Reconnecting with pleasure, desire and yourself
For years, I knew how to keep going.
I knew how to fit in. How to be agreeable. How to become whatever the situation needed me to be.
I was a chameleon.
I would adjust myself to the room, swallow what I wanted to say and try to blend in. I was ashamed of my voice, my different accent, the parts of me that made me stand out.
And underneath all of that, I was carrying so much.
Around 25 years of traumatic experiences, alongside the everyday moments when I abandoned myself. The people pleasing. The boundaries I did not set. The feelings I pushed down because expressing them felt too difficult.
My healing journey was intense. It unfolded over six years.
When I began to feel what I had spent so long suppressing, I had to learn how to meet it. How to ask for support. How to stop disappearing from myself.
And slowly, something started changing.
I began asking questions I had avoided.
Is this what I want? Is this where I want my life to go? How much longer am I going to keep fitting into a life that does not fit me?
The more I worked with myself, the more those old beliefs started chipping away.
And beneath them, I began finding my own voice. My desire. My fire.
Imagine there is a cup inside your body
This is an image I often use in my work.
Imagine having a cup inside your body.
Every time someone needs something from you and you say yes when you mean no, a little more goes in.
Every time someone crosses a line and you swallow your response, a little more goes in.
Every time you carry stress without giving yourself space to recover, a little more goes in.
The disappointment you brush aside. The words you never say. The resentment you feel guilty for feeling.
The cup fills and fills and fills.
Then one day, someone says a teeny tiny thing.
And you lose your shit.
Or you burst into tears. Shut down. Feel overwhelmed by a request you would usually handle without thinking.
Afterwards, you wonder, “Why did I react like that? It wasn’t even a big thing.”
Think about the cup.
That moment can be the final drop in something that was already full.
This is a metaphor for the load you are carrying, rather than a literal container of emotion. I use it because it makes something familiar visible: sometimes your response belongs to more than the moment in front of you.
Womanhood, change and carrying everything
Being a woman can involve so much change.
Changes in your body, your relationships, your roles, your responsibilities and your sense of who you are.
You can spend years responding to what life asks of you without stopping to ask what you want from life.
In my work, I have noticed this conversation coming up with women in their mid-thirties and beyond.
“I used to cope with this.”
“Everything gets to me now.”
“I don’t know why I’m so angry.”
Thirty-five is not a deadline or a switch in the body. It is an age range where I have witnessed some women begin questioning what they have been carrying and what they are willing to keep carrying.
And alongside that, there is a question I want you to ask:
Where in my life am I repeatedly overriding myself?
Where are you saying yes while everything in you wants to say no?
Where are you making yourself smaller to keep someone else comfortable?
Where are you being so reliable for everyone else that there is hardly anything left for you?
Three patterns I notice around anger
There are three patterns I often see. You can recognise more than one in yourself, depending on the situation.
You struggle to feel your anger.
You explain things away. You understand everyone else’s reasons. You tell yourself it does not matter, even while resentment builds.
You feel anger, but you are frightened of it.
You worry that expressing it will make you difficult, unkind or too much. You feel it rising and immediately try to shut it down.
You feel anger, and it takes over.
You say things you regret. You explode after holding everything in. Then comes the guilt, the shame and the promise to keep it together next time.
Learning to work with anger means recognising it earlier and choosing what to do with it.
You can feel angry without hurting yourself or someone else. You can express a boundary without an explosion. You can hear the feeling without letting it make every decision.
Sometimes anger points towards something important:
That crossed a line. I need something different. I cannot keep doing this.
It deserves your attention. It also deserves your discernment.
“Kat, why are you talking about anger in a post about pleasure?”
Because in my work, these conversations meet.
I have witnessed women who struggle to permit anger also struggle to name what they want, express themselves or make room for enjoyment.
If you are constantly holding yourself back, that restriction can reach into so many parts of life.
The voice that says, “Don’t be difficult,” can also say, “Don’t want too much.”
The voice that says, “Keep everyone happy,” can leave very little room to ask, “What feels good to me?”
In my spiritual language, I call that vitality your life force: your fire, your passion, your energy for living.
Some traditions speak about kundalini. I use life force to describe my experience of aliveness; these words have different meanings, and anger, desire and sexual arousal are not all the same thing.
But for me, reclaiming the right to feel, speak and want has been part of reclaiming my fire.
Your anger can be a starting point for a conversation with yourself. What are you no longer willing to accept? What do you want to make space for instead?
Pleasure and desire belong to you
When I talk about pleasure, sensuality and sexuality, I want you to understand how personal this can be.
You get to discover what these mean for you.
Great sex with a partner can be a beautiful part of life. There is also an entire relationship with pleasure that belongs to you, whether someone else is there or not.
Feeling comfortable in your own skin.
Enjoying the way your body moves.
Letting music reach you. Tasting your food. Noticing a scent. Feeling warmth on your skin and actually staying present for it.
In my own practice, there have been moments when simply breathing and being connected to my body felt deeply pleasurable—even sensual.
That is part of what I mean when I say turned on by life itself.
You do not have to recreate my experience. Arousal is not a test of healing, and you do not owe anyone constant desire.
I want you to have room to discover your own enjoyment. Your own appetite for life. The things that make you feel connected, passionate and fully here.
Your story does not have to look like mine
You do not need to identify a major traumatic event to recognise that you are exhausted, disconnected or tired of abandoning yourself.
Years of people pleasing, pressure, unresolved conflict and carrying responsibility can be enough reason to seek support.
And if your history does include trauma, you do not have to share every detail to begin working with how you feel today.
Your experience deserves attention without comparison.
What I mean by working with the body
When I talk about holding stress in the body, I mean the physical experiences that can accompany it: bracing, tension, changes in breathing, difficulty settling and the responses you recognise when something affects you.
In my own life, earlier experiences continued to influence how I met the present.
That is part of what brought me to this work.
I am trauma trained, and I work with breathwork, somatic connection, movement, voice and expression.
We pay attention to what is happening. We explore ways to feel and express what is manageable. We practise recognising your limits, using your voice and responding differently.
Sometimes the work is energising. Sometimes there is emotion. Sometimes what matters most is hearing yourself say a clear no.
I use the word release to describe experiences of putting something down, expressing a feeling or finding a shift in how you meet it.
The work continues in what follows: the boundary you set, the choice you make, the support you accept.
This is about lightening your load and creating more room for your life.
There is more to life than getting through it
This is what I want for you.
To smile and feel it.
To know what you want without immediately talking yourself out of it.
To trust yourself enough to take a step, make a decision and change direction when something no longer fits.
To feel pleasure that belongs to you. To notice the small details. To let joy have a place alongside everything you have survived.
There is so much more available to explore than simply coping.
Life needs to be tasted. Life needs to be felt. Life needs to be explored.
You get to ask what that looks like for you.
Begin with a moment of connection
Before you move on, choose one of your senses.
Look at something beautiful nearby. Listen to a piece of music. Notice the texture of your clothing or the warmth of a drink.
Give it your attention for a moment, without trying to create a particular feeling.
Then ask yourself:
What do I enjoy? What have I been missing? What do I want more of?
If focusing inward feels uncomfortable, keep your eyes open and stay with something outside you. You can stop at any point.
You do not have to answer every question today. Begin by giving your own experience some space.
If you are ready to explore this with me
If you recognise yourself in this story, you are welcome to get in touch.
My work brings together breathwork, somatic embodiment and space for expression, with support as you explore what is holding you back and what you want to move towards.
We work with your experience. Your voice. Your choices.
I want you to feel connected to yourself, trust what matters to you and have the clarity to act on it.
Send me a message, and we can talk about the right starting point for you.
With love,
Kat
Peony Libre
And if this resonated and you would like to connect to yourself, here’s a little gift from me to you.
Comments are closed