You've done the work. Real work. Therapy, couples counseling, the conversations, the books. You understand yourself better than you ever have — and you still feel the same way in your body.

That's not a sign you're beyond help. It's a sign you've been using the wrong tools.

This episode explains why the things most people reach for — talk therapy, mindset work, even good communication — don't reach desire and embodied intimacy, and what kind of support actually does. Whether you're partnered or not, high-desire or low — if you want a more satisfying sex life, this episode is for you.

In this episode:

• When therapy is genuinely valuable — and what it wasn't designed to do
• Why mindset work and self-talk can't override a nervous system pattern
• What somatic therapy does well and where even that hits a limit
• Why your doctor's answer probably wasn't the right one
• What body-based, future-facing work actually looks like
• Why I wish you wouldn't give up on your sex life before trying the right tool

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

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

If you've been trying to figure out how to want sex more and nothing is working — this episode is going to explain why. And it's probably not the answer you've heard before.

A lot of people struggling with low desire or low libido have already done the reading. They understand the concepts. Their body still hasn't gotten the memo. That's not a character flaw. It's the wrong sequence.

In this episode, I cover:

• Why desire and arousal are not the same thing — and why the order they happen in matters more than most people realize
• What responsive desire actually is, what the research says (including Rosemary Basson's work on how desire really works for most women), and why the model in most medical textbooks is wrong
• What your nervous system has to do with low desire — and why this is the piece that's almost always missing from mainstream advice
• How cultural conditioning and shame get wired into the body at a level that thinking simply can't reach
• Where your mind actually does help with desire — and what most people are doing with it instead that's actively working against them

If you've read the books, done the therapy, and you still feel stuck in your head, this one is for you.

Resources mentioned: Episode 5 (core desires and erotic emotions) | Free guide: Get Out of Your Head at laurajurgens.com/guide | Substack: laurajurgens.substack.com

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

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

Most people carry sexual shame so quietly and for so long that it starts to feel like a character trait rather than something that was handed to them. It isn't. Every flavor of shame — about wanting too much, too little, taking too long, not taking long enough, about your body, your history, your desires, your "low libido" — came from somewhere specific. And that somewhere is not you.

In this episode, I go through the full inventory of sexual shame I see in my somatic intimacy coaching practice, explain exactly where it came from (the culture, not your character), and go deeper into why shame lives in the body and nervous system — not just the mind — and what that means for how you actually release it. This is about a somatic, body-based approach to understanding and releasing sexual shame — and it goes where most intimacy advice, and even therapy, doesn't.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• The most common sexual shames — about desire, low libido, body image, sexual anxiety, sexual confidence, and what it takes to orgasm — and why every single one makes complete sense given the culture we inherited
• Why shame is stored in the nervous system and body as implicit memory — and why thinking or talking your way out of it rarely works
• What shame actually does behaviorally — why it makes you hide, avoid, and stay quiet, which is the opposite of what heals it
• Why speaking your shame to someone who stays in full somatic connection with you is the most powerful antidote — and why that's so hard to find on your own
• What somatic healing of sexual shame actually looks like in practice — and how it differs from traditional therapy or mindset work
• My own shame story — the things I carried for years without knowing I was carrying them, and what shifted when I stopped trying to think my way through it

The culture handed you this shame. You don't have to keep carrying it — but getting free of it requires more than understanding it. This episode is where that starts.

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

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

Have you ever followed the "right" advice and ended up further from yourself?

That's what this episode is about — and it's also why we're now Pleasure Uprising: Desire, Attachment, and the Sex You Actually Want. The evolution of this show mirrors what happens in my practice all the time: when you stop trying to fit yourself into the frame someone else handed you, something truer emerges.

In this episode:

• What the desire gap framing got right, what it missed, and what the shift reveals
• Why the disconnection most people feel from pleasure and desire is fundamentally a cultural problem, not just a personal one
• The full scope of what we're doing here: somatic and nervous-system-based work, secure attachment, and creating the most pleasurable relationships possible
• Why trusting your own experiment — over conventional wisdom — is the foundation of real desire and genuine connection

If you're curious about what's possible when you stop performing and start pursuing your own pleasure, desire, and genuine connection, you're in the right place.

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

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

When a woman asks a male partner to "be more assertive in bed," those words are typically landing differently than she intends — and differently than he's hearing them. This is a gendered language problem, and it's causing real confusion, frustration, and disappointment in real relationships.

There is a real vocabulary mismatch about "dominance" and "assertiveness" rooted in how men and women are socialized differently as children around anger, aggression, and sexuality — and once you see it, you can't unsee it.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why "assertive" and "dominant" mean different things depending on how you were socialized — and why that gap is doing damage
• The five things women typically mean when they ask for more assertiveness in bed — for women who want to understand how to ask more effectively, and for the partners trying to meet it
• Why aggression shuts desire down at the nervous system level — and what works instead
• What "attuned confidence" actually means and how to build it
• What the masculine/feminine polarity content getting popular right now is actually teaching — and why it's harming real libidos
• Simple scripts for both of you: how to say what you actually mean, and how to ask what your partner actually means

Most couples are having the wrong conversation about this. This episode gives you the right one.

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

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

You've heard it a thousand times: "keep the spark alive, get back to how it used to be, recreate that honeymoon phase magic." But what if that's the wrong goal entirely?

Here's what nobody tells you: the honeymoon phase was a drug state — literally. A neurochemical cocktail of dopamine, norepinephrine, and nerve growth factor that made you want constantly, but didn't actually deliver the goods. Research shows that only 49% of women climax in new or casual encounters, compared to 70% in long-term committed relationships. You were having more sex, more urgently — and less actual satisfaction.

In this episode, I unpack the neuroscience of New Relationship Energy (NRE), why it was never meant to last, and — most importantly — what becomes available on the other side of it when you build intentionally. Spoiler: it's not a consolation prize. It's deep satisfaction that a honeymoon phase literally cannot give you.

You'll learn:

• What's actually happening in your brain and body during the "honeymoon phase" of NRE (and how serotonin actually drops)
• Why the NRE fade is completion, not failure
• What long-term desire offers that new relationships never can — being truly known, a partner who has learned your actual erotic makeup, and trust built through rupture and repair (if you do the work to build it)
• Why "trying harder" doesn't work — and what actually changes the pattern
• The new research showing that desire for novelty and desire for deep commitment aren't opposites

This episode ends with a guided future visualization to help you focus forward.

If you've been trying to go backward, this episode will turn you around.

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

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

BONUS: Teaching embodied consent at home—for your kids AND your relationship.

This special Podcasthon 2026 episode benefits Freedom Network USA, the largest coalition working on human trafficking in the United States. Prevention of sexual violence starts in families— and most of us were never taught how to practice true embodied consent ourselves.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• Why teaching consent early matters— and how it connects to preventing exploitation
• 5 practical tools you can use TODAY to teach body autonomy and boundary respect to your kids
• How to model consent in your adult relationship (even if you're navigating a desire gap)
• Why "embodied" consent is different from just asking—and why it matters
• What to do if you don't know how to say no without guilt or respect your partner's boundaries without resentment

Plus: An interview with Karen Romero, Co-Executive Director of Freedom Network USA, on immigration policy, vulnerability to trafficking, and how listeners can help.

Kids learn from what we DO, not just what we say. If you're struggling with embodied consent in your own relationship—saying yes when you don't want to, sulking when your partner says no, avoiding touch because it feels like pressure—your kids are learning those patterns too.

This episode gives you actionable practices to change that, plus a curated list of age-appropriate consent books for kids (link below).

Support Freedom Network USA: [Donate Here]

Learn more: https://freedomnetworkusa.org | https://podcasthon.org

Resources: Consent books for kids by age group: https://laurajurgens.com/consent-books-for-kids/

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

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.

Does your partner's touch make your skin crawl? You're not broken—and this is fixable.

Touch aversion is when affectionate or sexual touch from your partner feels wrong in your body— irritating, threatening, or like you need to escape. This can happen even with light, loving touch.

This isn't about attraction. It's a nervous system response— and it's more common than you think.

In this episode, you'll learn:

• What touch aversion actually is (and why it's not rejection, it's protection)
• 8 causes beyond sexual trauma—including disembodied consent, emotional coercion, being "touched out" from kids, unresolved resentments, and attachment patterns
• Why therapy may help you understand it but doesn't solve it (and what does)
• Why your partner acting hurt about it makes it worse, even though it's understandable
• The Three-Touch Discovery Process— a practice you can try today to start reconnecting with what your body actually wants

Touch aversion happens when your nervous system has learned that touch isn't safe— even with a safe partner. You can't think your way out of a body-based response. You need new somatic experiences to re-pattern.

This is solvable. But you need guided work with someone who specializes in nervous system re-patterning, not just talk therapy. So we'll talk about what that looks like.

If you want help, book a consultation at https://laurajurgens.com/book-a-consult/

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

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited.