How to Help Your Vaginismus
So you have vaginismus and you’d like to, well, not have vaginismus! So how do you make it go away? Is there a cure for vaginismus? Let’s dive into it.
Here are some things you can do to help your vaginismus:
Understand Your Contributing Factors
You don’t need to know all the details of exactly why and how and when your symptoms began to occur. However, having a general idea of possible causes contributing to your symptoms is helpful to know so that you can best address them.
For example, if your symptoms stem from sexual trauma, then knowing this can help you heal and guide your treatment. You can make sure you have a mental health therapist on board and work towards bringing safety to your body and your pelvic floor. Compared to if there was a medical cause or scar tissue to address, then you’d want to include addressing that medical concern or scar tissue in your plan.
Build Your Team
You don’t have to do this alone. Build a team to support you and guide you through the process. Some people that may be helpful on your team: a pelvic floor therapist, pelvic health coach, mental health therapist, sex therapist, gynecologist, supportive friends, community of others in similar situations.
Include Your Nervous System!!
This one is maybe most important. Your nervous system is your body’s control center. It’s helping you interpret your environment, decide if something is a threat, and telling your body how to respond. Very frequently with vaginismus, there is a layer of fear involved. We have to communicate safety to the body and respect what our body is trying to communicate to us.
So if we just use dilators (see below), and just trying putting them in the vagina without intentionally being present, regulating anxiety that comes up, moving at a pace that your body is consenting to, and more then there’s a good chance it’s not going to be an effective or positive experience.
Being intentional with nervous system practices, allows us to better address fear, anxiety, shame, trauma, and pain. Just using these practices alone can help you decrease your pain response.
The Use of Dilators
Dilators are an excellent tool to allow for increasing sizes of insertion through working on your brain body connection. They are helping stretch the pelvic floor muscles to release tension. However, more importantly, they help retrain the brain to let go of a tension response at increasing pressure and to release fear and anxiety around that pressure.
Pelvic Floor Muscle Release
Part of this happens with dilation, as we are getting release of these muscles with dilators. However we can do more specific trigger point release with a pelvic wand, use of fingers, or other tools. This helps release tight/tender spots in the muscles and communicate with the brain on more specific spots for release. Sometimes a release in one spot can release tension in a totally different area! (remember, the whole body is connected). We can also get release through stretches, breathing, and daily awareness practices.
Changing Your Relationship With Sex and Your Genitals
This can especially be the case for you if you’re carrying feelings of shame, anxiety, or fear around your genitals or sex. When we have a more positive relationship with sex and the genitals, the muscles and brain can be more receptive to the activities associated with them. This can be done with the help of a mental health therapist or the right sexual or pelvic health provider.
Pharmacological Therapy
This could be the use of muscle relaxants (such as botox), local anesthetics (such as lidocaine), or anxiety medication. More research is still needed for the effective use of these methods. However for some, they can be helpful to aid in the vaginismus treatment journey. Now everyone is different of course, and these methods are not for everyone, however, pharmacological methods are often better used when in conjunction with the above methods (pelvic floor therapy and mental health therapy). To simply just use a muscle relaxant or numbing agent without follow up or treatment of the body during that time period, the symptom relief, if any, may easily not last.
So there is not one “cure” for vaginismus, however there are plenty of methods and strategies that have successfully brought those struggling with vaginismus lasting relief.
Ready to feel relief from your vaginismus and looking for more support?
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