As soon as his hand rested on my leg and began to flow in a slow and attentive way, tears began to fill my eyes. The mind tried to restrain them, but the touch so present and “safe” to which my body was not accustomed overwhelmed him in a wave of sensations almost unknown. I felt security and respect.
The tears turned into a mixture of emotion and fear. Commotion to feel for the first time really my body and fear of not being able to hold such intensely pleasant sensations.
This was one of the first steps towards healing from sexual trauma. A trauma I was aware of, but at the same time I was denying myself. Only after having deepened and understood how the trauma works, I realized that my beluning it, trying not to see it and blaming myself because maybe I did something to make it happen was a mere instinct of survival. Sometimes being ashamed of the trauma makes us in some way even more paralyzed than the trauma itself.
It can happen that people when they have intimate relationships and begin to feel the excitement become terrified or extinguished. Touch can support the rehabilitation of the nervous system and allow people to access more ease, pleasure and vitality.
While practicing new ways of breathing, moving and interacting with the touch, the nervous system reorganizes itself. He learns how to feel, trust and follow his inner impulse to pleasure, happiness and vitality at the same time, portraying what is wrong. We can co-create new experiences that contradict the feelings of impotence generated by the trauma and train ourselves to perceive a sense of choice in physical reactions and sensations. Our body knows how to get rid of the trauma and can tell us what we need to do if we learn to listen.
Using more creative tactile techniques and giving attention to sensations, we can learn to feel our body from the inside and enjoy every stage of excitement. We can train our nervous system to accommodate the erotic intensity so we can experience more and more pleasure.
Even the walls built by shame, from not having the right to pleasure begin to crumble and leave room for pleasure. We will probably be able to receive it in small doses, but as the body gets used we can expand our coloured palette of pleasant sensations.
