Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - How to Come Back to Your Body After Trauma

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Why does something that happened years ago still show up in the bedroom today? Why can you trust your partner completely, and still feel yourself pull away the moment intimacy begins? And why, when all you want is closeness, does your body react as if it’s still living in the past? In this Language of Love Session, I respond to two heartfelt listener questions that touch on some of the most vulnerable parts of our intimate lives. The first comes from Renee, who shared that after experiencing sexual trauma years ago, she still finds herself freezing or dissociating during intimacy even with a partner she deeply trusts. I talk about why this happens, why it’s actually a normal and adaptive response, and the steps you can take to reconnect with your body.  The second question comes from Angel, who admitted she’s always been shy about talking about sex, even though she has desires and fantasies she wants to explore. I offer concrete strategies for starting those vulnerable, exciting conversations with a partner in a way that feels safe and empowering. In this episode, you’ll hear me share: Why dissociation during intimacy is a normal trauma response and how healing begins Somatic practices that can help you stay grounded in your body Gentle ways to reintroduce intimacy after trauma A three-column exercise to let go of shame and reclaim your desires How to talk to your partner about fantasies and needs without fear If you’d like me to answer your question on a future episode, email me at [e-mail] Don’t forget to check out: The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis, the Hakomi Institute for locating Somatic Experiencing therapists, and traumahealing.org, which offers a full directory of practitioners. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm sex, love, and relationship therapist, Dr. Laura Berman, and for the last 30 years, I've been helping people learn to love and be loved better. Welcome to the Language of Love Sessions. This is where I get to work with you one-on-one, on air. You, my listeners, my goal in these sessions is to empower you to enjoy better relationships, both with others and with yourself, and to help you embrace how precious and sacred your body, your love life, and your sexuality really is. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Welcome to the Language of Love sessions where I get to your questions about life, love,

relationships, dating, mating, grief, whatever's on your mind. I am here for you helping you learn to love and be loved better. And you can always email me questions at languageoflovepod at gmail.com. And you can also let me know if you'd like to come on the show live and we can talk face to face. But I get so many amazing emails from you. Let's dive into one of them for today's session. This is from Renee, who says, Dr. Berman, after experiencing sexual trauma years ago, I still find myself freezing or disassociating during intimacy, even with a partner I trust. What steps can I take to reconnect with my body and feel safe again? Yeah, you know, it doesn't matter how long ago you experienced sexual trauma.

Until you can do the work in a safe setting with a safe person to begin to heal that trauma, it's really hard to be present during intimacy. And we disassociate, you know, for lots of reasons, but especially with sexual trauma. It's actually a beautiful, adaptive way that the brain and body of, you know, of our younger selves or whatever age we are keeps ourselves safe. We leave the building. We leave our bodies. We go somewhere else in our minds. And especially if that sexual trauma was repetitive, meaning that it happened more than once or regularly, then we really get into that mode of automatically leaving our bodies. So what's going to have to happen in order for this pattern, first of all, just know that that's normal and there's nothing wrong with you. It's actually a beautiful, adaptive way to survive sexual trauma. The problem is when you want to be embodied in your body and you want to have presence and pleasure, your body and your system's knee-jerk reaction is to leave, is to not be present. So that's why you freeze or disassociate.

When you disassociate, you are leaving your body in your mind. You're going somewhere else. So what's really necessary is that you do some trauma healing. And I would suggest that you explore somatic experiencing. That's a form of therapy that is particularly effective for trauma. And it kind of bypasses all the defenses of your thinking brain and gets to where you're holding it in the body and helping you release it and be with it. And where it doesn't just kick into gear automatically, right? Where it becomes something that you can be conscious of and work with and regulate yourself around.

Hey, it's Dr. Laura Berman. I've been a sex, love, and relationship therapist for over 30 years, and the main question I always get asked is, how the heck do we spice it up in a long-term monogamous relationship? Well, if you want to take your love life, your sex life to the next level, whether you're in a relationship or not, check out my free course on quantum sex. It's going to teach you how to take your sexual response to the next level capable of full body orgasms, how to use sex magic to manifest your dreams, and how to connect on an even deeper level sexually with your partner. Just go to drlauraberman.com and you'll find it right there on the homepage,

the quantum sex free course. Check it out. Let me know what you think. So you can find a somatic experiencing therapist at the Hakomi Institute, and we'll put these links in the show notes, or at traumahealing.org. Those are two great resources for somatic experiencing therapists where you can find people near you in your area who you can work with. And then as you're doing that work, you will start to learn how to become more and more in your body under stressful circumstances. And then you can start practice doing that in sexual scenarios and what you would hopefully do. And the therapist would guide you through this process, you know, with homework and things you were doing, ideally with a partner. And it sounds like you have a partner that you trust, which is huge and so helpful. they would you know hopefully educate your partner about what's going on as well and there's a beautiful book called the courage to heal which we'll also put in the show notes that is a great resource for you and for your partner to maybe read together and it also spells out the ways

that you can kind of slowly integrate sex back in in an embodied way because what you're going to want to do is just practice maybe first cuddling where you are fully present in your body than maybe kissing where you are fully present in your body. So you're slowly ratcheting up the sexual exchange, the sexual arousal, the sexual intensity while you practice staying in your body and then dealing with any feelings that come up or any disassociation that comes up.

And then obviously in the somatic work you're doing, you will have learned different techniques to re-regulate yourself, to come back into your body, to calm your nervous system down in the moment and in general and your partner can be a beautiful and really crucial ally in your healing. So long story short, absolutely can address this. I work with so many and have through my 30 years doing this with so many sexual abuse, sexual assault, sexual trauma survivors who go on to have beautiful and fulfilling and wonderful embodied sex lives with partners. So having the sexual trauma history

does not doom you to a bad sex life at all. It's just a matter of getting the healing. And what you will find is as you do the healing work, not only will you become more present during sex and be able to stay present during sex and enjoy it more, but I guarantee you, you will find other areas of your life improve as well, because it's not just in the bedroom where you probably tend to disassociate. Anytime that you feel, quote unquote, assaulted in any way, attacked in any way, scared in any way, that may be happening too. So what we often find when people start to do this work and start to heal is that all areas of their life improve, not just in the bedroom. So it's really worth exploring healing. I hope that gives you some guidance. If you have a

question or a comment on this or anything else having to do with love, sex, relationships, grief, I am here to help you learn to love and be loved better. Just email me at languageoflovepod at gmail.com.