Shame is one of the most debilitating emotions that can eat away at our sexual expression and pleasure. When we’ve been successfully socialized and policed with shame, it can stop us from pursuing healthy sexual experiences and relationships to begin with. Shame was one of the biggest hurdles I had to overcome in my sexual healing and liberation journey. Learning how to navigate and release shame is essential, if we want to feel free, whole, and LOVED for all that we are. Tune into this episode of the Woman Gone Wild Podcast to learn how to heal sexual shame

The most obvious reason to heal shame is that it just doesn’t feel good. It makes us feel icky, undesirable, and unlovable. It makes us want to recoil, hide, and isolate. Shame can stop us from seeking out not only romantic relationships but other relationships too. Particularly when you’re in a community that shames sex and pleasure, sexual shame can make you feel like a fraud, like you don’t belong or deserve to be in that community. When that is a religious or spiritual community, the impact is even more detrimental. We lose a sense of relating not only to our religious or spiritual tribes but the divine as well. Having experienced this, it’s a truly devastating feeling to think that you’re not really accepted by those who are supposed to be loving and compassionate to you, nor are you accepted by God/Universe/Spirit. Ouch.

But shame can also impact us physiologically and lead to sexual dysfunction. As a result of shame, you may experience:

• Low sexual desire
• Anorgasmia/difficulty orgasming
• Numbing or lack of sensation in the genitals
• Erectile dysfunction
• Difficulty “getting into it” or enjoying sex

While shame can be a serious pleasure killer, it’s not the end of the world. We all experience it from time to time, some of us more frequently than others. All the same, you CAN heal shame and transform your relationship to it. It doesn’t have to be something that separates you from love, but rather, calls you INTO love.

• The common mistake people make when trying to heal shame (DON’T DO THIS!)
• Shame as a mechanism for socialization and the detrimental effects
• Is shame the most effective tool for modeling and correcting behavior?
• How shame creates lost selves, shadow selves, and distorted selves (and what each of those are!)
• My approach to shame healing (go to the root!)
• How love transforms shame
• Subtle shaming to look out for in sex-positive spaces and spiritual spaces (thank me later