BONUS EPI: When Your Body Says Yes But You Mean No - Healing Sexual Trauma

We name freeze and fawn as survival, not consent, and speak plainly about coercion in relationships, religious pressure, and why obligatory sex harms the nervous system. We share body-based tools for healing, with special care for neurodivergent women who struggle with interoception and fawning.

• content warning, grounding, resources for immediate support
• freeze and fawn explained as automatic survival
• shame, self-blame, cultural myths that impede healing
• coercion inside relationships and why obligation is not consent
• religious messaging versus bodily autonomy and safety
• neurodivergence, interoception, and default people-pleasing
• why talk therapy alone is limited for sexual trauma
• EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, sensorimotor psychotherapy, IFS
• nervous system regulation, pacing, window of tolerance
• reconnecting with the body through neutral sensations and movement
• partners, boundaries, and consent-centered communication
• anger and forgiveness myths, defining your own healing

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About Me:

I’m Autumn Moran, a Licensed Professional Counselor in Texas specializing in trauma-informed care for neurodivergent women and trauma survivors.

Therapy (Texas residents only):

I provide individual therapy in my private practice for women working through trauma, late diagnosis processing, relationship challenges, and healing from narcissistic abuse or toxic family systems. My approach is neurodivergent-affirming and focuses on helping you understand your patterns while building practical tools for nervous system regulation and authentic living.

Life Coaching (available anywhere):

For women outside Texas or those wanting support alongside therapy, I offer:

•Somatic Healing Coaching: Bridges the gap between cognitive understanding and embodied healing through nervous system work, movement practices, and practical integration tools. Perfect as a complement to talk therapy or for those ready to work directly with their body’s wisdom.

•Unmasking Journey Coaching: Specialized support for late-diagnosed neurodivergent women learning to reconnect with their authentic selves after decades of masking. We work on identifying your real needs, rebuilding your sense of self, and creating a life that fits who you actually are.

Whether you’re healing trauma, discovering yourself after late diagnosis, or both, my goal is to help you not just understand your story, but feel genuinely safe and at home in your own body.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome, Content Warning, Grounding
• 2:10 Naming Freeze And Fawn
• 7:30 Aftermath: Shame, Blame, Confusion
• 11:50 Coercion Inside Relationships
• 18:30 Religion, Myths, And Obligation
• 23:40 Neurodivergence And Body Awareness
• 28:30 What Doesn’t Work
• 33:00 Somatic, EMDR, And SE Approaches
• 39:00 Reconnecting With Your Body Safely
• 45:00 Consent, Partners, And Boundaries
• 50:30 Forgiveness Myths And Anger
• 55:00 Hope, Resources, And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hi there. Welcome to the Awaken Heart, a podcast for healing women, a place where your voice matters, where your body is sacred, and your journey home to yourself is honored, no matter how winding the road. I'm Audda Moran, licensed professional counselor, life coach, yoga instructor who specializes in working with late-diagnosed, neurodivergent women, and trauma survivors. But now, right now, today, this episode, I am here as your companion on the sacred path of healing. Before we begin, I need to give a content warning. I want to give you a fair warning. This episode discusses sexual trauma, including assault, coercion in relationships, and body and the body's responses to violation. If you're not in a place to hear this today, that is completely okay. Please take care of yourself. This episode will be here when you're ready. And if you're listening and you start to feel overwhelmed or activated, please pause. Please ground yourself by using your five senses, naming what you see, feel, touch, taste, wiggle your toes. What do they feel like? What are they touching? And then breathe deeply. Whatever style of breath work you want to use, you can. My one tip is to just make sure that the exhale is longer than the inhale because that's where regulation comes in. And then if you need some temperature change, get an ice pack and place it on your chest, back of your neck, or in your armpit. Reach out to support if you need it. You don't have to get through this whole episode in one sitting. This is a heavy topic, but I feel that it's just needs to be talked about. It needs to be relevant. Like if we live in a society where a pedophile can be our president, I think we need to live in a society where I speak out loud about sexual assault, coercion, negative experiences. It needs to be talked about more than it is. It is not faux pas. It is, it needs to be talked about. So here I am. I'm gonna try it. I'm gonna do it. And during this time, if you need immediate support, the rain sexual assault hotline is 1-800-656-HOP as in pickle E. So 1-800-656-4673. And then you can text the mental health crisis hotline at 741-741. I tried them out over the Thanksgiving break just to see how the response was. And it was a very long wait time. So just a forewarning if that is the service you're using. I don't know why it's changed, but that is, I tried it twice and it was both long waiting times. Not saying not to use it, just want to give you a perspective of you may have to wait for a response. Okay, here we go. I'm diving in because today I want to talk about something that many of us, many of you, many women have experienced but might not have the words for. Maybe not even had the opportunity to have processed it. Maybe you're not even sure if it counts as trauma, counts as sexual assault, counts as rape. This episode is for anyone who's been in a sexual situation where you wanted to say no, but couldn't or didn't, where your body just essentially froze, where you went along with it even though everything in you was possibly screaming to stop, where you complied because you felt you had to, maybe because you were afraid, but maybe it's also because you didn't think you had a choice, the implications of standing up for yourself, right? And I want you to know that freeze response, that compliance, that's not your fault. That's not you agreeing, that's your nervous system trying to keep you alive. That's your body doing exactly what it was designed to do in the face of threat. If you've spent years blaming yourself for not fighting back, for not saying no more clearly, for letting it happen, I need you to hear this. You did not let anything happen. Your body went into a survival response that you had no conscious control over. And we're going to talk about why that happens, why it's even harder for neurodivergent women, and most importantly, what actually helps heal this. Because you can heal from this. It's not quick, it's not easy, but it's possible. And you deserve that healing. We as a society deserve this healing and this knowledge to be spread so that maybe when they hear the ugly truth about it and it's in their faces, maybe people will stop supporting rapists and pedophiles. It's my it's my big pie in the sky hope. So, where to start? I want you, I want to understand, I want to help you understand the freeze fawn response. So, like what your body, not your body, you. You you've heard, you've probably heard, right? Fight or flight when you're threatened. Like my I my went for I went into fight or flight. Your body either fights back or runs away. But there are two other survival responses that just don't get the same amount of attention, and that is freeze and fawn. Freeze is when your body essentially shuts down. You can't move, you can't speak, you might feel like you're watching what's happening from outside your body. Time might slow down or speed up. And it's it's this it's the same response we see in animals who quote unquote play dead when they can't fight or flee. Like a fainting goat, right? And fawning is when you become compliant, accommodating, people-pleasing in the face of threat. You go along with what's happening, you might even smile and seem okay. You're trying to keep the threatening person calm, trying to get through this situation by not resisting. And these are involuntary survival responses. I think this is very important for you to understand. This is not something you choose. I'm gonna choose fight, I'm gonna choose fawn, I'm gonna choose freeze. These are involuntary responses for your survival and well-being. They're not choices you make, they are automatic reactions controlled by the most primitive parts of your brain, your brain stem and your limbic system, your thinking brain, your prefrontal cortex is literally offline when thing when these responses kick in. So when your brain receives a perceives a threat, it does a rapid, unconscious assessment. Can I fight this threat? Can I flee from it? If the answer to both is no, if you're overpowered, if you're trapped, if fighting or fleeing would make things worse, if you're if you're a child with no power, or a young adult or a young woman, if you're in a situation where you cannot escape, your nervous system will choose freeze or fawn. And this happens in milliseconds. You don't consciously decide, I'm going to freeze now. Your body decides for you based on what gives you the best chance of survival. During the freeze state, your muscles might be either limp or rigid. You might feel disconnected from your body, i.e., dissociating. You might not be able to speak even if you tried. Maybe the same thing with movement. Even if you tried, you can't move. You just are stuck. Time might feel distorted in some way. And once again, you might feel like you're looking from the outside. And your body might even respond physiologically, like arousal, even though you don't want what's happening. And I think that's the last point the arousal during assault is a physiological response. It is not consent. Your body can respond to refuse me. Your body, it can respond to physical stimulation even when you're terrified, even when you're frozen, even when you absolutely don't want it. That doesn't mean you wanted it. That doesn't mean you liked it. That means your body responded to stimulus while your nervous system was in survival mode. And during fawning, like I said, the people pleasing, smiling and acting like it's okay, comply with what's asked, uh, what they're asking you to do or what you need to do, might say things you don't mean. You might even initiate it to try to get it over faster. You essentially try to appease the threat to survive it. Most people who experience sexual trauma freeze or fawn. Research shows that the freeze happens and 70% or more of sexual assaults. But we live in a culture that expects fighting back, that asks, why didn't you just say no? Or why didn't you fight back? Which is so gaslighting because as women, we're taught to stay small and not to go out at night and to be safe and watch our backs because men are scary. So, like, which one the fuck is it? Like, pick a fucking lane society. Anyways, so survivors spend years blaming themselves for a biological response they had no control over. And after experiencing freezer fawn during sexual trauma, people typically experience intense shame, self-blaming. I didn't fight back, so maybe it wasn't that bad. I went along with it, so I wanted it on some level. Confusion about whether it counts as assault or trauma, right? Like I froze. I said yes. I even smiled. I even told him it was great. You still didn't consent. It was a performance to stay alive. And then you might feel betrayed by your own body, like asking yourself, like, why didn't I do something? Why didn't I do something? And it may be very difficult, whether you're freezing or fawning, to tell others because you're afraid what happens that you'll get blamed. And sometimes you question your own experience. Maybe I'm making too big a deal of this. And when other people respond with victim blaming, why didn't you just leave? Why didn't you scream? Why didn't you fight back? It compounds the shame and makes healing so much harder. Your nervous system chose the response that gave you the best chance of survival in that moment. Freeze and fawn are protective responses. They kept you alive, they kept you from being hurt worse. They got you through an unbearable situation. Your body did not betray you, your body did its best it could to save you. And let's go switching, switching notes. This is this was a long one. This was a lot of stuff I wanted to put in here, so it's not very transitional, but I'm transitioning now. Take a sip, take a breath, shake it out. So we've talked about freeze and fawn, acknowledging that it was an automatic response. It wasn't something you chose. So let's let's put that piece in there. Let's plant that seed that it was never ever your fucking fault. I don't even care if you are absolutely fucking naked, shaking your titties in front of somebody's face. It is not your responsibility for someone else to control themselves, to consent is still there. I don't care what you are wearing, how you were acting. So, what if it's not a stranger? What if it's like coercion and pressure in relationships? What if it's actively happening or it has happened? And I so like maybe right now, last night, or even regularly, sexual coercion and pressure is in your relationship. I want to say this to you. I say this part of these notes, part of this episode, is because this is also sexual trauma. Even if it's your husband, your partner, even if you're married, even if you love them, even if you said yes, if if you only said yes because of pressure, obligation, fear of consequences, or religious duty, that is not consent and it is damaging you. Obligatory sex is not consensual sex. I said what I said, and I hope you are allowed to own that perspective. So, what about feeling obligated? You think it's your job as a partner or as a wife that sex is something you owe, that being in a relationship means your body is no longer entirely your own, that if you're not meeting his needs, you're failing at being a good partner. What about religious pressure? Maybe you've been taught you must honor your partner, your husband, in always, that denying him sexually is a sin, that your b body belongs to him once you're married, that your desires and comfort don't matter as much as his needs.

SPEAKER_00: 14:43

That being a godly wife means being sexually available regardless of what you want.

SPEAKER_01: 14:54

And depending on where you grew up and what kind of culture you grew up in, you might have the internalized message that your sexual boundaries don't exist once you say I do, that submission means your body isn't yours to withhold, that it's a wife's duty, that a wife's duty includes sex on demand. And what happens if you say no? You've got this fear of these fucking consequences. He'll be angry, cold, and distant. Maybe you'll get the guilt trip, you never want to, you don't find me attractive anymore, you don't love me, because love, sex doesn't equate love. Throw that out the bucket. Chuck that in the fucking bucket, right? Maybe he'll accuse you of withholding, of being a bad wife, of punishing him. Maybe there will be pouting and sulking, and you'll have to manage their feelings. Maybe there's passive-aggressive comments for days. He might cheat or threaten to leave, be in a bad mood, make everyone in the house miserable. You'll pay for it in other ways, essentially, emotionally, financially, physically, in how he treats you or the kids. Like there's a consequence, a negative consequence. So, what happens when that is on the table? It's easier to just do it. Saying no creates more problems than it solves. The path of least resistance is to comply, to go through the motions, to perform desire you don't feel, to leave your body and wait for it to be over. You might even initiate sex you don't want because you know he wants it, and you're trying to avoid the consequences of saying no. You might go along with sexual acts that make you uncomfortable because you're afraid of disappointing him. You might lie and say you enjoyed it. You may fake an orgasm to make it in faster. You may dissociate during sex. Your body's there, but you're not. You might feel relief when it's over, not connection. You might dread any physical affection because it might lead to sex. This one, this one. This note has a star by it. The dreading physical affection because it might lead to sex. When you can't even touch your partner without it turning sexual, it is so fucking disgusting. Like, get control of your fucking emotions. Like, what the fuck? That's like you're held hostage because you're an emotional being and physical touch is something that's really great. Hugs and snuggles, like we all need what, 10 hugs a day? Isn't that what I've read before? So, like asking your partner for what you need ideally just to feel good, to have a good quality of life turns into a sexual act. If I was a dragon, I would be hot pink and I would just fly around delicately and burn motherfuckers down that make people do things they don't want to, that hurt people. And you might start avoiding them at certain times because you know what they'll want. Same thing, right? It's all fucking you shouldn't have to be held hostage. This is not right. And I don't say any of this to turn you away or to shame you or make you feel bad about where you're at. I just want you to know that I see you, I've got your back, and like whatever you need, whatever you need to do to get to where you need to be. And you might be asking, like, why are you why are you saying this is all sexual trauma, even though it doesn't look like a rape, it's not assault. Because consent given under pressure, obligation, or fear is not true consent. It's compliance, it's survival, it's fawning. And your nervous system knows the difference between freely given yes and a coerced compliance. Your body knows when you're saying yes because you genuinely want to versus saying yes because you're afraid of what happens if you don't. And when you repeatedly override your own no, when you teach your body that your boundaries don't matter, that your discomfort doesn't count, you're creating the same trauma response we see in assault, assault, dissociation, freezing, shame, loss of sexual desire, difficulty assessing your own authentic desires. So you might leave your body during sex, you might go numb or shut down, you might feel like something's wrong with you. You can't find pleasure because sex has become associated with threat. And you can't tap into your authentic desires because you've learned to override them. You're holding, but I love him, but he's a good father, but he's not a bad person, but we have a good relationship otherwise. He never forced me. But pressure and coercion are force. The absence of physical violence doesn't mean the absence of coercion. Other people have it worse. So you minimize your own experience. You tell yourself this doesn't count, it's not that bad. You should be grateful. It's not violent. I chose this marriage. I chose this relationship. So you self-blame. You think if you choose, if you chose him, you chose this, and now you have to live with it. Sometimes I even initiate. Are you initiating because you want sex, or because you're trying to control when it happens, or because you're trying to keep him happy, or because you're performing desire to avoid conflict? What about the my religion says this is right? And your body says it's wrong. Your body is telling you something isn't okay, but your theology is telling you to override that. This might be what everyone does. This might be what good wives do. This might be what you were taught marriage is supposed to be. Like, I'm not gonna watch any canceled comedian that's coming back after staying quiet for years. I'm not gonna walk, I don't support most celebrity shit, but like you're not catching me watching a movie or spending money and time with someone in there that is a known offender. I would rather stare at the wall or count grains of rice. Like, I will not let my energy be supporting garbage, human behavior. You might have been taught that men have higher sex drives and women just have to accommodate it. You might have been taught that men can't control themselves and women are responsible for managing the men's needs. Maybe it's once you're married, your body isn't fully yours. You owe him, you've got to keep him taken care of. Saying no might have been taught that that's selfish, withholding, or mean. Maybe you have the rule that a good wife doesn't turn her husband down, or a good girlfriend, or a good partner, or this fucking one. If he strays, it's because you weren't meeting his needs. Nah, girl, he strayed because he's garbage. So you think everyone deals with this. You think this is normal. You think trauma has to be violent, has to involve a stranger, has to be a single horrific event. But this, this ongoing low-grade coercion, this counts.

SPEAKER_00: 23:22

This is trauma. This is harming you.

SPEAKER_01: 23:28

And when this happens repeatedly over months, years, and decades, I can't imagine you do nothing but dread, endure, get through sex. And maybe it's a chore, an obligation, a huge source of anxiety. Maybe you start avoiding any affection, physical affection, because, like I said earlier, it's going to lead to somewhere. Sex may become about your partner's needs only. You forget that you're even supposed to have desires. You might not even know what you like anymore. And your nervous system learns that sex equals threat. Even if you want to want it, even if you remember a time when sex was good, your body now associates it with pressure, performance, and disconnection and violation. Even if you eventually leave this relationship, the healing will require of you to relearn that sex can be safe, that your boundaries can be respected, that your no matters, and that pleasure is possible. And if you're hearing this and you're still in a relationship where this is happening, I want you to know that I know this is hard. Because you can't fully heal while the trauma is ongoing. You can't rewire your nervous system to feel safe during sex when sex isn't actually safe for you right now. You may need to start setting boundaries, and that might feel impossible. You might need to recognize that what's happening is actually abuse, even if it doesn't look like what you think abuse looks like. And you might need to make hard decisions about whether this relationship is sustainable. And I know this is complicated. You might have kids, you might be financially dependent, you might be in a religious community that doesn't support boundaries in marriage, you might have family that makes you feel like you need to stay. You might love him and not want to leave, and you might feel trapped. I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you that you deserve to have your boundaries respected. You deserve to only have sex when you genuinely want it. You deserve a partner who cares about your consent, your comfort, your pleasure.

SPEAKER_00: 25:59

You deserve better than this.

SPEAKER_01: 26:06

If you're already someone who fawns, if people pleasing and accommodating is your baseline trauma response, this relationship dynamic is your nightmare scenario. You're being asked to override your needs and boundaries constantly, which is that is which is exactly what you've been doing your whole life. This relationship is reinforcing the harmful patterns you have. If you're a neurodivergent and already struggle with body awareness, you might not even register what you're feeling in the moment. You might not realize you don't want it until after it's over. You might be so disconnected from your body that you genuinely don't know if you want sex or not. If you freeze easily, you might freeze during sex with your partner and they may not even know. You might be lying there checked out, waiting for it to end, and from the outside, it looks like consent. The healing work is the same work we're going to talk about, but it's harder.

SPEAKER_00: 27:06

But it's just so much harder when the trauma is ongoing.

SPEAKER_01: 27:13

What I want you to know, what I want to say before we get into the neurodivergent layer, your body is yours always and forever. That means even in marriage, even in committed relationships, even if you've said yes before, even if you've had sex a thousand times, your body is still yours. You're allowed to say no at any time, and you can change your mind at any time. Wifely duties, that's not a thing. That's patriarchal bullshit wrapped in religious language. Your body is not a service you provide. If your partner makes you feel afraid, guilty, or obligated to have sex, that is coercion. Even if they're not yelling or threatening, even if it's just them pouting, being cold, man, looking at you, making you feel bad, that's coercion. If your religion tells you that your body belongs to your husband and you have to be available, that teaching is harmful. That's not what healthy partnerships look like. That's not what God wants for you. You can love God and still have boundaries. And my personal take on this is if you want to say the wifely duties, your body belongs to God is love, is what a relationship is, then go to the Bible and read the definition of love. If your partner is following that definition of love, coercion would never be a factor. So don't let someone gaslighting you into abusing you or using you or being a piece of shit. You're allowed to want sex only when you actually want it. And you're allowed to leave a relationship where your boundaries aren't respected. And if you're not ready to leave, if you can't leave right now, that's fucking okay. I fucking understand. But you get to make your own decisions about your life. I want you to know that what is happening isn't okay. It's not normal, it's not what you have to live with, and that you fucking definitely deserve better. So, what about the neurodivergent layer? Because if you're autistic or ADHD, you might struggle with the ability to sense what's happening inside your body. You might not recognize early warning signs that something feels wrong or off. You might not notice your body tensing, your heart racing, your gut saying no. You might not realize you don't want something until it's already happened, until afterwards. And you might have trouble distinguishing between like physical sensations, like being able to tell if it's arousal, anxiety, discomfort. Like you genuinely might not know. Reading social cues may be a difficulty. You might not recognize predatory behavior, manipulation, gaslighting, grooming, love bombing. You might not pick up on the subtle cues that someone isn't safe. And earlier I said it like as a neurodivergent, a lot of the time, especially neurodivergent women, fawning and people pleasing are a baseline, can be a baseline. So, like, it's part of your life, it's part of your survival strategy to fawn to people please. It's like your default. So when you're in a sexual situation and you want to say no, you might not even have access to that no because you were taught that it doesn't count, you were taught that you needed to be polite, you were taught that it just didn't matter. And then you might have difficulty identifying and naming your emotions. So in the moment, you might not even know how you feel. You might not be able to access the words of saying, I don't like this or this feels wrong, because you can't identify the emotion. So you just kind of tell yourself to go with the flow, don't be difficult. If you're neurodivergent and you're already somewhat dissociated from your body, already struggling with body awareness, trauma makes all of that worse. So you become even more disconnected. Your body feels more of a mystery or of a threat. Your ability to have body awareness doesn't improve. In fact, it actually deteriorates. And healing requires reconnecting with a body you may have never felt connected to in the first place. You're not just healing trauma, you're also learning skills, body awareness, recognizing your own feelings, things that neurotypical people develop naturally, but you might not have never developed. So the healing journey can feel a little longer, be a little more complex. Because it's not just reconnecting with your body. It's about learning for the first time how to connect with your body while also healing from trauma. And that's a lot. So what does it mean? Like you need trauma-informed and neurodivergent affirming care. You need a therapist who understands both trauma and neurodivergence, who get that your healing journey might look different.

SPEAKER_00: 33:21

Give yourself time. Take as much time as you need to heal. You're not a failure if it takes a lot of time. So what doesn't work?

SPEAKER_01: 33:41

So before I get to like what actually helps, I want to be honest about what doesn't work because a lot of people spend years trying things that aren't sufficient for healing sexually. I'll start with one that might be surprising because I am a talk therapist. Talk therapy alone often isn't enough. And I am in no way saying that talk therapy doesn't help because I am a huge supporter in processing trauma through CPT, cognitive processing therapy. Talk therapy can be a part of healing, but sexual trauma lives in your body, not just in your thoughts. You can understand it intellectually, like you can understand intellectually what happened. You can have insight about why you froze. You can make all the cognitive connections, and your body can still be in a trauma response. You can't think your way out of a nervous system that learns sex equals threat. You need approaches that work with the body. Just getting over it, moving on, letting time pass, it's been so long ago type shit. Trauma just doesn't go away if you ignore it. It doesn't fade with time if you don't process it. It's quite the opposite. The more you resist, the more you ignore, the more you push down, the louder and the more debilitating it's gonna be. Are you sick all the time?

SPEAKER_00: 35:11

Does your body hurt? Do you prone to injuries? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 35:18

That's just your emotional trauma that you keep pushing away, showing it's showing itself, praying, helping, begging to be seen and processed.

SPEAKER_00: 35:35

You can't just decide to move on. You have to actually heal. What about avoiding all sexual contact forever?

SPEAKER_01: 35:46

I understand this impulse to protect yourself by avoiding anything sexual. And if you're not ready, that's completely okay. But long-term avoidance doesn't heal the trauma. It just means you're organizing your whole life around not triggering it. And healing isn't about forcing yourself into sexual sexual situations before you're ready. But it's also not about complete avoidance forever. It's about building capacity to feel safe in your body, safe in intimacy, and eventually, if you want to, safe in sexual connection. A simple starter. I don't even know. I have to go look at my notes, but I might repeat this. But like when it comes to that, safe touch. Go to a massage therapist you trust. What about pushing through, forcing yourself into sexual situations to prove yourself you're healed? Trying to override the trauma by exposing yourself to triggering situations before you've built the capacity to handle them. It doesn't heal the trauma. It can actually re-traumatize you. It teaches your nervous system that you still can't trust yourself to keep yourself safe. Healing requires pacing, titration, going slow enough that your nervous system can integrate new experiences of safety. What about just trying to think differently about what happened? Cognitive reframes can be helpful as part of healing, but trauma isn't primarily a cognitive problem. It's a nervous system problem. Your body is stuck in a threat response and you can't think your way out of that. You need approaches that work with the body, that help your nervous system complete the responses that got stuck, that build new neural pathways for safety. And sometimes, a lot of the times, you can intellectually understand and process what's happening or what happened, but the somatic processing component is not there. You can read every book about trauma, you can understand polyvagal theory, window of tolerance, the freeze and fawn response. You can have all the intellectual knowledge, but understanding doesn't equal healing. Your body needs to have different experiences, your nervous system needs to be retrained. Knowledge is necessary, but that's just the beginning. So what actually helps? What evidence-based approaches can I share with you today? Here we go. I talk about this all the time. I don't know what other people talk about, but I talk about this all the time because I'm a therapist that works with trauma and neurodivergent women. But first things first: nervous system regulation. Before you can process the trauma, you need to regulate your nervous system. You need to be able to tolerate sensation, emotion, and activation without getting completely overwhelmed or shutting down entirely. This is called building your window of tolerance. The zone where you can feel things without being flooded or numb, without jumping out the window or shutting it closed. For trauma survivors, trauma survivors, especially sexual trauma, the window of tolerance is very narrow oftentimes. Small triggers send you into hyperarousal, panic, anxiety, activation. Or the opposite, hypoarousal, which is shut down, dissociation, and numbness. And healing requires gradually widening that window, learning to pendulate between activation and settling, building capacity to feel without. Being overwhelmed. So, this can be done in a few ways. Somatic tracking. This is essentially noticing sensations in your body without judgment. Checking in with yourself, relaxing yourself, noticing how you feel in the body when something comes up. One of the very first things, this was geez. 10, 20, 25, 10, 20, 25 years ago, right? When I was a youngin, a young on my young journey, my the first somatic stuff that I started to do when I would check in and try to train my body and regulate my nervous system was no matter where I was at, but especially in my car, I would check in with my shoulders, make sure they're not up in my ears. I would check in with my jaws, my teeth. If my teeth were clenched together or my jaws are clenched, I would release. Check that tongue. Is it like forcefully pressing against the back of your teeth, the roof of your mouth? It's supposed to be like on the roof of your mouth, but lightly touching, not pressing in, not thinking hard. And then I would take three deep breaths. Grounding techniques, anchoring yourself in the present moment. Whether that's with breath, whether that's by using your five senses, whether that's by taking off your socks and shoes and walking on the ground, the grass, the dirt, the sand, taking a walk. And then there's breath work. So gentle, not forced. My tip here is inhale deeply, but let that exhale be longer than the inhale, and try to exhale out of your mouth. So it'll be like a kind of dramatic. Movement is a great regulator. Yoga, even gentle movements, walking, dancing, anything that just kind of helps you in your body to move your body, wiggle, shake, jiggle, shake it out, shake it out. You can't process trauma without the nervous system regulating foundation. So if you're working with a therapist and they jump straight into talking about what happened without building regulation skills first, that's not trauma-informed. Some evidence-based somatic approaches, EMDR, eye movement, desensitation, and reprocessing, is one of the most well-researched treatments for trauma. It uses bilateral stimulation, usually with eye movements, but also it can be with tapping or sounds while you process traumatic memories. It can be good for sexual trauma healing in that you don't have to talk about the details out loud if you don't want to. It works with your part of brain where the trauma gets stuck. It helps reprocess memories so they're less triggering. It can work relatively quickly compared to traditional talk therapy. EMDR has a specific protocol for sexual trauma. So if you have an EMDR therapist or someone who claims EMDR and you're doing it specifically for sexual trauma healing, make sure they have that component, that specific training in EMDR. Somatic experiencing. It's based on the idea that trauma happens when the nervous system's natural response to threat gets interrupted. So in sexual trauma, the fight or flight response can't often complete. You can't fight back, you can't escape. So that energy gets stuck in your body. So somatic experiencing tracks the sensations in your body. It helps you complete the movements, actions that get interrupted, maybe in small safe doses. It also works by discharging the activation that's stuck in your system, rebuilding your sense of agency, agency, and boundaries. Somatic experiencing is done very slowly, very carefully. It titrates the amount of activation so you're never overwhelmed. This is particularly good for people who dissociate easily. The book Waking the Tiger? Waking the Tiger. I feel like it's a better version of the body keeps the score. And there's a part in the book where he explains how he observed deer. And like, you know how you've ever seen deer like sit and graze and eat, but they sit up alert and then you go back down to eat. And when they go back down to eat, either their ears shake or their body shakes. Like you see some part of them like shake. They're shaking off that trauma. They froze and then they fought it off. They shook it off. They got that energy out of there. And they do it thousands of times a day. They regulate themselves thousands of times a day by shaking their body, by shaking their ears. So that's kind of like the image I have when I think about somatic experiencing, discharging what got interrupted. And then there's sensory motor psychotherapy. This combines somatic work with psychotherapy. It focuses on body-based responses to trauma, how trauma lives in your postures, your movements, your gestures, your physical patterns. So you might track the impulses in your body, the urge to push away, to curl up, to run. You might complete defensive movements that got interrupted. You'll build body awareness in a trauma-informed way. And you'll work with the body's wisdom about boundaries and safety. This is particularly helpful for people who feel very disconnected from their bodies. Internal family systems, IFS for sexual trauma. This works with the different quote-unquote parts of you: the part that froze, the part that's angry, the part that blames you, the part that just wants to forget, the part that's terrified. For sexual trauma healing and IFS, you get to know these different parts and what they're trying to do for you. You get to help the parts that are stuck in the trauma update to present time. You get to unburden the shame and blame that each part may be carrying. You get to access your self-energy, your wise, compassionate, whole self. And this is particularly good for internal conflict that often happens with sexual trauma, the parts of you that blame yourself versus the parts that know it wasn't your fault. And there are body-based practices as adjuncts to therapy. These aren't trauma therapy on their own, but they support the nervous system healing. So trauma-informed yoga, yes, please. This is not regular yoga. Trauma-informed yoga is designed specifically for trauma survivors. It emphasizes choice, agency, and safety. It helps you reconnect or just simply connect with your body gradually. Somatic movement practices. This is authentic movement, continuums, rhythms, practices that help you explore movement from the inside out rather than copying external forms. So, like this is like in a lightly based cliff notes way. This is kind of like when I often say, I want you to wiggle, jiggle, shake like you're a hippie under the full moon. Like just what comes to you naturally, not a prescribed performance or routine. Breath work, you know, we've talked about breath work. It needs to be done carefully with trauma survivors, as it can be activating. And that's why when I talk about breath work lightly here, when I'm not going into depth, I don't want to tell you to do a specific style of breath work because it might activate you. It might in fact make things worse. So if you're gonna use breath work, and if you find it that it activates you, use breath work as a secondary regulator. So first ground yourself. And once you feel calm and grounded in the present moment, then initiate the deep breathing. But either way you approach it, make sure that that exhale is longer than the inhale. It should be helpful. And then you've got safe touch, therapeutic massage, acupuncture from practitioners who understand trauma, who can understand that who can, I'm sorry, what am I trying to say? I'm encouraging you to get safe touch, like I spoke of earlier, when you're ready, massages, therapeutic massages, acupuncture from practitioners who understand trauma can help your body. They can help you learn that touch can be safe. And this is not for everyone, and only when you're ready, but I find that, you know, this is my take on massages, especially for single people, but especially for just people healing. We need safe touch. We need hugs. We as human beings need physical touch. And if you're not getting it from healthy people or if it's just not feeling right to you, find a massage therapist or an acupuncturist or someone that does a good massage on pedicures and manicures and just use it as your outlet to fill up your physical touch bank in a safe way. You might need more or less sensory input, you might need more explicit instructions and less relying on intuition, a different pacing, accommodations for executive function challenges. So, yeah, you it goes back to my suggestion. You want a trauma-informed and neurodivergent affirming therapist or life coach. So, what to look for in a therapist? They need to have specialized training in trauma, specific experience with sexual trauma, somatic body-based approaches, not just talk therapy, someone who understands your nervous system, doesn't push too fast, someone who explicitly states that they're neurodivergent, affirming, and someone you feel safe with. And I want you to trust your gut on this. So if you get out of the session or in the session or the consultation and you feel anxious, you feel something other than excited, supported, validated, and heard, that's not them. Make another consultation with someone else. I've said this earlier, but this is not quick work. Healing sexual trauma typically takes months, years, not weeks. Progress isn't linear. You'll have good weeks and hard weeks. You might feel worse before you feel better as you start processing what has happened, and that's normal. So healing can look like widening that window of tolerance gradually, less frequent and intense triggers, maybe a better ability to be present in your body, a little bit of lessening the dissociation, more capacity for pleasure, pleasure in general, not just sexual. Learn to have pleasure outside of sex and then touch that the last, right? Maybe you might feel more like yourself, and you most likely will experience less shame. But healing does not look like getting over it completely. It does not look like never being triggered again. It does not look like going back to who you were before because you're building a new version of you. It does not look like forgiveness. You do not have to forgive anyone to heal. And it does not mean that you have to want to talk about what happened. Some people do, some people never do, and that's fine. I want to go back to the forgiveness component because there is this cultural narrative that healing requires forgiveness. And I'm gonna tell you right now, my sis, my dears, that's bullshit. You don't have to forgive anyone who has hurt you. You can be angry forever if you want. Anger is valid, rage is valid. Express it, let it out. It's it's just an emotion like happy. Throw some ice on the concrete outside, punch a punching bag, kick a punching bag, take a kickboxing class, scream into the abyss, scream into a pillow, punch your mattress, let it out. Healing is about you getting free from the prison of trauma in your body. It's not about absolving anyone else. Because what happened to you matters, it changed you. And you don't have to pretend it didn't happen or that it's fine now. You're allowed to still be angry about it, you're allowed to grieve, you're allowed for it to matter. Healing doesn't mean it stops mattering, healing means it stops running your life. One of the core pieces of healing from sexual trauma is the connection with your body. But this can be terrifying because your body is where the trauma lives. Sexual trauma teaches your body that it's not safe to be in your body, that your body will be violated, that you can't trust your body's responses. So you learn to leave, dissociate, disconnect, live primarily in your head. But you can't heal trauma while disconnected from your body. You can't reclaim your sexuality, your pleasure, your sense of safety while living outside your body. So healing requires coming back gradually, slowly in doses you can handle. Start with neutral sensations. Don't start by trying to feel the places where trauma lives. Start with parts of your body are sensations that feel uh relatively neutral or okay. Can you feel your feet on the ground? Can you notice your hands resting on your legs? Can you feel the chair supporting you? Start there. Notice neutral sensations without judgment. That's reconnecting with your body. And then you can build tolerance gradually. You're building your capacity to be in your body for longer periods without getting triggered or dissociating. Maybe you can be present in your body for 30 seconds, then a minute, then two minutes. This is progress. I encourage you to move between being in your body, feeling the sensations, and resourcing, looking around the room, thinking about something pleasant, orienting yourself to safety. You don't have to stay in your body constantly. You learn to go in and out, building tolerance over time. And always notice without judgment. When you notice sensations, practice not judging them as good or bad. Just notice them. There's tension in my shoulders, there's warmth in my chest, there's numbness in my legs, my jaws are grinding, my neck's in my ears. This is harder than it sounds because we're trained to judge everything, especially our bodies. I'll say this at nauseum because I am one, because I know it's beneficial, and I'm just a fan. Work with a therapist. This is not work to do alone. You need support, you need guidance, and you need someone to help you pace this appropriately. There's a fine line between processing trauma and re-traumatizing yourself. Processing trauma, you will feel some activation, but you can regulate it. You can stay present. You don't get completely overwhelmed. You can come back to calm. You feel somewhat more integrated afterwards. Re-traumatizing, you get flooded, overwhelmed, completely dysregulated, you dissociate or panic. You can't bring yourself back down. You feel worse after, more fragmented. Good trauma therapy keeps you in the processing zone, not the retraumatizing zone. If your therapist is pushing you into overwhelming activation, that's not trauma informed care. Slow it down, have a conversation to see if they can accommodate or if you need to find another therapist. Eventually, and if and when you're ready, part of healing might include reconnecting with sexual pleasure. But this is way down the line. Please don't rush this. Please don't feel like you have to be here because first, safety in your body, being able to be present without dissociating. You can not have sex for as long as you don't want to have sex. Like you can be celibate if you want to. Like you can pleasure yourself every single day if you feel safe with yourself. But don't involve someone else if it makes you feel some sort of way ever. Take your time. Do not let society make you feel like you've got to be on some sort of timeline. And once you're safe in your body, once you're able to be present without dissociating, then you can recognize what feels good versus what feels bad. And this might start with non-sexual pleasure, food you enjoy, textures you like, movements that feel good. And eventually you'll explore what feels good sexually on your terms at your pace with full agency and choice. Some people never want to be sexual again after trauma, and that's valid. You don't have to reclaim your sexuality to be healed. You get to decide what you want. If you do want to explore sexuality again, start alone, not with a partner. If that feels safe. Notice what actually feels good to you, not what you think should feel good. Practice saying no to yourself, stopping when something Don't feel right. Build your sense of agency and choice and go slowly. If you're with a partner, you need a partner who can handle your no, your stop, your need, your voice to say, I need a break. You need a partner who prioritizes your comfort and safety over their pleasure. You need a partner who understands that healing takes time and might be messy. You need explicit consent conversations before, during, and after. And you need a partner who will not pressure you.

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If you don't have that kind of partner, you're not safe enough to do this healing work in that relationship.

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So if you froze, that's not your fault. Your nervous system made that choice for you in milliseconds. You didn't let it happen. Your body tried to save you. If you fawned and went along with it, that's not consent.

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Compliance under threat is not consent. If your body responded with arousal, that doesn't mean you wanted it.

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Your body can respond even when you're terrified, even when you're frozen, even when you absolutely don't want what's happening. If you didn't fight back, that doesn't mean it was an assault. 70% of people or more freeze during sexual assault. Fighting back could have made things worse, and your body knew that. If you can't remember parts of it, that's normal. If it's affecting you years later, that's also normal. If you're angry, very fucking valid. If you're not angry, that's also valid. Some people feel numb, sad, confused, or nothing at all. There's no right way to feel. You don't owe anyone any fucking thing, especially you don't owe anyone your forgiveness. And you don't owe anyone details of what happened. And your healing gets to look however you want it to look.

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You're allowed to be still figuring it out.

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If you are still listening to this and you're realizing that what happened to you was sexual trauma, or that what's still happening in your relationship is coercion, I see you and I'm so sorry. I'm sorry that that happened to you. I'm sorry your body had to make impossible choices to survive. I'm sorry you've spent years blaming yourself for responses you had no control over. And I'm so sorry that healing is on your shoulders and it's so hard. But healing is possible. It's not quick, it's not easy, it's really fucking hard. But so is staying like this. So why not choose a hard path that will get you somewhere where it won't be hard? Choose your hard. Because you can connect to your body, you can feel safe again. You can build a life where you have agency, boundaries, and choice. Your body did not betray you in that moment. Your body tried to save you. And now, with the right support and the right approaches, you can help your body learn that it's safe now, that the threat is over. You do need support for this. Please do not try to do this all alone. Find a trauma therapist who specializes in sexual trauma, who uses body-based approaches, who gets it? If you're in a relationship where coercion is ongoing, please consider whether you're safe enough to heal there. If you're not ready to start this healing work yet, that's okay too. But today, maybe you just needed to hear that it wasn't your fault, that your freeze response made sense, that you're not alone. You get to take this at your own pace. You get to decide when you're ready. And whenever that is, healing will be right there for you. Tough shit, tough shit. You know, I could sit here and ramble. I'm at an hour and four. They've been getting longer since I've been off the social media. I have more bandwidth and time and creativity. And I just want to say, like I've said a lot. And I just I want to make sure that I don't minimize the fact that this is hard. Feeling it, living it, waking up, dreams, thoughts, triggers, avoiding things just to not have a trigger, tiptoeing, eggshell walking, gaslighting yourself, being gaslit. Like the list could go on of how crappy it feels to have unhealed sexual trauma.

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Please get help. Please reach out.

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Please find a support group if financial component is problematic. I'd love to hear from you, my dears. If you've got a question, please message me. If you want to help more women hear this episode and support me by helping this podcast grow, please share it with someone. Please talk about it. Please comment, leave a review because this will help me show up in searches, I think. And you know, word of mouth, right? You can sign up. No, you can't sign up. I'm just, you can comment, you can message on whatever platform you're on. And if you're a YouTuber, I'm on YouTube now. I'm not on video. It's a static image of the cover art of each episode. But hey, baby steps, I'm getting there. One day I'll put my face up there and I'll just record myself. But right now, I record on the fly a lot of the times. I need the accessibility to just do it where I'm at. All right. You want to work with me? If you want to heal your trauma and you're the state of Texas, reach out to me. Let's navigate your trauma. If you want, if you're a lay-diagnosed neurodivergent woman who is ready to unmask, I am your life coach. I am happy to be your life coach. If any of this sounds good to you, click on the link tree in the show notes and fill out the form for a free 15-minute consultation to see if we're a good fit. Until next time, my dears, I want you to know that I want you to take gentle care of your awakened heart. You deserve gentleness. You deserve healing, and you deserve peace. You don't have to figure it out all alone. I'm right here with you every Wednesday and Friday. May you be happy and free. May our healing ripple outward to bless the world with happiness and freedom. Take care of you, and I'll see you soon.