No Shame in Your Kink: Healing from Sexual Shame in a People-Pleasing World

You’re tied up. Not metaphorically.
The rope grazes your skin. The air is warm, your breath heavier than usual. A hand brushes your shoulder, gentle, commanding. You lean into the tension, muscles clenching with anticipation. You’re not scared. You’re free.

And yet, beneath the pulse and the play, something else flickers. A memory:
You’re sixteen. Your browser history is full of things you don’t understand but can’t stop reading. You hear a parent’s voice echoing in your head: “That’s disgusting.” “People like that need therapy.”

You’re an adult now. Maybe you were surprised at how much you enjoyed fairy smut or that unexpected thrill while watching How to Build a Sex Room. Maybe you whispered a fantasy to your partner and their eyes lit up. Or maybe it’s still yours alone, tucked into private journals or late-night Google searches.

And then, just as you start to let yourself want more…
The shame rushes in.
Loud. Instant. Familiar.

What’s wrong with me? Why does this turn me on? Why do I still want this?

But what if that want, that ache in your body, that electric flicker in your chest when you picture letting go isn’t wrong at all? What if that’s a clue? A doorway into something deeper: your nervous system’s desire to feel safe and free, to trust yourself in the places we don’t talk about in “polite society.” To stop prioritizing everyone else’s comfort and start coming home to your own.

Leather, Lace, and the Shame Spiral

For people-pleasers, survivors, and anyone raised in environments where sexuality was off-limits or tightly controlled, the idea of wanting something, especially something bold, loud, or outside the lines can trigger deep fear.

When we do some digging in session, a lot of the folks I work with find that the shame they feel about their desires is not even their own. They explain that engaging in this bold play through kink is freeing. It feels good. But the shame has been implanted through family or cultural conditioning. When we’re told something is taboo, it can be accompanied by a fear that engaging in the taboo thing might mean being judged by those closest to us. And it’s the fear of abandonment by our loved ones that is the scary part.

This is especially true for people pleasers. If you learned to keep others happy to stay safe, centering your own desires might feel dangerous. You might have done your homework on how to sexually satisfy your partner but have a hard time explaining what lights you up. When you practice putting yourself second over and over, your needs get quieter, more distant, even shameful. Religion loves to add on to the pile of shame, with rules about sex before marriage, purity pledges, sinful desires. Wanting something, especially something kinky, queer, or nontraditional, is not modeled as safe or sacred in many spiritual communities.

Impact of Prescriptive and Restrictive Gender Roles

How do gendered expectations reinforce this self-abandonment? For those of us who were assigned female at birth (AFAB), the messaging is that our value lies in being pleasing. Polite. Modest. Chaste. Desired, but never desiring. It’s the double bind of purity culture: Be “a lady in the streets but a freak in the sheets.” We’re expected to be virginal and alluring, obedient and irresistible, self-sacrificing and sexually skilled all at the same time.

No wonder so many of us are confused, ashamed, or stuck. Then there are the complications of being socialized in feminine gender roles and later transitioning. How do you embrace healthy masculinity without leaning into patriarchal patterns? How do you make space for softness, vulnerability, or submission without setting off alarm bells of gender dysphoria?

And for those assigned male at birth (AMAB)? The messaging is different, but not necessarily better! Young men are often taught to equate sexuality with performance, conquest, and control; always confident, always ready, always dominant. Vulnerability becomes a threat to masculinity rather than a gateway to connection. This conditioning can leave AMAB folks cut off from their own bodies, unsure how to access authentic desire without shame, performance anxiety, or disconnection.

For trans women, the path to embodied, healthy sexuality can be especially complex. There’s the pressure to “prove” one’s womanhood through beauty, passability, or sexual availability, messages rooted in both transphobia and misogyny. On the flip side, there’s the fear of being fetishized, misunderstood, or outright harmed in intimate encounters. Navigating desire while trying to feel safe, seen, and whole can feel like walking a tightrope. Even if you’ve unshackled from the tiny boxes of gender and are embracing your non-binary identity, pulls to conform to these unspoken expectations can creep in with new partners, new experiences, or new phases in your life.

Regardless of what you were taught or have since learned about your relationship with gender, I imagine there is some grieving to do for parts of your sexuality that were lost or denied to you. Honoring your journey through the grieving process opens up the path for accessing healthy sexuality. It’s time to reclaim your agency, pleasure, and self-definition on your own terms.

Kink as a Playground for Healing

Kink can be a means to expansive pleasure as well as a powerful therapeutic space. When done with consent and care, kink creates opportunities to safely:

Reclaim your voice: You get to say yes. You get to say no. You get to change your mind. For many survivors, that alone is radical.

Explore power without crippling fear: Whether you're in control, letting go, or switching roles, power play done right is based on mutual trust and explicit agreements.

Bring your body back online: In a culture that disconnects us from our bodies, kink can bring sensation, presence, and even pleasure to places long silenced.

Because so few of us were taught how to have honest, nonjudgmental conversations about sex, many of us carry a backlog of shame, confusion, and silence.

So let’s name a few myths, and reframe them:

Myth 1: Kink is just about sex.
Truth: Kink is about connection, communication, and consent. Many people explore kink as an emotional experience, not just a sexual one. It can be an exciting arena for asexual and aromantic folks, too!

Myth 2: Only traumatized people are into BDSM.
Truth: That’s not only false, it’s harmful. While some folks process trauma through kink, many simply enjoy it for what it is: exciting, embodied intimacy.

Myth 3: Wanting dominance or submission is a red flag.
Truth: Kink invites you to explore dynamics you choose, with full awareness. It's not about dysfunction; it's about freedom and trust. (When dominance or submission is demanded, without consent and clear communication, that’s a different story).

A Corrective Experience for the Nervous System

Your nervous system isn't just reacting to what's happening in the moment. It's constantly scanning for patterns, echoes, and unmet needs of the past. For people with a history of trauma, emotional neglect, or chronic people-pleasing, the system can stay stuck in a loop of hypervigilance, shutdown, or overaccommodation. But kink can offer one route to disrupt those patterns.

Kink, when practiced in a safe, consensual environment, offers something radical: predictability, choice, and sensation.

Predictability: Kink dynamics are negotiated ahead of time. That means clear expectations, boundaries, and outcomes: something your nervous system craves when it’s used to chaos or unclear roles.

Choice: You choose the scene. You choose the role. You have safe words. You are not only allowed to change your mind, you’re encouraged to. That kind of empowered consent can rewire old scripts of helplessness or overgiving.

Sensation: Many kink practices involve intentional, embodied sensation: impact, restraint, temperature, texture. These help bring your awareness back into your body in a way that can feel controlled, focused, and safe.

In other words, kink can act like somatic therapy in disguise. You’re practicing staying present in your body, in an experience that is intense but chosen. Your brain learns: “I can feel this, and I’m still safe.” That’s a powerful rewiring for anyone who’s lived in freeze, fawn, or fear for too long.

I gotta say this part out loud: not everything labeled “kink” in movies or the media is actually healthy or consensual. When consent is missing, or when power is taken instead of offered, what you’re seeing isn’t kink. It’s coercion. And unfortunately, stories like Fifty Shades of Grey or other “dark romance” tropes often blur that line. They reinforce the idea that domination means ignoring boundaries, or that submission is just about enduring pain for someone else's pleasure.

In safer kink culture, consent is sacred. Communication is constant. Safe words are non-negotiable. Without these, what might look like “kink” from the outside is really just control without care, and that’s not empowering. That’s retraumatizing. We want kink that centers agency. It says, “You get to choose.” And that’s exactly why it can be so healing.

When you stop treating your desires like a problem to fix, something incredible happens. You become more honest. More grounded. More in your body. You stop shrinking to fit other people’s expectations, and you start expanding into your own. You find yourself speaking up, not just in bed, but in life. You start saying no with confidence, and yes with joy.

You might discover that kink is where your nervous system finally relaxes. That being worshipped or restrained or taking control allows you to drop the performance and just be. Without shame, your body becomes a place of curiosity again, not critique. Sex becomes a language of truth, not obligation. You stop asking, “Is this normal?” and start asking, “Is this the most alive version of me?”

And that version of you, the one who knows what they like, can name what they need, and welcomes their desires with compassion?

That version is powerful.
That version is free.
And they’ve been there all along, just waiting for permission.

So go ahead, linger in the fantasy a little longer. Picture what it might feel like to be seen, chosen, and fully in control of your “yes.”

There’s no rush to act, but if your curiosity is growing, stay tuned. In an upcoming post, we’ll explore how to dip a toe into kink safely and with confidence, from first conversations to resources and rituals that support empowered exploration.

Until then, let the image be yours. No shame required.