Episode 118: The Role of Early Imprints in Sexuality

Suzanne Noble: I'm very excited to welcome our new sponsor, Higher Nature, who have created Rekindle, which I'm currently trying out and is working a treat. A 100% natural libido-enhancing supplement for women, which contains clinically backed ingredients to give your sex life a boost. And who doesn't want that? Hi, this is Suzanne Noble, and you're listening to Sex Advice for Seniors. And I've had so many guests on recently from the States, like just loads of people. And, and there is a certain sensibility with people who are American therapists, sexologists, doctors, quite, you know, quite out there. My last guest especially was so bold. She was bold in that big American blonde way. But my new guest today is all the way in the Netherlands, and we've never had anybody from the Netherlands. And I suspect that the— your sensibility and everything will be quite different. I'd like to welcome Maya Kirsten, who works as a psychosexual therapist. And yeah, welcome to the show, Maya.

Thank you, Suzanne Noble. I'm very happy you invited me.

Yeah, we almost didn't make it, but we got there. So I'm curious to know, we had a little bit of a chat and it's something that we've actually not discussed, but I know it's something I've spent a considerable amount of time thinking about, especially as I wander through the world of alternative communities and I discover people with all different kinds of kinks and attitudes and different ways that they become aroused is around that sexual blueprint that starts often, you know, when we're quite young. And I know that's an area that you specialize on. So I'm really curious to know, you know, how does that develop?

Yeah, in fact, we can start at the conception. I mean, the way the parents made love to receive a child, already influences your sexual energy. And we get information also from the DNA. They discovered that trauma, for instance, is visible in the DNA of the father. So we get all kinds of stuff even before we are born, imprints about, yeah, how to deal with the lustful stream in the body. And in our culture, It's— there are many conflicts in this. We are raised with this idea of that it's not allowed, that we should split the upper body from the lower body. And yeah, there's something dirty in it. While when you are a child, the most natural thing is to follow the body and lustful feelings. It is like nature puts something in us that we, that we feel, okay, when it feels nice, that's good for us. And when it's not feeling good, like when we get tension, that's not good for us. So that's a kind of inner truth, a compass that, that can guide us to, to a healthy development. So that's where we start. Like we discover, um, lost in, in seeing and tasting, even in pooping. You know, like all the openings of the body are connected to lustful feelings. And it is like that consciousness slowly comes into the body, that we really can use our muscles, that we use the senses. And with, in a certain age, like 3 to 4, also this lustful feeling comes in the genitals, and the child is just curious and It's, yeah, it wants to discover what can we do with the body, how it works in other bodies. It discovers that there is a different, a difference between boys and girls. And there is this curiosity that guides us to, uh, this arousal in the body. And the problem is how the parents deal with this. If they don't understand this natural movement, they put shame and guilt on it. And then the natural— I call it always the erotic undercurrent— is broken. So the normal way to arousal and enjoying the body, and from there making contact to another sexual being, is not open anymore. And, and that's the cause of all the relational problems or the arousal problems. So these deep, these deep imprints from childhood.

Yeah. And I suspect that there are other influences as well that create, as you say, change, movement, arousal in the body. Is it true that there are specific times when we're growing up where if we're, where we receive more of a kind of sexual imprint as what really turns us on? Or is that in your world not relevant?

Yes, there are certain ages that are very important in the sexual development. Like, for instance, like birth, if you are received as when the parents were happy to have a boy or a girl, like we already feel if the parents are disappointed about our gender. That under hypnosis, people can tell you what, what they felt, even if the parents didn't speak about it. And then this age when the genitals arouse, uh, for the first time, like, consciously, it's— we call it the Oedipal phase. That's a very important phase because then children try to connect with these lustful feelings. And then there is a latent phase, like the energy goes more to the head, that the children are open to learn when they go to school. And then we talk about puberty when all the hormones come in the blood, that, that we get mature as sexual beings. So these phases where something happens in the psychosexual development, then we are very vulnerable for the imprints. And when something goes wrong there, that has a certain effect for, for later. So if someone comes with a problem in therapy, I always look what happened in, in your, in your life. It can be that in the beginning it was okay, but then you have your first love. And it was so painful that you were left alone or you were rejected or whatever. Also, that can make that you lose your trust in, in another deep intimate connection.

So all these kinds of stuff and the preferences, yeah, that depends what it is and what somebody has imprinted So considering that we go through our lives with all of these different feelings, different stages, and then on top of that, the, the parental influence of whether or not we were led to believe that touching ourselves, for instance, was shameful or disgusting, or anything that we did that had to do with our genitals was just completely off limits.

Yeah.

All of that then compounds over the years, and we end end up with a person who clearly is, is not comfortable being in their natural body.

Yes.

In their natural way, being sexually expressive in the way that we all would like. And then they meet their partner who has their own set of imprints.

Exactly.

And that seems like a shit show to me.

Yeah, because—

which is probably why I don't get involved too deeply with people because it just feels like a shit show.

The partner does not know what, what your imprints are. So we always expect the same, or we have certain longings. And we imagine that the other would guess what we need. But we have never learned to speak out because nobody spoke to us about feelings in the genitals or feelings in the heart. So when we are isolated in this I call it always psychosexual development because the biological development concerning sexuality, now there is written a lot, people know about it, but the influence of the interaction in the psyche, it's like a black space. Nobody knows what the needs on a psychological level are in these phases. And that's why I wrote a book about it. And I'm sorry, that's only in Dutch, but this is about the needs of a child to connect with these feelings and to learn words, to communicate and to have trust in these inner impulses and, and in, yeah, to, to how to learn to regulate this energy instead of suppressing it.

Hmm. And in how much of this is we, we know about trauma. Many of us can remember some of our early sexual experiences, you know, like you've said, feelings of rejection, being, being unloved, you know, having parents that loved us, didn't love us, whatever. But how much of the of the much earlier aspects of growing into this person that we become are unconscious.

Yeah, most of them. I mean, even if you know situations, and that means if you remember, it was not that bad, because when we are really traumatized, we forget, it goes to the unconscious, and you don't want to know anymore. That's, that's the real survival, the deep survival. So when we know still, mostly we don't know what we thought as a child, because what the child does, it never thinks my parents must have a problem. The child thinks I'm wrong.

Yeah.

And that is often unconscious. So that there is something wrong with me. And maybe I don't know what, but this makes that you hold back, that you don't dare, that you get ashamed, or you get just to the other side to start to please or whatever. But it is all starting with this feeling, I'm wrong. I'm not normal. And because we are not talking about it, otherwise you would find out that we all have this. Then we act strange and it can be misinterpreted by the other for why we do so strange.

Yeah, I mean, recently I was doing an interview for a newspaper and one of the aspects of that was answering reader questions. And a lot of the questions that come up are, especially because I'm talking about relationships and sex in later life, are about either mismatched libido or just simply the fact that women no longer want to have sex with their partner because it's assumed that it's the menopause is responsible and That's what's killed their libido. And as a result of that, they're just, they're just going, you know what, I'm happy, I don't want to do this anymore. And the men are still feeling sexual. So there's a real frustration in these, especially, you know, long-term relationships, where people have gone through various stages in their life together. And they've come out at very different places. Yeah. How much, in your view, is a result of just, you know, physiological changes in the body? And how much of that is about this imprint that you're talking about that may eventually lead to this conclusion, which is, I'm done?

You know, it is true that the body is changing. For instance, as a woman, you get much more vulnerable in the tissue. The tissue is getting thinner and it needs more time to, to fill it with blood. So, but it doesn't mean that you cannot have sexual feelings. That means that you need another way of approach to, to stay relaxed and have enough time to get aroused and to connect. And for the men who are very much programmed with competition and having to work and to be a man with a good erection, they get insecure because also that is changing. It's, it's not like with a young man that you immediately are ready. It comes and goes. And also, if you are frustrated a lot, it might stop the erection. But If you have no ideas how to treat your body, that the natural flow can, can stay in a relaxed way and that you can go into a surrender because the head is mostly in between the natural arousal. So if you cannot let that go, and start to trust the body again, yeah, then the problems get bigger and bigger. So I don't think the problem is the biological part, but it's true that something changes, so we have to be aware of it and deal with it. And what I know from, uh, yeah, my education is that we have a different direction in the sexual flow. Even if you only look at the body, uh, the man has genitals that come out of the body. The woman has genitals that are inside. So that means the, the, the flow from the heart who pumps the blood and the arousal to the genitals, for a man it goes down, and the man wants to give his heart his love with penis to his partner. So that's the way men share with love. And we women misunderstand because we think you have to give it from the heart. And we have something that comes out here. So energy goes out here from the breast and comes in in the vagina. But the receptive pole, I call this poles, the heart and the genitals, the receptive pole is the most vulnerable. So for the woman, this is the vagina. So when we don't feel loved and when we are not relaxed, we cannot relax in the vagina and open up. So we need time for that and we feel safe and loved. Then when we are open, the blood can flow. And yeah, when we feel something, uh, attunement to the partner that he is also able to follow our lead, then the sex can even be better because we are more sensitive, we have more time. Uh, if you know each other longer, for a longer time, we trust each other more, and it can be a completely new experience after menopause. But if we are treated with disrespect, or we have not learned how to put boundaries, or we just thought, oh, let my husband go because I fake orgasm, or whatever. At a certain point, the body says, you know what, I don't like it anymore. It's over. You know, I disconnect from the genitals. Yeah, you don't want all the pain anymore. It's getting too much. And for a woman, she closes the vagina. And you know what the man does? He closes his heart. Yeah, yeah, because that's the most vulnerable part in a man. If you feel not received by the way he wants to give the love and feel the connection, then he closes his heart. And then we end up sexless. And either, yeah, going like brother and sister, or we have fights all the time, because it's frustrating.

Yeah. And I think it's a really good point. I mean, I've spoken before with people about just letting, at this time of life, just being freer in giving yourself the space and the time to be intimate with your partner without that demands of being on the clock or that feeling like it's all gonna, you know, it's all gonna lead to orgasm. And yes, and, and when we release ourselves from all of that and think, you know, we've got all day, we've got all afternoon, or we'll just have a bit of fun now and then we'll go make a cup of tea and then we'll come back and we'll have a bit more fun. There's no— and when we're relaxed about it, then as you say, you know, we, we open our heart to the other, to the other person. I think that's really, it's a really powerful thing that you've just said about the fact that when, when women close their vagina, that men close their heart. Yeah, that's very— it's, I don't, you know, I don't know if that's— if everybody would agree with that, but I think there is something to be said in, in the fact that for men, a lot of men being, being sexual, being the one who's the giver in that way is very part, it's very much a part of their identity.

And when they feel misunderstood in their way of giving love, nobody understands that a man needs to connect on a sexual level to feel accepted, to feel received, to feel loved. That's where they feel it. Then they feel love. For a woman, it's the other way around. She first wants to feel love before she opens up. And this misunderstanding, that it's such a blind spot in a lot of relationships, that it's really time that we get aware about the difference in wanting to share our sexuality.

Yeah, absolutely. So I just want to move on because there was another, um, there was something else I read on your website which I was just curious because I'd never heard the expression before called Sexual Grounding Therapy. Yeah, what, what is that?

Uh, that's the, the therapy where I learned all this stuff about, uh, how the body works and the energy flow and sexuality and psychosexual development. But, um, it's not existing anymore in Holland like this because people made their own way of working from it. Like, I, I translated it into my way and in my words, and I add trauma therapy and did something from the '90s. But the fact is that sexual grounding means that you come with your feet on the ground, like the energy is connected to the ground, that we live in the pelvis, and not somewhere here up in the head and even above in fantasies. So grounding is down-to-earth sexuality.

All right. And how does that manifest itself when you're working with a client?

Now, first, I always ask about body reactions, like, because the sensations in the body, they lead us to unconscious imprints. I mean, I can talk with you an hour and you can be convinced about something, but if I ask your body and you feel tension, there is a conflict there and we find out What is the conflict? At what age this started? And what did you need from your parents in that age that you didn't get to stay relaxed? So because we have empty spaces where we are not filled with the lovely energy from our parents, or we are overwhelmed by energy of the educators, so we have kind of, uh, what you call it, stress places. Um, and there starts the projection. So if we have holes, we want our partner to fill that. I mean, I can remember how I started. My father had a war trauma and he was just somewhere in the past. I couldn't reach him, so I was really like, oh, my prince. And I never so much longing for a father figure, you know.

Yeah.

At a certain moment you fall on your nose, then you realize, okay, I have to be a woman, not a girl here anymore. So, or the other thing is if you have this pain spots in your body and the partner is doing something that reminds you on the overwhelming in your childhood, you react very very with a lot of fire, like, yeah, and the partner thinks, whoa, what is this? You know, so there is either longing or rejection because we want to avoid the pain. And that's where these strange, uh, dynastic, uh, relational patterns start. We have to find out what happened in the childhood of our partner to understand this. And get the stress out and meet in an open way with respect for the past of our partner. You know, if I can understand, I can forgive and I can relax and not make it my problem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so typically, do you work with couples?

Also, I work with individuals, with couples, and with groups, and I educate also therapists. To be able to work with this.

All right, cool. And do you find that there's a certain type of person that comes to see you? A certain, you know, is it because they've encountered a problem in their relationship and there's just, they just can't get past it?

Or for instance, yeah, yeah. Or they lost the connection or they are having the third relationship and coming to the same problem. Or they have a bodily problem, like the loss of erection or pain somewhere in the heart or whatever. And we find out that it's connected to sexuality, or they have very low energy or very high energy or something that they feel themselves like something is not yet balanced.

And would you say that some of the work that you do is kind of somatic work with the body in that way?

Yes, you can call it like this.

Yeah, yeah. Interesting. And I mean, you mentioned that this grounding therapy originated, is it from Holland, from the Netherlands?

Yes, it's a Dutch psychologist, Willem Popelies, who developed it, but he got his information from all kinds of sources, like from Pesel therapy, from Freud, from Reich, from, yeah, also American body workers. Like, he gathered it and he brought it all together.

Oh, I see.

He educated quite some people, but they all went out and find their own places. So there was also something in it that it couldn't go on. Some, I mean, maybe it's the, the work in our culture is not easy to, to work with sexuality because you are restricted in all kinds of ways. And if you even write something on the internet about sexuality, at a certain moment you can get blocked because they can only imagine that there's something dirty. Yeah.

Yeah, and I think, you know, there's, there's, look, there's some people that don't really want to delve into their childhood. And there's, you know, there's quite a lot of therapies that are just quite concerned with sort of how you can be in the here and now without reflecting too much on your childhood. And then of course, there's other therapies that believe that unless you understand your childhood, then you can't really understand yourself. So, and I think we've, there seems to be a trend moving away from, well, certainly I know within, within the NHS, for instance, there's a lot of CBT and cognitive behavioral therapy and things that are much more focused on let's just treat the issue that we've got now and work out some sort of a plan for how you can move on.

Yeah, and I mean, for people who are not disturbed that much, it can work for a while. But you come to a point that you cannot do your best anymore. Yeah, because there's too much stress in the body. And I have a lot of people who did therapies before, talking and talking and trying and trying, and, and they come here and finally they release the stress and meet on another level. Yeah, but not everybody is able yet. Also, I mean, there are people who first should go to trauma therapy because there's so much damage on the nerve system. I don't— that should be worked on first. But my experience is, if you want to really release the stress, you need to look via the body, not imagine or telling stories, but Fire Body feel where is the block that, that blocks my energy between heart and genitals. Where is the tension, or where I don't feel anything anymore? How many people are living in the head and in the heart, but to connect that with the pelvis, that's not easy, you know? And that's the grounding. If you feel your pelvis there is the— your worthiness, your self-consciousness, your power. So only when you are there in a relaxed way, you can react as an adult on situations. If you miss your grounding, you go into childhood emotions, like, and then you repeat the hurt. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because you react emotionally and you cannot stop things.

Yeah, and also I suspect when people do that, then they just find themselves getting into the same trouble over and over again and wondering why it is that they can't seem to move beyond having the same relationship with different people time and time again.

So that's true.

That's what happens, right? At some point, you have to look at what's gone on there to understand how you can break the pattern. Of just behavior that's not serving you very well. And I think everybody can learn from that.

Ja, because childhood behavior is survival behavior. And if you are not aware of that, it will not bring us to where we want to be.

Absolutely. That's a great way to end. We like to end at 30 minutes. And that's a great way to end. Thank you so much. For coming on the show. Yeah, and yeah, it's been really interesting and fascinating talking to you. And yeah, all the way from the Netherlands.

Yeah, you're very welcome, Suzanne Noble. It was nice talking to you.