Reclaiming Pleasure After Shame and Sensory Burnout
A Survival Guide for Neurodivergent Humans
If you’ve ever cried during sex, ghosted your own desire, or needed a three-hour nap after a five-minute orgasm attempt… you’re not broken.
You’re just fucking tired.
Tired of performing.
Tired of fawning.
Tired of trying to feel pleasure in a body that’s been trained to survive, not to want.
And if you’re neurodivergent? Add a side of sensory overload, masking, executive dysfunction, and a nervous system that throws hands every time it hears the word “relax.”
So yeah—this post is for you.
Why Pleasure Feels Like a Threat
(Especially After Shame)
Let’s talk about the brain on shame for a second.
When you grow up steeped in messages that your body is dangerous, your desire is sinful, or that sex is something to either perform or avoid, your nervous system adapts. It learns to protect you. It builds fences around sensation. It guards your pleasure like it’s a damn crime scene.
Add in trauma, religious scripts, fatphobia, ableism, racism, or queerphobic messaging—and your body learns one thing:
“Feeling good isn’t safe.”
Now add neurodivergence to the mix. Sensory differences. Social scripts. Masking for survival. Executive dysfunction. RSD. It’s no wonder pleasure feels like trying to meditate on a rollercoaster made of shame and overstimulation.
Pleasure Isn’t a Luxury—It’s Survival
Here’s the truth they don’t teach in sex ed:
Pleasure is regulation.
Pleasure is repair.
Pleasure is protest.
It’s not a reward for being productive.
It’s not a bonus round at the end of your healing journey.
It’s a damn necessity.
Especially if you’re healing. Especially if you’re unmasking. Especially if you’ve spent most of your life in fight, flight, freeze—or fawning through your own desire just to keep the peace.
The Survival Guide: How to Reclaim Pleasure
(Without Forcing It)
These aren’t “Just do this and you’ll be turned on again” hacks.
These are slow, sensory-rooted, nervous-system-approved micro-shifts to help you come back to yourself.
1. Start with Sensation, Not Arousal
If touching yourself feels impossible, start by touching anything else. Soft fabric. Warm water. Weighted blankets. Pet fur. Hairbrush bristles. Your own damn hair.
This is foreplay for your nervous system—not your genitals.
2. Build an Erotic Menu
List what feels good in different sensory categories:
Visual: colors, lighting, shapes
Audio: playlists, white noise, affirmations
Touch: fabrics, pressure, temperature
Emotional: feeling desired, feeling safe, laughter
This becomes your turn-on map—and it changes over time. Let it.
3. Set the Mood for Your Nervous System
Neurodivergent pleasure often starts way before touch.
Are the lights too bright? Are you hungry? Did your socks betray you today?
Regulate the environment = regulate your body = increase access to turn-on.
4. Let Slowness Be Sexy
There is no late bell for desire.
Go slow enough to hear what your body actually wants.
Stop rushing to the climax like it’s a productivity goal. This isn’t capitalism. You don’t need to earn rest or orgasms.
5. Make Space for Grief
Sometimes reclaiming pleasure brings up sadness.
The loss of past versions of you. The pleasure you didn’t get to feel before. The people who made you think you didn’t deserve it.
Grieve it. Honor it. Then light that shame on fire and call it foreplay.
You don’t need to be “fixed” to feel good.
You don’t need to wait until you’re fully healed to be turned on.
You don’t need to force your body into someone else’s idea of arousal.
You just need to remember: pleasure was never the problem.
Shame was. Survival was. Conditioning was. But your body?
Your body is a fucking miracle waiting to be felt.
