Reclaiming Your Erotic Self: Healing After Sexual Trauma and Narcissistic Abuse

Healing from sexual trauma and narcissistic abuse is not a linear path — it’s a deeply personal journey that touches every layer of who we are: emotional, mental, physical, and erotic. For many survivors, the body becomes a battlefield — a place associated with pain, betrayal, or numbness. But it doesn’t have to stay that way.

In The Erotic Mind, Jack Morin suggests that eroticism is not just about sex — it’s about vitality, creativity, connection, and our inner spark. Reclaiming your erotic mind and body can be a profound part of healing, especially if your sense of sensuality, agency, or pleasure was stolen from you.

Here’s how survivors can reconnect with themselves, move through trauma, and rediscover a life full of passion, intimacy, and self-love.

1. Understand That Desire is Not the Enemy — It's a Doorway

Many survivors feel guilt or shame around wanting or not wanting sex. They may fear their desires or feel disconnected from them altogether. But desire isn’t dangerous — it’s information. It’s a compass pointing you back to your aliveness.

Jack Morin’s core idea is that eroticism thrives where there’s a tension between risk and safety, vulnerability and control, taboo and freedom. When you’re healing, it’s vital to slow down and listen — not to rush toward sex, but to feel safe reclaiming your own inner erotic space.

2. Somatic Practices: Reclaiming the Body

Trauma lives in the body. It’s not just a memory — it’s an imprint. Somatic practices can help release stored trauma, reduce dissociation, and rewire your relationship with touch and pleasure.

Try These:

• Somatic Sexology Bodywork: A trauma-informed approach to sensual healing through breath, presence, boundaries, and consensual touch.

• Yoga and Embodied Movement: Not for performance — but to inhabit your body. Focus on hip-opening poses and grounding postures to reconnect with your root and sacral energy.

• Breathwork: Conscious breath patterns can release emotional blockages and bring you back into the body.

• Mindfulness & Meditation: Learn to witness your thoughts, sensations, and emotions without judgment. Mindfulness builds trust within yourself again.

These practices anchor you back into the now — the only place where healing actually happens.

3. The Power of Self-Touch and Masturbation

For many survivors, masturbation is layered with complexity — shame, disconnection, even fear. But it can become one of the most healing acts of self-love.

Self-touch is about more than orgasm. It’s about learning how you like to be touched, what turns you on, and what makes you feel safe. You get to take control of your pleasure — on your terms.

Start with sensual self-touch — caressing your skin, applying oil, or just holding your body with intention. Invite your curiosity. Rebuild intimacy with yourself as if you’re meeting your body for the first time.

4. Boundaries, Consent, and Empowerment

Healing involves reclaiming your voice. After narcissistic abuse, survivors often lose trust in their own instincts. Narcissists distort reality and erode your sense of worth. But your no is sacred. And your yes is equally powerful.

Working with a therapist, coach, or safe community can help you learn:

• How to recognize healthy vs. manipulative dynamics

• How to set clear and firm boundaries

• How to say yes only when you really mean it

Empowered sexuality is always built on consent, communication, and choice.

5. Pleasure as a Pathway to Healing

Pleasure isn’t a luxury. It’s medicine.

When you give yourself permission to feel joy, softness, or arousal — especially after trauma — you’re not being indulgent. You’re reminding your nervous system that you are safe. That you are allowed to feel good. That your body is yours.

This could mean:

• Dancing to music that makes you feel alive

• Taking long baths with candles and oils

• Wearing lingerie for yourself

• Laughing without guilt

• Letting someone love you gently — when you’re ready

There is no “right” way to feel pleasure — there is only your way.

6. Your Erotic Mind is Not Broken

You are not broken. Even if you’ve been betrayed, abused, or hurt, your capacity to feel, love, and desire still lives inside you.

As The Erotic Mind teaches us, some of the most powerful erotic expression comes from our resilience, not in spite of it. Your trauma does not define your pleasure. In fact, it may give you access to depths of empathy, creativity, and intimacy that others cannot even imagine.

You deserve to be cherished — by yourself and others.

You Can Have a Fulfilled, Passionate Life

Healing is messy. It takes time. Some days you’ll feel amazing. Other days, not so much. But it’s all valid. You’re not alone. And you are never too far gone.

Through practices like somatic work, mindfulness, erotic exploration, and community support, you can create a life full of power, intimacy, beauty, and fierce self-love.

The past does not get the final say. You do.

Are you ready to begin your healing journey back into your body? We’re here for you — with tools, workshops, products, and community to walk with you every step of the way.

Your pleasure is sacred. And so are you.