Healing Sexual Shame: Deconstructing Trauma and Reclaiming Intimacy

Richard Zwicky: Hi everyone, it's Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy, the show where we know there's no one path to healthy, so we explore them all. If you haven't subscribed yet, please do so on Spotify, Apple Podcast, or your favorite listening location. Today, I'm joined by Dr. Tina Shurmer Sers, who's a psychotherapist, professor, best-selling author, and medical director of Inana Rising and the Northwest Institute on Intimacy. Welcome to the show, Tina. Yeah, Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Thank you so much. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: I'm so glad to be here with you, Richard. Mhm. It's wonderful to have you on and, to take a look at, challenges people face and looking for paths to healing from many different perspectives. And, your book and your topics they're extensive, but they tend to help people look at how do you address sexual shame in some areas? Because religion and culture tends to shame people for sexual experiences, which really is something everybody should encourage and embrace because it's a moment where we're ourselves and should be ourselves. How does the shame form that actually gets us into this position where we feel apart from others and it causes barriers between us and our own intimate relationships. Yep. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Yeah, that is a fabulous question and Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: I love actually beginning our conversation there. One of the things I say about humans is that we are drawn to sharing connection with another and sharing pleasure, having fun together, And that's pretty core. We do it differently. Not everybody expresses it the same way. And large, 99% of people are engaged in sharing connection in some way and sharing fun and pleasure in some way. And so sexuality falls under that umbrella. It's a very natural part of just being human and wanting to enjoy life and wanting to not be alone in it. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: And so if we think about it that way, we know that little ones like infants, as soon as they can start distinguishing what feels good to them, they start moving towards that. So I'll often say you can have a brand newborn baby who will start rooting towards the breast Right. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: not because the milk is there because it's not there yet, but because they're seeking connection and pleasure, They can smell their mother, they just know it's going to feel good and so they're turning toward it. So it's very innate to us. And so throughout the early years they're finding things and they're experimenting with putting sand in their mouth. What's that and doing all kinds of things because again connection and pleasure. They're seeking connection and they're learning about their environment. Somewhere around 11 months when the little one is in the tub or Mhm. Right? Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: getting their diaper changed, they're going to find their genitals. And this is because they have begun to actually coordinate their hands to objects just before that, and so I always say the day that happens is one of the best days of their life because they realize they have a part of their body that feels really good to touch. And so they find it on accident, and what they need is someone there saying, "Yep, that's your penis. It's a fabulous part of you." Or your vulva. That's a fabulous part of you. And just names it because that's what kids are needing at that point. Eyes, ears, nose, right? They're needing naming. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: But often what happens is the very first experience of them finding their genitals, their caregiver is getting loud. Yuck, gross, don't. That's dirty. And often smacks their hands away. And that's scary to a little infant Right. Mhm. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: because they don't have any idea what they're getting in trouble for. And they're not going to stop doing that, As soon as they start figuring out, I know how to do that. Touch myself. It feels good. They're not going to stop until they're somewhere three or four years old and they're beginning to put together. I get yelled at when I do that. I can go in my room or I can go someplace by myself, right? And then they'll start doing that. Mind you, they've now had hundreds, maybe thousands of times where somebody's gotten mad at them for doing this thing around pleasure that's very core to the human being. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: And so now what the child begins to do and at first this is sematic. It's inside the body. It's not cognitive. But eventually it becomes sort of a combination of the two where they are learning something must be wrong with me because I'm getting in trouble for just being me.

00:05:00

Richard Zwicky: And Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: So that's a very core feeling of shame. Interestingly, people and interestingly, it's a form. It is emotional abuse but we don't think of it in that context Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: It is now. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Yeah. Right. Until we actually take the step back and realize wait a second we are negatively impacting somebody based on we don't want to see this as opposed to this is a natural part of the process Mhm. Yes. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: And in the US, we haven't had any kind of sex education since 1980. We had some between the 40s to 80 and then we turned it over to abstinence education which was just fear-based don't and so no education this is an area of our life that has to do with connection and pleasure forming bonds and instead we give you nothing that will help you in that process and Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: just scare you around it. So that's part of why parents are often doing what was done to them because it's innate again. It's become innate. And so they do that, but they're not wanting to hurt their children. That's not an intent at all. Right. Of course. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Nor was it an intent, I like to say it's not an intent with even people that are involved in the church. It's not intentional if they knew what the long-term effects were, which was part of why I wrote the first book was to help people understand a lot of things. And a lot of times abuse isn't intentional. It is just a byproduct of the behavior and you don't realize the impact it's having. It's much later that it shows up Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: That's right. Which actually often shows up for people is their challenges with their attachment styles and Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: That's right. Intimacy and seeking emotional safety in relationships when that safety was negatively impacted during this period that we're talking about here. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Absolutely. What's the correlation Of course, right? Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: I'm sure, pretty familiar with the research work of Bnee Brown around shame. So, she kind of made that a household word that we now understand, but we did not study sexual shame. We had no sexual shame, operational definition until 2017. And in 2017, we had research that was done and we could see in black and white what a lot of us clinicians were seeing in the office, right? We were seeing in people's lives this deep shame. And if you would like to hear, your audience, you think your audience would like to hear, I'm happy to read that definition right? Yep. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: because when people say, how does sexual shame affect me?" It's I think an important question because I can read off this definition and be like does that resonate anywhere with you because you may not have cognitive memory but your body will have memory if this happened to you if this was your treatment. So sexual shame is a visceral feeling. So it's in A visceral feeling of humiliation and disgust toward one's own body and identity as a sexual being and a belief of being abnormal, inferior and unworthy. This feeling can be internalized but it also manifests in interpersonal relationships. So like what I was just saying, it begins usually between infant and caregiver, right? Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: having a negative impact on trust Right. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: communication and physical and emotional intimacy. So basically our attachment style and then how we relate from that attachment style. Sexual shame develops across the lifespan as I mentioned with interpersonal relationship but then one's culture and society lays its layer on top and then that creates a subsequent critical self appraisal. So a feedback loop of criticism that goes on in our heads over and over until we do something to heal from it because it's now attacking us. Right? Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: There is also a fear and uncertainty related to one's power or right to make decisions including safety decisions related to sexual encounters along with an internalized judgment toward one's own sexual desire. Mhm. Right. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: So if you happen to know the work of Peggy Ornstein, she wrote a book called Girls in Sex and then Boys in Sex and she interviewed 80 girls, 100 boys. And what she found when she was interviewing the girls is these were 15 to 23 year olds, I think, 22 year olds. And she would find that many of these young women would describe themselves with all kinds of confidence and competence and capability, but when it came to going out, they were putting down three, four, and five shots of hard liquor because they didn't know if they could keep themselves safe or if they had the So this is how rampant rape culture is and how rampant sexual shame is, which makes sense when we stop and think about it. The problem is we don't stop and think about it.

00:10:00

Richard Zwicky: No, it's not. And people do confuse it. And it is tragic that people question whether they have the right to be safe, And when you fundamentally have that challenge, everything else spirals from there. We touched on briefly there about most of those attachment style issues. They as well documented stems from, adverse childhood experiences, whatever they may be. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Exactly. Yeah. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Sure. Yeah. And, some such as emotional neglect or emotional manipulation are much more difficult to identify precisely. But it was interesting you me talked about the fact that people have a feeling within them that there's something out of sort. But when you're in a relationship with somebody who's dealing with that, they're struggling, but you have no idea what it is because you can't see inside their experiences. How do you help them? Right. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: That's a really good question. I think you're doing a lot of what I will call under the umbrella of deconstruction, You're going back and you're being curious together about where did you get this idea? Let's talk about where this idea might have come from or this sense. Do you remember feeling that for the first time? You're trying to understand how were they knit together? One of the things I've done to help people in two areas. Right? Right. Right. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: One of them is this and the other one is in parenting. And people don't want to do to their kids what was done to them, but they're afraid that's their default. I wrote this shameless parenting book because I'm like, I will literally hold your hand. Birth to two four to six, up to 18. And I'm going to say, here's what typically kids are curious about, what they're emotionally trying to accomplish, how it's expressed behaviorally, here's what they're needing from you, and then ask you to pay attention to what happens inside you when you imagine. At this age, find their genitals. At this age, they're curious about other people's bodies. At this age, all the way through. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: If you can feel that part of you that goes like that, you just need to put your hand on your heart and say, "Somebody who loved me didn't know how to give me what I needed." Right? And then I'm like, "Here's the top resources for this age. Parent books. Go read them even." And I want you to imagine, go get a picture if you have it. Imagine you're reading it to the two-year-old the four-year-old or the eight-year-old who didn't get this and then imagine giving it to yourself because what you're going to begin to distinguish is Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: what I was thinking versus what I might have been thinking if I had gotten this. Mhm. Right. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: So, it's a way to kind of heal the inner young parts of you by deconstructing more with more clarity what might have happened to me. I can know absolutely my mom would not have been okay with that. I don't know exactly what she did, but I can know that I got that in my body, And so you can kind of deconstruct a little bit and then reconstruct what would have been helpful to have gotten And fascinating point you brought up there. For context, I've built a predictive analytics platform for mental health which helps people deconstruct. And one of the functions in it is so that it helps you understand what people may misunderstand about you because if you look at the scale in the world and we talk about neurody divergence and different things. The reality is we each exist in our own universe and we perceive it in our unique way and I am the only normal person in my universe. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Yes. I know, Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: right? That's right. And you are the only normal person in yours and Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: That's exactly right. Our job is to build bridges to others but we presume our parents know us and understand us. They do more than others sometimes, Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Maybe. Yeah. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Right. Right. But they still don't see inside us to know and understand it. And we misunderstand them. As much as we should, we would think I know them precisely because I've known them my whole life. The reality is we still misunderstand them. When you're trying to deconstruct that for people as you go through how do you help people build those bridges because they're trying to resolve that shame that sometimes it's

00:15:00

Richard Zwicky: Because of the bad example the parents set in how they communicated around it sometimes it's misinterpretation misunderstanding built up from other aspects But deconstructing that it becomes an understanding of shameless parenting. How do you bring that into practice? Right. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Yeah, I really love your image of I'm the only normal person in my universe. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: you are in yours that idea of we see and hear and speak out of our universe. So the question I think on the table is have I cultivated the skills to see outside my universe? How well have I cultivated curiosity about someone else's universe? So then when we start to recognize, I don't think, these people in my childhood were okay with my discovery Mhm. Right. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: let's talk for a minute about how these people are different from you. What have you noticed about their universe? Because they were perceiving you from their place. What do you think might have been going on for them? And sometimes as we do this work and I know for many it's the beginning of the family of origin work right is to develop some almost accidental compassion. There they were doing the best they could and given that they were perceiving me through this place of fear or this place of trauma or this place of whatever they couldn't perceive me as I would perceive me. Right? Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: So then it's like if they're still around, how do you imagine building a bridge in a way that they can hear you better and you can see them and Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: hear them more accurately to their universe, And so that's how we build the bridge is not by expecting you to be like me or your universe to be like mine, but to understand yours as best as I can and Exactly. It does. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: then imagine where is that meeting place? I use? What kind of tone might I take such that I can reach you? And then we can begin to design a bridge that we can safely walk across back and forth. And the more reactive the subject, the stronger the bridge needs to be. And building that bridge internally is incredibly powerful because it's about actually connecting with ourselves. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Yeah. Is that Yes. Right. And that's a huge challenge for some people who, we talked about how your whole nervous system will feel the shame which has been thrust upon you and you're trying to overcome that and break through the barriers. And that's an area a lot of people are turning to and looking at psychedelic assisted therapy. Because it allows you to stand outside yourself and view things without shame. How Yeah. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: with a more witnessing stance. As you approach some of these challenges and how do you at what point is that a viable or a recommended path for somebody? Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Yeah, really good question and it's a complex question because there's the physiological answers to that question. There's time and place, there's all kinds of things. Of course, you Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: But let me answer that with an assumption that we've already cleared all the medical and stuff that now it is a good time given where they are to do this work. I think then it's really looking at what are making sure that they understand what medicine will be like and what it might not be like. So just giving them some range. They have some we're going to and setting, We're going to help them with their mindset. We're going to help them know that their setting is going to be safe. Somebody's going to be sitting right there with them. All of that to help them be openhearted about the experience. When they become openhearted, then we're talking about What would be your intention?

00:20:00

Richard Zwicky: Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: they don't all act the same across each time you do them either. So there's can be changes in there, but it does tend to allow people to lift out of their current patterned thinking. And we know this from fMRI research. They can lift out of that. And the brain has the capacity to make unique connections and unique ideas that can last for many people afterwards. And so that thing that felt so stuck. I was working with somebody one time and they had done every kind of therapy in the world, but they had pretty extreme religious sexual shame and just shame and fear and she was just unable to minimize the visceral feeling of fear that would come over her all the time right throughout the day. Right. Mhm. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: And she said, "Do you think psychedelics would help?" And I said, " let's prep you for it and see what you think. We'll go over, everything we can think of to go, and we cleared all the physical side. And I said, "What would you want?" I just want to have more faith in myself and not feel fearful of even things I can't put my finger on. I just want to have a sense that I'm held in the world a bit, and not and I said, " then let's offer that up and Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: " And so, we did the work. And it ended up being the first thing that gave her a sense of awareness that was not rooted in fear that the shoe was going to drop. And you know that inner healer that individual inner healer, how does it differ from the authentic self? Because our authentic self is what we should be presenting to the world, but most people don't. Mhm. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: I'll just say the obvious. These are constructs. These are all attempts at us understanding humans, I think that the sense of self is perhaps more cog not entirely a cognitive construct but more of a cognitive construct. When you're in medicine, it becomes clear often that you are in conversation with that which is bigger than you. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Which is bigger than you may have been holding you all along, but you haven't been in conversation with this. Like you and even though you're in conversation with an aspect of it, you're aware it's still bigger than you, so often people will describe having this sense that they had a wisdom within themselves that was tapped into something bigger than them that they didn't even know to listen to. And in medicine, they get invited to hear something that they might now have outside of medicine, an inkling of its familiarity, but they didn't know Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: how to tap into it before. So, I think that's maybe a way to describe it. And again, it's an approximation, we don't know completely. It is difficult and it's true. A lot of us shut out our inner voice. We shut out our intuition, Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Yes. Mhm. We try and overthink it. And when people are coming to this point and trying they're tackling these challenges, how can they begin to reclaim their right to intimacy and pleasure and safety in those relationships without skipping over the hard emotional work? Some people think I can just get there and do things. But it's not just participation. It's actually uncovering the challenges in the first place and sometimes we don't want to listen that voice but we want the end the easy button. What are some easy steps but what are some easy first steps people can allow them to guide on the process and breathe and say take that sigh and go yes I can do this. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Yeah. Yeah.

00:25:00

Richard Zwicky: Right? Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: So my intuition, What have been times in my life my gut has said something and I had an inkling of it but where did I learn not to listen to it? And then maybe begin some practices of listening. That could be meditation practice. It could be walking in the woods and listening to yourself. Listen to the woods. Trying to really connect with this inner wisdom that is within you that is tapped into that which is bigger. And I think the practice of doing that, talking about it with others as well, get out of just being in your head and listening with your body mind can begin to cultivate an awareness and Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: an appreciation. There's more out there for you and in conversation with you than you might have been aware of. That's available. And that's a significant point. There's more available to us than we generally will acknowledge and that's a shame. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Yeah. Thank you. Tina, we are running low on time, but people who want to, of course your books Sex God and the Conservative Church and Shameless Parenting, they're available broadly through online and bookstores. How else can they learn about you about Anana Rising and other aspects that you're dealing with and reach out to learn more? Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: So Inana Rising is an organization that supports licensed therapists and licensed physicians and prescribers, different medical providers who have gone on to also study psychedelic assisted therapy. It's a membership community. So all of the clinicians in the membership are people who are deeply ethical and want to practice in a way that's patient centered and who honor the wisdom of the shoulders, the indigenous shoulders that we stand on in this work are very attuned to marginalization and social justice. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: And so we have things that provide training for them, confidential consultations once a month. We have a retreat center people are welcome to come rest at or do their own work at. This is just a way to support really excellent clinicians because it's a little bit easier in Canada than it is here, but things are pretty rough. I mean that's the grossest understatement I've said in the US right now but especially around Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: where are we going with psychedelics because we have a couple of states that are a little bit different but we just have a lot going on that's all over the place. There's a lot going on. It's incredibly detrimental to people's mental health regardless of where they sit. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Absolutely. And yeah And it's only getting worse. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: And so we're facilitating the development of trauma in people and yet we have only a few things that actually will get at it in significant ways. And so we in an honor rising are really wanting to support those brave, courageous clinicians that are out there trying to figure out from where they stand, what difference can they make. So that's what Anana Rising is about. We have a very small Instagram. It's anana\_ rising\_pat for psychedelic assisted therapy. I have an Instagram that's Dr. Tina Shameless and that's for stuff around shame my work. People are welcome to DM me there. Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: for some reason they're really wanting to do this work around healing sexual shame and they can't afford the books or one of the books, they're welcome to DM me and say, "Let me know that and then I will send you a free promo code to an audio version of the books." I want people to do the Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: if they're wanting to do the work, I want them to feel like they can because the work makes a difference in your quality of life in significant ways. So, those are some ways that they can get a hold of me, reach out to me, and then I'm happy to point them to things. I have free resources. Happy to point them to things from there. Fantastic. Thanks for joining us today on the show, Tina, and Dr. Tina Schermer Sellers, PhD: Thank you so much for having me. Thanks to everybody for listening. I'm Richard Zwicky with High on Healthy, and we'll be back again with you soon.