Monday 3-16
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[00:00:00] You love your partner. You wanna feel connected, but when the moment comes, your body just closes. And instead of feeling desire, you feel guilt. Today I wanna offer you something different. Not a technique, not a tip. A permission slip. A permission slip that says your body is not broken. It is brilliant.
And today we're gonna learn why.
Welcome back to the Regulated Life. I'm Erica, and this is the space where we take the most complicated thing you've ever felt and we break it down into something your nervous system can actually use. This week we're going deep into a topic that I think is one of the most under talked conversations, sitting at the intersection of leadership, wellness, and relationships.
We're talking about stress, the [00:01:00] body's natural break system, and why intimacy, emotional, and physical becomes nearly impossible when that break is engaged. Before we get into the science, I wanna name something. If you've ever ended a long hard day and thought I should want this, what's wrong with me? I need you to hear this.
Nothing is wrong with you. What you're experiencing has a name, it has a mechanism, and once you understand it, I promise the guilt starts to lift. So let's get into it.
I wanna introduce you to a framework called the Dual Control Model developed by researchers, Emily Nagoski, who you may know from come as you are, and originally based on work by Bancroft and Jansen. Here's a simple version. Your sexual response system [00:02:00] has two parts, an accelerator and a break.
The accelerator sometimes called the SES or Sex excitation system and scanning the environment constantly for things that are safe, inviting and pleasurable. A meaningful glance, a familiar scent. Feeling seen, feeling relaxed. These things press the gas.
The brake. The sexual inhibition system is doing the opposite. It's scanning for threat, and threat Doesn't have to look like danger. Threat looks like a deadline, a notification, an unread email, a mental to-do list that's still running in the background, an unresolved argument. A body that hasn't had enough sleep. And here's the piece that changes everything.
You cannot push the accelerator hard enough to overcome a fully engaged brake.
This [00:03:00] is not a metaphor. This is neuroscience. When cortisol, your primary stress hormone is elevated, it actively suppresses the hormones and neurochemicals responsible for arousal and connection.
It reroutes blood flow. It keeps your prefrontal cortex online and hypervigilant. Your brain is still in the spreadsheet. Your body hasn't gotten a memo that the workday is over. So when you're lying in bed next to someone you genuinely love and care about, and your body just feels... closed, it's not a reflection of your desire.
It's your nervous system doing exactly what it was designed to do. It is keeping you safe from what it still believes is a act of threat. And here's the thing about high achievers in particular. You spent years, years training your nervous system to stay alert, [00:04:00] to catch problems early, to push through discomfort, to armor up.
Those are real skills. They built your career. But that same nervous system doesn't know how to clock out. And so it shows up in your bed with the same vigilance it brings to the boardroom. That's not failure. That's a system doing exactly what it was trained to do. Let's talk about something that doesn't get nearly enough airtime, the mental load.
The mental load is the invisible cognitive labor of managing life. The mental checklist that never fully clears. Did I respond to that email? Is the kids' permission slip signed? What's for dinner? Did I follow up on that project? Did I say the right thing at that meeting?
Research on decision fatigue. Pioneered by social psychologist Roy Balmeister and [00:05:00] expanded by many others, shows us that the brain has a finite amount of decision making energy.
Every choice you make throughout the day draws from the same well. By the time the evening comes. Many high performing people are not lazy or disinterested. They're genuinely depleted. And when the brain is depleted, it defaults to the most automatic, low energy responses possible and initiating intimacy, which requires vulnerability, presence, sensory awareness and emotional openness is anything but automatic for someone running on empty.
This is where I wanna introduce a concept I call internal consent. We talk a lot in this space about consent as something we extend to others, and that is critical. But there's a prior layer, the consent we extend to [00:06:00] ourselves. Internal consent is the practice of listening to your own body's yes and no. Not the yes or no. You think you should feel not the yes or no, that would make your partner happy, not the yes or no that avoids conflict. The actual physiological honest signal your body is sending. When your nervous system is in a stress state. Your body is giving you a quiet no. Not a forever, no. Not a I don't love you, no. A not yet, I need to calm down first, no. Honoring that, no. Giving yourself permission to feel exactly where you are is not rejection.
It's a radical self respect. And it is, I would argue, the most intimate thing you can do. Because when you stop forcing a yes, your body doesn't have, and you start honoring the no with [00:07:00] curiosity instead of shame, you create the conditions for a genuine yes to emerge. That's the foundation of authentic intimacy, not performance, not obligation, but honest physiological truth.
And for those of you listening who are solo, this applies to you in every way.
Internal consent isn't only about a partner, it's about your relationship with your own body, your own pleasure, your own capacity for rest and sensation, solo or partner. This work is yours. So what do we actually do about this?
I wanna offer you what I call the transition ritual.
A bridge between the version of you that spent the day in employee mode, parent mode, manager mode, and the version of you who gets to be a human being again.
The premise is [00:08:00] simple. You cannot go from a nine hour sympathetic activation directly into a parasympathetic state of intimacy without a bridge.
It's like driving at 80 miles an hour and expecting to stop on a dime. You need a transition lane.
Okay. Step one, the brain dump.
Before you attempt to connect with your partner or with yourself, spend five minutes doing a brain dump. Get everything that's still running in the background outta your head and onto paper. Not a journal entry, not a reflection, just a data purge. Every lingering task, worry, to do, write it down. You are literally clearing the cache of your prefrontal cortex so we can stop monitoring for threats and begin receiving pleasure.
Step two is the physical transition. [00:09:00] This is a somatic marker, a physical act that signals to your nervous system that a context shift has occurred. For some people, it's changing out of work clothes intentionally and slowly. For others, it's washing their hands and imagining the stress of the day, washing away with the water. For others, it's a specific scent. A diffuser, a candle, a lotion that the body has learned to associate with safety and home.
The key here is intentionality. You are not just changing clothes. You are releasing a role You wanna armor today, now you're taking it off, and that is a conscious act.
Step three is the body check-in.
After your brain dump and your physical transition, pause, place a hand on your chest or your belly [00:10:00] and take three slow deep breaths, longer exhale than an inhale. And simply ask, where am I right now? Not where you think you should be, not where you wanna be. Where are you actually? If the answer is still tense, that's your starting point, not a failure, a starting point.
If the answer is a little softer, that's your green light to keep going. The goal isn't to manufacture desire. The goal is to remove the obstacle to it.
This week's challenge is simple, and I want you to do it tonight or tomorrow, whenever your next hard day ends.
Identify one break that has nothing to do with your partner. The laundry pile, the unfinished project, the conversation you're still having in your head from 2:00 PM [00:11:00] find it and name it out loud.
Not to fix it. Not to solve it, just to say, I see you. You are not welcome in this next hour of my life. That naming is a nervous system act. It takes a threat out of the background and puts it somewhere in your brain, puts it somewhere your brain can file it.
If this episode landed for you, share it with someone who needs to hear that their body is not broken. And if you're ready to go deeper to work on your actual nervous system patterns, not just surface symptoms. The Stop the Spiral Workshop is a 60 minute deep dive designed to help you identify and interrupt the stress cycles keeping you locked in.
The link is in the show notes. Until next time, stay regulated, stay curious, and be gentle with yourself. [00:12:00] You are not behind. You're exactly where your nervous system has been allowed to be.
