how do i unpack sexual shame?
Question:
One of my biggest barriers has been being afraid of intimacy and sex because of Christian religious beliefs. I’ve dealt for years with celibacy, sexual repression, and singleness fighting away every sexual thought and desire. Do you have any tips for how can I begin to explore sex and relationships after years of religious sexual shame?
Answer:
Hello love,
Thank you for reaching out. This is such an important and unfortunately common question. Many of us find ourselves confronting deep-rooted sexual shame as we explore and grow in our sexual journey and build loving and healthy relationships with ourselves and others. Whether you had your hand slapped for exploring your body when young or were taught that abstinence was the right sexual choice, the impacts of growing up in a sex-negative culture reinforce sexual shame to the point that it becomes normalized. It’s almost impossible to not internalize some sexual shame if you or others in your life have been shamed or judged for having very natural sexual desires. It can be hard to achieve shameless sex with this internalized sexual guilt.
Most Christian traditions teach us to value the soul over the body. There are teachings that say following bodily desires lead us towards sin and away from spiritual growth. This perspective positions us to see our body as our enemy and forces us to view our sexual thoughts, our sexual desires, our curiosities, and things that make us feel connected to our bodies as inherently wrong. What’s worse is that shame makes us feel like we are inherently wrong for having these natural desires. You may have experienced years of repeatedly hearing the message that sex is bad. That sex before marriage is bad, having sexual thoughts is bad, having sex with multiple people is bad, that solo sex or masturbation, watching porn, expressing your sexual desires, having same sex/gender attraction, exploring your body is bad, bad, bad!
Eventually, your brain and body learn that everything erotic feels dangerous and is a threat to you.This can have dire consequences. We’ve heard of folks crying after masturbation, having anxiety attacks during sex with a partner, denying their sexual orientation or gender identity, and struggling with sex for years even after “following all the rules” and waiting until marriage to have sex.
how do we combat this sexual shame?
It’s important to remember that you are not alone in feeling this shame and that you are capable of moving through this. There are steps you can take to confront your sexual shame. In time you can unlearn those negative messages, allowing you to reclaim your pleasure. As you pursue and practice pleasure, you are rewiring your neural pathways, your brain, and your body to no longer associate fear, danger, and shame with sex. After years of helping people unpack sexual shame, we created the ABCD method:
1. acknowledge the source of the message
The first step is acknowledging the source of the message. When shameful messages are internalized it can be normal for you to think that these messages are from you. You may find yourself struggling to figure out which beliefs are yours and which are ones you’ve been taught. Take a moment to reflect on where the shame based messages come from. Do you not wear “short shorts” because you don’t like the way they look on you or because you were told it’s inappropriate to dress that way; that you look like you’re asking for trouble; or that it’s considered unladylike or not manly? Do you not have casual sex because you don’t want to or because you’ve been told that people who have casual sex are easy, dirty, or are not relationship material?
The hard truth is that if you have judgments about someone else doing/wearing/saying the thing, you probably have shame and judgments about yourself doing/wearing/saying the thing. Spending time to reflect on your shame story can help you identify shameful messages that may be informing your beliefs today.
Try this exercise: Write about the messages your family, religious leaders, friends held/hold about sexuality. Who or what gave you those shameful messages?
We want to affirm for you that it is not your responsibility to carry around their sexual shame. Instead of placing the blame on yourself, place it where it belongs - on white supremacy, on your childhood pastor, on your caregiver. Acknowledging the source of the message can help us identify which messages are ours and which ones we no longer want to carry.
2. be compassionate with yourself
Next and always, be compassionate with yourself. It is so easy to blame ourselves for internalizing, believing, and perpetuating sex shaming messages. As you confront your sexual shame, you may feel a deep sense of regret for having denied yourself pleasure for years or you may recognize that you have sex-shamed others because you were uncomfortable expressing your sexuality in the way you wanted. This can cause some level of sexual guilt.
We have to confront this reality, but we can confront it with compassion. In the words of poet Maya Angelou, “when you know better, you do better.” You are now seeking information and resources to empower yourself to commit to no longer shaming yourself or others.
It’s also ok if you feel like you’re not yet ready to let go of some internalized sex negative messages. All of the shameful messages will not be released overnight and some are harder to let go of than others. This is a journey, allow yourself to practice compassion along the way.
3. challenge the message
Next is to confront and challenge the sex negative message. There are several ways you can do this.
You can challenge the message with pure facts. For example, a myth about masturbating is that you’ll grow hair on your palms. We are here to confirm for you as avid masturbators that we have not grown hair on our palms from masturbating! Another powerful fact is that studies show that only 18% of people with a vulva orgasm from penetration alone. We can’t tell you the number of people who think there is something wrong with them because they can orgasm during masturbation but not partnered sex. Learning about the clitoris and all of its powerful capacity for pleasure can help release some of that internal shame.
This is why comprehensive & pleasure based sex education is so important. We want to applaud you for already seeking the information you need to challenge some of those shameful messages. As you continue to learn accurate, sex positive information, remember to practice self compassion as this process can mean that we have to unpack and let go of some deep-rooted beliefs we’ve held onto as truths.
Affirmations are another useful tool to challenge sex negative messages. Affirmations are powerful statements that inspire, motivate, and remind us of all that we deserve and desire in our life. We recommend reflecting on which shameful messages are impacting you, writing them down, and creating an affirmation to counter each one. You can then choose the best way to use these affirmations.
Start your day off by reciting them out loud or internally.
Pull them out in moments when you are feeling shame to help to recenter yourself.
Create personal affirmation cards that you take with you throughout the day to affirm that you deserve to experience pleasure, that you can pursue the kind of relationships you want, or that your pleasure does not jeopardize your spiritual journey.
Some of our personal affirmations include:
Another way to challenge shameful messages is through building community and having open conversations about sex. Sexual shame thrives in silence and can make us feel like we are alone in our shame. We encourage you to be a force for change in your circle and start having open and honest conversations with friends and family about their sexual journey, what they’ve learned and unlearned, and what their erotic goals are. If you feel like having these conversations with your community will invite more shame, then we hope you feel inspired to join our webinars or online community and participate in the sex positive conversations. We know that as we normalize shameless sex it can break down the fear to explore or even talk about our sexuality.
4. develop pleasure practices
The last step in our strategy is to develop Pleasure Practices. Holding shame in our bodies feels awful! It’s the racing of our minds, the pain in our gut, the increased heart rate, shallow breathing, the loud internal messages telling us that moving towards pleasure is wrong.
Pleasure Practices are the things that we can do to experience pleasure and connect to our bodies. Some of our Pleasure Practices include masturbating, twerking, going outside and soaking up the sun, slowly putting lotion on our body while naked in front of a mirror, cuddling, listening to music, eating cookies & ice cream, baths - the list is endless. It’s important for you to explore and learn which practices connect you deeper to yourself and your body.
Pleasure Practices can be infused throughout your day to increase the amount of pleasure you experience. They are also helpful tools that you can pull out when you feel yourself stuck in shame and wanting to escape from your body. During those difficult times, these practices can facilitate moments for body connection and remind us of the pleasure we are capable of accessing.
Using our ABCD method is a great step by step exercise for unlearning sexual shame. We hope this process helps you reflect on the messages you want to release and develop practices to support yourself through that work.
As you’re on this journey, we want to encourage you to hold onto your erotic vision of feeling empowered to make sexual and body decisions that are rooted in your pleasure and not shame. If you want to do deeper work unlearning the impacts of sex negativity, our workbooks are full of sex positive information, practices, reflective questions, and resources to guide you on your sexual liberation journey.
With pleasure, peace, and power,
Dalychia & Rafaella