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

“If you want to have a healthy garden, a garden you choose, you have to go row by row and figure out what you want to keep or nurture and what you want to dig out and replace with something healthier. It is not fair that you have to do all that extra work. After all, you didn’t choose what got planted by your family or culture. No one asked for your permission before planting the toxic crap.”

- body shame

Idea of our minds/bodies being gardens + love being the water of life & sun being the stress/adversity, needing both in balance but some climates (contexts) and people (different gardens) need more water or more sun

“Sex is an attachment behavior reinforcing the social bond between adults. Sometimes it takes the form of passionate joyful sex between people who are falling in love with eachother. Sometimes it takes the form of desperate, grasping sex between people whose attachment is threatened. Counterintuitively, when attachment is at its most secure, it can take a back seat in your sexual arrousability.”

“For everyone, stress changes the context in which you experience sexual response which changes your perception of sexual sensations. The key to managing stress so that it doesn’t interfere with sexual pleasure, is learning to complete the cycle, unlock freeze, escape the predator, conquer the enemy, celebrate, like glitter settling in a snow globe.”

In modern culture, there’s a contradiction built into the social remedies to stress. On the 1 hand, being around other people is often a core part of allowing our stress response to complete. On the other hand, we put the brakes on, self inhibiting our stress response in order to stay socially appropriate and not make other people uncomfortable. We hold onto our incomplete stress response to access social security.

“Both feeling taken care of and taking care of others registers in your stress response as completing the cycle.”

- texting a friend(s) when you’re sad after a hard day or stressful fight w family

- offering comfort to someone else when you’re stressed, diffusing your own stress by helping someone else

Affiliative stress response: dealing with potential threats by connecting affectionately with people

- being cuddled after a hard day or given physical/emotional comfort

- anoñe

Attachment style is an inescapable factor in sexual response & relationship satisfaction & it varies, not just from person to person but also from relationship to relationship. And it can change. Yet, these deep emotional patterns are not always tractable and sometimes require therapy. Many people, though, can make a great deal of progress by increasing their nonjudgmental awareness of their own emotional responses.

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