Somatic Sex Therapy is a body-based therapeutic approach to exploring sexuality, intimacy, pleasure, sexual trauma, boundaries and your relationship with your body.
People come to this work for many different reasons. You might want to understand more about your needs, desires or sexuality, or develop greater capacity to communicate what you want and don't want. You might experience shame, numbness, pain, shutdown or dissociation around sex and intimacy. Perhaps sexual trauma or difficult relational experiences continue to affect how safe or connected you feel in your body.
You don't need to arrive knowing exactly what you want to work on.
What does 'somatic' mean?
The word somatic relates to the body.
Traditional talking therapy primarily works through conversation, thoughts, emotions and relationships. Somatic Sex Therapy also brings curiosity to what is happening within the body: sensations, tension, numbness, activation, shutdown, impulses, boundaries and embodied responses.
Somatic Sexology explores sexuality from this embodied perspective.
Rather than asking only "What do I think about this?", we might also become curious about:
What happens in my body when I say yes?
What happens when I want to say no?
Where do I notice pleasure, discomfort or nothing at all?
What happens when somebody gets close to me?
Can I recognise what I actually want rather than what I think I'm supposed to want?
This can be particularly relevant when experiences around sex and intimacy don't seem to make sense through thinking alone.
What happens in Somatic Sex Therapy?
There isn't a predetermined series of exercises that everybody works through.
Sessions are collaborative and guided by what you bring, your boundaries and what feels therapeutically appropriate.
Depending on the individual, our work might include therapeutic conversation, somatic awareness, noticing nervous-system responses, movement, creative practices, body mapping, consent and boundary exploration, self-directed touch or other embodied practices.
My work is also informed by the Wheel of Consent, developed by Dr Betty Martin. This can support exploration of choice, giving and receiving, boundaries, wants and the embodied experience of yes, no, maybe and changing your mind.
Importantly, Somatic Sex Therapy does not have to involve touch or practitioner bodywork. Many of my clients work with me entirely online.
Where body-based practices are explored, they are always optional and consent is ongoing.
Somatic Sex Therapy and sexual trauma
Sexual trauma can affect far more than our thoughts about what happened.
For some people, its impact can appear during intimacy through freezing, fawning, dissociation, numbness, pain, difficulty recognising boundaries, feeling disconnected from the genitals or struggling to remain present during sexual experiences.
Sometimes the body responds before we consciously understand why.
Somatic work gives us space to become curious about those responses rather than treating them as something that needs to be forced away.
For people whose boundaries have previously been ignored or overridden, having hesitation, a no, or a change of mind genuinely respected can itself be an important part of beginning to recognise and trust their own responses again.
There is no expectation that working with sexual trauma means becoming more sexual, wanting more sex or learning to experience pleasure in a particular way.
The direction of the work belongs to you.
Is Somatic Sex Therapy the same as conventional sex therapy?
There can be overlap, but they aren't necessarily the same thing.
People often find Somatic Sex Therapy while looking for sex therapy because something around sex, intimacy, pleasure or connection has become difficult.
My approach comes from my training as a Somatic Sexologist and counsellor and places particular attention on the relationship between emotional experience, sexuality, the body, boundaries and embodied responses.
Somatic Sex Therapy can therefore offer another way of exploring experiences that may be difficult to understand through words alone.
What can Somatic Sex Therapy help with?
People may seek this work around experiences including:
Sexual trauma or sexual assault
Dissociation, freezing or shutdown during sex
Difficulty with intimacy after trauma
Shame around sex, pleasure, desire, kink or fantasy
Numbness, pain or disconnection from the genitals
Difficulty recognising or communicating boundaries
Feeling pressure to have sex or be intimate
Difficulty knowing what you genuinely want
Pleasure or orgasm feeling inaccessible or complicated
Exploring sexuality, gender or erotic identity
Changes in your relationship with your body or sexuality
Wanting a more connected and authentic relationship with yourself
You don't need to fit neatly into one of these experiences to work with me.
Do you need some support?
Talking about sex, intimacy and our bodies can feel incredibly vulnerable, particularly when those conversations have previously been accompanied by shame, judgement or expectations about how we should be.
My role isn't to tell you what your sexuality should look like.
It's to offer a confidential, non-judgemental and consent-led therapeutic space where we can become curious about what is happening for you.
If you're considering Somatic Sex Therapy, you can book a free 30-minute Zoom consultation to talk about what you're experiencing, ask questions about how I work and see whether working together feels right for you by clicking here.