Reclaiming Your Desire: Sexual Healing After Assault
Trigger Warning This article discusses sexual trauma and the journey of reconnecting with sexuality after assault. Please read with care and take breaks if needed.
Sexual Healing Is Possible - On Your Own Terms
The idea of reconnecting with your sexual self after assault can feel overwhelming, even impossible. Many survivors carry fear, confusion, or numbness around sex - and wonder if they’ll ever want it again, or feel safe in it. This is not an uncommon response, and there is no shame in feeling that way.
Sexual trauma often impacts more than the act itself. It can feed into how you view your body, your desirability, how you trust others, and how you connect to your desire. It may bring up anxiety or sadness. Or perhaps you may feel nothing at all. Healing shouldn’t been rushing into intimacy. When you feel discomfort, your healing starts with acknowledgment—and curiosity.
While rape is categorically not sex, sexual trauma can sometimes make sexual acts and sensations feel triggering. Traumatic memories can become associated with what’s happening in the moment, activating a trauma response even in desired, consensual, safe interactions. This can be incredibly frustrating and confusing for everyone involved. It’s important to remember, however, that our trauma response is not in our control and it is a way in which our body is trying to protect itself. Forcing the issue through discomfort is rarely the right answer, instead it’s an indication that there is some more healing work to do.
Desire Doesn’t Have to Be Immediate
Trauma doesn’t follow a timeline, and the return of your sexual desire might not either.
You may:
Feel numb, indifferent, or uncomfortable about sex
Avoid physical intimacy, even if you want closeness
Struggle with arousal or fantasize but feel disconnected
All of this is normal. These responses are your nervous system doing its best to protect you. Your desires may come back slowly, in pieces, or differently than before. Sex might not look the way it used to, and there may be a grief in that.
Finding pleasure in intimacy again can be an important part of healing. While numbing or shutting down may have helped you survive trauma, healing often involves re-discovering your capacity to feel sexual, to enjoy touch, to reconnect with your body.
As Wendy Maltz writes, “Sexual abuse is not only a betrayal of human trust and affection, but it is, by definition, an attack on a person’s sexuality.” This means that for many people healing can’t just be emotional - part of th healing journey is also the work done to reclaim your sexual self. That complex process can include grieving what was lost, working through harmful beliefs, and reconnecting with your body, and exploring sexual pleasure.
Reclaiming Sex on Your Own Terms
Sex is not (and never was!) something you owe, perform, or tolerate. It should begin with choice, not performance.
Some survivors start with solo exploration - reconnecting to sensation, curiosity, or pleasure in private, pressure-free ways. Being present in your body can help reopen the path towards sensual feeling and ownership over your body and sexual experiences. You might also consider how your experience has shaped your beliefs about sex. Then you can begin the work toward a healthy and positive sex life, where sex is mutual, respectful, and safe.
You don’t need a partner to reclaim your sexuality, much of this work can be done solo. If you are in an intimate relationship, you should feel free to take your time and feel no rush back into anything before you’re ready.
When Intimacy Feels Overwhelming
Even if you want connection, intimacy can sometimes feel like too much. Many survivors describe feeling distant, disconnected, or even panicked during physical closeness. I have worked with clients who could no longer enjoy certain sexual positions, or who struggled with touch in certain areas, or to relax enough to achieve orgasm following an assault. Through healing, some of this can be overcome, and if it can’t then therapy can help with acceptance that there has been a shift in your relationship to sex. Different does not necessarily mean bad, and through thoughtful and sex positive work we can explore new avenues for sexual pleasure.
Acceptance is important. Your body and mind are working to protect you, even if it is inconvenient or frustrating. Understanding this can help replace shame with self-compassion.
If you are with a partner, you might choose to talk ahead of time about how you want to navigate intimacy. Discussing boundaries, preferences, pacing, how to communicate can make the experience feel safer, and more fun. Make space for aftercare - whatever feels best, whether that is cuddling, talking, snacks, or stepping away entirely.
Healing is listening to your body and honoring when it needs to pause. It means giving yourself that compassion that feeling overwhelmed is not a failure. Respond to your recovery with gentleness.
Therapy as a Space to Reconnect with Your Sexual Self
Therapy can be a supportive place to explore how your relationship with sex has changed and where you want to go from here. You don’t necessarily need a specific goal, simpoly an openness and a curiousity.
In therapy, you can:
Unpack shame, fear, or guilt around sex
Identify sexual symptoms that may stem from trauma
Practice grounding tools for flashbacks or triggers
Redefine sexual values, desires, and boundaries
Working with a trauma-informed, sex-positive therapist can be especially healing. Sex-positive therapy means creating space to talk about your sexual history, your fears, and your desires - with no judgment, pressure, or shame. You can work through your healing and explore what healthy, consensual, and pleasurable sex looks like for you now. Whether you are asexual, hypersexual, celibate, or curious about kink or intimacy, sex-positive therapy allows you space to explre yoru sexual identity.
You Get to Decide What Healing Looks Like
There is no “right” outcome. Healing might mean having joyful, connected sex again. Or it might mean deciding not to have sex for now, or ever. It could mean exploring pleasure on your own terms, redefining intimacy, trying new things, or letting go of roles that never fit you in the first place.
Healthy sex is about consent, equality, respect, trust, and safety.
Whatever healing looks like for you, it’s valid. Your sexuality is yours to reclaim, reshape, or redefine. Not as a reaction to trauma, but as an expression of who you are. These experiences impact you, but they also create opportunity for a deeper connection to your sexual self. When you’re ready, it’s possible to feel safe again. To feel joy. To feel at home in your body. And to choose connection on your own terms.
April is Sexual Assault Awareness month. This is my final post in a series of blog posts about this topic which may be of interest.
How Therapy Helps After Sexual Assault
This post explores how therapy supports survivors at every stage—from the immediate aftermath to years later. It covers emotional responses, Rape Trauma Syndrome, and how therapy evolves to meet your needs as healing unfolds.
Not Quite Assault, But Still Not Okay: Everyday Sexual Violations That Add Up
This blog dives into the subtle, often-overlooked ways women experience boundary violations—unwanted comments, pressure, and manipulation. It’s a call to name what we’re taught to dismiss and to recognize the long-term impact.
Sexual Abuse in Relationships: Why It’s So Hard to Name
Many survivors don’t recognize sexual abuse within a relationship right away. This post explores the confusion, pressure, and power dynamics that make it difficult to identify—and how healing begins with validation.