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Preshies don’t mess around
Here’s the latest episode: The Sex Episode.
There are plenty of places, especially online, where you can find material intended for sexual arousal. Not sure you’ve heard about that, kind of the internet’s strength, really. That’s not what our listeners were looking for. Our listeners, over in the Preshies group on Facebook, began a conversation last summer about the issue of how to understand what depression does to one’s sex life and what to do about it.
Say you have a couple. Person A does not struggle with depression and Person B does. The couple is comfortable around each other and getting intimate seems like a good idea. Person A is like, okay, let’s do this, I want this. Person B WANTS to want this but just can’t get there. Can’t get their mind and often their body to the right place where such a thing is possible.
Here at Depresh Mode, we decided to approach the topic with two guests. A doctor and a therapist. We needed a doctor to explain how the average brain and body approach sex and then how that works for someone dealing with depression, anxiety, traumatic stress, or other common mental health issues. I’m really interested in how the actual chemicals work. In our episode, Dr. Cindy Meston walks us through how serotonin and dopamine operate for someone with depression and how that affects sexual performance. She talks about the benefits of having even a bland sexual encounter, how the newer antidepressants are a lot more particular about chemical responses, and the very significant power of exercising together.
Renee Segal is a marriage and family therapist in the Twin Cities. I talked to her about what clients say when they come in and how she sets about helping them. She says intimate talk is really key for couples, not like sexy talk but genuine honest conversations about emotional life. Make it vulnerable. That helps them reconnect.
Cindy wrote a book called “Why Women Have Sex” and there’s a video on YouTube that’s similar and has the title “Why Women Have Sex with Dr. Cindy Meston”, which I think is some unfortunate title phrasing.
Thanks, Washington Post, we had no idea
I’m sorry. It’s good to write about mental health and they were just reporting the results of a study. But. Really with this headline?
People who survive multiple disasters have worse mental health
But I guess this isn’t obvious to everyone:
“We discovered the reverse of the adage ‘what does not kill you makes you stronger,’ ” said the study’s lead author Garett Sansom, research assistant professor in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the School of Public Health, in a news release.
I think of the line from “Cruelty to Animals” by Pernice Brothers:
She won't mind if the place we stand is marked by ash
She believes what doesn't kill her only takes more time to kill her
It’s easy to sit back and judge people. I guess that’s why I like doing it so much.
Politics is making us crazy
or
Thanks, New York Times
Why am I so snarky about the big establishment papers today?
I guess because they’re reporting things that have seemed completely obvious to me for years.
Michelle Goldberg writes in the NYT about new research indicating that indicates the current political climate is wrecking us.
Around 40 percent of Americans, he found, “consistently identify politics as a significant source of stress in their lives.” Shockingly, about 5 percent have considered suicide in response to political developments. Smith told me he was skeptical of that figure when he first calculated it, and still isn’t wholly sure it isn’t a statistical fluke, but it’s remained fairly consistent in three surveys. (After publishing results from the first survey a few years ago, he said, he got a call from someone who worked at a suicide hotline who reported experiencing an uptick in calls after the 2016 election.)
“Shockingly”?
Are you shocked? I’m not. In fact, that number seems low.
Oddly Satisfying Things
One of my favorite subreddits is called Oddly Satisfying. It’s full of mostly videos, short ones, where things happen that just make you feel the world is - or could be - a little more tidy.
I’m having a hard time embedding the videos here but please enjoy:
and their top entry, Reloading Random Objects
Speaking of odd, and satisfying
They Might Be Giants put together a song using Paul Stanley (of Kiss) stage banter. The fan art video is byooooootiful.
There is only one city in America.