What you need to know about About Painful Sex.
Getting professional help is one important step you can take to improve your sexuality lifestyle and relationships. With guidance from a sex expert, you will be able to develop a better understanding on how psychology impacts sexual performance in the bedroom.
Aside from gaining information, there are various techniques which work that include motivation and hypnotherapy. With the advancements of technology, these techniques can be used in the comfort of your home.
Hypnotherapy is commonly used to encourage and empower people to make constructive changes, in a step to develop new styles of behaviour in attempt to change how thoughts have been networked together. It is often used for people who have phobias, ingrained negative thinking patterns, illogical worries, stress related problems and overwhelming feelings which may bring on feelings of pain.
Within people’s sexual lifestyles these topics may include problems with erection problems, achieving astounding orgasms, become sexually empowered, manage painful sex and the prevention of premature ejaculation.
Dr Janet Hall specialises in hypnotherapy which helps people who experience the symptoms of painful sex.
About Painful Sex
Health conditions where people experience pain during sex include:
- Vaginismus: Vaginismus is the uncontrollable spasms of the vaginal muscles which can cause intense levels of pain for varying lengths of time and which can stop penetration during intercourse. The male partner often says :It feels like my penis is hitting a brick wall”.
- Vulvodynia: Vulvodynia is a chronic illness where a women experiences pain in her external organs including the clitoris, labia and vaginal opening. Medical professionals are often able to explain what causes it. It may be nerve damage under the skin as often it all looks healthy. However it is super sensitive and the best test of it is to hold a cotton bud to the skin. If this causes pain – it’s vulvadynia!
- Dyspareunia: Dyspareunia is painful sex which is caused by medical and psychological reasons. Some people who have Dyspareunia experience the pain on the genitlia and some may experience the pain deeper in the pelvic area.
- Menopause: Menopause is a natural stage in a women’s life where her estrogen levels lowers to the point where menstruation stops completely. It is often experienced by women aged between 40 to 61 but can also happen to women in their 20s and 30s. During Menopause the vaginal tissue may thin out which can women more prone to experience irritation and pain during penetrative sex.
In hypnotherapy, the hypnotist will induce an altered state of deep relaxation (it is not a state of deep sleep) through talking to the person with a soothing voice. During this time the person’s breathing and pulse rate slows down.
They may still be mindful of what is happening around them and are in complete control of their body, so they will not do anything they don’t want to do.
Whilst they are in this state the trained professional provides suggestions which are tailored to their needs. The method uses psychological and communication techniques so it works on a deep subconscious level. It will only work if the hypnotised person has consented to accept them. You cannot be placed into hypnosis against your will which is why it is often called self-hypnosis. Hypnosis is most likely to work on you have a decent imagination, enjoy reading a book or watching movies and you have sturdy attention levels.
We have spoken to Dr Janet Hall, a Clinical Psychologist and Hypnotherapist about how her work impacts people’s sexual lifestyles especially people who experience painful sex.
Tell me about yourself
Dr. Janet Hall: My work in private practice, writing, media, work-shops and public speaking is always aimed at helping people to learn user-friendly ways of understanding how to change behaviour to achieve happy, resilient lives as individuals, partners and families.
I became interested in the challenge of working with adults and teens about sexual behaviour and healthy partnering and have recorded seventeen audios and written two paperback books and fifteen ebooks on sexuality (Sex-Wise Teens and Sex-Life Solutions). These all sell online at amazon and audible as well as my own online shop at www.drjanethall.com.
In my book – Sex-life Solutions (Finch Publishing, 2004) – I explain that sexual difficulties in couple relationships are common, however they can be readily overcome.
Often, the difficult part for couples is talking about them together. This needs to happen, as all too often these problems can lead to the breakdown of the relationship or limit a person’s ability to have intimate relations at all.
Sex-Life Solutions discusses ways to overcome common anxieties, problems with performance or rejection, and patterns from the past that can be a block to a happier relationship. The book addresses the differences between men and women in terms of how they behave, think and feel about such personal issues.
The book is a practical guide that offers step-by-step directions for talking together and solving sexual difficulties. With the help of case studies it examines:
- How to deal with the difficulties created by different perceptions and anxieties – which include misunderstandings about sex and negative judgements of masturbation.
- How women can deal with specific anxieties about sex, problems with orgasms, and the fear of painful sex.
- How men can deal with their specific anxieties about sex, erection and ejaculation difficulties.
- How to overcome mismatched libido (desire discrepancy), the problems couples experience due to limiting beliefs about sex, and difficulties caused by our busy or stressful lifestyles.
I aim to give people confidence to confront problems in this intimate area, deal with any anxieties and learn how to feel safe with their sexuality.
What is your inspiration for becoming a clinical psychology and hypnotherapist?
Psychology fascinates me because it facilitates discovery of ways to understand learning, behaviour and how to help people prevent, manage and solve problems with their lives.
I love to use hypnosis as an adjunctive tool where it greatly assists time-valued outcomes. You can program for success without having to get out into the real world and make mistakes! Sometimes hypnosis is like a magic wand!
What did you study?
I have a Masters Degree in Psychology and a PhD.
What are your favourite quotes that inspire you?
“What will you do with this one and only precious life?” Mary Oliver
“Every day’s a new day – a chance to wipe the slate clean and start again.”
“Positive thinking may not work every time, but negative thinking does.”
My favorite quote is my signature on my emails:
“You’ve got to sing as if you don’t need the money
You’ve got to love as if you’ll never get hurt
You’ve got to dance as if there’s nobody watching
It’s got to come from the heart if you want it to work!”
I like quotes which help me move forward with excitement for positive living.
Is Hypnotherapy what you see in the movies? For example, the hypnotist waving a pocket watch in front of the patients face saying “You are getting very sleepy”.
That is stage hypnosis where there is smoke and mirrors and not at all like medical hypnosis which is what qualified professionals use.
Explain what is in your hypnotherapy?
Dr Jan’s Hypnosis Benefits
- Dr Jan’s sex-therapy tips help “prime” and endorse the conscious mind with healthy sex facts.
- Hypnosis then helps the unconscious mind heal any past inaccurate or painful programming and then reprogram for a successful sex-life.
- The body is then free to be relaxed and ready for arousal and experience sensational sex.
Too often we have been conditioned to view our sexual bodies as less than perfect. Because of this we have to use corrective imagery and sensory awakening to restore proper feeling and functions. Hypnosis trains you to change your inner view and explore your real feeling. Negative memories, no matter how distant in the past, have a tendency to be the cause of reduced pleasurable sensations because of the extreme vulnerability of sexuality to negative thinking.
What does hypnotherapy feel like to the patient?
It feels like a state of relaxation where the body is so comfortable the mind can begin to imagine just about anything the hypnotist suggests.
What types of suggestions will you make to help women who experience painful sex?
Sex should be a pleasurable experience which you anticipate with delight.
Hypnosis can help you to focus on the pleasure and relax to enjoy the intimate connection with your partner that you deserve.
Hypnosis can help reduce painful sex by distracting you from fear.
Patients with anxiety disorders frequently become absorbed in the fear state. Their anxiety responses generate further thoughts concerning the danger posed by the symptoms and their inability to cope.
Hypnosis can provide an adaptive and useful method of reducing this reactivity to the anxiety-producing situation and to the symptoms that may follow.
In my audio recording called How to have Pain Free Sex through Hypnosis there is a beautiful scene where I take you into a forest where you come to a lovely leafy glade and bathe beneath a waterfall to take away all your upset about discomfort in sex.
You wait for your lover to come and then you enjoy pleasurable love-making with satisfaction.
How many sessions of hypnotherapy do you need for it to begin working? Do you need to do maintenance sessions?
The number of sessions varies and the hypnotherapist can never really predict how many someone will need. However hypnosis can often make positive changes in 2 or 3 sessions if the person is motivated.
The hypnotherapist will often make a recording for the person so they can continue to listen to the positive suggestions on a daily basis –just before going to sleep can be a great time to listen.
Personal motivation can be a strong impacting factor on people’s sexual lifestyles.
What types of thoughts would you recommend people tell themselves?
I am a good person. I do the best I can in all situations. I deserve to enjoy life and experience the sexual pleasure which is my birthright.
I am good enough. I don’t have to compare myself with others because always there will be someone who is better and someone who is worse than me.
Does telling ourselves positive thoughts on a daily basis change our thinking pattern?
Positive thinking is wonderful to lift our spirits and help us
“turn lemons into lemonade”.
We may need to write positive thoughts down and memorize them and say them over and over for them to really change our thinking. That’s why a hypnotherapist’s recording can be so useful.
Australian Zen Hypnotherapist Valerie Davis.
Meet Sexpert, our full-time sex blogger! With a background in women’s lifestyle blogs, she brings expertise to Adultsmart and runs Good Girl Guide too.