Pleasure is Not a Bad Word
When you hear the word pleasure, what do you notice in your body? I have observed clients cringe, furrow their brow, clench their jaw, sigh, laugh, take a refreshing breath, even cry on command when asked this question. Pleasure has taken on the weight of our society’s condemnation of the erotic, of rest, and of liberation. Pleasure has been relegated to the realms of frivolity, dirty desires, and experiences worthy of your guilt and shame.
Pleasure is simply the enjoyment of something. It is a feeling of happy satisfaction. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary pleasure is defined as “1) desire, inclination, 2) a state of gratification, 3) sensual gratification, 4) frivolous amusement, 5) a source of delight or joy.” Pleasure is the experiencing of a stimuli that makes you smile or makes you orgasm (but doesn’t have to).
Does anything change in your body as you take in the full definition of pleasure? Are there any spaces that open up for allowance? Anything that softens? What do you notice when you allow yourself to associate pleasure with any source of delight or joy?
Unfortunately, pleasure has become a “dirty” word. Sexual repression, digital censorship and, most notably, inherited puritanical cultural norms, have commingled to create stigma around the concept of pleasure. The condemnation of pleasure that is not hard earned by cultural norms, familial punishment and reward systems, and religious doctrines of austerity does not benefit you. You feeling disconnected from the infinite pleasure possibilities that surround you each day ultimately serves a system dependent on your unwavering productivity.
We are in the midst of a burnout crisis. Millennials report the highest levels of stress and burnout on record, gaining the generation the nickname “the burnout generation.” To be fair, anticipating the ways late-stage capitalism would demand more and more of us was not something any of us on an individual level could have anticipated. Still, no generations before now have truly tested the sustainability of this work hard, play hard approach to life. The great successes so many of us worked so hard for (both personally and professionally), do not feel as rewarding as expected. Rather than experiencing fulfillment and a sense of accomplishment day in and day out, we exhaust ourselves trying to live up to an idealized version of personal and professional perfectionism, caregiving children and aging parents without substantive support networks, keeping up with rising housing and living costs all while trying to maintain our romantic relationships and friendships. No wonder nurturing and caring for our own selves, tending to our erotic nature, and deprogramming the guilt and shame we associate with pleasure is so damn hard.
(Re)connecting to pleasure may seem daunting at first. The rewards are so worth it. The practice of pleasure comes with ease once you make it through the woods of social messaging, conditioned stigma, and negative thoughts that have stood in your way. Getting a flywheel going is a nice metaphor for the process of deprogramming and reconnecting to the power of pleasure in your life. The flywheel has been used for centuries in ancient potter’s wheels, steam engines, motors, even children’s toys. This simple mechanical device - a wheel with a fixed axis - conserves momentum, stores rotational energy and powers movement. The process of getting a flywheel moving at first is arduous. You push against the large wheel with great force and may only move the wheel slightly at first. As you apply consistent effort, the wheel makes one complete turn. As you continue to push, the wheel captures the rotational energy and begins to rotate with more ease and increased speed. Eventually the effort required to keep the wheel spinning is quite low and the speed and output of the wheel is high. The wheel stores the momentum of your pushing and continues to move without the effort required to get the movement initiated. This is akin to any healing, growth or reclamation process.
Reclaiming pleasure as your birthright starts with clearing out the noise about what you deserve, saying goodbye to old stories that hold you back from receiving, throwing out definitions of pleasure that don’t serve you and reconnecting with your whole self. There is no “right” way to allow pleasure into your life or to reclaim your wholeness. By noticing, allowing, and intentionally connecting to pleasure in all its forms, you are beginning to move your flywheel. The deep satisfaction you receive from your first sip of coffee, the burst of excitement when someone laughs at your joke, the butterflies that dance around your stomach when a lover whispers in your ear, the full body relief of a long hot shower all create momentum in the direction of joy, connection, gratification, and delight. Giving yourself permission to desire pleasure, noticing it when it shows up, and allowing it in is all it takes to redefine pleasure on your own terms.