How I moved from trauma trigger crying to self-pleasure after getting hit in the face

In this deeply personal episode, I share what happened after getting unexpectedly hit in the face by a soccer ball and how that moment triggered an old trauma response connected to surviving D V and having my nose broken years ago.

Even though I knew logically that I was safe, my body didn’t feel safe.

This episode is a real and raw conversation about nervous system triggers, somatic healing, emotional release, self-soothing, self-pleasure and why mindset work alone is often not enough when it comes to trauma and embodiment.

I also share:

• The somatic tools I used in the moment to regulate myself

• What it means to “close the loop” after an emotional trigger

• Why suppressing emotions keeps them stored in the body

• How pleasure and pain are deeply connected

• Why expanding your capacity to feel sadness, anger and grief also expands your capacity for pleasure, love and aliveness

• The shift from numbness and disconnection into embodied pleasure

• How women often disconnect from feeling in order to survive

This episode is an invitation to soften your armour, reconnect to your body and remember that pleasure is not separate from healing. If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your body, struggled to feel safe within yourself, or wondered whether deeper pleasure is truly possible for you, this is for you.

Podcast Episode

Feel turned on by your own life.

Lit up by your own pleasure.

Be & live Pleasurelit

I’m Patricia.

I was the “good girl”, high-achieving, independent, high-functioning. I survived an ED and a DV marriage. For years I lived disconnected from my body. Somatic pleasure changed everything for me - in my life, motherhood, business, and relationships. From people pleasing to pleasure leading.

Now I wake up feeling deeply alive in my body. I feel pleasure in ordinary moments. I claim my power while I also soften. I can receive love, pleasure, success and rest without shutting down or rushing past it.

I am the founder of Pleasurelit®, the bestselling author of The Pleasurelit Way, host of the top 5% podcast Pleasurelit with Patricia and an award winning pleasure explorer and educator.

Through trauma-informed somatic pleasure, nervous system regulation, tantra, breathwork, yoga, kink and feminine embodiment, I guide women on their journey to feeling radiant, regulated & deliciously turned on.

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A Soccer Ball Hit My Face and My Body Took Me Back to the Worst Moment of My Life

Yesterday I got hit in the face by a soccer ball. My glasses flew off. My nose didn’t break. I wasn’t bleeding. By every rational measure, I was fine.

And then I started crying at the edge of a soccer field in front of my kids, other families, and anyone else who happened to be watching.

For a second, I thought about holding it back. Doing what so many of us have learnt to do, which is to override what the body is feeling with what the mind already knows.

I’m safe. It was just a ball. I’m fine.

But here’s the thing. My body wasn’t fine. My body didn’t care what my mind said. Because the moment something hit my face out of nowhere, my nervous system didn’t see a soccer ball. It felt the moment my nose was broken by my ex-husband.

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Your Body Is Always Keeping Score

We hear that phrase, the body keeps the score, but living it is different from understanding it. It’s not theoretical when you’re standing at a soccer field with pain across your face and tears coming that have nothing to do with right now and everything to do with years ago.

My nose was broken during my DV marriage. Painful in a way that doesn’t have adequate words. Not just physically, though that was significant enough that I had to fly back to Germany for surgery, but emotionally. The kind of break that leaves marks that aren’t visible.

What happened yesterday is that my body recognised the sensation. The sudden impact, the disorientation, something hitting my face without warning. My nervous system did what nervous systems do: it matched the pattern and sent me back. Not metaphorically. Somatically. My body responded as though I was in danger, because the last time something hit my face exactly like that, I was.

You cannot think your way out of that. No amount of I know I’m safe reaches the part of the body that’s running the alarm. That’s not a failure of mindset. That’s just how trauma lives in the body.

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Nervous System Regulation

I didn’t have a full collapse at the soccer field, because I knew I could give myself what I needed later. In that moment, I used the tools I have to regulate myself.

Extended exhale through pursed lips, self-touch, hugging my own body and talking directly to myself: you are here in the present, you are safe. Grounding in the now and building enough safety to get home.

My kids asked if I was okay. I told them mommy needed a moment. They gave it to me.

But I also knew that I had interrupted the emotional cycle before it completed. I had regulated, not resolved. And those are not the same thing.

Closing the Loop

Closing the emotional loop means going back and feeling what you couldn’t finish feeling in the moment. Because the body needs to move through the experience to release it. When we suppress emotions because the timing is wrong, because there are people watching, because we have somewhere to be, they don’t disappear. They sit. They wait. And eventually they surface somewhere else, louder.

The next morning, alone in my space, I put on music, took some conscious breaths, and let myself feel what had been left unfinished. Sadness. Some tears. A bit of anger. The kind of release that only happens when you’re not performing your feelings for anyone, including yourself.

And then, it shifted. My breathing changed on its own. Sensation started moving differently. What had started in grief moved, gradually, into something that felt genuinely good. Pleasurable.

I know that might sound strange. But this is something I don’t think is talked about enough. When you stop armouring yourself against pain, you also stop armouring yourself against pleasure. They come through the same opening. Widening your capacity to feel the difficult things is exactly how you widen your capacity for the delicious ones.

By the way, I speak more into this exact experience within my latest Women’s Pleasure Notes on Substack here.

The Trauma Trigger

The trigger doesn’t have to be dramatic. It doesn’t have to look like a soccer ball to the face. It can be a tone of voice, a smell, someone’s posture, a moment of unexpected impact in a completely ordinary situation. And when it comes, your body will respond to what it recognises, not to what’s actually happening.

This is why somatic work matters. Because it gives you tools to actually move through what the body is holding, rather than managing it.

The tools I used at that soccer field, the breathwork, the self-touch, the grounding, the language I directed at myself, those came from years of practice. They are learnable. They are teachable. And they are exactly what we work with inside the Pleasurelit Woman & Circle.

You Already Have Pleasure Within You

I spent years thinking I was broken. Disconnected, numb, unable to access real pleasure or emotions. What I have learnt is that the capacity was always there. It just needed safety to open.

If you feel limited in your pleasure, if your body feels like a place you live around rather than inside, that is not your permanent state. I know this because I lived the other version for a very long time.

You can feel safe inside your own body. You can learn to move through what’s hard without it taking you out completely. And on the other side of that is not just regulation. It’s aliveness. It’s pleasure.

That’s what I’m here for.

Ready to Go Deeper?

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With love & pleasure, Patricia

For educational and informative purposes only

We would love to hear from you:

• What has resonated with you from this episode?

• Have you experiences something similar? How have you moved through it?

• Has crying ever turned into pleasure for you?