By Jamie Azar, Sex, Relationship, and Intimacy Coach
Not feeling especially sexy, turned on, desirable, or interested in intimacy or sex?
You are not alone.
And it makes sense.
Political unrest, violence, and widespread attacks on human rights are creating an atmosphere of unsafety, hypervigilance, mistrust, fear, rage, grief, and deep exhaustion. Our nervous systems are under siege. Many of us are living in persistent dysregulation, moving between hypo and hyperarousal, reactivity, tension, and stress, all while carrying the additional burden of surviving under the relentless pressures of capitalism.
Stress, fear, rage, and grief disrupt the brain’s pathways to pleasure. Under chronic stress, anhedonia, the diminished capacity to experience pleasure, can emerge. This often shows up as low mood, lack of motivation, emotional numbness, and fatigue. The neural pathways associated with threat become hypersensitive, overwhelming the prefrontal cortex and weakening our ability to soothe, regulate, or make sense of intense emotions.
Anhedonia can flatten our emotional world, leaving us feeling hollow, detached, or cut off from joy. We become stuck in the brain’s “emotional basement,” trapped in activated defense systems, out of balance and disconnected from pleasure, play, and desire.
I am not here to tell you to have more sex. I am here to say that it is okay if you do not feel desire, if pleasure feels distant, or if intimacy feels complicated right now. Many of us are so consumed with managing anxiety, sadness, and grief that there is little room left for erotic energy. When we are in fear, our bodies cannot easily access pleasure or joy, even though those are precisely what we need most.
Sex and intimacy may look different for you, or in your relationships, during this time, and that is okay.
Right now, intimacy might look like
prioritizing rest and care
sharing cuddles or moments of safety and comfort with a partner(s) or pet
processing feelings and holding space for one another
committing to tenderness, play, and connection in small moments
taking intentional breaks from scrolling, media, and news a few nights a week
sharing meals with others
taking a slow walk outside
cooking a nourishing meal
deliberately slowing down
I am not suggesting that we tune out the world or retreat into ignorance. At the same time, we can give ourselves permission to honor exactly what we need. We do not need to add more pressure by forcing pleasure, performing intimacy, or conforming to unrealistic expectations. Pleasure can take many forms right now, through art, music, friendship, journaling, intentional movement, cooking or baking, community organizing, reading, or simply being outdoors.
Neurobiologically, both giving and receiving care activate our internal opioid system, the brain’s natural pain relief and pleasure mechanisms that also surge during childbirth, sex, and deeply connected conversations. While oxytocin is often described as the love or cuddle hormone, research suggests it functions more as an anti-anxiety regulator, helping us feel safer in connection. Caring touch, playful intimacy, eye to eye contact, and embodied connection can unlock dopamine and oxytocin, supporting regulation even amid fear and pain.
Ultimately, our affiliative emotions, especially care and play, are powerful pathways back to pleasure. Play is essential to a healthy pleasure system and can help reignite our joy chemistry. Reversing anhedonia depends on reconnecting the brain and body, allowing ourselves to play without purpose, productivity, or outcome. This might mean laughing with a friend, exploring outdoors, trying something new, or returning to a beloved hobby. Being fully present in the moment and engaging creativity can be profoundly healing.
This is not a call to simply regulate your nervous system, nor an invitation to ignore the world and go meditate. It is a gentle reminder that alongside activism, political engagement, and community responsibility, care, play, and pleasure are vital antidotes to grief, panic, and rage. They are not luxuries. They are essential tools for resilience and liberation, especially for Black, Brown, and Indigenous people whose bodies bear the brunt of systemic violence.
In tending to joy, connection, and tenderness, we reclaim our humanity in a world that too often tries to steal it.
Jamie Azar is former graduate of the Pleasure Psychology and Sexology Certification program, a sex, relationship, and intimacy coach, educator, writer, and mindfulness practitioner based in South Carolina. She offers 1-1 coaching with singles, couples, throuples + to co-create a safe, sex-positive, transformative, liberating, and empowering space that fosters personal and relational growth. She specializes in dismantling limiting beliefs, deconstructing, and destigmatizing harmful narrative constructs, to help clients reframe and redefine their understandings of selfhood, sex, sexuality, and relationships. To work with Jamie go here!