Rina Sawayama Reveals She Was Groomed At 17 And Needed Sex Therapy To Heal: ‘I Detached From My Skin’

etcanada.com:

Japanese-American alt-pop star Rina Sawayama is explaining just how much trauma can influence an artist’s musical output. Digging deep into the darkness of her past, the “John Wick 4” star, 33, stopped by BBC Three’s “In Conversation” series, where she revealed that she underwent sex and relationship therapy to alleviate experiences from her youth she now dubs as “grooming.” READ MORE: Rina Sawayama Seemingly Shoots Off At Matty Healy While Performing At Glastonbury: ‘I’ve Had Enough’ “This is the first time I’m talking about this, but essentially, through doing sex therapy – sex and relationship therapy – I realized that really something that I thought was a relationship that I had, when I was 17, was actually I was groomed.

Then why that realization happened in my 30s was because I was finally his age.” The troubling experience was so impactful that it led to the track “Your Age” from her 2022 album Hold the Girl.

Describing the therapy as “intense,” Sawayama says it helped her come to terms with the toxic relationship dynamic. To make matters more shocking, she revealed the perpetrator was a school teacher. READ MORE: ‘John Wick 4’ Sets Franchise-Best With $8.9 Million During Previews “I was so badly slut-shamed, that I developed so much shame around my sexuality, and lost completely my sense of self, I detached from my skin like inside, I don’t know how to describe it.

But I just felt so afraid of things. And I’d have anxiety attacks.” Sawayama now recognized the entire ordeal as an “abuse of power.” Although writing the “Your Age” proved difficult, she says it was also “one of the most incredible experiences.”