Learn how to discern healthy pleasure from unhealthy “pleasure”

---

Learn how to discern healthy pleasure from unhealthy “pleasure.”

Pleasure is a beautiful thing.

Pleasure is built into our bodies.

Pleasure is part of our power as humans.

Pleasure is feedback.

Pleasure is our birthright.

And, there needs to be discernment around when healthy pleasure tips over into unhealthy “pleasure.”

There is a difference between seeking real pleasure—things that nourish, replenish, enliven, and satiate you—and unhealthy pleasure, which is a bottomless numbing mechanism for pain, rather than a movement towards health.

Healthy pleasure satiates and replenishes us—it is balanced.

Unhealthy pleasure is a detour to distract us from pain—which it can’t ever actually fulfill, which is why we always crave more of it. When imbalanced, it can turn into addiction, numbing, distraction, or overindulgence in an attempt to self-soothe.

We do need to self-soothe, but we need to get to the root of just what it is we are actually trying to soothe and address it directly, rather than trying to tamp it down. This is where deep inner work comes in, dealing with our shadows and trauma, and learning new skills for healing and balance.

And, we need to learn to choose healthy, balanced pleasure SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS PLEASURABLE.

We don’t have to justify it. We win no extra points at the end of the game of life for denying ourselves true pleasure. Healthy pleasure is a tool for self-balance; without it, it’s hard not to fall victim to unhealthy pleasure in some way.

How do we discern balanced pleasure from imbalanced gratification?

Imbalanced gratification leaves us wanting more—it is never complete. It never has enough, so we don’t feel lit up by life. We feel anxiety about not getting the thing we’re craving. When we get it, we feel let down—if we don’t numb that feeling, too.

Healthy pleasure makes us feel ALIVE, energized, and connected to life, others, and ourselves. Healthy pleasure is tied to our values, gifts, and deep desires.

Healthy pleasure fills us up WITH OURSELVES, so we feel generous—healthy pleasure wants to be shared. Which means healthy pleasure is healthy not just for you, but for others, too. That is a beautiful thing.

Why value emotional intelligence?

---

Intelligence is a good thing. Thinking is a good thing. Intellect is a good thing. Reason is a good thing. Thoughtfulness is a good thing.

Here’s the thing: emotions have intelligence.

They are also a good thing.

When we develop the skills to listen to them, rather than tamp them down, we are actually amplifying our intelligence.

Emotions are information. They are data-conveying states that arise from the body’s experience of life.

If we dismiss our emotions in favor of our “rational” thoughts, we are dismissing half of our body’s own lived experience. Basically, it’s like gaslighting ourselves.

Not so intelligent.

Emotions exist for a reason: to communicate to us what we need and desire, and as part of the elegant human feedback system.

Emotions try to get us to course correct when needs and desires aren’t being met (fear, grief, anger, e.g.), and to feel satiated when they are (joy, pride, awe, e.g.). 

When emotions work in tandem with our reason, they are an elegant alignment system. 

To attempt to reason our way out of feeling emotion is to shut down a major line of communication—all of that rich information.

Our bodies have their own natural intelligence. When we learn to tune into it all, we give ourselves more awareness, which equals more ways to navigate ourselves and our lives.

That is powerful. That is power. That is human power. Why not use it all?

Why not be human and love humanness?

What could change in the world if we acted more human, not less?

From where I sit, we are living in an increasingly anti-sensory, anti-human world.

So much of life asks us to show up as brains, with bodies in tow as afterthoughts or inconveniences.

Emotions, exhaustion, illness, inconsistency, injury, are considered liabilities.

Have you ever asked yourself: liabilities to what?

Our humanness is a liability to systems that require relentless productivity, predictability, replication, perfection: all those things machines do so they can keep feeding a bigger machine.

But we are bodies.

We are soft around the edges. We intake life, and that affects us physically, emotionally, spiritually—as individuals, and as a collective.

We output life, and that affects us physically, emotionally, spiritually. We have needs and desires that must be met.

But we’ve lost sight of the true needs of humans in an attempt to model ourselves on machine-like perfection.

Humans need healthy connection with other humans. We need to be held. We need healthy pleasure. We need joy and rest and to feel our own fire. We need purpose and community. We need a healthy environment. We need to feel sunlight, clean water, rich soil.

But we’ve treated these as negotiables, afterthoughts, non-essentials—in service to our brains.

Somehow, that became “reasonable.”

The idea of perfection is lovely. Productivity can feel good. Consistency is a fantastic skill.

But there is no movement in perfection—if it changes, it is no longer perfect—so it holds itself rigid and impenetrable until it cracks under the strain.

Perfection cracks because life is change. Life is movement, fluid, sensory, material, and messy.

Our bodily intelligence is what takes in all of this data and feeds it to the brain so it can discern how to feel and act—but we’ve been getting this backwards, assuming it’s our brains that should instruct our bodies. 

Unknowingly, we’ve pit our beliefs against our nervous systems.

What if we flipped the script? What if we knew the body held prized intelligence?

What if we could learn to tune in to our bodily and emotional intelligence and then combine that with the knowledge and beliefs in our brains?

Then, we get to fulfill our purpose—not to be just really smart disembodied brains, but to be wholly human.

Humanful.

Then, feeding our brains with new knowledge and skills becomes an amazing asset to building happy, healthy lives—together.

Let’s do that.