Pleasure is the Goal, But Not the Kind We’ve Been Sold

Pleasure Isn’t the Problem: It’s the Wiring

We talk a lot about pleasure in healing spaces, but for many women, it doesn’t land the way we hope. Sometimes there’s confusion. Sometimes guilt. Sometimes a quiet ache—I should be feeling more than I am, but I’m not.

And so, instead of deep, nourishing connection, we reach for things that look like pleasure but don’t quite get us there.

Not because we’re doing anything wrong. But pleasure is more complex than we’ve been taught.

Pleasure Can Mean Many Things

Sometimes what we call pleasure is really relief. Sometimes it’s a distraction. Sometimes it’s a way out of pain. And sometimes, it is a spark of connection, a returning to aliveness.

But without presence, real, body-based presence—it’s hard to tell the difference.

That doesn’t make our choices bad. It makes them wise responses to our nervous system’s capacity.

We all have strategies. We all reach for something that helps us cope, soften, and survive. Whether it’s movement, food, caretaking, intimacy, scrolling, or even stillness, we’re all trying to feel better. Or feel something.

But when the body hasn’t learned how to stay with itself, even good things can feel off. That’s not your fault. It’s the imprint of a culture that doesn’t make space for women’s feelings, needs, or longings.

The Nervous System and Pleasure

In Somatic Experiencing®, we look at how experiences get linked—or “coupled”—in the nervous system.

• Overcoupling happens when pleasure is linked with something threatening: shame, danger, rejection, or control. So when something starts to feel good, your system might tense, back away, or even shut it down.“I want this… but I shouldn’t.”

• Undercoupling happens when the experience of pleasure is disconnected from the body. You may know what you like, or think you do, but you can’t feel it.“I’m here, but I don’t feel much.”

Both patterns are adaptations. They’re your system doing its best to keep you safe, based on what it’s been through.

A Metaphor That Might Help

Think of a dimmer switch. Pleasure is like light.

But for many women, the wiring behind that switch has been shaped by years of subtle (and not-so-subtle) messages: Don’t ask for too much. Don’t feel too deeply. Don’t want too loudly.

Sometimes the light floods on—too bright, too much, too fast. Sometimes it barely flickers. You try to turn it up, but nothing happens. You question yourself. You think: What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I feel?

But it’s not about doing it “right.” It’s about the system having the capacity to feel. And that capacity can be rebuilt—gently, over time, with care.

Pleasure is the Goal—But Not the Kind We’ve Been Sold

Pleasure matters. It’s a glimmer. A resource. A pulse of life in the system. It supports healing because it brings us into contact with something real, something good.

But when pleasure is sold as luxury massages, peak sex, or something you have to earn after doing enough, being enough, or achieving enough, it becomes disconnected from presence.

It becomes performance. Consumption. A means of escape or approval.

Real pleasure, the kind that heals, is rooted in presence. Not because it’s flashy or perfect, but because you’re actually there to feel it.

It might show up as the warmth of sunlight on your chest. The quiet relief of not being touched when you don’t want to be. A full breath. A small yes. A softening you didn’t expect.

These are not trivial. They’re doorways. And they become possible when we stop striving for pleasure as an end result, and start tending to the nervous system as it is.

Want support in reconnecting to your body, your truth, and what feels good, for real? Go to

www.somashift.org to book a complimentary session.

Pleasure is your portal to healing