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Let’s Talk About Stress, Baby

Ep #65

Let’s Talk About Stress, Baby

As women, we’re taught that we must take care of others first and put ourselves last. We’re used to sacrificing ourselves and our pleasure to make those around us happier, and we’ve been raised to compact any feelings of depression, resentment, and exhaustion. But there’s a solution, Renegades, a way to feel better, and it may sound radical, but it’s exactly what we need right now.

You might think that feeling turned on is not a priority when life is challenging and turning upside down on itself, but I want you to consider that maybe this is the answer to difficult times. The idea of sex and orgasms during stressful times may sound hard, but saying yes to pleasurable moments will produce the feel-good chemicals required to keep us alive.

Join me this week as I share why more people are more likely to reach for a drink or dessert before they reach for an orgasm, and why this needs to change. I’m explaining why it’s important to get into your body and out of your mind, and why stress affects our sex drives, but orgasm can be the answer.

What You Will Discover:

  • Why we are meant to feel pleasure and experience massive emotion.
  • How to produce hormones that are necessary to our wellbeing.
  • Why our brain is designed to seek pleasure.
  • How stress affects our body.
  • Why self-care is a priority.

Resources Mentioned:

  • If you’re enjoying the tools and concepts I’m sharing each week about your brain on dating, you won’t want to miss out on working with me one-on-one. I’ve just launched my program, Wake Up Before Another Breakup, where in just 8 weeks, you won’t question if you can trust yourself to date or why you can’t find the one. Click here to learn more about it and how you can work with me.

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Let’s talk about stress baby let’s talk about you and me… let’s talk about all the things like depressed, devastation and doubt that make me… let’s talk about stress and how it affects our sex… gimme gimme gimme let’s talk about stress no let’s talk about sex.

Did you know that 1 in 4 women are struggling with depression? And only 1 in 5 of those women will seek help?

Given the last year and the added pressures from Covid this has increased. And the pressure this has on relationships due to work, finances, childcare not being able to live the way you once did- grieving and mourning all the things pre-pandemic -has increased our potential to fall into all the emotions and behaviors that fall under the category of uncomfortable.

I’ve been thinking recently about my neighbor who is pregnant. She posted this picture on vacation and said, ‘I’m not sure if the added weight is from the baby or vacation but either way I don’t care.’ And it reminded me of the times I was pregnant and how I cared for myself. Not just physically or by what I ate, but emotionally - all my typical shaming and propensity to be hard on myself melted away.

The way I thought of my ever-expanding body- the way I embraced it and nurtured its growth was so supportive and loving. The way I would rub lotion on my skin was done with such intention and care.

The foods that I would eat, the alcohol and caffeine I wouldn’t drink- it was effortless to care for myself in this way. When I heard it was good for my body and safe for the baby for me to respond to the ever-increasing sexual desire, I was feeling I got right on that, too. I ordered my first sex toy- introduced it to my husband and dropped into pleasure town.

I was so in my body and out of my mind.

How does this practice, this art of self-love and pleasure get lost? Thrown out the window? Put aside?

As women we are taught how to take care of others first and put ourselves last. Did you know that there are not only wage gaps between genders but pleasure gaps? We are so used to sacrificing ourselves - our jobs- and our pleasure to make those around us happy.

And then we wonder why we feel deprived. depressed. Devastated. resentful. exhausted.
And god forbid you raise your voice and demand more for yourself.

Don’t be so emotional.

As women we have been raised to push it down. Compact those feelings.

And so what today, what I’m going to suggest we do in regard to stress is going to sound a little radical. Radical because as female born creatures, we have not been taught that not only were we made to feel pleasure, but it is our inherent birthright.

And that pleasure is the antidote to most of our inner turmoil, stress and struggle.

I’ve done my research and it’s physiologically backed.

You are meant to feel pleasure. Experience massive emotions. Communicate. Nurture yourself.
And when we do this, we are able to create and increase the very necessary chemicals
To survive stressful, challenging times. These hormones, serotonin, dopamine and one in particular called Nitric oxide, is the cure to cortisol. To our wellbeing.

So how can we produce Nitric oxide?

Dr Northrup found that “Orgasm is how the body resets its electromagnetic grid and maintains vibrant health and pleasure. In order to feel joy and pleasure daily, our brains need a constant supply of beta endorphin, that morphine like feel good chemical. Because nitric oxide is the uber neurotransmitter that is responsible for all the other feel-good neurotransmitters like beta endorphin, you need to follow a pleasure enhancing lifestyle that keeps your nitric oxide levels high. If you don’t get pleasure deliberately and healthfully your body will get its beta endorphin through drugs alcohol and sugar.”

Now, here’s the challenge Renegades…. For some, the idea of sex and orgasm - initiating it with your partner- or self sounds hard, maybe impossible.

AND the brain wants to do the easier thing to feel good as fast as possible. It’s designed to seek pleasure, avoid discomfort and be efficient. More and more people are likely to reach for a drink or dessert before they are going to reach for an orgasm.

Your brain may offer, what? No. An orgasm? that’s going to take too long. I don’t want to.
And so you reach for the quick fix of dopamine. Which, let me remind you these concentrated kicks of dopamine are short lived and unfortunately produce more stress hormones and chemicals of cortisol, epinephrine aka adrenaline, hangovers weight gain etc. You feeling me?

That’s your brain under what we might refer to ‘normal circumstances’.

Add to our new life and stresses that we are under that are triggering our fight or flight responses we are firing off these chemicals and vibrating from a reactive state.

The longer these states go unnoticed the more long-term damaging effects they have on our physiology, emotional states and over all wellbeing. Heart disease, addiction, depression.

We need Nitric Oxide Renegades.

Remember going to spin class? The music was pumping. You were moving and grooving on your bike, with your community supporting one another. That feeling after? That was as good as sex, right? Because on a chemical level its basically the same.

There are many ways to get a boost of beta endorphin, serotonin, and dopamine that our bodies need. It’s not limited to the bedroom. The design of the female born body is beyond progressive.

The state of the world has most of our brains shutting down. Which shuts down our sex drives. That’s what chronic stress does. It literally works against the hormones required to get us in the mood and produce more of that yum yum. Our brains are processing what is happening around us as urgent and we have more important needs than sex, therefore those mechanisms shut down.

How can we produce and marinate in these chemicals and hormones?

I know for fact I shut down in times of crisis. I’m the type to freeze when I’m in survivor mode or trauma. And as I mentioned last week, I experienced this zero sex drive - not at all on mind - scenario when Austin had its freeze over.

And as a sexual being I found this curious. Not that sex is a coping mechanism for me, but it is a high priority in my self-care and wellbeing program. The fact that it didn’t even occur to me was interesting…

What’s more interesting is how I found myself aware that this was even happening to me. On the 3 or 4th day of us still wondering when Austin would have its utilities restored, my lover suggested I meditate.
There was one specifically that he suggested I needed to hear about anxiety… I think he and everyone else around me could feel my anxiety reverberating through out whatever room I was near.
So I laid down in a quiet room and as I listened to the narrator explain that anxiety comes from extreme apprehension and worry and when it experienced for long periods of time, it can come debilitating. I started crying and was like yes. All of us in this world right now yes.

And then he’s like breathe and I thought no. I don’t want to… then he asked that I start with a body scan. To just bring awareness into the body AND Renegades, I definitely didn’t want to. And I’ll tell you why; as soon as I tuned in, I could feel just how icky and uncomfortable my insides felt. It was like a cauldron of boiling bubbly that was releasing in a static frantic energy throughout my body. I felt sick. My body was pumping and dripping cortisol head to toe.

This was the moment I realized how in my head I was. In survivor mode. Freaked out.
Admittedly it wasn’t physically easy to be in my body which explains why I was avoidant to drop in. I did the mediation twice and worked the anxiety out. That’s the great thing about the brain and anxiety. All you have to do is label it, narrate and describe it. That act moves you into your prefrontal cortex. Your modern brain.

I want to urge all of you who have anxiety and live with it daily that when you wake up you label it immediately. Become the watcher of it.

Get really intimate with it. In doing so you can start to feel it as soon as it presents itself. It doesn’t necessary fully relieve you of it but there is a massive shift that happens.

Okay, so once my body was fully relaxed from the scan and breath work, I felt normalized. I was out of my mind.

And then it was as if, from a faraway space and place I could hear my pussy calling out… hello! What. The. fuck.

She had questions. She had answers.

Why do you always shut me out when things get stressful? Don’t you know I’m the answer?

The truth is yes and no. Sex isn’t always the answer.

But our pussy, our life-force pleasure filled circuit board does have the answers.

My body- your body- has the answers to what we need to do to remain in our turned on states.

It’s our intuitive guide. Our ultra uber femme force.

The answers can range from supporting our sisterhood, families and communities. It could be dancing and feeling your emotions move through you while you laugh and cry. It could be a sweaty workout. It could be an orgasm. It could be breath work and meditation.

But ultimately, it’s getting out of our heads and into our bodies and creating the anabolic chemicals that will help decrease the negative catabolic ones.

I want you to ask yourself when was at the last time I felt good- like real good…
I’m not just talking about the pleasing of your pussy. I’m talking about all the things that light you up and make you feel alive.

What were you doing? Maybe you were with your girlfriends having dinner. Maybe you had just put on a matching lingerie set and checked yourself out, maybe you cooked a dinner for your lover, maybe you were having a mind-blowing orgasm. Saying yes to the selfish things we want and need to do for us.

These things- these pleasurable moments and activities have us present in our bodies, in the moment and they are producing all the feel good juicy chemicals required to feel good. The anabolic emotions that give longevity to our bodies on a cellular level.

You might be thinking feeling good and turned on is not a priority when life is challenging and turning upside down on itself, but I want to push back here. I want you to consider that maybe this is exactly the answer for these times. To find our light, our turn on - to take care of our needs first so we can better take care of and support those around us.

If you don’t want to use words like pleasure and turn on, I will offer you this; by regulating your nervous system with breath and beta endorphins you are minimizing the anxiety and stress. The less stressed you are during difficult times the more discerning you are in your decision making and ability to care for those around you. To make it through. Clear your mind and the rest will follow.

The side effects that it will have on your body will be far less damaging and you will find that you have more energy to sustain.

Whatever way you want to put it, it doesn’t matter to me. I just want you to know, without any doubt, that your self-care is the utmost importance. And we need it now more than ever.

Once your mind is clear you can do what I tell you to do every week. Journal. Get the thoughts on paper and deconstruct the fuck out of what you are thinking. Interrogate, with love, kindness and compassion- all your thoughts. The curious mind can show you so much about how why you are reacting the way you are. The curious mind can bring you clarity.

Until next week, Renegades.

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