This piece was originally published on Substack and is shared here as part of the Sensual Institute’s body of work.
This piece explores how long-term adaptation in the nervous system shapes emotional experience, intimacy, and the capacity for pleasure.
We don’t talk enough about the fact that your body is a drug factory.
Not metaphorically. Literally.
Serotonin. Dopamine. Oxytocin. Endorphins.
Your body knows how to make them all.
It always has.
But here’s the twist:
The factory is responsive.
It adapts to what you feed it, what you expect, what you tolerate, what you postpone.
If you’ve spent years in survival mode, running on deadlines, self-denial, or “I’ll rest later” logic, your factory adjusted. It downsized production. It cut corners.
It stopped stocking the chemicals associated with deep satisfaction.
Not because you’re broken.
Because you’re brilliant.
Because the body always adapts to the emotional economy you live in.
Camilla Wellton’s, Founder of the Sensual institute and author of the I Awake book series, The Cost of Abandonment is a biochemical reckoning.
It asks:
What happens to your inner world when no one meets your needs, not even you?
What happens to your neurochemistry when connection is inconsistent?
What happens to pleasure when care is conditional?
And maybe even more importantly, what begins to change when you start listening to the signals your body stopped expecting anyone to hear?
This isn’t self-help fluff.
This is science, soul, and symbolic rewiring.
It’s shadow work through the lens of chemistry.
It’s nervous system literacy that doesn’t come with shame.
It’s the opposite of “just push through.”
Because neglect doesn’t just make you tired.
It recalibrates your thresholds for joy, for rest, for intimacy.
The Invisible Framework (I Awake Book One) laid the ground.
It named the adaptations. It showed you the architecture.
But The Cost of Abandonment goes deeper into the underground.
Into the somatic chemistry lab.
Into the place where your feelings and your molecules meet.
Inside, we meet your Inner Dealer.
The part of you that manages the flow of emotional chemicals.
Who gives you hits of approval. Or withdrawal from affection.
Who’s been trained by past patterns, but who can now be retrained by presence, by choice, by micro-dose repair.
This is a book about neurochemical literacy, yes.
But it’s also about emotional justice.
What would happen if your body stopped expecting scraps?
What might shift if your inner chemistry started believing pleasure was not only possible but safe?
We begin there.
While the sensual workbook The cost of abandonment is published in Spring of 2026.
Its accompanying sensual 7 day journal, Love starved, is already available on Amazon, Adlibris and right here in our shop.
You can begin this journey today.
Not with willpower. Not with another to-do list.
With one real breath. One honest yes. One act of not postponing your own medicine.
Because the truth is:
You were never lazy. You were biochemically lonely.
But the factory still lives inside you.
Let’s re-open it.
With devotion,
Camilla
