Learning to want things again

Content note: This letter discusses recovery after abuse, rediscovering pleasure and desire, and rebuilding autonomy.

You’re sitting in a restaurant and the server asks what you want to order and you freeze.

Not because there are too many options. But because you genuinely don’t know. You scan the menu looking for clues about what sounds good and nothing registers. Everything sounds equally fine and equally irrelevant. You end up ordering what you think you should want, or what’s safest, or whatever the person across from you is having.

This happens more than the restaurant. Someone asks what you want to watch and you say “I don’t mind.” Where you want to go and you say “anywhere is fine.” What you want to do this weekend and you have no answer because the question itself feels foreign.

You don’t know what you want anymore. And it’s not just indecision. It’s a complete disconnection from your own preferences, your own appetite, your own desires. They were systematically trained out of you and now you’re standing in the rubble trying to remember what it felt like to want something.

For months or years, what you wanted didn’t matter. Worse: it was dangerous. Wanting the wrong thing, expressing a preference, having needs that conflicted with theirs: all of it got punished. So you stopped wanting. You stopped having opinions. You became a blank slate that reflected whatever would keep the peace.

Your appetite for food became complicated. Maybe they controlled what you ate, when you ate, how much. Maybe mealtimes were battlegrounds. Maybe you learned to eat quickly and quietly, to not ask for more, to not have preferences. Or maybe food was one of the few things you could control so you restricted or binged or used it to feel something when everything else was numb.

Now you’re free and you sit in front of a meal and you don’t know if you’re hungry. You eat because it’s mealtime, because you should, because your body needs it. But the pleasure of eating, the satisfaction of choosing something you actually want and enjoying it, that feels distant or gone entirely.

Your appetite for connection became muted. They isolated you, criticised your friends, made socialising so difficult that you stopped trying. Now someone invites you somewhere and you feel nothing. Not excited, not curious, just the weight of having to decide and the vague anxiety that comes with being around people.

Your appetite for pleasure disappeared. Sex, if it happens, is something you endure or perform. Hobbies you used to love feel pointless. Things that used to bring you joy like music, art, nature, movement, might not register anymore. You go through the motions. You try to remember what you liked before. But you’re doing it from memory, not from actual desire.

You became so focused on survival that everything else got muted. Your nervous system had no resources left for pleasure, for want, for preference. Those are luxuries. Survival mode is about threat detection, compliance, getting through the day. There’s no bandwidth left for “what do I want for dinner.”

And now you’re out. You’re safe. Your body is supposed to relax, supposed to start wanting things again. But it doesn’t know how yet. The mechanism that signals desire, that says “this appeals to me,” has been offline so long you’re not sure it still works.

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People around you might not understand. They see you as free now and they expect you to be thriving. Making plans, trying new things, excited about life. And you’re just tired. Blank. Going through motions that look like living but don’t feel like it yet.

You might feel guilty about this. Like you’re wasting your freedom. Like you should be more grateful, more enthusiastic, more alive. You got out - why aren’t you celebrating? Why aren’t you seizing the day, making up for lost time, diving into everything you couldn’t do before?

Because your nervous system is still in the aftermath. Because wanting things feels vulnerable and vulnerability still feels dangerous. Because you spent so long suppressing your needs that you can’t just flip a switch and access them again.

Small things start to come back first, maybe. You notice you actually do prefer tea over coffee. You realise you hate a certain song that you used to tolerate. You find yourself wanting to sit in the sun. These feel inconsequential but they’re not. They’re your body starting to have opinions again.

Or maybe it’s physical. Your appetite for food returns. You eat something and it actually tastes good, not just functional. You feel hungry - genuinely hungry - not just “it’s been X hours so I should eat”, and you eat what your body is asking for and it feels like something.

Or it’s creative. You pick up a pen and draw something just because you wanted to. You put on music that you actually like instead of background noise. You rearrange your space because you prefer it a different way. These tiny acts of preference feel enormous because they are. They’re you coming back online.

Or it’s sensory. You notice textures again. The feel of certain fabrics. The temperature of water. The smell of rain. Things you were too numb to register start registering again. Your body is waking up to sensation that isn’t threat-based.

But it’s slow. And it’s inconsistent. You have a day where you feel alive and connected to what you want and then three days of nothing. You have moments of genuine pleasure and then long stretches of going through motions. That’s normal. Your nervous system is recalibrating and it doesn’t happen all at once.

You might grieve the time you lost. The years you spent not wanting things, not enjoying things, not being allowed to be a person with preferences. The experiences you missed. The version of yourself that used to have strong opinions about music and food and how to spend a Saturday and doesn’t exist anymore.

That grief is real. You’re not just mourning the relationship. You’re mourning the self that got erased in it. The appetites that got suppressed. The desires that became dangerous.

And you might be afraid of wanting things again. Because wanting made you vulnerable. Because expressing needs got you punished. Because the last time you asked for something it was used against you. So even as your body starts signalling desire, you might reflexively suppress it. Better to want nothing than to want something and be disappointed or hurt.

You might also not trust your own wants. You spent so long editing yourself, performing what they wanted, that you’re not sure anymore what’s genuinely yours and what’s just residual people-pleasing. You think you want something and then second-guess it. Is this what I want or what I think I’m supposed to want? Is this my preference or my old habit of accommodating?

It takes time to sort that out. To learn the difference between genuine desire and performance. To trust that your wants are valid even if they’re small or seem silly. To believe that you’re allowed to have preferences now without punishment.

The hunger comes back in strange ways sometimes. You might find yourself crying because you wanted something specific for dinner and you got it and that felt profound. You might feel disproportionately happy about wearing a certain colour because you chose it, not because someone else approved it. You might laugh at something genuinely funny and realise you haven’t laughed like that in years.

These moments don’t erase the hard days. The days where everything still feels flat. Where you’re going through the motions of eating, socialising, existing, but not actually feeling any of it. Where someone asks what you want and you still have no answer and you feel that familiar blankness.

Both exist. The moments of reconnection and the long stretches of nothing. You’re not failing if you’re still mostly in the nothing. You’re in the process. And the process is slow and nonlinear and sometimes boring and frustrating.

You’re learning to be a person with wants again. That’s strange after being a person whose wants didn’t matter. It feels vulnerable to say “I want this” because what if it’s wrong, what if it’s criticised, what if it’s taken away. Your body remembers that wanting led to punishment so it’s cautious about wanting again.

But slowly, maybe, you start to notice. What foods you actually like. What environments feel good to you. What time of day you prefer. Who you want to spend time with. What kind of touch you want or don’t want. What hobbies still interest you and which ones were just going through the motions.

You start to rebuild a sense of self that’s based on your actual preferences, not on what kept you safe. That self might be different from who you were before. Quieter or louder. More solitary or more social. With different tastes, different priorities, different boundaries.

And that’s okay. You’re not trying to return to who you were. You’re discovering who you are now. And that person gets to want things. Gets to have opinions. Gets to say “yes” and “no” and “I prefer this” without needing permission or fearing consequences.

The hunger you forgot you had is coming back. Not all at once. Not in a rush. But in small moments where your body signals something, desire, preference, want, and you actually listen to it.

That’s what freedom feels like, eventually. Not constant joy or perpetual excitement. But the quiet return of appetite. The ability to want something, however small, and know that wanting it is allowed.

Thank you for being here… exactly as you are, and exactly where you are in your healing ♡

Warmly,

Debbie x

Your wants matter now. They always did. You’re just finally safe enough to feel them again.

Some things to notice when you’re ready:

• What’s one small thing you wanted today and actually let yourself have?

• What’s something you used to love that you’re curious about trying again?

• What does your body want right now e.g. rest, movement, food, quiet, connection?