Why does enjoyment suddenly feel like danger?
Pleasure Turns Panic-Ask Liza Express Answers
For trauma survivors, pleasure and fear often live very close together. If your early experiences of touch, affection, or sexual stimulation were tied to violation or manipulation, your brain learned that pleasure equals danger. So when you experience genuine enjoyment, especially during intimacy, your nervous system misfires and triggers panic.
This is called traumalinked pleasure response, where positive sensation activates the same neural pathways associated with harm. Your system doesn’t trust good feelings because good feelings were once used against you.
This creates a split experience: your body leans into pleasure, while your brain pulls back. The panic isn’t about the current moment—it’s about old wiring.
Healing requires teaching your body that pleasure can be safe, slow, and consensual. Emotional connection, gentleness, pacing, and communication help recondition the experience. When your heart and body learn to experience pleasure without threat, the panic loses its power.
Your enjoyment isn’t the danger—your history is. And history can be rewritten.
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