and prior traumatic experiences. These responses can seemingly come up out of nowhere. Part of the healing journey is to understand and identify your triggers so that you can learn to manage them in the future.

Triggers for trauma responses include:

• Sexual or close intimate physical touch
• Specific colognes or perfumes
• Food or drinks
• Music or certain songs
• Loud noises
• Seeing someone that looks like the perpetrator
• Being in a similar setting to the trauma
• Experiencing a similar emotion to what you felt during the traumatic event

Common responses to trauma include:

• Physical: shaking, sweating, racing heart, difficulty breathing, nausea, and loss of appetite
• Emotional: feelings of fear, anger, sadness, guilt, shame, and numbness
• Behavioral: avoidance of people, places, or things that remind the person of the trauma, being easily startled, irritability, and engaging in risky or self-destructive behaviors
• Cognitive: intrusive thoughts, PTSD flashbacks, panic attacks, difficulty concentrating, and memory problems
• Social: withdrawal, difficulty trusting others, feeling disconnected from others and/or yourself, and a loss of interest/pleasure in activities

3.  Let Go of Guilt & Shame

If you have experienced sexual trauma and are feeling shame or guilt, please know that this is a common reaction to what you’ve been through. These feelings don’t mean that you’re weak or broken or have done anything wrong—they mean that your body is trying to heal itself from a very difficult experience.

Sexual trauma misconceptions that may cause guilt include:

• Not doing enough to stop the assault from happening
• You had too much to drink
• You flirted or wore revealing clothing
• You knew you should have left sooner
• You led that person on in some way
• They were your superior, and you made a career gain as a result
• It is a friend/family member
• It was a significant other

4. Reconnect With Yourself

Following sexual trauma, your nervous system can be hypersensitive, leading to numbness, shutting down self-awareness, and an overall disconnection from life. While it can feel overwhelming, reconnecting with your feelings and body are key to working through sexual trauma. Regular self-care and healthy coping skills can help you stay focused and grounded as you heal from trauma.¹

Things you can do to reconnect with yourself include:

• Mindfulness meditation: Mindfulness is a means of staying in the moment and not worrying about what might happen next. Following sexual trauma, you may be living in the future, always trying to predict what will happen next. Engaging in mindfulness will help you regulate your nervous system and stay in the moment.
• Rhythmic movement: Rhythmic movements, such as dance or yoga, can be very therapeutic. It can help reconnect the mind and body, reboot the nervous system, and retrain the brain to promote healing
• Journaling: Journaling can help with processing emotions, identifying triggers, examining your thoughts and beliefs, tracking progress, and communicating with support.
• Engaging in creativity: Creativity can provide an outlet for complex emotions, re-establish a sense of control, promote self-discovery and self-exploration, builds self-esteem and confidence, and facilitate connection with others. Examples of creativity are art, music, writing, or dance.
• Engaging in meaningful relationships: Engaging in meaningful relationships can help with receiving emotional support, building trust in others, improving self-esteem, normalizing intimacy, and offering a sense of belonging.
• Breathwork: Breathwork can help with reducing stress and anxiety, increasing body awareness, releasing the tension, and supporting emotional processing.
• Practice self-care: Benefits of self-care include reducing anxiety and stress, promoting feelings of empowerment and control, improving physical health, increasing self-esteem and confidence, and providing a sense of comfort and safety.
• Prepare for triggers: Experiencing triggers is a typical response to sexual trauma. Triggers can be difficult to anticipate and manage because they are situations that may evoke memories or feelings related to the trauma. Potential triggers could be locations, sounds, smells, or certain types of physical contact. These triggers can produce PTSD flashbacks or panic attacks.

 5. Reconnect With Loved Ones

Reconnecting with loved ones after a sexual trauma can be challenging. Some helpful tips to feel safe in these reconnections are communicating your needs, practicing emotional self-care, starting small, and being kind and patient with yourself.

6. Work With a Therapist

Online therapy options provide survivors of sexual trauma with building the tools and support they need to heal and move forward. Trauma affects the function of the autonomic nervous system in ways that can affect emotional regulation, memory, and stress responses. Therapy can help undo these neurobiological effects of trauma by helping you process your experience and reduce the intensity and severity of your trauma responses (i.e. fight/flight/freeze).

It is essential to find a therapist that has experience working with survivors of sexual trauma and who can create a safe and supportive environment. Looking at an online therapist directory or finding a referral from other survivors is a great place to start.

Therapeutic techniques for healing sexual trauma include:

• Cognitive Processing Therapy (CPT).  Cognitive Processing Therapy is a type of treatment that stems from Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. It helps trauma survivors challenge their negative thoughts and beliefs about a traumatic event and their role.³
• EMDR: EMDR is a treatment for trauma that focuses on aspects of the trauma while engaging in bilateral stimulation (most commonly eye movement). The bilateral stimulation helps to reduce the intensity and frequency of the emotions associated with the trauma.⁴
• Brainspotting: Brainspotting is a treatment, similar to EMDR, that focuses on specific aspects of trauma and processes the emotions surrounding that trauma. Brainspotting can help you identify and work through specific triggers, memories, and emotions while feeling safe and supported to utilize your coping strategies.
• Narrative Therapy: Narrative therapy is a type of treatment that focuses on exploring and reshaping the stories that people tell themselves about their experiences. The four focuses of narrative therapy include: externalizing the problem, deconstructing dominant narratives, re-authoring a new narrative, and acknowledging and validating emotions.
• Medication Management: In addition to therapy, medication can help regulate your emotions while processing intense traumas. Common medications recommended for PTSD are sertraline, paroxetine, fluoxetine, and venlafaxine. Finding a psychiatric provider that understands and specializes in trauma treatment is crucial.⁵
• Mindfulness-Based Therapy: Mindfulness-based stress reduction and cognitive therapy can help people learn how to manage stress and anxiety, and these techniques may be useful for reducing trauma symptoms.
• Body-Centered Therapy: Somatic therapy, or sensorimotor psychotherapy, can help individuals reconnect with their bodies and reduce physical trauma symptoms.
• Prolonged Exposure Therapy (PE). Exposure Therapy is a treatment that helps individuals gradually expose themselves to aspects of the trauma, either imaginal or in-vivo, to help them process the negative emotions that come up. This treatment is also commonly referred to as “flooding,” which is overwhelming the brain with emotion while being able to process and cope with it in a contained, safe environment. ²

Final Thoughts

Healing from sexual trauma can have numerous benefits that can positively impact your life. Some benefits of healing your trauma include improving your mental health, having better relationships, increased self-esteem, reducing physical trauma responses, and a sense of empowerment. Healing from trauma is not a linear process and can be challenging at times; however, with the right support, it is possible.