Love & Pleasure after Trauma for Women

Podcast Episode

You are functioning, but you are not feeling…

You hold it all together - your life, career, motherhood, relationships. You keep pushing, managing, and people pleasing. A life on autopilot. Underneath all of it, you ask yourself: is this really it? Your mind rarely stops, you move from one thing to another, rest makes you uncomfortable. Your sleep is broken, your digestion is off, and your mood is unpredictable. Your nervous system is stuck in a survival state. Your body has forgotten how to feel safe, how to soften, to receive, and how to feel good.

What is missing isn't more effort. What is missing is somatic pleasure.

I’m Patricia - an ED & DV survivor, former nurse, mother, and an award-winning pleasure explorer & educator. I guide women from functioning to feeling radiant, regulated & deliciously turned on - in life, business, motherhood and relationships.

I am the founder of Pleasurelit®, the bestselling author of The Pleasurelit Way, and host of the top 5% podcast Pleasurelit with Patricia. My trauma informed somatic pleasure approach blends nervous system regulation, tantra, sexuality, breathwork, yoga, meditation, holistic health, fitness, alchemy, identity shift, and feminine embodiment.

Pleasurelit is your pleasure lit from within.

Choose your path:

• Join The Pleasurelit Woman Program

• Join The Pleasurelit Circle Online Community

• Access all my Online Courses

• Get my bestselling book The Pleasurelit Way

• Apply for the 1:1 Hour

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• Book Patricia for your speaking or workshop

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YouTube Video

Have you been telling yourself you have high standards, but underneath that is the fear of getting hurt again? In this episode, I share my own journey from a DV marriage through hyper-independence, high-functioning and emotional armour, to realising the men who hurt me were still controlling my life. I talk about the difference between protective walls and boundaries, what somatic self-trust actually changes, and how women can open up to love and pleasure after trauma without abandoning themselves.

I hurt my little finger this morning lifting weights.

It’s still throbbing as I record this. And my first thought, once the sting settled, was that everything worth having comes with this kind of risk. Weightlifting makes me feel strong and radiant and deeply alive in my body. It also, apparently, occasionally destroys my little finger, or gives me some bruises, soreness, dry skin spot.

And that’s what this episode is about.

Because if one man hurt you, and now no one else gets access to your heart, that one man is still controlling your life. That landed hard for me when I first understood it.

After I left my DV marriage, I very quickly met someone who showed me similar traits. The love bombing, the pull, the familiar shape of something I’d already survived once. I got out before it went too deep. But what happened after is what I want to talk about, because it’s what I see in so many women and almost never name clearly enough.

I armoured up. Completely.

I told myself I didn’t need anyone. I poured everything into my children, my business, my qualifications, my certifications, my podcast, my mornings, my routines. I built a very full, very functional life.

And for a season, that was exactly right. That space gave me something I hadn’t had before, which was the room to actually focus on myself and fall in love with myself, to explore my own body, take responsibility for my own pleasure, my own safety, my own happiness - without waiting for someone else to provide it.

That part on my journey mattered.

But there’s a point where the armour stops being protection and starts being a.. prison. And the tricky thing is that from the outside, it doesn’t look like fear. It looks like high standards. It looks like self-sufficiency. It looks like a woman who has healed, moved on and doesn’t need anyone, thank you very much.

Underneath, for me, it was fear. Fear of getting hurt again. Fear that maybe I couldn’t trust my own judgment. Fear that if I opened up, I would lose myself again the way I had before.

But when I finally sat with that in my own coaching sessions, what I realised was this: my feminine energy, that softer, receptive, open part of me, had gone very quiet. She didn’t feel safe enough to come out. So I was running everything from my masculine, the doing, the achieving, the protecting, the building. Which served me in many ways. But it also meant I was living at a fraction of my full capacity for love and pleasure.

The moment that really shifted things was when I understood I was still giving those men the power. The hurt, the fear, the closed-off heart, all of it was still being controlled by experiences that were already over.

There is a real difference between walls and boundaries. Walls say nobody gets in, ever, because I cannot trust what might happen. Boundaries say I know myself deeply enough now that I can open my heart but will not lose myself inside it. I can feel the red flags earlier. I can honour my body’s yes and its no. I can choose who I let close, and I can trust that choice, because I have built genuine self-trust from the inside out.

That self-trust changes everything about who you engage with and how. You become harder to manipulate, because you don’t put up with shit anymore. You stop tolerating what isn’t aligned with you.

A bad experience was never meant to be the thing that closes you off from everything you actually desire. A bad experience is useful information. It can make you wiser. You know you got yourself now.

There was also the fear of "not being loveable” - but I will go more into this another time.

I want you to remember: You deserve healthy love. You deserve pleasure. You deserve to feel safe enough in your own body to receive both.

Don’t let the hurt keep winning.

If this episode stirred something in you, that’s your invitation to join the Pleasurelit Woman program - my eight-week somatic alchemy process where we rewire your nervous system so you can open up to love and pleasure without losing yourself in the process. The Pleasurelit Circle is my ongoing community for women who don’t want to walk this path alone.

Support the podcast: Follow/Subscribe to the show, rate it with 5 stars (on Spotify) and share the episodes with others, so we can spread more pleasure into this world. You can also tag me, so I can re-share your love. Thank you.

With love & pleasure, Patricia

For educational and informative purposes only

We would love to hear from you:

• What resonated with your from this conversation?

• Have you put up the walls? Closed your heart?

• What do you feel called to share?