101 ~ Desire vs. Discontent: What Your Frustration Is Trying to Tell You

What if desire shows up before we even have the words for it? In this episode, we explore how desire first emerges - not as a clear thought, but as a whisper, a spark, a sensation in the body. Long before we can name it, it’s already speaking to us.

We share personal stories (including Brenda’s not-actually-about-the-beach vacation dilemma) to show how subtle desires, when ignored, often morph into resentment. In a world that trains us to focus on problems rather than possibility, we rarely ask: What do I truly want?

Together, we unpack what it means to become responsible for your desires—not just chasing outcomes, but tuning into the deeper need beneath the surface. Sometimes the real craving isn’t “no more beach trips,” but “I need novelty,” “I want freedom,” or “I’m longing for adventure.”

Desire isn’t a luxury—it’s a compass. And the practice of listening to it can reshape your relationship with yourself and everyone around you.

Episode Highlights

• Desire often arrives as a body-based knowing before we have language for it
• Suppressed desire doesn’t vanish—it turns into frustration or resentment
• Our culture prioritizes problems over possibility, making desire hard to access
• Being “responsible” for your desire means understanding the deeper why beneath a want
• Desire is rarely about the outcome—it’s about the feeling we're seeking
• Tools like desire lists help build clarity and self-awareness
• Small acts of fulfillment grow the muscle of self-trust and inner wisdom
• The key question to return to: “What am I really longing for?”

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Chapters

• 1:34 How Do You Feel Desire?
• 4:29 Recognizing Desire Before Labeling It
• 9:02 Being Responsible For Your Desires
• 12:51 The Cost of Suppressing Desires
• 18:18 The Practice of Desire
• 22:32 Reorienting to Desire Not Problems

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Inviting you into our world. I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life, motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 1: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. Welcome back family, friends, listeners so excited to be here with the lovely Brenda and, of course, all of you. I'm so grateful that you take the time out to listen, that you take the time to write. We love hearing from you. The first eight episodes of Desire is Medicine are basically a course. Brenda and I sat down and we were like what are the pillars, like the things that are must-knows, must-haves in order for us to be able to feel into our desires. And as part of our 100th episode celebration, we decided to sit with what's showing up in the field for us.

Speaker 1: 2:08

And one of the things that we've been sitting with is how do you feel desire before you actually feel desire? Like, how do you know that you're feeling desire? Is it turn on? Is it sex? It's so layered, it's absolutely so. So layered Because it could vary, I think, with us culturally, personally, relationally, the rules we set for ourselves, all the shoulds that we have, how we think or imagine it should feel Like I should know what I want to eat.

Speaker 1: 2:47

Whenever I go out, I should know exactly what my taste buds are calling for. I should know the nutrition I need. I should be able to pick the perfect partner that I'm going to be with forever and ever. I should have found the exact best friends we could shit on ourselves or really be with. What does a desire feel like? So, on this episode, brenda and I are going to feel and do our best to tap back in to what it felt like before. We actually knew desire, and I think Brenda has some good insight here. So I'm going to invite Brenda to unmute and share. What was it like for you?

Speaker 2: 3:29

Hello everybody, great to be here. Wow, what was it like before I started studying desire? I think that, first of all, it's important to say that our culture has a mixed idea of what desire even means. When we think about desire, we think about sex, and there's so much more to desire than just sex, and so anytime I thought about desire, I really just thought about sex, which meant that I didn't talk about it, because we also don't talk about these things.

Speaker 2: 4:00

I think I had a relationship with desire before I was really tapped into what that means. Because here I am, I got here. I've been studying desire for maybe 18 years, which is quite a while, but I lived 40 years before that and I certainly had some beautiful things in my life and had some beautiful experiences. So I must have felt desire right Before I even really knew what it was. And I think when I feel into desire, it's like oh, it's something that just shows up for me, like you said, an excitement or an idea or a spark, or an idea or a spark Before I was even in tune with my body. It would show up as like a knowing or an idea or like where do these things come from? Right, like we're always in relationship with the universe and sometimes something will just hit you and you're like, oh my God, I want that.

Speaker 2: 5:00

Sometimes it's in response to the world, like maybe you're window shopping and you see a dress and you're like, oh my God, I want that. Sometimes it's in response to the world. Like maybe you're window shopping and you see a dress and you're like, oh my God, I want that dress. Right, that's a really obvious example. But what about when it's not obvious? What if you're just at work, living your best life, making a grocery list, and all of a sudden you're like, oh my God, there's this thing that I want. I really want X, y, z, whatever it is. Like, where did that come from? I think it just comes from co-creating with the universe, but for me it landed in my body. It's like something that I can feel and then something that I could respond to.

Speaker 1: 5:41

I love the story that you're sharing, so I want to stay with you for a second. And you studied desire for 18 years, and before that you hadn't. And you're saying it would land in your body. So did you? Were you experiencing this before you knew what desire was Like? Clearly, we're experiencing desire before we know, and is that what you're saying? Or was it before we know? And is that what?

Speaker 2: 6:06

you're saying, or was it? Is it more nuanced? I would definitely experience desire. I mean, there were things that I wanted. I wanted to get married, I wanted a house, I wanted children, I wanted to go to Mexico. You know, I wanted XYZ. There were a lot of things that I wanted. I wanted that car, right, and I wanted that house, and, oh, I really want rollerblades, yeah. So so I definitely had an experience with desire of oh, I want these things.

Speaker 2: 6:36

Very often for me it's in response to the universe, like, specifically, the rollerblades. A friend of mine who I taught with bought these great rollerblades and she would be talking about rollerblading all the time and I just got really turned on by her desire. I was like I want rollerblades. So these were back in the eBay days. So she went on eBay, she got me a pair of rollerblades and that was it. I was rollerblading for a really long time after that, but it was in response to her enjoying that desire that I was able to feel the stirring of my own desire. Oh, my god, I just have so many great memories of rollerblading down, you know, the road to the beach where I lived and just being in complete flow and just feeling one with the universe. That was really amazing.

Speaker 1: 7:25

Thanks so much. I love that. I love the example of being around people who are doing something and it sort of pops in our mind and we go, oh, I want to do that. I also want to make space for when we feel a desire, that sometimes we choose not to do it. I would love to skydive, but I would love to skydive with an instructor, and if I already took a skydive lesson, I wouldn't necessarily want to be on an airplane where they're like all right, catherine, it's time for you to jump now. I have the desire to do it and I thought about the action required behind the desire. But I'm not going to do it just willy nilly. It's under certain circumstances, like with certain safety nets, and I think this is a great time to talk about withholding. We have a whole episode on that but sometimes we're so afraid to feel a desire because we don't want to not do it, we don't want to not go after it, like. All the examples you gave were great. They're like you're going rollerblading and you want the house, the husband, the children. It's super tangible.

Speaker 1: 8:37

But what happens when we have a desire for something? You spoke about this very recently. One of Brenda's students had a desire for a yoga studio, and it's not about having the studio. I don't want to go too far off. Today we're talking about how do we know we have desire and we're tapping into it before we're actually using the word desire, before we have the sort of airmark or the flag in the ground. Oh, I know exactly what desire feels like.

Speaker 1: 9:08

In my body, desire is somewhat like a goal, like I want a house or I want that car, I want these rollerblades, and sometimes it's not so easy. We have a desire and we can't just go to the bakery store and buy that croissant that we're craving. Sometimes it's something different. Maybe it means that I have a desire to be the sort of woman that says no really easily, and then, potentially, I may not know how to say no. And then now, all of a sudden, I don't want to feel into what it feels like to be a woman that doesn't know how to say no, for example. It can become so complicated. Do you see what I'm pointing to Brendaa? Like, can you talk? Yeah, what comes up for you around that?

Speaker 2: 9:49

these are really great examples. Oh, my god, I have so many thoughts. It feels like, in a way, what you're talking about is being responsible for your desire. You know when you're like, oh, I want to go skydiving, but I only want, I want to be safe, I want it to be fun and I'm only going to do it under these circumstances.

Speaker 2: 10:07

You know, there was a time before I studied desire where a flood bank started opening for what I wanted in my life and I was like, oh, I just need to follow all of these things and while that was very fun, I don't know that it was the most responsible thing and I certainly don't do that anymore. You know, now I take into account well, you mentioned safety, right, safety capacity, impact and really slowing down and asking myself can I do this? When can I do this? Is this something that I really want? Or, you know, just exploring it, and I think that's being responsible for our desire want, or, you know, just exploring it, and I think that's being responsible for our desire.

Speaker 2: 10:55

You know, we can have everything that we want in our life, but maybe not all at the same time. Right, there is a responsibility of it's the other side of the coin of like whimsy. Like when I started out this journey, I felt starved. I deprived myself of desire in a lot of ways, I deprived myself of what I wanted, and it filled up like a bottle and then it was started exploding out because I had ignored it for so long. And then I was like, well, I'm just going to give myself absolutely everything at the buffet.

Speaker 1: 11:27

Can we slow down and talk about that version of you, the version of you that wasn't willing to give yourself what you desired? Do you have, like, a politically correct way of touching on it, like, are you willing to share something so that somebody potentially listening is like oh, I feel that I know what that looks like. Is it because you were like a mom and as a mom, you can't do this when you have children? Or yes, what versions were showing up for you?

Speaker 2: 11:52

I mean there's a lot of different versions. The story just comes up right now this experience that I had. We used to go on summer vacation every summer with my husband and the kids when I was married, and we used to do a particular kind of vacation. We would go to a beach, we would go to Cancun or we'd go to Dominican Republic or something really fun like that. It was like some kind of beach vacation. And I grew tired of that and I wanted something different, and so I tried to communicate that to my partner at the time. There's so many other things that we could do.

Speaker 2: 12:24

Like I had a desire I didn't quite know what it was, but had desire for something different and he just wouldn't hear it. He was just like what, what do you mean? We're not going to go on a beach vacation. And I didn't quite have the skills or the self-awareness to be like, hey, something's coming up for me. I really would love to chat about this more. I'd really like to explore this.

Speaker 2: 12:50

Like I have a desire for something different.

Speaker 2: 12:52

I didn't know how to hold that, so I just kind of let it die and quote.

Speaker 2: 12:58

Let him have it his way, which is definitely a pattern for me in the past of just kind of like quietly dying and falling over because I don't know how to hold my desire, because my thought is, oh, if I had really showed up in a communicative, clear, loving way, I think he would have met me there and we could have come up with something that we could really all enjoy, potentially something different, right. But he didn't know how to do that, so that version of me was just willing to let it go. And then here's the thing the price. There's a cost to that, and the cost was that I got resentful. I got resentful, so that part of me would rather have just been resentful, I got resentful. So that part of me was would rather have just been resentful, and I thought, oh, that's just the way it goes, that's the way it is in a relationship, and that I don't. I don't think that that is necessarily true, but it was definitely true for me back then.

Speaker 1: 14:01

I think what we're talking about is that we make it about the beach, we make it about the vacation, thinking that is the desire. Oh, I want something that's not the beach vacation. And then your ex-husband is like no, I want the beach vacation. And now the tug of war is around the beach vacation when, in actuality, if we're talking about desire, the desire is no, I want to do something different than what we've done. And it's not really about the beach vacation, it's something's coming up for me. And then leaning into desire would be what is it that I'm really looking for and how can I get closer to having it? But then here's the tricky part. We can become so obsessed around well, I just don't want to go to the beach, that's what I want. And he wants to go to the beach. So I'm just going to be resentful because I can't have what I want. I can't have it the way I want it. He gets to have it the way he wants it. Versus, oh, how can I have something different if I'm sort of bored of this way that we're doing vacation? What am I actually missing? What's the nutrient that I'm missing? How can I make this happen for myself? How can I create this for myself.

Speaker 1: 15:18

I think that a lot of this is skill, right, you're sort of walking in the dark when you don't know. I'm sure listeners are like, oh, he just had to go somewhere else and not go to the beach. Especially if you're new to this work. You're like, no, just have him take her somewhere else, have him take the family somewhere else. Like, decide on a different location, you can do something different. But potentially we don't know because it didn't happen. Potentially you could have still gone on the beach vacation and have found some other way to bring in something different, to touch on the craving, the desire of I would like to experience something new with my family, my husband, something that doesn't have the feeling of same same on top of it. I'm looking for, potentially, adventure, different scenery or maybe no sand, or what exactly about the beach am I not enjoying anymore? Is it just because it's the same? Is there something even bigger occurring? And it has nothing to do with the vacation, and I'm just making it about the vacation.

Speaker 1: 16:29

Being responsible for our desire isn't just getting your husband to take you somewhere else. It's what am I really asking for? What do I really want, and how can I communicate this to my partner, my person, and have it be okay, even if I don't get it. Have it be okay even if I don't get it, because part of what's happening with desire is that you're growing into the woman that knows exactly what she wants and gets to ask for it, and that's really the gymnasium, that's the muscle that's being exercised. Not can I get the end result that I want, because, who knows, who knows? Maybe you would have said to him hey, I want something different. You guys could have had something different and maybe it wasn't as satisfying. We don't know. We're not looking to cry over spilled milk. We're more of pointing to examples, trying to show listeners, family's friends. These are examples of what can be happening all underneath the. I just don't want to do that anymore.

Speaker 2: 17:35

Absolutely. That was really beautifully said. You hit it when you said oh, it's more about showing up and having the conversation, which I knew how to do a little bit. I think we know how to do that a little bit. Or we know how to fight for what we want, right. But can we really just like, soften and hold our desire in the face of a no? Do we know how to come back to our partner and say, oh, I want to revisit this, oh, I really would love to do this instead? Or what do you think of this?

Speaker 2: 18:08

You know, one of my teachers said we have to ask a man for something 12 to 21 times before he will maybe realize that we really want it or give it to us. And so are you willing to ask that many times? Like it's the first time? And we did a whole episode on that and here's here's what it was for me. Um, I was starving.

Speaker 2: 18:31

Like when you are not filled up as a woman, when you are generally kind of like in a video game, just letting all the pieces fly by you and not hitting them, and you're not having your desire, you're not giving yourself what you want. There comes a point for many women for myself and a lot of the women that I work with you're just so starving and you're under-resourced and you've starved yourself for so long that you have to have it. And if you don't have it, you're blaming it on someone else and you get resentful and instead the alternative is like when you start actually feeding yourself, giving yourself the things that you want, even if it's something really small, or even just showing up to the conversation in a mature, respectful way, it does change things. And this is what we're talking about that the desire actually grows you to be someone new and there's plenty of opportunities. So if you didn't hold your desire with the vacation, well, there's the desire.

Speaker 2: 19:44

You know, to what restaurant do you want to go to? You know, there's so many opportunities that we can do this in life and I have a million stories like that in my relationships where I didn't hold the life. And I have a million stories like that in my relationships where I didn't hold the desire and you know it just kind of died and the night didn't go. Well, you know there was one night where he said, oh yeah, you did say that. You said you really wanted to go to that other restaurant I wish.

Speaker 1: 20:08

I had listened.

Speaker 2: 20:08

It's so good wish I had listened. It's so good.

Speaker 1: 20:13

I love how we are pointing to the early stages of desire, like when we, as women, are just putting our finger on I want something and I just can't put my finger on it. And sometimes we're hungry, we're starved, whether it's relationship, love, sex, maybe it's been money, time off, all the things that have us feel resourced. I think that this might be a future episode. This might be a future episode, but for now, I really want to leave everyone with the little whispers that you feel inside of yourself and the big whispers. So you'll hear something loud like I just don't want to go to the beach anymore, I don't want the beach vacation, but we don't hear the little whisper of oh, I'm craving something different. What's happening for me? What would fulfill it? Yes, the beach vacation not beach vacation is one of the options. But what else is an option? Because desire, unlike our goals, is not outcome specific. So there will be plenty of ways to be able to touch on and nourish yourself with something different, using the example that we're talking about. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 21:43

The thought that came to me, which is so important, before we are in touch with our desire. It's really tricky because our world is oriented to problems, not desire. Our friends are generally not asking us what do you want? What do you want? They're like oh, what happened last night? What did he say? Or what did she say? We're really oriented towards problems and that's what I love about these discussions is that we can actually reorient ourselves to desire and when we start doing that, it's just a game changer for our entire life and it takes time to practice it, but it is possible, orienting ourselves to all the ways in which life isn't working, to looking at all the ways in which we want things to be different or better, or what are we desiring.

Speaker 1: 22:38

It has me think of desire pulls that's also one of our mini toolboxes and that's a great exercise for that or even desire lists, where you just sit with yourself and write what do I want? What do I want? What do I want? I actually have a client who's been doing this and who's reporting back that she's like I forget how important it is to just sit with what do you want, because it's not about getting it, it's about feeling into what you want. It's almost like checking your thermostat, like where am I in my life, what are the things that are still yet to be had, yet to be felt? Where is this woman that I'm becoming going? What am I looking forward to?

Speaker 1: 23:23

And I would love to leave our listeners with this question of if you already know what desire feels like, wonderful, but if you happen to fall into the camp that you're not sure you hear the really loud desires, can you ask yourself what's underneath this? What is my desire? I see what it's asking for the new car. I see what it's asking for a different vacation but what's really happening Is that I want something different. Is it that I want more comfort? What am I really looking for and how can I give it to myself? What is one small way that I can give it to myself? Not where I can ask for it? One small way that I can give it to myself and then after that, yes, you can ask whoever you want, whatever you want, but just for practice sake, and if you're listening to this for the first time, welcome If you're listening to us for the first time.

Speaker 1: 24:18

If you are not, if you are returning. Thank you so much for being here. We absolutely love and adore all the things that you share with us and how this podcast touches you, and if you'd like to share this with someone you love, please do so. Write us in a review on Apple Podcasts and send us a screenshot. We'd love to know. Bye for now.

Speaker 2: 24:47

Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 24:50

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.