The Body Remembers: How Trauma Shapes Sexual Response, and How to Rebuild Safety
Individuals who have experienced trauma, such as rape, regularly suffer from prolonged states of nervous system dysregulation… survival becomes the only goal. Your body is not failing you, it’s protecting you. We often imagine trauma as a loop in the mind. But as many survivors discover, it’s also imprinted in the body. This is especially true for intimacy and sexuality, where the nervous system can speak louder than conscious thought.
Your Nervous System: Always on Watch
Your nervous system’s job is simple: keep you alive. It’s constantly scanning for danger or safety, something Dr. Stephen Porges calls neuroception. After trauma, as my thesis explains, “neuroception can become ‘faulty’, picking up perceived threat when perhaps it doesn’t have to.”
One participant shared:
“Even if I wanted to be close to someone, my body would suddenly feel like it was in danger. It was like my brain said yes, but my body screamed no.”
This mismatch isn’t a choice, it’s biology doing its job a little too well.
The Three “Gears” of the Nervous System
Polyvagal Theory helps us understand the three main states the nervous system can switch between:
Ventral Vagal – Connection Mode
When the body experiences safety, connection is possible. Here, intimacy can feel warm, grounded, and pleasurable.Sympathetic – Action Mode
Your body is primed to fight or flee. Heart racing, muscles tensed—sex is likely the last thing on your mind.Dorsal Vagal – Shut Down Mode
Your system conserves energy by withdrawing. Numbness, dissociation, or hopelessness may dominate.
Reframing the Body’s Response
These responses should not be viewed as flaws but as resilience: These self-protective strategies, viewed in their original context, should be considered as strengths rather than deficits.
When you understand your reactions as adaptive, born from survival, you can approach healing without shame.
What You Can Do for Yourself
Healing isn’t about forcing yourself “back to normal.” It’s about teaching your body, slowly and gently, that safety is possible again.
1. Use Polyvagal-Informed Practices
Breathwork – Slow, deep breathing can help shift you toward Ventral Vagal connection.
Gentle movement – Yoga, walking, or stretching can reintroduce a sense of safety in your body.
Orienting exercises – Look around your environment and name things you see, hear, and feel. This signals to your nervous system: I am here, and I am safe.
2. Bring in Compassion Focused Therapy
My research draws on Compassion Focused Therapy to address shame:
Self-compassion provides a corrective emotional experience for those whose internal worlds are dominated by threat and self-criticism.
Try:
Speaking to yourself as you would to a loved one in pain.
Placing your hand over your heart and saying, “It’s okay to feel this way. My body is protecting me.”
Journaling moments of courage, no matter how small.
3. Understand Attachment
This model can help you notice patterns in how you seek closeness or avoid it.
Reflect on times you felt safe in connection—what helped?
Experiment with small, safe relational steps, such as spending time with trusted friends before exploring sexual intimacy.
Bottom Line
You are not “broken.” As one participant in my thesis powerfully asserts:
“I was raped. That does not make me dysfunctional.”
With patience, body-based tools, and compassionate self-awareness, your nervous system can learn, at its own pace, that intimacy can be safe, even joyful, again.