I was able to eliminate a work-related trigger through a form of exposure therapy that I customized to meet my needs. I may have shared that experience in another thread. Now I'm feeling compelled to work on physical intimacy. This is huge!
I bought a book by Wendy Maltz about relearning physical intimacy. She has you do certain exercises that are progressively more intimate. It starts out with stuff like doing a form of patty cake. Frankly, the exercises seemed really cheesy and weird to me. I also thought she did not address deeply enough how to re-center yourself if you are triggered as well as other details. So I'm going to create my own system for doing exposure therapy.
Currently, my husband and I have very minimal physical contact. It is very rare and when it occurs, it is very G-rated. When it does occur, it is because I initiate it. This arrangement has resulted in a great reduction of stress for me and I feel like I am in charge of what happens to my body. At the same time, I know the triggers and fear will not go away on their own. I will need to put in some work to be able to get over my fear of physical touch.
So far I've come up with a list of physical touch experiences with which I can explore. Right now I have about 24 actions on the list. They consist of things like, "sit side by side and hold hands." Eventually, I will add more intimate activities but I have to proceed with baby steps. I plan to print out the exercises on slips of paper and select them at random, like pulling names from a hat.
Details I need to figure out are:
- What activities will I do prior to the exercises to ground myself?
- How will I determine how much to do the exercises at a time? It could be a set period of time or a set number of exercises.
- How long will I do each exercise? Perhaps I can set up a limit of 1 minute at first or until I want to stop. Need to determine if the slips of paper specify the time or do I keep it flexible so I can adapt to how I'm feeling in the moment?
- What should my husband's responsibilities be? What should he do if he feels hurt or rejected because I feel triggered.
- What will the ritual be if I get triggered? I would like to come up with some kind of phrase I can say where my husband feels the least hurt if I want to stop.
- What should our rituals be for after the exercises? I envision that we each spend time separate from each other immediately after the exercises so that we can each reflect and reground. What would be a good stress reliever for my husband? (He has very few stress management skills presently and just started going to therapy for this.)
- Where in the house do we perform the activities? So far, I think I want the activities throughout the house so that I don't develop a negative association with any particular place. However, at work, the trigger always occurred at my desk and I was able to conquer it. We could pick one place initially at first and then rotate places. I want to avoid doing it in my yoga room which is my sanctuary/ safe place. Whatever the location in the house, I will need to develop ways to make the environment comfortable. I could surround the area with things that make me happy and comforted like fresh flowers, candles or aromatherapy, a soft blanket, some crystals that are supposed to have comforting properties, etc.
I just thought it would be helpful for me to share my process/ thinking so far.
Has anyone else ever done something like this? Or was there another way you conquered fear of touch?
On a side note, the psychiatrist I used to visit for short term disability make a statement like, "Overcoming intimacy issues is extremely hard for people." He said it with a pessimistic tone like he was trying to prevent me from getting my hopes up that I could overcome this. I choose not to listen to the pessimism of others. It's a shame it had to come from someone on my treatment team. My therapist, on the other hand, is a ray of sunshine who is always cheering me on! I am going to share my thoughts with her and work on some of the details together.
My other triggers, are having to trust people in general and experience poor or confusing communication. Those triggers are more complex and I'm at a loss on how to tackle those - that's probably another thread.
I bought a book by Wendy Maltz about relearning physical intimacy. She has you do certain exercises that are progressively more intimate. It starts out with stuff like doing a form of patty cake. Frankly, the exercises seemed really cheesy and weird to me. I also thought she did not address deeply enough how to re-center yourself if you are triggered as well as other details. So I'm going to create my own system for doing exposure therapy.
Currently, my husband and I have very minimal physical contact. It is very rare and when it occurs, it is very G-rated. When it does occur, it is because I initiate it. This arrangement has resulted in a great reduction of stress for me and I feel like I am in charge of what happens to my body. At the same time, I know the triggers and fear will not go away on their own. I will need to put in some work to be able to get over my fear of physical touch.
So far I've come up with a list of physical touch experiences with which I can explore. Right now I have about 24 actions on the list. They consist of things like, "sit side by side and hold hands." Eventually, I will add more intimate activities but I have to proceed with baby steps. I plan to print out the exercises on slips of paper and select them at random, like pulling names from a hat.
Details I need to figure out are:
- What activities will I do prior to the exercises to ground myself?
- How will I determine how much to do the exercises at a time? It could be a set period of time or a set number of exercises.
- How long will I do each exercise? Perhaps I can set up a limit of 1 minute at first or until I want to stop. Need to determine if the slips of paper specify the time or do I keep it flexible so I can adapt to how I'm feeling in the moment?
- What should my husband's responsibilities be? What should he do if he feels hurt or rejected because I feel triggered.
- What will the ritual be if I get triggered? I would like to come up with some kind of phrase I can say where my husband feels the least hurt if I want to stop.
- What should our rituals be for after the exercises? I envision that we each spend time separate from each other immediately after the exercises so that we can each reflect and reground. What would be a good stress reliever for my husband? (He has very few stress management skills presently and just started going to therapy for this.)
- Where in the house do we perform the activities? So far, I think I want the activities throughout the house so that I don't develop a negative association with any particular place. However, at work, the trigger always occurred at my desk and I was able to conquer it. We could pick one place initially at first and then rotate places. I want to avoid doing it in my yoga room which is my sanctuary/ safe place. Whatever the location in the house, I will need to develop ways to make the environment comfortable. I could surround the area with things that make me happy and comforted like fresh flowers, candles or aromatherapy, a soft blanket, some crystals that are supposed to have comforting properties, etc.
I just thought it would be helpful for me to share my process/ thinking so far.
Has anyone else ever done something like this? Or was there another way you conquered fear of touch?
On a side note, the psychiatrist I used to visit for short term disability make a statement like, "Overcoming intimacy issues is extremely hard for people." He said it with a pessimistic tone like he was trying to prevent me from getting my hopes up that I could overcome this. I choose not to listen to the pessimism of others. It's a shame it had to come from someone on my treatment team. My therapist, on the other hand, is a ray of sunshine who is always cheering me on! I am going to share my thoughts with her and work on some of the details together.
My other triggers, are having to trust people in general and experience poor or confusing communication. Those triggers are more complex and I'm at a loss on how to tackle those - that's probably another thread.
