Shame and Hope: Sexual Anorexia Part III

Vocabulary: 

Theist- One who believes in God with a textual narrative, The Bible.

Meta Theist-One who believes in spirituality without textual narrative.

Sexual Anorexic- One who feels the terror of sex resulting in avoidance of physical and emotional intimacy. (SX)

The video entitled, The Still Face Experiment, illustrates the power of connection and conversely the shame of disconnection. Did you see it?  When the mother emotionally hid from her baby, the child went through anxiety and finally a meltdown into shame.

Shame and the sexual anorexic (SX) weave a tapestry. Fear networks crafted through traumatic events or childhood experiences leave the SX with reservoirs of shame.  Unattended by healthy conversation and relationship shame becomes toxic and integrates among fear networks causing feelings of terror and avoidance of sexuality.

Shame hides. We become partners who cannot be transparent, we lose empathy, relationships lose their richness and…intimacy.

Patrick Carnes says this in his ground breaking work, “Sexual Anorexia”:

“Sex seems to be the area of life that most deeply touches our personal issues. Whatever problems we face in life sooner or later impact our sexuality. If we are chronically angry, the anger will eventually become sexualized. If we cannot tolerate closeness, we will fail at sexual intimacy. If we need to be in control, passion will elude us. If we have experienced trauma, we may repeat it compulsively through how we express our sexuality. If we are perfectionistic, sexual response will elude us. And, if we are so overextended and driven that all of our important relationships are abbreviated, sex will seem brief and overrated. To put it in another way, we can hide with sex, we can hide from sex, but we cannot be fully ourselves sexually and hide.”(Carnes, 285-291)

I love that statement, we cannot be fully ourselves sexually and hide. He speaks of shame. How do we unravel the tapestry of shame and sexuality?

For theist clients and friends of faith, the Book of Genesis Chapters 1-4 speaks clearly of sexuality and shame. Post pride and failure Adam and Eve make themselves clothing and hide from the presence of God. Loving Creator seeks them out and surgically addresses their shame with truth, the gift of pain, and then…He covers them. God covers shame. For my meta theist friends, your higher power must have the capability to remove your toxic shame, or your higher power isn’t and shame becomes part of the system of fear.  How do you assess the ability of your spirituality to unweave the tapestry of self hatred and shame?

Let’s talk, reflect richly on truth, accept pain as a gift, and release your shame to the One who rewires fear with love and tender compassion. 

I am a grateful follower of Jesus. He is safe. Jesus, single and celibate with neither sexual scandal nor political agenda, experienced no shame.  Intimacy with God the Father wove the fabric of His narrative. The death of Jesus on the cross bore the full weight of our story of shame. He is my higher power with the ability to cover that which I hide. I love this hope.

Notes:

Carnes, Patrick J. (2009-08-07). Sexual Anorexia: Overcoming Sexual Self-Hatred (Kindle Locations 285-291). Hazelden Publishing. Kindle Edition.