This post talks about childhood sexual abuse and sexuality and it’s potentially triggering. Take care of your own well-being and stop reading when you notice signs of dissociation or flashbacks.

 

It is hard to talk about sexual parts without offending anyone. I will share with you an integrative approach and I need you to be aware that this is not the only option. In the end we all have to find what works for us. This is what worked for me and I hope it adds an option for you to choose from. There is no textbook solution here. Some people with DID don’t have sexual parts at all and that is normal too.

 

A systemic view

Before we try to work on connecting with sexual parts it is helpful to understand their role. Sexuality is a healthy part of human existence. Everyone has sexuality and a sex drive. People differ in what that looks like but it is normal and won’t go away. That means we need to befriend the idea that we as a system have sexuality. We might have learned to fear it or despise it, feel ashamed of it or plainly hate it, but it is part of who we are.

When we think in terms of action systems we can see that sexuality is among them. In an attempt to remove the whole topic from our awareness, we ended up with parts who took on this burden for the whole system, since it had to go somewhere. It is the price we paid for not having to deal with it for a while.

Yet sexuality is a pretty big topic and ends up being a lot more important to human existence than we hoped. And sexual parts are usually younger and ill suited to manage such a huge area of life unsupervised, especially since all their experience is based on abuse. They need help. We can’t avoid the topic forever.

 

I think it is good to start with examining who in the system has access to the action system of sexuality. It might be one part who ended up with all of it or several parts who know different aspects. When we get in touch with them we will be exposed to some trauma of sexual abuse, that is why it is ok not to dive too deep in this assessment. We just need a bit of an overview who the players in that area are so we know who to work with.

When parts share an action system it is usuall easier for them to work together. It is helpful when there are adult parts who already have more diverse experience but it is also common for hosts to be highly avoidant of sexuality as a whole. We explain things for the avoidant type of ANP because they have the farthest to go concerning integration.

 

 

Ways to survive

Then we can try to identify how these parts operate. It is possible to keep it very logical by looking at what other action systems a sexual part has access to.

Some will clearly show defensive strategies like appeasement behavior or submission. They don’t like what happens but they hold still and let it happen. This is a smart survival strategy that avoids additional pain and punishment. These parts are protecting the system from worse things and often have very low self-esteem but they aren’t sexual parts in their core.

Others might feel superior to abusers, claim that they play with them, that they are in control of the situation and that this is what they want; they operate within the action system of dominance and control. These parts tend to prostitute themselves as a demonstration of their power and self-sufficiency. Telling ourselves that we are in control of a helpless situation is a powerful way to survive it and not feel violated.

And then there are parts who learned to enjoy the sexual interaction they were forced into. They feel real pleasure, they like the attention and it makes them feel good. They might operate within attachment or social action systems. Sometimes pain and pleasure got all mixed up and they are masochistic and seek pain when they look for sexual adventures. It is yet another way how we twist ourselves to match an impossible situation. (More about the Logic of Survival)

[Organized abuse can result in slightly different parts because they were actively trained for sexual interactions. Some were taught to perform without feeling anything, others were conditioned to meet the needs of customers with real pleasure. I am not an expert in that area. Just know that treatment might have to look a bit different then.]

 

 

Overcoming rejection

Having parts like this is hard to accept. Because they are so closely intertwined with abuse they are scary and the way they have become seems worthy of rejection at first because they hurt our values. They can sometimes cause terrible situations for us when they take over, from promiscuity to illegal actions and getting us back into abusive situations, up to dangerous genital self-harm through reenactment. Some are loyal to abusers and love them. ANPs will avoid them, trauma-holders hate them for loving what hurts them, controlling parts might look down on them. It is a huge challenge to move beyond the phobia of these parts and see them as something other than an enemy or a source of shame and disgust. It is possible though when we look at the whole picture and how they were needed for survival. They took on a crucial role that helped the whole system to somehow cope. It is logical and there are even types that can be described because that is how it typically happens, we are not alone with that. We personally find it more useful to think of these parts as protectors, regardless of their age, than to try and make them fit in with child parts.

Someone had to cover the whole area of sexuality for the system. It was too much and it couldn’t be removed so it needed to be dissociated. It is not their fault that they are the way they are. It is time that we gain access to that action system with them so we can help.

 

 

Safety

When there are unsafe behaviors we need to offer a new frame in which sexuality can be expressed safely. That often means cutting contact with unsafe people. It might need long conversations with partners to figure things out. To create safe learning experiences for every part involved it can be useful to invest in sex toys. They prevent injuries that could happen if a part used random items and they can help explore pleasure and sexuality without getting mixed up in a relationship with another person and their needs. Usually this is less triggering too since toys don’t have to look like genitals at all. A new rule that toys get used instead of seeking adventures creates a safe foundation for everyone to do this work. If it makes you feel uneasy you can remind yourself that it is for therapy purposes and meant to aid learning about healthy sexual experiences. Creating a safe setting is crucial and more important than shameful feelings. Trying to control unsafe behaviors just results in power struggles. It needs an alternative that meets sexual needs. The time of trying to make it all go away has to end. It is helpful and possible to keep most trauma memories contained while we work on the present day situation.

 

 

Staying

If sexual parts cause trouble in our life that usually happens with amnesia for what exactly they did. We just come to and have to clean up the mess and try to somehow return to a sense of safety. When we want to stop the amnesia it means that we have to learn to stay with these parts when they front instead of going away where we don’t have to know. It doesn’t have to be perfect and there is room to grow, but it is important to understand that amnesia doesn’t just happen. We are automatically and actively shutting down when these parts appear and we have to work against that to stay a little longer to witness what they are doing. Learning to stay co-conscious is how we get to influence the situation. Then we can tell these parts about our wishes and guide them to try things differently and they get a chance to know how we are feeling about it instead of just doing their thing. If we do our best to keep these experiments in the realm of masturbation and not have the additional trouble of another person involved we might still feel revulsion or get triggered by that but it is harmless enough to not have us running from what is happening.

Alters who are used to violence as part of sexuality might learn that pain isn’t needed to feel good under gentle guidance. There is room to learn from each other and demonstrate new possibilities.

 

This experiment of staying co-conscious also needs to be turned around: we can ask sexual parts to stay with us when we do things that have nothing to do with sexuality. Sometimes they need to learn that the world is more than sex and there are other fun things to do. They are often stuck in their own little world that is very limited and don’t even understand what we mean unless we show them. Bake cookies together. Watch nature. Add new experiences. There might be a need for exciting experiences to match the energy sexual parts are used to. This is very much needed but we fool ourselves if we think that if we do this long enough and leave out the other exercises sexuality will just vanish so we don’t have to deal with the topic. This is not like trauma-holders we can just get re-oriented. We need to accept that sexuality is here to stay and integrating it in a healthy way is our best chance to manage it safely.

It is ok to keep these exercises small. The phobia can be crushing otherwise.

 

 

Bringing parts together

We need an exchange and opportunities to learn from each other. That way we won’t switch so harshly between extremes. It means that both sides need to be open for new experiences and nobody can be dominant and attempt to fix the other or make them less of who they are. Yet the more we share the more we balance each other. With sexual parts who seem out of control it is key not to try to control them but to instead build relationships with them so they get more insight in how life works. Then sexuality can find its place in that life in an integrated way and we can learn to navigate it within relationships. It simultaneously gets smaller and bigger. Smaller because the huge events of out of control behavior go down and bigger because the system gets more in touch with the topic and we can find a healthier expression.

There will be hard realizations on the way. Sexual parts will eventually understand that what they experienced was abuse and that it wasn’t fun or love or within their control. When these realizations come it is especially important to have inner connections and support in place. More trauma work will be needed to integrate memories and that will look more similar to regular DID work again. We can move on with our strategy for integrating new parts.

 

 

 

This is a very dutch approach and nobody has to do it this way. There really is more than one way for most things in life. It is just what worked for us and, in a short period of time, established the change that we needed to be safe and in touch with ourselves.