• last year
“When I healed vaginismus, I got my life back.” Brut talks to Dr. Taru Jindal about vaginismus and how it affects relationships.

🧑‍⚕️ : Proactive For Her
Transcript
00:00When I got vaginismus, it was not just penetration that was taken away from me,
00:05I lost my whole life to it. And when I healed vaginismus, I did not just get back penetration,
00:11I felt like my whole life came back to me. I think the maximum sex education that we received was
00:17how do periods happen in reproductive system, contraception and STDs. So it was all about
00:23period pain and how to not get pregnant and how to not have an STD. So it was all about what not
00:29to do or scared us about many aspects around sexuality. Pure based sex ed is the root of
00:37vaginismus. Vaginismus is a condition in which women find it difficult to allow vagina penetration
00:48of anything. It could be their own finger when they are trying to put a tampon or a cup,
00:52it could be their doctor's finger, it could be an instrument or it could be a penis during a
00:58sexual situation, even though this woman really, really wants to do it. We don't have a vocabulary
01:03around this condition. And hence, it takes a lot of time for her to even start speaking about it.
01:08And hence, there's a lot of delay in her receiving treatment. This girl goes into a sense of
01:15silence and withdraws from the society because she starts to feel that she's defective in some way,
01:21she's inadequate in some way, because we are all taught to believe that this is one of our main
01:27role as a woman in our society. And if we can't do that, then who are we? Causes of vaginismus are
01:34usually in the growing up years of this girl. If this girl has grown up with messages like
01:41sex is painful, sex is shameful, overexposure to news of sexual abuse or sexual assault,
01:48fear of pregnancy, ignorance around her own genitals or any other childhood trauma that
01:55she may have faced like witnessing domestic violence at home, abuse from parents or teachers,
02:00bullying at school. All of these conditions are sort of seeds that are sown in the psyche of this
02:08mind. And later on, this helps or this causes the mind to send signals of fear and threat to
02:16the vagina. So, the cause is in fact psychological and not biological. I think the maximum sex
02:24education that we received was, they spoke to us about periods and how do periods happen in
02:30reproductive system or condoms and STDs, contraception and STDs. So, it was all about
02:37period pain and how to not get pregnant and how to not have an STD. So, it was all about what not to
02:43do or scared us about many aspects around sexuality. So, fear-based sex ed is the root of vaginismus,
02:52right? We don't want that. We want pleasure-based sex ed. We want to tell this girl what she has.
02:58She knows, right? She has two eyes and nose and a mouth. Why should she not know what is her,
03:04what is the capacity of sexual pleasure she has? The impact of vaginismus is not just on
03:10sexual penetration. The impact can actually crawl into other areas of her life, like
03:16she even wants to go for gynecological examination, but she's not able to do it. She wants to use a
03:21menstrual cup. She's not able to do it. So, this goes from becoming a penetrative issue to
03:26a real lifestyle issue in her life. It's very, very important to address the relationship dynamics
03:33when the vaginismus has gone on for more than a few years. We have seen loss of desire,
03:41loss of libido, inability to get an erection, fights in the marriage or fights in the relationship,
03:50both staying as friends in the relationship, but no sexual intimacy anymore. We have also seen
03:55things leading to separation and divorces. One of our clients with whom I have worked had said
04:03that when I got vaginismus, it was not just penetration that was taken away from me.
04:08I lost my whole life to it. And when I healed vaginismus, I did not just get back penetration.
04:14I felt like my whole life came back to me. The first step is obviously doing a deep dive
04:22into her past and trying to fetch out those reasons why she got vaginismus in the first place,
04:28because let's realize the root is in the mind. So, we start working with some kind of emotional
04:34healing. The first step also includes just helping her sit with her body, help her literally look at
04:40her whole body and her vulva and try to embrace it, try to accept what she has and try to actually
04:46find beauty in that. Some amount of emotional healing has happened. We start with something
04:51called as vaginal training, training your mind and your vaginal muscles to relax in presence
04:58of an external object at the vagina. Instead of starting directly with the penis, we first start
05:03with something called as vaginal trainers, which are also called as vaginal dilators.
05:08They are of graduated sizes, going up to a size that is as big as an erect penis.
05:13But we make it a very gentle process by teaching her a lot of relaxation techniques,
05:18techniques to make this a pain-free process. We also include pleasure in this because our whole
05:25goal here is not just to have painless penetration, but also to make it pleasurable.
05:30And we move on to the third step, wherein the partner starts to get involved with her,
05:35in case she has a partner, in which we start to first build a lot of emotional intimacy.
05:41Then we go into sensate focus and partner dilation. The last step is, of course,
05:45vaginal penetration. We take it in a very trauma sensitive, in a very gentle way
05:51and ensuring that the whole process is painless, pleasurable and she feels supported.