In Living with Vaginismus: Dealing with the World’s Most Painful Pleasure, Victoria Johnston provides a comprehensive overview of this pelvic pain condition. She opens up about her own personal experience to raise awareness about an issue that most people either don’t know about and/or aren’t comfortable talking about.
Vaginismus involves the involuntary contraction of pelvic muscles (the pubococcygeus or PC muscles). This makes it difficult or even impossible to penetrate the vagina with even small objects like a tampon. The condition specifically relates to those muscle contractions, and it doesn’t encompass other sexual difficulties like low desire or inability to orgasm. The book quotes a physiotherapist who describes vaginismus as panic attacks of the vagina, and Victoria describes sex as feeling “like you are being ripped apart.”
Unfortunately, even many medical practitioners have a poor understanding of vaginismus. The book includes multiple stories of negative experiences with health care providers. The causes of vaginismus can be complex and multifactorial, and the book describes various physical and psychological factors that have been identified. The book also includes stories about the often devastating effects the disorder can have, including strain on relationships and problems with mental health.
Victoria describes the various treatments that are available, taking a holistic view and explaining that what’s most effective can vary greatly from person to person. Treatments include the use of dilators slowly progressing in size, physiotherapy, counselling, and medication. A chapter is devoted to physiotherapy exercises, with photos to demonstrate. Another chapter describes Botox, a promising approach that isn’t yet commonly performed and is quite expensive.
The book includes contributions from a number of other women who live with pelvic pain. Many felt invalidated by their health care providers, and a common theme running through their stories was how alone they felt in their experience. The book also includes the stories of men whose partners have vaginismus. I was surprised by how many partner stories Victoria was able to gather, and how openly these men spoke. It really illustrated how this disorder isn’t just an individual problem; it’s an issue that couples need to face together.
Victoria calls out the many unreasonable societal expectations around sex, including the idea that is the only way of truly achieving closeness and connection, and the expectation that it’s normal for females to have pain during sex. She advocates for more realistic, open conversations about sex, something I heartily agree with.
While vaginismus manifests itself physically, mental health is often involved, either as a contributing factor or as a consequence. As such, it’s important to raise awareness in the realm of mental health as well as sexual health, which is why I thought it was important to review this book on my blog. I would definitely recommend it.
Living With Vaginismus is available on Amazon (affiliate link).
You can find Victoria on her blog Girl with the Paw Print Tattoo.
You can find my other reviews on the MH@H book review index or on Goodreads.
I’ve never heard of this before, great thing to raise awareness of!
Thank you for writing this – I’ve never heard of the book but might check it out as unfortunately this is something I suffer with (I know, add it to the list). I’m really glad there are conversations happening about this because it’s really isolating and so hard to get out of the anxiety cycle with it.
Yes, definitely something it’s important to talk about.
Thank you for sharing! 🙂 This means so much to me that it is getting out there and awareness is spreading
So enlightening. I have never heard of the condition before. So happy to read about it and agree with the advocacy championed by the author. For real I think I agree with vagina panic attacks because I had them at some period of my marriage especially when forced to have sex. So sorry what goes on with many
I think it’s probably something that’s a lot more common than people think.
Oh my goodness this sounds awful … thanks for the post, you’ve opened my eyes.
I’ve wondered if I have this myself in the past. Especially for the first few years I started having sex. Sex always sounded so simple, but my muscles just seemed to not want to relax.
I think sex is not simple for a lot more people than is generally assumed.
I have looked into this when I had difficulties with sex in the past… hard to imagine, can believe how much of an effect it has on sex life and how you feel every day though!
http://Www.rosysmind.wordpress.com
Yeah I know for this author it’s had a huge effect on her day to day life.
Interesting blog you have, thanks for sharing, I will love if you take a look on my blog as well, everything about obstetrics and gynecology Ultrasound, always with the women interest in mind, give your feedback and a follow if you like it, thank you so much and I also want to wish a happy new year!!!
http://www.ultrasoundfeminsider.com