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Most people think that desire disappears because of boredom, low confidence, or lack of chemistry. That explanation is comforting and wrong. Desire doesn't disappear. It goes offline when the nervous system decides it's no longer safe to be spontaneous. This activates the arousal inhibition response, what I call air in the brain. This is the core mistake modern high functioning people make. This episode is brought to you by my Harper Collins published book, Mind over Explicit Matter. Learn how artificial stimulation miswires your brain and what you can do to rewire it back to purpose, intimacy and connection. Go to drtrishleigh.com backslash book. I'm Dr. Trishley. Welcome back for another episode of the podcast. Today we're going to talk about why arousal shuts down when you want to perform and what you can do to make sure it never happens again. So let's dive into what's hijacking your brain, how it creates a miswire, and of course, what you can do to rewire your brain so you can enjoy healthy intimacy in the real world. Again. Let's go. Okay. So if you go to perform and you can't, your desire has become performance protected. It's the state where attraction exists. Desire's possible connection is even wanted, maybe desperately, but your nervous system keeps it locked away. Now why does this lockdown happen? It happens because evaluation, either by yourself, from yourself, or from your partner, or a conditioned response activates air in the brain. Not emotionally risky, but it's neurophysiologically risky. Air in the brain is the way that your brain says this moment isn't safe enough to emerge. Now let's talk about what causes this. In today's day and age of constant notifications of fomo, of screen based dopamine hits and comparisons, your brain has a background process always running. And this is what it's saying, am I safe here? When the answer is yes, your ventral vagal pathways open up in our online. This is when you can feel open and it becomes possible to connect with another person. This is when curiosity and attraction can emerge. But when your brain doesn't feel safe and when the answer is no, even though you might not hear it, the system shifts into surveillance mode and you begin to self monitor. That goes up, it increases. Air in the brain activates, that's arousal inhibition response, which means you cannot become aroused even if you want to. And you know what happens then? Desire shuts down automatically. Neuroscience calls this ventral vagal suppression. Air is the functional expression of that state. So I don't want to say it in the way of pathologizing and definitely not using trauma language. This is a protective mechanism in the brain. It was trained to do this. Now, where did this trap start for high functioning people? Here's the real deal. The more capable that you are, the easier it is to mistake control for safety. Trust me, I know how that goes. High performers respond to threat by doing this very thing. Are you ready for it? Trying harder. Then they manage themselves more trying to get more control over a situation. They try to optimize behavior. In the trying, they are actually creating more air in the brain. It leaves you feeling vigilant, hypervigilant, always on red alert. But the vigilance feels like threat to the nervous system. So what happens is your brain does the one thing that it has been trained to do to protect you. It activates air in the brain and it suppresses arousal when spontaneity is there. This is why high performers often succeed seed everywhere, except when it comes to desire. Now let's talk about the culture that makes for this to happen. Dating apps didn't just change how we meet. They changed the state that we meet in. Hear this. Profiles, swipes, photos, metrics, all of these things make you do one thing, evaluate. Then one thing happens to you. You're constantly evaluated. You're watching yourself be watched. That state is not neutral to the nervous system. That's surveillance. And under surveillance, the nervous system does not open up. It doesn't feel safe. It shuts down. It inhibits air stays online. Arousal, inhibition. Response arousal shuts down. Marshall McLuhan famously said this. The medium is the message. In other words, the structure of a system shapes the nervous system state within it. So when you're in dating apps, these are not just connection tools. These are in fact, evaluation environments. And evaluation reliably activates air in the brain, which means arousal shuts down. Now, we would be remiss if we didn't layer social media on top of this. Let's talk about likes, views, comments, silence, even rest, is now visible. As Byung Chul Han writes in the burnout Society, paraphrased, When everything becomes performance, exhaustion replaces freedom. That exhaustion isn't just mental. Even though you feel it there, it's neurological. Air becomes chronic. When air becomes chronic, your baseline arousal state shuts down. Exhaustion and lack of motivation persist. Now, here's the real cost, the one that matters most to me. Identity fragmentation. It's subtle and it's so dangerous. The brain doesn't just respond to pressure. It learns from it. Over time, an identity forms. I am desirable Only if I perform does that sound familiar. That identity works for status. It works for productivity. But unfortunately, it keeps air online. Because now even intimacy feels like a test. If I had a dollar for every time I suggested to one of my clients that it's time to start enjoying desire instead of performing. Esther Pearl puts it simply this way. Desire needs space. And space is the first thing evaluation removes air, closes the space. Here's the part that most people miss. The opposite of performance isn't passivity. It's availability. A regulated nervous system isn't lazy. It's available. It's available for connection. It's available for curiosity, for affection, for attachment, for good old fashioned play. That's what I love about my family. They know how to play hard, even though we work hard. That's how your true state can emerge. This isn't about being emotional. It's about standing down from the vigilance in your brain, in your life. So air can deactivate and your true self can show up again and enjoy your life. Rewiring doesn't mean fixing yourself. What it means is removing the false threat. The brain is plastic. It's neuroplastic. Patterns that were learned under pressure can be unlearned under a different environment. Say safety. But safety isn't an idea. It's an actual state change. Specifically, air standing down. Okay, so let's talk about your brain hack strategy for today. These strategies work. They will move you forward. So here's what we want you to start with. One interaction per day. No outcome, no agenda, no performance. Not to get closer to goal achievement. Not to fix anything. Just to let your nervous system finally register safety and being instead of doing. Think of it this way. Nothing is being asked of me right now. That's not small. That is neurobiological permission. That's how air in the brain loses its grip. That's how arousal inhibition response can turn itself off and arousal can come back online. Okay, so have you ever wondered what it really feels like to be regulated? Regulation doesn't feel exciting. I know when I first started feeling regulated, I was kind of, you know, I guess bewildered. Because it feels more like steadiness and stability. You feel available. You don't have to force things. They come to you. Your body settles, breathing is slower, muscle tension falls away. Your attention widens and deepens. You're no longer chasing connection. It becomes available and you become available for it. That, my friend, is when desire returns. Not because you forced it to, not even because you wanted it to, but because air in the brain is no longer blocking it from you. Okay, so why are some people still stuck? Some nervous systems have been trained under pressure for decades. High stress, high stakes, high self monitoring. In those cases, insight in understanding this is not enough. You can totally understand how this works and not be able to turn air off yourself using your distorted mind and body behaviors. So mindset doesn't move the needle. You don't need more understanding. You need state level precision. You need regulation in the brain. That's why I always tell everybody you must regulate first. Then the changes happen. And of course, this is where brain mapping with me fits in. It's not therapy. It is a measurement. It's many measurements of how your brain is performing. You can see with your own eyes whether your brain can downshift. You can see where air is staying online, consistently blocking your arousal. You can see whether ventral vagal safety rhythms are accessible or not. There's no guessing, there's no moralizing. Just data that leads you in the direction of figuring arousal dysfunction out. And here's what I want you to understand. Desire isn't something you generate. It's something you stop blocking. And the thing that blocks it the most in modern life, take one guess, Performance under surveillance. So think about when are you performing and being evaluated? Because when air stands down, attraction comes back online. And that is what I want for you. That is included in the life that you want and you deserve. So when the nervous system stands down, life and desire returns. Desire isn't lost in modern life. It's just waiting for safety. Now remember, control your brain or it'll control you. I'll see you next time.