Sexual intimacy is an important part of human connection and happiness. But sometimes, women struggle with issues like low desire, trouble getting aroused, or difficulty reaching orgasm. These challenges often ripple into relationships, creating stress and distance.

While traditional sex therapy and medical treatments can help, a special kind of therapy called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is proving to be a powerful way to heal the deeper emotional causes of these issues.

Understanding Sexual Challenges

Sexual problems can take many forms, such as not feeling interested in sex, struggling to become aroused, or being unable to orgasm. These difficulties often come from a mix of physical and emotional causes. Past trauma, negative sexual experiences, cultural or religious beliefs, anxiety, or self-doubt can all play a role.

For many women, these struggles are not just about the body but also about the mind. Feelings of shame, fear, or emotional pain can make it hard to enjoy intimacy. This is where EMDR can be a powerful tool to help heal and move forward.

How EMDR Helps with Sexual Challenges

EMDR is a type of therapy that helps people process painful memories and negative thoughts, so they no longer feel stuck in them. This therapy was first used to treat post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) but has since been found useful for many emotional struggles, including sexual difficulties.

During EMDR therapy, a therapist guides you through recalling difficult memories or thoughts while using special techniques, such as moving your eyes back and forth, listening to sounds, or tapping. This helps the brain process the memory in a way that makes it less distressing and allows for healthier thoughts and emotions to take its place.

When used for sexual challenges, EMDR can help by:

1. Finding the Root of the Problem: Many women have past experiences, such as trauma, body image struggles, or painful relationships, that affect their sex life. EMDR helps bring these memories to light so they can be processed and healed.

2. Changing Negative Thoughts: Women with sexual challenges often have harmful beliefs like “Something is wrong with me,” “I’m not attractive,” or “Sex is bad.” EMDR helps replace these thoughts with more positive, empowering ones.

3. Reducing Anxiety: Worrying about performance or past negative experiences can block sexual enjoyment. EMDR helps lessen these fears, making it easier to be present and engaged in intimacy.

4. Reconnecting with Pleasure: As old emotional wounds heal, people often feel more comfortable in their bodies and more open to pleasure, improving their overall sexual experience.

Steps in the EMDR Process

Each person’s healing journey is unique, but the EMDR process typically involves these steps:

1. Learning Your Story: The therapist and client discuss past experiences, emotions, and beliefs that might be affecting sexual wellness.

2. Building Coping Skills: Before working on painful memories, the therapist helps the client learn ways to stay calm and feel safe.

3. Processing Difficult Memories: EMDR techniques are used to help the brain work through upsetting memories and thoughts.

4. Healing and Positive Change: The brain begins to replace negative emotions and thoughts with healthier ones.

5. Using These Changes in Real Life: The client practices using their new confidence and emotional freedom in their everyday relationships and experiences.

Who Can Benefit from EMDR for Sexual Healing?

EMDR may be helpful for people who:

● Have experienced sexual trauma or abuse.

● Feel anxious, ashamed, or afraid when it comes to sex.

● Struggle with low sexual desire or arousal due to past experiences.

● Have trouble reaching orgasm even when their body is healthy.

● Feel disconnected from their bodies or emotions during intimacy.

Online EMDR: As Effective as In-Person Therapy

One of the benefits of EMDR is that it can be done effectively online. Studies have shown that virtual EMDR sessions are just as successful as in-person therapy. Through secure video calls, clients can experience the full benefits of EMDR from the comfort of their own homes.

Online EMDR provides a flexible and accessible option for people who may not have access to local therapists or prefer the convenience of remote sessions. The same structured approach is used, with therapists guiding clients through eye movements, tapping, or auditory cues to help process and heal past experiences. Many clients find that being in their own familiar environment can make them feel even more comfortable and open to the healing process.

A Path Toward Healing and Connection

Sexual difficulties can feel overwhelming, but healing is possible. EMDR helps people work through emotional and psychological barriers that get in the way of pleasure and intimacy. By reprocessing past experiences and shifting negative beliefs, people can develop a healthier, more fulfilling relationship with their sexuality.

If you or someone you care about is struggling with sexual concerns, EMDR may be a helpful part of the healing process. A skilled therapist can help you create a space for deeper connection, confidence, and joy in your intimate life.

At EMDR Transformations Counseling, our team specialize in trauma-focused EMDR therapy, offering individual, couples, and family therapy, as well as specialized services for first responders. They provide a compassionate and supportive environment where clients can heal, grow, and achieve lasting change.

If this topic resonates with you, our therapists at EMDR Transformations Counseling would be honored to support you.
Call 480-550-8340 or schedule a consultation.

For many people, sex is meant to be a pleasurable and intimate experience. But for some, penetrative sex can be painful, stressful, or even emotionally overwhelming. If this sounds familiar, you are not alone.

Painful sex, known as dyspareunia, can have many causes, including medical conditions, past trauma, or psychological distress. One powerful tool for healing this experience is Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy.

Understanding Painful Penetrative Sex

Pain during sex can be caused by physical factors like infections, hormonal changes, or conditions such as:

• Vaginismus (involuntary tightening of vaginal muscles)
• PCOS (polycystic ovary syndrome)
• Endometriosis 
• Vulvodynia (chronic vulvar pain)

However, emotional and psychological factors can also play a significant role. Anxiety, fear, negative past experiences, or even messages learned about sex from a young age can contribute to pain and discomfort. When the body perceives sex as a threat, muscles can tighten involuntarily, making penetration difficult or impossible.

If you’ve experienced sexual trauma, even if it happened long ago, your body might still react as though the danger is present. This response happens because trauma is stored in the nervous system, affecting both the mind and body. This is where EMDR therapy can help.

What is EMDR Therapy?

EMDR is a type of therapy that helps people process and heal from distressing memories and experiences. It works by using bilateral stimulation (like eye movements, tapping, or sound) to help the brain reprocess trauma in a way that reduces its emotional charge. Originally developed to treat PTSD, EMDR has been found to be effective for many issues, including anxiety, phobias, and sexual difficulties.

When trauma is unresolved, it can feel as though it is “stuck” in the brain, leading to distressing emotions and body sensations. EMDR helps process these memories, so they lose their emotional charge, allowing you to move forward more freely.

How EMDR Can Help with Painful Penetrative Sex

EMDR therapy can help address the emotional and psychological causes of painful sex by:

1. Processing Past Trauma: If painful sex is linked to past trauma, EMDR can help desensitize the memories, so they no longer trigger fear or pain in the present.
2. Reducing Anxiety and Fear: EMDR can help rewire the brain’s response to sex, shifting from fear and tension to relaxation and pleasure.
3. Changing Negative Beliefs: Many people struggling with painful sex hold deep-seated beliefs like “Sex is dangerous” or “My body is broken.” EMDR can help replace these with healthier, more empowering beliefs
4. Reconnecting with Your Body: By processing past experiences, EMDR can help you feel safer and more present in your body, making it easier to experience pleasure without tension or discomfort

What to Expect in EMDR Therapy

If you decide to try EMDR for painful sex, your therapist will guide you through the process at a pace that feels safe and comfortable. EMDR is done in several phases:

1. Preparation: Your therapist will get to know your history and help you build coping skills to manage any distress that comes up.
2. Identifying Target Memories: You will work together to identify memories, beliefs, or experiences that may be contributing to painful sex.
3. Processing with Bilateral Stimulation: Your therapist will guide you through eye movements, tapping, or sound stimulation while you recall distressing memories. This helps your brain reprocess them in a healthier way.
4. Reprocessing and Integration: Over time, the emotional charge of these memories fades, and your mind and body learn new, healthier responses to sexual experiences.

Healing is Possible

If you have been struggling with painful sex, please know that there is hope. Your body is not broken, and you are not alone. EMDR therapy can be a powerful tool to help you heal from the past and move toward a more comfortable and pleasurable sex life.

At EMDR Transformations Counseling, we specialize in helping individuals and couples overcome sexual challenges, so they can experience intimacy without fear or pain. If you’re ready to begin your healing journey, please reach out to schedule a session with a compassionate therapist who understands what you’re going through.

At EMDR Transformations Counseling, our team specialize in trauma-focused EMDR therapy, offering individual, couples, and family therapy, as well as specialized services for first responders. They provide a compassionate and supportive environment where clients can heal, grow, and achieve lasting change.

If this topic resonates with you, our therapists at EMDR Transformations Counseling would be honored to support you.
Call 480-550-8340 or schedule a consultation.

Let’s back up for a moment and make sure we all have a general understanding of what Intersex means. Intersex is a term used to describe individuals whose biological sex characteristics do not fit typical definitions of male or female. These can involve variations in chromosomes, gonads, hormones, or genitalia. Intersex traits can be present at birth or become more apparent later in life. It’s important to note that being intersex is a naturally occurring variation in humans and not a medical condition. 1-2% of the population is intersex; this is as common as every redhead that you have ever seen.

Say it again for those in the back!

I repeat, 1-2 in 100 people are intersex. So why is it that most of us have never heard about this group of people and their traumas until now? One word stigma, I’ll get to that later. For now, let’s have a quick science lesson taught by yours truly.

Biology 101

If you are anything like me (I failed basic biology twice in college), you may need a refresher on the differences between sex and gender. Sex refers to biological differences between males and females based on physical attributes such as chromosomes, hormone levels, and reproductive/sexual anatomy. For example, females typically have two X chromosomes (XX), and males typically have one X and Y chromosome (XY). Again, the primary categories of sex are male and female, but there are also intersex individuals who have a combination of male and female biological traits or differences in sex development.

Gender refers to the roles, behaviors, activities, expectations, and identities that societies and cultures consider appropriate for men, women, and other gender identities. It is a social construct, not inherently tied to biological sex. Gender identity can be male, female, a combination of both, neither, or something else entirely, such as nonbinary, genderqueer, or transgender. Gender is more fluid than sex. People can identify with a gender assigned at birth (also known as cis-gendered), and some may identify as a gender that does not fit within the traditional male/female binary.

Where we begin to run into trouble

The gender binary is a classification system that divides gender into two distinct categories: man and woman. This framework assumes that there are only two genders, each associated with specific roles, behaviors, identities, and attributes. This harms not only cis-gendered men and women (which is a different topic for a different day) but anyone who does not fit neatly into these boxes. It opens gender-diverse people to many different discriminations.

Human Rights Violations

Because intersex bodies are viewed as different from the gender binary, they are subject to multiple human rights violations-especially when it comes to seeking healthcare. One of the most concerning is unnecessary, non-consensual medical interventions. Circumcision aside (again, another topic for a different day), genital surgery is happening on minors today.

Since the 1950s, standard treatment has involved determining a sex for these intersex infants and performing surgery to make the infant’s genitals fit more “normally” with the gender binary. Post-surgical complications include scarring, chronic pain, loss of sensation, and urinary and sexual dysfunction. Parents of intersex children are lied to about their child’s “condition.” The risks and long term-impacts that the surgeries can have are not fully disclosed, meaning consent is not fully informed.

Yikes is absolutely right!

And on a more horrifying level, parents and physicians fail to divulge the truth about their medical histories to intersex children. Leaving many intersex children to uncover the truth about their identity later in life after having undergone multiple surgeries that have serious long-term complications due to our society’s discomfort with anything that is outside of the “normal” binary.

Rather than normalizing diversity, providing the public with accurate medical information, and including intersex people in research that accounts for all diversity, we are condemning this vulnerable group of people to isolation, secrecy, invisibility, identity erasure, and shame, which can have lasting impacts on their mental health. Intersex people are at an increased risk of developing PTSD, depression, and anxiety.

The Path to Healing

Addressing these sources of trauma involves promoting greater awareness, acceptance, and respect for intersex variations, advocating for informed consent and bodily autonomy, and providing appropriate medical, psychological, and social support. The malpractice must end. Those who continue to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and perform these damaging surgeries must be held accountable.

Treatment modalities such as EMDR, somatic experiencing, sex therapy, and pelvic floor therapy are most beneficial in treating the traumas intersex people have faced.

If you are an intersex person who is struggling with coming to terms with your identity and the medical abuse that you have faced, you need to know that you did not need those experiences to become the amazing person that you have always been. What has happened to you and how you have been treated is wrong. There is nothing wrong with you; it is our culture that needs fixing. Diversity is normal and should be celebrated for all the uniqueness and exquisite beauty it brings to our planet. Sending acceptance, love, and healing your way!

Sources:

Karakazis, K. (2008). Fixing intersex: Doctors, hormones, and the making of sex. Duke University Press.

Pagonis, P. (2020). Nobody needs to know. Topple Books/Little A.

Digitale, E. (2008). Stanford author explores struggles of intersex individuals, their families, and doctors. https://med.stanford.edu/news/all-news/2008/11/stanford-author-explores-struggles-of-intersex-individuals-their-families-and-doctors.html

Beherns, K. (2020). A principled ethical approach to intersex pediatric surgeries. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7597036/#:~:text=It%20was%20observed%2020%20years,that%20atypical%20anatomy%20will%20lead

Medina, C. (2021). Key issues facing people with intersex traits. https://www.americanprogress.org/article/key-issues-facing-people-intersex-traits/#:~:text=Because%20people%20with%20intersex%20traits,Figure%203

Other Resources:

Phx Pride
https://phoenixpride.org/phoenix-pride-lgbt-center/

Every body
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt27074938

If this topic resonates with you, our therapists at EMDR Transformations Counseling would be honored to support you.
Call 480-550-8340 or schedule a consultation.

If you have stumbled across this page, I commend you for your bravery in searching for answers and support. You deserve clarity about what happened to you. You deserve to be free from the shame, guilt, and confusion you may carry about what you experienced perhaps it may even be more than one occasion. This post is for anyone who is struggling to understand an uncomfortable, negative, or terrifying sexual experience they have endured, and for those wondering what they can do about it moving forward.

Rape Culture

We live in an environment in which sexual violence is prevalent, normalized, and excused in the media. Rape culture blames and shames the victims and fails to hold the perpetrator accountable. Those who speak out about their experiences with sexual violence are second-guessed, discredited, harassed, gaslit, insulted, and bullied. Just take a glance at some famous sexual violence cases, such as Bill Cosby, requiring over sixty victims to come forward to even obtain a conviction. And then he would go free after only completing three years of a ten-year sentence. Popstar Kesha’s music career disintegrated after she spoke out against Dr. Luke for drugging and raping her. It’s no wonder sexual assault survivors are fearful to reach out for support.

Differences Between Rape and Sexual Assault?

People are often confused about whether they were raped or sexually assaulted. Both are serious crimes that involve non-consensual sexual acts. Sexual assault is a broad term that includes a range of unwanted sexual behaviors and actions. It encompasses any non-consensual sexual contact or activity, including groping, fondling, and forced kissing. Sexual assault can include instances where someone is forced or coerced into performing or receiving sexual acts.

Rape is a more specific term that refers to non-consensual sexual intercourse or penetration. It typically involves vaginal, anal, or oral penetration, whether with a body part or an object, and is committed without the victim’s consent or when the victim is unable to give consent due to age, incapacitation, or coercion. Both can have serious psychological impacts on a person.

What is Consent?

Consent is about making sure everyone’s comfort and safety are the top priority and is necessary to have a positive sexual experience. Planned Parenthood has the FRIES model (freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic, and specific). This means you know precisely what you are agreeing to and can change your mind at any given time. For example, incidences where the perpetrator lied about putting a condom on would be considered rape, as you had agreed upon something entirely different when first embarking on the sexual experience. Consent cannot be given under any pretense of force or intimidation. If it isn’t safe to say no, then saying yes becomes meaningless; this is known as coercion.

Common Myths

What we have all been led to believe is true about sexual violence is inaccurate. Most sexual assaults do not occur in dark alleyways and isolated areas with a stranger hiding in the bushes waiting to ambush their victim. Most sexual assaults are committed by someone the victim knows, such as a neighbor, friend, classmate, co-worker, spouse, partner, or ex-partner. Most sexual assaults and rape occur in common places typically thought of as safe, such as a person’s home, office, or car.

Myth: Victims ask for it by being “seductive, careless, drunk, or high.”

Reality: You are not responsible for the offender’s behavior. You did not fail to prevent it because you did not struggle hard enough with the offender. Freeze and fawn (people pleasing to ensure no further harm is done) are normal responses to trauma.

Myth: Many women “cry” rape.

Reality: FBI crime statistics indicate that between 2% and 10% of reported rapes are false. This is the same rate of false reporting as any other major crime.

Myth: Sexual arousal including climax and ejaculation during sexual assault means the survivor wanted it or enjoyed it.

Reality: Arousal non-concordance is when the physiological sex response and desire for sex are not connected. In simpler terms, your sex organs are programmed to respond to sexual stimuli, so sometimes our bodies can react differently than our brains.

Myth: Men cannot be sexually assaulted, and women cannot be the perpetrators.

Reality: Men are sexually assaulted regardless of appearance, strength, and sexual orientation. Although most offenders are male all genders can be victims and perpetrators of sexual violence. 

Myth: Sex workers can’t be sexually assaulted.

Reality: Sex workers are particularly vulnerable to sexual violence. Sex workers have the right to give and withhold consent for any reason and can be raped. Sex workers are human beings who deserve bodily safety and respect regardless of anyone’s beliefs about their profession.

Healing is available to you

As you embark upon your healing journey, let safety be your number one priority after experiencing sexual trauma. Use any coping mechanism that helps you feel a little bit safer in your body, such as talking to a trusted friend or a loved one, taking a hot bath, or lying under blankets listening to songs you love. If you are supporting someone who has just gone through a traumatic sexual experience, try to refrain from pressing them for the details about what happened. Your presence, to simply be someone that they know they can trust and who will support them in whatever they decide to do, is invaluable and will be deeply appreciated for years to come.

After a sexual assault, you may want to seek medical attention to treat any possible injuries and test for unwanted pregnancy and STIs. If you do not have health insurance, there are victim compensation programs that can help cover some of the expenses. Victim compensation funds typically require you to report the crime to law enforcement within 72 hours to be eligible.

Consider seeing a therapist who specializes in using EMDR to treat trauma and is trained in the R-TEP (recent traumatic episode protocol). R-TEP allows for early intervention, which can get you relief early on and help prevent the development of more chronic symptoms of PTSD.

I want you to know that what happened to you was not your fault and I believe you. You did not need to wear longer shorts, cover up your stomach, drink less alcohol, or argue and fight back to prevent sexual violence from occurring. The sexual assault happened because the perpetrator decided to do it. Sexual assault is about power, control, and entitlement. The shame and guilt are the perpetrator’s to carry not yours. You did exactly what you needed to do during that experience to survive and get out alive. Sending love and healing your way!

Sources:

Gay, R. (Ed). (2018). Not that bad: Dispatches from rape culture. Harper Perennial.

Nagoski, E. (2015). Come as you are: The surprising new science that will transform your sex life. Simon & Schuster.

Planned Parenthood. (2024). What Is Sexual Consent plannedparenthood.org/learn/relationships/sexual-consent

RAINN. (2024). Victims of Sexual Violence: Statistics. rainn.org/statistics/victims-sexual-violence

Richmond, H. (2021). Reclaiming pleasure: A sex-positive guide for moving past sexual trauma and living a passionate life. New Harbinger Publications.

Resources:

Arizona Attorney General’s Office of Victim Services

642-542-4911

https://www.azag.gov/criminal/victim-services/victim-compensation-restitution#:~:text=For%20more%20information%20about%20restitution,Restitution

National Sexual Assault Hotline

1-800-656-4673

If this topic resonates with you, our therapists at EMDR Transformations Counseling would be honored to support you.
Call 480-550-8340 or schedule a consultation.