Body + Soul - Stress derailing your sex life? Here’s how to fix it
“I think one of the ways that stress really impacts the body and libido is that it gets into your sympathetic nervous systems,” Susie Kim, a relationship & intimacy coach, tells Body+Soul.
“To be open to sex, you need to be in the part of the nervous system called the social engagement system, which is the connect, relax, receptive, open, pleasure part of the nervous system, and you need to be relaxed enough to be able to engage in it.
“But when you’re stressed, you’re often just thinking about what you're stressed about, and you're not really in a mood to slow down enough to really have sex.”
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Stress is more than just the unwanted third party in the bedroom – it can also be a major mood killer.
“I think that being in your head is one of the biggest barriers to fully being in the experience of your body,” Kim says.
“And when you're in your head and have an overactive mind, of course you can't fully orgasm because you're not actually open to the pleasure that's running in your body.
Kim explains that in order to hit the big O, there needs to be quite a lot of presence in the body.
“They call it interoception,” she says, “which is the awareness of sensations inside the body and there needs to be, ultimately, a surrender and relaxation in order to experience an orgasm.”
“But if you’re stuck in your head, you're very much holding on, you're very much thinking and analysing, and you're not in a receptive somatic state, which is what you need.”