How does Stress affect a Woman Sexually
We all understand that stress can be harmful to our body. Stress harms various aspects of our health and is termed as the silent-killer!
But exactly how does stress affect a woman sexually? What effect does it have on your libido, interest and drive towards sexuality?
Can stress cause a woman to not want to be intimate? Let us find out.
How Stress impacts your body.
Stress is a necessary function of our bodies. When faced with life-threatening situation stress allows our bodies to put non-necessary systems on hold.
Stress releases a hormone called Cortisol, and is thus called the stress hormone. It's job is to divert energy from all around your body towards either fight or run away from the threat around us.
This includes digestion, immunity and repair systems of our body. Stress channels all of this energy towards our limb muscles and heart, increasing the heart rate and sending energy to deal with the threat.
This redirection of energy can help us get massive boost in energy when needed, but if this stress lasts for few hours, or even sometimes days weeks and months, it can seriously harm your whole body.
How does stress affect sexual health of a Woman
Some ways in which stress affects women are:
Stress affects your hormone levels
When you are stressed, your body releases high levels of cortisol, which suppresses the levels of estrogen, which is one of the main female sex hormones.
Low levels of estrogen makes it hard to get excited for the sexy time. It affects the menstrual cycle, reduces lubrication of vagina, among other things that results in dysfunction in sexual health of a woman.
Stress hormone cortisol can also lower your libido, because your body thinks sex shouldn't be a priority when you essentially need to do something about the present threat.
Not only that, it can causes mood swings and irritability. Talk about things that you do not want during your fun times!
Stress makes it hard to relax
Most stressed individuals spend their days being inside their heads thinking about or even imagining new scenarios and trying to solve the problems.
Whereas sensual pleasure requires you to be connected with your body and how you feel at the moment.
Muscle tightness, and running mind makes it hard to be present and enjoy the sensations that arise from sexual pleasure.
When your body is stressed, it can be uncomfortable and even scary to be in your body.
However to seek an escape from this constant stress and repetitive thoughts, you might find yourself seeking escapism through social media, overeating and sometimes even pornography.
Stress can cause you to lose interest
Stress changes your priorities. Pleasure, fun and enjoyment takes a back seat as you focus is on tackling the threat and survival.
Because you are in your head too much when you are stressed, it becomes difficult to experience and enjoy physical sensations.
A study conducted on impact of stress on women shows a drop in the levels of both arousal and desire to indulge in sexual activities.
The study noticed that Cortisol does decrease the levels of satisfaction that a woman can achieve from sex and masturbation.
Your sexuality is not only affected by hormones, but also by social, relational, and psychological factors. When the stress hormones kick in, closeness is replaced by absence. It is nearly impossible to be present – to listen and to be interested in the people around you – if you're feeling stressed out. It's hard to deal with anyone but yourself.
Stress affects your energy levels
Its not just your sex drive, being in constant state of stress will decrease your energy levels as well.
Chronic stress will wreck your metabolism, so much that maintaining a healthy weight becomes a difficult task. Most people under stress put up a lot of weight, especially around the belly area.
But this increase of fat is not correlated with the amount of energy levels of the person. You might feel tired and exhausted even when you are simply going through your daily life.
Stress also affects your digestive system, which means that nutrient absorption can be reduced, and you have other dysfunctions such as IBS, bloating and could develop intolerance towards certain foods.
What can you do to reduce stress
Compartmentalize Stress
When you are overwhelmed by certain thing, it can be normal to think and obsess over it all the time until you reach any conclusion.
That is, if you are stressed about an interview, it is normal to spend the days before the interview to think, plan and worry the whole time.
But this is destructive to your health and well-being. This can be much worse when the stress lingers on for weeks and months at a time.
Instead what you can try is to schedule time out of your day to worry and stress about anything that is on your minds. This can be an hour a day, or the 30 mins when you journal.
And when it is not the time to worry, you should remind yourself to be present with what is in front of you and not think about the future, any background fears or worries.
Try Somatic Therapy
A lot of our stress is created by our minds, and that is how we try to solve it as well. We try affirmations, to not think about certain things and try our best to fight stress. But we end up stressing even more just by worrying about our stress levels.
Somatic therapy tries a different approach where the body is in focus of our therapy. Managing emotions, working with any trauma, physical and spiritual health are all easier to manage when you work with the body.
If you need help dealing with stress, or know someone in your life that does, Somatic therapy would be perfect for you! Click the link below to find out more about body based therapy for stress.
