As far as the everyday usually goes – at work, in the gym, in our personal lives – we’re told to grit our teeth and crack on. Push through, compartmentalise, keep going. By enduring something uncomfortable, it can only get easier, right?
As we all know, this isn’t the case with vaginismus. Forcing something when it hurts just makes us even less excited to do it again.
However, instead of seeing this as a negative, I think it’s full license to only do what feels good. After ‘soldiering on’ through painful penetration for years, I decided it was time to try a kind of reverse-psychology on myself. What about saying no to pain full stop? If the smallest dilator was fine, I kept going. If the next one wasn’t comfortable, I stopped. Rather than delaying progress, I found that dilating without pain made it easier to move up the ranks.
Sex is supposed to be fun – and the more fun it is, the more your body will respond and remember.
Over to Kate…
Forcing dilators is the opposite of what you need to be doing. Yes, you might need to insert them with some gentle pressure, and you do have to push and guide them in, but this should be gently and at your own pace.
With vaginismus the muscles tensing is part of the body’s response to perceived threat, whether that is fear, anxiety, fear of pain, the impact of trauma, feeling nervous that doesn’t really matter – what is important is that something about the situation is making you feel uncomfortable and your brain decides, and your body responds appropriately.
So, you have to think that if you are already nervous, and then you force something, then that is going to feed into the idea that this is something involuntary or something that you shouldn’t be relaxed about. For so many women they just want to get to the end of the process and the tendency is to rush through using the dilators, but the best way to use them is being completely comfortable and relaxed with one size, before moving onto the next. Then if you are struggling you only go back a step, which is encouraging as so many fear the ‘back to square one’ idea of a struggling with the next size up.
Forcing dilators, will cause discomfort and potentially pain, and this isn’t helpful. So, take your time. When talking about dilators with those I work with I break them down into parts – just the tip, and then into thirds, or a half and then the whole thing. You don’t have to use the whole dilator at once. Your confidence is as important as the physical progress you are making, and the two aspects of dilating massively feed into one another. If you feel that you aren’t making the progress that you want to, and are getting frustrated or want to test / force yourself, then give yourself a few days break and distance.
Come back to them without the pressure to get any further than you did before. As always, use loads of lube, relax yourself, and run the dilator around your vulva and along the entrance to your vagina, gently hold the dilator against the entrance to your vagina, (I personally recommend the Sh! dilators which have the optional vibrator which you could have on for this part) and gently push it in. Then you can hold it there for a bit, and then push a bit further, pause and take a few breathes and do the same again.
Don’t rush or force the process. The more positive the relationship with your body, the dilators and the process of dilating, the more you will notice improvement.