Blow Job Therapy and the Amygdala

If you like science and sex, you might find this post of interest. If you or your partner has ever had a sexual trauma, you’ll likely find this post invaluable.

Here’s the science part:

There’s a part of the brain called the amygdala. Its purpose is to function as the body’s central alarm system. It can gather information from several routes; from emotions, from thoughts and from sensory input. It also gathers memories of how you’ve responded to fear, perceived threats and actual threats since infancy. It is believed that it may also contain traces of your prenatal and birth experience as well.

Once this part of your brain is conditioned to certain emotional and physiological responses when you feel anxious or threatened, its learning is nearly indelible.

What’s interesting about all this is that this part of the brain can spur a cautionary or fear response in you based on fragmentary information such as a stray scent, sensation or thought. You can actually go into a full flight or fight response (read panic, freezing or defensive aggression here) just based on something so little as a sound you once learned to associate with a painful event. And this response can happen in the blink of an eye.

That’s because the amygdala can bypass the cerebral cortex which would have sifted all the information that could be gleaned from your environment and come up with a measured response to the sound, which may or may not have anything to do with your past experience. Say the sound was a clicking sound. I can tell you that I still freak out to the sound of a zippo lighter being used. Ugh! I hate that. Anything that sounds like it causes me to cringe just a little. I used to leave a room if I heard even a little part of that special combination of sounds in a full panic attack.

This fear response is a very good thing that happens to us. We would not have survived and evolved as a species without it. We still wouldn’t despite our civilized lifestyles in most of the world, as life is a dangerous event in many silly and grand ways. We can trip and fall in front of a bus just as easily as our ancestors might have not noticed the bear in the bushes as he walked by.

So this is a grand plan for us to survive…but we can all agree that there are some instances where this survival response doesn’t always tell us the truth when danger mimics safe experience or vice versa.

Now here’s the sex part:

So now the juicy stuff…the sex. There’s lots of sounds, scents, sensations and thoughts that are similar between consensual and non-consensual sex. Are you with me so far…? If you recall what I just told you, it will be easy to understand then why the amygdala is firing off danger signals in response to sex with a much loved partner if there was ever a sexual trauma.

It is not anyone’s fault that this response is misfiring in wrong situations. This is literally how the brain is made to respond to signals its learned may be dangerous. This is a primal activity and must continue if you are to survive.

Now…here’s the part that can change things:

I’m not going to lay the gory details of my sexual trauma on you…but I’ll say this much. It was an oral rape.

So now we all know how much my husband or any other lover I have had or will have would love a blow job from me….and as you may imagine there was a time when I didn’t exactly get all bubbly happy about putting that on the sex menu. No matter how much I loved who was in my bed, I didn’t want to give any blow jobs.

But I love sex. I want sex. I wanted freedom from that past experience, so I wanted to find a way to actually enjoy a blow job, not just tolerate it, all the while barely able to not be sick to my stomach at the whole idea of it; never mind doing it.

That involves some retraining. It involves adding in some additional input to the memory storied in the amygdala. I have to add the information that a particular scent, sound or sensation does not always mean danger.

Now this part of the brain generally learns about fear responses, yes? Well you can be sure that I had some fear when I went about trying to have a blow job to my husband…so you can be sure that my brain continued to learn about blow jobs and what was or wasn’t danger when it comes to a blow job.

Your brain can be taught this about whatever your sexual trauma is too.

Now I knew that dealing with sexual trauma is a bit much to deal with all alone. Its also very hard on family and friends to have lots of details. Its hard because they have emotions about it naturally. They love us after all. The sad fact is, the survivor frankly already has too much personal emotion about what happened to themselves to be at all handy about family emotions…and they will have alot of them if they know details. Generalities are enough to know. Its very important that loved ones do know because we all need loving understanding. And they have the right to offer it to us. But its just better to do details and problem solving with an unbiased third party. So I saw a counselor.

And we did Blow Job Therapy. (Not in the actual sense of the word, its a figure of speech…she just taught me how to break down blow jobs into separate sensations and activities so that, slow but sure, I could reclaim any part of the sexual experience of a blow job that I chose to reclaim)

What I call Blow Job Therapy is really desensitization. My initial mission, and I chose to take it on *smiles*, was to discover what part about dealing with an erect penis near my face was the least frightening to me.

I discovered that it was the least frightening if my partner was laying down beside me prone on his back and wasn’t waving it at me nor asking me to do anything with it at all. Not even mind fucking me about it. Yup. It was definitely important that he not be mindfucking me about his cock in my mouth too.

That was the thing that I was the least frightened about, so for weeks, I would just practice being beside my partner while he was erect and laying prone, and neutral sexually with me. This period of time, gave me time to deal with the scent, sound and energy of an erect penis without having to do anything about it at all. The fear went away when the amygdala stopped making these particular fragments of sensation something to respond to in fear.

I still have a mild fear response when a new man becomes a lover. Because his scents, sounds and sexual presence are all new to me. My brain is not sure if its okay or not…so I take it slow, usually not offering a blow job the first time. I take the time to let my brain realize that I can trust my instincts to pick safe men to have sex with.

I let my impulses guide me with the next step in the therapy. If I recall correctly, I believe that the next step was to touch until I wanted to stop. It was important that it be okay no matter when it was that I needed to stop touching my partner’s penis, so I had to do this therapy only when he was in the mood to not be frustrated by my withdrawal and wouldn’t take it personally….because it was crucial that I teach my brain that I would not be forced by a man with an erect penis again even if he was very aroused. This part took alot longer. It requires alot of willing participation from a partner that needs to also take breaks in order to deal with the situation and keep frustration out of things.

And have you noticed yet that at this stage, I haven’t even got anywhere near a blow job? This stage took about a year.

Blow jobs didn’t come into the picture until after I was okay with a man having an orgasm beside me again without being really freaked out….and they didn’t come until after I could be okay with just kissing an erect penis affectionately and know for sure that it wouldn’t be forced into my face even a little bit. When I learned that, then I would linger on the kissing and use my tongue for a bit.

Finally, I gave a blow job for awhile. I always stopped whenever the fear response got over what I’d rate as a five on a scale of 1-10. As soon as it did, I stopped. Slow but sure, I taught my brain to question that original input from the rape and I taught it to stop firing danger when I give a blow job.

Its been about 16 years since I began that therapy and one has to remember that for about half that time I was bedridden and about half of the time that was left, I hadn’t the time or the inclination for many blow jobs in the midst of dealing with crazy kids. So perhaps for four years in all, I did this therapy…even though it was stretched out over far longer. When I had the time and inclination, we’d work on some other part of the trauma scenario and I’d master it and expand on what I could do to be creative and fun about blow jobs.

These days the final frontier is to not need my hands any more to control the depth of thrust, to let a man ejaculate in my face, and to not freak out about taps on my gag reflex.

So…in practicing for that I’d likely start giving a blow job leaving my hands on his belly for as long as I could stand it until I am finally at the spot where I could just be bound and unable to control the depth of thrust. I’d likely let him cum on my chest near my face until I thought I could try on my face. The last one, I’ve not figured out how to manage yet, but I will once I finally feel enough desire to do so. Its the last on my list because its what causes the most fear in me.

This is how ptsd must be handled if you are to gain control of fear responses and resume a normal lifestyle….no matter the source of the trauma, whether its battle or sexual assault. You can learn to manage it given some time…but it always requires facing fear, over and over again until you learn to manage it. The one thing, not to do is to force yourself into reliving the trauma because that only reinforces the input from the amygdala. It would have retarded my progress had I just kept giving blow jobs despite detesting it. I could have made myself do it and I’d have eventually learned to ignore the fear responses, supressing them. But I would not have learned to love them. Loving them is vital to me. This is about my sexual freedom. Adoring the cock of the man I love is one of the joys of my sexual experience. It should be something I adore, not just tolerate. And any man worth his salt wouldn’t want to be tolerated, he’d want to be worshiped and eagerly slurped up…yes?

Blow Job Therapy…doesn’t that sound fun? *grins* It sure does to me. *winks* It takes me to my heart. Having my sexuality be free of such ugly things is a source of happy to me. Each moment I am reveling in the arms of a man, hedonistically enjoying every touch and lick, every thrust, I am more of me….and I know again that nothing was stolen from me. Its all mine….It sometimes amuses me to kneel before a cock and think to myself…”Mmmm….that’s my lolipop….my all day lolipop…”and I pull him closer with a smile…