Are you more inhibited sexually than you want to be? Is this inhibition hurting your ability to date or your relationship with your partner? Are you in sexual situations where you know what you would like to have done to you, but you just can’t bring yourself to ask for what you want?

Many of my patients have absorbed negative or frightening messages about their sexuality from parents or their church, so that normal sexual wishes — like the simple wish to be touched sexually or the desire to pleasure themselves — are off limits.

One of the Milestones of Sexual Development, as I call them, is permission to be a free, sexual person.

One of the principal ways sex therapists help their patients is by combating negative messages about sexuality. But you can free up your sexual inhibition yourself, if you prioritize transforming yourself in this way.

One good way to check in with yourself about your inhibitions is to watch a very explicit sex scene on TV or in the movies and check with yourself about how you feel while you are watching it.

My patients report all kinds of negative feelings doing this exercise, like:

• Thinking “that’s disgusting”

• Believing “I don’t think I deserve that”

• Feeling “I don’t think anyone would want to do that with me”

• Thinking “I am afraid I will go to hell for having these thoughts and desires”

• Simply feeling unpleasant sensations in your body while watching this sexual stimulus

You can begin to collect those anti-sex messages that you have received by writing them down in a notebook. You’ll probably be astounded by what you were taught, implicitly or explicitly.

When you are ready, rip up the pages of the notebook, or cross out those messages and write down a more positive message, the one you aspire to believe.

Here’s a technique that is going to make you laugh: Write down the negative message on a crepe and then flush it down the toilet

If you are curious about how your family affected your sexual life today, you might check out my book SexSmart.