Pleasure Is Not a Reward for Healing
In this post, we will explore:
what happens when research only studies what’s wrong with us
how trauma can feel comforting and familiar
the retreat that reminded me why I do this work
tending to pleasure has been creating luck in my life
glimmers and joyful art mediums
“The oppressed will always believe the worst about themselves.” — Frantz Fanon
Building a room of one’s own gives us agency. But how much time has been stolen thinking the worst of ourselves? Self-policing, monitoring, assimilating, masking (1)? That we’re too broken or we’ll never belong and be loved (2)?
Healing isn’t linear and…
A lot of therapy spaces (I include my own profession here) begin with healing from trying to help people in vulnerable states find immediate relief in talking something out. We’re often handed frameworks, theories, exercises, worksheet guides about what’s wrong and how we can resolve, process or fix it with these tools and resources.
Social psychologist David Myers tallied decades of psychology research, he found studies on anger, anxiety, and depression outnumbered those on joy, happiness, and life satisfaction by 14 to 1.
For most of its history, institutions like psychology and medicine focused on pathology like negative emotions and survival-driven fight-or-flight, studying what goes wrong far more than what helps us feel alive, joyful, well, connected, loved. It can also be seen as a bias in mental health research and understanding lived experiences: healing as something to overcome, to get through, and recover.
Figure 1. dawn with Honey, the cat
Can trauma feel like comfort?
Trauma pulls us back to the past. At times, we feel like we’re being swallowed whole by the hurt. Then there are times when one foot stays stuck in that painful experience, as if it’s still happening.
Trauma keeps us in loops, convincing us to keep searching for whys. Trauma is also very good at convincing us that good things don’t happen for us.
Aliveness, pleasure, love, care, asking for help, belonging can be felt for everyone else. Other people get to be loved and held and have wonderful things happen to them…
…just not us.
Strangely, there can be comfort in that. Being the exception feels familiar. In a twisty way, it can even make us feel a little special. If we never reach for pleasure, we never have to risk it being taken away.
But what if we approached healing by coming back to the present and letting ourselves feel pleasure here, right now?
Many of us were taught that pleasure is the reward we get after the hard part. But what if pleasure is something we need to witness, experience, and allow as we are still navigating hardships?
Fear and stress narrow our attention to the threat/s in front of us but pleasure widens what we notice and what feels possible (3). Over time, tending to pleasure will become inner resources we subconsciously look for in every space we enter: like being seen, expressing ourselves, feeling inspired, experiencing safety, co-regulating and self-regulating, feeling the gift of presence when we connect. Instead of an experience that can only be understood after we do enough healing.
That’s why I find myself leaning into pleasure activism when working through hardships, holding it dear to my heart. It reminds me to dip out of the clouded, intense drama that keeps us stuck, even if it’s for a short time.
Oppressive systems depend on keeping us cut off from that knowing but pleasure activism (4) refuses this conditioned ordering. It treats pleasure as a deep, bodily knowing of what truly satisfies us (5). Gravitating us to connecting with what we want.
After all, someone who remembers what pleasure feels like in their body is much harder to convince to settle.
Figure 2. bts co-hosting a retreat!
Tending to pleasure has been creating luck in my life!
Working with folks who struggle with rigid patterns and blocks, being an eldest daughter witnessing mental health concerns in my family and in my partner’s life taught me that it takes thousands upon thousands of attempts to be able to be aligned with what really supports us, hold ourselves with the kind of care we give to others, and let ourselves take in pleasurable moments.
The journey of pleasure activism led me to a magical group I had the honour to meet, facilitate, co-host our first creative retreat with Leah from Friendly Bureau.
What was lucky and magical was witnessing 11 participants from all over the world, courageously flew and took trains across France to a small countryside town called Saint Vincent de Tyrosse to learn, connect with each other and with our creative selves. Some of us are figuring out how we want to live and what’s next, pivoting careers, dealing with mental health difficulties back at home.
We shared space like a family, laughed, cried, sang, made art, wrote letters, beached, and basked under a sky full of the brightest sheet of stars on our last night together. (Will share more about this experience. I’m still taking it all in!)
Luck and pleasure can be nurtured!
I couldn’t help but think of this video (6) and this book (7) introduced by my art therapist friend and colleague, Cammi Manchur, and a practice I return to again and again.
The idea is that luck isn’t just something that happens to us, it’s a skill we nurture.
We get to teach our attention what to look for: opportunities, invitations to collaborate, pleasurable moments. In the research, people who practised this increased their luck by 40%.
To me, pleasure works the same way. Tending to it clarifies the experiences we desire, what we’re protecting, and what’s sacred to us.
Figure 3. apple cinnamon oatmeal
Orienting to safety via glimmers ⋆⭒˚.⋆
Safety can look like finding glimmers in our lives: moments that are the opposite of triggers. Every time we notice small cues of safety and delight, it signals to our nervous system and consciousness to soften and strengthen adaptive beliefs (beliefs that help us get through hardships).
On the retreat, I made sure to bring ample books of stickers (including Decipher’s sticker sheet) to promote the inherent, therapeutic quality of my favourite medium. I find stickers are that portable glimmer the participants can bring home after the retreat.
What are your pleasurable / joyful art materials?
Mine are ones that naturally help me loosen my grip on control: colourful paint sticks that look like glue sticks, stickers from all over the world gifted by friends and me to my inner child, coloured pencils that soothe me, nature (rocks, flowers, sunlight, shadows, inspo from animals’ coats), and cute craft papers for journalling and writing letters to loved ones.
Next time, I’m sharing what happened after co-hosting my first retreat, what happens to us after the magic, and low cortisol practices we might bring home.
I’m rooting for you to let in pleasure, friend.
With gratitude and wonder,
Linda ♡
Notes
(1) Internalized oppression: when the messages a system sends about your group move inside and start speaking as part of your own voice, blurring the line between what we’ve internalized and what we can choose to externalize it. It clouds our judgement and consciousness with trauma.
(2) Defectiveness/shame schema makes us fear and pull away from taking in glimmers, joys, life-giving moments from learned helplessness, fear of being seen, cared for, loved by others…never feeling the belonging that we crave.
(3) Barbara Fredrickson, psychologist’s broaden-and-build theory
(4) adrienne maree brown describes it in her book Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good: the work of reclaiming our “whole, happy, and satisfiable selves”
(5) Audre Lorde’s 1978 essay “Uses of the Erotic”
(6) It’s Not Magic: 4 Scientific Secrets to Get 40% Luckier
(7) Psycho-Cybernetics by Maxwell Maltz
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