got a good grade in physical therapy because i ordered a sex toy life is fun
anyways tmi/nsfw warning but since it helped me and my therapist hadnt considered the idea before im willing to bet a lot of others havent either so im gonna share:
if you have vaginismus and struggle with dilating regularly i highly recommend looking into wearable toys. theyre generally vibrators that hook onto your clothes or your person in some way, and they're intended to be worn long-term and in public which means you can safely+comfortably just put it in and go about your day without having to sit down and do the whole production of dilating on its own. theyre usually curved to follow your body and soft/flexible unlike the dilators which are straight and stiff, so theyre imo easier to get in and less uncomfortable to ambiently exist with, and the long term aspect gives your body more time to adjust to having something there. and frankly the vibrator part is helpful too, a big part of vaginismus therapy is teaching your body that sensations there arent actually painful like it thinks so introducing positive stimulus helps it relax, bc functionally it kind of is a type of massage lol. but yeah again i know this is oversharing and tmi but i also know this disorder majorly sucks to have and feel like you cant make progress on so if it helps anyone else then yeehaw
actually ive decided these tags are important enough to go in the post body
image id under cut bc it wouldnt fit in alt
alao i don't know enough about vaginoplasty to feel comfortable saying whether the first tip would be useful for that dilating too but its something to keep in mind at least, i cant see any reason why it wouldnt work the same though
i dislike "hey rb this actually" type things so if you dont want to thats completely fine esp considering a good chunk of it is abt vibrators lol, however it would be greatly appreciated as vaginismus was never mentioned in school / health class for me and ppl really do end up assuming (or being told by assholes) that the pain is just how it works and they have to push through it to be normal, i learned abt it somewhat early on bc mine was so severe i straight up thought i simply Didnt Have A Vaginal Canal and wanted to see if that was a thing, but for a lot of people its more subtle where penetration is /possible/ just not /comfortable/ so they think "ah this must just be how it works, everyone must experience this when they have sex so i just have to deal with it", which sucks on its own but is also something often taken advantage of/encouraged by abusive partners. or those with low/no libido* often find out when they reach the age for their first pap smear and either are in way more pain than normal for it, or are just straight up unable to complete it and then have to wait until after therapy finishes to get that test, so i want to give anyone i can a head start on that realization lol. and even medical stuff aside, the mental impact of not being able to engage in sex the "normal" way despite wanting to is really rough on its own, it's even been really rough for me and i'm transmasc so to a certain degree ive found it gender affirming not being able to do it """the girl way""", but at a certain point that just became a sprinkles-on-a-turd kind of thing yknow lol
*can also include those with active libidos who just choose not to sleep with anyone, but theyre a bit more likely to find out via masturbation whereas someone without probably won't feel the need to explore what's going on there as much
also i wanted to add vis a vis the physical therapy part, the "having a doctors finger in you" part does feel weird and awkward and embarassing and yes probably will hurt a bit when youre first starting out, but they will go as slow as you need and it really is helpful, because from that they can tell you what areas to focus pressure on with the dilator, test muscle control, make sure youre doing kegels/breathing exercises right, and gauge your progress while making sure youre not pushing too fast, so if youre willing/able to push thru the awkwardness of it then it really is worth it
editing bc i think this has started showing up on ppls fyps: there's another version of this post here where i go into more detail about treatment options, including a breakdown of the instructions my therapist gave me for mine, so if this post helped out then i would check out that version too! 💕
