Dissociation during sex is when your attention leaves the experience, often right at the moment it gets most intense. Juliette Karaman, an intimacy and touch expert in the UK, has been working with trauma and the body for the last 10 years, and knows this from the inside.
That is me. So when I say we go at the pace of your body, I mean your body. Your no holds. Your yes is required.
Why do I dissociate during sex?
Something in the moment arrived too soon or too fast for your body to take in, so your attention stepped out to keep you safe.
Trauma is anything that happened too soon or too fast for your body or your psyche to take in. Big events count, and so do small ones. Your body files every single one. Then, right at the peak of intimacy, it answers before you do.
One of the three Touch Patterns I work with is the Wanderer: “My attention can leave the experience.” At the very moment that could crack you open, you leave, and watch it happen from somewhere up there. What brings you back, in my experience, is capacity, built slowly.
What does zoning out during sex look like?
It often looks like being in the room and somewhere else at the same time. Zoning out during sex can show up as any of these.
- You watch it happen from somewhere up there.
- You look up at the ceiling and mentally run the clock.
- You check his face and wonder how long this is going to take.
- You go numb, or feel far less than you want to.
Every one of these is protection. Your body is doing the job it learned, and it can learn a new one.
Is feeling numb during intimacy a sign of trauma?
This section mentions sexual assault.
Sometimes it is. It was for me. After I woke up on my half landing, one thing unravelled, then the next. Then I remembered what my mind had buried for twenty-five years. I had been date raped. My body had carried it the whole time. The bracing. The numbness. The years of wondering why I couldn’t feel as much as I wanted to.
So many of the women who come to me carry sexual trauma. Some don’t remember it. Their body does. A woman never has to explain her numbness to me. I know where it lives.
How do I stay present during intimacy after trauma?
Start with safety, add a structure your body can trust, and build capacity slowly, with your yes required at every step.
- Touch Base®. Thumb to forefinger, feel the ridges, say “I am safe right now”, and hold for two minutes. It is the anchor I teach for the moment you feel yourself checking out.
- Give touch a clear end. Touch Dates with a time limit, so your body knows exactly when it stops and the part of you that scans for danger can come down.
- Your no holds. The moment it arrives, it is honoured. Nothing has to be explained.
- Your yes is required. Nothing happens to your body without it.
- Drifting costs you nothing. If your attention leaves, nothing is taken from you while you are gone.
Here is something you can do right now, from my podcast. Put one hand on your forearm. Notice the warmth: is your hand warmer or cooler than the skin underneath? Then the weight, when you stop hovering and let it land. Then where: can you feel the edge of it? That is a touch no one is taking from you. You gave it to yourself, on your own terms.
Can dissociation during sex change?
Yes. A body that learned to leave can learn, on your terms, that this touch right here is different.
That is what we rewire in the room. A body that learned the world isn’t safe gets to find out that your no holds, that your yes is required, and that you are allowed to be all the way home in touch. I bring EMDR and hypnotherapy tools in wherever it helps, always inside a structure your body can trust.
I talk about the bracing in When the World Feels Unsafe, Your Body Learns to Brace, about leaving at the peak in The Erotic Pull, and about Touch Base as an anchor in The Power of Saying No.
Picture another year of watching from the ceiling. Then picture staying, one slow minute at a time, because your body knows it can.