Understanding women's help-seeking experiences for vaginismus : implications for their constructions of sense of self

Abstract

Vaginismus is a largely neglected female sexual pain disorder. While previous scholarship on vaginismus has a clinical focus on treatment and classification of the condition, there is a lack of research on women's experiences of seeking and receiving help for vaginismus from their perspective. To address this gap, this project aimed to understand Australian women's help-seeking experiences for their vaginismus, and the impact of such help-seeking on their sense of self. In order to meet this aim, a feminist theoretical approach informed the methodology of this project to centre women's voices to understand how they took Action, negotiated Power, and expressed Advocacy in their help-seeking journeys. Semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2020 with 21 participants who sought help for vaginismus in Australia. Thematic analysis was used to categorise participants' voices from the semi-structured interviews. This led to the construction of three major themes: 1). Women's Help-Seeking Experiences; 2). Impact of Women's Help-Seeking Experiences on Their Constructions of Sense of Self; and 3) Participants' Recommendations, and relevant themes and subthemes. The findings uncovered that participants' help-seeking experiences, with health professionals and within and outside the healthcare system, impacted their constructions of self in ways that informed their approach to future help-seeking, potentially like a feedback loop. Negative help-seeking experiences with health professionals, treatment, or to gain diagnosis weakened participants' sense of self, which led to their demotivation or withdrawal from help-seeking. Conversely, positive help-seeking experiences to seek information, diagnosis, and treatment strengthened participants' sense of self to believe in their own capacities to persevere with treatment even when it was challenging. Women's weakened sense of self was often caused by a gap between their ideal and perceived self, which led to negative feelings and responses to subsequent help-seeking. Health professionals should be trained to identify possible gaps between vaginismus sufferers' ideal and perceived selves to offer support in specific ways to help them overcome the gap. This can help women to empower their sense of self to accept their situation, own worth, and motivate them to continue help-seeking to experience improvement without feeling lesser.

Date of Award	2021
Original language	English