What happened to you doesn't have to keep happening inside you.
Maybe you can't fully explain it. Something from your past (an experience, a relationship, a message you absorbed growing up) has quietly shaped the way you experience intimacy, your body, and yourself.
You might not even connect the dots between what happened then and what's happening now.
Maybe you grew up being taught that sex was shameful, sinful, or something to be endured rather than enjoyed. Maybe purity culture left you with a body that doesn't feel like yours anymore — one you learned to distrust, ignore, or punish. Maybe someone took something from you that wasn't theirs to take, and you've been carrying that ever since in ways that are hard to name. Or maybe you trust your partner completely and still can't let yourself be fully present. Still flinch at touch. Still feel your body shut down when intimacy gets close.
Still wonder why something that's supposed to feel good feels like something to survive.
Your body isn't betraying you. It's protecting you — the only way it knows how. And with the right support, it can learn that it's safe to do something different.
Sexual Trauma & Healing
You might be in the right place if...
• Sex feels like something to get through rather than something to enjoy — and you're not sure if it's ever felt any different.
• You grew up in a faith community where sex was framed as dangerous, dirty, or only acceptable under very specific conditions. Those messages didn't leave when you did.
• You find yourself avoiding all physical closeness — not just sex — because being touched at all feels like a door you're not ready to open. (What I call an 'intimacy desert' — coined by Jess VerBout, LMFT, CST — this pattern of complete physical withdrawal is more common than most people realize, and it makes complete sense as a protective response.)
• You dissociate during sex — checking out, going somewhere else in your head, watching from a distance — and you don't know how to stay present.
• You feel guilt or shame for enjoying sex, even in a safe and consensual relationship. Pleasure feels like something you're not allowed to have.
• Your sense of worth feels tied up in whether others find you desirable — not in who you actually are.
• Something happened to you (once or over time) that you've never fully processed. It might have been a long time ago. It still shows up.
• You struggle to assert yourself sexually (to say what you want, to say no to what you don't want), to trust that your voice matters in intimate spaces.
• Intimacy triggers anxiety, shutdown, or a physical response you can't control — and you're exhausted from trying to manage it on your own.
Your nervous system is not the enemy.
Here's what most people don't know about trauma: it doesn't live in your memory the way other experiences do. It lives in your body. In your nervous system. In the automatic, split-second responses that happen before your conscious mind has a chance to weigh in.
When your body learned — through experience, through repeated messaging, through pain — that intimacy meant hurt, it did what nervous systems do. It built a response system to protect you. Avoidance. Shutdown. Dissociation. Withdrawal.
These aren't character flaws.
They're not evidence that you're broken or damaged. They're your nervous system doing exactly what it was trained to do. The problem is that your nervous system doesn't automatically update when your circumstances change. It doesn't know that you're safe now. That this partner is different. That the messages you were given weren't true. It just knows what it learned — and it keeps responding accordingly.
Therapy doesn't erase what happened. But it can help your nervous system learn something new — that safety is possible, that pleasure is allowed, that intimacy doesn't have to mean danger. That healing isn't just something you think your way into.
It's something your whole body gets to experience.
Why I use Brainspotting for trauma and what it actually means for you:
Talk therapy can be powerful. And what we’re learning from research is that, for trauma, it often isn't enough on its own.
Trauma is stored in the parts of the brain and nervous system that language doesn't fully reach — the subcortical regions (read: subconscious parts) that operate below conscious thought, that don't respond to insight or logic the way the thinking mind does. You can understand intellectually why you respond the way you do and still have your body react as if the danger is happening right now. That gap between knowing and feeling is one of the most frustrating experiences trauma survivors describe.
Brainspotting works differently.
Your brain stores difficult experiences not just as memories but as physical sensations, reflexive reactions, and emotional responses that get triggered without warning. Brainspotting works by locating where those experiences are held in your brain/nervous system through an eye position (as our eyes are the messengers to this area of the brain to tell it if there’s danger or not). By staying with this “spot,” your brain creates the conditions for you to process and release the held trauma — often reaching places that years of talking alone never quite touched. It's not hypnosis. It's not strange or out of control. You are present and aware the entire time. It just works at a deeper level than conversation alone.
Developed by Dr. David Grand, Brainspotting is a research-supported method used by trained therapists worldwide. As a Certified Brainspotting Practitioner, I integrate it into trauma work when it's the right fit — and for many clients navigating sexual trauma, religious shame, or deeply embodied responses to past experiences, it creates movement that talk therapy alone hasn't been able to reach. You don't have to understand exactly how it works to know it works. Most clients just notice that something shifts, releases, and heals.
Trauma therapy isn't one-size-fits-all — and trauma that shows up in your sexuality, your body, and your intimate relationships requires a particular kind of care and competence.
We start where you are.
There's no timeline, no checklist to get through, no pressure to revisit anything before you're ready. Early sessions are often about building safety — in the therapeutic relationship, in your own body, in the idea that this space is genuinely different from what you've experienced before. From there, the work unfolds according to what you need. For some people, that's processing specific experiences or memories — working through what happened in a way that finally allows the nervous system to update. For others, it's untangling years of shame-based messaging, rebuilding a relationship with their body, and learning what it actually feels like to experience pleasure without guilt.
Progress looks different for everyone — because the goals are yours, not mine.
Maybe it's being able to be physically close to your partner without shutting down. Maybe it's having sex that feels genuinely good rather than something to just endure. Maybe it's finally feeling like your body belongs to you. Maybe it's being able to say what you want, or what you don't, and trust that your voice will be heard.
Whatever your version of healing looks like, we work toward that. At your pace, in your words, on your terms.
What healing actually looks like in this work.
What makes this work different with a sex therapist?
Most trauma therapists are trained to work with trauma. Far fewer are trained to work with the specific ways trauma shows up in sexuality, intimate relationships, and the body's sexual responses.
As an AASECT Certified Sex Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner, I work at the intersection of both.
I understand trauma and how it lives in the nervous system — and I understand human sexuality, how it develops, how it gets disrupted, and how it heals. That combination means we don't just treat the trauma in isolation. We work on the root cause, and watch the sexual struggles often begin to resolve as a result.
I've worked with survivors of childhood sexual abuse, religious and purity culture messaging, relational trauma, and single-incident assault. I've sat with people who have never spoken these things out loud to anyone. I've watched people who came in convinced they were permanently broken leave with a completely different relationship to their bodies, their desires, and themselves.
This work is some of the most meaningful I do. And I don't take lightly the trust it requires to bring it into a room.
FAQs
Can desire actually come back, or is this just how I am now?
1
For the vast majority of people, yes — desire can change, grow, and return. It is not a fixed setting. With the right understanding, the right support, and some honest exploration of what's getting in the way, most people experience real and meaningful shifts. It takes work, but it is absolutely not a lost cause.
What if I'm not sure whether what I experienced counts as trauma?
2
If it changed the way you move through the world — the way you feel in your body, the way you experience intimacy, the way you trust yourself or others — it counts. Trauma isn't defined by how dramatic an event looks from the outside. It's defined by the impact it left on the inside. You don't need a diagnosis or a clear story to deserve support.
Is Brainspotting safe? What does it actually feel like?
3
Yes, Brainspotting is a gentle, client-directed process. You are present and aware the entire time, and nothing happens without your consent and collaboration. Most people describe it as quietly intense — like something is processing beneath the surface without having to force it. Some sessions feel subtle, others feel significant. Either way, we go at your pace and check in throughout, and there are ways to slow it down, if the processing starts to feel overwhelming.
What if I don't remember everything clearly?
4
You don't need complete or clear memories for this work to be effective. Trauma often lives in the body as sensation, reaction, and emotion rather than a clear narrative — and that's exactly what Brainspotting is designed to work with. Fragmented, unclear, or absent memories are not a barrier to healing.
What if I start and it feels like too much?
5
That's something we actively work to prevent, and something we talk about directly from the very first session. Trauma therapy isn't about diving into the deep end before you're ready. We build capacity and safety first, and we move at a pace that feels challenging but manageable, not overwhelming. If something ever feels like too much, we slow down. You are always in control of the pace.
You’ve carried this alone long enough.
Whatever happened, however long ago, however complicated it feels to put into words, this is a space where you don't have to have it figured out before you begin. You just have to be willing to start.
Reaching out is the hardest part. Everything after that, we figure out together.