Thoughts and desires

How we think and what we do with our thoughts has a huge impact on our sex lives.

We can utilise our thoughts to elicit psychological arousal while simultaneously our thoughts can infiltrate our mind putting a halt on connection. Research on distraction, focus and performance thoughts has been conducted over the last two decades. Back in 1976 two researchers; Geer and Fuhr wrote about the role of distraction on our sex lives.

We can use our thoughts to tap into fantasies and connect with our partners (or ourselves!) But equally our thoughts can come marching into our minds lecturing us on "shoulds", expectations or our negative thoughts around our bodies.
Failure and disengagement thoughts being the most common: "I'm not getting turned on", "why isn't this working" being examples, irrespective of gender (Nobre and Pinto-Gouveia, 2008) With these thoughts, trying to engage sexually feels like an impasse.

How do we tackle these challenging thoughts know? We know from the collosal amount of research on it, thought suppression doesn't work.

*Instead using mindfulness as a tool to learn to meet these thoughts without judgement or jumping on the back of them and being taken off with.

*Working on positive affirmations around our bodies and genitals.

*Lots of self-compassion and patience.

*Alongside challenging some of those negative beliefs around ourselves.