When the Body Says No: Trauma, Pleasure, and Reclaiming Sexual Selfhood with Brooke Bralove

When trauma takes away your voice, it often affects the pelvis too. You may not be able to say what you want. You may not be able to relax enough to receive touch. You may not be able to feel pleasure without fear, shame, or shutdown. But that doesn’t mean your body is broken. It may mean that your body has simply been protecting you for a very long time. Today, Brooke Bralove joins me to talk about sex therapy, trauma healing.

desire, shame, and how we begin to reclaim safety in the body.

Welcome back to the Vocal Pelvic Floor. I am Dr. Ginger Garner and today we are talking about trauma, sexuality, desire, shame, nervous system safety, and healing. I want to welcome my guest, Brooke Bralove . Welcome.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (00:57)

Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (01:00)

Yeah, I’m so glad you’re here. All right, y’all. Let me tell you a little bit about Brooke. She is one of my favorite professions, practices, one of my favorite professions, and that is social work. She’s a licensed clinical social worker, psychotherapist, ASEC certified sex therapist, and trauma expert with over two decades in private practice. She helps individuals and couples work through anxiety, trauma.

Sexual concerns, relationship challenges, and the barriers that keep people from feeling connected, confident, and fully themselves. I love her approach and I cannot wait to talk about this because I don’t know anything about it. I am learning. She integrates neuroscience-based approaches, including accelerated resolution therapy, or ART for short, which can help people process trauma without requiring them to endlessly retell every painful detail.

I cannot wait to learn about this. So, Brooke, welcome to the vocal pelvic floor.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (02:00)

Thank you.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (02:01)

What I am curious about is there, I mean, there are so many different pathways in psychotherapy. And I’ll be honest, like it’s hard to keep up with them. And I as a pelvic PT refer, you know, constantly, right? And so I’m just wondering, you know, how did you become  interested in that intersection? emotional healing, sexuality, trauma.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (02:03)

Mm-hmm.

Well, my background ⁓ originally actually was in domestic violence. So I did domestic violence work for two years exclusively out of social work school. So I immediately went into trauma work and you know, women’s work. we only saw women at our clinic. Of course, there are men who are victims of domestic violence, but we only saw women. And I became very interested and

It was a lot to just see only that type of population. It was very intense, ⁓ sometimes pretty depressing. I’m not gonna lie. ⁓ watching people cycle in and out of that clinic was was quite difficult. And so what I decided was that I really wanted to be in private practice so I could see an array of different

issues because again, you know, when you see the same type of person, I don’t care whatever it is, depression or anxiety, if you only see that one type of thing all day, it really can get quite overwhelming. And so I think that’s why a lot of us have more general practices where we see a a variety of of things. But I always cared very deeply about trauma and and women. And ⁓ I went through a divorce in ⁓

2013 and came out of it and said, I want to be a sex therapist, ⁓ having a lot to do with my own awakening. But I had always been very comfortable talking about sex. And I was telling my teenage girls last night at dinner that my absolute favorite undergrad class was human sexuality. I just remember feeling like

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (03:52)

So

Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (04:13)

It was the thing I wanted to learn about. I mean, it’s fascinating, right? And and so I just thought, well, that’s what I wanna do. And I, you know, wanna break up my day of trauma by talking about sex. And then of course there is a massive overlap. And so that is kind of the sweet spot I find myself in. Although I certainly do regular kind of sex therapy with couples and individuals as well, that doesn’t necessarily

have to do with what we think of when we say trauma.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (04:46)

Yeah. How

did your work evolve from like, you know, traditional psychotherapy? And I just want to give a really big shout out to working with victims of domestic violence. I am one of those people too, so I just have a really deep love for people who take on that work ⁓ in social work and in that field. It’s just incredible. So first of all, thank you for doing that because that is very intense work. ⁓

And second, like how did all of that inform how you evolved from traditional psychotherapy into sex therapy and trauma focused care?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (05:24)

Well, I think that you know w when we think of domestic violence, we certainly think of big T trauma, right? It is ⁓  can be violent, ⁓ you know, and and that’s what we think of. We think of big T like natural disasters and witnessing a murder and school shootings. But of course, what I found more fascinating in my work with domestic violence victims.

Is the ones who had never been physically assaulted. It was that insidious psychological and emotional abuse that I found to be much more difficult to work with, much more difficult to even help the victims understand that it was actually going on, and really difficult to break out of those patterns.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (06:04)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (06:18)

And so that’s much more of what I began to see in my practice. It was, you know, controlling partners. It was partners who ⁓ isolated, you know, women and you know, kept them financially dependent on them or, you know,  basically would get jealous if they would go out with their friends and kind of criticize them all the time.

That’s where I began to see so much of the work. And because the straight, it’s straightforward when someone is hitting you. It’s straightforward when someone is pushing you or blocking your exit. And in fact, I’m sure you’ve seen this quite a bit, but when I would speak to women who were being emotionally and psychologically abused, much of the time they would say, I just wish my partner would hit me.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (06:52)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

⁓ yeah. Clear. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (07:13)

Then it would be so easy to leave and clear.

And of course, that breaks my heart. ⁓ but I understood it also. Because when you’re swimming in that water, that water of control and often a narcissistic partner, and the gaslighting that goes on, it’s unbelievable how you begin to doubt everything about yourself and about what you know to be true.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (07:35)

Yes. Everything.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (07:42)

And so I found that that was the deeper work that needed to be done. And it it was harder to treat for sure.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (07:52)

Yeah, absolutely. It just tells us so much about why sexual concerns are much deeper than sex, right?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (08:03)

Yeah, absolutely. And again, people, you know, the other again, rape is pretty clear, not always to people, but it can be pretty clear, especially when it’s outside of a marriage. But rape or coercion, sexual coercion, pressuring, guilting, you know, ⁓ you know, ⁓

Accusing your partner of cheating all the time. So the partner feels like they have to have sex with you to just prove they aren’t cheating, things like that again are just more subtle. And so those are the things that were showing up, not to mention things like sexual pain, you know, pelvic pain, ⁓ urogynecological issues, all of that also shows up in in ⁓ trauma as well.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (08:57)

It is, and that’s why I I mean, I would say easily over half of everyone that I see who comes into clinical practice with pelvic pain has a a really big emotional driver component of that. There is a trauma component, big T, little T trauma, it’s there. And it it does make it more layered and complex. And it’s why people will often then

No matter what their background is or whatever trauma they experience, will come to or won’t even end up considering sex therapy because they feel ashamed, they feel intimidated. So, you know, what does, and we’ve had several sex therapists all all throughout the whole season ⁓ on the show already, but you know, what does a sex therapist do? What do people un misunderstand about sex therapy?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (09:48)

Well, the the biggest misconception is that I’m going to be doing something sexual with you in my office. So that’s the biggest misconception. And I do field a few of those phone calls ⁓ annually. excuse me. So the biggest misconception is that I’m gonna do something sexual with you in my office.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (09:54)

⁓ Yeah.

one.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (10:10)

There is no sexual touch. In fact, there’s really no touch at all, except if I’m seeing a couple and they would like to practice something that is, again, kind of non-sexual, like hand holding or something like that. ⁓ but I don’t touch my patients at all. And I think the second thing that is that people really get wrong is that there’s no hope.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (10:38)

Hm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (10:39)

That sex therapy is really pointless, and that if you go, if you are in a couple and you go to sex therapy, all you’re gonna figure out is that you’re broken and there’s no hope. And that simply isn’t true. Are there people who decide that they’re actually just sexually incompatible and and they don’t desire to be with each other anymore? Of course that happens, but but really rarely.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (10:52)

Mm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (11:08)

The majority of people come in because they think there’s something wrong with them and they want to fix it. And the very first thing I do is say, you know, you are not broken, your body’s not broken, but we do need to figure out what is happening inside of you. And if you’re partnered, then how that is interacting with what is inside of your partner. And if you’re not partnered,

You know, what is it that you want for yourself? And what is it, what are your goals? Because everybody’s goals are different, right? So a couple could come in and her goal is she wants to have sex every day of the week. And his goal is that he wants to have sex once every two weeks, but he wants to improve the sex they’re having. So

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (11:42)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (11:59)

And and and we gotta find a a little bit of a you know, a medium. You gotta find that Venn diagram where they can agree on at least what they are willing to work on right now that’s reasonable.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (12:12)

Yeah. And that that’s what brings up a really important question. Like what other kinds of concerns, because you listed a few already, what other kind of concerns do people bring to you?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (12:21)

Well, low libido is huge. And I see a lot of perimenopausal, postmenopausal, menopausal women. That’s the big thing, right? We’re seeing a lot of low libido, loss of desire. ⁓ I sex therapy, I can work with erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, mismatch libidos, ⁓ ethical non-monogamy issues, polyamory.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (12:31)

Mm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (12:50)

⁓ you know, those types of things. But a lot of what I deal with is the low libido. And often that is accompanied by pelvic pain, ⁓ of you know, unknown origin. ⁓ and and it’s my job to figure out, as you said, like what is the traumatic aspect, whether people know it or not. And that’s sort of where something like accelerated resolution therapy.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (13:15)

Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (13:19)

Can really come into play because people may not even know what is actually causing their pelvic pain without digging a little bit deeper beyond your thought process, beyond what you can consciously remember, think about, and point to.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (13:41)

Yeah, I had ⁓ one case just came surging to the forefront of my mind because I ended up referring her out ⁓ while I continued to work with her on the pelvic pain stuff. And it turned out that one of her little t traumas she had experienced was related to birth. And it wasn’t obvious in the beginning, but it was causing the pelvic floor to be held in such a way that.

There was no sexual functioning happening there. You know, so it was the it was the multidisciplinary aspect that we could we could work with the biomechanical and the fascial and all of those things, but then

that big part of returning her pelvic function and control back to her was talking about that little t trauma. And I just I love normalizing this because so many people think that, you know, sexual struggles do mean something is is wrong with them. And it makes me wonder like how much of the time in sex therapy gets dedicated to things like anxiety, shame, communication, trauma, or body trust.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (14:50)

A lot. I do a lot of work, especially around sexual shame. And so with every single person I see, I always do a, you know, a sexual history. It’s basically a a sexual timeline. And I start with the question: when were you first aware aware of your genitals? And what words did your parents use to describe your genitals? And

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (15:10)

Hm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (15:18)

Right there, you often get a a really clear picture about whether it was, you know, ⁓ ever talked about, whether the body parts were named correctly. And if you’re not naming the body parts correctly, then there you’re usually communicating something. You’re communicating that it’s like a sing-song-y thing that we talk about, a pee-pee and a wee-wee and a whatever, you know, or

You know, it’s kind of a hush hush thing. And either way, that sends a message. So I’m always excited when I hear that parents actually use the word penis and vagina, although we now know that we really should be using penis and vulva, because vagina only refers to the hole that tampons and penises and fingers and vibrators go into. ⁓ So, you know, we we do need to do a little bit of up.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (15:50)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (16:17)

dating. ⁓ but I’m always very excited when I find that somebody actually just used the this correct anatomical words for another body.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (16:28)

Yeah. You know, as as someone in healthcare that was one of my ⁓

big sticking points with raising three boys is that we just we talked about anatomy, you know. Had a well I have anatomy books all over the place anyway. So they were gonna if they trip and fell, they might fall on an anatomy book somewhere, right? So they had anatomy cards and all kinds of things. They’ve been in my office and posters and stuff. And I just I I feel so strongly about that too, you know, that we need to be empowered with the proper language instead of, you know, almost infantilizing infantilizing it, ⁓ if you will. Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (17:02)

Exactly. Yeah,

exactly. ⁓ and so, you know, and then it’s, you know, how if it’s a woman, you know, tell me about the first time you got your period. Tell me about masturbation, tell me what actual explicit or implicit messages you got around sex. And what I always find fascinating is a lot of times they’ll say, you know, so what messages, you know, what did your parents tell you about sex? And they’ll say, ⁓

Yeah, nothing, not bad, nothing bad. They didn’t scare me at all. You know, they just didn’t mention it. And I’ll say, Did you ever think that not mentioning it is also a message? And it’s as if they’ve never considered that not talking about it is friggin’ loud. That’s loud and clear, right?

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (17:42)

Mm.

Yes, yes,

yes, it’s so true. That’s so true. so if someone just someone comes in and says, ⁓ I just don’t want sex anymore, what are you listening for in that story?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (18:04)

Well, I definitely wanna know how long has this been going on? Where are you in your ⁓ life in terms of menopause or giving birth or, you know, ⁓ nursing, you know, where are you? what medications are ne- So I always rule out biological stuff right away. And again, I wanna know what practitioners they’ve seen, you know, but I’m assuming that.

People are not really the people who come to me usually have done all of that, or mostly all of that, and there’s no real clear-cut answer. Maybe they’re already on hormones and feeling better. ⁓ so first of all, I’m always gonna be looking at the psychological and social factors. So if they’re in a relationship, how is that relationship? Do they love and trust their partner?

Do they are they physically attracted to their partner still? ⁓ and then I want to know a lot about what their pain history is. When they were sexual, when they were interested, if they were, then, and that’s the majority of people. They used to be interested in sex and now they are no longer. I mean, if you if I if I meet someone and they never were really interested in sex.

Then that’s very unlikely to change, right? That’s who they’ve been their whole life. But that’s not normally who I see. I see people who are super upset because they want to want to have sex, but they just don’t. And so those are the people who, you know, again, you gotta look for how’s the relationship? And often what I see a lot of resentment. I always say resentment 

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (19:33)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (20:00)

Kills libido and attraction. It really does. And that’s again a usually a relationship issue, but it’s also a voice issue. Why are these women not speaking their resentments? And it’s often that they’ve gone for so long not saying anything that they almost don’t feel entitled to anymore.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (20:28)

Mm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (20:28)

Like, well, I’ve agreed to it to be this way for so long. I can’t change the rules up now. You know, and marriage is the only  contract we sign without actually creating the contract. We don’t actually sign our name to anything real.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (20:44)

Yeah.

True, yeah. Gosh.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (20:50)

Right?

We read everything else with a fine-tooth comb and get one or two lawyers to look at it. But when we sa sign a marriage contract, it’s blank. So why can’t we renegotiate?

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (20:55)

Right.

Ouch. Yeah, that makes me close both my eyes. That makes me wince. ⁓ that’s such a good point. Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (21:06)

Right?

And so, but women don’t feel that they can change it up in the middle of a marriage. And I really want to encourage people that you get to renegotiate anything. I I’ve been hearing about this idea that there are couples who every five years basically have a meeting to decide if they want to re up for another five years. And I think that is so amazing. And

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (21:33)

Ha ha ha

Brilliant.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (21:37)

And it’s not yes or no, right? It’s how’s

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (21:38)

Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (21:40)

this going? What do we want to change? But I love this idea that you can continue to ⁓ renegotiate and check back in. Are we in the place where we wanna re-up? You know, it’s sort of what I did with my kids. My kids went to a private school, and I decided that every year I was going to ask myself the question.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (21:55)

Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (22:07)

Is this a good fit for next year? And to be to be honest, I made that decision for you know, and then one day, you know, one of my daughters, it wasn’t the right place. And so we changed course. So that’s kind of what you’re doing. You’re saying, is this the right thing for me for another year or another five years? So I’m a big fan of of doing that, and I I I really like that idea because

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (22:22)

Yeah.

I love that.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (22:36)

We change so much over our lifetime. Relationships change. People change. And you’re not the person you used to be. You don’t have the libido you used to. And you know, maybe sex was a lot of what you had in the beginning. Well, for a variety of reasons that might have changed, ⁓ health issues, stress issues, ⁓ you know, medication issues. And so

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (22:42)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (23:05)

Maybe there’s not a lot of glue holding the relationship together anymore.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (23:10)

Yeah, true. And I mean that that having that that check in ⁓ at with any relationship, you know, married, not married, whatever, it prevents that more trauma from happening and then a shutdown happening and then there being kind of a point of no return. And

You know, in pelvic health we see the physical side of it. We see breath holding, jaw tension, abdominal bracing, like inner thigh, adductor gripping, then the pelvic floor gets involved and it’s overactive. There’s pain, there’s numbness, loss of sensation, just like difficulty accessing pleasure. ⁓ but it’s not broken. It’s still even even then, you know, the body’s not broken. It’s just it’s often  you know, protecting.

And that idea, I think movies do this, I think porn can do this, like this this perfectionism, like what it’s supposed to look like, like performance-based sex, right? There’s loads and loads of shame around that. And I know, and I you’re you’re like, for those of you not watching, you know, we’re back and forth, we’re like shaking our head and like nodding nodding backing forth to each other because that perfectionism just ⁓ it just brings everything crashing down, interfering with, you know, intimacy and pleasure. So

What happens when people when someone has learned to perform instead of feel?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (24:28)

Mm-hmm. Well, I again I think we are women are raised to perform sex. They are ⁓ raised to believe that it is something we give to men. They take something from us, which doesn’t sound super fun to me. And it’s often about how you look and you know, do I look good from this angle? And and so what happens in a lot of ⁓ sex is that you’re spectatoring.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (24:46)

Mm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (24:58)

You’re watching it from above or to the side, or, you know, wait, ⁓ I can’t do it doggy style because my butt is big. Well, maybe you wanted to do it doggy style, but then your conscious brain came in and said, No, that’s not our best look. And so a lot of what I teach is mindfulness. You know.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (25:08)

Mm.

Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (25:24)

Most people who are doing pretty well in this world have a mindfulness practice. It’s just kind of true. And so sex requires the same thing. It requires being inside your own body, fully present. And the way I teach it is simply the just getting in touch with your five senses.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (25:31)

True, yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (25:47)

Because that’s really the best way. And yes, deep breathing and all of that, but just, you know, what am I hearing? What am I feeling? What am I seeing? What am I tasting? What am I smelling right now? And it’s because so many women, because there’s not a lot of pleasure in sex for them, they dissociate. Whether they kind of know it or not, they’re just not really that present. Well, you can’t have pleasure if you’re not present.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (25:57)

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (26:16)

It’s a requirement to be present in order to feel pleasure. And so we gotta attack that right away. And what is the major factor in taking people out of their body? Anxiety. So we have to look at the mental load women are carrying. You know, the default parent, the one who keeps it all together.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (26:44)

Yes.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (26:44)

And

who’s usually working and who’s, you know, usually managing the social calendar and the camp deadlines and the new clothes and the uniforms and the lunches and all of that. And if we don’t address the stress and anxiety that women are carrying, how can we expect them to turn on this aspect of them that they don’t have access to because they’re so stressed out?

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (26:57)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (27:13)

And

so this is where I always talk to, you know, men. And again, I am being very biased here because I do see mostly heterosis couples. So I just want to say that. ⁓ yeah. And and and again, this is all couples usually have a default person who handles more of the stuff. And, you know, ⁓ sometimes it’s not along gender lines and sometimes it is. ⁓ but we’ve got to address, you know, the the the thing that’s

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (27:23)

Okay, yeah, that’s good to make clear, yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (27:42)

Upsetting women and not letting them have access to this other creative sensual part. And that means take something off her plate. Literally do something. Say you look tired. Why don’t you go lay down for 15 minutes? Say, why don’t I make the lunches today? You know, women will tell you all the time that they are super attracted to their partner when they’re being capable.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (27:55)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yes, yes, yes, ⁓ yes. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (28:15)

Right? Show me you’re capable, and that is hot. Because that

means I’m not the only capable one in this relationship. And also another thing I see all the time, which I think goes along with this idea of you know being capable, is women don’t want to make any decisions in the bedroom. They want someone to show up, take control.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (28:25)

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (28:44)

Sometimes tell them what to do or just sometimes kind of kind of direct things so that they don’t have to because they’re tired of doing it in the rest of their lives. They don’t want it. They don’t find it sexy to also have someone kind of approach them very sort of like, so do you think maybe we might wanna, I don’t know, could you tonight? I don’t know. What are you thinking? It doesn’t work for them for the for the most part.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (28:55)

Yeah.

Yeah, there’s like decision fatigue in every aspect of their life. Where do you see that coming true? Like for men’s health, men’s sexual health, because I also get, ⁓ I see a lot, I see both ⁓ men and women, so all genders. And when it comes to, you know, penis owners, women people who identify as male.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (29:14)

Exactly.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (29:33)

That performance and the anxiety around performance is like, you know, that’s a killer also, where they feel so much pressure. ⁓ and that they often, I my job, I think a lot of the times is to determine, is this a biomechanical issue, or do I need to refer out to a sex therapist for this, right? So, how how do you see that manifesting?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (29:56)

Well, again, i i the people I see it’s almost never a biological issue whatsoever. And they’ve you know, th or or they had a little low testosterone, they’ve been on testosterone, it’s you know, better and they feel like the other benefits, you know, they might even have like more of a sex drive or libido. But, you know, you get you get in your head and I mean erectile dysfunction is

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (30:17)

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (30:25)

Is really hard to treat because most of it is emotional. And so again, that’s where we use something like accelerated resolution therapy, where we help people get over the all their experiences of having it fail and fail and fail. Because when you walk into a new sexual experience and your expectation is that that’s going to happen again, it it really does happen again.

So we have to help them clear out the trauma of that. And sometimes there’s an actual incident the very first time when it started. And usually there’s shame there. Meaning that might be when they were much younger. Maybe someone laughed at them. Maybe someone said, you know, or or dumped them after, you know, they had an incident of ED. And so you’re often trying to kind of help them manage a very

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (31:12)

Hm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (31:24)

early shameful experience, and then that has just precipitated all these other experiences.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (31:31)

Yeah. Well so that brings us back to ART accelerated resolution therapy. And and I will be completely honest, as I was telling you before we hit record, y’all. I was telling Brooke, I was like, I’ve not heard of this before. I am super excited to learn something new today. How is ART different? I know it’s probably not traditional talk therapy and rehashing stuff over and over again. So what is it?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (31:56)

So ⁓ ART or ART is an evidence-based treatment modality that uses rapid eye movement and voluntary image replacement to change the way the brain stores distressing images, sensations that show up in the body, so that basically you’re updating the brain to say, hey, this thing that happened isn’t happening anymore, and we’re gonna store

positive images that relate to something that happened that was negative. And then we’re gonna send you on your way. So now when you think about that incident or that experience, you see these positive images.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (32:39)

Wow. And and so I’ve been through EMDR. I recommend EMDR to a lot of patients. I think it’s fantastic. There are so many different evidence-based modalities out there. How is it different then from EMDR?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (32:43)

Okay.

So it came out of EMDR, but again, I’m biased, but I think there are a lot of improvements to it. ⁓ ART is much faster than EMDR. ART, we usually recommend one to five sessions per issue that you’re coming in with. And often it is literally just one. So if someone comes in and wants to process a sexual assault,

A terrible sexual assault, whether it happened last week or 35 years ago, it will often only require one to two sessions. And then it is cleared. And it means that they will then respond presently differently than they have been responding. For instance, you know, I’ve had people come in and they say they flinch every time their partner touches them.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (33:26)

Mm-hmm.

Wow.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (33:45)

Because they are still having, you know, flashbacks, or not even flashbacks. It’s just that’s what their body does. One to two sessions, we can clear that and they are able to be touched and loved and hugged and ⁓ in a way that they’ve always wanted to. So it’s much faster. ⁓ ART focuses on images and sensations rather than EMDR, which focuses on feelings and thoughts.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (34:01)

that’s incredible.

Hm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (34:15)

ART has a very clear protocol, which means that there is a resolution at the end of every session. In EMDR, often you will open something up and you may not be able to close it back down. And so there are people that actually feel worse after EMDR and they need more sessions and they’re in a lot of distress.

The most, I think the longest someone has ever been in actual distress in my office or virtually, because it can be done virtually, is a max of five minutes. And I mean a max. And even that is very rare. Because we process out these negative sensations as we go with the eye movements. But because it has this protocol, these steps just take you through it.

And so at the end, you know, what we say in ART is keep the knowledge, lose the pain. You’re never going to forget the facts of what happened to you. And you don’t need to or necessarily want to. But the images and the way your body is responding in the moment now that’s so upsetting to you that no matter how much you talk about it or think about it or understand it, it doesn’t change.

We cannot change the way our nervous system responds. So we have to change the way it gets stored in the brain so that when that same stimulus happens, your body doesn’t respond that way anymore. And literally, I’m talking day to day, minute to minute, it can change.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (35:57)

That’s really amazing. I I wonder I want to go back to something that you said. ⁓ it really stuck with me and that was and I want to know more about it. So what does it mean when someone may not have to retell every detail of that trauma?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (36:15)

So in ART, there’s almost no talking. So what happens is in order to get through and work through, you know, a trauma, you imagine it and see it like a scene in a movie with no talking while you’re doing the bilateral eye movements. You do not need to say a word about it. And that means that if you don’t want to tell me what you’re working on, you don’t even have to tell me what it is. Now

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (36:33)

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (36:46)

I’m a perfectionist when it comes to ART, not in the rest of my life. But in ART, I do really like to track my patients and really be with them in it so that I can help them and add more suggestions or creativity to their process. So I do like to know, but they don’t have they could just say, I want to process a trauma that happened to me in fifth grade. And that’s it. Okay, let’s do it. ⁓

So they really you’d really have and because we know that retelling trauma actually ⁓ reinforces those neural pathways. The whole point in ART is we’re jumping and creating new neural pathways. And then what that’s what we want. We want to get those kind of, I always say like, I just think about it as like the groove of these new neural pathways. We don’t want to reinforce the old ones.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (37:40)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, I’ll often describe that that the the trauma that way to patients. It’s almost like a rut in the road, you know, the road to the amygdala hijack, the fight, flight, freeze, fawn that we get into. And for in therapy, we talk about motor patterning, you know, reframing, hacking the brain, get into a new motor pattern so that we don’t go into these fear-based motor patterns. And, you know.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (37:43)

By talking about

Exactly.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (38:11)

That to that takes time. ⁓ but I the message that I’m hearing is that, you know, people need hope to to know that healing doesn’t always have to mean years of reliving the story.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (38:23)

No, in fact, there are times where I will say to patients, you know, do you want to talk about it or do you want to get better today? You know? Yeah. And, you know, and often they’ll kind of, you know, be like, well, I thought we would talk about it. And I’m like, we can. Or we could just knock this out today. What do you want to do? So I’d love though, I think to give you a real clear ⁓ example in terms of pelvic pain, because of course this is what your listeners want to know about.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (38:31)

⁓ wow, I love that.

Yes, yeah.

Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (38:52)

So the best example I had is ⁓ I’m sure you know the amazing Dr. Rachel Rubin, ⁓ who is ⁓ a neighbor here in Bethesda, Maryland, down the street. She refers many, many people to me for pelvic pain, birth trauma, ⁓ you know, difficult medical exams, whatever it is. And there’s l lots of reasons she sends me her most difficult people ever.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (38:57)

yes.

⁓

 her advocacy. Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (39:19)

Once in while, there’s someone I can’t quite w you know, help, but most of the time I can. And she sent me this amazing woman who had six years of the most debilitating pelvic pain, couldn’t work, couldn’t sit down, couldn’t wear pants, could only get the tip of her pinky nail inside her vagina. ⁓ I mean, just miserable. And she wanted to get pregnant.

And you know, there was really no hope at that time. And ⁓ Dr. Rubin, you know, struggled to kind of come up with anything else. So she sent her to me. And what we realized in ART is what we did was we basically had her think about her pelvic pain, see it all the worst times she’s had pelvic pain. And then what I did was I said to her, ask your brain to show you the first time you had those.

Sensations in your pelvis, the earliest you can go back to. Right away, what popped up is a scene from when she was eight years old and she was being beaten by her mother. All we had to do was clear that trauma. And her pelvic pain went away. And she was able to get pregnant.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (40:33)

Hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (40:48)

Not the old fashioned way, but with a turkey baster. And a turkey baster is a lot bigger than ⁓ you know, the tip of your pinky finger.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (40:51)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. ⁓ that’s that’s wonderful. I mean it’s a the it is so complex. It’s so layered, pelvic pain is. ⁓

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (41:07)

Because

she had, and I had to explain to her because she didn’t really understand. And I said, your body learned. Cause she was she sort of showed me that she was crouching and she got really small. And I said, Do you see how small you just got? Your pelvic, your pelvis learned that in order to stay safe, it had to grip and get as small as possible and as tight as possible. So actually that saved you.

And that kept you protected. And now that’s not happening anymore. Your mom lives in another country. You’re here. You’re safe. You’re in a wonderful marriage. You’re safe. Your partner loves you and and you know is there to support you. There’s no harm coming to you anymore. And I mean, you’re s it seems like you’re getting a little emotional now. I don’t know. Yes. So I I can’t tell you how much I cried with this patient because.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (41:40)

Right.

I am

Mm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (42:04)

It really is. And I cry on podcasts every time I talk about it and I get goosebumps every time. Because it is that fast. And she had no idea. How could she? Why would she ever think those two things were related? And in fact, she hadn’t realized that was abuse. She had literally not realized it was abuse. So we just had to get through that. So your body knows, your brain remembers.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (42:08)

⁓ yeah.

Mm.

gosh.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (42:31)

And it may be something so unrelated. And so you need a trauma therapy that bypasses your thinking brain, that just has your body speak to you and tell you what it remembers. And it does. It does.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (42:49)

gosh. I now I have to like take a moment. You’re gonna hear ⁓ tissues on my desk here.

That is so critically important because people don’t realize, just like with the patient that I had, that we were able to work through that piece and with the referral too as a team, we were able to get through that and get her on the other side of that. But she had not realized either that it was related. And I think that’s one thing that’s I

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (43:19)

Yeah.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (43:22)

This could be true of any gender, but I just see it so much in women where something happens to them, they can’t even call it what it is. I know that happened to me, and I’m very sensitive about noticing that with other women and with all people who come into my practice, because I’ve had men who’ve been abused as well, is that they can’t even call it by name, that it’s abuse.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (43:43)

No, and I s I mean, I’m sure you see this, the you know, quote unquote date rape situation in college, colleges before I mean I I have to really help women to see that that was not okay. Because women blame themselves and when you blame yourself again, you’re gonna shut down and that’s gonna cause pain because it wasn’t safe. And so you

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (43:50)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And finding that

safety moving forward is that’s the repair, you know, that needs to happen. Even communicating about sex feels unsafe for many people.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (44:18)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I want to be clear: like this sort of transformation happens around every issue that you could possibly go to therapy for. This is not just a trauma therapy. It’s for ⁓ depression, anxiety, OCD, phobias, insomnia, ADHD. ⁓ you want to treat your kids better. You want to not get triggered when your mother-in-law comes to town.

you want to start exercising and you can’t seem to get through that. It’s it’s about body image. It’s it’s it and libido. It actually just simply works on libido. I’ve worked with women who have low libido. They come in, we do a specific script, ⁓ and they go home, they have sex with their partner, they love it, and then they actually like and love their partner more.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (45:18)

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (45:19)

I mean it’s unbeliev that I’m always like, Really? You do? But they do.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (45:25)

my gosh. So like when someone’s repairing like that, after years of avoidance or pain or resentment or disconnection, what are a few like phrases? What do you wish more couples knew? ⁓ you know, about how they should interact or how they should communicate?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (45:45)

One thing I wish is that if you don’t know how to verbally communicate, find ways to talk about sex, text, write each other emails, ⁓ suggest reading articles together. You know, send your partner an article and say, I know we don’t usually talk about sex, or I know we, but I

I think it’s important that we start. And I thought this would be a great thing. So I usually tell people to find something neutral to talk about rather than, and so like I always suggest this thing called a, you know, yes, no, maybe sexual activity list, where you, you know, you have a list of, you know, a hundred sexual activities and you can circle yes, no, or maybe. If you do that separately and then you come together, you’re looking for the overlap.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (46:25)

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (46:38)

You’re not looking for the one that says yes and absolutely never. You’re looking for the yes or maybes. And you will learn so much about your partner, but you don’t have to come up with these things by yourself. It’s written on a paper. So you just read it. And I always tell people it’s a lot easier to say, you know, kissing in public, you know, on a piece of paper versus like,

Hey, do you feel like do you ever think about kissing in public? Like it’s people are embarrassed. This is a new skill. And so it’s gonna be awkward. Nobody died from awkward. It’s what I say to my kids. If I have something to say to them about sex, you know, years ago, I would say, so this is gonna be awkward for 38 seconds, and we’re gonna get through it. And so you can say that to your partner.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (47:12)

Yeah, fairly

Yeah.

 it.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (47:35)

This is gonna be so awkward. my god, can you believe it? We have no idea how to do this and we’re, you know, in our thirties or forties or sixties. But let’s do it anyway. You’ve gotta bring a sense of humor too.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (47:38)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. ⁓ that’s

true. That’s true. Some you know, that I often say that. I was just talking about something ⁓ earlier with a patient. I’m like it’s it’s very difficult to talk about it and you know, oftentimes you will default towards crying, but sometimes you can also use humor, you know, in that situation too to kind of patch yourself through.

What are some of the ⁓ how would you prepare someone for an ART session?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (48:13)

You just find out what they want to work on. You have to be motivated. And so I just meet them where they are. So, you know, what do you want to change right now in your life? What how would your life be different if you worked on, you know, your libido? How would your life be different? And one of the th the thing we ask at the at the beginning of every ART session is, how would you like to feel at the end of today’s session?

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (48:17)

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (48:44)

And they’ll usually say free, you know, you know, calm, ⁓ at peace, you know, less conflicted or horny, you know, they’ll say whatever. And that’s my goal is to try to help them feel that. And they really do often feel that. And more, like a lot more than they expected.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (48:56)

Yeah.

Yeah. gosh. So I have a question for the clinicians who might be listening because we do have a several ⁓ therapists and and and docs that love to listen to the podcast too. What do you wish that pelvic health clinicians understood about trauma before treating sexual pain or dysfunction?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (49:30)

That there might not be a big T trauma and you still need to help the person begin to understand that their body is responding to something that was unsettling or overwhelming. I would love for pelvic floor PTs to begin seeing trauma as something simply that the person found overwhelming in their nervous system.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (49:58)

That’s good. Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (49:59)

That’s

it. That’s what it means.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (50:02)

Yeah, I love that. How do you think? I mean, we all have thoughts about this too, being in this, ⁓ you know, this this shared ⁓ community is how can pelvic PTs and sex therapists collaborate better? I mean, being in it, right, and having a podcast about it, obviously I’m, you know, referring and stuff on a regular basis, but I don’t see that. Like someone in orthopedics who like dabbles in pelvic PT, they’re not looking for trauma, they’re not looking for

they’re not going to refer to sexual, you know, to sex therapy. So how do you see that, you know, we can collaborate together better?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (50:37)

I think we have to go into these more medical kind of straight up medical, you know, places and talk directly to the doctors about what to do when they’re stuck. We are the answer. You know, we are the answer. We’re not trying I always tell people, I am not trying to take a patient from you. In fact, maybe I’ll see them a couple times. I’m gonna send them right back to you, but I’m your friend.

Because you’re frustrated. We know the patient’s frustrated, but you’re frustrated. You’re you’re at your the end of what you know how to do potentially, or what you’re doing is working, but it’s just not really shifting them out of something that they still want to change. So we’re your friends. We are here to again handle something that you just don’t know how to do because you’re not a therapist or you’re not a pelvic floor PT or whatever.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (51:26)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Okay.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (51:36)

And so I think we have to go in and just say, ⁓ we have a magic bullet and it is magic. What I say about ART is that it is one hundred percent based on science, but what happens in that session is pure magic. Pure.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (51:54)

Yeah. I think that or I have seen that oftentimes the a person will say, ⁓ and this is, you know, let’s talk about women’s health for just a second. Because I think men male pelvic health can be even more disastrous sometimes because with women they’re they go to their OBGYN and they think they’re talking to a subject matter expert.

To which OBGYNs, let’s be clear, and and and any person that’s in general healthcare, ⁓ regular PTs, et cetera, none of them have been taught to creen to screen for sexual dysfunction. And so if I have a patient that says has the courage, right, to even say it, I’m having a problem with sex, usually, and I can’t even repeat the things that I hear, you know, they’re told. ⁓

have a glass of wine and relax is probably one of the worst ones, but it it’s along those lines that just absolutely enrage you. And then they get blown off. So then they lose, they’re deflated, they lose their courage. And that’s the scenario that I see most often. And that’s a clear sign that someone needs trauma and form psychotherapy alongside pelvic rehab so we can figure this out. So if if you’re listening and you have gotten that answer, don’t accept it. And I’m sorry that you got medically gas lit and there is help.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (53:09)

Yeah, and and you know, the medical gaslighting that I see ⁓ with any sexual concerns, obviously chronic health issues. I mean, that’s trauma all in and of itself, and you often just has have to process that out completely too. So

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (53:25)

Yeah. Yeah.

It’s trauma in the system that’s supposed to be helping. Yeah. It’s w that’s even worse. It’s, you know, because you’re supposed supposed to be able to find safety and be able to disclose this information and have it have you be, you know, feel encouraged and oftentimes they’re kind of told it’s all in their head. And yeah, yeah, yeah, we get it. There’s a lot that happens in our head that puts it in our head, but we don’t wanna tell patients that, you know, that

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (53:42)

Yeah.

Right. I think rather

than, you know, it’s all in your head, it’s also in your head and how could it not be?

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (54:01)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, we’ve got to take control of that that narrative, you know, take back control of that narrative that’s been used to gaslight people, but also explain neuroscience to them, you know. Yeah. Because that’s where I always will say: ⁓ tissue matters, hormones matter, inflammation matters, relationship safety matters, the nervous system matters. There’s hardly ever one simple explanation. ⁓ but

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (54:04)

And it shows up in the body. Mm-hmm.

Exactly.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (54:30)

For the person who is listening who may feel numb, shut down, ashamed, afraid of intimacy, or disconnected from the body, that’s a huge one that they don’t even know how to feel, where the parts are in space. What is one compassionate first step? What what what should happen?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (54:52)

I I think, you know, the the the thing you need to say is ⁓ I’m gonna figure this out.

I’m gonna figure it out. I just haven’t yet. I love the word yet. I haven’t figured this part of my life out yet. The other thing that I think is even more important to say, whether you believe it or not, pleasure is my birthright.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (55:11)

Yeah.

Hm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (55:24)

Pleasure is my birthright. And I’ve been sold a bill of goods that tells me that my pleasure means nothing to anyone else. So why bother having it mean anything to me?

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (55:26)

Pleasure is my birthright.

⁓ yeah, that yeah. Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (55:44)

But it’s a God given right. And I always tell people, I’m not even, I’m not talking about religion. I’m just

saying it’s your God given right, you know, to to feel pleasure. And that means all kinds of pleasure. The the the thing that makes me the saddest is when I ask people, women specifically, what is something that brings you pleasure that has nothing to do with sex whatsoever? And they can’t name one thing.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (56:10)

⁓ that breaks my heart.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (56:12)

It’s terrible. It’s really hard. And so that’s where we start and I’ll say, you know, you know, what about the sunshine on your face? And they’ll say, I don’t know, I’ve never really noticed. And I’ll say, okay, that’s your homework this week. Is tilt your head to the sun and just notice. Just breathe and notice. Because there’s pleasure everywhere. But you have to believe.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (56:16)

Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (56:41)

that it’s your right to feel it and to notice it. And I I I really don’t think that’s I think men are all about their pleasure. ⁓ you know, I I think they feel entitled. I think that’s great. They should.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (56:54)

Yeah. They yeah,

they’ve been socially conditioned to immediately accept that as truth. We were not. Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (57:02)

Right. And I will

say, I want to say one thing about pleasure. Men are dying to please their female partners. They are dying to. What I hear from men so often is: I ask her so much, what does she want? What would feel good? What does feel good? And she always answers, I don’t know. And guess what? She doesn’t know. And so she needs to go to sex therapy to

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (57:10)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (57:31)

Actually, just give herself permission to tune into when her body feels good doing anything at all.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (57:40)

Mm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (57:42)

When does she feel

powerful? When does she feel free?

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (57:46)

Yeah. that’s such a great conversation that needs to be had. And it breaks my heart. And it is so true to know that you you and we know this is true, but just to get it out in the open, to ask yourself what actually brings you pleasure can be absolutely non-sexual, and women aren’t able to answer that question. It’s heartbreaking, but it is one piece that you can carry away, dear listeners.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (58:11)

Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (58:13)

⁓ no matter what gender you are, because I think that with the pressure and performance, you know, anxiety that that men have too, they have their own set of pressures to like measure up or whatever it may be, that they need to ask themselves that same question. But you’re you’re right, you know, from a social conditioning perspective, men are taught that that pleasure is their birthright, and then we’re never even it’s never even consideration, you know, for us, because we’re still used to caregiving others.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (58:38)

Yeah, and I do think that’s

I do think that’s changing. I really do. I I I think the younger generation of boys, even though they’re raised with so much porn, I I do think that they see it more as ⁓ you know, something that’s mutual. ⁓ I’ve heard that a lot from younger, you know, teens and twenties, that there is more interest. And, you know,

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (58:43)

Yeah.

Hmm. Okay.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (59:06)

I mean, I think that’s great. And I think, you know, when you when you have when you’re selling vibrators in CVS, that’s a good thing. That is a good thing. I remember when I saw that the first time, I took a picture. I was so excited to make it accessible, to make it where next to condoms and lube. And that says pleasure matters. And of course, there’s also, you know.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (59:14)

Yes, yeah. Finally.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (59:33)

Vibrating cockerings, right? For men too. I mean, it’s not just women’s pleasure, but a lot of the things there are for women specifically. And

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (59:35)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, hurt hurt’s frequency

matters for both for all genders. Yeah. Well, Brooke thank you so much for this conversation. I I’ve taken I’ve taken away so much from this, but one of the things that I that stick with me is that sexual healing is not about forcing the body to perform in any way. It’s about restoration of of safety, of being able to use your voice quite literally, speaking up. ⁓

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (59:45)

Exactly.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (1:00:09)

To make choices and to create connection. And for everyone listening, if this episode resonated with you, please know this: your body is not broken. Your symptoms are information. And what the right support, healing is possible, which leads me to my next and last question, which is: where can people find you, Brooke?

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (1:00:30)

you can find me at BrookeBralove.com and ⁓ I’m also on Instagram and Facebook at Brooke Bralove Psychotherapy.

Dr. Ginger Garner DPT (1:00:40)

Fantastic. Thank you so much, Brooke, for this essential conversation. This has been so helpful and I have learned so much, so many new things. I just, I’m so, I’m so excited. Thank you.

Brooke Bralove, LCSW-C, CST (1:00:51)

Thank you for having me.