When we speak of trauma, we don't often speak about how it can lead to illness.
If trauma lives in your body, not only can it make you sick but it can also affect your sex life.
Trauma is described as the response to a deeply distressing or disturbing event that overwhelms an individual’s ability to cope, causes feelings of helplessness, diminishes their sense of self and their ability to feel the full range of emotions and experiences.
Trauma lives in our bodies and minds and often times causes people to disassociate themselves from their body as a means to protect themselves from remembering or reliving the traumatic even.
According to Psychology Today, post-traumatic intimacy issues are not uncommon. When we experience a traumatic event of any type, our body goes into physiological “survival mode”— a response which, if not completed and returned to normal regulation of the nervous system, can lead to emotional and physical intimacy issues.
We spoke to Dr Marlene Wasserman who founded the DR Eve brand to work with couples through sex therapy and intimacy trauma.
Dr Marlene is a clinical social worker, specialising in family therapy and intimacy trauma. She is an internationally trained clinical sexologist and relationship therapist working through a trauma-informed lens to help couples and individuals overcome their sexual trauma experiences.
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She is also the author of ground-breaking book Cyber Infidelity: The New Seduction.
In this episode, we spoke about the many ways that trauma can affect one's ability to be intimate within relationships in a healthy and pleasurable way.
