Sex Addiction and the Nervous System, Part 2: Fight-or-Flight
Sex Addiction and the Nervous System, Part 2: Fight-or-Flight
The three states of your nervous system — ventral vagal, fight-or-flight and dorsal vagal — shape the feeling of your life. Ventral vagal, covered in the previous post, is the bodily state of calm. I call it the “living room” of the nervous system because you feel safe, social and connected.
This article covers the second state, known as fight-or-flight, a state of dysregulation in the body, and how it influences a sexual addiction. Let’s look at what fight-or-flight is.
Fight-or-flight: nuts and bolts
Master therapist Larry Heller writes in his book Healing Developmental Trauma this about fight-or-flight: “Essentially, the goal of the fight-flight response is to prepare us to defend ourselves in a situation of threat or to run away if we cannot defend ourselves.”
Fight-or-flight is a “place” our nervous system takes us to handle harm coming our way. Ideally, after the harm has been eliminated our bodies begin to relax again, we recover, and fall back into present moment awareness and connection.
Let’s take a look at what happens in fight-or-flight.
What happens: brain, body, mind
A cascade of processes gets set in motion that affect the whole person — mind, body, brain — when fight-or-flight is triggered. See if any of these resonate with you and your experience.
Shutting down the brain
In fight-or-flight, your body needs to channel its available energy to your muscles and limbs, to prepare you for fighting or running from a perceived threat, so it cuts power to things like memory, creativity, and planning. Energy-hogging brain functions get abandoned until the threat has been neutralized.
Powering up the body
There is a surge of power to your body. Your heart pounds faster and your body heats up like a lightbulb. Sometimes within seconds. An impulse to fight or run rises within you, and you find yourself fidgety, often brimming with energy, and needing to move.
It’s the mind too
In fight-or-flight, your thoughts are fighty as well. This is because your mind and body are intimately connected. Though fight-or-flight is a physiological state — something happening in the body — the life of your mind is affected too. In fact, there’s a saying that goes: “the story follows the state,” meaning the story in your head will follow the state your body is in. Read that last part again.
Basically, when your body is in fight-or-flight, so is your mind. The story in your head will be oppositional. Your thoughts will be heated. You will see others as “getting you” and you’ll see yourself as a “victim.”
How do you get up there?
We should all probably take inventory on what triggers our fight-or-flight response. It could be one major stressor or several stacked on top of each other.
Stress: Your kid’s ongoing difficult behavior, behind in work, marital strife.
Rumination: Obsessing about the past, worrying about the future, imagining things that could, but probably won’t, go wrong.
Busyness: Jam-packed schedules, constant hustling, long days.
Lack of self-care: Processed foods and saying “yes” when you don’t mean it.
Sleep deprivation: Sleep is crucial for mental health and daily functioning. Being sleep deprived can make you more vulnerable to nervous system dysregulation.
Trauma response: Trauma can trigger a fight-or-flight response fast.
External signs
There may also be external warning signs, if you slow down enough, that you are in or approaching fight-or-flight dysregulation. These could be biting your nails, pulling at your beard, heavy sighing, inability to sit still, pacing, irritability, anger, and a short fuse.
Fight-or-flight & sex addiction
One important way the fight-or-flight response intersects a sex addiction boils down to this: cravings. Being in fight-or-flight, for sex-addicted men, can lead to cravings for their preferred addictive behavior (sexting, porn, masturbation, etc.).
For many of these guys sex became a way of soothing the nervous system and coming out of elevated dysregulation. Sex became relief. They learned that “acting out” could calm the body and even lull them to sleep.
Upping awareness
The man in recovery from sex addiction should become aware not just of his cravings, but of the movements and patterns of his unique nervous system. If he discovers that being in fight-or-flight has been problematic for his addictive behavior in the past, he will want to become increasing conscious of what triggers that response.
Related: Try my Nervous System Reflection to start increasing your self awareness.
Get me outta here! (Getting back to ventral vagal)
After awareness has increased, he can better discover the things that regulate him (that aren’t sex), the things that work to bring him down and out of fight-or-flight effectively. Here are some ideas to get you started.
“Honor the energy:” In fight-or-flight, the energy in the body is up, sometimes very up. Honoring the energy might mean going for a run or brisk walk around the neighborhood, or really any kind of movement.
Breathe: Slowing down the breath is like putting the brakes on fight-or-flight. Deep inhales through the nose, pushing out the belly. Then long, controlled exhales through the mouth. Try 2-5 minutes worth.
Self-care: It’s not rocket science; It’s getting quality sleep, eating whole, unprocessed foods — focusing on high-quality animals foods — getting exercise, and kicking toxic thoughts to the curb.
Conclusion
Fight-or-flight is the first stage of nervous system activation, prepping you to handle dangerous situations. Men with sex addiction often find themselves more tempted when their fight-or-flight response is skyrocketing. Becoming more aware and learning new ways of regulating your nervous system dysregulation can be a powerful step in your recovery journey.
Read: Sex Addiction and the Nervous System, Part 3: Dorsal Vagal