A journey of healing sexual trauma and opening the body to pleasure again written by certified De-armouring Professional and Tantric Sexologist, Dorthea Cathrine Egelund
Healing from sexual trauma looks different for anyone. This is a story of some of the most impactful elements of my journey from pain to pleasure. This is first and foremost a glimpse into my embodied wisdom, spiced with theory from leaders in the field of trauma, polyvagal theory, and shadow work. It’s not a step-by-step guide to healing from sexual trauma, and the elements are not necessarily in the order I worked through them. Some of the elements, I’ve revisited many times and continue to do so.
I simply share this as inspiration and a source of hope for others on a similar path.
My sexual trauma story
The idea of alchemizing pain into pleasure can be both provocative and seemingly impossible. Believe me, I know.
I was drawn to the Tantric Sexlogist education while doing my De-armouring Education. Not only, did I notice, that I attracted a lot of women with sexual trauma in my practice sessions, and wanted to be better fit to work with these clients, I also discovered a suppressed sexual trauma in my own body during this deep embodiment work, that had unknowingly been ruling my (sex) life. I was aware of the assault but had never allowed my body to feel it. Instead, I suppressed it. Told myself it wasn’t a real rape - because a rape has to be violent, right?
Well in my case, it wasn’t. I was sleeping, possibly drugged, when I suddenly felt the man inside of me. I remember saying “no” and trying to push him away. Then I dissociated. The details of what happened after that, are blank in my memory. I left my body. When I woke up the next morning, I knew something was very wrong. My body felt it. You see, it wasn’t the first time, I had brought home a man after a night out, but usually I would remember and I wouldn’t have this sense of horror in my body.
So I called my friend, who actually knew the guy, and told him what happened. He immediately told me he would go with me to the police, and that he would go to this man’s house and “kill” him. Bless this friend. However, as I heard these words on the other end of the phone, I started questioning my experience.
Did I really say no? Was I into it? Had I agreed upon this, but just forgotten? It wasn’t violent, so does that even “count” as a rape? Will the police believe me?... Better just forget it ever happened.
I told my friend I wouldn’t go, that he shouldn’t do anything, and buried the memory far, far away. I continued life as usual – or so I thought.
How the trauma affected my (sex) life
Trauma rewires how we relate to ourselves and others. For me, my relationship to sex was already shaped by shame, lack of proper sexual education, and societal norms. But after that night, something shifted.
Subconsciously, I began detaching my heart from the act of sex, ensuring no one could “take” anything from me again. This showed up as attraction to unavailable men and a loss of desire for loving, emotionally mature partners. Even in a committed relationship, this pattern persisted until I started unraveling the roots of my trauma.
The body decides
Healing from trauma is not a linear process. The body decides when it is safe to address what lies beneath. Six years after my assault, during my de-armouring training, my body finally felt ready to process what had happened.
Trauma dysregulates the nervous system, putting us into a fight, flight, freeze, or fawn response. Healing requires a sense of safety and regulation in the nervous system. My body needed to address layers of childhood trauma first before it could handle the assault.
This taught me a valuable lesson: healing isn’t about rushing. The body’s wisdom knows when it is ready, and we must trust that timing.
“Feel it to heal it”
We cannot love and light ourselves out of trauma. We have to feel it to heal it.
Allowing the body to feel the pain helps release the armour it creates in the body, which can affect the way we behave, and feel.
Feeling the trauma can seem very dangerous, and that’s why it’s extremely important that the body feels safe in the current moment. If the body doesn’t feel safe, and we trigger a trauma, we risk re-traumatizing.
That’s why, it wasn’t until 6 years later, that my body felt fully safe to go into this specific trauma.
Working with sexual trauma is very delicate, and (like any other trauma) requires a trauma-sensitive approach. In my case, I worked with both incredible de-armouring therapists and during the education, where I was held in a safe, trauma-informed container.
In the feeling part of my journey, somatic experiencing was a safe and effective way to enter the trauma softly.
Somatic experiencing is a therapeutic approach, created by Dr. Peter A. Levine, where the facilitator guides you into the body to feel the sensations of the trauma, without attaching any stories to it. Simply just feeling it. Approaching trauma with somatic experiencing can be a gentle first step into releasing the body of it’s armour around it, because it allows us to feel it, without identifying with it.
De-Armouring: Releasing Pain Stored in the Body
After this, I was ready for a more trigger-based approach such as de-armouring – where the therapist gently brings loving presence to armour in the body. This can bring out pain, and/or more intense sensations in the body.
It’s important to keep being present with what comes up, so it can be fully met, in order to release. This can be done by intentionally breathing deeply, and co-regulation.
If you cannot stay present, because it gets too intense, it’s important that the facilitator can spot which trauma response is alive, and gently guide you back to the present.
This is why, a trauma-informed de-armouring approach is a must.
Getting to know my boundaries
In order to feel safe in the body, we need to be able to feel and set boundaries.
However, most people pleasers (myself included) will have a difficult time knowing what their boundaries actually are. This is because, we are in a constant trauma response, not feeling our bodies, and therefore not feeling their boundaries.
I had NO clue what my bodily boundaries were. I have done a lot of things in my life, that crossed my body's boundaries unknowingly. The rape was a clear boundary being crossed, until I started questioning my experience aka leaving my body again.
Somatic experiencing, described earlier, and tracking – a practice of tracking my body, mind, and emotions as an observer – have been key factors in getting to know my boundaries.
Especially when guided into exercises like the Wheel of Consent with my co-students.
The Wheel of Consent is a model created by Betty Martin, that can help us become more aware of the concept of consenting to physical touch, by distinguishing between who is doing the the touching and who the touching is actually for – the receiver, or the giver?
Being guided into this practice, as well as bringing it into my relationship has been a game changer in understanding my boundaries better. Allowing myself time to feel my body before answering to requests, has given me profound rewiring in relating.
Rage the rape
Knowing my boundaries was one thing, but to be able to voice them, I needed to work with my suppressed anger.
Rage is sacred, but most of us learn that it’s shameful.
I grew up surrounded by a lot of rage, and quickly learned that there wasn’t room for mine and coped by either freezing, or going into people pleasing mode. Rage has always been very frightening to me, and tapping into my own rage seemed both impossible and scary.
The first time, I was invited into an anger release circle that familiar freeze activated in me.
However, somehow I managed to put myself in the circle and let my suppressed anger out. For the first time, for as long as I can remember, I felt every cell in my body.
Since then, I have raged my rape many times, and it has been an important step for me in reclaiming my power, and alchemizing pain into pleasure. Anger work is powerful, especially if you’ve had your boundaries crossed, like with sexual trauma.
Anger work is specifically an important step, if we’ve been stuck in a freeze trauma response, which many rape survivors have. This is because, according to the Polyvagal Theory as described in Deb Danas book The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy, the nervous system functions as a ladder.
The freeze/collapse is the last resort for the nervous system in a threatening situation, categorized as dorsal vagal, and at the bottom of the ladder. Meaning, when the nervous system decides, there is no option of fighting or flighting, it collapses and enters the dorsal vagal.
To move back to the top of the ladder – regulated, ventral vagal – we need to climb through fight/flight.
This process perfectly explains what happened to me in that circle. I was in freeze, moved into fight, and after this process, I was regulated – feeling all of my body.
Releasing Victimhood to Heal
Being both a person who set her needs aside for others in order to keep the peace, and a literal victim of assault, a part of me thrived in being the victim.
The reason being, as a victim, I had no responsibility – aaah what a relief. Everything was everyone else’s fault and I simply couldn’t do anything about the unhealthy habits I had developed because of it.
The only problem with this strategy was, nothing changed. I realized during somatic experiencing and shadow work, just how much I loved being the victim, and just how much I needed to let go of that in order to heal from my sexual trauma. Keeping myself stuck in victimhood took away my power to heal.
Shadow work is an act of bringing our unconscious beliefs and patterns to the light. When we bring them to the light, they no longer control us.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” Carl Jung.
There are many different ways of doing shadow work, but one, I deeply resonated with was Carolyn Elliott’s, which she describes in her book Existential Kink.
Her theory is that anything about our life, that we’d like to change, a part of us finds immense pleasure in. In my case, I deeply wanted to change my relationship to sex, AND I loved being a victim. Once, realizing just how much I loved it, allowing myself to bathe in the pleasure of being a victim, it no longer ruled my life.
Embodying the Inner Dominatrix
With lots of conditioned shame and a sexual assault in my past, I wasn’t very open to sexual kinks. I would have fantasies of course, but never dreamt of living them out.
One night during a module at the Tantric Sexology education, we were invited into a temple night, where we were asked to embody the sexual archetype we identified the least with. I instantly felt repulsive when feeling into the energy of the dominatrix, and that’s how I knew, that was the archetype I should embody that evening.
That energy was hidden in my shadow, and I did NOT want to embody it. But I did. I dressed in all black with a harness, high ponytail, and winged eyeliner. I felt into this shadow part of me and showed up from that essence.
Surprisingly, it felt very empowering and somewhat natural. What I discovered was, when interacting with my fellow students was, that this POWER lived in me. Sure, it had been hidden deeply in my shadows, but it did exist! And it felt yummi!
But I also discovered something else. I had been so deeply scared of this energy because it reminded me of the offender energy.
Embodying it myself, I suddenly had the opportunity to feel the pureness and beauty of the dominating energy. I learned that it was actually not dangerous or offending in its essence. It’s simply an energy like anything else.
After this experience, coming back to normal life, I was suddenly a lot firmer in setting my boundaries – not just in sexual settings, but in life in general. I was no longer afraid of being dominant.
Opening my body to pleasure
Everything I’ve shared thus far, has been important steps in opening my body to pleasure. Those steps were the groundwork needed for me to feel safe in my body again. Did that mean, pleasure just arose from that? Yes and no.
Going through those steps, I felt more ease in my body, and I felt more connected to it. However I still struggled with feeling and allowing pleasure in my body. This is where my pleasure awakening journey fully started.
I felt less of a pull to do more de-armouring and shadow work and instead was drawn towards more tantric, pleasure touch. I had had these kinds of sessions before but had a difficult time actually receiving and allowing the pleasure to be felt.
However, going back into a self-pleasure practice as well as receiving pleasure sessions, I noticed that my body was more expressive. I noticed that I could stay with the pleasurable feelings. This step, was when I finally started feeling my desire again in my daily life. It helped me get turned on by life.
Healing through pleasure is profound. And I believe the secret to true healing, lies in pendulating between “pain” (such as de-armouring, anger work, shadow work) and pleasure – both in a trauma-informed way of course.
Where I am today
So, have I fully healed from my sexual trauma now? No. I don’t think that’s the point. Trauma is full of layers, and any new situation can trigger something. But do I feel more pleasure? Yes way more – and it’s continually growing.
I hope my journey has been an inspiration for you, if you too have experienced sexual trauma, and I hope you read these last words, knowing that this is possible for you too.
How this journey has shaped me as a Professional
As a professional in this field, your own embodiment is crucial. Had I not worked with this personal sexual trauma, I would;
risk projecting it onto my clients
not be able to hold a safe space
get triggered when working with sexuality and sexual expression
be unable to hold space for sacred anger and fight response
Instead, because I've done my own embodiment work (and continue to do so), I safely and confidently hold space for women in any expression, healing and rewiring their sexual timeline.
My deepest purpose is empowering women to take ownership of their bodies and awaken to their inner lifeforce and pleasure. I specialize in de-armouring, inner child healing, boundary-, shadow-, and voice work, allowing women to break free of limitations, while held in a deeply safe container.
Do you feel disconnected from your body? Have you had your boundaries crossed? And do you long to alchemize your pain to pleasure? It would be my honour to hold space for your journey. Reach out to me through Instagram: @dorthea.cathrine
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