Sexual Harassment Is Not a Passing Incident: How Trauma Lives in the Body

Many people still believe that sexual harassment is a temporary incident—something that happens, leaves a psychological bruise, and then fades with time. Even when its emotional impact is acknowledged, it is often minimized as short-lived or manageable.

The reality is very different.

Sexual harassment does not always end when the incident ends. For many survivors, its effects surface years later—especially during the most vulnerable and intimate phases of life: pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding.

This blog series explores how sexual harassment can deeply affect women long after it occurs, and why pregnancy and motherhood can unexpectedly reopen old wounds.

To understand this, we must first understand how memory and trauma work.

Have you ever walked into a room to get something—only to forget why you went there? Then, when you return to where you were before, the memory suddenly comes back?

Psychologists call this state-dependent memory. Certain memories are tied not to logic, but to physical sensations, emotions, or bodily positions.

Trauma lives in the body.

A woman in her thirties once sought therapy because she experienced intense panic during intimacy with her husband. When her arm bent painfully beneath her, her body immediately recalled a rape she believed she had forgotten. During the assault years earlier, the perpetrator had pinned her arm in the same position.

Her mind had moved forward. Her body remembered.

This same mechanism explains why many survivors experience severe emotional reactions during pregnancy, childbirth, and breastfeeding—long after the harassment itself.

For some survivors of sexual harassment, pregnancy can be unexpectedly distressing.

As the body changes, old emotions may resurface:

• A growing belly can trigger feelings of loss of control

• Increased visibility may bring shame or fear

• Some women feel exposed, watched, or judged

• Others feel that pregnancy itself is a reminder of sexual violation

  
  

As their bodies change, survivors may experience:

• Panic attacks

• Severe anxiety

• Depression during pregnancy

• Emotional numbness or dissociation

  
  

For some women, every physical change becomes a reminder of what they once endured.

As the belly grows, a survivor may feel:

• “Everyone will know I had sex.”

• “My body no longer belongs to me.”

• “This feels like another form of violation.”
  

These thoughts are not irrational. They are trauma responses.

In some cases, women experience intense fear or panic during labor itself—especially when pain, medical procedures, or physical vulnerability resemble past abuse.

Pregnancy is often described as a joyful time. For survivors, it can instead become a battlefield between the present and the past.