We like to think desire is instinctive. That we either know what we want or we don’t. That confidence will somehow close the gap.

Anisa Varasteh sees something different in her work. Not a lack of desire, but a disconnection from it. What follows is a direct conversation on how that happens, and what it actually takes to come back to yourself.

Why did you write a parenting book when you work with adults?

“Most often when people come to see me and they present with sexual problems, it’s not that these problems are rooted in adulthood. They’re related to social conditioning around sexuality.”

She explains that the messages we absorb are rarely explicit. “They’re indirect. About what it means to be a man, what it means to be a woman, what we are allowed to desire.”

Then she names the thing that comes up most often in her clinic. “People come to me and say, I don’t even know what I want.”

The book, she explains, is not about teaching children what sex is. “It’s about what skills to teach them so they can have more fulfilling relationships in adulthood, including intimate and sexual relationships.”

How are our desires actually shaped?

“There’s definitely attachment,” she says. “The bonding that we form with our parents in childhood can have an impact on adulthood choices, including our intimate relationships and sexual experiences.”

But she is clear that attachment is only one part of it. “It’s also the environment. The atmosphere. The micro interactions with parents, caregivers, peers, media.”

When those early experiences associate intimacy with something unsafe, the body remembers. “If a caregiver was not responsive or was harmful, then intimacy can equate danger. That creates a pattern in the nervous system.”

That pattern often looks like contradiction. “Getting close to someone, but at the same time pulling back.”

Why is it so hard to change those patterns, even when we’re aware of them?

“If there is just awareness that you’re stuck in a pattern and you feel powerless to change that, then yes, that can lead to re-traumatisation,” she says.

The work, as she describes it, is not about trying harder. “It’s about finding a sense of agency. And not perfection. There is no such thing as a perfect parent or a perfect person.”

That agency begins with something many people have lost connection to. “Understanding your own needs. And regulating your nervous system.”

Because without that, everything else becomes reactive. “If you’re constantly anxious or panicky or numb, you’re not able to make good decisions for yourself or for your loved ones.”

What is erotic agency, really?

“It’s our capacity to feel and to identify and to choose our own desire based on self-trust,” she says. “Not from fear, pressure or obligation.”

She is quick to dismantle the common misunderstanding. “It’s not about being more sexual or more adventurous or more confident on the outside. It’s about internal integrity.”

In practice, that integrity is often subtle. “It could be sensing a contraction before you say yes. Or realising halfway through something that it no longer feels right.”

And then allowing that to matter.

How does self-abandonment show up in intimacy?

“Self-abandonment is not weakness. It’s not failure,” she says. “It has a function. It once kept someone safe.”

Most people learn it early. “They don’t override themselves because they’re passive. They learn it because wanting cost them something. Love, approval, safety, belonging.”

The lessons are often subtle but consistent. “Love is more available when they are agreeable, easy, low maintenance. Or it’s withdrawn when they want something.”

Over time, the body internalises a simple rule. “My needs are a threat to connection.”

That rule does not disappear in adulthood. “Even when the partner is safe. Even when the relationship is loving. These patterns are deeply rooted.”

What Anisa Varasteh outlines is not a reinvention of desire, but a return to it. Not through performance or confidence, but through something quieter and more precise.

Self-trust.

Interested in hearing the entire conversation on the Becoming Flame Podcast with host Kait Tregenza? It is available on all podcast platforms now.