Episode 4
Ep 4: Is stress keeping pleasure away?
Episode four of Pleasure People asks how stress effects our ability to feel good at all and makes the case for pleasure as a stress reliever.
Sex Researcher Emily Nagoski breaks down the brakes and accelerator running in every brain (the dual control model), explains why stress doesn't cancel out pleasure so much as slam the brakes on it entirely and covers what dopamine, orgasm brain scans, and warm socks have to do with it.
Four participants track their own stress: Binx leaning on her vibrator through wildfire season and grief, Mary using masturbation to regain a sense of agency in her body, Sueann treating her pleasure as a stress gauge, and Julie Rae treating pleasure as ritual to get through cancer treatments and grief.
Pleasure People is hosted and produced by Danielle Bezalel
Executive Producer: Sarah Tomchesson
Lead producer: Kate Helen Downey
Music supervision, sound design, and mixing: Kelly Kramarik at Maven Post Media
Our theme music was composed by Julie McCarthy
Pleasure People was made possible by the financial support of Vibratex, Inc.
Thank you to sex educator and author Emily Nagoski, phD for appearing on this episode as our expert guest.
And a huge thank you to the participants in the Magic Wand study who shared their experiences in this episode.
Transcript
If that's the case, I'm very impressed. Over the past three years, I've been experiencing chronic and debilitating jaw pain. As soon as I open my eyes, I immediately feel the aching, and the worry begins. At this point, I've tried close to everything to ease the pain: physical therapy, massage, Botox shots, lidocaine trigger point injections, you name it.
at scares and worries me the [:"What is the cause?" "It's most likely stress," she explains, as if she's given this diagnosis 100 times that day. "How are you managing your stress levels?" She asks. "Poorly, I suppose, Doc, very poorly." And I imagine I'm not alone in this. If you take just one moment to look at the current state of the world, you too will notice that stress is genuinely all around us.
ICE raids, school shootings, environmental policy rollbacks, existential AI dread, and world war are only a few of the things I can name off the top of my head that influence our daily stress levels, our general feeling of hopelessness. If you're 40 or under, you might also be stressed about the fact that you can't and probably won't build enough wealth to ever buy a home or to afford the type of family you thought you were able to have when you were dreaming about your future 10 or 15 years ago.
about stress, and how do we [:You may not realize it, but many of us already use pleasure as stress relief. We get a little treat, like a snack or a dessert, during the workday because it feels good to play hooky and do something for yourself once in a while, go for walks in the park to ease our mind, watch a TV show when we should really be paying our bills, engage in masturbation to get rid of stress and activate those pleasure receptors.
e hormones, but how are they [:What a perfect question for acclaimed researcher, sex educator, and stress expert Emily Nagoski. You may remember Emily from episode two when we discussed the US's obsession with abstinence. When doing research for your book, Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, what did you find when you studied, in particular, the connection between stress and pleasure?
Are they opposites? So what happens when you are stressed out, your brain transitions into a state where it is inclined to interpret almost any stimulus as a potential threat, as opposed to when you're in a relaxed, safer state of mind, your brain is inclined to interpret almost any stimulation as something to approach with curiosity and pleasure.
stimulation as pleasurable. [:Whereas, if somebody tickled you and you were in the middle of an argument with that person, it did not feel playful and pleasurable. You maybe wanted to slightly punch that person in the face. That's the difference that your brain state makes on how it interprets a sensation, 'cause it's the same sensation, but in a different mental context.
o orgasm in a brain scanning [:Just that goes away and instead of, like, worrying about what's happening in the moment or worrying about, like, the dishes in the sink or worrying about how weird it is that you're masturbating in an fMRI, it closes off and your brain is just noticing the sensations that are happening in your body. I mean, everyone has a kink for something.
Someone has a kink for masturbating in an fMRI machine. I'm sure someone does. We're positive of it. If this is you and you're listening, please write in to me Yeah ... at sexedwithdb@gmail.com. Do you know, though, even among the people who do volunteer to participate in an fMRI study of orgasm, only about half historically have been able to get to orgasm during the study until a Dutch researcher was like, "You know what?
socks" and it increased from [:No, they just weren't as cold and so they weren't as distracted by it. Wow. But, like, that information has caused people I know to incorporate socks into their sexiest outfits. I mean, that makes a lot of sense. If the research shows that you're more likely to orgasm, put on those fuzzies. Wool over the knee socks.
That's so good. I had no idea that something as simple as feeling cold could distract your brain enough to make it harder to orgasm. This got me thinking about how other brain chemicals, like dopamine, could affect orgasms. Dopamine is my favorite neurotransmitter. It's not the pleasure neurotransmitter.
he wanting neurotransmitter. [:Incentive motivation is the technical term. Some people call it a sex drive. It's not technically a drive, but it is a motivation state. We're like, "I'm gonna go get me more of that." And the way we get to that state is pleasure first, then comes the desire, the motivation. Which is why it's so important that we recognize that our brains only have access to pleasure in certain mental states, in certain external conditions where we feel safe enough and connected enough.
he dual control model is the [:So the dual control model has two parts, hence the name. If I tell you that one is the brakes, you can probably guess that the other one's gonna be the accelerator. So the accelerator notices all the sex-related stimuli that's coming into the brain. That's everything from our exteroceptive senses, everything you see, hear, smell, touch, taste.
Everything in your body sensations, that's your interoception, and everything that you think, believe, or imagine. So fantasies, but also attitudes and ideas about what's okay about sex. Everything that's sex related activates that accelerator and makes the go experience that many of us are familiar with.
ste. Everything in your body [:And when it notices those things, it hits the brakes. So the process of becoming aroused is the process of turning on the ons, but also turning off the offs. And it turns out when people are struggling with any part of sexual response, sometimes it's because there's not enough stimulation to the accelerator, and boy or sex toy's good for that.
But very often it's because there's too much stimulation to the brake. Does this differ depending on sex, depending on different identities? Everybody has the same mechanism. This is a mammalian mechanism, right? 'Cause every mammal on Earth needs a mechanism in their brain that's going to notice even in the midst of mating, courtship, that like, "Here comes a predator.
make evolutionary sense that [:The folks with the very not sensitive accelerators are the people most likely to identify as asexual. And some people have really sensitive or really not sensitive brakes. People with not very sensitive brakes are the people who are most likely to engage in high-risk sexual behavior 'cause their brake isn't sensitive enough to inhibit behaviors that a more sensitive brake would respond to as being this is a potential threat.
woman, are in charge of the [:Yeah. Stress, boy, oh boy. So I will say that for about 10 to 20% of all people regardless of identity, really high stress can increase their interest in sex because their brain is inclined to use sex as a way to cope with the stress. There are some people for whom stress doesn't have an impact on their interest in sex, and then for a bunch of us, sex absolutely slams on the brakes for the straightforward evolutionary reason of there's a lot of potential threats around here.
of this stuff is dealt with."[:The dual control model is so helpful to understand how stress gets in the way of our pleasure. It's a good reminder to pay attention to what our turn-ons and turn-offs are. And as Emily so aptly puts it, turn on the ons and off the offs as much as possible when trying to access pleasure. Let's check in with our study participants.
They had a lot to say about stress and pleasure. And here's a reminder of the structure of the study that the participants all followed. First, abstinence week with absolutely no masturbation or sex. Then a week of using the Magic Wand at least once a day. And then a week of sex as usual. Last episode, you heard Binks talk about contending with her bisexuality and her gender expression.
Let's hear about Binks' experience with stress and pleasure during the study
't know what's going on down [:And it was funny that after the abstinence week happened, I had this realization of like, huh, I really needed that. Like, oh my gosh, like let me make sure to always pleasure myself in some way, shape, or form if I reach that level of stress. I'm definitely focused more on self-pleasure when I'm feeling stressed.
I also just talk about my feelings a lot more. I'm very fortunate to have a few confidants and safe spaces where I can express my frustration, and if that is not enough, then I will go seek out either the cannabis or the self-pleasure with the Magic Wand.
ow much she reached for this [:Next, let's hear from Mary. Mary is the 22-year-old who talked about Abstinence Week being a nightmare for her in episode two, and she'll be the first to tell you that she deals with a lot of stress in her day-to-day life. I'm a depressed, anxious, full of ADHD with a heavy sprinkle of OCD, all kind of wrapped in a PTSD bun, and I'm an oldest daughter of young parents, so the entire world is on my shoulders in my brain.
I definitely was a lot more [:Pleasure absolutely does decrease my stress. Mary articulated something really well that I hadn't thought about before: the element of having control over something in your life We are in control of very little in our lives, and that stresses me out a lot. But when you are in charge of your own pleasure, you are saying, "I am in charge of my body.
I am in charge of how I feel, and I'm showing myself what I deserve. I'm satisfying my needs." When I'm fantasizing, when I'm thinking about being the one in complete control of my body, that really helped with stress. Obviously, there are a lot of very happy chemicals released in your brain when you orgasm or when you feel pleasure.
ng my body, and I think that [:Comphet is the idea that we live in a society that programs us to be straight by default, and Mary is very aware of how that has crept into her sexuality, even though she identifies as a proud lesbian. It was really stressing me out because I was like, when I have sex with my girlfriend, I am having sex with her like I am having sex with a straight man.
And, like, there's probably some part of that that is pleasurable for her, but I don't need to do that in that way. I don't need to put that experience and that pleasure above myself. And so that very positively impacted my stress. I asked Mary what she learned about her own stress from the study as someone with a lot on her plate.
gonna masturbate, and it may [:I'm gonna masturbate every single night and every single morning." That's great, but it takes up a lot of time, and it's good to just take a break and say, "You know what? Things are okay right now. I'm gonna take my foot off the gas, leave my clit be for X amount of time and come back to it." And I think this study taught me that abstinence can be beneficial, which has been really terrific
d that the ability to decide [:I hadn't considered that angle before, but agency and autonomy are so important for our stress and our pleasure experiences, so it makes sense. Sue Ann, the 6'5" school dean we heard from in the last episode, also described a way of engaging with her stress and her pleasure that I hadn't considered.
Rather than using pleasure to counteract stress, she realized she could tell how stressed she was based on how she reacted to pleasure. Before the study, I masturbate every day. When I'm not masturbating, I can tell that I'm stressed out because if I don't have the energy to do it, then something's probably wrong.
masturbate or how many times [:This has helped me to, like, figure out the parameters of, like, if it takes me a long time to have an orgasm, I'm, like, actually really stressed out, even with the wand. If I'm unable, I'm stressed out, like something's going on Sue Ann's experience with having trouble having an orgasm when she's really stressed out is exactly what Emily Nagoski was talking about with the dual control model.
Her brakes were more active than her accelerators in those moments because her body was reading those stressors as threats. Let's hear from Julie now, the retired theater professor we heard from in episode one, who was having maybe the most stressful time I can imagine while participating in the study
hey could live independently [:I was pretty stressed. And then within the span of the month of the study, I lost my high school bestie and my college bestie, and it threw me, especially since my high school bestie died of the cancer that I have. Talk about a mind fuck. That is an amount of stress I can't even comprehend. I asked Julie what it was like to do her assigned study homework, AKA masturbating, on days when the stress from everything she was dealing with was really, really high There were days when it was like, "Get it out.
y had a more profound effect [:I wanna scream yes. It's huge. It's huge. So I'm involved in a bunch of online groups with women over, like, 80, just because, you know, I'm heading there and I wanna know what it's like. And there was just a major thread, and I couldn't believe it, Danielle. These women discovered that if you masturbated before you went to bed, you slept better.
They're in their 80s. There was, like, I would say 200 women easy that were like, "What? Okay, I'll try that." So they were doing their own experiment. Yes, totally. How mind-boggling is that? First of all, because it's something men do all the time. It's a given, and the fact that it had never occurred to them or that somehow it took that long to recognize that they were worth that time and effort, my mind blew a little bit.
ike, you're still, I'm sure, [:There was just another tool in the toolkit, and I was forever grateful. I'm trying to do a lot of things to mitigate stress because it is a very stressful time. And so participating in this study reminded me that taking literally sometimes five minutes, 'cause that magic wand, it's efficient. It just reminded me that these small things that you can do for yourself and oftentimes by yourself so that you're connected more into yourself, it's just relaxing.
it felt good and it helped. [:In this study of 1,000 people with vulvas, we found that over the course of the three-week study, a majority of people did report decreased stress. So I wanted to ask our stress and pleasure expert, Emily Nagoski, is pleasure a good practice to counteract stress? It's gonna vary from person to person, and it depends on how intense the stress is.
For some people, the level of stress is so much that they truly need to offload some before they can even begin to think about sex. But if it's, like, a moderate level of stress, there's a practice I learned from the delightful, wonderful, glorious adrienne maree brown, who talks about gratitude for pleasure.
n this work brain state when [:Pause, notice the beautiful pleasurable thing, and allow yourself to experience a moment of gratitude that that pleasurable thing exists. So if you build in a daily practice of, like, "I'm gonna close the door on everything else in my life, and I'm just going to pay attention to the pleasurable things that are happening in my body," that's going to make it easier for you in your day-to-day life to notice pleasurable things happening outside the context of your specific closing the door on everything else practice.
locked out of the pleasure. [:But what if you're dealing with so much stress that a daily gratitude practice feels like a Band-Aid on a broken arm? So for the people who listening to this are like, "That must be nice for people," let me tell you I have been there. The reason I wrote Come Together, my book about sex in long-term relationships, is the process of writing Come As You Are, which is a book about women's sexual wellbeing, was so stressful that I lost all interest in actually having any sex.
at your body transitions out [:I'm sure we could all learn from Emily Nagoski's book Burnout, especially in our current cultural and political moment. There are just so many things happening at all hours of the day, and stress feels inevitable, and maybe a little stress is inevitable. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try our best to make time for even just a little bit of pleasure.
As Julie said, maybe it's just five minutes of your day focused on you and feeling good. There are always going to be excuses to not put in the extra time and effort when things feel heavy and overwhelming, and we don't typically think of masturbation as an antidote to stress, but we can and should start thinking of it in this way.
e, oxytocin, and endorphins, [:If a thousand people can make the case for pleasure as stress relief, maybe it's worth giving yourself those five minutes, too. Next week on Pleasure People, we're talking about pleasure and health. Do we have to be in good health to experience pleasure? Does our health changing mean the way we access pleasure has to change, too?
And what happens to our pleasure as we age? The research is really clear that the people who experience illness and disability are forced to find routes to pleasure outside the standard narrative. Lichen sclerosus is a autoimmune disorder that affects your skin for most women in the vaginal area.
ate of panic and being like, [:Feeling my body suffused with pleasure has pushed aside the nagging knees, at least temporarily.
Pleasure People is hosted and produced by me, Danielle Bezulel. Our executive producer is Sarah Tomchesen. Our lead producer is Kate Helen Downey. Music supervision, sound design, and mixing was done by Kelly Kramarik at Mavenpost Media. Our theme music was composed by Julie McCarthy. Other music cues courtesy of APM Music.
experiences in this episode. [: