What Is Sexual Trauma? The Psychological and Somatic Impact
You might have thought about “sexual trauma” as something out of Law & Order: SVU - extreme, physically aggressive, and “obviously” traumatic to an outsider. In reality, sexual trauma is a violation of personal autonomy and control in a sexual manner. What defines sexual trauma is your system's response, not how extreme it looks from the outside.
Sexual trauma can look like freezing when you thought you would fight back; it can look like going along with something because “no” didn’t feel safe. Everyone’s experience and response can look different - your response is about coping with what happened, in a way that is unique to you.
Understanding what happens in both your mind and your body during and after sexual trauma and nonconsensual experiences can make your healing process feel less confusing, less lonely, and actually possible.
What Counts as Sexual Trauma?
In psychological terms, trauma is defined as an experience that your system is unable to process in the moment. For sexual trauma, this includes any unwanted sexual experiences, manipulation, boundary violation, or nonconsensual act. It also can include situations where you weren’t able to fully consent, including being under the influence, frozen, or emotionally manipulated. Our systems cope with various approaches, including fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and flop. None of these constitute true “consent.”
Many survivors hesitate to use the word “trauma,” describing “gray area” experiences, minimizing the harm they experienced because it doesn't fit media portrayals. However, sexual trauma is often much less extreme in reality than what we see in the media. The fact that it often occurs behind closed doors contributes to the lack of awareness and recognition of what sexual trauma actually looks like in the real world.
The Psychological Impact of Sexual Trauma
To understand the psychological impact of sexual trauma and nonconsensual experiences, it’s important to remember that the brain’s number one job is to keep you alive. Because of this, it can be hard to understand from a purely logical place - before and after sexual trauma, the “logical” part of your brain (your pre-frontal cortex) defers to the survival parts.
Survivors might be familiar with one, multiple, or all of the following experiences - they’re all ways that the brain tries to use survival responses to regain control following the trauma.
Hypervigilance after sexual trauma
Hypervigilance refers to feeling constantly on alert and scanning your environment for changes (i.e., danger, according to your survival brain). When your system hasn’t processed what happened to you, it prepares itself for constant threats in your environment - all in an effort to protect you. This can look like feeling jumpy, having trouble sleeping, or overanalyzing interactions.
Intrusive thoughts and flashbacks after sexual trauma
You might experience thoughts or memories coming into your mind following trauma that feel intrusive. They may interrupt entirely unrelated situations, sometimes triggered by sounds, smells or body sensations that feel distantly familiar to the trauma. In their more intense form, this can look like memories that feel like they’re happening now, rather than during the trauma. Survivors often describe this as disorienting or distressing before understanding what is happening.
Shame & self-blame following sexual trauma
Shame and self-blame is incredibly common following sexual trauma and nonconsensual experiences. Many survivors ask themselves “why didn’t I stop it,” or “did I lead them on?” They also minimize their trauma while firsthand experiencing trauma symptoms, calling themselves “dramatic” for their posttraumatic reactions. In reality, shame is a symptom of trauma. It’s your brain’s attempt to make meaning or take back a sense of control. If you believe it was your fault, then you feel able to protect yourself in the future - you feel a sense of control, in theory. In reality, self-blame often just leads to decreases in self-esteem and self-efficacy.
Avoidance & emotional numbing following sexual trauma
When something feels too big, or too painful, to face, we often subconsciously try to find ways to block it out. This could be avoiding reminders, such as people that you relate with the trauma. It could also look like staying busy to avoid downtime where you could think about it. It could also look like drinking, using substances, or finding another way to disconnect from your emotions. With the pressure to keep moving on in life, your mind uses their avoidance strategies to protect you from feeling overwhelmed.
At times, the mind can feel overwhelmed enough to resort to dissociation - this can feel like there is a distance between your mind and your self, or yourself and reality. Some survivors describe it as a fuzzy, distant feeling of nonreality (derealization), or a disconnect from themselves as a person (depersonalization). Others experience gaps in memory altogether. While this can feel disorienting and distressing, it is another protective strategy from your mind. Part of healing involves helping your body feel safe enough to be present in day to day life.
Even if it feels like a betrayal, each of these experiences is your nervous system doing its best to keep you safe.
The Somatic Impact of Sexual Trauma
You may have heard “the body keeps the score” (a reference to a book of the same name by Bessel van der Kolk). To understand the impact of sexual trauma and nonconsensual experiences on the body, we need to recognize that trauma is not just in your thoughts - it’s in your nervous system. When your body and mind feel overwhelmed by an experience, the body mobilizes energy in the form of survival responses - fight, flight, freeze, fawn, or flop. If that energy can’t be released (by screaming, running or pushing away), it gets stored in the body as unfinished activation. Over time, this shows up in the body, whether as chronic tension, digestive issues, or other physical experiences.
Common physical symptoms of sexual trauma include:
Muscle tension (e.g, in the jaw, neck, shoulders, or pelvis)
Digestive issues (e.g., IBS) or nausea
Sleep difficulties
Feeling “numb” or detached from your body
Difficulty tolerating touch, even from someone “safe”
Moments of panic or dissociation without obvious triggers.
In addition, the somatic impact of sexual trauma and nonconsensual experiences can show up when attempting to enter positive sexual and intimate relationships. The experience of touch and pleasure can feel unsafe for many survivors. While this can be incredibly frustrating, it is important to remember that this is not a sign that something is broken - it’s a sign your body remembers and is protecting you from potential harm. And it is possible to teach your body that you are safe and no longer in a threatening situation.
Somatic therapy and trauma-informed practices can help you complete the interrupted survival responses. Through these approaches, your nervous system can learn that it is safe to relax again. This happens through small moments as your body learns to soften rather than brace.
Why We Minimize or Question What Happened
Survivors often minimize their experiences or question whether what happened “really counts,” especially if physical force or violence wasn’t involved. This can happen due to both psychological defenses and societal pressures.
As discussed above, survivors often intellectualize their trauma to maintain a sense of control or to have a greater “understanding” of what happened. You may subconsciously believe that if you can convince yourself that it “wasn’t that bad”, or that it wouldn’t have happened if you “said no sooner,” you will feel safer in a world that suddenly feels more dangerous than you thought.
Societal and cultural messages about sexual trauma and consent can contribute to minimization and denial of what happened. Even in a post “me too” world, messages abound blaming women for what they wore or said and criticize women coming forward. There is often an underlying message in discourse around sexual trauma that if you can’t “prove” it, it didn’t happen, which dismisses the broad majority of sexual trauma. Furthermore, those raised as women are often taught to prioritize others’ comfort and “not make a scene.” This can be further intensified by the body’s protective instincts post-trauma, resulting in fewer and fewer women sharing their experience.
One reason the phrase “the body keeps the score” resonates with so many survivors is the truth that no matter what your mind tells you or that you try to tell yourself, your body’s responses following trauma tell the true story.
Healing Forward
Trauma doesn’t define who you are or what you can do - it’s the way your body learned to protect you when it wasn’t safe to feel. Healing and therapy isn’t about undoing that - it’s about helping your system learn that safety is possible again.
Through somatic and parts work, you can begin to notice what calm feels like in your body and help your system understand that it can feel calm without repercussions or danger arising. You can begin to understand and care for the parts of you that carry conflicting experiences and pain through parts work. Throughout the process of therapy, you are supported in making choices guided by your values, rather than hypervigilance.
If you’re ready to begin reconnecting with safety and trust, therapy can help you begin at your own pace. To learn more about what this looks like and to get started, head to Therapy for Sexual Trauma and Nonconsensual Experiences.