One of the most significant parts of healing our vaginismus is practicing with dilators.
There was a beautiful question from one of the lovely members of our FB community.
(You can also join if you haven’t yet by clicking here: Yes We Can Heal Vaginismus Together. )
She posted that she couldn’t insert even the tip of a dilator even though she had been inserting the same dilator easily and fully before.
She was asking if it was OK to be able to dilate one day and not another day, it was such a disappointing and frustrating experience for her, she eventually ended up feeling like a failure.
I want to go through this answering this question together with you while touching a little bit on dilating.
We’ll uncover what mental qualities we need to cultivate in order for us to reach our goal of having pain-free penetration while we work on dilating.
But before that, are you new here? Then you’ll want to join our EXCLUSIVE Facebook Community “Yes We Can Heal Vaginismus Together” by clicking here!
Lastly, you can download here your FREE Vaginismus Overcoming Guide based on my personal experience and research!
So let’s get started, shall we?
I want to answer this great question, but before that let’s dive into dilators.
Why do we use dilators while treating vaginismus?
We use them to restore our vaginal capacity.
What I mean from this is that our vaginas are naturally equipped to have things inserted inside them, so we are restoring that ability when we use dilators.
Dilators are not only useful in training our vaginal muscles to relax but also to shift the mindset from “NO, there is no way I can insert anything into my vagina” to “Wow YES, I can insert something into my vagina!“.
When I was living with vaginismus, I couldn’t believe that I could put anything inside of my vagina because I was not even able to touch my vaginal entry with my fingertips.
So the hope of inserting anything inside me was a sort of UTOPIA goal for me, which I wanted to believe I could achieve, but could not at the time because of the mindset I had towards my condition.
Once we see that we can insert something inside ourselves- even if it’s 1mm at the very beginning- the beliefs that we had for years lose their strength from:
“NO WAY” to “MAYBE I CAN.”
and eventually, to “YES, I CAN and I WILL!”
There are two crucial points that I’d like to emphasize here:
- We can’t take our dilation experiences personally,
- Every single experience that we have throughout the day manifests in our bodies.
Let’s look closer at each one!
What does it mean to not take your dilating experience personally?
This is an attitude that we cultivate as we practice Mindfulness: experiencing things as you’ve never experienced before.
They call it “Beginner’s Mind” in Zen Buddhism.
I talk more about “Beginner’s Mind” in this blog post:
“Here is How You Can Heal Your Vaginismus Even If You’re Single and How You Can Start a New Chapter In Your Life”.
You can check it out if you’d like to by clicking here.
It simply means that you can implement a fresh, clear, and new approach towards learning information.
It is an approach that takes away the expectations of experience and replaces them with a clear and unbiased attitude towards the healing process.
Let me get straight with an example!
When you look at toddlers, they can play with a particular object over and over again making the same motions, which seems seriously boring for us, right?
For instance, they open the lid of the jar and close it.
They open it and close it.
Open and close, open, and close. It can be a forever journey for them!
But when you look at their faces, you can see their contentment, their joy! What they are actually doing is investigating the experience itself with curiosity, which makes it joyful!
This is a skill, and we’ve had this skill before when we were toddlers too!
What we do in Mindfulness is essentially RELEARN that skill!
Let’s get back the experience of that lovely woman with vaginismus that I mentioned earlier:
she couldn’t insert the same dilator that she was easily inserting before.
When we put expectations on dilating by comparing it with our other experiences, sooner or later, naturally, we’ ll feel disappointed.
Instead of simply getting lost in thoughts such as:
- “It’s never going to end, I’m broken”
- “I’m never going to be able overcome vaginismus”
- “What is this? Why am I falling back to the beginning?”
Which leads us to feel hopeless about our healing journey.
I always try to see it as a new experience by saying:
- “I’m tight today”,
- or “It’s a bit difficult to insert it today”,
Rather than taking it personally and seeing it as a failure.
What do you think? Wouldn’t it be healthier to think of facts as just a fact, rather than adding the emotional baggage that comes with these thoughts while you practice your dilation exercises?
Oh! And a quick reminder; it’s OK to be TIGHT from time to time!
This brings us to our second point about being tight.
How does every single experience that we have throughout the day manifest in our bodies?
According to a study by Aalto University, “The researchers found that the most common emotions trigger strong bodily sensations, and the bodily maps of these sensations were topographically different for different emotions.”
You can find the study by clicking here.
This simply means that the emotions we experience throughout the day manifest within our bodies.
Think about when we have a challenging conversation with our partners or loved ones, we might hold in our breath during this conversation or even afterwards.
While holding our breath, we are contracting our diaphragm too, which is connected to our pelvic floor muscles.
Guess what? We could be contracting our genital muscles at the same time too!
That means any penetration attempt might be a bit more difficult than it ever has been when we were more mentally and physically relaxed.
Our body is like an instrument playing in harmony within itself and our mind.
The vagina is a part of this BEAUTIFUL BODY, which responds according to the current state of mind.
And our vaginismus healing journey is not linear but forward-facing even if there are steps that lead us up and down towards the finishing line.
Therefore, we need to remind ourselves that
- it’s OK to feel tight sometimes,
- it’s OK to feel like a failure sometimes.
Also, whenever we feel like this, it’s good to name it as it is:
“I feel like a failure, right now. And it’s OK to feel like that!”
So here is my answer to the beautiful question, which was; “Is it NORMAL?”-Yes, it is NORMAL!
Just remember, there is ALWAYS progress if we keep working on it with CONSISTENCY.
We don’t have to live with vaginismus for YEARS, dear.
While living with it, it might be difficult to cultivate these skills and continue on our healing journey with consistency, but that’s OK.
If you feel like you need support, then get some!
If I could overcome it, you can overcome it too, in fact, we can OVERCOME IT TOGETHER, dear.
“The meditative journey is not about always feeling good. Many times we may feel terrible. That’s fine. What we want is to open to the entire range of what this mind and body are about. Sometimes we feel wonderful and happy and inspired, and at other times we deeply feel different aspects of suffering.”
Joseph Goldstein
You can download my free overcoming vaginismus guide from here if you haven’t yet.
If you found this article helpful, then come and join our free online community Yes We Can Heal Vaginismus Together, if you haven’t yet.
I talk more about these topics and in more detail.
Let’s meet there. Let’s grow together.
E-mail: petek@yeswecanhealtogether.com