Pleasure Uprising: Desire, Attachment, and the Sex You Actually Want

By Laura Jurgens, Ph.D.Health & Fitness Mental Health Education Self-Improvement Sexuality

Pleasure Uprising: Desire, Attachment, and the Sex You Actually Want episodes

August 17The Trust Wound: Why Being Vulnerable Feels So Dangerous
I used to chase accomplishment hard, and I dismissed soft skills and people skills entirely — mostly because I had no idea how to do them. I'd put on this dissociated charm self when I met new people, which wasn't connection at all. It was a disarming move. If I could charm you first, you couldn't get to me. Underneath all of it was a deep fear of being publicly rejected.
A close colleague of mine has the same wound and it looked nothing like that from the outside. Hers came out as passive aggression, eye rolls, indirect judgment, the quiet withdrawal of approval. Underneath: a deep fear of humiliation. Two different flavors of the same armor, both doing the same job of not letting anyone get close enough to make us feel small.
This is episode three of the attachment wounds and erotic emotions series, and it's about the trust wound — what happens when your openness got used against you, and you concluded you'd never be in that position again.
The paradox at the center of it: the erotic emotion people with this wound most often crave is the exact thing they've spent their lives defending against.
In this episode:
Where the trust wound comes from, and why humiliation specifically drives manipulation as a coping response
The two developmental paths, depending on how old you were when it happened
What it feels like from the inside, including the constant low-level tracking of who has power in a room
Why the powerful poles — revered, dominant, worshiped, unattainable — show up as the obvious turn-ons, and what's often underneath them
How this shows up in relationships: guilt tripping, triangulation, passive aggression, and pseudo-connection
Why the vulnerability play that can heal this needs serious aftercare, and what happens if you get dropped
What actually changed for both me and my colleague, including what she discovered was a real turn-on
Vulnerability is not the thing that makes you vulnerable. Look around at how many people are working to avoid it. It isn't making them any safer. It's just keeping them from being known.
Topics: fear of humiliation, why is it so hard to be vulnerable, passive aggressive relationship, invulverable
Send Laura Fan Mail
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Follow me on Substack for deeper dives into the research and notes from my practice at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
The Guide to Finding Your Secret Turn-Ons includes the Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
© Laura Jurgens, PhD, Pleasure Uprising. Quote with attribution and a link to the original. No reproduction in full and no use for AI training.
29 min
August 10Is My Vagina Normal? Undoing Vulva and Labia Shame
Around 40, I realized I felt disgust about my own genitals. I'd been carrying middle school bullies' words about female bodies in my head for more than thirty years without ever once questioning them, and it wasn't until I started trying to reclaim my own sexuality that it smacked me in the face. It's very hard to feel pleasure in a part of your body you feel bad about.
If any of that lands, you are in extremely good company, and I want you to know it is not personal, not yours alone, and not permanent.
This episode covers where female genital shame comes from, why it's more layered than penis shame, and the exact four-step process I used to repair my own relationship with my vulva. Plus the myths worth dismantling on the way: that vulvas are dirty, that porn vulvas resemble real ones, and that "vagina" is the right word for the parts that actually give you pleasure.
A scope note: this episode addresses cis women's experience specifically. Trans people with vulvas face distinct and important challenges with genital shame that deserve dedicated coverage, and I'm working with a trans colleague on a collaborative episode on that.
In this episode:
Where vulva shame comes from, and the strange contradiction at the center of it — women are the only sex with an organ that exists purely for our own pleasure
Why middle school is so often where genital shame gets installed, and what's actually going on for the boys doing the installing
The dirty myth, and why calling a vulva dirty makes about as much sense as calling a flower dirty
Why porn vulvas aren't real-world vulvas, and how to normalize the actual range
Vulva versus vagina, why the distinction matters for your pleasure, and how to pick language that works for you
My four-step repair process: acknowledging the harm, normalizing through exposure, mirror work, and a daily gratitude practice
The eviction exercise — identifying whose voice is actually in your head, and taking away their vote
There is no downside to loving your genitals. None. And on the other side of that shame is considerably more pleasure than you currently have access to.
Topics: vulva shame, genital shame, body shame, labia, women's pleasure

Resource Links: https://www.labialibrary.org.au/labia_gallery/
https://www.all-vulvas-are-beautiful.com/
https://www.thevulvagallery.com
Send Laura Fan Mail
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Follow me on Substack for deeper dives into the research and notes from my practice at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
The Guide to Finding Your Secret Turn-Ons includes the Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
© Laura Jurgens, PhD, Pleasure Uprising. Quote with attribution and a link to the original. No reproduction in full and no use for AI training.
33 min
August 03The Dependency Wound: When Care Was Never Something You Could Count On
One partner wants sex constantly and can't understand why they're being refused. The other has quietly stopped wanting it at all and feels like they're constantly being pestered. Most people assume these two have opposite problems. Often times, they don't. They have the same challenge underneath, but they are coping in different ways.
We're going beyond the standard "anxious or avoidant" here. Most of us learned early on whether care was something we could count on, and when the answer was unreliable, we did what smart, adaptive human children do: we picked a coping strategy and got very good at it. There are two main choices children make — pursue harder, or stop needing.
Those two roads lead to very different adults, very different ways of existing in relationships, and very specific erotic desires. This episode will help you understand the challenges, drawbacks, opportunities, and desires that come from each path, and how to work with those to have better connections, easier relationships, and a more satisfying sex life.
This is episode three of the attachment wounds and erotic emotions series, and the second one on specific wounds.
In this episode:
Where the dependency wound comes from, including causes that have nothing to do with bad parenting and everything to do with circumstances that made consistent attunement hard
The two survival strategies it creates, and what each one actually feels like from the inside
Why the under-dependent's deepest erotic craving is often identical to the over-dependent's, just buried under years of pretending it isn't there
How both patterns land on a partner, in and out of bed
Why over-dependents and under-dependents are drawn to each other, and why that match can go sideways fast
What movement actually looks like for each, including the single most important thing an under-dependent can do before they quietly shut someone out for good
Your needs are real. Both sides of this wound are just different ways of coping with the same early experience, and you can learn to count on care being there.
Topics: anxious avoidant attachment, my partner never wants sex, sex feels like obligation, mismatched libido couples, desire discrepancy
Send Laura Fan Mail
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Follow me on Substack for deeper dives into the research and notes from my practice at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
The Guide to Finding Your Secret Turn-Ons includes the Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
© Laura Jurgens, PhD, Pleasure Uprising. Quote with attribution and a link to the original. No reproduction in full and no use for AI training.
37 min
July 27Body Shame and Your Sex Life: It's Not Your Fault, and Only You Can Fix It
Body shame is pervasive, especially for women but increasingly for everyone, and it gets in the way of much more than how we feel in a swimsuit. It gets in the way of presence, pleasure, and our capacity for real connection. This is the first episode in a series I'm doing on body shame. If you've ever been so in your head about how you look that you couldn't stay present with a partner, or with yourself, this one is for you.
I walk through where body shame actually comes from (spoiler: it's not truth, or you, that's the problem), the business model built on manufactured insecurity, the medical misinformation and racial history behind our cultural obsession with weight, and why shaming yourself has never once helped anyone change. I also share the exact steps I used to move from shame to neutral to genuinely loving my body.
In this episode:
Why body shame kills presence, pleasure, and desire, and why underconfidence itself isn't sexy
Where body shame really comes from: family, culture, diet culture, and a patriarchy that built this by design, not by accident
The advertising strategy behind manufactured insecurity, including research on exactly when women feel worst about themselves
Debunking the medical myths: why BMI was never built to measure individual health, and why weight stigma itself, not weight, is the real risk factor
The racial history behind fat phobia and Eurocentric beauty standards, and how that bias still shows up in medicine today
Why shaming yourself has never once helped you change, and what your inner rebel is actually trying to tell you
My own story of hiding my arms for years, and finally wearing tank tops without a second thought
"Point positive," the whitewater kayaking principle I now use to retrain my brain out of shame spirals
The exact steps for shifting from shame to neutral to genuinely believing you're lovable and attractive exactly as you are
Topics: body image and sex, overthinking sex, get out of your head in bed, fatphobia, health at every size, mindset work for body image
Resources mentioned: Health at Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight, by Lindo Bacon, PhD https://lindobacon.com/health-at-every-size-book/
Send Laura Fan Mail
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Follow me on Substack for deeper dives into the research and notes from my practice at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
The Guide to Finding Your Secret Turn-Ons includes the Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
© Laura Jurgens, PhD, Pleasure Uprising. Quote with attribution and a link to the original. No reproduction in full and no use for AI training.
34 min
July 20The Safety Wound: When Your Body Was Never Home
Part 2 of the Attachment Wounds & Erotic Emotions Series
Maybe you have a tendency to intellectualize or spiritualize your experience, but not always fully feel it. Or maybe you can only really arrive in your body when something intense is happening. This episode is about how that happens, how it shapes your erotic needs and the way you show up in intimacy, and what to do about it, if you choose.
The safety wound is the earliest developmental wound we're covering in this series. It shows up in desires, in relationship, and in sex, plus in every day life where people with this wound have a tendency to dissociate. This episode is Part 2 in the Attachment Wounds and Erotic Emotions series — if you haven't listened to Episode 130 yet, start there first.
What Is the Safety Wound? Origins and Early Development
The safety wound forms in the very first stage of life — from the womb through infancy, before language, and before verbal memory as we know it. The unmet need is fundamental: a sense that the world is safe to exist in, and that the body is a safe place to be.
The causes can include traumatic birth, early separation from a birth mother through adoption or loss, time in a NICU, parental anxiety or depression, domestic chaos, overwhelming or unpredictable environments, or generational trauma. Often nothing was done consciously or intentionally. The body simply learned, very early, that being present was dangerous — and dissociation became the primary survival strategy. This is just a coping style, and it carries some challenges that can be worked with.
In this episode:
What the safety wound is, where it comes from, and why it forms so early — before language, before memory
Why dissociation here is a brilliant survival adaptation, not a pathology — and how I recognized it in my own experience
How this wound is named across Hakomi, NARM, and the Somatica Institute® framework — and why the older Freudian label is worth leaving behind
What the safety wound feels like from the inside: the floating quality, the empathy overload, the pull toward intellectualizing and spiritual bypassing — and the deep current of pain, fear, or rage that often lives underneath
How the safety wound shapes erotic desire through two pathways: resolution (craving calm, merged, held, contained, seen) and repetition with agency (craving intensity, edge, risk, primal)
Why craving dangerous or intense experiences in a chosen context makes complete sense for this wound — and why felt safety is still the prerequisite, even for the edgy stuff
What the safety wound looks like in relationships: the connection that arrives and quietly disappears, and what partners tend to experience in bed
What healing looks like for this wound — embodiment first — and why somatic work is more relevant here than therapy or spirituality alone
Companion resource for this series: The Wheel of Erotic Emotions → laurajurgens.com/wheel

Send Laura Fan Mail
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Follow me on Substack for deeper dives into the research and notes from my practice at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
The Guide to Finding Your Secret Turn-Ons includes the Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
© Laura Jurgens, PhD, Pleasure Uprising. Quote with attribution and a link to the original. No reproduction in full and no use for AI training.
20 min
July 13Beyond Anxious and Avoidant: Here's What's Actually Driving Your Desires
That thing that turns you on but you've never quite been able to explain? Or the relationship dynamic you keep recreating? Those aren't random. And they aren't fully explained by your attachment style.
This is the introduction episode for a series on attachment wounds and erotic desires. Before we get into the specific wound patterns, I'm laying the foundation — what attachment styles actually are, where they fall short, and how to understand attachment patterns beyond the standard (avoidant, anxious, disorganized or secure) boxes. We'll talk about how our childhood experiences and specific attachment wounds tend to lead to specific turn-ons. Plus, why that's good news and will help you de-shame your desires.
In this episode:
Why attachment styles are learned habits, not personality traits or life sentences
How your attachment response shifts depending on who you're with, how they communicate, and the specific felt safety of that relationship
Why the anxious/avoidant label doesn't capture the full picture — and what the deeper wounds underneath those patterns actually are
A preview of the five developmental wounds this series explores: safety, dependency, trust, autonomy, and worth
The core skills that underlie secure attachment — and why they're learnable, not fixed traits reserved for people who had easier childhoods
How early unmet needs shape not just your relational patterns but your specific erotic desires — and why that connection makes complete sense once you see it
Companion resource for this series:

Dr. R. Chris Fraley's attachment quiz at yourpersonality.net/relstructures/ — the most useful tool I've found for understanding your patterns in the context of specific relationships, not just in the abstract
The Wheel of Erotic Emotions — a visual map of common erotic emotions organized by category → laurajurgens.com/wheel
Send Laura Fan Mail
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Follow me on Substack for deeper dives into the research and notes from my practice at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
The Guide to Finding Your Secret Turn-Ons includes the Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
© Laura Jurgens, PhD, Pleasure Uprising. Quote with attribution and a link to the original. No reproduction in full and no use for AI training.
39 min
July 06What Makes a Great Lover? Research Shows It's These 8 Traits
If you're searching for how to be a better lover, chances are you're encountering a lot of opinions that aren't rooted in fact. Most of us absorbed a version of what makes a great lover without ever being taught it — from movies, porn, romance novels, and a culture that never corrects those images with reality. The result is a subconscious checklist that includes perfect technique, the right body, spontaneous chemistry, and orgasms that look like movie scenes. And most of us are quietly measuring ourselves and our partners against it.
Here's what the research actually says: none of that is what separates great lovers from everyone else.
Dr. Peggy Kleinplatz at the University of Ottawa spent years interviewing people having what she calls magnificent sex — the largest in-depth study of its kind — and what they described looks almost nothing like what we've been taught to aspire to. The traits that actually made the difference are learnable. And almost nobody is talking about them.
In this episode:
The cultural myths most of us are still measuring ourselves against — and why they're not just unhelpful, they're actively in the way
All eight traits Dr. Kleinplatz found in people having truly magnificent sex, and what each one actually means in practice
Why the cure for low desire isn't more desire for the sex you're already having — it's more desirable sex
The book referenced in this episode is Magnificent Sex by Peggy Kleinplatz: https://www.routledge.com/Magnificent-Sex-Lessons-from-Extraordinary-Lovers/Kleinplatz-Menard/p/book/9780367181376
Topics: what makes a great lover, magnificent sex research, low desire, low libido, somatic sex coach, intimacy coach, feminist sex coach, embodiment, erotic intimacy, sexual communication, be a better lover
Send Laura Fan Mail
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Follow me on Substack for deeper dives into the research and notes from my practice at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
The Guide to Finding Your Secret Turn-Ons includes the Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
© Laura Jurgens, PhD, Pleasure Uprising. Quote with attribution and a link to the original. No reproduction in full and no use for AI training.
29 min
June 29When Parenting Your Partner is Killing Your Desire
You love your partner. You're pretty sure you're still attracted to them. So why does your body say no — and why does it feel so connected to the fact that you've reminded them three times this week to do one thing?
It is connected. The slow creep of feeling like your partner's parent is one of the most consistent desire-killers I see in my practice. In this episode I'm breaking down the three forms it takes, where each one comes from, and what actually moves the needle — whether you're the one carrying the household or the one wondering why your partner never wants sex anymore.
In this episode:
The three patterns I see most: chore-based parenting, "good-boy syndrome," and anxiety-based reassurance-seeking — and how to recognize which one you're in
Why your nervous system cannot be in caretaking mode and erotic mode at the same time, and why wanting to want your partner isn't enough to override that
The flip side: why the person in the "child role" often has high desire and gets stuck in a loop they can't see from the inside
Where this comes from — work-life balance issues, patriarchy and male learned helplessness on one end; the developmental roots of not being able to self-soothe on the other
Why the frustrated-complaints approach keeps not working — and what I've seen actually work instead
What moving out of this dynamic looks like, depending on which side of it you're on
Topics: parenting your partner, desire killer, low libido, not attracted to partner, emotional labor, mental load, resentment and desire, nervous system and sex drive, somatic intimacy coach, intimacy coach, relationship coach, male learned helplessness, self-soothing, attachment anxiety
Send Laura Fan Mail
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Follow me on Substack for deeper dives into the research and notes from my practice at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
The Guide to Finding Your Secret Turn-Ons includes the Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
© Laura Jurgens, PhD, Pleasure Uprising. Quote with attribution and a link to the original. No reproduction in full and no use for AI training.
35 min
June 22Even Light Power Play Needs a Negotiation (Here's How to Make It Sexy)
Most people who are experimenting with power play and BDSM aren't doing anything extreme. They're just two people who trust each other, trying to "spice it up." But skipping the negotiation conversation because it feels like it has to be a mood killer is a rookie move that can lead to real problems.
I'm not talking bruises here, I'm talking about emotional distance, shut down, and loss of libido.
This episode is built around a real couple — smart, communicative, good at relationships — who did years of power play without ever having a proper negotiation conversation, because they both assumed that trusting each other was enough. It wasn't. The fallout was a sexless relationship, nervous system shutdown, and a lot of hurt that took real work to untangle.
I want to help you avoid that entirely.
Whether you're using restraints, doing impact, or just soft-topping: the negotiation is the first scene. Done right, it's not a clipboard and a liability waiver — it's where the anticipation starts, where you find out what your partner actually wants, where you start co-creating something that's going to be really, really good. This episode is about how to do that.
In this episode:
Why smart, aware people keep skipping BDSM negotiation — and what it actually costs them
What subspace is, why your prefrontal cortex goes offline in it, and why that means the bottom has to be an architect of the negotiation, not a passenger
The real difference between topping/bottoming and dom/sub dynamics (and why accidentally agreeing to the wrong one causes relationship problems)
How to make the negotiation desire-forward, not just limit-focused — starting with how you want to feel, who you want to be, and what energy from a partner opens you up
Why aftercare isn't an afterthought, and how to talk about it before you play
Where to find real community and credible resources if you want to go deeper
Whether you're kink-curious or have been playing for years, this one's worth your time.

Resources mentioned:
Yes, No, Maybe Lists from various sources (pick your favorite):
Babeland: https://www.babeland.com/babe-blog/how-tos/yes-no-maybe/
Bex Caputo: https://www.bextalkssex.com/yes-no-maybe/
Sunny Megatron: https://sunnymegatron.com/consent-sexual-boundaries-yesnomaybe/
Send Laura Fan Mail
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Follow me on Substack for deeper dives into the research and notes from my practice at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
The Guide to Finding Your Secret Turn-Ons includes the Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
© Laura Jurgens, PhD, Pleasure Uprising. Quote with attribution and a link to the original. No reproduction in full and no use for AI training.
39 min
June 15Joy and Pleasure After Sexual Self-Abandonment
Sexual self-abandonment is what happens when we stop having sex for ourselves. We may or may not actually stop having sex -- we might be doing it for someone else. For their desire, on their timeline, their idea of what sex should look like, while our own wants, our own pace, our own boundaries quietly went missing somewhere along the way.
That's what this episode is about. How we get there — there are three really common pathways, and I've lived through all three myself — and more importantly, how to find your way back to your own body, your own desires, and your own pleasure. This episode is about hope, and about a door that's still open to you no matter how long you've been on the other side of it.
In this episode:
The three pathways into sexual self-abandonment — through approval-seeking, through abusive relationships, and through trauma and dissociation — and why they so often overlap
Why "sacred sexuality" group spaces can actually be dangerous if you haven't done this work yet
The six steps back to yourself, including the grief that's part of the process (and why that grief is a good sign, not a setback)
What it actually means to come home to your own body, your own erotic self, and your own yes and no — and why that's the foundation everything else gets built on
Topics: sexual self-abandonment, somatic sex coaching, sexual trauma recovery, de-shaming, erotic self, intimacy coach, body-based healing, dissociation, reconnecting with your body, feminist sex coach
Send Laura Fan Mail
Get my free guide: Get Out of Your Head: A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Follow me on Substack for deeper dives into the research and notes from my practice at https://laurajurgens.substack.com/
The Guide to Finding Your Secret Turn-Ons includes the Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https://laurajurgens.com/wheel
© Laura Jurgens, PhD, Pleasure Uprising. Quote with attribution and a link to the original. No reproduction in full and no use for AI training.
29 min

About Pleasure Uprising: Desire, Attachment, and the Sex You Actually Want

From the publisher's feed

Formerly The Desire Gap Podcast

Most people who feel disconnected from their desire, their pleasure, or their partners have spent years assuming something is wrong with…

them. It isn't. The disconnection is real — but it traces back to what most of us were never taught: how to be in our bodies fully, how to connect to each other authentically, how to know and ask for what we need without guilt or shame. Culture shapes that — the broader culture we inherit, and the family we grew up in — and it can be unlearned. Pleasure, secure attachment, and authentic desire are your birthright.

You can learn what you were never taught — and unlearn what got in the way.

Dr. Laura Jurgens is a somatic sex and intimacy specialist, Master Certified Intimacy Coach, American Board of Sexology Certified Sex Educator, and former research professor whose work sits at the intersection of nervous system science, attachment theory, and genuine embodied pleasure. Every episode delivers the somatic, body-based tools that generic relationship advice and most therapists miss entirely — because desire, pleasure, and connection aren't fixed by talking more. They're fixed by giving your body and your nervous system reparative experiences that shift you out of your past.

This show covers: getting out of your head during sex · low libido and what actually helps · somatic and nervous system approaches to intimacy · desire discrepancy and mismatched libido · secure attachment and relationship repair · sexual shame and body disconnection · how to talk about sex without fighting · ADHD and desire · the orgasm gap and why it exists · reclaiming pleasure on your own terms.

Whether you've tried therapy, books, date nights, or just quietly wondering why intimacy feels harder than it should — this show will help you understand why those things don't move the needle — and what does.

New episodes weekly. Start wherever you are.

Free resource: Get Out of Your Head — A Starter Guide to Releasing the Pressure, Shame, and "Shoulds" Around Intimacy at https://laurajurgens.com/guide

Wheel of Erotic Emotions: https;//laurajurgens.com/wheel

For deeper analysis and the research behind desire, arousal, and attachment -- plus a chance to ask me questions, subscribe to my Substack here: https://laurajurgens.substack.com/