Smut As a Healing Tool for Nervous System Trauma

The Bothered Blog by Chloé Ellert

September 2026

What if the things that turn you on in a story could tell you what your body needs? This question is at the center of Chloé Ellert’s work. A sex therapist and certified clinical aromatherapist, Chloé’s own experience with sexual trauma led her to discover that reading smut made her feel calmer, safer, more centered and more connected to her desire. 

This interview is adapted from a conversation between Chloé and our CEO, Allison Whaley, as part of our podcast series, Bothered Stories: Smut Talks. In it we talk about why some stories make us feel safe enough to be aroused again, what stress has to do with desire, and how paying attention to the smut we love can teach us about ourselves.

When Smut Becomes a Lifeline

Allison: Tell me a little about your work and the personal story that led to it.

Chloé: Right before COVID, I had a lot of creeping symptoms I couldn't quite pinpoint. I had chronic anxiety, I had depression, I had severe paranoia out of nowhere, I was unable to date, I was unable to let any man touch me.

I didn't know why. It was driving me crazy, and I was thinking, am I going crazy? 

Then during COVID, I went through a master’s program in sexology and I was recognizing myself in all of these pathologies, and all these sexual trauma states. It was such a relief to not be a question mark in what I was living through.

And slowly I got into smut. I started noticing in my body that my anxiety was going away, I felt happier, I felt more stable, I felt more centered.

I would read these wonderful books that would have spicy scenes in them, but they also had a lot of consent. They had a lot of female desire put forward, a lot of autonomy, a lot of expression, a lot of communication. I could see my body responding in certain ways, not just arousal, but also safety. And I was thinking, why? Why does this make me feel better? What does that say about my body and what it needs? 

And then out of my curiosity, came a method. 

The smut-scent method pairs an essential oil with a type of smut. The more you associate the smell of the oil to that particular smut, the more the state of arousal you feel from the story will be immediately available whenever you smell the scent.

The Smut Your Nervous System Responds To 

Allison: So what's happening when we're reading? How does smut affect us physically?

Chloé: Smut activates certain neural activity in your brain. Reading it creates new memories, new perceptions, new neural pathways, because the brain can't distinguish between reality and fiction.

The fact that you gravitate towards reading scenes with consent, for example, might indicate that you need that. Or you may need a slow burn, you may need something that's more devotional, you may need something that's a bit more emotional, or just very light. 

This process of discovery meets needs that were disrupted because of trauma. 

The trauma in itself creates voids that need to be filled, or something that needs to be triggered, something that needs to be responded to in order to create healing, or a healing pathway. When you create new neural pathways in your brain, you're literally rewiring, restructuring your brain after the trauma happened.

Desire Doesn't Happen in a Vacuum

Allison: Can you speak to how cortisol plays a role in arousal? 

Chloé: The nervous system isn't a background condition, it is the immediate environment desire lives inside.

From what I understand, cortisol and desire go through the same pathway in the body, so if cortisol is up, there's no way for desire to go through as well. It’s either one or the other. 

When cortisol is up, that's when our sympathetic nervous system is activated, and there's no way that any arousal or desire could actually come into play because we're in a sort of fight or flight. So you can't just decide to be aroused if you're in a trauma state of mind. 

And women's desire is more directly and immediately sensitive to cortisol than men's. 

What Does Your Favorite Smut Say About You?

Allison: How can reading smut help people understand their own desires, even if they're not dealing with sexual trauma?

Chloé: Smut can awaken certain kinks, desires, needs.

You can also read stuff that’s really unhinged, not something you’d actually want in real life, but you find that it’s what your nervous system needs. It calms you down. 

Say you're reading a book where a man wears a mask and stalks you. Sounds intriguing in a book, it kind of awakens some kink in you, but it's not something you’d want in real life. Instead, maybe it reveals something that you emotionally or psychologically need at that moment. 

You can ask yourself what does stalking mean? Maybe it means someone who actually pays attention. Maybe you’re not used to someone actually noticing you, maybe you feel invisible, maybe you’re not used to actually being doted on. And I know you shouldn't think of someone who's stalking you as someone that's doting on you, but the psychology behind it could reveal that. 

What Chloé Wants More of in Romance

Allison: What would you want to see more of in the romance genre?

Chloé: We love our morally gray men that are slightly toxic, but after watching Off Campus it felt excessively good to see positive masculinity, to see no red flags whatsoever in the men. I love a shadow daddy, we all love them, but I think we need more books with these green flags.

My entry into Dark Romance was Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. I wasn't into the beast, though, for me, it was all about the eyes. I liked how he looked at her. The yearning. 

And that’s what I’m into now: how he looks at you, how he talks to you, approaches you. That’s the real beauty in a man.

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About the Author

Chloé Ellert is a survivor who went looking for something that actually help. What started as her own search for healing became a method, because of her deeply held belief that every woman deserves to feel seen and supported in her intimate health. She holds a master's degree in sexology and is a certified aromatherapist.