How Your Mental Health can Affect Your Sexual Health
Hello and welcome back to the third part of our sexual health series! If you have not caught on by now, this is where we start breaking the stigma, talking about all the taboo stuff (yes that means sex), and of course changing the narrative around this topic. In week one we introduced you to the topic of sexual health, week two we learned more about how your sexual health has impacts on your mental health. Leaving us with this question: how does our mental health affect our sexual health?
As we have come to learn, our physical and mental health are intrinsically related, meaning our sexual health and our mental health are related. Let’s take a moment to reflect on that for a second. This means that if we learn to manage and take care of our mental health, then we indeed can experience positive changes in sexual health and function. It has been reported in studies that women who are experiencing lower sexual desire are more likely to experience symptoms related to depression or other mental health concerns. Supporting this, studies have also found that sexual dysfunction is often highly associated with depression. Adults who are less frequently engaging in sexual activity are experiencing higher levels of psychological concerns and lower psychological function. Combined mental health and stress will often lower our
levels of desire.
When we experience such things as stress or anxiety, it can lead to concerns that pop up in the bedroom. These concerns often look like low desire/low libido, performance anxiety, and/or just feeling outright distracted. When we experience increased levels of stress, this increases the stress hormone Cortisol, which in turn can suppress our sex hormones (testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone), lowering our libido. But it does not just end there, when cortisol increases due to stress it can also present other symptoms like sleep issues or overall mental exhaustion; both of which will continue to suppress arousal. Some individuals can even experience sexual dysfunction, erectile dysfunction, impacts on fertility, it can contribute to premature ejaculation, vaginismus, and dyspareunia.
Cortisol is also one of the main contributors to kick-starting our fight-or-flight system response, leading to issues and concerns like performance anxiety in the bedroom. Our fight-or-flight acts as a response to anxiety, which shuts down other processes in our body that are not considered “essential” to our survival. This includes the process of arousal. This can lead to a vicious cycle: by worrying about your performance, your mind then focuses on your actions during sex, critiquing yourself as you go, which then triggers a self-conscious response that can take you away from the present moment, interfering with your overall performance. So, the next time you go to be intimate with your partner, you are already worrying (again) about how things will go that time around. With repeated experiences like this it can lead to avoidant patterns or behaviors, and a tendency to shy away from having sex altogether.
Have you ever felt distracted in the bedroom? Yep, stress and anxiety can cause that too. Do you ever find sometimes when your stressed out or anxious that your brain is foggy and fuzzy? Or does it become the opposite and become busy, thoughts racing all over the place? This ends up affecting us in the bedroom as well. Really, if you think about it our brains are a BIG sex organ. When its busy, it cannot focus on starting the processes required to make us aroused, because it is focusing on too many other things. Just like when its relaxed, it can put all its time and effort into the processes that make us feel arousal and pleasure. So, if you are too busy focusing on other things, your brain is not going to be able to notice the sexual stimuli, or it might interpret it differently. Being distracted in the bedroom can also go hand-in-hand with performance anxiety, as sometimes anxiety seeps in, causing you to be self-conscious, (remember the vicious cycle?). If you’re too busy thinking about yourself and wondering how silly you look trying that new position, you may become so distracted in negative self-talk that your no longer in the present moment.
There’s so much more we can talk about when it comes to mental health affecting sexual health (there’s a whole wide world of it to discover), but you might be starting to think ‘ this is all good to know Stephanie, but how do I break the cycle?’ or maybe you’re thinking ‘ wow, if I don’t start tending to my mental health, this could really affect my relationship, what can I do to prevent it?’
Here are some tools to help you get started:
- Knowing that sexual wellbeing is closely related to our physical health, there is some science out there suggesting that regular exercise or physical activity
(especially cardiovascular activity) can improve sexual health. - Having a balanced diet can help aid in the promotion of positive sexual health.
- Maintenance (that’s right) – if you do not use it, you lose it, practice self care.
- Open communication with your partner(s).
- Tend to your relationship – a strong and healthy relationship creates a good foundation for sexual health.
- See a therapist – therapy can you help you connect with yourself and your partner, maintain your mental health, and feel good.
These among so many more things, can help foster healthy connection, intimacy, and sexual experiences.
Thanks again for tuning into this weeks addition to the Sexual Health Series. We’ve covered how mental health and sexual health can have their own affects on one another. Next week we’ll dive further into what shame, self esteem and intimacy look like in the bedroom
Stephanie Byerson
Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying)
References:
Bradford, A., & Meston, C. M. (2006). The impact of anxiety on sexual arousal in women. Behaviour research and therapy, 44(8), 1067–1077. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2005.08.006
MyAlly Health. (n.d). How stress impacts your sexual health and ways to manage it. https://myallyhealth.org/about/blog/how-stress-impacts-your-sexual-health-way- to-manage it/#:~:text=When%20an%20individual%20is%20stressed,lead%20to%20or%20w orsen%20ED.
Precision Sexual health Clinic for Men. (2023). How stress impacts sexual health. https://precisionclinictoronto.ca/how-stress-impacts-sexual- health/#:~:text=Low%20desire%20doesn't%20mean,Targeted%20supplements
Rao, T. S. S., Tripathi, A., Manohar, S., & Tandon, A. (2024). Promoting sexual well-being. Indian journal of psychiatry, 66(Suppl 2), S262–S271. https://doi.org/10.4103/indianjpsychiatry.indianjpsychiatry_612_23
Vasconcelos, P., Carrito, M. L., Quinta-Gomes, A. L., Patrão, A. L., Nóbrega, C. A., Costa, P. A., & Nobre, P. J. (2024). Associations between sexual health and well- being: a systematic review. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 102(12), 873–887D. https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.24.291565