stressed out

As one goes up the other goes down. Stress can not only kill us, it also can kill our sex lives. Survival is our first priority; continuing our species is down the list. Stress as we know it is a maladapted survival response that takes our energy and focus away from sex.

Sex and survival are mutually exclusive

If a tiger is chasing you, you are not relaxed – you are running for your life. It is not until you escape and come down from the fight-or-flight response that you begin to feel your sexual urges. Relaxation is the setup for sexual arousal.

Our bodies often follow our heads. If we are mentally stiff, we will be physically stiff. If a man’s head is focused on solving the crisis at work, his little head is unable to receive the attention it needs to feel safe to come out and play. Treating your sexual performance as you might treat your professional or athletic performance will not work. It would be like expecting someone to feel and express his sadness about a deep loss while he is lifting a new level in weights.

Sex is a mirror

An old friend and teacher used to tell me that the body does not lie. In some way, your body will express physically what it is experiencing. The expression may not be outward, but it does occur.

Sex may start a mental experience, yet the act becomes very physical. For your body to be fully engaged it must be fully available to experience all aspects of sex. If some part of your life is not in sync, such as your relationship with your partner, your body will manifest that tension. That body/mind tension will eventually show up in your sex with your partner.

Why do you think affairs are so much fun? You get to experience sex without experiencing the stress that exists in your on going relationship.

Mediocre sex

If you want better sex – create better communication. Your sex life, more than any other aspect of your life, is an expression of how well you and your partner communicate. The communication that might need to occur may not be about your relationship. You may only need to share with her your frustration about work and your fear about not performing well. Those little truths can set your sex life free.

A recent British study suggests that half of their citizen’s sex life suffer because of stress or medical issues.

I have worked with many couples who are so embarrassed about intimate health complaints that it has caused a huge breakdown in communication and put serious pressure on the relationship. Talking to a partner or a professional candidly about the issue is not easy, but it may save a great deal of emotional strain. Denise Knowles, a relationship counsellor with Relate

How to shift it

Chill out – do some stress reduction. Review some of the other posts on this blog. Teach your body/mind not go into the stress response as your default. Getting good bodywork is a quick way to facilitate the process of removing old stress and learning to relax.

Communicate more of your thoughts and feelings. Begin speaking those feelings you have not spoken. In the above study, three out of five Brits said they struggled to speak about personal issues. Start taking risk, just like you did when you and your partner began dating. Some people get bent out of shape when it comes to talking about feelings.. Going back to the beginning often rekindles the spark that was once there.

Keep others out of the bedroom Don’t bring unfinished business into the bedroom. Believing that having sex will solve the problem is a lie. Yes, it will often take the edge off and can create a feeling of intimacy for a period of time.Unfortunately, the issue and its charge is there to come up another time. Do what you need to deal with the problem or release the tension  before you enter the bedroom.

Build intimacy

Support intimacy Great sex is predicated on great intimacy. Sharing difficult feelings quickly builds trust and intimacy. Having a weekly ritual where time is scheduled  just to talk has transformed relationships.

Both of you can have your own stress reduction practice. She may have yoga; you could have your weekly massage. Additionally, the two of you can come up with something you do together, like going to a hot springs.

With sharing your feelings, share what you want emotionally and sexually. Sharing our wants certainly sounds simple, but we all know know difficult it can be. Telling your partner what you enjoy sexually is a risk for you. Yet it will support your partner in pleasing you, which empowers her. As she gives you what you want, you will need to let go and receive, another challenge for us Type As.

Play. All this talk of sharing emotions may sound intense. Create some fun around sex. Set up an experience where the two of you get to play as if your were kids exploring a new game. Bringing a child-like innocence into the bedroom lightens the whole experience, and can reduce the stress and increase the pleasure.

Go slow. Being a Type A aboutsex does not work. Go back to being the kid who played simply because that is what he wanted to do. There was no end goal, he was just having fun – that was the goal.

If you were to agree on discussing old feelings, agree to set the bar low. Your goal should be to build skills and have fun, not to resolve ten years of limited communication. It is like training for a marathon – start your daily mileage low. Going for too much too soon  will create injuries and you’ll never run the marathon.

Breathe. The more you breathe, the more relaxed you will be and the more your body will be able to experience the pleasures of sex.

Sex as a stress reducer

The sexual arousal curve and orgasm mimics the arousal curve of fight or flight. Unlike many  stressful events, when you have an orgasm you complete that curve, allowing for the recovery phase to occur next. The more you can relax going into asexual experience, the more we can allow yourself to fully engage – the more intense the orgasm and the release.

The act of intimacy, as much as the sex, reduces stress. Another British study: 

Volunteers who had had penetrative intercourse were found to be the least stressed, and their blood pressure returned to normal faster than those who had engaged in other forms of sexual activity….

Having intimate sex with a partner gives you something nothing else can give you.

Replace stress with great sex. Allow yourself the pleasure of learning or deepening your skills of being a relaxed lover.

Your body often becomes the depository for your anger. When an emotion is not fully expressed, some of that energy or charge can transform itself into physical tension. Clenched jaws don’t happen overnight, they happen from years of holding frustration in your body. After a while, these tight jaws can increase your reaction through, enhancing the feeling of anger. It is as if the tension in your body starts to act as a computer virus running the system on its own.

The converse is also true – if you release the body, you will release old emotions. Thirty years ago, when I discovered Rolfing, a respected form of bodywork, I had no idea how much my emotions would let go. Stalking out good bodywork will significantly enhance any lake draining. The bonus is that the bodywork will aid you in increasing your body/mind awareness, thereby thwarting the rage attacks.

Psychotherapy and anger

Good therapy can be a useful tool to transforming rage. Psychotherapy that integrates the body into its process is generally quicker. Going further into your head or learning more coping skills will not heal the rage. “People who have a lot of anger invest a lot of energy in trying to control it, and that kind of friction is likely to increase the probability of a heart attack,” says Charles Spielberger, Ph.D., a University of South Florida psychologist who developed the leading test to measure anger. True control comes when you shift from attempting to repress the anger, which eventually explodes, to allowing your natural responses to take over in their smaller increments of expression.

If you are to go the therapy route, you need to find a therapist who is not afraid of his or her anger. Interview therapists; push them about how they deal with anger. You are not looking for someone who will placate your anger. What you are looking for is someone who will teach your new skills of being fully expressive. Trust your gut here.

As you learn to express all your emotions, the tension will not erupt into rage. You will start to identify patterns; you can begin alerting rage response earlier in the process.

Don’t become one of the statistics

More than 30,000 heart attacks each year are triggered by transitory anger, according to a 2004 Harvard study. These heart attacks occur because an acute anger episode actually builds on many previous episodes. These same men are part of the group that are three times more likely to develop premature cardiovascular disease, or a stroke, and six times more likely to have an early heart attack. Charles Spielberger, Ph.D claims, “The more intense the anger, the more likely the heart attack.”

You can reduce your anger intensity to a point where you express anger appropriately for the situation. You can stop having anger rule you. When anger is primarily making sure your boundaries are honored, your anger returns to acting asa servant for you.

The macho archetype of a man who does not express vulnerable emotions yet can explode on a moment’s notice is outdated. Also gone is the archetype of the sensitive man who serves women only to repress his aggressive side going to work. As men, we are beginning to learn to express our feelings and to receive love. Converting our rage into an anger ally can bring healing to our heart as well as our gender.

How to heal rage

“People with this problem [IED] have an insufficient ’stop’ response,” says neurophysiologist Royce Lee, M.D. The power of built-up emotions override any conscious control. Creating more coping behaviors is not the answer. Learning anger management will not do it. Counting to 10, over-exercising, using drugs and alcohol only buries the anger further and can deny the seriousness of your rage. You need to heal the rage – the PTSD of anger.

You must develop methods of going to the cause of the problem. The first step is to get sober about your anger and rage. Your explosions of anger can be diffused before they even begin to occur. Releasing the old stress and trauma is what will transform an automatic, repeating behavior into an appropriate response.

Averting rage

Draining the lake of anger is hard work. It takes determination to release the original stress or trauma. It doesn’t happen in the moment of reaction (screaming at the sales clerk). It happens when you are not in reaction. You do it in the pre-rage moments – those times when you just feel a small irritation.

In the past, you would have ignored those little thoughts and feelings until they built up to a temper tantrum. You start by setting the intent to first be aware of those “petit mal” anger episodes. Awareness is a skill we were never taught. If we were taught anything, it was non-awareness, like when we were told to grin and bear it.

Use your body to learn awareness, specifically your breath. As you focus on what your body does under stress, or how you hold your breath all the time, you will begin to catch emotions sooner and sooner. When anger starts to creep up as a held breath or clenched jaw, you have a chance to express your anger in the moment before it builds into rage.

Rage lake-draining

Stating how you feel about what a person just said or did stops the escalation of anger to rage while breaking an old pattern of repressing those “stupid emotions.” With each expression of pre-rage anger a little of the lake of anger is drained out. You begin to build a new skill-set of behaviors that fit the situation.

To increase the draining of the rage lake you can go out in nature and let it go. This is best done under the supervision of someone who has experience with rage and can monitor you. I say this because if you really get into truly expressing your anger/rage, the levies may burst and you can feel out of control. That said – going out in the desert or some forest where you can scream and throw rocks is hugely healing. These settings maybe your only safe place to lose it.

As the anger that became rage drains off, you may discover old grief or fear. Let them go also. From 30 years of doing this for myself and helping others through the process, I have seen some unexpected effects. As the old, embedded emotions start to release, the old traumas begin to complete themselves. Your body and your emotions may experience feelings you never had before. The unraveling allows for the old emotions and their physical analogues to let go. Having support can make the process much easier and quicker.

On-going support

One excellent resource for men is an international non-profit called the ManKind Project. They offer weekend experiential trainings throughout the world. Even better than their powerful trainings is their network of men’s groups. These groups usually meet once a week. They are not the standard support group, where the focus is around a problem that often becomes self-perpetuating. The ManKind Project weekly groups focus on assisting men to be fully successful. Supporting a man through draining his rage lake is what they are about.

To be continued….