Erica* appeared confident; a poster child for the American beauty standard. Straight white teeth. Long, sleek blonde hair. Strong, upright posture. A trim body dressed head-to-toe in a look that could have been pulled straight from a magazine spread. In many ways, she exemplified “perfection.”
On paper, too, Erica’s life looked enviable. She had two healthy children, an amicable divorce years behind her, a career she enjoyed, a fit, healthy body, a couple of close friends, and a strong relationship with a family member she trusted deeply. From the outside, everything looked “great and problem-free.”

Inside, however, she felt like a fraud.

When I complimented her on her outfit, she caught herself smiling, then quickly joked that she doesn’t like to smile too much or people might notice the crow’s feet around her eyes. I laughed with her, but part of me suspected she was telling the truth. She preferred hiding a full-face smile rather than risk looking “old,” which in our culture is often treated as the same as “unattractive.”

She told me she had a palpable fear that “something is missing,” like she was watching life from the outside and it was passing her by. She didn’t feel depressed. She just didn’t feel much passion for anything except her kids. She kept repeating some version of: “I know something is missing, I just don’t know what.”

I compared her experience to the movie The Truman Show, where Jim Carrey’s character lived in a “perfect” world other people would envy. But deep down he sensed there was an entire reality he was not in touch with. Unlike Truman, whose life was created by TV producers, Erica’s world was created by an intense drive to appear appropriate, controlled, invulnerable and problem-free.

Essence vs performance

At one point, I asked Erica whether she had any sense of her own essence. She looked at me like I was speaking in another language (a common reaction for people who have built their lives around looking composed and in control.) I explained it this way: If you watch a talent show like American Idol or The Voice, sometimes the judges say to a contestant, “You hit every note perfectly, but it didn’t move me.” Technically, the performance was flawless, but something was missing. That “something” is essence. It’s what makes Adele “Adele” instead of someone trying to sound like Adele. It’s what people mean when they say, “Make the song your own.”

Perfectionists focus on performance. They don’t want to mess up. They don’t want to look bad. They’re afraid of showing too much. Being in ones’ essence, on the other hand, is about being fully you and letting yourself be felt. For many of my clients, especially those with a history of rigid self-control, perfectionism becomes a kind of armor. It looks impressive from the outside. Inside, however perfectionists feel emotionally flat and they’re often anxious. Not surprising, perfectionists struggle in close relationships with being vulnerable. When it comes to the openness required for satisfying intimacy and sex, they are often unreachable.

Bioenergetics and the rigid pattern

In the Bioenergetic tradition – a mind-body therapy that addresses how personality is shaped by the way individuals manage their energies – people like Erica often fall into what’s called the “rigid” character structure. (Bioenergetic therapy is not to be confused with biological bioenergetics, a field that studies how living organisms metabolize cellular energy). Bioenergetic therapy works with the idea that character structure impacts how people process their emotions and experiences. The idea was introduced by Wilhelm Reich, one of Sigmund Freud’s students. He took Freud’s idea of the defense mechanism – which people use to defend themselves from feeling anxious or exposed (such as projection, denial, or rationalization) and expanded it to what he called character structure (Reich, 1933/1945). Instead of defenses being conceived of as just mental strategies to deal with anxiety – the way Freud saw them – Reich envisioned character structure more wholistically. He proposed that these structures are so impactful that they shape the body and personality over time. Similar to Freud’s ideas about defense mechanisms, however, Reich saw character structure as originating in one’s family.

The Origins of Armoring

Reich believed that character structure starts early in our lives, and is the product of early relationships, especially with our parents. A parent who is hostile, shaming or demeaning toward his or her children causes the child to emotionally protect themselves. If the parent is inconsistent with their nurturing and prone toward withdrawing their love or frequently punishing their children, the child, in turn, develops emotional protections to avoid the pain of these parental behaviors. If the child’s natural creativity, or emotional expressiveness or even early erotic feelings are rejected or ridiculed by the parent, that too causes the child to recoil and protect themselves.

These experiences of “bad parenting” then become internalized in the child where they crystallize in a rigid character structure. Thereafter they become largely unconscious. In the face of emotions or uncertainty or difficulty, the structure is invoked and filters what the child is capable of feeling and experiencing.

Reich’s student, Alexander Lowen, developed these ideas into Bioenergetics, a therapy approach that pays close attention to the body, to posture and to muscle tension as expressions of our emotional history (Lowen, 1958, 1975). According to Bioenergetic therapy, as children grow up, they create and the maintain these structures to protect themselves. Threats, fears, feeling anxious; these emotions cause children to tighten up and focus on self-control to manage the uncertainty. The tension of muscular control, maintained over time to manage emotional uncertainty then leads to a freezing of mind- body energies that becomes heavy, restrictive, and rigid, just like a suit of armor.

Turning back to Erica, the perfectionism reflected in her perfect muscular control and management of tension, viewed through the lens of Bioenergetics, becomes a picture of emotional armoring and rigidity. In this view, her unrealistically high standards has created a painful reality for her body. She may appear perfect on the outside, but inside, she is suffering. At one time, given her personal history, armoring might have been a smart self-protective move for Erica. But over time, it has exacted a painful toll in the following ways:

  • She has become armored against criticism, and against experiencing painful emotions.
  • She keeps her own feelings and desires tightly managed.
  • Her rigidity is so ingrained, that much of her armoring operates outside of her conscious choice.

How armoring impacts intimacy and sex

Reich noticed that many of his patients were terrified of pleasure. These were often people raised in families that looked righteous and disciplined on the surface but in reality were emotionally cold, shaming, and even abusive. Alexander Lowen emphasized that in these familial environments, children survive by tightening up, losing their spontaneity and suppressing their capacity for pleasure. (Lowen, 1975). More recently, the sex therapist and researcher Gina Ogden has called these familial worlds, “factories of repression” that train people to be disconnected, joyless, emotionally cold and prone to sexual dysfunction (Ogden, 2008). Some people hold themselves so stiffly, that they are like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, incapable of having much feeling. The person may look composed but their body is stiff and tight. They often register that tightness in their jaw, neck, or shoulders, or in their chest, pelvis, or buttocks. Their breathing might be restricted. Their posture, overly erect and rigid. These bodily conditions and armoring powerfully impacts how these armored people experience sexual pleasure and intimacy. They often have difficulty letting go into the pleasure and arousal of a sexual orgasm. They often internally monitor their intimate behavior, asking themselves: “Do I look okay? Am I doing this right?” That in turn leads them to avoid certain natural positions, sounds or movements because they’re afraid they’ll look foolish. Sex for them, in several ways, becomes a stiff, overly restricted performance rather than an experience of shared intimacy with one’s partner.

Ogden accurately notes that armoring can make it very hard for a person to truly bond with another because the same defenses that protect them from pain also mute their feelings, stifling the capacity for intimacy (Ogden, 2008). Sexual intimacy can be equally difficult because emotional vulnerability is out of reach.

Perfectionism as a form of sexual defense

Based on these findings, Erica’s perfectionism wasn’t just a personality quirk. It was armor.

Her straight spine, carefully curated outfits, reluctance to smile fully, and constant effort to appear “fine” all made sense in the context of a history where vulnerability felt unsafe. Growing up in a dysfunctional family had caused Erica to don a suit of emotional armor to protect herself. Her body had learned, “Stay tight. Stay in control. Don’t let them see too much.”

In my work with Erica as a sex therapist, I didn’t begin by asking about her sex life. I started by asking her about pleasure. When did she feel pleasure in her body? Even a little bit? And what helps her relax – and why does it do so? What happens inside you when someone really sees you or appreciates you? For people like Erica, these questions can feel both inviting and terrifying. They begin to reveal the gap between performing “perfect” and actually feeling alive. They also can prime memories so that we could begin to unpack why Erica was so armored. That was the first step toward Erica taking her armor off and allowing vulnerability – and intimacy – to enter her life. Gradually, Erica was able to experience her emotions anew while welcoming deepening feelings of pleasure.

Signs you might be armored around sex and intimacy

You may recognize yourself in pieces of Erica’s story. Here are some signs you might be armored:

  • You’re often praised for being “put together,” but feel empty, flat or like a fraud inside
  • You worry more about how you look during sex than how you feel.
  • It’s hard to be self-expressive, you restrict your facial expressions, the sounds you make or how your body moves.
  • You avoid eye contact or emotional closeness during sex.
  • You pull away, shut down or go numb when conflict or vulnerability shows up.
  • Pleasure makes you anxious, guilty or out of control.

If you see yourself in this, it doesn’t mean you’re broken. It usually means your nervous system and your body did an excellent job protecting you in situations that didn’t feel safe. The problem is that the same armor that once kept you safe may now be keeping you lonely, disconnected and sexually unsatisfied.

Working with a therapist trained in both relational and body-based approaches can help you slowly soften the armor, reconnect with your own essence and experience sexual activity as something you can participate in, rather than just perform.

*Erica is a composite character created from multiple clients and personal experiences. Identifying details have been changed to protect confidentiality.

References

  • Lowen, A. (1958). The Language of the Body. New York, NY: MacMillian Publishing Company.
  • Lowen, A. (1975). Bioenergetics. New York, NY: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, Inc.
  • Ogden, G. (2008). The return of desire. Boston, MA: Trumpeter Books.
  • Reich, W. (1933/1945). Character Analysis (Higgins, M., Ed.).  New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.