From Victim to Victor with Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

There is such an important shift and especially for abuse survivors to become embodied because sexual abuse creates a disembodied disassociation and the work is to become embodied again to tolerate that.

There is nobody that’s going to save you, you have to save yourself and that’s about really coming out of a victim mode, even though if you were sexually abused you were victimized, but if you live as a victim you’re only going to perpetuate that cycle..

So, stopping the cycle of victim-perpetrator-rescuer and coming to your own rescue is a huge act of love and compassion and self-compassion and that’s where the healing begins. It’s really is an inside job.

[00:00-00:53] Nunaisi Ma

Hello everyone and welcome to RISE. I am so pleased to have with us today Alexandra Katehakis. She has a Ph.D. and is the Clinical Director of Centre for Healthy Sex in Los Angeles. She is an award winner and an author of several books including Sex Addiction as Affect Dysregulation- A Neurobiologically Informed Holistic Treatment, the multiple award-winning Mirror of Intimacy- Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence, Sexual Reflections and Erotic Intelligence. Thank you so much Alexandra for being here.

[00:53-00:57] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Thank you Nunaisi for inviting me to be here today.

[00:58-01:19] Nunaisi Ma

I see your work is so vitally important, personally working with so many women that have been sexually abused or molested or harmed in any way and I know that that is an epidemic, right?

[01:21-02:21] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Yes, and I think, you know the manifestation with which I see it and we see it here at Centre for Healthy Sex, is through love addiction or sex addiction. Meaning that women are compulsively having sex oftentimes because of their sexual abuse. There is a repetition, a compulsive component to it because our brains are so highly automatic and these become adaptive strategies in the brain and the body.

So, people keep hurting themselves over and over again and not understanding why they’re doing it and feeling terrible afterward, or if it’s with love addiction, it’s that they’re compulsively seeking relationships but they’re all built on fantasy. They’re not on the actuality of who the person really is. Essentially, it’s just a warm body that will hold them and take care of them. At least that’s the fantasy because that’s what they didn’t get as children.

[02:22-04:08] Nunaisi Ma

That’s unfortunately very very true and you know when you speak about fantasy, this is something that I really want to unravel because I know for myself being sexually molested as a child, you know, from the age of 7 to 10, my sexual energy was activated way too early for me to be able to emotionally deal with it and in fact, I want to even say that I had received an orgasm during that stimulation which at the time I didn’t know what it was but it swept me off my body.

It was so huge and it really changed the trajectory of my life because I was not interested in children’s games anymore. I was more interested in sexual games because that energy was so powerful and so dominant and what happened for me is that I reverted to fantasy for me to become sexually stimulated later on as an adult and even with my husband and other lovers that I had before, I could not be in my body present to the sexual energy that was there with somebody I love. I had to go into my mind and recreate a traumatic repetition of abuse to be sexually activated and aroused and I really want to touch on that fantasy escape as a survival coping mechanism.

[04:09-07:33] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Well, when a child is assaulted like that, we have to consider the data coming through the central nervous system which are the eyes, right? The five senses, so whatever is happening on the outside is coming into the body through these senses and when it’s too much for us to handle whether we’re in an airport and a bomb goes off or you’re a child from 7 to 10 years old and somebody’s sexually assaulting you, the nervous system cannot handle it. It’s too much energy as you say coming into the body and so there’s literally an uncoupling between the central and autonomic nervous system.

The autonomic nervous system manages the body so we can think of the central nervous system as the brain and the spinal cord and the autonomic system as the body and when those two things are uncoupled you get Pathological dissociation. So, our higher cortical functions, our intellect is decoupled from the limbic brain or the emotional brain and Ellen Shaw who is the famous neuropsychoanalyst calls this an escape where there is no escape. So, it’s not a voluntary action, it’s actually quite an elegant mechanism built into the human being that harkens back to when we were cave people, you know if you’re running down the plain and a lion or tiger is chasing you at some point you know you’re in a flight state.

You’re running, running, running but if the body is going to give out and it can’t take it anymore, this dissociation occurs and there is a flood of opioids also which is what we think of as a sedative so that when that lion bites your leg off or eats you, you don’t feel anything, right? You have ‘left the body’. So, this system is in place to protect us and children are also often very confused because if they’re boys they get erections if they’re girls they lubricate during sexual abuse and that again is also nature’s way of protecting us. Likewise when women are raped sometimes they’ll orgasm because they’re lubricating but if you didn’t lubricate you would be destroyed, your body would be destroyed inside, right?

So, these are all protective mechanisms and there’s nothing that we should feel guilty about or bad about we should just be very curious about wow, those were actually survival mechanisms to get me through this trauma, and now because they don’t get worked through, we have to go to therapy in order to move the energy all the way through the system the way it’s meant to otherwise it keeps looping as it did for you and sex is a threat.

Sex is dangerous and so you have to conjure these dangerous fantasies in order to have the same arousal that you had then but it has nothing to do with intimacy or the person that’s in front of you, in fact, they could just be anybody at that point so you can’t really connect and that’s the problem with sex and love addiction, it’s that you know people cannot really connect to their lovers, they don’t really own their desire, desire owns them and sex is both arousing and painful and it’s just a vicious cycle.

[07:35-08:42] Nunaisi Ma

I have been there for so many years trying to come out and I have been torn between the desire to be with my lover that I love and really want to connect to but at the same time I’m so numb, I’m so frozen and the only way to engage in that activity was escape to my head, run the fantasy and then have that as you said vicious cycle, because then I feel so guilty and even disgust because I had maybe even orgasmed but it’s so wired up with disgust and shame and guilt that it’s not even an uplifting emotion.

It brings me really down so I know that I have worked through it for years and I’m good now. I mean I’ve overcome it so it’s possible. I just want to put it out there but I would love to hear from you what are the tools to get unfrozen, unstuck to come back to the body after experiencing sexual abuse?

[08:43-12:03] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Well, there’s not one straight path for everybody because everybody is so different but my first, I guess advice would be to stop having sex, right? Because you’re not acquainted with your body in that way and the more you keep repeating this thing the more you sort of cement it, if you will, in your brain because we know that when these neurons fire together, they wire together so you keep wiring the same route or pattern over and over and over again and in fact your abuser lives inside you now, you’ve been very loyal to your abuser.

So, one of the ways to stop that loyalty is to stop having sex with other people and to start a course of therapy that’s body-oriented where the therapist can help you track into your body. Unfortunately, oftentimes, you have to go back to the abuse and remember what you couldn’t remember then or more importantly I guess feel today what you couldn’t feel then which was the terror and the shame and the frozen state and to be able to hang out in that frozen state with someone who can be there with you so that slowly but surely you can start to mobilize your limbs and mobilize your body.

They say one of the worst traumas a human being can suffer is when we can’t move when we’re pinned down because the brain is designed to move the body. If there were an earthquake right now, we would all get up and run, right? That’s a survival mechanism but if you can’t run, you’re going to be in a free state and that’s also a terror state and those are the people that would have PTSD. So, you meet someone who can gently very gently start to bring you back into the body that couldn’t move at that time and who can regulate it with you. So, in other words they’re with you, they’re breathing with you, they have compassion and empathy. This is not something you want to move too quickly with because you won’t be able to tolerate the small feelings that you need to feel now.

So, these are grounding processes, they’re slow, they require finding a therapist that you can trust, you know, who’s direction you’re going to take and you have to stay in therapy for a long time. It’s not a quick-fix, so a long time, maybe 3 to 5 years, right? It’s not 10 to 20 years but you have to make a commitment to yourself and I think that’s what it means to really really love yourself, is to make that commitment to you and to trust that you know there’ll be other men and women out there for you to have sex with 5 years from now and nobody’s going anywhere.

You can have sex in 5 minutes if you want. All you need is an app and boom! you can find someone. So, you’re not really missing out on anything but to reclaim yourself is the best source of self-esteem, shame reduction, and ultimately- I hate to use this word- but retaliation to the abuser is that you take back your sexuality from them, from what they stole.

[12:06-12:15] Nunaisi Ma

So, you recommend refraining from sex and that includes sex with yourself, stimulating yourself, or is that different?

[12:15-13:25] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

I would say early on it would be to refrain from stimulating yourself also unless you can do it without evoking those fantasies of assault, of shame, humiliation, the abuser because if you’re using fantasy, you’re doing the same thing as if you’re using somebody you’re not connected to.

Now let’s say you’ve been in therapy for six months and you have a partner who’s kind, who’s thoughtful, who’s patient, who’s willing to go through this slowly with you, that you can stay present with and notice your desire to pull away or to avoid or that you start to

dissociate and that partner slows down with you, they make eye contact with you, you talk to each other, you just maybe hold each other and maybe in the holding of the other person you start to have a memory and you start to cry and your partner can just hold you and be there with you, that can be incredibly healing. But racing to any kind of genital stimulation with yourself or someone else is really just more of the same.

[13:31-14:22] Nunaisi Ma

Right, you know, I just feel very lucky to have had that partner that I cried in his arms so many times and he was holding me and I could share everything with him. I could share my fantasies and he would say that’s okay you don’t have to shame yourself; we can work through it together. So, it’s really important to have that supportive partner and I’m sure that some of our audience that are listening to this recording now, they are maybe survivors of sexual abuse as children and they maybe are in a marriage or in partnerships already, how do they take it from there? How do they bring it into the relationship so it can move through and heal through their relationship if they’re already in a relationship?

[14:23-15:47] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Well, that would require a conversation with your partner for starters about what exactly happened, what goes on for you, how it’s not about not loving that person or caring about that person, it’s just that your nervous system is dysregulated, your nervous system is not able to hold both your thinking brain and your body online simultaneously, that only one or the other can happen and so it requires a commitment of both people to go on this healing journey and if you don’t have that if the partner who wasn’t abused gets frustrated or takes it personally or pouts, they’re not a safe person to do this with.

It really requires someone who’s got a solid sense of self because I believe that we do a lot of our healing in therapy but in the sexual arena the most powerful healing takes place during sex and you can’t do that with the therapist, you have to do that with a partner but you have to choose wisely. You really have to choose well if you’re single because not everybody is up for that task and if you have a partner you sort of have to renegotiate your relationship about going as I said on this journey or through this process together.

[15:49-16:33] Nunaisi Ma

Absolutely, and I think that not only transparency is vital but you also have to receive a sacred yes from your partner that he is actually willing to hold your hand through this journey

because it is a journey and especially for the partner also, right? It’s a huge role that they play and maybe they’re not up to it and therefore they’re not the right partner. I really believe that there will be the right partner that will be able to support you through it and actually grow in intimacy through the process because it’s really unpacking so much together.

[16:34-19:41] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Yeah, you know, people reduce sex to really genital stimulation and orgasm but sex and spirituality are inextricably bound and this is written about in the great Tantra teachings and Neotantra and even in the sexological circles, that sex is such a powerful energy when we connect with another person. There is no right or wrong way for it to be and this idea that- even this little language of ‘finishing’.

Did you finish? as if that’s the endpoint as supposed to going on a very interesting journey with each other who are deeply curious about each other and something could happen that’s completely unexpected and can we follow that and trust it. So, I had a client who had been sexually abused from the time she was 3 years old until she was 14 years, old enough to say no, and when she finally had a partner that she could trust, they were actually having intercourse and there was something about the turn of his neck which is what she saw with her uncle and, you know, the right amygdala which is in the limbic part of the brain reads danger very quickly and it’s not literal in its interpretation of it.

So, for example, if you’re walking down a dusky path, it’s dusk and it’s a dirt path and you’re hiking and all of a sudden you see an object on the path, and you jump, it’s because the amygdala is immediately reading danger. It doesn’t discern whether it’s a snake or a stick, right? It’s just reading danger. So, the body jumps and upon closer examination, meaning we have the prefrontal cortex online, we see that it was a stick not a snake, and likewise for this woman when she saw the turn of his neck the amygdala read danger, this is the uncle raping me, right? So, she had to stop and slow down and make eye contact with him and maybe even let her start to hit his chest with her fist. He was a very big guy by the way and this wasn’t abuse. Because she couldn’t do that with him when she was a child, she knows it’s not her uncle, her brain is reading uncle and danger.

Her partner is willing to let her complete in action what she could not complete at that time, which is to say no, get off of me, even while she was in tears or what-have-you and he’s able to hold that and take it from her so she can work that through until she kind of collapses and he holds her and that’s a way that this can unravel. I’m sure you know Isi you have other stories like this yourself where it happens during sex but the main thing is that you’re not repeating it with a stranger or casual lover, you’re doing it with somebody who can help you complete these actions.

[19:43-20:29] Nunaisi Ma

Yeah, for me I can resonate with this, the need to say no, the ability to say no and actually stop. I felt that. It really empowers me and my husband also says that. He said I think it’s really important for you to be able to say no when you feel no and so we intuitively kind of worked through it together. It’s been a long path. We’ve been together for 24 years so there was a lot to work on. It is so intricate and so multi-layered and it’s consuming in its effects.

[20:30-22:02] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

I mean those are such tender years, 7 to 10 or 11. Oh my God, that’s prepubescent. That’s deeply wired into the system and so before you even go through puberty your sexuality has been distorted and stolen from you. Not only do you have to heal the distortion and the assault, once you get through that piece more or less, then it’s about how do I reclaim my sexuality as a woman? How do I have fun with it? How do I enjoy pleasure for pleasure’s sake which is what a lot of women struggle with even when they haven’t been sexually abused?

So yes, I mean the level of complexity is enormous and I think we can reframe this as this is a spiritual path, right? Some people’s spiritual path is through renunciation, what they call the right-handed path in Buddhism and for some, it’s through the Tantric path, which is the left-handed path and it’s through sex, through desire and sex, that’s our spiritual path and that’s how we heal and I think those of us that are drawn to sexuality, the women that are drawn to sex, it’s a spiritual awakening. You know it could be worse, it could be heroin addiction, it could be methamphetamine addiction or something else but for many of us, it’s sex.

[22:05-22:39] Nunaisi Ma

Yeah, I definitely also found that connection between spirituality and sexuality, and what really helped me to really quantum leap through the abuse and its connotation is to bring in the Divine into the lovemaking and to know that I’m not only there with my partner but the Divine is there and I think that really reframed everything.

[22:41-24:09] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Beautiful yes, and I think that is a huge shift for all of us when we recognise that when we are having sex, it’s such a gift that we have the ability to have pleasure in these bodies and the desire, as Mark Epstein talks about, is an enormous teacher for us because, as he said, desire

always leaves us wanting more and we have to play with that line between what is enough and what tips us into really our shadow side which can be from these abuses or addictions or what have you. But when you recognise that we are connecting with something higher than ourselves and our love represents the god or goddess within, that this isn’t just like rubbing our genitals together which is what pornography is the way I see it.

You can be in some sort of athletic pornographic event where it’s just about getting off which you can do by yourself, but connecting with a human being. What is that connection actually bringing you? How does it bring it closer to yourself and ultimately to the Divine? and what messages do you need to hear or really need to learn? Then it becomes how to tolerate pleasure as opposed to avoiding abuse internally.

[24:11-24:40] Nunaisi Ma

And even a step further is how much pleasure can the body actually contain? This is something that is really so intriguing for me because from my own experience of expanding that capacity to hold more and more and more is just incredible.

[24:41-25:47] Dr. Alexandra Katahakis

Right and I think these are the things that never get talked about. I was thinking about, you know, before our conversation driving to my office this morning about how we have- at least in the US- such a poor education when it comes to sex. I mean in most families it’s just not even talked about and if it is, it’s talked about poorly. It’s just that whole part of us just gets completely shattered or divorced from our humanity.

It is such a vital part of our life force. I’m convinced it’s what keeps us young and our cells and even our mitochondria vital throughout our life. It’s a huge experience internally, neurochemical experiences that if we don’t use it or lies dormant, it probably even makes us sick I would think, but yes, the celebration and the capacity for pleasure and pleasure over a lifetime is something that is a relatively new conversation, I think, in the list.

[25:49-26:21] Nunaisi Ma

Yeah, and you know from somebody that was frozen and stuck with sexuality for many years and then moving into a multi-orgasmic zone, I just don’t think there’s anything that comes close in this human body to the experience of multi orgasm when the orgasm just builds and builds and builds in their capacity for pleasure, expands so much, I mean nothing comes close to it, right?

[26:22-27:30] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

I think that’s true, yeah. There’s nothing else as pleasurable. You know the sole purpose of the clitoris is pleasure; it has millions of nerve endings in it. It doesn’t do anything else. Men have a penis and they can ejaculate out of it, they urinate out of it, right? It’s also how they reproduce but not the clitoris, it’s just there for pleasure’s sake. I mean that’s one aspect of pleasure certainly but I think it gets underrated, underutilized and we don’t understand again just how important it is to our well-being, our radiance, our power, you know as females as well which is likely where female genital mutilations started.

It was to eradicate females not just pleasure but power I mean, it’s like the most insultive thing you can do to the female body and so these conversations, these movements like RISE, for example, is so vitally important to waking up the feminine on the planet.

[27:31-28:10] Nunaisi Ma

Absolutely and you know, I mean I’m talking about pleasure and that feels amazing and I really believe in the path of pleasure. I always say that pain is the pointer but pleasure is the path, but it’s so much more than that because yes, it’s pleasure that cannot even be put in words but it’s where I feel most inspired, most creative, most connected, most motivated. It’s just what keeps me so alive and so vibrating that this is really our power. You just nailed it.

[28:11-30:17] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Well, I love that you’re talking about creativity because I’m thinking about the women, I know that are on this sexual path, that are teachers and are published writers, they’re enormously creative and just alive with this sensuality. So, these are women that have big careers, they’re ‘powerful’ but they’re not embodying the masculine.

I mean the masculine is certainly part of what has us creating businesses and organizations and things like that but they don’t show up in this masculine way, they show up very embodied in the feminine which I think that sort of androgyny is extremely powerful for women also fluid in the yin and the yang and putting it all together in that way. So, when we think about creativity, all of us are creative, and it doesn’t mean that we paint or we write or we make music, creativity comes in- well sex is a creative act for example- creativity comes in cooking or how we parent any number of things that is essential to our vitality.

So, I think this is good for women that are listening to think about where are you most creative? Where does your sexual creative energy go? Where are the ways in which you’re making your life too small for yourself because you’re not tapping into that energy because you think it’s frivolous or dirty or not that important? With so many women, you know, after a certain age, typically around 50 and menopause, they’re like well if I never had sex again it wouldn’t matter.

I think well maybe the kind of sex you’ve been having wouldn’t matter but what about the kind of sex you could be having and why do you ignore that just because the body is shifting and changing? What part of yourself are you really giving up when you give that up?

[30:18-32:09] Nunaisi Ma

Yeah exactly, I just listened yesterday to Dr. Christine Northrup who is a teacher I’ve been following for years and she’s been talking about menopause and she said that it is very common in our culture to think that women after menopause have finished with their sexuality. She says it’s just the beginning. It’s really just the beginning if you make the shift in your mind and maybe it’s time to have a new lover at that age to ignite that energy but it’s certainly not passed you at any age and it’s never too late. It’s never too late. It’s just there for you waiting for you to tap into it and maybe some work is needed for sure maybe some clearing, maybe some un-shaming, maybe some previous abuse or conditioning or culture or religion dogma that still kind of sits in your understanding or in your relationship with sex.

But when we clear all of that and we tap into that potential that is there, I mean we’ve all been born from sex, right? I always say that we’ve been born from at least one orgasm- I doubt it if two for most of us, right? – but at least one, so it’s really life force energy that is moving through us, that is who we are, it’s everywhere in nature. Mother nature is sexual and sensual in every possible way, right?

[32:11-35:21] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

For sure, yes, I mean I think you’re right. We see sensuality and beauty and lust all around us so there is something you just said that I think it’s worth highlighting, that most of the sexologists in the US, at least that I’ve studied that have been my teachers, one in particular always said that we have the best sex in the fifth and sixth decades of our life meaning in our 50s and 60s because we’re less hung up about our bodies and how we look and just all of these insecurities have melted away or just like they say women do the most important work in their 50s and 60s because the mummy brain turns off.

So, we really start to mature as women and sexual goddesses if you will in these two decades and so our culture, at least in the US, the consumer culture really starts to erase people of a certain age. I was looking at bathing suits today online and it was a gorgeous company but all of the women are in their 20s, right? and you know I’m slender, I’m happy about my body but I’m thinking, I am not going to look like that in that bathing suit and so I wish that they had models that were older so we can actually see ourselves in our own beauty and our own bodies reflecting back to us.

But we don’t in a consumer culture and so we have to be very careful about what we look at, what we compare ourselves to and to really stop comparing ourselves all together because there is no comparison between you and me for example, we’re different people; different bodies, different stories, different sexualities even, and so it’s really emotional suicide to compare ourselves to each other. It’s an act of violence that I think women perpetrate on themselves instead of getting very quiet in a meditative space and being grateful that you’re even able-bodied if you are for starters, and that you’re still alive.

You know it’s a crazy world so practicing gratitude I think is a very big portal to accepting one’s sexuality for starters and that starts to lead us towards the sensuality and then, you know, again Tantric path talks about experiencing lust and sensuality and everything, so having a cup of tea, right? The way it feels in your hands, the way it smells, be it the heat as it’s going down your throat, this is a tantric practice not just having sex all day long. Savouring your food, choosing the fabrics that you put on your body. Beauty is an extremely important part of that sensuality so as you say it’s everywhere not just in this reductive notion of genital-to-genital contact.

[35:21-36:37] Nunaisi Ma

Yeah absolutely, and we really have to redefine beauty because beauty is so extensive and comes in so many forms and shapes and colours and we have to really break from that very small narrative media concept of what the ideal beauty is that we all fall into, and I love how you use this term, I’m definitely going to use it myself again, I’ve never heard it before, emotional suicide, to compare ourselves because really, you know, I always say to my children; compare despair.

There’s nothing to compare. It’s just, you can’t compare and I even say if you see somebody beautiful and you really feel they’re beautiful then get inspired by that beauty, appreciate it. You couldn’t see the beauty if you couldn’t be able to see it, so appreciate to be able to see it and don’t feel less than because of beauty out there rather, work on your inner being so your soul shines through your body and illuminates your own natural given beauty, however, it is.

[36:38-38:11] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Yes, that’s lovely. I remember many years ago I think I was probably just 30 years old and I was in Hawaii and I was on the big Island and standing at the top of Waipio Valley, if anybody’s ever been there, it’s this massive valley it looks like mother nature’s vulva. It’s all green, it’s cut into these mountainsides and, my, it took my breath away and, in that moment, I was in tears because I recognised that that was my beauty. That was my strength. That was my power. That was my magnificence looking back at me and I’ve never had that experience quite in that same way, a unity experience.

So, it’s similar to what you’re talking about is to be inspired by that, to recognise that you are that in whatever form that you come in and so that reflection back is very different than being jealous or envious, what you’re talking about, to be inspired by beauty. I’m reminded also of a book by John O’donohue who’s since passed away, who was a beautiful Irish poet and philosopher and he wrote a book called Beauty and the subtitle is The Invisible Embrace and he talks about this type of beauty. We typically associate beauty with somebody’s face like a female face and he expands it in the ways we’re talking about that is so so moving and to consider really studying beauty and your environment.

[38:13-39:25] Nunaisi Ma

And of course, it’s a very feminine essence quality to appreciate beauty and to beautify everything, our space, ourselves, so it is a natural tendency of the feminine, right? But we just have to drop all those judgments and all those little details that we kind of watch through our lenses of the judgmental mind about oh I’ve got a bit of cellulite here or you know, the shape of my nose or the hips.

We really judge ourselves more than anyone else and then once we understand that being grateful for the body for having a body, to begin with, it’s not for granted and it’s not forever. It’s a very short amount of time, right? and really appreciate the divinity of the body and what it can do and its wisdom and what it can feel and really transitioning from what it looks like to what it feels like, right?

[39:26-41:20] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Yeah, that’s such an important shift and especially for abuse survivors to become embodied because sexual abuse creates a disembodied disassociation and the work is to become embodied again to tolerate that.

So, it’s not just about tolerating being in the body, it’s about recognising, wow I am in my body, my body, my mind, spirit, soul is one entity or organism if you will, and we’re not separate. So, what we eat, how we treat ourselves, simple things like just buying flowers for your space once a week or having plants around, something that lights you up. It’s the simplest thing that can encourage our sensuality and an expression of our sexuality as we’ve been talking about by starting to look at beauty and so that’s another thing. I think you asked me earlier Nunaisi, about what we can do, it’s about looking at our space.

How do we actually tend to ourselves because sexual abuse survivors tend to struggle with deprivation? They feel ugly, dirty, broken, these are the words that people use and that’s the dissociation and when they maybe become more neurally integrated we start to feel beautiful and connected and stable and solid and clean, and so what does the inside of your home look like? What do your clothes look like? Maybe you don’t have a lot of money, but you don’t have to have dirty ragged clothes with holes in them. You can buy new things that aren’t expensive so that you have a sense of dignity in your body and that can make a very big difference in just how you’re tending to yourself

[41:21-43:01] Nunaisi Ma

I love that. I love that sense of dignity. That is absolutely what was violated, right? So, to bring that back and I really like that you basically talked about self-care and I find that to be a very vital piece of healing trauma because we can take the responsibility back home and we can actually say I matter, I’m worth it, and I will make sure that I’m safe, that I am comfortable, that I am healthy and vital, that I’m feeling everything.

I don’t want to say feeling good because sometimes you don’t feel good and that’s ok but allowing the feelings, cultivating that sense of I am worthy, I am worthy of love and worthy of good care, I am worthy of pleasure, I am worthy of beauty outside me, as you said your environment, and inside of me. I find that a very very vital step to take that responsibility back. Maybe you haven’t received enough, sufficient self-care from your caregivers growing up or been abused and violated but to actually take that, almost take the reins back to yourself and say I can do it for myself.

[43:02-43:57] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Right, I think that that’s important, it’s multi-faceted as you said. I mean the therapy is crucial to getting into these deeper issues but what you can do for yourself on a day-to-day basis is create an environment that reflects back to your beauty. It’s a living affirmation in addition to stating affirmations by tending to yourself, buying yourself flowers, buying yourself healthy food, buying yourself oils or scents that make you feel good, all of these are an act of – what would you say- it’s an act of taking back what was stolen from you. So, they are empowering acts even though they seem so small, all of it cumulatively makes a difference, a big difference in the restoration of the self.

[43:58-44:43] Nunaisi Ma

Right, self-nurturing. This is what it is and I mean where we can always work on ourselves of course from the inside but even working on our external environment really affects our inner being. So, I found that whenever I declutter and I clear things in my environment I feel as if I clear the things within my being, I just become lighter. So, sometimes if you don’t know where to start from in your environment, start from your bedroom. Get that clutter off, reorganize things, maybe move and shift some furniture to create new energy and you will feel it in your body right away.

[44:44-45:49] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Yeah, because when you get rid of things like that, you’re starting to make space for something new to arrive and all of this is intentional and asking yourself, what is my intention or my intentions for healing? Then where is your attention? Is it on creating a healing space for yourself in all areas of your life? because no one’s going to come back and take care of you. Now as adults we have to come to our own rescue.

There’s no parent, there is nobody that’s going to save us. We have to save ourselves and that’s about really coming out of a victim mood even though if you were sexually abused you were victimized, but if you live as a victim you’re only going to get in a relationship with perpetrators or guys that you have to rescue or women that you have to rescue. So, stopping the cycle of victim-perpetrator-rescuer and coming to your own rescue is a huge act of love and compassion and self-compassion and that’s where the healing begins. It’s really is an inside job.

[45:50-46:45] Nunaisi Ma

I like to say that trauma is not your fault but healing is your responsibility and you are the one you’ve been waiting for, as you said. No one will come to the rescue and if you think that your partner will rescue you, you are setting yourself up for disappointment because that’s not going to happen. Nobody can do the work for you. Yeah, you can find somebody that will support you, that will hold a safe space for you, that will love you through it but ultimately you can only do the work yourself from within, right? Yeah, thank you so much Alexandra for this juicy and really potent and powerful and important conversation, and if people want to maybe work with you privately or get hold of you what’s the best way?

[46:46-47:06] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Well, the website is centerforhealthysex.com and on that is information about my webinars for Mirror of Intimacy which is my book of daily affirmations on emotional and erotic intelligence and so that’s the best way to find out about the resources that we offer here at Center for Healthy Sex.

[47:07-47:25] Nunaisi Ma

Beautiful. I will have all the links on the page and thank you so much for making the time to share your wisdom. It’s so highly appreciated and blessings for the brilliant work you’re doing in the world. I really really salute you for that.

[47:26-47:29] Dr. Alexandra Katehakis

Thank you. I appreciate it and thank you to all those who’ve been listening.

[47:31-47:40] Nunaisi Ma

Right, so blessings to all of you and lots of love and until the next time we meet, ciao.

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