September '24 Journal Prompts
“Pleasure is good for you.”
Dr. Betty Martin
Have you ever tried to “force” pleasure? How did that go? Were you trying to make something pleasurable for someone else or were you trying to get pleasure from something that just wasn’t?
How do you most reliably access pleasure? What are your steps?
Dr. Betty Martin say, “You can’t give or receive pleasure. You access it within yourself. We can contribute to the likelihood that another will be able to access pleasure, but we can’t actually give it.” How does this make you feel?
She goes on to say that we CAN “give and receive time, attention, and sometimes, if requested - touch.” Do these three things make pleasure more conducive for you?
Have you ever tried to tell pleasure where it should be? Did you know that pushing pleasure to show up engages your defense responses - making it impossible for the pleasure response to engage? Have you ever experienced this phenomenon?
Have you ever run into your “pleasure ceiling.” Dr. Martin says that, “You have a ceiling on the amount of pleasure and the kind of pleasure with which you are emotionally comfortable. This is normal and universal.”
Do you know how to raise your pleasure ceiling? Betty says that it’s not the enjoyment, but the “feelings we have about that enjoyment” that are our limiting factor. “It’s self-protecting in a sense - protecting yourself from feelings you don’t know what to do with.” To raise our ceilings we can back up a little so the feelings are less strong. When we stop pushing ourselves, the feelings gradually soften. This lets our ceiling rise. Can you think of an example of a time you’ve done this or something that’s coming up where you could practice this?
What does this sentence mean to you? “Pleasure is a powerful change agent.”
Betty says,”Change your physiology, and you change what you are able to percieve. Change what you can perceive, and you change what you are able to imagine. Change what you can imagine, and you change what you are able to choose in your life.” What could the presence of pleasure change in your life?
