THE EROTIC COST OF SILENCE: HOW SHAME DISTORTS DESIRE

Josi
Aug 19
2 min read

A GinkgoMinds Blog by Jo Oswin

You think you’ve lost your sex drive. You think you’re “just not in the mood lately.”

You say things like “It’s stress” or “Maybe it’s hormones” or “I’m just tired.”

But what if it’s not biology? What if it’s not burnout?

What if your desire isn’t gone —just buried under layers of silence, shame, and self-surveillance?

WHEN DESIRE IS CONDITIONED, NOT CHOSEN

Many of us weren’t taught how to want. We were taught how to behave.

We were praised for being polite, not passionate. Rewarded for being quiet, not curious. We were sexualised before we were ever allowed to feel sexual —and then punished for it when we did.

So our relationship to pleasure becomes fragmented.

Desire doesn’t flow freely. It’s filtered through guilt. It’s distorted by expectation.

And often, it becomes performative instead of embodied.

This is where toxic shame (see Bradshaw, 1988) shows up: Shame that doesn’t say “I did something bad” —but “I am bad for even wanting this.”

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SHAME AND SEXUALITY

According to internal family systems theory, we all carry “parts” — inner protectors, exiles, and managers.Many of us have an inner exile who still holds sexual shame from early experiences. A parent who made a comment. A teacher who said your skirt was too short. A time someone said “you wanted it.”

So now, as an adult, you don’t just struggle to express desire —you feel unsafe even noticing it.

And the nervous system doesn’t fake safety.

It contracts. It fawns.It dissociates — even during self-touch, even with loving partners.

This isn’t frigidity.It’s not low libido.It’s trauma.It’s somatic memory.

THE HIGH COST OF LOW VOLUME

Every time you mute your needs, your body remembers.Every time you fake an orgasm, shrink your appetite, say “it’s fine” when it’s not —you chip away at the part of you that was born wild.

And desire? It doesn’t live in control.It lives in truth. In your voice.

Shame teaches us that asking for what we want is selfish. That taking up sexual space is dangerous. But the truth is:

There is no intimacy without risk. And there is no erotic power without presence.

🖤 COACHING PROMPT FOR TODAY

WHAT HAVE I NEVER SAID OUT LOUD — NOT EVEN TO MYSELF — ABOUT WHAT I TRULY WANT?

Write it. Whisper it. Scream it.Just get it out of your head and into the world.

Then ask: Who would I be if I trusted that this desire is not wrong, but sacred?

Because your desire doesn’t make you dangerous. Silencing it does.

If you’re ready to stop playing small in your pleasure, I teach this in depth inside my workshop Who the Fuck Am I Becoming? And we go even deeper inside Patreon — with coaching, confessionals, and nervous-system safe spaces to explore your erotic truth.

Because healing your relationship to desire doesn’t start in the bedroom.It starts in the moment you stop apologising for wanting.

xx Josi