De-stressing Can Improve Your Sexual health - Here's How
You've just started the day and yet you already feel like the weight of the whole world is on you. Your work is tedious, you have so many meetings to attend to, your back is aching, and it’s Monday.
And now, you get home to your partner who’s been anticipating your touch all day, but you just can’t seem to get it right. So now your stress levels have shot through the roof and it’s still Monday evening.
How do we break this cycle?!
The Science Behind It
Stress is caused by so many factors which may not even be the same daily. Today you may be stressed about work, tomorrow it could be your relationship, and next week it could be about your finances.
With all this stress, you become burnt out and tired and it takes a toll on your sexual health. But how exactly does this happen?
Well, when you’re stressed, your body releases hormones that, in adequate amounts, are good (because it helps us do things we need to) but when released in large amounts within a short space of time lead to so many problems, including low sexual performance.
You see, when you’re stressed, your adrenal glands release stress hormones called epinephrine and norepinephrine, also popularly called adrenaline and noradrenaline, respectively.
They are released because your body thinks of those stressful situations as ‘fight-or-flight’ situations and wants you to be energized enough to face the ‘threat’.
Once adrenaline peaks, the adrenal glands release a hormone called cortisol for several hours. Cortisol is less acute but lasts longer, leaving you in a stressed state for a long time.
This means that what may be a minor issue could be read by your body as such a significant threat that you have to fight or flight. Talk about blowing things out of proportion.
These high stress levels could then affect your sexual health by causing conditions such as erectile dysfunction, painful sex (dyspareunia), and low libido.
And because you deserve better, I’m here to show you how to get your sexual health back on top.
Ways To De-stress To Improve Your Sexual Health
So now you can see what happens when you stress too much and why your sex life tanks as a result. Let’s talk about how to increase satisfaction and improve your sexual health.
Practice Effective Communication
Effective communication with your partner is something I preach over and over again. You can actually solve most of your relationship problems by just talking it out with your partner and using active listening skills.
This is also important in reducing your stress to improve your sexual health. It could be that you’re nervous about your body or you’ve been having it bad at work and it’s been spilling into your relationship.
Talking this out with your partner can help you both understand the problem and reach the solution together, thereby reducing or completely eliminating the stressor. It could also help your partner understand you more and maybe even prevent them from blaming themselves.
Remember, it takes two to make a relationship so why not bring in your partner to help!?
2. Carve Out Time For Intimacy (Not Sex)
It could actually be the little things that are holding you back. Maybe you have no room in the day and you feel like you have to rush things and get back to what you’re doing. That’s a lot of pressure you’re putting on yourself and not enough time to even enjoy the smaller intimate moments with your partner.
This leaves you feeling stressed out just thinking about all you have to do and will then affect you when you finally get into the bedroom.
Instead, carve out time for intimacy (instead of sex) because this will reduce the pressure of sexual performance but still create anticipation of closeness. This could trigger the release of oxytocin, the hormone that lets you feel those ‘butterflies’ for your partner and that reduces stress.
If you can start to think about all forms of physical intimacy (e.g., kissing, cuddling, “foreplay”, etc.) as forms of “sex”, it can be easier to build satisfying sexual situations and reduce the pressure that “sex” has to look a certain way.
I talk at length about how to do this in my workshops and courses, and my clients have said this was key in them overcoming a lot of sexual obstacles.
3. Use Sex To Destress
It seems counter-intuitive but it’s incredibly helpful. You see, when you’re stressed, you may feel dissatisfied in bed which could trigger your sexual anxiety and make you even more stressed about sex in the future. It’s such a bitter cycle
But we can make our own cycle and call it the ‘sweet cycle’. Once you feel stressed, having sex can be a great stress reliever. If sexual anxiety is what’s triggering your stress, then you can engage in foreplay, masturbation, and other sexual activities.
These activities can trigger hormones such as oxytocin to relieve your stress, Serotonin to boost your mood, and dopamine to bring you intense pleasure. There's quite a lot of research to back up the benefits of sex to relieve stress and this study from the National Library of Medicine goes into detail about how sex helped to reduce anxiety and depression during the pandemic.
If you’re too anxious to do it with your partner, go solo and masturbate more. Explore your body and find what gives you pleasure and makes you orgasm. With each masturbation session, you get to relieve your stress as well as learn more about your body to become more confident in the bedroom.
4. Get More Sleep
This has been sounded to us by our mothers so many times but I bet the ‘teenage you’ didn’t know just how useful sleep will be in other areas of your life except school. Ah yes, those days when school was our only problem ;)
Sleep is important for every single aspect of our lives and our sexual health is no different. This article by the Sleep Foundation explains the science behind it and why you need to be getting those 6 to 8 hours of beauty sleep everyday.
5. Stay Present
It’s easy to let your worries and anxiety follow you into the bedroom but it’s time to cut that out. Staying present and in the moment during sex reduces your stress levels as you’re no longer thinking about ‘just how good you’re doing’ but enjoying being with your partner.
Also, cut out any form of distraction such as technology devices as they could be bearers of external stressors. Let that moment be between just you and your partner, so enjoy every moment of it.
6. Take Care Of Your Physical And Mental Health
A person is completely healthy if their physical, mental, and sexual health is at their optimum levels. Taking care of one and neglecting others can affect your whole body so watch out for that.
Reducing smoking and drinking when you feel stressed as these affect your physical health and seep into your sexual performance, making you feel more stressed. Opt for a balanced diet instead and watch your body thank you for it.
Exercising is also linked to improving stamina in bed, increasing libido, releasing endorphins (called ‘feel-good hormones’), and reducing stress. Talk about killing more than 10 birds with one stone.
You can also practice yoga, meditation, mindfulness and positive affirmations to improve your mental health. Engaging in a hobby you love is also beneficial to your mental health.
7. Practice Self Love
Poor body image, anxiety, and depression weigh down our sexual satisfaction and increase stress levels.
It’s up to you to love and accept yourself to improve your sexual health. Having healthy habits, practicing mindfulness, eating right, celebrating your accomplishments, surrounding yourself with positive people, and saying positive affirmations can help to inculcate this habit of self-love.
Loving and accepting yourself is so powerful that it seeps into other areas of your life and you find yourself being generally happier.
8. Speak With A Sex Therapist or Trained Coach
A professional Sex therapist or Qualified Sex Specialist can be helpful if you feel that you need professional guidance. As sex therapists have been trained and licensed to deal with these kinds of situations, they can help you to identify the root cause of your stress and provide solutions tailored to your needs.
Sex Specialists who have the background of Sex Therapists but provide education and coaching can help with understanding cutting edge research on sexual health and wellness and help you achieve your goals of a more satisfied sex life.
Not sure where to start? Don’t worry, I’ve got you. You can contact me below and I can help you figure out which path is best for you!
It’s okay to be stressed every once in a while because, well, we’re all human. But don’t let it affect your happiness and sexual health. Try to appreciate the small things and see sex as something to enjoy.
