The most damaging emotion to choke up your sexuality is shame. Shame remains often hidden even after years of psychotherapy. Who wants to look inward when what’s staring back is a painful emotion that makes us feel unworthy and unlovable?
Many have managed to suppress this pervasive feeling of unworthiness and cover it up with perfectionism, hiding out or even shaming others in order to feel some relief from this pervasive damaging emotion. Some people who have been wounded with shaming develop eating disorders and addictions of all kinds.
Jungian analysts call shame “the swampland of the soul”.
Shame has an overwhelming influence in all sectors of life, especially in your financial and love life. You do not feel loveable and you cannot fully open up to love another.
Mary, a very beautiful and intelligent woman came to me to seek help because she was sexually numb. She had been faking orgasms in all her past relationships.
Mary was a magnet to attract men who only thought of their own pleasure, and did not even notice she acted as if after intercourse she would stuff herself with food to squelch her feelings of failure. Her hidden question was “what’s wrong with me?”
The last man she fell in love with cheated with one of her friends. That really hurt. She was shocked and hurt. How could both her lover and her friend betray her? She had been working with psychotherapists for years and taken hundreds of workshop hoping desparately to heal this devastating pain that she could no longer hide from.
This is what she writes to me after committing to a series of sessions of deep, sensitive Tantric work:
“I wish all women who think there is something wrong with them knew how important it is to recover their sexual power. Working with you I discovered the impact my sister’s reaction had on me when she caught me masturbating as a teenager. I felt humiliated and dirty. I felt ashamed of myself. I now understand that I absorbed her shame about being sexual. That stopped me from enjoying my body. I put all my energy in proving that I was worthy by trying to become as “perfect” as she was. Still in my 40s when I came to you, I was not able to enjoy being touched.
Thank you for your compassion, openness and wisdom that led me beyond what I thought possible. You transmitted to me your own innocence and love for your sexuality.”
Since shame is a pervasive problem especially for women, I encourage you to join me in one of my upcoming women-only workshops in New York.
Have you ever covered the topic of sexually transmitted diseases? I contracted genital Herpes when I was a young man. This was probably in the early 1980’s, I was in my late teens / early twenties. It has created a great deal of shame with in me. It has left me with a chronic feeling of being damaged and unlovable. How do men and woman (that have Herpes) deal with this when they first meet a potential love interest? (or sexual partner)? How do people that don’t have Herpes respond to those that do have it. I look forward to hearing your opinion. Love John
until I find a woman to pleasure with your great ideas I would like to learn how to both explore my own male sexuality and have better masturbation. orgasms that rock the world. I find your content so helpful. yet without a partner it is solosex for now. what can I do to or try? thanks dave in Texas
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