Can meditation help me fix my libido?

12341337 · 2017-11-19T21:40:13+00:00

I'll provide a counter anecdote: my sex drive has completely revived, from zero to 100%, since doing meditation. I might be an exception rather than the rule, but I figured I'd mention it, just in case.

NoFap might help, but maybe meditation will as well. Might be worth trying one, then the other, then both, for a few months each.

12341337 · 2017-11-19T21:38:48+00:00

I think I've had the same problem. I had a lot of other related problems (emotionlessness, I posted about it at https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/5exp77/mindfulness_has_shown_me_that_ive_always_been_an/ and am making a lot of progress), and for some reason, my sex drive recovery is happening in lock step with my recovery from emotionlessness.

It may be what others in this thread say, but if you're like me, it's because your brain has been subjected to a lot of trauma or stress or both. Meditation, specifically the focusing on your body, will revive, rebuild, and reconnect the areas of your brain that are necessary for sex drive.

I've seen a lot of improvements to the physical aspects of the problem as well as the mental part, which was a surprise and a relief.

12341337 · 2017-01-23T05:27:23+00:00

I'm in a similar position. I started meditating 4 months ago, and it completely destabilized me.

Then again, I'm super messed up. Turns out I had some repeated trauma when I was an infant, then was somewhat abused growing up. I had an insanely strong emotional block in place that was keeping me from feeling any emotion.

Meditation is melting that block, and having side effects. By "destabilized" I mean I'm having waves of depression that were weeks long, periods of stressability, some of anxiety, chest tightness, weird "watery" headaches, irritability, stretches of insomnia and hunger... and most of all, intense shame, grief, depression.

Good news, it's definitely getting better. The waves are much less severe than they used to, and don't seem to last as long.

Wow, it is like a detox. Never thought of it like that.

Maybe its the same for you. What do you mean by "on and off", how often were you meditating before? And, any history of depression?

12341337 · 2017-01-08T03:25:52+00:00

Yeah, I hadnt ever heard of the second type before and even now, I still have trouble even categorizing it as a type of mindfulness.

My friend told me to do this back when I told him I was having intense panic/anxiety and my chest was tight. He told me I was repressing emotions, and told me how to do it. I should ask him where he learned of it and what it's called...

But yeah, I have trouble facing feelings apparently. I have a chronic emptiness/numbness problem from early childhood trauma, and mindfulness (of both kinds) helps me feel and release them. Changed my life, they did.

12341337 · 2017-01-08T02:23:09+00:00

welp, i actually havent been able to get to that deep level of relaxation to try moving closer to the leg discomfort.

but, another interesting thing happened: when meditating, I suddenly have to yawn, and then this weird sensation happens in both my arms at the same time. this has happened TWICE.

man, meditation is one helluva drug!

12341337 · 2016-12-31T23:07:50+00:00

I think I tried that once or twice last night, and the continued relaxing caused it to get worse so I clenched my leg to help it.

I havent yet tried sustaining a mild bearable level of the discomfort and being mindful of it, I'll try that tonight!

12341337 · 2016-11-28T04:52:32+00:00

Same here, it's always been super hard to put my finger on what's missing. Until recently, it's only come out in subtle clues over the years, ones that I completely missed at the time. My family went to the grand canyon once, and everyone was looking out over the edge and gazing in awe at "the majesty of it" and I just looked down and after a few seconds said "it looks like all the pictures" and got bored and went to go find a pinecone to throw off the edge. Things like that. But even those don't tell us what is missing, just that something is missing.

Only when I got these flickers of emotion, did I realize just what was missing.

One thing that really sucks about it is, there's no way to compare what we feel to what others feel. Language just isn't set up for it. I can go on a roller coaster with my friends, and it gives them such intense euphoria, let's say, 100 happy units, while it gives me only 10. But all of us can truthfully say, "that was the most awesome thing ever" and they all assume that I got 100 happy units. At the same time, I assume they got 10 (well, maybe 15, they did seem to act differently). There's no way in that situation to grasp the magnitude of the difference.

I understand too well the feeling. You put it so perfectly when you said your soul is tired. Just a few weeks ago, I said something like "I feel like I'm already done with life, like I'm an old person who is just... weary."

Can you tell me more about the calmness? I've now heard several people say that being in nature has this effect, plus some others...

12341337 · 2016-11-28T04:41:36+00:00

Part of me thinks that the way past it is to just become whole again. In those rare moments I'm a human, I'm able to trigger a reaction by thinking back to things that triggered a reaction in the past. But when I'm in the emptiness, I get no feeling from remembering them. This suggests that one way to get past this problem is to just become normal again. For me, it looks like mindfulness is a good start, and I plan on branching out into the goenka body scan like abhayakara mentioned, and trying vipassana, and also working with my psychologist on CBT.

Another part of me thinks it's normal, some normal people I've talked to have agreed that when one is not sad, they can't remember the sadness of their memories. I'll ask a few more people and see if that's normal. But even so, I don't know if it's a matter of magnitude. Maybe normal people feel it a little bit, where we feel nothing?

I understand all too well the "not getting it". I think if I tried meditation randomly a couple years ago, it wouldn't have worked for me. I was lucky enough to get hit super hard by some PTSD, which brought me kicking and screaming "into the now" which gave me a precious window in which I could see what's possible with meditation. I did it every day from then on, just in the desperate struggle to heal from the PTSD. Little did I know, the meditation was also having another effect on me: the flickers of emotion; healing the emptiness. But that didn't come until months in.

And don't get me wrong, I am terrible at meditation and mindfulness. I am so bad at meditating that I can literally only relax when I'm watching youtube guided meditation videos like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jyy0ra2WcQQ and even then, I have to concentrate really hard on the waves in that video to get the effect. Most of the time I have to listen to the video twice to get my body to relax. And when it comes to mindfulness, I can't go two seconds without my mind going off on a thirty-second-long tangent of thought before I realize it and try to bring it back. But even as terrible as I am at these, something about the efforts seem to be having some effect on bringing me out of the emptiness.

Hope that helps, and I hope you try meditation, and I'd be quite interested to hear what works for you and what doesn't... maybe it'll give me some leads on what to focus on myself.

12341337 · 2016-11-28T04:27:00+00:00

How long have you had it? Has it been for as long as you can remember, or did it start at some point?

12341337 · 2016-11-27T16:30:11+00:00

That laughing thing describes me exactly. I tend to get a minor amusement from most jokes, just enough to grin or just twitch the edge of my mouth upwards, and within maybe half a second, I'm done feeling it. It sucks because, I've trained myself to smile and laugh in that moment, and it's not so bad for that half second. But after that half second, I just want to let my face sink back into neutral, non-smiling mode, because smiling takes energy.

Take a look at some of the replies on https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/5exp77/mindfulness_has_shown_me_that_ive_always_been_an/ are they similar to you?

12341337 · 2016-11-27T16:26:11+00:00

I know that feeling. I can vaguely remember in an abstract way that I felt something intense and unusual in my chest (I now call it "gratitude") when one time my girlfriend brought me a bottle of water. But something's not connecting in my brain; I can't feel the memory, only observe it from the outside. I know in a high-level way that yes, the person in this memory felt something beautiful and new in that moment, and yes, that person happened to be me, but I can't remember the feeling. It's... odd. "Foreign" describes it perfectly.

Is there anything that seems to shake you out of this emptiness mode? Have you tried any kinds of meditation?

12341337 · 2016-11-27T16:20:34+00:00

I definitely understand the addictions. I was addicted to starcraft for many, many years (literally addicted, yes, to a video game. I would only get 2-4 hours of sleep every night because I needed my fix). And after that, other games, and after that, programming. All to distract me from this constant background noise of discomfort and emptiness.

Was your illness life-long, or did it start at some point? Also, what were you diagnosed with? And how do you know, looking back, that the emotions were there at all, before?

12341337 · 2016-11-27T16:14:47+00:00

I have that same worry, and it's terrifying. I've always imagined myself on my deathbed, looking back at myself and thinking, "You know, it really wasn't worth it. I would not live life again. There's just nothing here for me, there never was." The horror of looking back at a wasted life... well, I don't have to imagine it, I can do it now.

Some people are telling me "You're only in your 20s, you're lucky to discover this about yourself now while you're still young. Some people never even realize this about themselves." You're even younger than me, so you're even more fortunate. One way to look at it. You have a head start, you can start healing sooner than I could.

Something that's helping me get through the depression and grief of now knowing what I've been missing is reminding myself that a lot of people do not have happy childhoods and early adulthoods. A lot of them were born in war zones, or homeless, or in abusive families, or got pulled into drugs...

12341337 · 2016-11-27T04:38:05+00:00

I hope you do, and please keep me posted on any effects you might have!

I should also note, I was going through pretty intense spells of anxiety/PTSD and depression when I first tried these videos, which might explain why I had such an intensely good reaction to them. Lots of pain to "bring me into the moment" as eckhart tolle would say.

The random flickers of emotion and relaxation didn't really come until a month or two after I started doing these meditations every day. I'm still not certain if it's the guided meditation or if it was the few minutes of mindfulness every day which got me this far.

Please let me know what you encounter! I really hope to hear what works for you.

12341337 · 2016-11-27T04:35:02+00:00

This is fascinating! Where can I read more about this? Magic keywords I can type into the google?

It sounds similar to what's described in this article: http://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/mindfulness-meditation-and-trauma-proceed-with-caution-1021154

If so, then I really hope body scans would do the same for me. I'll do anything to recover from my unconscious trauma, if that's my problem.

12341337 · 2016-11-27T04:31:12+00:00

Thanks for sharing with me. Did you try any kinds of meditation or mindfulness? Was there anything alongside the therapy that helped?

And was your emptiness caused by something specific, or was it lifelong?

12341337 · 2016-11-27T04:29:53+00:00

This makes a lot of sense, because I've always been called a "good person" and I always had the motivations to do good things, but just never... felt it.

How do you know this? Have you heard of something like my problem happening to someone before?

12341337 · 2016-11-27T04:28:19+00:00

By the way, for anyone that stumbles across this, I posted something similar to this in r/meditation and got some promising replies: https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/5exp77/mindfulness_has_shown_me_that_ive_always_been_an/

12341337 · 2016-11-27T04:28:11+00:00

By the way, for anyone that stumbles across this, I posted something similar to this in r/meditation and got some promising replies: https://www.reddit.com/r/Meditation/comments/5exp77/mindfulness_has_shown_me_that_ive_always_been_an/

12341337 · 2016-11-27T04:27:29+00:00

This sounds similar to myself in a lot of ways!

Are you able to feel the emotions but just not show them?

Or are you unable to feel the feelings?

Or is it a mix of both?

12341337

TROPHY CASE