April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. According to RAINN, sexual violence and assault impacts 1 in 6 women and 1 in 33 men in the U.S. every year. The aftermath of sexual assault results in what therapists refer to as “Big T” trauma, which frequently seriously impacts sexual and emotional intimacy in romantic relationships. Many survivors find themselves struggling to regulate and communicate contradictory emotions as well as somatic shutdowns internally, which prevent them from experiencing authentic pleasure in their sexual lives. These struggles are common among survivors of sexual trauma. It is important to know that healing and reclaiming sexual pleasure is possible.

When a sexual trauma survivor experiences post-traumatic stress disorder, seemingly normal stimuli can cause them to feel as though their life is in imminent danger. Research shows that trauma may change the way the brain functions. Bessel Van de Kolk, a groundbreaking trauma specialist, writes in his book The Body Keeps the Score that the frontal lobes in PTSD patients often don’t work properly. The frontal lobe (responsible for planning, reasoning, and decision-making) often shuts down in survivors’ brains so that the medulla (responsible for regulating many bodily survival functions) can react quickly to escape the threat of violence. This is essential to survival when a person is indeed being threatened.

With sexual trauma, any erotic stimuli can cause survivors to push their partner away in

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