Madeline’s Reviews > Come as You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life > Status Update

Co-survivor: the partner of survivors of sexual trauma/violence, who live with the aftermath/long lasting effects of their partners’ trauma and must help their partner cope, live with the history of abuse, and heal.

- not a lot of support for peeps in this position exists

Handling stressors: quitting a job, leaving a relationship, getting past a huge event is NOT the same as handling stress (showing your body that it’s over, you’re safe, you’ve ’escaped the Lion’)

Exercise is the sole most effective way to reduce stress in our bodies.

W/out suppressing stress (watching TV, binging, drinking, smoking, fighting) and allowing it to roll through our bodies and out (exercise, sleeping, affection, meditation, yoga, tai chi, walking, making art, writing, etc.) we can move through the stress cycle effectively & not lock it in our bodies

Incentive salience: wanting. The generic accelerator of the emotional brain; it feels the desire to move towards something or away from it. When wanting is activated with a stress response mechanism, we search for safety. With attachment mechanism, we seek affection. With sexual accelerator, we pursue sexual stimulation.

3 bad experiences vs 3 good

- specifically, what made them bad or good? Internal state, external circumstances, etc.

Concept of accelerators and brakes in sexual stimuli. Existing together, but separately, and each affecting an individual’s experiences related to desire

Ex:

Brake: grandma walking into bedroom, PETA ad, family dinner, etc.

Accelerator: grey sweatpants (I can’t), etc.

“You learn the language you’re surrounded by. Similarly, you learn the sexual language you’re surrounded by. Just as there are no innate words, there appear to be almost no innate sexual stimuli. What turns us on or off is learned from culture in much the same way children learn vocabulary or accents from culture.”

“You know you have made a theoretical advance when you can no longer reconstruct why you failed for so long to see the obvious.”

Interesting metaphor about our minds/bodies/beings as garden plots that are tended to by our family/parents/etc., with certain seeds planted, plants cared for, etc. to describe the preconceptions were raised with about our bodies, others, and internalized shame

“This is what science can do for us, if we let it. It offers us an opportunity to lower our defenses and experience the ways that we are all connected.”