Your Pelvic Floor Has Feelings Too 💛

When people talk about the pelvic floor, they usually mention things like bladder control, bowel control, sex, babies… all very important stuff.

But there’s one role that almost never gets talked about — and it’s a big one.

Protection.

Your pelvic floor is designed to protect you. When your body senses danger, fear, or threat, those muscles can tighten automatically to guard your internal organs and prevent unwanted intrusion. In other words… your pelvic floor doesn’t just respond to movement — it responds to emotion.

Yep. Your pelvic floor is both a physical AND emotional muscle.

And science backs this up.

Newer pain research shows that emotions, stress, and mental health play a huge role in how pain shows up in the body. This has led to something called the biopsychosocial approach — which basically means we stop treating people like broken body parts and start treating them like whole humans (about time, right?).

This approach recognizes that pain isn’t just about muscles and joints — it’s also about the nervous system, emotions, past experiences, and feeling safe in your body. And for pelvic health? This perspective is huge.

Take pelvic pain conditions like painful penetration or involuntary tightening of the pelvic floor. Often, what we see isn’t just tight muscles — it’s a loop of tension, fear, anxiety, and pain feeding into each other.

Your body learns to stay in “protect mode.”
And it makes sense — it’s trying to keep you safe.

That’s why treating pelvic floor pain isn’t just about exercises or hands-on work. Addressing fear, anxiety, and emotional safety is just as important — sometimes even more so.

Healing looks different for everyone, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. But one thing matters across the board: feeling safe. When someone feels heard, supported, and emotionally safe, their body has a chance to let go of that constant guarding.

Because sometimes, the pelvic floor isn’t “misbehaving” — it’s just doing its job a little too well 💛

And when we understand that, real healing can begin.

Mia Dang, PT, is a pelvic physiotherapist with extensive supplementary training in pelvic floor physiotherapy and perinatal care