Healing religious sexual trauma Helping you recover from fear-based religious sexual teachings.

It’s been ten, tweny, or more years since you first heard the church’s teachings about saving yourself until marriage, purity, abstinence, and the importance of your virginity. You still feel guilt, stress, or shame about sex. Being close and intimate with your partner just doesn’t feel right. You might not be able to relax and sex may hurt, which can drive more shame and guilt. Your partner probably feels unwanted or distanced from you, and could wonder what they’re doing wrong.

The faith of my fathers hurt me

For people who grew up in authoritarian or strict religious environments, rigid messaging that our sexuality is evil can delay healthy sexual development and desires, especially since it was delivered “with love and in our best interest of saving our soul”. These messages, reinforced through youth and into young adulthood, demand that our natural sexual urges and bodily sensations will lead us to hell teaches us to distrust, repress, and demonize our sexual selves. Religion warns us to avoid popular music, television, movies, and the internet that indoctrinate us that sex is something we should engage in now.

You may be confused trying to comprehend how these feelings are so bad when “God made us as we are”. You may feel additional shame and alienation from your partner due to your internal conflict and doubt that you may suffer from religious sexual trauma because you were never physically abused in the church.

This unwanted religious sexual dysfunction brings stress to intimate relationships that may continue or exacerbate the pain, guilt, and shame you learned in your youth.

Accomplished sex therapists Chris Wilhoite and Caitlin Bovard know the subject of religious sexual trauma and the effect of strict religious environments on women's sexuality. Chris wrote her Master’s thesis on body image, religiosity, and sexual shame.

Connection, communication, intimacy, and sex are the core of our human experience. When things aren’t working in this realm of our lives, it has a profound impact on the overall quality of our entire life. Littleton Couples Counseling believes in a holistic approach to brain-body mental and emotional health, understanding that the body remembers events and feelings long after the mind has forgotten. Our counseling center is one of the few that integrates Reiki, pelvic PT, and psychopharmacology in addition to couples counseling, sex therapy, individual therapy and adult ADHD and autism coaching. We even have a gynecologist in residence to assist with female sexual health. Our psychiatric nurse practitioner is fully-versed in ADHD and provides our clients with medication management.

Our providers work with individuals and couples in all relationship structures including traditional relationships, open relationships, ethical non-monogamous relationships and consensual non-monogamous relationships, poly relationships, swinging and lifestyle relationships, monogamous relationships, casual relationships, and/or long-term relationships. Our providers are kink-positive, poly-positive, and swinger-positive and work from a position of judgment-free therapy and shame-free therapy. Littleton Couples Counseling clinicians understand and work with trauma, sexual trauma, religious trauma, religious sexual trauma, and faith crisis counseling and are sensitive to the beliefs of individual faiths.

Littleton Couples Counseling offers both in-office/in-person and Zoom/teletherapy counseling appointments for religious sexual trauma to accommodate your busy schedule, with offices both in Littleton and in the DTC. Littleton Couples Counseling provides religious sexual trauma therapy in communities throughout Denver, DTC, Cherry Hills Village, Cherry Creek, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, Lakewood, Englewood, Parker, Castle Rock, Castle Pines, Evergreen, Morrison, Greenwood Village, Centennial, Thornton, Arvada, Golden, WashPark, and surrounding areas.

“May the flowers remind me why the rain was so necessary.” —Xan Oku

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Signs of religious sexual trauma

You feel shame or guilt when you think about, desire, or experience sexual pleasure. The never-ending demand for purity the church taught you all your life could be expressed in the confusing statement "sex is bad, sex is bad, sex is bad: save it for marriage". Just having a marriage ceremony can’t undo a lifetime of indoctrination that any sexual act— let alone even thinking about sex!— will send you to hell. It’s no wonder your mind and body won’t allow you to enjoy sex.

You are ashamed of your kinks and sexual fantasies. The pastor taught you any sex was bad outside of marriage. Some religions teach that sex is only for procreation. Most religions struggle to endorse healthy sexuality and preach that any sexual acts other than vanilla sex is an abomination before God and being kinky is a sin. Religious trauma may lead you to believe that your sexual fantasies and kinks are unacceptable, dangerous, shameful, disgusting, or deviant. Honest introspection and open communication between you and your partner can lead to greater internal acceptance that you are sexually healthy.

You find it hard to express your needs in the bedroom. Many religious denominations preach a patriarchal system that subjugates the woman and places the man’s needs before hers. This often extends into the bedroom where expressing her desires may feel like a religious offense and they make you unlovable and undesirable. For those who struggle with religious trauma, any form of sexual pleasure often feels sinful to acknowledge, and communicating your desires to your partner could feel impossible, even in the safest of relationships.

Don’t go it alone

One of the most enduring pains of growing up in a rigid religious environment is taking the first step towards a healthy sexuality. Littleton Couples Counseling specializes in relationships and healthy sexuality. Don’t settle for a therapist who primarily works with individuals when you need a religious-trauma informed sex therapist who can help you both navigate debilitating and destructive sexual religious trauma.

About religious sexual trauma therapy

Religious sexual trauma counseling and religious sexual trauma therapy are no different than any other type of therapy. In religious sexual trauma counseling, we discuss your thoughts, desires, perceptions, and feelings. We develop new understanding and goals. During religious sexual trauma counseling and religious sexual trauma therapy, there is never any nudity or sexual contact between therapist and client or between clients.

Communities we serve

Littleton Couples Counseling offers both in-office/in-person and Zoom/teletherapy counseling appointments to accommodate your busy schedule, with offices both in Littleton and in the DTC. Littleton Couples Counseling provides kink-positive sex therapy, sex therapy, and adult ADHD coaching in communities throughout Denver, DTC, WashPark, Cherry Hills Village, Cherry Creek, Littleton, Highlands Ranch, Lakewood, Englewood, Parker, Golden, Castle Rock, Castle Pines, Evergreen, Morrison, Greenwood Village, Thornton, Centennial, Arvada, and surrounding areas.