Is Sexual Shame Stopping Me From Feeling Pleasure?

Shame shows up as a thought. Someone touches your belly and immediately there is: my belly is not tight enough. Am I bloated? Do I look good in this position? And just like that, you are back in your head. The body closes. Pleasure shrinks. A pattern like this can be changed.

Where it comes from

I invite you to think about this. How was nudity experienced for you as a child? Was it okay for you to be naked? For your parents to be naked? How was sexuality experienced in your home? Were your parents at ease in their bodies? These are not abstract questions. They are the first layer of conditioning, the one that shapes everything that comes after, long before there is any sexuality involved.

Then there is conditioning from religion, from culture. It is so quick for us to feel shame in this area, and so easy for that shame to accumulate. It is useful to bring your attention to where yours began, to see that what feels like your own belief is often just a very old message. And old messages can be changed.

What I have also found is that your experience of pleasure is conditioned by how you talk to yourself. The permission for pleasure, the ability to receive it, starts with that internal conversation. Watch how you speak to yourself, about your body, about what you feel you are allowed to want.

What shame does to pleasure

Shame comes as a thought. Someone touches you and immediately there is a commentary, am I too this, am I not enough of that, and just like that, you have left your body. You are observing, evaluating, worrying. The body reads that departure and contracts. Sensation narrows at exactly the moment it could be expanding.

What I have found, in my own practice and in working with others, is that when you bring awareness into the body and work with your senses, you are amplifying your capacity for pleasure. One of the biggest barriers to pleasure is that we cannot hold it. As soon as we have a little, we override ourselves. The practice is to build a larger capacity, so the body can receive more, and the noise has less room.

Resensitisation allows you to expand pleasure so that you feel so much pleasure that you are not getting distracted by a thought because it feels so good. The limitations are constructed. When we start to feel more, they have less room.

Where the practice begins

Every time you look at yourself in the mirror, every time you touch yourself, I invite you to have a positive intent. We are heavily shaped by beauty standards and cultural constructs. A practice that sends positive intention to yourself, regularly, repairs the gaze.

If you feel guilt or shame after pleasure, it might be that you do not yet feel you have permission for it. In which case, take a moment to check in with yourself and to give yourself that permission directly. Let it land. That is where it begins.