If you’re feeling down about your body, it can be difficult to get in the mood or feel sexy. We asked a sex therapist what you can do to stop those insecurities getting in the way of your love life
“When you don’t feel attractive or you don’t feel sexy, that is naturally going to decrease your sex drive,” says Leigh Norén, a sex therapist, podcast host and intimacy coach.
She works with individuals and couples most commonly on low desire, pressure and stress surrounding sex. “There’s not much incentive for you to have sex or for your desire to show up, because sex doesn’t feel comfortable or enjoyable.”
Norén believes there’s a big strain on men to appear self-confident. “We’re always talking about how sexy confidence is and it’s incredibly pressuring,” says Norén. If you feel like this “you’re not alone”.
“Society places unreasonable expectations on our bodies that aren’t real and there’s lots of ways for you to enjoy sex, even if you don’t look the way you want to.”
First up, how can body insecurities affect our sex life?
“If how you feel about your body is very consuming, then it’s going to affect how you feel about having sex – a lot,” explains Norén. “Sometimes there might still be desire, but you become hung up on [conditions like] it always has to be dark, or we always have to have a certain type of sex, or a certain kind of position,” she explains.
“You can of course use quick fixes [like lights off etc]- but the issue with that is that over time you’re not likely to let go of the body, or bodily insecurity,” says Norén. “That works in the moment but not necessarily over time and it can even make it worse and become like a crutch.”
“Sometimes it really is just [the feeling that] ‘I don’t understand how anyone could ever want me, I don’t want me and I don’t feel sexy and so I don’t want to have sex at all’.” Norén says it’s very common for people to carry shame around their body and the way they look.
“We often worry about things in ourselves that someone else hasn’t even noticed or thought about that much.”
So, what can you do to stop it interfering with your sex life?
• Focus on what’s happening around you with your five senses
“Whether it’s just general performance anxiety or body insecurities, we tend to focus on ourselves and our minds,” says Norén. “We’re watching ourselves and judging ourselves.”
Instead, Norén recommends using the five senses grounding technique to help you be more present in the moment that’s happening. Rather than focusing on your own worries, try to focus on what you can smell, taste, hear, see and touch. “What you need to do is get out of your head and into your body.” (More on how to do this below.)
• Redirect your attention to your partner
Focusing on your partner can be a great way to redirect your attention away from these insecurities. Try to move your attention onto their body and what they’re doing, says Norén, who suggests using the aforementioned grounding technique to help with this.
How to use the five senses technique: “Focus on what you can smell: so it could be your partner’s body, it could be their hair, it could be there’s a scent in the room; then what you can taste: your partner’s mouth, the saltiness on the skin; then what you can feel, so if it’s soft touch or hard touch, or the actual physical sensation that you can feel,” suggests Norén.
“Then what you can hear; so it could be your partner’s breath or their moans, or the music, whatever it might be that helps ground you in the moment. Finally, focus on what you can see; so it could be the room if that can help you just bring yourself back into the moment – try to focus on what’s sexy that you can see.”
• Work on how you speak to yourself
“Working on how you speak to yourself or talk to yourself is really helpful,” says Norén, who acknowledges it can be very difficult to kick old thought habits. She suggests using therapy to help you rewire some of those brain patterns. “It’s something that can be quite difficult to do even with therapy,” she admits.
“I think that’s because the way you relate to your body doesn’t usually magically change, so you need to work on that. We’re often really hard on ourselves so it’s about changing that inner monologue – and things like CBT therapy are really good for that,” she says.
• Communicate with your partner
It can be really difficult to discuss our insecurities and body-conscious feelings with a sexual partner. “When you feel shame about your body, it’s really difficult to share that with someone else,” says Norén.
“It’s not just sharing your body with someone else, but talking about the fact that you feel shame can feel so shameful,” she says. “People can try to shun sex before they’ve been asked, or make sure that sex can’t happen so that you don’t have to have the conversation.”
Despite this, Norén stresses that a conversation about how you feel can really improve things. “Communication’s always really important because shame is something that festers in silence, and so talking about it is usually part of how you dismantle it,” she says.
“Sharing this with your partner can be really helpful in terms of that. Bring it up and let them know that it’s difficult for you because then they’ll be able to read you better, understand you when you’re having sex, and if you don’t want sex, they won’t take it personally.”
• You can listen to Leigh Norén’s podcast ‘In Bed With Science: A Sex Podcast’ on streaming platforms now.
