I recently had a consultation with a pelvic floor therapist. I have endometriosis, and these past few months I’ve been struggling with increasing pelvic pain, especially when sitting. My endo specialist recommended that I try pelvic floor therapy to find some relief.
The session was wonderful, I learned so much, and felt hopeful that the therapy would help manage my pain as I also pursued other options for treatment. The therapist recommended weekly sessions, but since Barcelona (and Europe) largely shut down in August, she would be leaving for holidays. We wouldn’t be able to begin our sessions until mid-September.
As we were winding down, I asked whether there was anything I could do during the next four to six weeks to get the ball rolling as I waited to begin the therapy.
“Do you have a vibrator?” she asked.
Instead of an enthusiastic yes, I found myself speechless, unsure how to answer or even whether I wanted to. I am a 43-year-old woman who consciously believes there is nothing shameful about owning a vibrator, which, by the way, I do. Yet in those first few seconds, I felt embarrassed and exposed, as though acknowledging it revealed something I should have kept private. My body reacted before my conscious beliefs could catch up.
She had asked for an entirely practical reason. She explained that there were certain pressure points where I could place the vibrator so that the vibration around the pelvic region could help release some of the tension in the muscles, which evidently I had been keeping extremely tight. She discussed it without awkwardness or judgment, because that was precisely what it was within the context of our conversation: a therapeutic tool.
Walking out of the appointment, I found myself shaking my head. Not out of shame, more toward bewilderment. It had been a knee-jerk reaction, something that moved before I could intercept it, and I couldn’t quite account for why that one question had landed the way it did.
We were not talking about sex or pleasure. We were talking about endometriosis and the tension my body had been holding. Yet that one word brought an entirely different set of associations into the room. The shame I felt was connected to sexuality, but it surfaced in an appointment where I was seeking treatment for pain.
That distinction is important because sexual conditioning does not remain neatly contained within our sex lives. It can emerge in medical appointments, conversations about our bodies, and the language we use when describing our health. It can influence what we are comfortable admitting, what we hesitate to ask, and which parts of ourselves we instinctively keep private, even when that information may be relevant to our care.
I had believed that being open-minded and comfortable with female sexuality meant I had moved beyond that kind of shame. My reaction showed me that consciously rejecting a message does not necessarily erase every trace of it. We absorb ideas about women’s sexuality, pleasure, respectability, and judgment throughout our lives. Some are obvious enough to challenge. Others settle more quietly into the body and only reveal themselves when an unexpected question touches them.
During that appointment, mine was the giant vibrator in the room: the shame attached to owning a vibrator, even for a woman in her forties who consciously believed otherwise.
Recognizing it didn’t make it disappear. But there is something that shifts when you can finally name what has been quietly occupying space. You can begin to ask where it came from, whether it was ever really yours to carry.
Awareness doesn’t instantly undo a lifetime of conditioning, nor does one conversation resolve every feeling it brings to the surface. But listening to my body’s reaction made that giant invisible vibrator visible. And once I could see it, I could begin to understand it, shrink it enough to fit through the open door, and let it vibrate itself out of the room.
