Pleasure Is Shame: How Trauma Teaches You to Fear Joy

Ana teaches that shame around pleasure is not morality — it’s trauma. Reclaiming joy is not betrayal of your past but devotion to your life. Ana Mael’s “Pleasure Is Shame” — one of her most layered and psychologically rich pieces, combining trauma theory, embodiment, and intergenerational survival dynamics.   ANA TEACHINGS & PROGRAMS https://exiledandrising.mykajabi.com/store   Get the Book: The Trauma We Don't Talk About https://amzn.to/41SjKKL   ❤️  Please donate  This podcast is independently run. No production teams. Fancy edits. Only a somatic education, truth & storytelling.     https://donate.stripe.com/3cI9AS5Xfb9W6O832VfEk00 _____________________________________ Core Teaching Pleasure and shame are trauma-linked. Ana reframes pleasure not as indulgence or luxury, but as an innate human state — one that trauma disrupts. Survivors often associate pleasure with danger, humiliation, or betrayal because it was used against them or forbidden by those in power. Abuse severs the link between aliveness and safety. When abusers punish victims for joy, sensuality, or satisfaction, the nervous system learns: pleasure = threat. What should be restorative becomes dysregulating. Guilt replaces joy. Once shame takes root, guilt follows — not just as an emotion, but as a physiological residue. The survivor internalizes the abuser’s judgment, carrying it like “molasses” over the body, believing they can never be clean, good, or worthy again. Somatic and Psychological Lens Pleasure as a body-based function. Pleasure is not abstract; it’s neurochemical (dopamine, oxytocin, endorphins). When trauma teaches the body that pleasure is unsafe, these pathways constrict. The body literally stops producing or tolerating sensations of delight. The “molasses” metaphor: Ana’s description — “as thick as molasses, the guilt and shame drips over the body” — translates an emotional imprint into somatic texture. It communicates how shame feels heavy, sticky, and inescapable. Cycle of pleasure–punishment. Many survivors oscillate between denial and overindulgence: Seek pleasure → feel guilt → self-punish → suppress desire → seek again. This repetition mirrors trauma’s pattern: relief, shame, punishment, freeze. Nervous system dysregulation. The body of a survivor can’t hold high-arousal states (joy, excitement, sensuality) without tipping into anxiety or collapse. Ana implies that capacity for pleasure must be rebuilt slowly — in titrated doses of safety. Intergenerational & Cultural Trauma Survival guilt and inherited deprivation. She links personal trauma to collective trauma: oppressed, displaced, or war-torn communities may view pleasure as betrayal. “If I’m happy while my people suffer, I’m disloyal.” This is survival guilt disguised as morality. Loyalty to deprivation. The phrase “loyalty to deprivation” is brillia...

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