Why Shame, Body Image, and Trauma Are Blocking Your Pleasure—And How People Around You Make It Worse

Episode Introduction

Dr. Diane: Hey everybody, welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of the Libido Lounge. I’m your host, libido expert, Dr. Diane, and we have a juicy episode here today for you. We’re talking about body image, sensuality, how your body image can impact your sensuality, how sensuality can actually heal, help you heal from any body image imbalances or mental, you know, thoughts you have that are not serving you in this way.

Dr. Diane: And to help us have this conversation, I’m very very excited about our guests. You just heard about Celeste and Dr. Danielle. So, as you just heard, they’re the co-founders of the Somatica Institute. And we’re going to get really juicy today and talk about these things that I think are so common, right? So, especially for women, but I think for men both.

Understanding Body Image Challenges

Why Body Image Struggles Persist in 2025

Dr. Diane: And so, let’s just start, ladies, if we can, let’s just start with why the heck are we in at this point? We’re in 2025, right? We’re at a point where this is not the first time that anybody has heard that, you know, we have to love our bodies and be kind to our bodies and all these things, right? So, why are we still in 2025 at a point where this is such a struggle for so many of us?

Celeste: I feel like we still get so many messages out there, imagery, you know, messages saying like you have to look this way and you have to look young forever and your body has to be a particular shape and size and weight for you deserve any sort of joy and pleasure. So, we’re bombarded, which is why it still happens. And we need to be able to create like an internal sense of self and pleasure in order to like, you know, stave off all of those constant messages that we get and to actually just realize that we can claim our pleasure right now. And we don’t have to be perfect or feel perfect in order to do that.

Conscious vs. Subconscious Body Image Issues

Dr. Diane: Now, I know some of our listeners might be thinking like, okay, like I hear that and I’ve worked on, you know, I’ve worked on my body image and I work on opening a magazine and, you know, not comparing myself to that woman in the magazine and all these different things. What about though? Do you guys feel that there’s still a level for many of us that there’s almost like this subconscious thing where we think we’ve done a level of work around like, okay, I’m not going to identify with that girl in the photo who’s been airbrushed and photoshopped and all the things. But do you think that we can have then this almost like deeper level of, wow, like I didn’t realize I had a body image issue until somebody put their hand on my thigh and I cringed, you know? How much of this is like happening consciously versus subconsciously I guess is my question.

Danielle: So I think it happens both ways. It happens consciously and subconsciously and there’s a little bit of a way of like we are trying to work on that in a cognitive way and I think that’s not helpful enough. It’s one thing to start to compare yourself to magazines and get and see different imagery which is super important. It is very important to relate to different kinds of bodies because then you can find yourself in those bodies as opposed to just one kind of body. But the imagery is not getting much better. It’s still kind of like the same with maybe here and there fringe other options.

Shifting to an Internal Experience

Developing an Inner Body Connection

Danielle: But I think the real thing that can help helped me and can help other people is to start to develop like an inner experience of your body that’s not just about the look. We’re not like clothes hangers that walking around and supposed to look in particular way, but more like, wow, like maybe I’m gonna look at my body as something that feels and experiences and have sensations and really enjoy things and not just like the way that I and then start to apply it to the look like like kind of like developing a look from the inside from sensations as opposed to developing a look from the outside.

Dr. Diane: So, I want to go into that a little more. One of the things I said when we were, you know, just chatting for a few before we started recording here was that this concept that I see in my work of, wow, people try to be intimate and we can’t experience so many times orgasm or pleasure of any kind if we’re worried around like, well, how do I look in this position or is my belly hanging out here? Do my thighs look big? And you know it’s really really difficult if not actually completely impossible to enjoy pleasure if we’re worried about all this. And I hear in what you’re saying some level of we need to get out of just this like kind of trying to heal this just with like the mind and thinking okay well I’m not going to compare myself to the image. It sounds like the process that is moving more into the body and the experience. So am I hearing you correctly? And if so, can you explain that a little more?

A Somatic Exercise to Feel the Body

Celeste: I want to do one better than explain it. I want us all to try it right now. So, I feel like it’s so easy to sort of feel ourselves like we’re looking around all the time. We’re in this external world and we’re getting all of this input and then we can also switch to our internal world and we can actually do it pretty quickly and efficiently. So, I want us to do it right now. Here’s how it goes. We take a couple of deep breaths and we start to feel our pelvic floor. Just notice your pelvic floor is there part of your body. I almost want to feel it like open and relaxed and softened to the world first as we continue to breathe. And then on the next breath, we’re going to take a little hello squeeze. Squeeze the muscles as you breathe and see if you can feel the pleasure of the sensation. And then release. And another squeeze. And focus on pleasure. Imagine it flowing from there through your body. And release. And one more. Just wake up. Hello. I feel myself on the inside. And release. And then we’ve switched our point of view from the outside to the inside.

Dr. Diane: Beautiful. I love the activity so much. I feel compelled to bring up something that some of my listeners have heard me say before, which is when I snowboard, I sometimes do this activity with one of my girlfriends where we snowboard with our pelvic floor leading. So it’ll be like so that’s kind of like exactly what you’re talking about the exercise of saying okay well on this run dropping first into feeling her right and then imagining that the movement that every turn that the connection is actually coming from that as kind of the focal point.

Integrating Sensuality into Daily Life

Decompartmentalizing Sexuality

Dr. Diane: So this just brings me to my question which is like okay so taking what you did do you teach and do you focus on ways where it’s like okay outside of almost this meditative visual state can we begin to have these experiences like that and bring it in more to like washing the dishes and showing up at work and you know how does this work from like a day-to-day incorporating leading from feeling my body type of way.

Celeste: Definitely. And you know we call it decompartmentalization of sexuality because it is you know like we think that sex is just this thing we keep for the bedroom but like let her have like a pelvic floor be our guide our like our compass you know like she is leading me about like what do I feel like wearing today or how do you know like how do I want to move my body or what do I feel like eating or how do you know She is like she’s my you know I move from my pelvic floor the same way that you describe the snowboarding right so I really think it’s like the way we absorb our body image it’s just a habit you know we heard about it we heard we drill drill drill so we need to unrill it and start putting in some new practices that will allow us to connect with our body and with our experience of ourselves in a different way.

The Science of Pleasure and Hormones

Dr. Diane: So my other question is in thinking about the you know kind of the science behind this. I’m a scientist at heart really because I really find that when people understand some of like why this is happening sometimes if there’s like a little resistance to like okay this is interesting lead with my pelvic floor drop into my pelvic floor feel my pelvic floor like although sometimes it can be like what is this going to do right so can you explain like kind of like almost from the mechanism perspective like how dropping and feeling into our bodies into our anatomy into our you know our pleasure centers how that is then connected to repairing you know the body image.

Danielle: I do feel like so much of it is about our hormones like the hormones that get released when we’re in high states of pleasure when we’re having orgasm when we’re squeezing those muscles and feeling the sensations move through our body we’re like releasing endorphins and oxytocin we’re doing it with ourselves and we’re loving ourselves more when we come from that inside place and that embodied sensation based place and we’re doing it with our partners when we create this loop of pleasure between us right then we’re having all of the sensation and pleasure that we can share and the feedback.

The Role of Relationships in Healing

Receiving Feedback from Others

Danielle: And I think one of the things that I really want to say you know is a lot of times we feel like we have to do these things all by ourselves but I think it’s great to like really get the feedback of other people like helping us raise those hormonal levels and giving us pleasure and taking in how much they desire us instead of like, oh, is do I look good? It’s just like, wait, I see desire coming at me from all over the place. I must look amazing, you know, and that loop actually releases those hormones as well. So, that combination just for me, it just is what balances my brain. It’s what makes me, you know, live to fight another day.

Celeste: And just again to keep reinforcing what Celeste said like and letting like allowing and keep reinforcing this landing strip in our body that says like yes that feels good. Yes, I can take it in because what do we see? What do we tell like let’s think about like the average person like you know like when we are hearing a compliment we’re just like oh no they didn’t really hear it. Oh thank you but not really letting it in. And I was like I want to get it in. I want to take it in. I’m building my landing strip to be luscious and open and available and say, it’s almost like we learned we’re not supposed to take it in and we’re supposed to be miserable in some way. And I was like, let’s be greedy. Let’s take it in. Let’s shower ourselves as this good compliments and positive sensation because who said we have to like buy into the other story?

Active Receiving and Receptivity

Dr. Diane: That’s the art of receptivity is like it’s so crazy to me sometimes how hard it is to literally just be okay with just being in the receiving, you know? It’s so easy to receive a compliment superficially like you’re saying and then just like instantly be like, “Oh, and then like give a compliment back.” And that’s, you know, it’s great. It’s great to be, you know, reciprocal that way, but I think so often we’re like we’re just so quick to kind of get out of that state of receptivity versus like taking that moment to be like, “Wow, yeah, that feels really, really good.” And actually completely allow that energy in before we move into whatever, you know, whatever else we’re moving into.

Danielle: Can I add something also which is this idea of receiving I think people often think of it as passive and we really teach active receiving. Okay, active receiving is where you aren’t just like laying there like hoping something will happen. I remember I was trying to help a woman orgasm for the first time. And I was just like okay so how would you start? you know, she had her clothes on and everything, but she was just like touching her body and she’s just lying there and she’s like, “Yeah, I feel bored.” And I’m like, “Yeah, I would be bored, too.” You know, nothing’s happening. And so, I was like, “Here’s what it looks like when I masturbate.” And I start like squeezing my muscles and moving my legs and breathing and like touching my body and making sound and like this is not a passive process. This is like we’ve got to go towards the pleasure. We’ve got to make sound. Like sometimes the only thing that makes me come is like both the experience of making a noise and hearing my noises that I’m making because I’m actively going towards pleasure sounds. I’m going towards pleasure movements.

Pleasure as a Birthright

Challenging the Work Ethic

Dr. Diane: I know one of the things that you ladies talk about is this concept of pleasure being a birthright. And I know in talking to people like sometimes it’s so easy for people to just be like, “Well, I’m not that interested in sex. That’s just not what my partner and I do. It was great in the beginning. It went away. We’re fine now.” And you know, what do you have to say to that in response to also this idea around like this is a birthright. This is healing. This is everything that you’ve said. So why is pleasure a birthright? And why do you think we like deny it so often?

Celeste: In our culture, what we really have is a work ethic. We think the only thing that makes us valuable is these sort of like particular external achievements. And you know, I believe in a pleasure ethic. And it’s really, I think, what makes life more joyful and interesting and exciting and fun. I think we’ll still get plenty of work done, especially if we’re having much more fun doing it. So, to really go into that birthright means to let go of some of this idea that the only thing that gives us value is sort of like this kind of productivity. I think a lot of times I see couples thinking, well, I have all these things to do. Sex is trivial and it doesn’t matter and I’ll just put it on the back burner. And I don’t really need it anyway. And then you see them drift apart.

Addressing Vaginal Numbness

Causes and Solutions

Dr. Diane: So, what about things like numbness? Like, you know, because I do see that vaginal numbness is a very fairly common thing. Sometimes from trauma, sometimes from hormones, sometimes just with aging, sometimes from lack of interest. There’s so many different reasons for this. So, where does your work come in with helping people heal from any sort of vaginal numbness?

Danielle: I think many times especially women don’t want to have sex because and you call it vaginal numbness. So like you know lack of interest like they don’t feel that level of arousal mostly because they’re actually not getting well a few reasons. One is that they’re not getting the sex that they want. They’re getting like some sex that doesn’t mean that that’s what turns them on and they are not like because we’re trained that sex is not for us in you know in society. So we don’t go on an exploration of pleasure for ourselves. We do it to satisfy our partners. So that creates like you know a lack of libido is just around the corner. I’m not talking about hormones. Hormones had their own issue that I think deserves some, you know, special special mention. But definitely people are not even like, you know, like we eating from a kitty meal. We’re not eating for the full potential gourmet French meal that we can get. So it reduces motivation for sex if you don’t get what really turns you on.

Expanding the Definition of Sex

Dr. Diane: So then, okay. Okay. So, another question that I have for you ladies is so we’re doing an exercise like this somatic exercise we just did, right? And that was around our pelvic floor but in waking up the whole body, right? Cuz I think so many times too, one of the problems we get into with intimacy and sex is we just thinking penetration. And when I ask people when I have like teach live classes and I ask people like when I say sex, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? It’s always intercourse, penetration, intercourse, penetration, right? That’s what everybody thinks of. And you know, sex for a lot of us is like so much more than just this penetrative type of act. It’s a pleasure-filled event of so many different of waking up ourselves in so many different ways.

Celeste: I do feel like we don’t teach people about women’s bodies and the ways that our bodies need a lot of all of body touch and warm-up. I know when I’m with a new partner so quickly I feel them trying to go to my genitals and touch them right away and when they do that I’m just like there’s nothing happen if we want to talk about numbness like she’s not awake. I’m like you kiss my ear if you stroke my arm like I can feel that in my clitoris in a way that if you touch my clitoris right away nothing’s going to happen. In fact the opposite is going to happen. And so it is really about educating our partners. And also I think as women what we don’t realize is that our arousal curve does take longer. We need more warm-up time. I think everybody does well with more warm-up time. But we really need it in order to get to the heights of our pleasure whether we’re having intercourse or oral sex or none of the above, manual, playing with our vibrators, but to take the time to really feel and touch and smell and like all over body touch and kissing.

Healing Body Image Through Practice

Starting the Healing Journey

Dr. Diane: So where do people start right if like if the say block is around something like body image. And if people are experiencing that, they go into a sensual experience and they’re either in their head around like being touched or how they look or they’re like their, you know, hand touches an area of their body they feel trepidation around and they feel themselves like pull back and you almost like have this inability to receive. Do they go straight to an exercise like you taught us? Like where is kind of the beginning part of the road map of really healing the you know from a say a body image imbalance here.

Celeste: I want to say that it definitely you know like it’s been years of us like working with that you know I mean like it’s like we get those messages really early on. So it’s not going to be like an overnight of unworking it. But I do think that the place to start is really we created two special classes. I just want to say you know like one is really about erotic embodiment and the other one is about body image. And I think this combination of those classes where you kind of go and practice it takes practice the same way that we practiced unconsciously taking the negative messages. We want to practice consciously F creating a positive loop in our nervous system.

Relational Healing

Dr. Diane: And my question here is this is and I’ll give you a little backstory around I was healing from a relationship many years ago when I went to a therapist. I had said something to this therapist around I was like, well, you know, I want to make sure that I’m like totally healed from this relationship before I start dating again. And the therapist had told me something that nobody ever told me before that, but I thought was profound. And she’s like, in order to heal from a relational thing, you do that in relationship. So my question for you kind of comes from that and thinking about this from like a you know healing body image and learning how to be receptive and all of this like how much of this work do you think then from a you know somatic experience is work that we can do alone versus like hey we really need to have this partner here to help us you flags heal.

Danielle: I think our whole method is basically based on that belief system. Like we work with our clients and we train our coaches. We teach them how to be relational and you know and we do go into erotic and emotional intimacy with our clients within the boundaries of the method. And we do that as a way to actually like maybe touch on some of those triggers and they’ve become activated in the relationship. And then we can work on them in a very safe container where the focus is the work because sometimes you’re not totally ready to bring it to a partner. You’re too scared or you’re too wounded. But you do need a place where you can practice inauthentic intimacy to create that safe we call it the relationship lab.

Celeste: And just to add to that like you can’t heal body image just with your own you know because then you go out you need to create some sort of like immunity you need to create experiences that you’re going out because you can tell yourself so many things that which is amazing you keep do tell yourself all the good things in front of the mirror that’s fantastic but then like it’s also like go out there and then first learn to listen to the good stuff that people tell you and take it in and then like keep asking people to tell you good stuff like why just ask people for criticisms I was like, “Yeah, yeah, tell me more. What do you like about me?” “Yeah, yeah. I want to hear more.” You know, and really take it in.

Resources and Next Steps

How to Engage with Somatica Institute

Dr. Diane: I can’t believe we’re already at the top of our time. This went so fast, ladies. I know we’re going to put in the show notes how to work with you guys, how to get involved if you are if people are interested in learning your methodology as healers, as people that would actually like to bring this work to others as well as if they are interested in working with you guys more on just people that want to learn your methodology right in their own lives. But tell us a little bit like just kind of will you package that up nicely for us around like how people worked with you and and of course we’ll put everything in the show notes for for everybody.

Celeste: So we have our platform learn.somatica.com. This is where you can get classes and really kind of practice with yourself. We have an app for that and you can really kind of learn and everything is experiential. So while it is like a self-learning process, you definitely have practices. This a little bit like Celeste demonstrated earlier and way in more opportunities for you to practice tools to start to love your body and engage in your sexuality and feel like very driven around that. And we have the somatica institute.com. This is where you can explore about the potentially being a coach and support others on this journey as well.

Closing and Call to Action

Dr. Diane: Amazing. And thank you so much for being here everybody. Remember that I will be doing part two in our Modern Libido Club. So please do come over and check that out. How you join is in the show notes below. I’m going to ask a lot more juicy questions such as what are the steps that we need to do to really be transformed here? How do we really begin to learn our pleasure body? Where do we start? So much more. All right, everybody. That’s it for today. Thank you again for joining me on the lounge and we’ll see you again real soon. Ciao for now.

Celeste: Thank you so much.

Danielle: Thank you, Diane.

Dr. Diane: Thank you for listening to the Libido Lounge. Please don’t keep me a secret. Please share this with your friends. You can find me on YouTube, on Instagram, and check out our Modern Libido Club for so much more!