Reclaiming Female Sexual Desire | Pamela Joy | TEDxPaloAlto

hi I'm Pam Costa and I struggle with that zyre now that sounded a little like to start to an a a meeting and in many respects it is because I struggle with sexual desire and I'm guessing many of you do as well now I'm a researcher so I'm gonna make the hypothesis that if I share about my experiences with you that you will feel less alone in your experiences and maybe empowered to do something about them now might be helpful to back up again because believe it or not I wasn't always this comfortable talking about sex in a room full of strangers I grew up in the Midwest this is my family I was nailing the shy and awkward part of childhood as is evident by the photo of me and the top right-hand corner at glasses and a bow on my head in a very uncharacteristic move for myself when I went off to college I flirted with this guy and we started dating my hormones and I were so excited about how things were going with this guy that despite an abstinence pledge I had taken in church about six months into our relationship I had sex for the first time it was great we eventually married moved to California and started our careers in tech it was my own personal fairy tale it was the years went by however I started to notice a trend about every 6 to 12 months my husband would tap me on the shoulder and say We Need to Talk we would sit down and he would look at me with a sense of rejection on his face and say I want more sex I would look back with this sense of guilt on my face and say I don't and I don't know why but we're engineers so we'd put our thinking caps on and we come up with solutions maybe you're familiar with some of these there was the I know let's go on vacation solution there was that it's probably hormonal I'll just change birth control solution and of course the ever popular weekly date night solution we were good engineers and all of these solutions worked for a little while fast forward 15 years and this was my life pretty stereotypical scene of married with kids right I was a busy working professional and sex was at the very bottom of my to-do list so the next time my husband came to me and said we need to talk something felt different it felt more serious this time like our fairy tale was crumbling I decided to get myself checked out medically and went to my gynecologist and explained to her that I'm really struggling with sexual desire she laughed and responded yes you and every other woman in my practice she really said that you and every other woman hyperbolic may be relieving definitely but then she looked at my chart and said there's nothing wrong with you hormonal II the medical community doesn't really have anything to offer you but then she reached in her drawer and took out the business card of her own personal therapist handing it to me saying this woman helped me maybe she can help you well I ran out to my car and I emailed her and she responded back right away saying I'm sorry I'm fully booked not accepting new clients she gave me about a half a dozen other sex therapists though and I reached out to them and wouldn't you know it fully booked not accepting new clients now the business side of me was like wow the market of people struggling with sex really must be huge but the personal side of me was getting a little frustrated so I got home hopped online with my husband and we found the website of someone who called herself a sex and relationship coach now I don't know about you but I wasn't quite sure what a sex coach did so I called her up and she assured me we keep our clothes on in session and so we booked an appointment a few days later we're sitting in her office starting to explain what's going on and a little ways through the story she paused and asked me the first in a series of very important questions she said what messages did you get about sex as a child now I pause because I never really thought about that before and as I searched back through the archives of my memory I remember this time when I was six years old in a girlfriend's basement and she told me if you put your hands here and wiggle it will feel good oh I tried it and it did actually feel pretty good but as I was recounting that story I realized that was the last positive message I have gotten about sex for a very long time a few years later in the third grade I was at a shopping mall and I looked down the aisle and happened to see this man touching himself well looking back at me the message I got there was that sex was for somebody else's pleasure and it made me feel kind of icky Cass Ward a few years later and you remember that sex education talk you got in the fifth grade well the message I heard there was that sex was dirty and dangerous and that if I did it I'd likely wind up pregnant or with a disease my coach paused me at that point on the story and said wow Pam if those were the messages he received no wonder you don't want to have sex this huge wave of relief washed over me I had been feeling broken like there was something wrong with me but it was beginning to dawn on me that all those princess fairy tale messages that I had gotten since the age of two that ended with a kiss and nothing more we're really damaging how could I suppress the sexual side of myself for so long by receiving all these messages and then just SPECT to turn it back on again my coach sensed it was the perfect time for a lifeline because I was sitting there wondering how is it that any woman anywhere is having a healthy sex life given this culture and she said to me it's okay to stay exactly as you are there's no right way to live a sex life but I'm curious would you like to read with that part of yourself that you've been disconnected with for so long I said yes and over the next several months I learned to connect to my body through focusing on little things throughout my day that bring me physical pleasure for instance like a hot shower a soft sweater the feeling of sunshine on my face I learned how to connect those feelings of pleasure to those feelings of pleasure and in doing so I realized my pathway to desire an arousal looks very different from my husband's it's slower to build but can often reach higher heights well this was really exciting to me I started to wonder what if I shared my story with other women so even though it scared the crap out of me to like even think about talking about this with anybody else I pulled out my phone I messaged a few girlfriends and moments later they were writing me back oh my gosh I'm having the same experience or oh yes but it's my partner who's having that experience and then one of them wrote me and said a very bold statement that changed the collective trajectory of our lives and she said let's get together and talk about this so we did the next Sunday we met in the park we all came wearing yoga clothes because we couldn't tell our partners where we were going no joke that meeting was full of laughter it was full of tears it felt so profound that we decided to get together monthly we kept meeting same Park and we realized no no topic was off-limits first we talked about social messages that we'd heard we talked about the messages we would have liked to have heard instead we talked about masturbation how we learned it whether we do it we talked about fantasy what we fantasize about and if we don't what's holding us back at the end of the year I looked around at least group of women and I was really surprised at what I saw all of their lives had changed many were experiencing better sex and better relationships just from talking about sex with their girlfriends this was fascinating to me I started attending medical and mental health conferences to learn more you know is like a hobby a part-time thing because my day job was that of a data scientist I decided to look at the numbers and I learned that over 40% of women at any one point in time are struggling with some aspect of sexual function I also learned there's new pharmaceutical options on the market that have debatable effectiveness and plenty of side effects of course I learned about sex therapy and sex coaching and then if you had financial means and geographical access to someone who is well trained that was an option to you but I was wondering what is happening with this group of friends who are just sitting around talking about sex I actually got so excited about it that I came home one day to my husband and I said that's it I'm quitting my day job and I'm going back to school to research what effect peer support groups on FEMA have on female sexual health I'm thrilled to be here just a few years later to share with you what happens when hundreds of women aged 25 to sixty-five meet in living rooms across the globe to talk about their experiences of sex overall sexual function increases 20% when you break that down by subcategories desire arousal orgasm the increases range from 16 to 26 26 % distress about sexuality decreases almost 30% and these women didn't meet for a year they met for four weeks these changes are in line with any other medical and mental health intervention on the market and it doesn't take a therapist it doesn't take a facilitator it doesn't take meditate or medication all it takes is women being brave enough to sit down together and talk about sex there's actually only one guideline for the group and that was that we are not allowed to share advice as women really like to share advice but these groups were about sharing experiences the qualitative part of my study showed that when women get together and share their experiences not only do they feel normalized in their own personal experiences but they also feel inspired and empowered to explore more about their own sexuality of course I'm talking to their girlfriends about sex they gain communication skills that translate into being able to speak with their partners about sex but by far the most exciting thing that I found in my research was that the women with children reported being able to talk to their kids about sex for the first time these groups were having a multi-generational impact what started as a personal journey has led me to talk to a growing number of people about my sexual experiences first my gynecologist then my coach my friends research participants and now you I know things are shifting for those that I've talked with which makes me wonder what if thousands or millions had the opportunity to talk to a trusted friend about their sexual experiences what if you reached out to a woman you know and asked her about her experiences particularly those that bring her pleasure and joy thank you [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 1,484,036

Rating: 4.8196406 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, Life, Change, Communication, Feminism, Health, Personal growth, Relationships, Research, Romance, Sex

Id: 0Sn_UhcXZm4

Length: 13min 30sec (810 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 05 2018