How Cuddling, EDMR, and Touch Therapy Helped Me Understand My Sexual Assault Trauma

My Healing Journey After Sexual Assault

That house of cards came tumbling down exactly two months after the attack, when I found myself explaining to a male masseuse, through sobs, that I didn’t want to be touched by a man. The episode was so jolting that it forced me to get honest with myself about my situation: I spent nights in bed sobbing to the point of exhaustion—once for 10 straight hours. I was drinking every night, usually by myself, to get through the evenings.

In additional to traditional talk therapy, we also tried eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy , a form of psychotherapy created to treat PTSD. Over the course of several months, I’d recall traumatic mental images of the attack while following a light with my eyes, then reframe those images with new, hopeful narratives.

When I arrived to the session, my cuddle therapist led me to a soft futon bed covered in pillows. We’d talked on the phone previously so she could better understand what I was hoping to get from our work. We went slow, starting with breathing exercises. Then hand-holding. About fifteen minutes into the session, we started to cuddle. My apprehension relaxed, my jaw softened, my heart rate slowed. Finally, she moved behind me, pressing her cheek between my shoulder blades.

Three months later, I heard about a healer who releases emotional trauma from the body through intentional touch using a therapy called Body Memory Recall. BMR is a form of reiki developed in the West that, like cuddle therapy, hinges on the idea that the body stores, and is capable of releasing, painful memories. In it, a patient is touched very lightly on specific areas of the body in order to release the trauma stored there.

The part of me that insisted I never make myself vulnerable to a man again was the part that most needed to feel safe with one.

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