Sexual trauma is the lasting effect of any sexual act or contact that happened without your consent, whether once or over years, recently or long ago, from a stranger or, far more often, from someone you knew and trusted.
It lives in the body as much as in memory, which is why we treat it somatically: our licensed trauma specialists use body-based methods such as Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, EMDR and Brainspotting that do not require you to describe what happened in detail.
We work with adult survivors of sexual assault, sexual abuse and childhood sexual abuse in person in Edmonds and Kirkland and online across Washington, and every therapist offers a free consultation.
One of the most horrific and impactful types of trauma a person can be affected by is sexual trauma. Sexual trauma is caused by a nonconsenting sexual act that can take place in many different forms and have lasting impacts on the person that has experienced the trauma. A few different forms of sexual trauma include rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, sexual violence in a relationship, online sexual harassment, familial sexual abuse, and childhood sexual abuse.
A lot of people think of sexual trauma as being caused by someone that they do not know, or have no personal relationship with. However, this often isn’t the case. The majority of sexual trauma cases that occur happen with someone that the person loves and trusts. This can be family members, partners, a babysitter, and even a church official. Sexual trauma can feel very confusing. Because of this, some people will have a hard time labeling their experience as sexually traumatic because of the love they had for their perpetrator.
The experience may be a one-time tragedy or it can be a recurring situation that leaves you feeling lost without a sense of security or safety. For some people, the sexually traumatic event that they went through happened years ago and has somehow been pushed to the back of their minds so that they don’t have to confront it. For others, they’ve experienced sexual trauma in their adult lives and are struggling to cope with the emotional and bodily symptoms that have occurred because of it.
Being able to understand the symptoms of sexual trauma can be difficult since every person responds to it in their own unique ways. However, having an understanding of the impacts of sexual trauma can help you recognize your own response. This recognition can be very tricky as often sexual trauma can be difficult for the mind and body to process that people can dissociate and even forget what happened to them by entering into what is called a dissociative fugue.
Those who do remember what happened to them will often report the following symptoms: Body aches, fatigue, headaches, insomnia, physical sensations of reliving the event when triggered by the touch of others. Sexual assault or rape is a devastating experience that can undermine one’s own feelings of safety and trust.
The responses to sexual trauma are highly individualized as everyone reacts in their own ways. Some may experience a long delay before they realize the impact that it had upon them.
Others may have severe psychological and bodily symptoms, and a few may even be classified as having PTSD depending on the level of severity. However, the majority of individuals will undergo some type of short term effects and long term effects after their traumatic experience.
This is not an exhaustive list of the symptoms that a person can experience because, as mentioned before, everyone responds and copes in different ways. However, if you are concerned that you have not dealt with your sexually traumatic experience in a healthy way, the best thing to do is talk with a therapist to see how they can help you work through your symptoms.
Short term effects are the symptoms a person may be dealing with right after their trauma has occurred. These can include:
Shock
Fear
Anger
Withdrawal
Confusion
Anxiety
Long term effects are the symptoms that continue to affect a person long after their traumatic sexual experience is over. These may include:
Drug use/alcohol use
Depression
Eating disorders
Suicidal thoughts
Co-dependency
Shame
Self-blame
PTSD
Dissociative patterns
Sexual/relational problems
There is no right way to react, and many survivors are troubled by their own response: that they froze instead of fighting, went along to survive, stayed in contact with the person afterward, told no one, or felt almost nothing at first and everything months later. These are not failures. Freezing, complying, dissociating and minimizing are what a nervous system does when escape is not possible, and they are among the most common responses there are.
Other responses people describe include a wariness about touch and closeness, hypervigilance in ordinary places, sleep that will not settle, a body that feels foreign or unsafe, sudden shame or disgust without an obvious trigger, and a quiet certainty that it was somehow their fault. Recognizing these as trauma responses rather than character is often the first relief therapy offers.
People ask this because they can feel it. There is no single location, but survivors and somatic clinicians describe the same territory again and again: numbness or bracing in the pelvis, hips and lower belly; a jaw and throat that stay clenched; a chest that cannot take a full breath; shoulders held up as if waiting; a startle or freeze response to unexpected touch, and sometimes to wanted touch. This is not imagination. During the assault the body prepared to fight, flee or freeze and could not complete any of it, and that unfinished response stays in the muscles and the nervous system, replaying whenever something in the present resembles the past.
Physical sensations of reliving the event, which the original symptom list above names, are the body remembering. Somatic therapy works at exactly this level, which is why we believe it is the most effective way to treat sexual trauma.
Sexual trauma often changes a person's relationship to their own sexuality, and the changes run in more than one direction. Some survivors lose desire entirely, feel pain or panic during intimacy, go numb or leave their body during sex, or avoid closeness altogether. Others find themselves drawn into compulsive or risky sexual behavior, or into patterns that seem to re-enact what happened, and are frightened and ashamed by it. Both are trauma responses. Both make sense as attempts by the nervous system to regain control over something that was taken, and neither means anything is wrong with you as a sexual person.
Two things are worth saying plainly. First, the body can respond physically during an assault; this is a reflex, not consent and not desire, and it is one of the heaviest and least spoken sources of shame that survivors carry. Second, if your partner is struggling to understand what has changed between you, sexual trauma is one of the most common reasons couples come to us, and couples therapy with a trauma specialist can help both of you make sense of it without pressure on either side. Individual somatic work restores the body's sense that it belongs to you; that, not technique, is what makes intimacy possible again.
Often times, people have difficulties using traditional talk therapy in the treatment of sexual trauma because they do not want to relive their experience by continuously talking through it. This is why Somatic therapy can be so helpful for those who have experienced sexual trauma. It is a way for us to free you from the trauma that has been held in your body which will lead to emotional and mental release as well.
Together, we help you develop an understanding of your mind-body connection to bring your body into a state of balance once again.
Treatment is phase-based and you set the pace. It begins with safety and regulation: helping your body learn, in the present, that it can settle, that touch and closeness can be chosen, and that you can notice a trigger before it takes over. Only then, and only if it is useful, do we approach the memory itself, using methods that reprocess what happened without requiring you to narrate it.
Depending on your history that may include Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, which works directly with the bracing, numbness and unfinished protective movements the body still holds; EMDR and Brainspotting, which help the brain reprocess a traumatic memory so that it becomes something that happened rather than something still happening; Internal Family Systems, for the parts of you that carry the shame, the anger or the need to stay small; Trauma Release Exercises and the Safe and Sound Protocol, which give a nervous system that has not felt safe a physical experience of ease; and, for childhood sexual abuse, Lifespan Integration, a gentle timeline method that shows the body the past is over.
You will never be asked to describe what happened before you are ready, and you never have to describe it at all.
Here at Seattle Trauma Counseling, we believe that a traumatic sexual experience impacts your mind, body, and spirit. Through Somatic Therapy, our goal is to create a supportive therapeutic relationship so that we can release you from all of the negativities that your sexual trauma has brought to your life. By helping you to assess your own mind, body, and spirit we are able to have a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of the symptoms that you’ve been facing.
The idea of bringing your mind and body into a state of balance may sound foreign to you. For many, you’ve been hindered by your negative symptoms for far too long and in ways you may not even be aware of. For others, you’ve been ready to feel free again for a long time, but you haven’t figured out how to get there. Either way, we at Seattle Trauma Counseling are ready to help you begin your journey of healing the mind and the body.
Sexual trauma is the lasting psychological and physical effect of any sexual act or contact that happened without your consent: rape, sexual assault, sexual abuse, harassment, sexual violence within a relationship, or childhood sexual abuse. It can follow a single event or years of abuse, and it most often involves someone the survivor knew and trusted, which is one reason it can take a long time to name. It affects the body and nervous system as much as memory, and it is treatable at any point afterward.
No. The somatic methods we use, including Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, EMDR and Brainspotting, work with how the trauma lives in your body and nervous system now, and do not require you to narrate the events. Many survivors never describe what happened in detail, and heal. You decide what to share, and when, and your therapist will never push past that.
There is no single place, but survivors consistently describe numbness or bracing in the pelvis, hips and lower belly, a clenched jaw and throat, a chest that cannot take a full breath, raised shoulders, and a startle or freeze response to touch. These are the traces of a protective response the body could not complete at the time. Somatic therapy works at that level, helping the body finish what it started and return to a state where touch and closeness can be chosen.
Yes, and in more than one direction. Some survivors lose desire, feel pain or panic during sex, go numb or leave their body, or avoid closeness altogether; others are drawn into compulsive or risky sexual patterns and feel ashamed of it. Both are trauma responses, not defects. It is also true that the body can respond physically during an assault, which is a reflex and not consent or desire. Individual somatic therapy restores the sense that your body belongs to you, and couples therapy with a trauma specialist can help a partner understand what has changed.
Asexuality is a valid orientation, not a symptom, and nothing about therapy assumes otherwise. It is also true that trauma can shut desire down as a form of protection. If your lack of interest arrived after something happened, comes with fear, numbness or disgust rather than simple indifference, or feels like a wall you did not build, that is worth exploring, gently and with no agenda about where you should end up. Therapy is not there to make you want anything; it is there to give you back the choice.
Often they are more body than picture: a sudden sense of touch, pressure or weight, nausea, a smell, a wave of panic or disgust, or your body going rigid or numb, with no clear image attached. These somatic flashbacks are commonly triggered by intimacy, medical exams, crowded spaces, a tone of voice or a particular kind of silence. They end, and grounding skills shorten them; somatic therapy reduces how often they come and how much power they carry, by resolving the body memory underneath.
Yes. Sexual trauma can create symptoms that look very similar to ADD or ADHD, particularly difficulty concentrating, losing track of conversations, feeling mentally foggy, or struggling to stay present. In many trauma survivors, however, what feels like an attention problem may actually be dissociation. After traumatic sexual experiences, the nervous system can learn to disconnect from overwhelming emotions, memories, and bodily sensations as a way of protecting itself. Dissociation can include depersonalization, feeling detached from yourself or your body, derealization, feeling as though the world around you is unreal, panic attacks, or simply a persistent sense of being mentally absent.
More commonly, people describe difficulty staying with their emotions, recognizing what they are feeling, allowing themselves to feel those emotions, or remaining connected to sensations in their body. People may also develop ways of numbing or stimulating themselves in an attempt to manage this disconnection. Cigarettes, excessive coffee, compulsive activity, substances, or even certain forms of sexual behavior can sometimes become ways of moving away from painful emotions or traumatic sexual experiences. From the outside, this can look like distractibility or an inability to focus, but the underlying process may be the nervous system repeatedly moving away from experiences that feel unsafe or overwhelming.
Trauma related dissociation and ADHD can also occur together, so a careful assessment is important rather than assuming that every difficulty with attention has the same cause. In trauma therapy, part of the work is helping a person gradually become more present with emotions, bodily sensations, and internal experience without becoming overwhelmed.
It is common for sexual trauma to surface long after the event, often when life becomes safer: after a birth, in a new relationship, when a child reaches the age you were, after a news story, or simply when the nervous system finally has room to feel. Some people always remembered and only now connect it to their symptoms; others have gaps. Good therapy never digs for hidden memories, because memory is reconstructive; it works with what is present now and lets memory clarify, or not, at its own pace. If you are asking specifically about repressed memories, our dissociation page addresses that carefully.
At the beginning of any work on sexual trauma, we focus first on helping you create and recognize a sense of safety in your body before going into painful memories from the past. This means learning to notice when your nervous system feels more settled and present, and beginning to recognize the bodily sensations that tell you that, in this moment, you are safe. Research consistently finds that survivors of sexual trauma are at higher risk of being harmed again, and the reason is never anything about the survivor’s worth, intelligence, or judgment. Trauma responses that made sense at the time, such as freezing, dissociating, minimizing what was happening, or learning not to trust your own alarm signals when danger once came from someone you trusted, can later make unsafe situations harder to recognize or leave.
People who cause harm may also take advantage of exactly these kinds of trauma responses. This is one reason therapy often begins with restoring your ability to feel and trust the signals coming from your own body, rather than immediately asking you to revisit traumatic memories. As you become more able to recognize tension, fear, discomfort, boundaries, and also genuine safety in your body, those internal signals can become an important source of protection. And throughout this work, it is important to be clear that responsibility for sexual assault always belongs to the person who commits it, never to the survivor.
Believe them, and say so. Follow their lead about what they want to share and what they want to do next; do not ask why they did not fight, leave or report, and do not press for details. Say that it was not their fault, that you are not going anywhere, and that they get to set the pace, including around touch and intimacy. Take care of your own reactions elsewhere so they do not have to manage them. And if the relationship itself is straining under it, couples work with a trauma specialist can help both of you.
There is no right answer and no obligation. For some survivors a confrontation is meaningful; for others it is re-traumatizing, and the other person's response is not something you can control. It is a decision best made from stability rather than from crisis, ideally once therapy has restored enough steadiness that your healing does not depend on how they react. Questions about reporting or legal action are separate from the therapeutic one, and we will help you find the right resources for those if you want them.