Below are four habits guided by your survival brain that’s always telling you to avoid discomfort, seek comfort and preserve your energy (your survival brain’s motivational triad).
These 4 behaviors can negatively impact your libido because they keep you in a state of alertness and hypervigilance and that in its turn negatively impact your self-esteem and self-confidence.
The hypervigilance leads to feeling unsafe and overthinking and that makes it difficult for you to physically relax in your body and experience arousal and pleasure.
The hypervigilance does not allow your parasympathetic nervous system to kick in, and you need that to be activated to feel safe and relaxed so you can have a pleasant sexual experience.
But unfortunately, there is no amount of validation, reassurance, and safety your partner can offer you that will completely override your own survival brain.
The sense of safety and connection you’re looking for to feel ready for sex and intimacy needs to come from within and learning to feel safe from within and good about yourself will make sexual intimacy easier, more fun, and more pleasurable.
That will then have a positive impact on your desire for it because sex becomes less stressful, and your protective brain likes that and calms down.
1. People-pleasing
From a very young age we are taught that we are responsible for other people’s feelings and that we can control how other people feel with what we say and what we do (e.g., “What you did hurt little Jonny’s feelings, you should go and apologize…”).
We are also taught that making our partner happy is what we should strive for in our intimate relationship.
We learn that’s how we should be in our relationships, and we start to experience fear of criticism and rejection at the thought of failing in that goal.
So, anticipating other people’s needs and satisfying them becomes a way to feel useful and worthy of love.
As a result, we start to feel guilty when we have our own needs and desires.
We start to worry about what other people will think about us if we take care of ourselves and do the things that make us feel good and not what (we think) they want from us.
We push away what we want, and we focus on what (we believe) others might want instead.
We struggle to say “no” when we don’t want to do something, and we say “yes” because we fear that others might not like us or love us anymore if we say “no”.
The outcome is that we end up lacking boundaries or not even knowing what our boundaries are.
We end up living in fear of being criticized, being rejected, making someone angry, and just feeling bad if we have any needs because they might clash with others’ needs.
This can happen consciously and unconsciously, and it’s a painful process that backfires.
Even though people-pleasing momentarily offers satisfaction, purpose and meaning, in the long run it leads to resentment, a loss of your own identity, a sense of not knowing who we are and what we want, feeling as if our needs and we as a person don’t matter and, ultimately, it leads to feeling depressed.
No wonder people-pleasing kills desire for sex!
When you feel drained from trying to anticipate and fulfill your partner’s needs, and resentful because you feel that there is no space for you and your needs and desires in your relationship, the last thing you want is another situation (sexual intimacy) to repeat this pattern.
Healing yourself from people-pleasing will help you understand, love, and support yourself in a way that allows you to then love your partner in a deeper and more meaningful way.
Healing yourself from people-pleasing will also allow you to shift sexual intimacy and lovemaking from something that you do out of obligation or to be liked to something that is truly an act of love (as much for your partner as it is for yourself).
2. Mindreading
Initially, mindreading starts as a natural survival behavior that all humans are wired for but for some of us, sometimes due to trauma we might have experienced growing up, it starts to work overtime.
Mindreading is believing you know how and what another person is thinking.
You believe you know their intentions and what they think or feel (in general but also about you).
It may be based on their tone of voice or non-verbal behavior.
It may be based on the lived experience you’ve had with them or based on what you’ve seen them say or do but half of it is inaccurate.
Half of it is you (unconsciously) projecting your own thoughts and beliefs (about yourself) onto that person.
When you mindread your partner, you’re projecting your own insecurities, negative self-talk, and self-criticism onto them and then you decide they are the ones having those negative thoughts about you.
Chances are, you are not aware you are doing this.
You are not aware that, what you believe this other person will think about you if you do this or that is what YOU think it means about you if you do this or that.
So, you unconsciously end up trying to avoid situations where you might find yourself worrying about how you might be perceived, and sexual intimacy is one of those situations.
During sex, it becomes mission impossible to relax and get turned on physically and mentally.
You end up being stuck in your head, spinning with all the thoughts about what you (think) your partner thinks about how you look, how you sound, how you move, how you smell….
Mindreading becomes performance anxiety.
And it won’t let you experience sexual pleasure and satisfaction.
On the contrary. It makes sex stressful, and it kills sexual desire.
Getting a hold of your hyperactive brain and calming your nervous system will allow you to create mental space for a more satisfying connection with your partner, a deeper intimacy in your relationship, and more enjoyable and pleasurable sexual experiences.
3. Perfectionism
Your primitive protective brain only sees safe or unsafe.
When you are in doubt about a situation, it decides “unsafe”.
Unless you consciously and intentionally use your logical progressive brain to assess a situation, you’re defaulting to functioning in a state of survival with your primitive brain leading the way.
What does perfectionism have to do with this?
Thinking there is a perfect way is our brain’s attempt to simplify life so we can survive.
It likes to think in black and white and good, or bad.
Your primitive brain thinks that “imperfect is bad”.
So, it has you searching and comparing to find what the best way to look/feel/do/behave is.
When you compare though, the bar is always moving.
What you did well yesterday, today might not be good enough because you might find something that looks/sounds/feels “better”.
You end up thinking that you are inadequate or inferior and you start to fear judgment, rejection or even abandonment!
Since we humans are herd animals, we like to be part of a group.
Part of a community.
When fear of rejection and abandonment is triggered, your survival brain will have you do anything to avoid it.
Including to avoid intimacy and sex.
When you see yourself as imperfect and potentially on the verge of rejection, being intimate and showing vulnerability starts to feel threatening or unsafe.
You start to feel anxious about it.
That anxiety (sympathetic nervous system in full gear) drastically decreases your libido (parasympathetic nervous system cannot kick in and allow you to relax and become aroused) and your desire to openly share your precious self with a partner.
As a result, you consciously and unconsciously start to avoid intimacy (physically but inevitably emotionally as well) to prevent the other person from “seeing” your imperfections…and rejecting you.
Learning to calm your survival brain and to activate your progressive brain will allow you to let go of perfectionism and lean into self-acceptance and self-love.
And letting go of perfectionism will set you free in all areas of your life, not just in the bedroom.
4. Buffering
Your survival brain functions under these three basic principles:
1. seek comfort and pleasure,
2. avoid pain or discomfort and
3. preserve energy and minimize effort.
Because we are not taught by anyone how to use our progressive brain and how to feel all feelings and process all emotions, when we have an emotion that doesn’t feel good, our survival brain kicks in.
We feel compelled to avoid it.
We want to distract ourselves and do something else instead that feels better.
Something that brings comfort.
So, we end up overeating, overdrinking, endlessly scrolling on our phone watching one reel after another, binge watching Netflix and shopping online.
Anything to numb the negative vibration in our body that comes with a negative feeling.
Procrastination is one of the most common ways buffering looks like and something that all of us have experienced at one point or another.
Because we all have a survival brain that wants to avoid discomfort and get a dopamine hit with the least amount of effort possible.
What your survival brain does not know though is that the negative feeling it was trying to avoid by indulging in a pleasurable behavior will be there when the dopamine hit winds up.
And it comes back with a vengeance because now you might have a few more negative feelings (usually guilt or shame) because you indulged in a behavior that maybe gave you temporary relief but didn’t align with how you wanted to be or what you would rather have done.
The work that you didn’t finish is still there.
The pressure and the dread about doing the thing that you didn’t feel like doing are back compounded by the shame and the guilt that you now might feel because you buffered instead.
The unfortunate result is a lack of confidence and trust in yourself and a sense of being out of control.
Lack of confidence that you can persevere and lack of trust that you can do what needs to be done.
Out of control because you ended up doing the thing that you said to yourself you didn’t want to keep doing anymore.
Let me tell you, feeling like crap about yourself and having a hangover, a few extra pounds around your waist, a lighter wallet and a deadline still hanging over your head at work will not make you want to jump into bed and make some whoopee.
Chances are that sex will be the last thing on your mind.
Learning how to process negative emotion and let it pass and allowing yourself to feel all feelings is a huge gift you can give yourself.
Your progressive brain knows it will not kill you.
Your progressive brain knows you are not as vulnerable or unsafe as you think you are when you are in survival more.
Your progressive brain knows you can tolerate discomfort and do difficult things.
Sustainable connection with a partner and deep intimacy in a relationship requires a sense of self-confidence and the safety that comes from within when you know you can trust yourself that you will be ok even if something feels uncomfortable for a bit.
Sexual intimacy is so much less of a hassle and so much more fun when you like yourself!
When you embrace yourself with all the human imperfections that make you uniquely you, then you can truly share your intimate self with someone and give and receive effortlessly.
If you think that calming your survival brain, accessing your progressive brain, and experiencing a deeper and more fulfilling intimacy in your relationship is something that you want to learn how to do, I would love to hear from you and I have many ways you can get in touch!
Feel free to schedule a FREE 30-45 minute inquiry call at the link provided below so I can answer all your questions and give you guidance on what to do next!
https://www.newintimacy.com/freeinquirycall
If you want to understand why just improving your communication with your partner doesn’t translate into the bedroom, and what to do instead I have just the thing for you!
Every month I offer a FREE webinar on this topic and the link to sign up for the next one is here:
https://www.newintimacy.com/freedesirewebinar
For more information and tips on how to feel better, develop more self-confidence, increase your sexual confidence, and improve your relationship you can follow me here:
https://www.instagram.com/thelibidocoach/
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Cheers to your personal and sexual growth!
Much love,
Eleni Economides
eleni@newintimacy.com
https://www.newintimacy.com/
