Sexual Trauma Therapy
Your body remembers. Even when you wish it wouldn’t.
You learned to leave your body — and you may not even remember when it started.
Maybe it happened in childhood — in a home, a family, a relationship where you should have been safe. Maybe it happened later — an assault, a violation, a relationship where your boundaries were eroded so slowly you didn’t see it until you were already lost in it. Maybe it happened more than once, in different ways, at different ages. Maybe you’re not even sure what to call it, only that something was taken from you, and your body hasn’t forgotten.
You might feel disconnected from your body, like you’re watching your life from a distance. Or you might feel too much — flooded by sensation, triggered by touch, unable to relax into closeness even when you want to. You might struggle with trust — either shutting everyone out or trusting blindly without discernment. Intimacy may feel like something you perform rather than experience. Or pleasure may feel muted, confusing, or altogether unreachable — desire replaced by numbness, or pain, or a fear you can’t explain.
And underneath it all, there may be a shame so deep it feels like it lives in your bones.
You might carry anger you don’t feel allowed to have. Guilt that makes no logical sense but won’t let go. Intrusive memories that ambush you. A hypervigilance that exhausts you. Your body may speak in its own language — pain, tension, constriction — because the words haven’t been safe enough to use.
You’ve tried to push past it. To be “normal.” But your body keeps pulling you back to the truth: something happened, and it changed the way you inhabit yourself.
None of this is your fault. And the way your body responded — by shutting down, by disconnecting, by going far away — was never a failure. It was survival.
Most of my clients don’t walk in saying “I’m a survivor of sexual trauma.”
They come because they’re struggling in relationships. Because intimacy feels impossible or overwhelming. Because they can’t figure out why their body freezes in moments that should feel safe.
Some have carried the knowledge of what happened for years but have never spoken about it out loud. Others are just beginning to piece together memories, sensations, or patterns that are starting to make a different kind of sense.
Many are high-functioning, deeply self-aware women who have done a lot of work on themselves — and still, their body holds something that understanding alone hasn’t been able to reach. The tension in the pelvis. The tightness in the throat. The constriction in the diaphragm. The way stillness feels dangerous.
Wherever you are in that process — whether you have language for what happened or not — you don’t need to arrive with everything figured out. We start wherever you are, and we go at the pace your body sets.
Somatic sexual healing — a path back to yourself.
Sexual trauma lives in the body in particular ways: in how you hold your breath, in the places you’ve learned not to feel, in what your body still carries long after your mind has tried to move on. Somatic sexual healing works with all of it. Not in stages, but as it emerges.
Some of what we work with is internal. The nervous system learning it can settle. The body discovering it can be here without bracing. Shame loosens when it meets steady, compassionate presence. Desire and pleasure — which were always yours — finding their way back.
Some of what we work with is relational. Learning to stay present in your own body when someone else is near. To be in someone’s presence without disappearing from yourself. So much of what was hurt happened in closeness. Part of what heals is discovering what closeness can feel like when it’s safe.
All of it moves toward the same place: embodiment. Living more fully and freely in your body, your relationships, your life. Not a destination you arrive at. Something that grows.
Everything we do is guided by your readiness. We follow what is emerging. Not a script.
The heart of this work is undoing aloneness. You are not left alone with what happened to you. We hold it together.
Healing is not about erasing what happened. It’s about reclaiming what’s yours.
Over time, clients often describe shifts like these:
Present in your body again
Not all at once, but in small moments that gradually expand. You start to recognize your body as yours.
Shame loosens its grip
The voice that says “something is wrong with me” gets quieter, replaced by a growing understanding that your body’s responses were acts of survival, not betrayal.
Boundaries feel possible
You find yourself saying no — or yes — and actually meaning it. You notice when something doesn’t feel right, and you trust that signal instead of overriding it.
Intimacy begins to shift
It stops being something you endure or perform and starts to become something you can actually be present for. Touch, closeness, and desire become less frightening — because your body has found enough safety to let them in.
And gradually, you begin to feel more whole. Not fixed — whole. Like the parts of you that went away to survive are slowly coming back home.
“Pleasure is your birthright. Trauma may have interrupted your access to it, but it cannot take it away permanently.”— Staci Haines
This work is intended for deeper, ongoing healing rather than crisis support or acute stabilization. If you are currently in crisis or feeling unsafe, this may not be the right support for you at this time, and that’s okay. I’m happy to help you find the right resources.
You don’t have to carry this alone anymore.
You don’t need to have the right words. You don’t need to know exactly what happened or what to call it. You just need to be willing to begin. I offer a free 20-minute consultation. No pressure, no commitment, just a conversation.
Begin with a free consultation