Joy and Pleasure After Sexual Self-Abandonment

Sexual self-abandonment is what happens when we stop having sex for ourselves. We may or may not actually stop having sex -- we might be doing it for someone else. For their desire, on their timeline, their idea of what sex should look like, while our own wants, our own pace, our own boundaries quietly went missing somewhere along the way.

That's what this episode is about. How we get there — there are three really common pathways, and I've lived through all three myself — and more importantly, how to find your way back to your own body, your own desires, and your own pleasure. This episode is about hope, and about a door that's still open to you no matter how long you've been on the other side of it.

In this episode:

• The three pathways into sexual self-abandonment — through approval-seeking, through abusive relationships, and through trauma and dissociation — and why they so often overlap
• Why "sacred sexuality" group spaces can actually be dangerous if you haven't done this work yet
• The six steps back to yourself, including the grief that's part of the process (and why that grief is a good sign, not a setback)
• What it actually means to come home to your own body, your own erotic self, and your own yes and no — and why that's the foundation everything else gets built on

Topics: sexual self-abandonment, somatic sex coaching, sexual trauma recovery, de-shaming, erotic self, intimacy coach, body-based healing, dissociation, reconnecting with your body, feminist sex coach

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Transcript

Welcome to Pleasure Uprising. I'm Dr. Laura Jurgens, intimacy coach, somatic practitioner, and your guide to getting out of your head and into your body, your desire and your real capacity for connection. This show is for people who are done performing and ready to actually feel it. Let's go.

Hey everyone, welcome. Today we're going to talk about sexual self-abandonment, which sounds really heavy — it is — but we're also going to talk about joy and pleasure after sexual self-abandonment, which is really hopeful and wonderful. So this is a little philosophical today, but it's also really real and tangible, and I think it's an important topic that we need to address head on, because oftentimes people almost talk around it, or think around it, or try to fix around it without actually addressing that many of us have self-abandoned our own sexuality. This is a topic that's really close to my heart, and I hope you enjoy the ride today.

Here's the overview of what that ride is going to look like. We're going to talk about the pathways of how we get there — what does sexual self-abandonment look like? I want to help people who might have done this, or might have wondered if they've been doing it, recognize it. So I'm going to talk about three main pathways. It's not an exhaustive list — there are other ways people wind up in sexual self-abandonment — but these three are really common. I've done all three myself and recovered from the full combination of them, so it is totally possible for you too. And it's really common to have all three, because they feed into each other easily — you'll understand that more when we talk about what they are. I've also helped a lot of other people recover from all of these.

Fair warning: I'm going to talk briefly about some trauma stuff today. We're not going to dwell on it, but we're also not going to pretend that traumatic shit doesn't happen, or that people don't hurt other people, or that we aren't sometimes massively affected by that. I'm only going to talk about it briefly from my own story, and then I'm going to move on to how we recover and the path back to ourselves — because that's one of the things that happens with trauma, is we can lose the path to ourselves and our anchor in ourselves.

So, joy and pleasure after sexual self-abandonment — that's what we're doing today. I want to start with the top three self-abandonment pathways that I see.

Number one: self-abandoning through approval and love-seeking. Through seeking approval from others, through seeking love from others, we can sometimes actually abandon who we really are. This happens when we don't feel really worthy of love and approval as we are. If we got that message early in our life, in our childhood, that we had to be a certain way in order to be approved of — or if it was sort of impossible for us to ever be approved of — we get fixated on performing what we think will make us loved or approved of, trying to be what other people want, to receive what we hope is eventually going to be love and approval. Sometimes we get it, sometimes we don't. If we do it long enough, we can really lose connection with who we are underneath.

I don't want to shame any of these self-abandonment pathways. They are not anything to be ashamed of. They are real-world coping mechanisms that made sense for us at the time. We just don't always want to keep them, and we want to find our way back to ourselves sometimes. I don't think anybody ends up on their deathbed saying, "Oh, I'm so glad I just stayed stuck in self-abandonment, and I never really figured out what lit me up, and I just tried to people-please my whole life." I don't think anybody really ends their life being super stoked on that.

So when we want to stop, when we want to reconnect to ourselves and finally allow ourselves to be seen so that we can be loved for who we are — sometimes it's really hard to know how to stop doing this people-pleasing, approval-seeking thing without shutting down our sexuality altogether. Sometimes, in order to try to find ourselves, we actually start saying no more than necessary — more than we're saying no to everything, as a kind of blanket refusal. I think that's a really valid choice. It's not the only choice, and it's not necessarily one we want to stay stuck in permanently. We may need to go through a period of saying no, but we also want to find our own yes.

So that's one very common self-abandonment pathway, and you may relate to that if you've been a person who's really trying to be cared for by sometimes being somebody else.

Number two is self-abandoning through, or after, an abusive relationship. This is another coping mechanism — nothing to be ashamed of, but something to acknowledge has happened. If you've been in an abusive relationship — either as a child with abusive parents, or in an abusive adult relationship — any of those can cause us to self-abandon. This includes emotional coercion or manipulation, withholding of love and affection, belittling, being with people who literally don't care about your needs or desires or your boundaries, like narcissists. If we've been in relationship with those people — and this doesn't have to be physical abuse — all of these other emotional manipulations and abuse can absolutely lead us very easily to slide into self-abandonment to keep the peace. Years later, we have a really hard time feeling entitled to having needs and desires, let alone knowing how to find them.

We can also be in a place where we're so used to being nervous-system triggered or activated by a romantic partner that we mistake anxiety, fear, and emotional instability for chemistry, and so we can wind up perpetually going into other relationships where we continue to self-abandon, because we're actually used to being on this crazy roller coaster of emotions, and we don't know how to take it down into a calmer nervous system state.

So if this is you, it can be really hard to feel entitled to having needs and desires. It can be even hard to love and support yourself at all, since you've practiced self-abandonment in the relationship, and it may not feel safe to love and support yourself, your body, your desires, your boundaries.

In my case, I started with an abusive parent, which led to abusive first sexual relationships, and I've had many clients who had prior abusive relationships that really did a number on their access to their own pleasure. I love helping people find their way back to their own pleasure on their own terms after having been in abusive relationships, because it's really rewarding. It can feel almost like a death sentence — like, I'm only ever going to be able to abandon myself because I don't know how to do it differently — when we've been in an abusive relationship. But that's not true. You can learn to do things differently, you can learn to know what you want and practice showing up with that as a priority. It can be a challenge — it really can be — and we typically do need some support.

So, the third one — and a lot of times this is related — abusive relationships can also be associated with prior sexual or relational trauma, which brings us to number three: self-abandoning through trauma and dissociation. None of these three are mutually exclusive — they all often overlap. But you don't have to be in an abusive relationship to have trauma or dissociation.

What I'm talking about here — sexual trauma, explicit assault, molestation — those are the obvious ones, but they're just two types. There's also the trauma of sexual harassment, religious and shame-based trauma, and other more subtle traumas in families of origin, where there's a lot of attachment wounds, miscommunication, misattunement to children, no support of your autonomy, things like that.

When we start in trauma and dissociation, we often repeat some of the ways our boundaries have been crossed for ourselves. So if it wasn't safe to have boundaries, or we have experience of our boundaries being crossed, we can often wind up pushing ourselves to have sex for someone else when our body doesn't want to or isn't ready. That can also happen in abusive relationships, which was number two. And it can happen through approval and love-seeking, where we're pushing ourselves to have sex even though our body doesn't actually want it or isn't ready — it's either too soon, or it's just not the right situation for us.

If we've done that, I want to acknowledge that there's an added trauma there. When we have actually crossed our own boundaries, or allowed our boundaries to be crossed, by having sex for someone else when we don't want to, there is a really profound grief there. This is the part that gets a little heavy — talking about grief and trauma — but we need to talk about it and normalize it, because it happens for a ton of people.

I had a client last week who was in tears in my office, realizing how she had abandoned her own body. It was a really deep grief she needed to work through — but she did, and you can too. It does need to be accepted and looked at head-on in order to get to the other side and find the joy of reconnecting with yourself.

So I want to really talk about the path back here. These are three common ways that people can self-abandon as coping mechanisms, but there's also a path back to yourself — and sometimes it's hard to find on your own, and that's okay.

So let's define what "the back" is. The path back is to you. It's to your own pleasure, your own erotic self, your own secure attachment with you — where you're not abusing yourself inside your head, where you're not pushing yourself past your own body's boundaries. It's a positive relationship with yourself, your body, your genitals, your pleasure. That's the destination we're working to help you get back to — you. And you get to decide what that looks like — there's no one-size-fits-all. I'm going to talk to you about the general path back, but it's going to be at your pace, led by your body, your nervous system. This is why I don't do this work in big groups — it doesn't work. You can try, but a lot of times you get more traumatized, because group settings aren't going at your body's pace, and the facilitator isn't attuned enough to you when they have a whole big group of people.

If you do seek support for this, I really highly recommend finding a one-on-one person to work with — whether it's a really good therapist or a really good coach — rather than group workshop stuff. This is also because people who have been self-abandoning are very vulnerable to more self-abandonment in group dynamics — the group will pull you faster than your body and nervous system actually need. This is why, if you've listened to any episodes about cult dynamics, and how they prey on people looking for "sacred sexuality" — if you are a person who has historically self-abandoned for any of these three reasons, please do not go into "sacred sexuality" spaces hoping to find the path back to yourself in a group setting. You really need help attuning to yourself first, so you know where your boundaries are. Once you know where your boundaries are, you can actively say what you want and don't want, and you feel comfortable walking out the door, and you feel comfortable telling somebody to fuck off when they're trying to cross your boundaries. Until that happens — please don't go into a group setting.

Okay, so that said — the path back is to you. You decide, after that, whether you want to erotically connect with other humans or not. You don't have to. If you're a person who feels like they have sexually self-abandoned, the path back to you might just be to your own full self — to feeling fully embodied and alive, to being able to self-pleasure really happily and with great outcomes, with wonderful orgasms, with no shame — to really enjoying that kind of release, maybe because it gives you better sleep, some really nice hormones, some stress relief in a healthy way. Or just enjoying being really deeply present with yourself and your body, so you can walk through the world feeling more calm and at peace. You don't have to ever have sex with anybody else if you don't want to. You never have to, and that doesn't have to even be a goal.

If you do want it to be a goal, then it will be so much better when you do erotically connect with other humans you choose to connect with, once you've already found the path back to yourself — once you already have the joy and the pleasure and the playfulness and the safety to be in your body, with its pace and its boundaries and its joys and the things it likes. You will have much better sexual connections with other humans from that place, if you're deeply and unshakably connected to yourself first.

It's okay if you want to stop at the self-connection part — if you never even want to do more than that. I think that part is sad, if we never even want to reconnect with ourselves at all — that's the part that's sad. It's leaving a huge amount of joy in life untasted. And that's my bias, and I'll admit it, from my own path. I'm so glad I found the path back to my own pleasure in my own body, and to be embodied instead of just dissociated, in trauma land. From here, I have the foundation of total choice — I can connect with others or not. But when you're really connected to your own erotic self, it's way easier to find the best way to connect with others. You get really good radar, and you attract more aligned people, because they can actually feel it, and it feels good and safe to them, because they know what it's like inside themselves.

So, some people get tired of the self-abandonment. They may not have ever called it that, but they kind of know that's what's going on, and they just start opting out of dating or romantic relationships completely. I think that's totally valid, and I'm not here to ever shame that. But it's also not what a lot of people want. So instead of a "give up and hide" approach — that's okay if it's what you really want, but make sure you're deciding it on purpose. If you do decide to opt back into sexual relationships with others, it's a really good idea to first learn new ways of relating to yourself and your own sexuality, so you can find the people who will be supportive, connected partners. If you have typically chosen people who weren't those people, the way to have more success in the future is to start with the path back to you.

So here's what that looks like. This is what we do.

Number one: we help you feel into your own body and nervous system, so you can have your own compass — your inner compass. I think Martha Beck calls it your North Star. There's an awareness in your body of your true self's desires and boundaries — what you want, what you don't want — you can feel them really clearly if you're a person who already has that. Congratulations, good for you. There are many of us who don't. I didn't used to have that — I was like, oh, that sounds nice, but how do I find it? This is step one: learning to trust your own body, learning to hear it, which takes a bit of a shift, because it's not going to be loud and fast like your brain. And learning the difference between when you're listening to a trigger and when you're listening to your real, deep body wisdom. For somebody who's been dissociated a lot, sometimes we only listen to our body when our nervous system is triggered, and we think that's the only time our body is talking to us — and that's not true, nor is that our real, deep body wisdom. So we want to help you find that inner compass — this is the deepest part of you, like who the universe wants you to be.

Number two: this part usually comes with some grief. I'm not going to pretend it doesn't, but I think it's really beautiful pain — clean pain, the kind that brings relief, the cleaning out of the wound. This is like the pain my client was going through last week, when she finally connected to her body in the middle of a session. We were helping her feel into her own body from the inside, and she realized how much she had abandoned her own sexuality and her own connection with her body. It brought a lot of tears — she needed to cry, and even be held for a little bit — but it passed, and it left her with this deep sense of calm, resolve, and confidence that I hadn't seen in her before. So yes, we process the grief, and then we let it move through us as we leave behind the old habits of self-abandonment.

That's step two — letting the sadness of the fact that we abandoned ourselves in the first place move through us, all those times we didn't hold our own boundaries. There's a process of relationship repair and forgiveness that has to happen with ourselves, and it's freeing, and it's beautiful, and there are tears, and that's fine. I think sometimes people are so afraid of this step that they don't even let themselves start the process of self-rediscovery, and that's such a tragedy. The grief is temporary and tolerable. I think the biggest fear is that you won't forgive yourself — and that's not necessary, because you will forgive yourself. The past you was doing the best you could, and you don't have to do it alone. You can, but you don't have to.

So we move bravely through that part, we let the grief go, and we start finding the yummy, joyful stuff next.

Number three on this path back to yourself is mapping your true desires and needs at a foundational level — getting to know what lights you up, specifically, emotionally, physically, energetically. In the words someone offers you, in the way someone looks at you, in the type of touch you get, in the energy a partner brings, in the energy you bring. And whether you want to keep those things that light you up in fantasy and play solo with them — great — or express them to a partner — equally great. This is about being empowered enough to know how to light yourself up, which is fucking cool.

Number four: we deshame the living shit out of you, and turn your inner critic into an inner cheerleader. You leave the shame behind in the past, moving forward in self-compassion, free from all that negative self-abuse stuff, into being a kind, loving, supportive parent to yourself, to your inner child — so that when you struggle, when you feel small, when you feel scared, when you feel hurt, you know how to care for yourself and hold your own hand instead of being a dick to yourself. This is not about being arrogant or overindulgent — that's totally different. This is about kind parenting of yourself, free of shame, feeling worthy, feeling confident. That's number four.

Number five: we practice loosening your voice and helping you use it kindly and effectively. Instead of manipulation, or passive-aggressiveness, or angry backfiring accusations — using your voice to get your needs and desires out loud into a space where you can actually have a constructive conversation about them, and they can be met, because somebody can hear them coming from you calmly. And if they're not met, you can handle and process disappointment without it turning into a whole nightmare, or tying it to your worth. In this step we're using the voice — the voice is a really powerful healing component for those of us who have self-abandoned. Even just saying, "Hey, I have a need," for some of us, or just speaking out loud what we want, or speaking out loud what we don't want, is also really powerful. So: fully owning your no, no apologies. Fully owning your yes, no apologies for that. Feeling like you can stay in connection with someone whether you're saying yes or no, feeling like you can support somebody else whether they're saying yes or no. This is a way to have your own back that works with partners, friends, family, colleagues. It's really powerful, and it's amazing, and it will change your life.

Number six: basically, you stop holding yourself back from being the real you with people. This step is best taken after doing all the other ones, because we can't just jump to this. I think it's a myth in our culture that you can just "be yourself," as if it's easy. It's not easy to just be the real you with people, and it's not easy to go from not being the real you to being the real you. There's no magic wand. If you have a coping mechanism pattern, your nervous system has a pattern that's holding you back from showing up with your authentic wants and dreams and desires and real boundaries. It's not possible, in the vast majority of cases I've seen, to go from that to all of a sudden just "be yourself." So this is step six, and we have a step-by-step process.

When I'm talking about this, I'm also talking about freeing your erotic self — your alive version of you, in your whole adult self, not just for sex. Our erotic self is so much bigger than that. It's usually the part of us that holds, literally, our life force. So if you've been suppressing it and disconnected from it, it actually feels in your body like taking full breaths for the first time. It's where a lot of times our sense of bigness lives — when we feel the opposite of feeling small. When we start owning what brings us pleasure and joy, and the things that are for us, and saying no to the things that aren't for us — that's also about owning your erotic self. And it's not about oppressing others or forcing our agendas on them, because your erotic self doesn't need anything from anyone else. If someone wants to play with you, yay — you'll be up for playing with the people who feel right to you. But it's also a place where we're absolutely okay and enough in ourselves, so much so that other people's boundaries feel good and feel fine and don't feel like a threat.

So those are the six steps back to our erotic self when we've been in self-abandonment, and that's something I do all the time with people in my practice. It's one of the reasons I have the best job ever. I just want anyone here who recognizes themselves in those self-abandonment patterns to know that it's not a life sentence unless you let it be. The door is absolutely open to you, and there is a path back to you.

So I hope that's been illuminating, and I'll look forward to hearing from anybody with any questions. All right, see you here next week.

Hey, before you go, if you enjoyed the show, I want to invite you to check out one of my favorite things I've ever created. It's a free guide called Get Out of Your Head, a starter guide to releasing the pressure, shame, and shoulds around intimacy. It has four reflection exercises that go deeper than anything you'll find in a typical freebie, and most people feel a shift just after part one. So go grab it at https://laurajurgens.com/guide — the link is in the show notes. And if you're ready to find out what your specific path looks like, I'd love to talk to you. Booking info is also in the show notes, and I will see you here next week.