** Trigger warning** Orgasm is very painful

[Dee]

I have a therapist and a meditation coach.  The other day my coach was out of place trying to resolve guilt he doesn't understand.  He was explaining how people can be stimulated and feel pleasure even when being abused.  It isn't something I have ever talked about, but yes, I had orgasms and they were very painful and still are today.  I hate, hate having them.  I don't find it pleasurable and I can't figure out why everyone likes it so much.  My ex-husband would make it happen despite me begging him not to.  I must be the only person in the world who thinks an orgasm is possibly the worse thing that can happen during sex.  It is strong, intense pain.  I have never enjoyed sex, but this makes it even worse.

[radical]

Dee,
I sorry you have had this part of your life stolen from you by abuse.  We lose so much.
I hope you are able to reconnect with sexual pleasure at some point in your life.  You deserve very kind of happiness.

[papillon]

Hey Dee,

That's awful. I'm sorry you're going through this, but I'm confident that you're not alone in your experience. Seriously, google it, I just did.

You're also most definitely not alone in experiencing arousal from abuse. No one here will shame you for that. It's a body response to what should be a safe and pleasurable experience.

My completely unqualified guess, which should be taken with a pile of salt: Your body has experienced orgasms in relation to abuse. Because of this, your brain has grown to wrongly understood a sensation that should be pleasurable and associates it with pain.

Pain and pleasure are processed in the same part of the brain- the amygdala. This part of the brain isn't connected to rational thought. It's impulsive. You know orgasms should be pleasurable. Your experience is contrary to what your rational mind knows should be true. These wiki links might be a helpful place to start understanding what's going on in your brain.

The most helpful thing I took away from learning about the brain and reading "The Body Keeps the Score" is that the brain is plastic (meaning, it can change). What you have learned you can un-learn. Not that it's easy. But it is possible and that offers some hope.

Something also worth looking into is "body memories".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_and_pleasure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala

Regarding body memories: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtAq_Ufjm50&index=74&list=PL1JVIE7JPYgwOD-qQAHXrG9pvcG84Ttyd

[Dee]

papillon,

I cannot begin to tell you how touched I am by your post.  My first reaction was you went through all this trouble and looked this up for me... really...for me?  This isn't something I have discussed with my therapist, yet and was horrified that my ex-meditation coach would even go there.  I actually found my voice to say don't want to see him again.

What you wrote makes perfect sense to me and gives me some hope.  It is more reprogramming the brain.  Right now I never want another relationship again, but I hope I feel differently some day.  When/if I do I hope that I can enjoy every aspect of it.  I have some time this morning and I am going to look at the links you have sent.  Thank you so much!

[phearial]

Dee,

To follow up with papillon's point about body memories and the connection between pain and pleasure; the general recommended treatment related to abuse and trauma with chronic implications is generally exposure therapy. Body memories are tools we can use to uncover the truth about our personal histories when our active memories are blocked or repressed -- which frequently happens with sexual abuse due to it's violence and violation.

Body memories in my experience tend to be extremely accurate. If you can cope with their intensity and follow them with a relaxed focus and intent, they can lead you to what you've lived through that remains unresolved. Your goal in therapy is to work with those memories and feelings to make sure every inch of you survives whatever trauma you endured and can fully rejoin you in the present moment. This process can take significant time and the body memories aren't always clear right away. They can require effort to connect with or draw meaning from and can bring about very old, very primal feelings which can feel unsafe -- which of course makes complete sense because it wasn't safe to feel them then!

For me personally, the revelation that I was incested was not terribly surprising given the level of shame and guilt I held that I couldn't place. What I recalled from my body memories while sexual, wasn't really about sex at all, it was about power, control, and personal vengeance -- a lust for violence and revenge. I believe my abuser was "getting back" at someone who abused them while abusing me. The result is that it makes it very difficult to be touched there by someone who isn't me. While in a relationship, I experienced certain sensations that felt like the specific feelings of the trauma -- I hesitate to share details, but it felt very much like pinching, cutting, or tearing (though I was physically fine, I always checked since in the trauma memory I bled). Hard to enjoy the sensations if all you want is for them to stop! Worse if you're afraid you're bleeding too! A feeling of safety is crucial to enjoyment of anything, but most especially things of a sexual nature.

I definitely recommend body memory recovery done in the presence of a therapist until you're familiar with it. This work can be tough and exceptionally draining, but every inch you fight for is an inch you keep. Sexual abuse by it's very nature can involve heavy amounts of shame and guilt, which can greatly inhibit any recovery process until you can *know* and *feel* that the shame is from your abuser, because they were transferring the same to you while they were incapable of feeling their own shame. If they had appropriate shame, the would never have behaved in that manner! Incest, molestation, and rape all have their own individual problems as well. With these specific types of traumas, corrective experiences are recommended. (how a good healthy person would have behaved instead of the abuser, how you wanted to protect yourself in that moment but couldn't express fully, how someone championing you in that moment of victimization would have looked like, rewriting how you view yourself based on the memories of the trauma and forging meaning from the trauma and reclaiming yourself from it, etc.)

The goal of exposure therapy is to incrementally choose to expose yourself to triggers, situations, feelings, sensations that have overwhelmed you negatively in the past. By doing so, you get acclimated to greater and greater levels of intensity and build a capacity for experiencing more and working through the feelings as you experience them. Having easy outs, plans for how to take care of yourself during, afterwards, and how you actively cope with an uncomfortable experience are all part of the process. Working with your therapist is a good idea to develop plans and experiments towards exposure and reclaiming of your sexuality.

To use an example: If I nearly drowned and never learned how to swim, throwing me into the deep end and seeing if I sink or swim won't help. It'll make me never want to go near a pool or water again! But if I wanted to learn, I would need to go through the process of coping with my own physical reaction to the water, the triggers of what it felt like to nearly drown -- water in my nose, around my eyes, in my ears, and recognize that I'm going to be okay and that it won't kill me. I can stop it any time I want and that the goal of swimming is about reducing the impact of fear in my life -- heck, I might even like swimming! I might even be good at it! But if I never survive the experience of having nearly drowned, that is my body memories of it, I'll avoid water and never know if I might be good at or enjoy swimming.

Sex should be about mutual intimacy and safety. I presume you're female given mention of your ex-husband. Female anatomy especially requires that you feel both safe and relaxed and that you've had enough stimulation -- if you're stressed, tense, and you body isn't ready, of course you're going to experience pain. Add in trauma and sexual abuse, it's completely normal for you to have a physical response like that. Much like the analogy of nearly drowning and learning to swim, you'll likely need to embark on a similar process of recovery for your sexuality. Body memories are a tool to explore your woundedness and traumas. Corrective experiences are for trauma mastery. Exposure therapy is for reclaiming parts of your life stolen by trauma and those who caused it. You are worth your recovery.