Why Suppressing Your Desires Is Making Healing Harder, Not Easier

At some point in the healing journey, many people come to a quiet, painful conclusion:

“If I were really healed, I wouldn’t still want this.”

Maybe it’s the desire for partnership.

Or rest.

Or softness.

Or being chosen, seen, supported, without having to earn it.

So instead of listening to that longing, you try to shut it down. You tell yourself you’re “past that.” You minimize it. You spiritualize it. You stay busy. You focus on self-improvement, independence, and emotional strength.

And yet… the ache doesn’t go away.

In fact, it often gets louder.

For many Gen Z and Millennial clients, especially Black women and people of color, this isn’t a personal failure. It’s a learned survival strategy. And it may be getting in the way of real healing.

How Suppressing Desire Shows Up (Even When You’re “Doing the Work”)

Suppressing desire doesn’t always look dramatic. Often, it’s subtle and socially rewarded.

It can sound like:

• “I don’t even want a relationship anymore.”

• “I’ve healed my attachment issues.”

• “I’m focusing on my goals, love will come later.”

• “God took the desire away.”

• “I don’t need anyone.”

  
  

It can look like:

• Overworking or overachieving

• Staying emotionally unavailable while calling it “boundaries”

• Shaming yourself for wanting closeness

• Judging others for wanting what you’ve told yourself you don’t

  
  

For many people, especially those who grew up having to be strong early, suppressing desire became a way to stay safe. If you don’t want too much, you can’t be disappointed. If you don’t need too much, you can’t be abandoned.

But safety and healing are not the same thing.

Why Suppression Backfires

Here’s the thing therapy teaches us again and again:

What we suppress doesn’t disappear; it goes underground.

Unacknowledged desire often resurfaces as:

• Anxiety that feels hard to explain

• Chronic self-doubt or inner criticism

• Emotional numbness

• Repeating relationship patterns

• Feeling “stuck” despite years of insight

When desire isn’t allowed to be felt, it tends to come out sideways.

This is especially true for relational desires. Humans are wired for connection. Wanting closeness, love, intimacy, or support is not immaturity; it’s biology and attachment.

Suppressing desire doesn’t regulate the nervous system.

It often dysregulates it further.

Desire Is Not the Enemy—Avoidance Is

In a culture that glorifies independence, detachment, and “being unbothered,” desire is often framed as weakness. For Black women in particular, desire has historically been pathologized or dismissed, while strength and self-sacrifice were praised.

But desire is not a pathology.

It’s information.

Longing tells us:

• What matters

• What was missing

• What our nervous system is still reaching for

  
  

Healing doesn’t require you to stop wanting. It asks you to change how you relate to what you want.

You can acknowledge desire without acting impulsively.

You can honor longing without abandoning yourself.

You can want something deeply and still move with discernment.

The Cost of Denying What You Want

When people believe healing means “wanting less,” they often end up:

• Policing their own emotions

• Feeling shame for normal human needs

• Confusing emotional suppression with growth

• Losing access to joy, play, and hope

  
  

Many clients come to therapy saying, “I don’t know what I want anymore.”

That numbness is not peace, it’s disconnection.

True healing doesn’t flatten you.

It reconnects you.

What Healing Actually Asks of You

Healing doesn’t say:

“Stop wanting.”

It says:

“Let’s get curious about what you want, and why.”

It invites you to:

• Name your desires without judgment

• Grieve what hasn’t happened yet

• Notice the difference between longing and urgency

• Practice self-compassion instead of self-correction

Healing is not about erasing desire.

It’s about letting desire exist without shame, panic, or self-betrayal.

A Gentle Reminder

If you’re still longing, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed your healing. It means you’re alive, relational, and human.

You are allowed to want love.

You are allowed to want rest.

You are allowed to want more ease than survival ever offered you.

And you don’t have to figure out how to hold those desires alone.

Thinking About Support?

Therapy can help you explore your desires safely, without rushing, minimizing, or judging them. If you’re in NYC or Brooklyn and ready to deepen your relationship with yourself (and others), support is available.

You don’t need to want less.

You deserve help learning how to want honestly.