about my research

Purity culture & embodiment

In 2024, I completed my Master's thesis on sexual embodiment and purity culture. In this study I used an arts-based and embodied method called body-mapping to explore participants stories through the use of symbols and imagery on a life-size body outline. Body mapping was used to explore five participants experiences of sexual embodiment after purity culture. From this study six main themes speaking to participant's stories and experiences: overwhelming emotions; confusion; protection of the sexual body; barriers to embodiment; desiring and attempting embodiment; and healing.

My research and understanding of embodiment and purity culture continues to influence my clinical work and understandings. 

Link to the full thesis is posted here. Summaries of my personal story and themes from the study are provided below. 

Link to full thesis

Personal story (an excerpt)

...I started seeing a new therapist halfway through my undergraduate studies and although other therapists had focused more on talking through my problems, this therapist was different. Prior to our work together, I had spent years thinking that emotions would overwhelm me. Through her gentle guidance, I slowly learned that my body could move through uncomfortable experiences. It was only when I started to apply this slower, gentler, and more relational way of experiencing my body to my faith that I started to notice a difference.​

I began to see and feel the ways in which I had internalized my theology, the ways in which I had embodied Evangelical Christianity and purity culture. While I had reevaluated certain theologies and beliefs, I could feel how my body still knew, at its core, that I was “sinful” and “worthless.” My fear of hell motivated the kind of relationship that I had with my body. My body was something to be controlled and suppressed at all costs because I believed that, at my core, I was sinful. Mentally, I had dismantled rules around my sinful nature, modesty, and abstinence-only. However, my body knew deep within me that it was still not good. Before I could even think about experiencing pleasure, my body would suppress pleasure and desire. There were still parts within my body that believed that desire would overwhelm and take over my body, away from goodness, and away from God. I began to see how these beliefs had been placed there during my childhood without my knowing.

It took a long time to unlearn what my body remembered about sex and purity: terrified of pregnancy and hell, and ashamed of myself, and my messy sexual body. One day, the pregnancy nightmares that had dominated my adolescence stopped. I realized that I had begun a different process outside of the mental deconstruction process I was used to. I noticed how fear tensed my body or how I recoiled with disgust at anything surrounding sex or sexuality. I was not trying to “turn on” or overcome my sexual self. I was no longer trying to overcome my body. I felt shame rise whenever I approached pleasure. I noticed, I listened, and I waited. Slowly, my sexual self, who had been terrified of my body, sex, and pleasure, emerged softly.

For the full story in my thesis click here. 

Themes from participant narratives

  • Overwhelming emotions

    Many participants left purity culture feeling intense emotions such as disgust, despair, and shame at the sexual body. The unattainable messaging from purity culture brought on feelings of isolation and a need to escape. 

  • Confusion

    Participants described the contradicting narratives in purity culture to be confusing, especially in doing sex "correctly". However, when trying to do sex correctly, their appeared to be no correct way to achieve this while maintaining purity. Confusion was also an embodied experience for some participants whether as confusing battles between happiness and exhaustion, or the confusion from disjointed relationships with the sexual body. 

  • Protection of the sexual body

    Participants protected their bodies within purity culture through a variety of ways whether through perfectionism, modesty, or disconnecting from the body. Participants also found new and creative ways within the body mapping process to protect their body through visual symbols and imagery. 

  • Barriers to Embodiment

    Current barriers to embodiment was found in experiences such as body dysmorphia and disassociation even after leaving purity culture. This theme revealed the ways in which participants had a present need to protect the sexual body and prevented further positive embodied connections. 

  • Desiring & Attempting Embodiment

    Participants described desiring more positive embodied connections after purity culture. The dual process of desiring and then attempting new embodied experiences was often experience in the midst of experiencing barriers to embodiment. 

  • Healing

    The theme of healing presented as three subthemes: acceptance, comfort, and safety; freedom, choice, and autonomy; and engagement with goodness and difficulties. The acceptance, comfort, and safety subtheme showcased the ways in which participants needed safety in the sexual body before experiencing healing. Second, having the freedom and autonomy to make new choices was present in participants descriptions after purity culture. Finally, the subtheme of engaging with goodness and difficulties revealed how some participants were able to integrate the goodness of the sexual body alongside suffering rather than separate experiences. 

  • For the full description of themes in my thesis click here.