103 ~ When You've Lost Desire: How to Get It Back

Have you ever found yourself in that strange, disorienting space where you used to feel your desires clearly, but now, all you hear is silence?

In this episode, Brenda and Catherine explore what happens when desire goes quiet. After spending so much time learning to follow the whispers of longing, what do you do when those whispers disappear?

Rather than rushing to fix it, they invite you to pause and listen differently. These quiet seasons aren’t failures—they’re invitations. Invitations to slow down, return to the body, and deepen your trust in the natural rhythms of desire.

They discuss how speed, overthinking, and life circumstances like grief can muffle desire’s voice. They share personal stories and practices that help them reconnect - like Catherine’s ritual of doing absolutely nothing for two hours, or Brenda’s reflections on trusting the unknown in her longing for home.

Most of all, this episode is about trusting that desire doesn’t abandon us. It simply changes form. Sometimes it simmers. Sometimes it rests. But it’s always alive inside you.

Episode Highlights
• Experiencing a lack of desire after learning to follow it isn't a problem - it's a signal
• When desire feels absent, check if you're in your head instead of your body
• Pivoting your attention often restores connection more easily than forcing clarity
• Reconnection strategies include movement, stillness, time in nature, relational support, etc
• Moving too fast can drown out desire - slowing down helps you hear and feel
• Life’s desires have a natural hierarchy - you can’t fulfill every want at once
• Grief and hardship often quiet desire; it’s not wrong, it’s human
• Gripping too tightly to desires creates resistance, practicing trust is more effective
• Holding the “what” while releasing the “how” is a powerful desire practice
• Desire isn’t a constant flame - it ebbs and flows, like everything else in nature

🎧 If this episode resonates, leave a review on Apple Podcasts and send us a screenshot—we love hearing what lands for you!

Chapters

• 1:34 When Desire Goes Silent
• 3:47 Reconnecting with Your Body
• 9:10 The Hierarchy of Desires
• 15:27 Trusting Your Desires Without Gripping
• 21:50 Final Thoughts on Desire Practice

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire, inviting you into our world.

Speaker 2: 0:16

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, piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. Welcome back, family, friends, listeners. I'm here with the lovely Brenda.

Speaker 1: 1:34

We're here talking about desire, as per usual, but we have some topics coming up around desire that we haven't necessarily touched on, gone in to really excavate, and one of the things we're talking about is how does desire feel when we've never felt it before or you haven't really been listening to the soft whispers or the loud knocks or been looking at the big, big picture dreams, the big visions, the vision boards.

Speaker 1: 2:06

What it looks like when you haven't done any of that, what it feels like when you haven't done any of that, and what it feels like when you have. What it feels like specifically today. What we're talking about is how it feels when you know what the whisper sounds like. When you know what the whisper sounds like, you know how the loud knocks sound, you know what it feels like to take responsibility for your desire and all of a sudden, you don't feel any and it's like womp, womp, womp. Nobody's home, there's just silence. When you I asked Brenda, I think earlier, this question and I think I'm going to have her say it out loud I think you said you haven't really experienced this.

Speaker 2: 2:54

I would say I don't really experience this very much lately. This is something that I used to experience a lot, but if we're talking about how do we experience the lack of desire after we've studied desire, I don't think I feel that very much lately anymore. Which can we just celebrate that over here Like?

Speaker 2: 3:17

woohoo right, congratulations, all right. How does it feel? Feels great. This isn't perfection, but it's a marker that when we do the work, we do move the needle and we do arrive somewhere, somewhere where I feel in touch with my desire and I can recognize it when it comes in, feel in touch with my desire and I can recognize it when it comes in.

Speaker 2: 3:49

Now, that being said, do I ever not know what I want or do I ever feel disconnected from my desire? Yeah, I definitely do. I do have those experiences, but where that used to freak me out in the past, I used to think something was wrong with me or I was starving or I would get scared. I don't feel that way anymore. Now I just ask myself what's going on? What's going on internally, the awareness right, and what do I need? Mostly, when it happens, I need to pivot. I need to pivot my attention and do something different, and I don't need to get caught up in the whole quote problem of I don't feel my desire or I'm not sure what I want. No, we don't need to worry about that, it's not a problem, it's usually. There's something that I need that I need to give myself. Like I said, pivot.

Speaker 1: 4:48

When you think pivot, do you just mean pivot away from trying to fix the I don't feel desire? Do you mean put your attention on something else? Do you mean all of the above?

Speaker 2: 5:05

All of the above, all of the above, all of the above, where I used to put my attention on it and focus on that right Thinking it's a problem that needs to be fixed. Now I say, oh, you know, I'm tired, or I've just been doing this for too long and I need to shift and do that. Or I've been staying home a lot lately, which felt really nourishing, and now I need to get out into the world. Or maybe I need movement, or maybe I need to call a friend, or maybe I need more sleep, or I'm hungry, whatever the thing is, or maybe I need to say a truth, maybe there's something that I need to say in order to pivot the energy. So I'm saying, take my attention off of oh my God, I don't feel my desire and just actually ask myself what does my body need?

Speaker 1: 5:56

So you're looking at your resources. How am I resourced? You know, sleep, eat, that sort of thing you're looking at have I gone out to nature? Have I been outside? Have I seen sunlight? Have I been in connection? What potentially small resource tweak can I make to myself, or is there a physical state that I have to change? You're sort of evaluating all right, if not feeling my desire is not a problem, it's just okay, it's just a circumstance. Then what else is happening? You're sort of taking an aerial look at what's happening for you.

Speaker 2: 6:27

Exactly, exactly. And I want to add something to that, a really huge one that a lot of women and my clients and myself will fall into is being in my head instead of being in my body. She laughs. When I'm in my body, I'm very much in tune with what I need and what I want, and I'm very in tune with my desires. I can hear them and feel them.

Speaker 2: 6:51

But if I get into my head, right, I get stuck in a problem, or I'm trying to fix something, or whatever that is. I can feel very disconnected. So that is a question that I ask myself am I in my head right now or am I in my body? And very often I will just be in my head and again, it's not a problem, but it's pointing to something. Oh, I need to get into my body First of all. It feels so much better. Being in my body is so much better, and you know how to get there, because I've spent the last two decades understanding what it feels like to be in my body and how to get into my body.

Speaker 1: 7:29

I love that, I actually really love that. You use the word disconnected, like how do I get connected, reconnected with myself? I think that's the biggest part. Once you have felt desire and you know the whispers, you know the loud clunks, the loud sounds, the hard knocks, once we know that if we, for some reason, are not feeling our desire, we're disconnected somewhere, something happened and it happens. We're human. Right, it could be. We got activated. Maybe there's a trauma response, maybe we didn't sleep, maybe we didn't eat. We have this often. We can have a go-to For you, brenda, I think you said I may have missed it.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Am I in my body? You said something like that. Right, for me, I might be going too fast, so I'm going from one thing to the next thing, to the next thing, to the next thing and I have not paused. And so where Brenda says, all right, I'm going to move, I know that she does Koya or she does movement practices. For me, movement practice would be great. Walking is a great one for me to sort of clear my head.

Speaker 1: 8:47

But sometimes when I hit what I call a wall, maybe Part of it is energy management for me, when I can't feel something, I just lay flat on the ground. That's something I'll do. I just have to actually pause. Usually it's an experience I'm having because I'm moving too fast and I sort of have to get reconnected with myself. So maybe I meditate, maybe I lay flat with myself. So maybe I meditate, maybe I lay flat, maybe I just lay on the ground. Laying flat and laying on the ground are the same thing. I'm just thinking lay flat in my living room or lay flat in my bedroom, one is cooler than the other, thank you, ac. And I just be with myself for about 10 minutes to see, all right, what am I feeling. And sometimes I will say, oh, I feel a lot of noise in my body. It's not even thoughts. I'll feel almost cluttered. I don't have a better way of describing that experience and I just say, okay, it's time to go outside and I just go out for a walk. In the beginning of that walk I will not be listening to anything, it's just sort of me and myself and walking and just paying attention to my breath, paying attention to some thoughts.

Speaker 1: 10:14

And that's one stage of how to get reconnected when you're not feeling your desire after being a woman that has felt her desire. Brenda and I were talking about how tricky this is, because when you practice feeling your desire Brenda said earlier she doesn't really come across these moments anymore where she can't feel what she wants it's really easy, I mean in comparison to where you couldn't, in comparison to when I wasn't practicing my desire. You know, I just wanted to make sure I did a good job at work and I got my paycheck and I saw my family once a month or once every quarter or six months, that sort of thing. I'm looking at sort of these particular markers in life to see am I being fulfilled and am I doing my duties, whatever those human duties are? Then you bring desire into the mix and you just want so many things. You just want this, you want that, you want this, you want that. And then you're practicing that. You can get really masterful at pulling them up or knowing what they are.

Speaker 1: 11:29

And then, when it goes quiet, sometimes it's because we need stillness, we're going too fast or we're disconnected from our bodies. And then sometimes we go quiet because there's a hierarchy Brenda says this often right you can have everything, just not at the same time. And some of us can look at that like ugh, universe, why can't you give me everything I want all at the same time. But this is less universal and more of. Can we be responsible with every desire that we want at the same time, and that one's a big fat. No, that one is really hard to do to be on top of everything that you want, and that's why we tend to be working on one thing at a time because of our attention span. Right, brenda? Like there is a hierarchy, yeah.

Speaker 2: 12:22

Also, you can't have everything at once, right. If you want children, you're not going to also have peace and quiet and lazy Sundays where you get to sleep in. It's just not going to happen, right. You can't have youth and then also have a ton of wisdom. It just doesn't work like that, right. We can't actually have everything at once, and so it's really a misconception that we can have it all at the same time. It would kind of feel like one of those buffets on a cruise Did you ever go on a cruise? And they have these buffets where it's like so much it's like you can't even really eat it. There's so many things on that buffet that I would really love to try, but I just can't fit it in my body. I think desire is like that and that's okay. You know, god willing, we live a long life and we get to experience a lot of different things and have different desires at different times. I think that's the way it's meant to be.

Speaker 1: 13:20

Yes, I love the buffet analogy. Yes, you can't we can't necessarily binge on everything and be satisfied by everything all at the same time. We have to kind of choose and there is a hierarchy, like you said. You can't have peace and quiet on a Sunday. If you have, you just have newborns right, like crying every three hours. You have to choose and it's like, oh, this is going to be a louder time in my life.

Speaker 1: 13:47

Okay, I'm going to be focused on raising my children right now Not focused on traveling the world with a two month old, like that's not, doesn't really make sense, right, and what makes sense for us? We have to be the ones that say, okay, this desire, now this, now this, now this, now there is an actual hierarchy. It does require us to be responsible to not just feel our desire but choose the ones that we're going to follow. Feel our desire, but choose the ones that we're going to follow, not just be like, oh, I can't feel my desire, but also feel into how do I build more possibility? Do I need to be still? Do I need connection? Do I need to connect with myself? What is missing from me at this moment in time, so that I can really feel what's happening? What's the humming sound that's happening in my body and for myself? Where is this all threaded?

Speaker 1: 14:49

But for sure, if you're someone who has been practicing desire, chances are it's really easy for you to pull up the desires. What do I want now? What do I want now? What do I want now? But when it goes, quiet resources is a great place to go. How fast am I moving? That's another great place to go. Stillness is a great place to go. And then there's. What do I actually want? What's really true for me in this season of my life, with all the competing desires? Right, because life is always lifing, things are happening and we get to choose where we want to go Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 15:27

And sometimes, when life is lifing, things come our way and we find ourselves in difficult circumstances, like if you're experiencing grief, like if you're experiencing grief in some form or if you just had a baby or you had just a big life event happen.

Speaker 2: 16:02

You might, your body, you might just be landing and going through something that maybe you chose, or maybe life chose for you, and it might be a time of more quiet and stillness, and that's okay. You know we don't recommend panicking. You know there's a time where we just need to be with what is, and it might not be really comfortable, and I found that the best way through those difficult moments in life is by just having a lot of approval and taking really good care of myself during those times, and your desire will come back, your laughter will come back, your life force will come back if you're in a really difficult point. And this is where I think one of the biggest pieces of desire comes in, which is trust. Trust, right, there are times where it doesn't happen very much anymore, but there are times where I'm not sure specifically what the desire is, or definitely there's a lot of times where.

Speaker 2: 17:03

I'm like, oh, I have this desire and I don't know how to have it. Well, now, that's something that I experience a lot and I could get into my head and start trying to figure it out, but that's not the way desire works. I just need to trust. We need to trust that what we want is on its way to us and we don't know how. It's actually none of our business, and I recently had this where I have.

Speaker 2: 17:34

Okay, I'm going to share one of my biggest desires, truly like one of the really, really big ones, which is I have a desire for my own home Again. I've owned two homes and I really want to own a home again and to live in my beautiful house. So I don't know how that's kind of come to me, but I do need to trust that it's on its way to me, okay. So a friend pointed out to me and this was brilliant, thank God for women and sisters that I don't need to constantly be saying this desire. I don't need to be all day, every day, saying I desire my home, I desire my home. I was like a little bit graspy. I could just let it go and trust I'm actually doing the work behind the scenes, to have this desire because I really do want it, and in doing so I make myself available for it. And we just have to trust, because we cannot wheel it into place. It just doesn't work that way.

Speaker 1: 18:38

Thank you so much for that tender share. But yes, I think that when we hear the whisper and we don't know how to become the person that gets to have it, that we can get grippy and just want it now. And, yes, there is A desire teaching that what you want wants you back and it's already here and it comes into sight once you become the person that can have it, that somewhere, the only thing in between you and this other thing is the person that you're becoming. What you just shared had me think about when we do know what desire feels like and there is a hierarchy and you know we're potentially moving too fast. We have to get resourced, we have to get back to the basics. Sometimes it's just us listening and you just listen what's next, what's next, what's next and you're just really just putting your attention on yourself.

Speaker 1: 19:45

I've had practices where coaches have said to me and this was hard, I did this, I can't it was recently where I would pause in the middle of my day sometime in the afternoon and just stop everything for two hours and do nothing no scrolling, no listening to external, like just nothing, so that I could reconnect with myself, and the goal was to be bored, to have that level of connection with myself. I don't think I did that exercise because I couldn't hear my desire anymore. I did the exercise because I was just going so fast that I couldn't feel fast anymore. And going really fast, just like if you're in a fast car or on a plane, you just can't see, you don't have the same sight.

Speaker 1: 20:40

Yeah, so this era, when you're here and you're a woman who can feel her desire and you start to feel like, oh, I don't know what's next, there are all these ways for you to be with what's next. And if you do know what's next, remember that gripping is not required, it's not part of the equation. You get to just let go remind yourself it's something you want and put your attention on the desires that are more up front, that have the hierarchy, that have your attention, that are the now. If they're not in the forefront, you can put that down and just trust that you're getting to it. It's going to, it's going, it's in the queue and it's coming up. It's in the queue and it's up next.

Speaker 2: 21:31

And you're not doing it wrong. No, you're not doing it wrong or you're not doing life wrong. If you've studied desire, if you've listened to all of our episodes perhaps right or you've been practicing this for a while and you don't feel your desire, or you don't know how you're going to have your desire, that's not a sign that you're doing it wrong or that you're broken. Please don't use it as that. It's just a sign that you need to maybe slow down or pause, and I love the practices that you're talking about, about you know how to connect back to your body. Desire isn't a constant flame. It's not like constantly going. You know it goes in and out.

Speaker 1: 22:10

This has been so good to touch on and talk about. Desire really is something to just be with so that you can learn more about yourself. We learn so much about ourselves through this practice. Thank you so much for listening. If something resonated, please, please, please, hit follow. Write a review on Apple Podcasts. Send us a screenshot. We'd love to know what landed for you. Bye for now.

Speaker 1: 22:41

Thank you for joining us on the Des is medicine podcast 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.