It has been a long road, but this will be the last post in my series about sex and how we treat our bodies, and just look where our fling has taken us. We started out in Part 1 with the sex talk, in Part 2 talked about love, Part 3 became lost in the throws of passion, Part 4 took a road trip with Vanessa in our guest post, had to stop and do our homework in Part 5, became distracted by the TV and media in Part 6, our real, feel, and ideal in Part 7, and now it is the morning after, and I have gotta go. I am feeling smothered.

In all seriousness, where has this journey taken us? Well, for as long as time has been ticking we have been and will continue to be beings that are anthropologically, genetically, physically, emotionally and spiritually driven to engage in sexual relationships with others. That has not been the issue of this series. I am all for people having sex. The issue is how we go about pursuing sex and how, in many ways, we have become slaves to our cultural beliefs, attitudes, behaviors and language of sex. IMHO, sex is one of the most sacred experiences in which we can engage with another person, and it is important that we see it that way for ourselves and others to preserve our self-respect and others’. Probably the most important subtext to this series has been the effect of our attitudes and the influence of various cultural issues on our kids. Honestly looking at all of these factors when it comes to ourselves, it is the influence of our issues on our kids is often the hard part.

Lost and Found Along the Way

It has not been my goal to come across as judgmental, nor holier than thou. I am not taking a religious nor political point of view; I am more focused on the health of our collective spirit. Sometimes in life, we become distracted by that which looks and feels inviting. This is not always in our best interest.

Life offers many distractions and temptations and so many things become a part of these distractions: work, play, relationships, television, internet, the media, drinking, drugs, social life, how we look, who likes and loves us… Many of these things I have touched on, and one of the common denominators of all these issues is often sex. It is ultimately up to us to take responsibility for what we focus on. It is my sincerest hope that you have grown through this exploration. These are some of the issues that I would like you to consider when considering your choice, not just in sex, but in life:

• Are we making the choice that brings us instant gratification, or making choices that look at our long-term best interest?
• Are our actions dishonoring our self and our soul, or are we loving, respecting and honoring ourselves?
• Are we looking for a quick fix, or are we truly looking for intimacy?
• Are our behaviors and attitudes carelessly affecting our children, or are we careful about what they see and hear?
• Are we indifferent to our children’s awareness and attitudes about sex/life, or if we are invested in what they are learning and doing?

I hope these become guidelines for you to use in your everyday life to help direct your choices for you and those you guide. Never forget the power that you have in what you create. No matter what you do create, do it from a place of love, and let that become its foundation. After all, amusement parks can be enjoyable when we ride them safely. When I’m done with this blog, I am going to Disney World.

The Pledge

I hope you will take the following pledge and will allow this to become a part of your everyday living.

I pledge to learn more about love, what it truly is and truly isn’t. I agree that sex is not love, but instead can come from a place of love. I agree to honor, my body, mind and soul and commit to the intention of acknowledging my mistakes in the context of sex and love and to learn and grow from them. I understand that to err is human and forgive myself and others is Divine.

I understand that sex is not a shameful or guilty act, and also acknowledge that sex, intimacy, trust and love belong hand-in-hand-in-hand-in-hand, and one without the others may not honor the creator’s intended design. I understand that it is my place to find my power and ability to love myself from within and will honor others as I honor myself.

Sex is not intended to be a vehicle of power, status or control, but a vehicle of love and connectedness that is the culmination of a respectful and healthy relationship based in Agape, Eros and Philos. I owe this commitment to myself, those I love, and those I will love.

Respectfully,

Dr. E…

(I will return to Your Body Is Not a Disneyland in my next post.)

What a truly inspiring week for the sum of humanity who witnessed the miraculous rescue of the Chilean miners. Whether one was involved personally or was riveted to the television, this event went a long way to redefining how we can all witness a news event as a positive outcome and challenge us to seek a more peaceful world. And my being an On-Air consultant to CNN Networks during their climb to earth was a once in a lifetime gift. Perhaps the most synchronous part was that the miners were reached on John Lennon’s birthday – “Imagine” that. As a psychologist, I am often looking at metaphors that life evokes, and the circumstance of these miners, rescued after being trapped below the earth, provides such an apropos metaphor for the world to learn from.

So many times in the history of mankind, we, as a collective, have created the circumstances that contributed to our traumas, and those who were supposed to protect us either caused the trauma or did not do what could have been done to prevent it. As a result, we feel betrayed, neglected, unloved, and our trust is shattered like a stone through a window pane. Through our experiences in this world, we are taught to hide our traumas and pains deep inside ourselves.

So many of us have so many wounds and pains that we feel helpless to know what to do with, and we believe that the deeper we bury them, the better off we should be. Sooner or later there comes a time in our life when something so egregious happens that we can’t just turn our backs to it. We have to act, there is too much to lose if we don’t, but we often don’t have the resources to find our lost selves and heal them. We require the help of others. But how helpless it can feel when we are trapped by our own negligence and denial.

So we work to dig and drill down to the depths of our soul traversing the various strata of our defenses, addictions, attitudes and beliefs of indifference, anger and mistrust, the efforts slowed by almost impenetrable doubt and fear, and still we press on, learning that failure is the process of learning on the journey. Quitting, not an option, we continue, refining our technique with proper guidance, until we reach them.

Still alive, we give them enough to sustain them until we can bring them to the surface, one by one, and the efforts begin again.

Trapped for so long in indescribable conditions, banished to the recesses of our unconscious, we understand that to feel our wholeness and resolve our shame we must bring them back into the light. As we widen the reach of our efforts, we are able to free our pain from our self-imposed tombs, and we bring our traumas to our light, and as each is exposed, worn, sickly, and wary of the light, they require time to regain their strength. Share they must their traumas and pains, no more to be buried and forgotten. Learn, we will from them They ultimately grow in strength from the light. Stronger they are to stand with us, changed forever, by facing our truth we realize that our shame was not suffered through the trauma, but was the result of our own disrespect of our self and our soul.

Through this we learn, as failure will teach, that the love and respect of ourselves and others leads us to understand that there is no price that can be put on our soul, nor one else’s.

But when the miner’s were rescued, their president spoke to the world of the “33” being strong and better for their experience, denying their own negligence and accountability. And the miners’ pain and their potential pain to come, should they bury their experience behind their shield of strength, indifference, and financial reward to come, as so many have before them, would only be borne by them as others would have moved on long ago. Shall this all be forgotten when we turn the channel?  I hope not.

I dedicate this not only to the indeterminable strength of the “33” miners, but to the indeterminable strength of the human spirit that lives in all of us.

Bless you all in your journey to healing, and God bless us all in our journey to truth.

Dr. E…

I often talk about our real, feel and ideal with people. These three terms have to do with how people see us and our actions (our real), how we feel about ourselves deep down inside (our feel), and how we want to be seen by ourselves and others (our ideal). Often people have wide gaps between a few of these concepts, if not all three. The more separation between our real, feel, and ideal, usually the more distress a person feels in their life.

When it comes to how we treat our bodies, there are often wide gaps between our real, feel and ideal, because it can feel painful to be so honest with ourselves and others. We spend so much time trying to avoid our truth and our emotions. As a result, we look to others for approval with our appearance and sexuality to see what we need to do to feel accepted and fit in with others. Family, peers, society and sources in the media become the objects that we look to that contribute to how we determine our real, feel, and ideal. There are many areas in our life where we may apply these concepts of real, feel and ideal and our sexuality is definitely one of them that is prominent in our culture. Too many times we are trying to deny and disprove our feel, ignore our real, and spend too much time trying to support our ideal by attempting to appeal to others through the way we dress, sexual innuendo and sexual behaviors… These behaviors are often accompanied with arrogance and exploitation which become a major part of our avoidance.

The purpose of arrogance is to protect us with a shield of false pride. It often hides feelings like shame, guilt, embarrassment, inadequacy, unlovable, and many other emotions that we consider to be bad, wrong and weak. The problem is that it often our arrogance can lead us to denial and can result in us getting into situations that are over our head and sometimes dangerous and even life-threatening. When we attempt to dress, talk, and/or act in a sexually provocative manner, we are often trying to use some of our “assets” that we feel will appeal to others. We want the attention, acceptance and power from others, often because we want to feel better about ourselves, getting us further away from our “feel” and closer to our ideal, but at what expense to our integrity and truth?

Am I saying that wanting to dress up and look nice is or wanting to feel our “sexual beingness” is a bad thing? Absolutely not. What I do believe, however, is that behaving as we do contributes to our avoidance of emotions, issues, attitudes and beliefs that would help us to become better people if we had the courage to face them. Too much of our lives are spent around avoidance of learning and understanding ourselves, and the intoxication surrounding sex and everything around it is often a great way to avoid.

Until my next post, pay attention to your feel, real, and ideal and see what you can learn about yourself. You may be surprised.

So, it’s been a few weeks, and I hope you did your homework that I provided in my last post. I, too, have continued to pay attention to what I have seen and the sexual innuendo on various media sites goes from the very subtle to the obvious. The question I have is, “How many of us actively look at this and discriminate the content we are viewing and how that content affects our attitudes, emotions and beliefs?” Even more, how does that content affect our kids?

Get Slinky

I would like to provide you with a few examples that I have seen in the past two days. My daughter is four years old, and she likes to get on the computer and play on some of the dress-up sites. These sites are geared toward kids who can use the mouse and drag and drop clothing, shoes, jewelry… In other words some are very young kids who are learning to use the computer and may not have proper parent supervision. There are hundreds of these sites on the internet and many of them come with ads attached. The range of characters are from cartoon characters, to fairies, to young girls, teens and adults and actors and actresses. I am very conscious of how many of these characters are portrayed, and while there are many that I don’t allow my daughter to play on, still there are many more that have “Zwinky” ads on there that have many cartoon type girls with cleavage. These ads run on the side of many of these dress-up sites, and I talk to my daughter about these sites and that I don’t want her to feel that she has to look or dress a certain way to get attention.

The second example is related to Eureka a show that I was watching on the SyFy channel. This show is more of a technology-fantasy type show, and in one of the scenes, a woman is proposed to by a man, and in the process of her opening up the ring, she is wearing a tight-fitting tank top. The camera puts the center of the shot on her breasts with the ring to the side. The camera then has to pan up and to the right to focus on her face. What caught my attention to this shot was that the camera had to move so abruptly to the right to refocus on her face that I rewound to see the layout of the shot to really notice how quickly and subtly this was done.

Finally, the most obvious selling of innuendo was on America’s Most Talented. There is a female artist named Maricar, who in one of the shows did her act in a devil’s costume, purposely accentuating her bountiful cleavage. As if her artistry act wasn’t enough, they continued to fit her in to many of the segue shots after that with other contestants and then next to the host at the end of the show.

Dwayne the Bathtub, We’re Dwowning…

These were only three short examples, and I did not cover magazines, news shows, prime time television, kids shows and cartoons, commercials, billboard, advertising, suggestive wording and phrasing, adult-focused internet content (not pornography)… and the list goes on. As we know, sex sells, and often what it is selling has so little to do what the product.

We are inundated in sexual content, and we don’t even realize it. Now please understand, I realize that we are sexual beings, but how early and how much of our lives need to be inundated in sexually suggestive content. Remember, I believe the human body is a work of art, and is something to be appreciated, however, I do feel that there is a difference between appreciating the human body and selling sexual content. We may have become numb to it, but do our kids need to become numb to it also, and at what cost to them? If these patterns in our society are going to change, we have to choose to stop buying.

Up next… Part 7, The Dying Breed

Respectfully,
Dr. E…

Sorry for the divergence from “Your Body Is Not A Disneyland”. We will return to that in my next post. Stay tuned.

I just finished the open audition for Your OWN Show and found it to be a very interesting experience. Mark Burnett (reality show guru) and Oprah Winfrey developed a reality show to have a competition for a talk show that a “Winner” of the competition would host on the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

I am not much of a purveyor of many reality shows (I do like my American Idol and So You Think You Can Dance), and never saw myself involved in one, but the opportunity to “win” a talk show on the Oprah Winfrey Network seemed to be too big an opportunity to pass up, especially when I have been working on developing my own show for the past year. Apparently that is what about 10,000 or so other people thought too.

I didn’t want to do this audition at first, because I am a more conventional person when it comes to business and have been pitching my show through the more established channels. However, when three separate people told me I should do it and then my Intellectual Properties Attorney said, “You are crazy if you don’t try this.”, I thought I better give it a whirl.

Today, I am never amazed by the number of people who get involved in reality-based shows. So many of us want to be stars, and we often see these opportunities that will bring fame and fortune to be the answers to all of our troubles. Often they are just the beginning of others.

What I loved about the idea of this show was to see so many people who had some really good ideas, and those with dreams who were willing to put themselves out there. Thousands invested in their dream and saw themselves in their OWN studio on the air, daring to dream big. It seemed that others just wanted to be part of the experience so they could have the memory.

As someone who has worked for years on being in the media to share a message I strongly believe is worth sharing, I have to be honest and say that it felt difficult to see all of those people out there wanting something that I have worked for for so long, who likely have not worked as hard as I have. But I also acknowledge that it is my own ego that had me feeling that I was more deserving than many of my compatriots out there for such an opportunity.

The process began with an application. I spent hours on this and tried to put as much of myself into this as I could. I worked off and on for a week on the application. I found it to be a great exercise to reflect on my life, my goals, and to really help me focus on what I want. The next step was the “big day”, the open call audition at a Kohl’s store in Atlanta (sounds a little cheesy don’t you think).

So, I decided that I wanted to be fresh for the day and got a hotel ten minutes away from the Kohl’s store so that I would be able to maximize sleep and not have to worry about the drive. I had my wife and daughter come along so we could spend the evening together, and they would be part of the memory. I went to bed at 11pm. Little did I know that my brain would wake me up at 2 am, more than two hours before I intended to wake up. So my plan for 5-6 hours of sleep turned into 2 hours of sleep. I got out of bed at 4:15 to get ready and then arrived at 5:15, only to find that there were hundreds of people in line waiting already.

While waiting in line, I struck up some conversations with others to hear their stories—everybody has a story. By 5:45 the line was moving and by 6:45, I was given number 874, and per my number, was supposed to be back between 11 and 12. When I looked behind me, there were still another 400 people in line.  In seeing all of those people in line, I had that internal fear that all of these people are going to take my opportunity away from me (after all, the was MY OWN show). The Reality – it wasn’t my opportunity to be taken.

So I returned for my first round. According to the producer, the 20 others in my group and I each had :30 to 1:30 to pitch our show. I was the only man in my group… hmmm great odds. I heard some great ideas and some that seemed like someone just wanted to be on TV. It came to my time, and I felt that I nailed the pitch. It was as I practiced it: I presented my qualifications as an expert, defined the pain to be healed, presented the solution, remained concise, incorporated humor, and ended with my sound bite, all in less than :90. I saw heads nodding, got the applause, and the producer commented on how well I ended the pitch. I felt that they would have to be crazy not to select me for the next round (100 were people selected for the next round of interviews from the 1200 or so that showed up).

So I celebrated my success and waited for the call. It wasn’t if they were going call me, it was when… I also realized that there were many factors that they may be considering for entertainment purposes for the reality show that were beyond my control. I went home and waited for the call. My wife, daughter and I had a relaxing evening, and I waited…   and waited…        and waited. I quietly thought, “Are they calling the best first or last?      How could they pass me up?      I am perfect for hosting my OWN show… Oprah is going to love me…  Why are they not calling me?     This competition is rigged…”

I was feeling the resonance of all of my past rejections in my life, and while I wanted to feel cool and calm about it, there was a part of me that felt that I will never get where I want to be—to change this world. “How could they do this to me?” There was also the balanced side of me that realized that there are likely many others just as qualified as me, if not more. I had to also remind myself that this was not my first choice to do this reality show, and I really was not enthused with the idea of being on it in the first place, so why did I feel so upset. I felt like it was a blind date, and my not so attractive date left me with the dinner check.

I packed it in at about 11pm and went to bed. It felt like Christmas came and went, and Santa Claus didn’t show. So I woke up the next day with my Hang“OWN”ver, realizing that one more opportunity to reach my goals of changing this world came and went. One more opportunity to have my hopes, dreams, goals and expectations fulfilled fell to the ground like a Ming vase off of a museum shelf. The feeling felt so familiar to all of the other times in my life when I experienced losses and perceived betrayals. When things like this happen, I have learned to stop and look inside of myself to find these times and places where my emotions emanate from and honor the emotions and memories that came with them. I knew it would take some time to adjust to the “loss”, and continued to remind myself that this opportunity to get my show off the ground wasn’t the way I wanted to do it. So why did I feel the loss that I did?

Well, what I realized was that my Hang”OWN”ver wasn’t that I truly felt badly about feeling rejected by the show. The experience dredged up the emotional resonance of past rejections that I suppressed and did not want to feel. With that realization and my acceptance of my journey, I had rebounded by Sunday night, and I resolved myself to continue to work toward my goals that I had set. The gift of this experience was that it helped me to renew my commitment to myself, my wife and my daughter, appreciate my practice with my clients who have taught me so much, and reinforce my goal to continue to work toward my show. It is me who chooses how long I stay down and when I choose to get up.

If there is one thing that I have had to learn is that life is what happens when you are making plans. I will refer you a blog I wrote last year, Reach for the Stars and Land on Uranus. I look forward to what the Universe has in store for me. And to all of you who made it to the next rounds in the Oprah Winfrey Network’s Your OWN Show, I wish you all the best. To all of you who put yourself into the process and didn’t make it, I wish you all abundance, and hope your Hang”OWN”ver doesn’t last too long. As Casey Kasem says, “Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars.”

BTW, Oprah, call me…

Respectfully,

Dr. E…

I am going to take a side step before we continue on with the Media Machine. I would like to give you an assignment.

Did you ever take a moment to think about how you learned to speak a language? Did you just wake up one day and start talking? No. Over time you were exposed to the language. You initially had no idea what people were saying, but as you grew older, you understood more and more and tried to speak. Your brain continued to develop and you understood more and more and learned to speak better and better.

The next issue is where in the country you grew up. Different places in any region have different slang terms, accents, vernaculars, and depending on where you grew up, you believe that you have no accent and the terms you grew up using are “normal” to you. So, have you had any “bangers and mash” lately? Ask a Brit what that is, if you don’t know.

So, why am I talking about language, when I was talking about sex? Well, we acquire our knowledge and beliefs just like we acquire language. Now, here is what I would like you to do. Take a look around your house and your neighborhood. That includes what’s on your TV shows and commercials for ALL ages, computer emails, websites ads and pop-ups (especially your kids), magazines and newspapers, clothing styles, including words, name brands, phrases on clothing… Also do this for your kids. When you are looking at these items, I want you see if there is anything in the content that is sexual. This does not mean that they showing skin (for example, a show about a medical issue versus a commercial showing a bikini), but is there direct or indirect reference that could be seen as a sexual nature.

Do this for a week, and if you really want to be scientific about this, write down the number of things that you begin to notice and keep a tally. What you might expect is that you may first not notice as much, then may become more aware and notice more and more. I expect that what you notice will be biased by the “language” that you grew up with. Just as with language, sometimes we don’t realize our slang is “slang” until we listen to ourselves and others. Be aware of how much you were accepting of and were just accustomed to the content.

I don’t want to taint your assignment very much, so I won’t say much more. Good luck with your assignment.

Until next time…

Dr. E…

In the last year, I became acquainted with Vanessa Van Petten, a very insightful and ambitious young woman who wrote a book about parenting as a teenager, You’re Grounded, from the teen’s perspective. She didn’t stop there, however. She since has developed a website called www.radicalparenting.com that also involves a number of teen writers to help educate parents on trends with teens and good advice for parents and kids, and she has appeared on various television shows as a youthologist and resource for teen behaviors. When I thought about writing this series, I wanted to team up with someone who could help me to spread this message, and Vanessa was an obvious choice. Below is her post, and her concept is a great addition to this series for anyone to consider. I also included links to additional articles that she has written on the subject following her post with is simultaneously appearing on her site. Without further ado…

Vanessa’s post:

I have been working with the amazing Dr. E… on helping young people respect and cherish their bodies.  Our biggest challenge was figuring out how to spread this message in a relevant, interesting way to kids and teens so that we were not being preachy or missing the mark.

We decided to write a short series of posts on this topic for our parent readers.  Dr. E…’s first article, [here] is an introduction to the Your Body is Not A Disneyland Message:

“Your Body is Not a Disneyland: Throughout time, people have treated their bodies like amusement parks, sometimes letting almost anybody take a ride at any cost to their self-respect. Whether it is in the name of experimentation or being a free spirit, your body is your temple, and how you and others treat it is, in some way, a testament to your feelings, beliefs and attitudes about yourself. The issue of how we treat our bodies doesn’t begin or end with us as adults. This has a trickledown effect to our children. They are always watching and listening. If we don’t begin to see and understand this issue, our children and ourselves will likely continue this self-depleting pattern. Why and how do we develop our attitudes and beliefs about sexuality, and how can we and our children learn to respect our bodies and our souls?”

While thinking about my take on this concept, I remembered a comparison that my health teacher made to me in 5^th grade that has always stuck with me.

“Your body is like a car,” she told me.

“What do you mean Mrs. Brown?” I asked.

“If you knew you had one car for your entire life what would you do when you got it?”

This was an easy question, “I would take really, really good care of it.”

She nodded. “Would you give it the best quality gasoline?”

“Yes, definitely,” I responded.

“Would you wash it, clean it regularly and take it in for check-ups?”

“I would take it in all the time just to check, and I would make sure that people cleaned their feet before they got in.” I responded, reconciling having only one car my whole life and my messy friends.

“I bet you would be careful who you let in it and who you let drive it too?” She sat down.

“Oh my goodness yes.  I would only let people I really, really trust drive it.”

“Have you ever thought that your body is like getting one car for your entire life?”

I had not, but now I was getting the comparison.  Here are the tips that changed how I treat and think about my body. I challenge you to share them with your family:

1. You only get one, so treat it very carefully.

2. Take preventative care.  Make sure to protect the outside and the interior with sunscreen/carwax, vitamins/leather cleaner.

3. Get regular check-ups.

4. Have fun too, but always make sure you are safe.

And the most important one…

5. Only let people you really trust and love get into it.

Dr. E…’s [second and third installment] addresses love head on, from a global, scientific and even historical perspective.  I thought I would add to these angles by bringing an example that many kids understand in real terms.  They would never let someone they did not know or trust drive the only car they get for their entire life.  It is the same thing with loving relationships and with sexual relations.

I hope that you can talk to your kids about treating their body more like a once in a lifetime car, and less like a Disneyland.

Next Installment: The Media Machine

Vanessa Van Petten, youthologist and teen author of the parenting book “You’re Grounded!,” manages RadicalParenting.com, a parenting blog written by 119 teen writers, ages 12-20 to help parents and adults get an honest and open view into the world and mind of youth. Van Petten’s work and blog have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Teen Vogue, CNN, Fox News, Real Housewives of Orange County and much more!  She won the Moms Choice Award in 2009 and her work is read by over 300,000 adults.
http://www.RadicalParenting.com

Additional Articles by Vanessa and her crew:

The Laws of Teen Dating: Tween Inter-Sex life Here I go over some popular sexual terms and trends including sexting and what is inter-sex anyway?

Teen Trend: 7 Reasons Why It’s Cool to Pretend Be Bisexual Yes, this is the new wave.  Everyone is bisexual and a lot of teens are now pretending to be bisexual or gay because it is the ‘cool’ thing to do.

Teaching Teen Girls: 5 Signs A Guy Is Only Interested in Sex A parent’s guide to teach their daughters this very important dating lesson.

Teen Hook Up Culture: Teen Sex and Theme Parties Oh yes, teens having sex and Pimps and Hoes Parties when parents leave town or the second they get to college…some myths and truths.

5 Messy Teen Sex and Relationship Issues You NEED to Talk to Your Kids About There’s more to the “Sex Talk” than just the birds and the bees. What every parent must discuss with their teen.

The Sex Talk: 6 Things Parents Must Know Straight from the mouths of teens, what parents should consider before giving the sex talk.

Many of the teen articles are here: http://www.radicalparenting.com/category/sex/

…And We’re back with The Ultimate High

Both sex and that eros type love discussed in Part 2 have very strong effects on the brain that can feel intoxicating in different ways. There are various ways that researchers can measure the concept of love and sex, but as one can imagine, with the lightning speed that things can happen when it comes to sex, recording and understanding that process can be a little more difficult.

The experience of sex begins long before we may end up in the throes of passion. When sexual desire is activated, the amygdala (where powerful emotions are evoked), hippocampus (where memories are managed) and areas that evoke body-awareness and understanding the motives of others are stimulated. Also stimulated are areas of the Limbic System, which is one of the most primal, emotional parts of our brain. At the same time there can also be stimulation of visual centers (more common in men), self-awareness centers and other areas of the brain that may be stimulated rapidly and then become inactive.

The neurochemical involved in this euphoric process is dopamine. Researchers have stated that the rush of dopamine that occurs at orgasm is similar to the same rush that occurs when people shoot Heroin. That’s a pretty powerful punch. So what keeps us from pursuing the next fix again and again? Well, after we have reached our physical nirvana, the body secretes a chemical called prolactin. This chemical helps us to turn off our desire for sex. The effects of prolactin can influence desire and behavior for days after sex, which can explain some of the “on and off switching” that people experience in sexual relationships.

The perception of being “in love” also effects the Limbic System and dopamine is also a key neurotransmitter. When someone experiences the more primal, lusty side of the eros attraction, all rationality goes out the window, due to the stimulation of the brain and the role that dopamine plays. To our brain this feels like a huge reward. So what that really means is that we will do anything for dopamine (but I won’t do that… Sorry for the Meatloaf reference).

So just what am I saying here? Well, without going into too much detail in this installment, I wanted to make the point that our life experiences are connected to neurochemistry and the influence of our neurochemistry on our behaviors. The experiences of love and sex are strongly influenced by chemical processes in the brain, and those influences are as strong as or stronger than many illegal drugs. The question is how much influence do we have with self-awareness and education over our chemistry? Many researchers would argue that this is the way we were designed and/or evolved? I believe that we have more influence than we would like to think. There is an interaction between our thoughts, emotions and intents and our neurochemistry. If this wasn’t the case, therapy wouldn’t work. So, if people are blaming their neurochemistry or the devil for their actions in the bedroom, I would ask them to think again.

As I have said before, we are highly evolved and have the ability to use our frontal lobe for reasoning and problem solving, while we are prone to make mistakes. Sometimes reasoning is a difficult undertaking, especially when we feel intoxicated by desire or love. But we have choices. Think about tomorrow when you are acting today, and always be willing to talk with someone you trust when seeking advice before you make a mistake that may last a lifetime.

If you are interested in reading more on this topic, I would encourage you to read works by Pat Love, Helen Fisher, Serge Stoleru, whose work was referenced in this installment.

Next installment… Vanessa’s Guest Post

Respectfully,

Dr. E…

Welcome back. In my first installment, I discussed the nature of our relaxed attitudes toward sex. I feel that we are in a precarious position, and our children are in danger of suffering from our lack of self-respect. So let’s pick it up from here. What I always tell people is that even though we may have roots that connect us to the animal world, we also have a brain that functions at a higher level. The gift of our frontal lobe is that we can use our ability to reason to help manage our unavoidable more primal and animalistic tendencies. The goal of this blog series is not to become moralistic and judgmental, it is to challenge people to consider their intentions, values, emotions, attitudes, and choices. I hope you will evaluate yours.

How Do I Love Thee???

Let’s first look at our concept of love. We have one word that describes so many different emotional states, and this lack of attention to detail to this very important concept is a major problem in our culture, IMHO. There is a popular urban legend that says that Eskimos have more than one-hundred words for snow, and while the figure has been grossly exaggerated, the idea is that concepts that are important to a culture will have much more specificity than those that aren’t as important.

So, just how do we “love” things, let me count the ways… You can love your mom, your dad, your kids, your sister, your brother, your friend, your uncle, your aunt, your cousin, your teacher, your boss, your student, your country, your team, your school… You can also love a sunny day, an ice cream cone, the beach, skiing, baseball, football, as well as your pets. Some even say that they love sex.

The question is, even with this short list of things we may say that we love, do we love them the same way? I think not. Yet we use the same word to describe so many states of emotion. Do we have some words that describe different states of love? Yes, but our use of the word love is somewhat careless and leads to a lot of confusion that I firmly believe affects our relationships and attitudes toward intimacy and sex.

It has been said that Sanskrit had 96 words for love and ancient Persian had 80. Greek has three: Agape, Philos, and Eros. I will explain those, because it takes a takes a lot less time to convey the point, and we all know that blog are supposed to be brief . Agape is considered to be a more spiritual love. It is described in the Bible as to how God loves man, and I would describe it as our admiration and connection to people on their journey in life. Philos or philia is a brotherly type of love and overlaps into how parents love their children, how siblings love each other, friends love each other, and even how some people may love their pets. As you can see only three words is already getting a bit sticky. The third type of love is eros, which describes a romantic type of love. It involves the attraction between two people that is sexual and ranges from physical attraction to blind infatuation.

Well, what happens when we only have one word to describe so many states? It leads to emotional confusion and a great deal of discomfort. Let’s say that a girl loves a boy in a philos way, but the boy feels eros? They both love each other, but the boy is feel that he wants to take the relationship to the next level, while the girl is enjoying the closeness with the boy. She may then feel pressured by him to take the relationship where he wants to go or fear losing him and the love she feels from him. They both “love” each other don’t they? But does it mean the same thing, and are either of them ready for sex?

Age Is A Relative Term

What I try to teach people, as young as twelve years old through adulthood, is that in order for any intimate long-term relationship to survive, both people have to feel all three components as the relationship develops and grows. Too many times, people in our culture believe that feeling that eros attraction, which is often as strong as a mind-altering high, is enough to take a relationship to the next level. Eros will always wear off, because that is, in part, a neurophysiological experience (I will explain more about that later). The problem is that when the eros wears off, what are the two people left with? Too many times they are left with nothing, and the relationship dies. What happens when either person wakes up and one finds themselves pregnant or they find themselves married?

Developing a deep friendship (philos) and admiring the person (agape) that you are in a relationship are crucial to a successful relationship. It is easy to open ourselves up to our more primal urges and let emotion take over only to find ourselves in the walk of shame the next morning, but I feel that we were born with the ability to reason beyond our more primal self and learn to respect ourselves and those we relate to. We owe that to ourselves.

In my next installment, we will discuss “The Ultimate High…”

Respectfully,

Dr. E…

You don’t have to look too far today in our society to see that sex has overtaken many aspects of our culture. It is on the television, on the covers of many magazines, in almost every corner of the internet, and our children seem to be immersed in innuendo and direct sexual content.

I would not call myself old-fashioned, nor would those who know me, but I feel that our culture’s attitudes and behaviors about sex are out of control, and we seem to be more and more desensitized the more we are exposed to this. I will say that I believe that human body is a work of art and should be appreciated. I am not in favor censorship. I am in favor of good taste and mutually respectful behavior that models and emulates a respect for ourselves, each other and our bodies.

Many of you may have heard the song Your Body Is A Wonderland by John Mayer, which I am sure has inspired many a couple to be moved to an amorous exchange, to put it lightly. However, in our culture I feel very concerned by the trends that we are seeing with our teens and young adults. What I feel that I have observed is that too many people, young and old, are treating their bodies like amusement parks, letting almost anyone take a ride who in interested. What I feel that we are losing is our self-respect, blurring our boudaries and don’t understand what love and intimacy truly is.

We are humans that seek pleasure, and many a medical scientist and/or fan of Sigmund Freud would state that seeking pleasure is part of our hard wiring. We can look back to our roots as animals and find neurochemical reasons why we would seek pleasure. I also look at us from an intelligent design view and can see why sex would be made to feel pleasurable.

In future installments of this series, I will discuss our concept of love, our blurred boundaries and societal issues, as well as a few other tidbits. I hope you will become a part of this discussion as I continue this series.

Respectfully,

Dr. E…