Why Pleasure Matters in Challenging Times

The Paradox of Pleasure in Challenging Times

As fall arrives, many of us feel the weight of intensified routines. There is often more structure, more responsibility, and more demand on our time. That can be challenging in itself. Yes, and this year it is not only about personal schedules or seasonal shifts. Around the world, the collective nervous system is stretched thin. Wars are unfolding. Economies are unstable. Communities are divided. The news cycle delivers fresh waves of conflict and crisis each day.

Our bodies are not designed to hold nonstop signals of stress. The nervous system is built to move through cycles of activation and rest, not to stay locked in a state of threat. When the tension never lets up, our systems become depleted and rigid. This is why pleasure matters. Pleasure is one of the ways the nervous system remembers how to soften, reset, and come back to life.

Challenge shows up in layers. It can be the exhaustion of a packed schedule, the heaviness of grief, or the fatigue of illness. It can also be the larger overwhelm of living inside a world that feels unstable and unpredictable. Most of the time, we equate those kinds of challenge only with depletion and pain.

But what if another truth lives inside these experiences? What if pleasure can exist here too?

A Personal Reflection

Recently I felt like I was getting sick. My system had been majorly overtaxed with work and other stressors, just waiting for a moment to collapse. I went up to my rooftop for a few minutes to get a change of scenery, and even though my body ached and my energy was wobbly, the sun still warmed my skin and lifted my spirit. The stones under my feet felt cool and grounding, and the air felt fresh in my lungs. None of that erased the discomfort. But it reminded me that pleasure had not disappeared. It was still present, woven into the moment, waiting for me to notice. Waiting for me to acknowledge and enjoy it when I could.

This is what our nervous system craves. Even in stress or illness, it looks for cues of safety, warmth, and nourishment. When we notice them, we give the body a chance to downshift out of survival mode. Even if just for a few fresh moments.

Pleasure Within Difficulty: A Breath Metaphor

Think about your breath. Every inhale naturally rises and peaks, and every exhale naturally softens and releases. In between each breath, there’s a pause. A space. A stillness. A moment to make a choice. Our emotions move in a similar rhythm. Even in seasons of heaviness, there are natural pauses where the body wants to settle and reset. Where a window opens briefly and we can choose what to perceive through our minds and senses.

Pleasure often lives in those pauses. It might masquerade as a sliver of sunlight through the window creating a beautiful design on your wall. Or a sip of something warm and soothing. Or a sudden belly laugh that literally shakes off a layer of stress. These small moments don’t cancel out pain, they don’t try to disqualify it- but they will coexist with it. They are the nervous system’s reminders that life’s happenings are not only a threat. These are the micro-regulations that let us soften, even just briefly, so we remember what balance feels like deep inside.

The Weight of Guilt Around Pleasure

A lot of us resist noticing pleasure, especially when we’re in periods of grief, or illness, or anxiety, or when we’re already stretched to capacity. We will literally push pleasure away.

Why? Because we feel like we should. We should be hyper-focused on the problem. We should stay locked in the pain. We should keep grinding, keep producing, keep proving. We should not be experiencing joy and pleasure when others are suffering. The conditioning runs deep. Cultural weight, religious stories, family patterns — they all pile on top of us until guilt feels automatic.

But that guilt is not the natural truth. It’s like a blanket wrapped too tightly and suffocating what the body intuitively knows. The nervous system is designed to hold more than one thing at a time. In fact, it needs to to stay whole and healthy. 

It can ache and still register the pleasure of warm sunlight on the skin. It can cry and still soften and smile at a kind word. It can feel stress and still let out a laugh that shakes something loose.

Underneath all of our conditioning, the body still knows how to let pleasure and pain coexist.

The Lost Meanings of Please and Pleasure

This conditioning doesn’t just live in our bodies. It’s hidden in our language too. Words like pleasure and please carry histories that reveal how far we’ve drifted from what the body knows.

Both words come from the same Latin root placēre, meaning “to please, to bring delight.”

Originally, the word pleasure simply meant ‘what satisfies or brings joy to the senses and the mind’. Over centuries, it was narrowed down, made suspect, and then became tied more often to sensuality or sexuality. The word lost its original diversity, including feelings of delight, nourishment, renewal, and it was framed as sheer indulgence or hedonism.

The same thing happened with please. It began as a phrase: “if it pleases you.” A way of honoring the other’s agency and delight. Over time, it was shortened and flipped around. Now we teach children that “please” is the “magic word.” But its magic is different than once intended. Instead of asking “if this brings you joy,” it became a polite demand: “would you please me by giving me this.” Still useful as a social lubricant, but I believe it’s been stripped of the depth it once held.

We live under the same cultural narrowing that turned pleasure into indulgence and please into a formality. Both words remind us that our conditioning has thinned out something natural and organic, and quite necessary to our souls.

The nervous system doesn’t experience pleasure as indulgence. It experiences pleasure as medicine. 

It doesn’t hear ‘please’ as a demand. It hears please as an invitation: will this soothe me, will this help me feel safe, will this bring me back to life?

What if reclaiming these words could also help us reclaim what our bodies already know?

Pleasure Matters

Pleasure is not frivolous. It’s not something extra. It is not something to be earned only after the grief is complete, the project is finished, or the stressful time has passed. Pleasure is what fuels us and charges us, helps us keep going as the informed, whole version of ourselves.

The nervous system cannot survive on constant depletion and bleakness. It needs moments of warmth, nourishment, and unbridled joy to stay whole and healthy. Conscious moments of pleasure regulate the physical body, remind the brain that we are safe enough to keep going and expanding, and give us the capacity to meet the next challenge that inevitably faces us.

When we treat pleasure as an indulgence, we cut ourselves off from one of the most powerful medicines we have. Pleasure is the nervous system’s signal that life is more than just survival. It renews our energy, it keeps us resilient, and it lets us remember that we are alive for more than endurance— we’re also alive to enjoy.

Goodbye to Survival Mode

Fall energy naturally ramps things up and has an air of organization and productivity. There are more commitments, we create more structure, and we might have more deadlines. None of that is inherently wrong, but it can become consuming if we don’t also schedule pleasure.

This is the season when we need to consciously make breathing points, to allow spaciousness, to pause inside the rhythm of the day and notice where pleasure may already be present. It’s just as essential to create space to consciously curate our own moments of pleasure.

We do this work together inside the CNTRD Practice Membership space. We explore nervous system resets and develop long-term regulation skills so that moments of genuine joy and pleasure become easier to embody and simpler to invite into our daily lives. We don’t bypass difficulty. We teach ourselves, again and again if needed, that our systems are wired for more than just surviving. We are wired to have a joy-filled existence. It’s our birthright.

My Invitation to You

Pleasure is not separate from life’s challenges. It weaves through them, waiting to be noticed. Sometimes it’s the strongest thread holding us together.

Right now, I invite you to take a full, easy breath and let yourself name one small pleasure that is available to you right now. It might be the colors in a piece of artwork, the warmth and smell of your tea, or the sound of someone’s voice. Whatever it is, give yourself permission to feel it fully. Invite it to soothe you.

This is how we begin to retrain our nervous systems. This is how we remind ourselves that we are made for more than survival.

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Jessica Crow is the author of The Power of Guided Meditation and founder of CNTRD Wellness. She teaches nervous system blueprints through meditation, Yoga Nidra, and somatic practices, guiding both individuals and professionals toward regulation, resilience, and authentic joy. Jessica leads the CNTRD Practice Membership, an online space for nervous system resets and long-term regulation skills, and trains facilitators in Yoga Nidra and conscious rest.