‘Guidance with Tanja taught me that pleasure is my birthright.’ 

Happiness, joy, peace, and calm are all emotions that generate a specific state of being – pleasure. However, pleasure is looked down upon, and evolution provides an explanation. By nature, humans are discouraged by happiness or finding pleasure in many areas of life as it elevates the threats of ‘survival’.

Applying this explanation to the cavemen age is easy, but what about today? Why is it so difficult for some of us to experience pleasure, especially in situations that are supposed to give us that elated sensation after sex or to get a promotion?

Pleasure was always accompanied by guilt and fear. 

One particular story reflects this belief. A woman who believed that she was not worthy of pleasure decided to undergo NLP in order to discover the root cause of her belief. She initially expressed her struggles of not being able to feel pleasure because it was always accompanied by guilt and fear.

Throughout the process of timeline therapy, another belief was unpicked and it was that pleasure is not safe. As for the root cause of each emotion involved, the guilt came from being 8 years old and having to take care of her ill sister, it was at that moment that she started affirming to herself that she was not allowed to go out and have fun because her sister was suffering.

This incident created a subconscious belief system that would later attract more situations to prove its validity. At 15 she was sexually involved with a partner who did not respect her boundaries or what she would and would not consent to. This created another layer of subconscious blocks that would remind her of the self-guilt because she couldn’t stop what happened and the cultural background she grew up in would not have accepted this ‘behavior’. She was mostly left alone to deal with her emotions with no support.

The power to change is in your hands. 

These blocks were carried around throughout her life, they stopped her from getting any pleasure from partners, personal achievements, and simple activities that made her feel worse than better because of the guilt. When she became aware of all of these issues and how much they affected all areas of her life, she then recognized that the power to change is truly in her hands and although she can not change what happened in the past, she definitely could change her perception of it and what she was going to attract in the future.