Innocence & Our Relationship with the Erotic.
Exploring Intimacy, Sex, Sensuality, Boundaries & Trauma.
How do you feel in your skin, right now, at this moment?
Take a breath.
Let it out.
Notice the sensations.
Intimacy is about more than how we relate with others. It is, primarily, how we relate with ourselves.
So, let’s check in, shall we!
I invite you to relax: soften the muscles of your face, your lips, your jaws, your throat. Drop your shoulders. Soften your belly.
Breathe.
Let your body move, if so inspired. Roll your neck, stretch your arms, reach through your fingertips and toes.
What do you notice?
I notice I need a shower, still. I’ve been stewing in my creative juices since yesterday.
Dragging my fingers through a tangle of curls, I make contact with my scalp. It is sensitive. My shoulders are tense. And, at this moment, I am entertaining a mild headache. For me, this is either a sign of extreme stress, dissociation or integration.
How do I make the distinction?
Well, yesterday I had an intense session with my counselor that concluded with us landing in some old, dense psychosomatic terrain.
I’m reorganizing the way I hold a certain energy: responsibility, specifically, in regards to intimacy. I tend to take on more than is my share and it impacts my body as well as how I communicate.
For some time I have been dabbling with a man who bestirs every possible human feeling in my wild witches heart. Hopes for domestic bliss, hunger for his flesh, endless fascination with his mind. Devotion to his soul.
Oh, and—utter fucking terror.
Why the fear?
Well, for someone whose erotic responses have been deeply fused with traumatic reactivity—intimacy is scary. Feeling turned on and excited can also, at times, feel completely unsafe.
It’s not just that I am navigating my side of an intense intimate connection. For some bizarre reason it seems that a lot of sexual distortion is coming up, through, and around me in various settings over the last few days. (Since the last full moon, honestly, if I track it, but I’m not going to run into some astrological interpretation; that’s not my niche.)
I also hear that I'm not alone on this exploration of sexual distortion. It seems to be happening for others as well. A good friend (a man) spoke with me yesterday about feeling grossly objectified by a group of drunk women whom he was professionally (he’s a singer and guitarist), performing for. So yes, women do it, too. We can all be predatory.
Recently I wrote a promotional piece for my practice describing my therapeutic process (for my business page on Facebook) and attached it to cute photo of me wearing shorts, a cowgirl hat, and a blue blouse posed in front of the lawn at my mother's house.
For some reason this particular post (not showing an inordinate amount of skin or cleavage), brought the creeps out of the woodwork. In the past 48 hours I've gotten more private messages requesting my relationship status, naked photos, and even I got sent a dick pic.
I could ask, “What the fuck?” But I think I may know… it’s the innocent eroticism of my essence. It's a bit intoxicating. It flows organically from me when I'm feeling happy, healthy, secure, and especially when I’m creative.
Honestly, it's ovulation energy—ripe, juicy, full, and delicious.
And I won't be ashamed of it.
Though I did pull down the post (I’m just not into fielding the endless skeeze at the moment), in the past I may also have shut myself down, perceiving this form of unwanted attention to somehow be my fault. I can’t keep doing that. Simply because I am in the fullness of my creative (and sensual!) expression—that is not an invitation for vulgarity or lechery.
In other words: this sexual distortion is coming at me—not from me.
Huge aha moment for Justice!
The distinction between an internal distortion and an external manifestation is known as: boundaries, bitches!
(And I have, in fact, been called: The Boundary Bitch.)
Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” ~Prentis Hemphil
Boundaries are physical, emotional, psychic, internal, and external. We cannot exist (healthily) without clarity (in all these realms) unless we know where you and I begin and end.
It has taken me years to unravel the layers of numbness, hyper arousal, and hyper sensitivity that enmeshed with my nervous system as child.
A sense of confusion about self vs other is a common occurrence with people who experience abuse. In other words: as we mature we may have a hard time telling what we are actually responsible for (as I stated above, is an issue for me).
Inappropriate sexual contact (usually from and adult), prior to the age of consent is, regrettably, the experience of millions, if not billions, of people all around the world. Statistics say: 93% of abuse happens from someone the child knows (family, friend, caregiver, neighbor etc.) and 70% of (reported) abuse occurs before the age of seventeen.
I would estimate that at least 70% of the people, men and women, who wind up in my intuitive counseling practice have had some kind of sexual violation (physically) as a child. And if we look at emotional or psychic violation, that number is much higher.
Just this week I was speaking with a client who was trying to unravel her own erotic impulses from the way she was programmed (through her childhood) to to respond to sexual stimulation. (She was serially abused by her father.) This can be deeply confusing territory because our bodies will respond to stimulation that is pleasurable even when the context of it is inappropriate. This kind of behavior is also often the origin of a trauma bond.
Even without early developmental disruption to our erotic connection with ourselves familial, cultural, and religious conditioning often distorts the delightful innocence that is innate when we are naturally connected with our bodies.
As children, we are often forced into activities that violated our tender senses and sense of self. We are encouraged to stifle our instincts in exchange for acceptance. After a time, we cease to notice those sensations in the same way. Eventually we become either hyper aroused, numb, or a combination of both.
Humans are erotic beings at every age and that has nothing to do with any form of sexual indoctrination. Early eroticism is simply an affect of us being, naturally, sensual beings.
Now before anyone goes getting their thongs twisted up please understand: I am fully against early introduction of any form of sexual propaganda to kids. It’s not about that. Kids observe life and make natural conclusions about their observations.
In regards to an innocent expression of eroticism, it is simply about recognizing that our nervous systems—at any age—are wired for pleasure.
Sensuality does not equate sexuality and neither does eros, (though the Greek god, Eros, is associated with passionate love). And, in modern psychology, eros has come to be equated with vital energy.
“In Freudian psychology, eros, not to be confused with libido, is not exclusively the sex drive, but our life force, the will to live. It is the desire to create life, and favors productivity and construction.”
It is also proposed by this same school of thought that neuroses have their roots in the disruption and distortion of our life-force.
Now, if we consider that all life (human, mammalian, avian, reptilian, even botanical, etc.) requires male and female components (and some sort of sexual interaction) to reproduce, we can factually, poetically, and biologically say: Eros (the erotic) is truly at the heart of life.
We can, also, many of us, agree that life without passion is not a life well-lived.
And, no, I'm not speaking merely of sexual passion. I'm talking about the creative impulse—the hum, crackle, and thrum of life that beats our hearts and vibrates our bones.
Now that is erotic!
So I'll invite you, once again, to return to your breath…
In
and
Out.
Feel the movement, the fire in your belly, the space in your pelvic bowl, listen to the blood singing through your veins.
Feel the air caress your skin, your eyes widen as you take yourself and even more of life—in.
Allow life to penetrate you and then return the favor!
Are you blushing yet?
Good.
This is it… this is the moment that you, now, can begin to come back to yourself. Back to that innocent connection with your own eros, no matter what has happened to you or how far you may have drifted.
Feel it!
Is is a little scary?
Does it feel risky?
Are you still numb?
All of that, or any other response to this invitation, is perfectly okay.
And it is and open-ended invitation.
In any moment you can begin to notice just how deliciously alive you really are.
Oh, my!
What ever might happen next?
Author: Justice Bartlett
Image: Hana Pastova
Image: Author’s own.
To learn more about Justice Bartlett and her intuitive counseling work:
visit www.bedheadmystic.com
