The Libido Lounge: ADHD, Body Image, and Reclaiming Your Sex Drive

Introduction to Women, ADHD, and Sexuality

August McLaughlin: Women in particular are getting diagnosed more often because our brains weren’t studied as much. It wasn’t expected to be a thing for women, and it might present differently. You can’t just push the stop button on thoughts, and they disappear. The more we try to do that, the louder they can be. I think it’s really important to have a little bit of a game plan if that happens to you. I developed a very severe eating disorder. I did talk therapy, met with a dietitian, and there was kind of this day program I was doing, and nothing was really helping very much. But I was sitting in this college classroom, and one day we were talking about sex, which floored me because even though I had had sex and considered myself into sex, I had realized I’d never talked about it, like even with the person I was having it with. Whatever those things are to make it more pleasurable for yourself, I think is totally worth it. Just because you started sex doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it exactly as you were and stay at it. A good partner wants to know how they can make things more pleasurable for you. So I really see ADHD as a totally just unique kind of brain style, and it feels very disordered. The challenges I see often are things like, one big strength and beautiful thing that I find is that people with ADHD tend to, if you’re having the same sex over and over and over again, it’s just not going to be as fun for you.

Sponsor Break: My Libido Doc

Dr. Diane Mueller: Hey everybody, quick break from our episode to talk to you about our sponsor, My Libido Doc. One of the things that we truly believe is that great sex is available to everyone, but we just have to learn how. So head over to our site to get your free copy of our eBook, Five Steps to Mindblowing Orgasms and Romance. Get quick and easy tips to turn your sex life around, rev up your engines, and fall in deeper love and passion with yourself and your partner. So if you just go to mylibidodoc.com, you will find that eBook there for download. Now back to our show.

Welcome to The Libido Lounge

Dr. Diane Mueller: Hi everybody, welcome to another episode of The Libido Lounge. I’m your host, Dr. Diane, board-certified sexologist, libido expert, and I have an amazing guest for you today. We’re talking about body image, how you feel during sex to actually enjoy sex. We’re talking about eating disorders and the relationship to their sex and to your sexuality, as well as things like ADHD, which is just rampant in today’s society, and we’re going to talk about that and how that can impact your ability to be present during sex, to enjoy intimacy with your partner, and so much more. And you know, I think this conversation applies to almost anybody because all these simple things that can happen during sex, such as, I’m sure people can relate to this, right? Where it’s like you turn one way, and your partner touches your thigh or your belly or whatever, and it’s like you know, you can feel yourself sometimes like shrinking back or wanting to pull away or not being comfortable with being touched in that particular part of your body. All of these types of things are actually limiting the capacity to be present with your partner, with yourself, to enjoy intimacy, and so much more. So that’s why I wanted to bring this expert on for you guys today. So everybody, meet August, and welcome to the show, August.

August McLaughlin: Oh, thank you so much for having me. It’s such a pleasure.

Guest Introduction: August McLaughlin’s Story

Dr. Diane Mueller: I know you have your own history with eating disorders, and I know that this is a huge part of what we want to talk about today: how can we have more body confidence, how can we just love our body and all of those parts that we may judge ourselves for, feel shame for? How can we get through all this in order to really deeply enjoy sex? And I think because it’s such a sensitive conversation, it would be really lovely if you would mind sharing your story on your process with this and why you’ve now dedicated so much of your life to helping people with this similar type of scenario.

August McLaughlin: Yeah, so I grew up like a lot of folks, not learning a lot about sex, and I learned some pretty negative things, and I didn’t really realize that it was affecting me. I didn’t even know I had any shame around sexuality. I had had my first boyfriend, and I’d had a sexual relationship with him, and I enjoyed sex. I was traveling after high school; I started traveling in the fashion industry, and I developed a very severe eating disorder. I was living in Paris at the time. I actually collapsed during a morning run, and it was a very scary situation. When I went back to my hometown in Minnesota, I tried all the conventional stuff. I did talk therapy, met with a dietitian, there was kind of this day program I was doing, and nothing was really helping very much. And that’s not to say the treatment wasn’t quality; it’s just that what helped me was so surprising to me, and I saw a lot of it in hindsight, how impactful. But I was sitting in this college classroom, basically taking classes so I’d have something besides treatment to think about, and it was a Psychology of Women course. One day we were talking about sex, which floored me when the teacher announced the topic because even though I had had sex and considered myself into sex, I had realized I’d never talked about it, like even with the person I was having it with. We didn’t really talk about it. And so I felt myself glancing around the room, like, is anyone else feeling this strange disconnect right now? Like, are we supposed to talk about this? And that led to this whole deep-dive introspective journey. I got angry in a really healthy way about the societal things that had stood in the way of me embracing my sexuality, respecting my full body and full self. Like, there was this big missing piece, this big gap, and I started to just dive very deeply into that, like, why didn’t I learn about sex? I literally couldn’t stop talking about sex. It started to kind of frighten some of the shy Minnesotans around me, but it was really empowering for me. And later, I realized that that truly was the day that I stopped wanting to hurt my body. I stopped wanting to starve myself, I stopped wanting to restrict. And it’s not like, poof, I was better, of course. As I’m sure you know, it’s a very complicated illness. I was originally diagnosed with anorexia, then I dealt with a lot of binge eating, and it was probably a 10-year process of fully moving past it. I consider myself fully recovered, but the most impactful things were, for me, I don’t think I would have healed without talking about sex and without deciding to really explore. I really started exploring after that and discovering my body’s capacity for pleasure, and it brought this whole new respect for my body and then, by extension, myself.

Rediscovering Pleasure and Healing Body Image

Dr. Diane Mueller: So this is so important and so interesting. I’m curious from a standpoint of, you know, that turning point, right? That turning point moment where, like, wow, I’m going to make different decisions, I’m not going to hurt myself in these ways. Was it anything, can you think of, like, a specific thing that was said? Was there an aha moment? Was it more just, like, bigger picture, like understanding, like, oh, my body has the capacity for all of these things, and the more we respect our body’s ability for pleasure, it leads to, you know, perhaps more respect in other areas? Or is it something else? I’m just throwing out random ideas here to understand it. Do you have any idea what that turning point really was?

August McLaughlin: Yeah, I think there were multiple turning points. One was the aha, oh my gosh, I haven’t talked about sex, for sure. Another was then this feeling of really, truly letting go during sex, which I don’t think I had done before. There were a couple of times where I just felt myself not thinking about my body or what my partner was thinking of my body. That was huge. And then a very profound moment for me was, years later, I was around 30 years old when I masturbated to orgasm for the first time, and I didn’t think that I could do that. I didn’t think I needed or wanted to do that. I was like, well, if I’m in a relationship, you know. And circumstances just led to this impromptu self-pleasure session, and when I reached orgasm, I burst into tears. It was so powerful, and it actually is what inspired me to start Girl Boner first as a blog series because it showed me that I had been seeing sex as something that was dependent on another person, that my sexuality was not my own, that it was a shared thing or it was a responsive thing. And truly, it’s mine, and that changed everything. It changed the course of my career and, importantly, it changed all of my intimate and, you know, romantic and sexual experiences moving forward.

Dr. Diane Mueller: So then, tell me, because I love the whole concept, right, of pleasure as a gateway for healing, and that’s actually what got me into this work too. And we’ll talk about that, you know, I’m sure on the show when you interview me. Like, one of the intro things for me, just like two seconds, was I was experiencing this really crazy vulvar pain for many, many, many months. Nobody could figure it out. All tests for this were normal, couldn’t sleep, etc., etc. Did my first masturbation session of my life, this was in my early 20s, and pain went away. And I did it again, and the pain went away, and like, did this a few times, and it was like, after months, and then all of a sudden, it was just like, oh my gosh, like, I don’t have pain anymore, like, through self-pleasure. So, you know, kind of a similar, you know, pleasure heals kind of experience for you.

Healing Through Self-Pleasure and Tools for Positive Self-Talk

Dr. Diane Mueller: So I’m curious then for, like, your work, right? Then, like, how, like, if somebody is struggling with, whether it’s a full-blown eating disorder, whether it’s just like body dysmorphia, not feeling comfortable in one’s body, judging oneself after they eat, you know, there’s so many different versions, right, of what healthy eating versus eating disorder looks like. And I think because of our society, so many humans, and probably, you know, more women than men, but I think men too, have a lot of self-judgment on how their bodies look. So where do people, like, in your methodology, with what you’ve seen with pleasure as a supportive tool for that, where do people begin to help start unwinding this and really start to heal their body from this negative self-talk and on and on and on?

August McLaughlin: I love journaling as an entry point because when people are really gripped by self-shame and really intense negative thoughts about their body and their appearance and food and eating and all of that, journaling provides a place, whether you freehand write it, you can do it audio files, there’s so many ways to journal, you can paint your thoughts out, but really expressing what you do feel about your body and about sex and ask yourself what you learned about sex and about appearance, parents, and about your body, and really just, without any self-judgment, just let the words pour onto a page. You can put someone else’s name on it, throw it away later, whatever you need to do to just feel totally private about it. I think that’s a really, really powerful tool because often we’re having thoughts we aren’t even really realizing; they’re so embedded in us. And then start questioning those thoughts. Take one, if you have a thought that really kind of haunts you, like, “Oh, my breasts are too small or too flabby or too saggy or whatever it is,” like, take a thought and really question it and really go through kind of your own self-awareness process with debunking that thought as much as you can. I think that’s really powerful. I think spending time with your own body is so key because, really, if you think about it, when we are being critical of our body, it has so much to do with how we feel other people or our partner, for example, are perceiving it, right? So take them out of the picture and spend time, whether it’s naked or maybe in your skivvies, whatever your comfort level is, spend a few minutes, 5 minutes, 20 minutes, alone, and really start to try to feel a little more comfortable with your body being a body. Like, just let it be a body. I think that’s really powerful. And then, when you’re having sex with a partner or partners, I think it’s really important to let yourself have tools. You don’t have to—I think we can have shame about having shame, you know what I mean? Where it’s like, absolutely, oh my gosh, I believe in, you know, I’m a feminist, I should just love my body the way it is, and I shouldn’t care what other people think. Just toss that stuff out into the garbage, put it in like a brain spam folder because it’s not your fault, and thoughts and feelings just happen. So if you can just put that aside somehow and let yourself use a tool, if it helps you to feel more comfortable by having the lights really dim when you’re having sex, great, start there. Maybe it’s lighting candles; some people like because it’s a little more flattering. Maybe it’s not having sex right after a meal when you feel a little like bloated or gassy. You know, just whatever those things are to make it more pleasurable for yourself, I think is totally worth it.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Yeah, I really like in the beginning part of what you’re saying with journaling. There’s a thing that I think we do as humans, which is believe everything that goes through our head is true. And you know, it’s like, just because we have the thought doesn’t actually mean that it’s true at all. So that journaling, like you’re talking about, around, like, okay, well, what is the thought, and like, disproving it, debunking it, like, is this actually true? Meaning, like, you know, from a truth perspective, like everybody in the world believes this, right? Like, we could say, like, okay, how we’re going to define truth, and there are so many truths that we say are truth that are actually not true at all. It’s just like a random thought that we decide to hold onto there. And what about, so, I understand, you know, from what you’re saying around, okay, let’s take a moment and actually, like, be with our body and, like, just look at it as a body and all of that. What about, like, when somebody is, say, in the middle of being with a partner? So, like, now we’re intimate, we’re in that moment, we’ve done some of the suggestions, we’re not, you know, having sex right after a meal, we’re having sex maybe before, so we feel a little more in our body and comfortable there, we’re doing all these things, but we still get into the bedroom, and our partner touches us in this way, and we feel our body contract or move their hand, or here’s another story that I think people sometimes do, which is, like, okay, so partner touches you here, right? So maybe it’s a belly, right? Partner touches belly, and then partner moves a hand away real fast, and it’s so easy in those moments to be, like, that moment can literally just be, like, your partner just is wanting to touch a different part of your body now, and that’s probably what it is. But I think it’s so easy in those moments then to make up a story and have this thought that it’s, like, oh, they’re moving their hand because it is what I think, like, they did feel my rolls, and they don’t like them or whatever the story may be. So my question is, like, in real-time, how do we stop, like, in the middle of that intimate act, how do we stop in real-time those thoughts from taking over and really beginning to, like, drop deeper into, hey, no, I’m actually present with my body, myself, my partner, the intimacy, on and on and on?

Redirecting Energy During Intimacy

August McLaughlin: That can be so tricky, I totally get that. And it’s hard because you can’t just push the stop button on thoughts, and they disappear. They actually, the more we try to do that, the louder they can be sometimes. So I think it’s really important to have a little bit of a game plan if that happens to you, you know, pretty regularly. I would say one thing is to redirect your energy to a sensation somewhere. So if you are having these thoughts, okay, so I have these thoughts about the hand moving away from my belly, my belly this, my belly that, you go into this big dive, think about something that feels good in your body. It could be your feet feeling the sheets down below, or it could be touching your partner and really focusing on the pleasure of feeling your partner’s face or their pelvic region or their thighs. It’s totally okay to divert the activity, and I think when those thoughts are really gripping, if you’re really struggling, it’s totally okay and sometimes very healing to take a pause and just gently say, “Hey, could we stop for one second? I’m telling myself a story about something about my body. I’m just feeling a little off right now.” And maybe you have a conversation about it, or maybe you do something else. Maybe you play a game, or you put your clothes on and go for a walk or something. You don’t, just because you started sex, doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it exactly as you were and stay at it. But sometimes those conversations, even if they don’t happen during sex, which can be a tough time, I realize, it’s good to put a pin in it and bring it up at some point if it’s with a committed partner because a good partner wants to know how they can make things more pleasurable for you. And wouldn’t you hate it if you were having sex with a partner, and they are sitting there thinking, “Oh my gosh, she just looked at my belly in a certain way, and now I can’t stop thinking about how much she hates my belly.” And you know, I think it can be really good to bring light to those things because it is a very human thing, and when we say it out loud, sometimes it takes the steam out of it.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Yeah, and I think so many times we just, like, either shame ourselves, like we’re talking about, or push it under the rug and not address it, even as later, like you’re talking about, and these things, like, they don’t go away. That’s the thing, it’s like, they don’t go away when we just ignore them and don’t bring them to the surface. So I think it’s really important advice, and I know we could stay on this topic all day, but I want to make sure we have time to talk about the ADHD component of things as well since that’s another area that you specialize in. And, you know, we’re just seeing more and more and more people that have an ADHD diagnosis, which I think there’s a lot of different reasons for, but I am curious about what you’ve seen then in your work as pleasure as a way to help work with ADHD. And to take a step back, maybe let’s start with, how have you seen that ADHD can actually impact sex and intimacy and be something that is maybe preventing people from experiencing the fullness of pleasure?

ADHD’s Impact on Intimacy: Challenges and Benefits

August McLaughlin: Sure, so I really see ADHD as a totally just unique kind of brain style, right? And it feels very disordered, I know from my own experience, in a world or certain environments that are not set up for a brain like yours. So I think it’s important to have the self-awareness because, especially now, I think one reason women in particular are getting diagnosed more often is because our brains weren’t studied as much. It wasn’t expected to be a thing for women, and it might present differently. So I think learning what you can and learning about your ADHD strengths can really help. But from a sex standpoint, I think the brain is so huge in every person’s sexuality, so it’s not like an ADHD person is this anomaly where their brain is totally impacting sex. Everyone’s brain does, right? Just totally in different ways, and we bring strength to the table too. So the challenges I see often are things like having ruminating thoughts that are not just these thoughts that are a little troublesome but, like, a hyperfocus ruminating where it just won’t stop for days, weeks. I mean, it’s very, very severe. That’s one that can keep you from wanting to engage in sex at all if they have to do with your body or they have to do with sexuality. Sometimes it’s that you’re just so scattered, and you’re, like, your brain is going a million different directions, and something else is really distracting you, so it’s very hard to be present. And you feel like you’re supposed to be totally present, which is a myth, by the way. I think you can be semi-present; it’s still a joy. And sometimes it’s the sex that brings us into the present. One big strength and beautiful thing that I find is that people with ADHD tend to often have a very zen-like benefit from sex because sometimes it’s one place where we feel very mindful and present in the now. And it’s very hard for anybody with any kind of brain to think about something that’s stressful or bothersome during orgasm. I mean, it kind of overtakes everything, so it can be so therapeutic, and I think that’s beautiful. I also find that ADHD folks tend to be creative thinkers, very passionate people, and those are huge strengths that you can bring to sexuality. At the same time, you might have to really advocate for that because novelty is exciting for most people in terms of sex, especially in long-term relationships, but if you’re an ADHD person, it’s, I would say, vital to have some way to infuse novelty and exploration because if you’re having the same sex over and over again, it’s just not going to be as fun for you. And I think that can cause disconnect and libido challenges. So just being aware of those things and not feeling like you have to try to be like another style person. Like, bring all of your uniqueness to the bedroom, and that includes your brain, however it functions.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Yeah, I love that so much. I think there’s just so much permission in what you say, and I think sometimes we can listen to, you know, sexologists and podcasts and all the different things we learn, and it’s, like, oh, like, if it doesn’t, it’s not this one way, it’s wrong or any of that. And there’s just so much permission to be, like, you know what, if your mind, it’s about the practice of being present, and your mind wanders, like, just bring it back when you notice it, kind of thing, and allow yourself the permission without the shaming, right?

August McLaughlin: Yes, yes, absolutely. And let your chattery brain chatter. Like, it’s okay if, like, you know how they say with meditation, some people think, oh, you can only meditate if you are completely still and have no thoughts? It’s the same type of thing. There’s actually research around this that you don’t have to have a totally, you know, I think it was called, like, monkey mind. You could have monkey mind and still enjoy your sex, so it’s okay. Bring your busy mind to the sex whenever you want, and if you need to talk something through first and get it off your chest, go for it. But I think that’s a really big thing, is that permission to give yourself and say it’s okay, let those thoughts just party away, and eventually that orgasm will probably take over.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Yeah, I actually studied meditation for a very long time, got certified in a certain form of it, and went pretty deep down. And one of my teachers over the years, like, one of the things that he would say is, like, meditation is not the practice of a still mind. Meditation is recognizing, like, oh, my mind went over there, and now I’m going to practice bringing it back to the moment. So it’s just like with sex; we can apply the same thing, right? It’s not that it’s about being present the entire time, but it’s about having that awareness or that intention around, like, oh, maybe, like, my mind’s over there. When I notice it, I’m just going to bring it back, and then I’m just going to focus on the pleasure and the orgasm in those moments, and nobody’s doing it wrong just because that happens, right? So well said.

August McLaughlin: Yes, want to—well said.

Dr. Diane Mueller: So when thinking about, you know, when thinking about this, like, have you then seen any other benefits? Like, I know, you know, we can say a zillion different things, and actually, I’m going to take a step back because there’s something I want to ask you first, which is, you said something about novelty earlier, and that’s another question or a conversation I have a lot on this podcast. And I am, since that is something you brought up, I am very interested in, like, in working with couples, what are some of the ways that you like to encourage, like, the conversation or the ways to help people that are especially in long-term relationships bring novelty back?

Sharing Fantasies and Creating a Novelty Jar

August McLaughlin: Sure, so a lot of my work is storytelling, right? And I love listening to, reading stories, and I think that that is a really powerful way for folks to get ideas for things. So I interview folks about their most extraordinary sex experiences, and then I create these narrative episodes for my podcast, and then I also have books that are full of stories too. And so I think that one really powerful way is to, whether it’s through podcasts or books, there’s wonderful erotica anthologies. I don’t know if you know Rachel Kramer Bussel, but she has edited a whole bunch of amazing erotica anthologies. Her final one, I think, I think it’s her final one, just released. They have different themes; some of them are kink-themed, some of them are orgasm-themed, and it’s a wonderful way to get a taste for all different kinds of ways that people engage in pleasure. Now, not all of them might be realistic; like, I think she has some, there’s sex with an alien, like, there’s some things that are, like, kind of might feel kind of out there to you. But even still, there’s something so sexy about these fantasies. So you get to learn what your fantasies are. You can maybe trade; maybe you hear a story on a podcast or you read a story in a book, and it really gets you excited or curious. It’s a really fun thing to share with a partner and say, like, “Hey, what do you think of this?” I think it’s a really powerful way to do it. And then what you can do is you could even take, like, let’s say, 30 days, where you, either by yourself or if you have a partner and you want them to engage too, you each jot down these ideas that come to you. They don’t have to be ideas that you totally want to do, just potential things that maybe you haven’t tried or you haven’t tried together. You know, maybe it’s trying a feather wand that you heard about that you brush over the skin. Maybe it’s temperature play with a massage candle. Maybe it’s a certain type of role play. Maybe it’s reading sexy things to each other. So you just jot these things down, and then at the end of the month, you could just put them all into, like, a jar or just keep them in list fashion. If you use the jar, you just pull one out and say, “Do we want to try this?” And either you try it, or at least you talk about it, and I think talking about it can sometimes be the fun activity. It’s great. Or you can turn it into a yes/no/maybe list, where both of you go through each item and decide, like, is this a yes for you? Is this something you don’t want to try right now? So really using other people’s experiences and stories and even, like, fiction, even in movies, maybe you jot down a scene from a movie that touched you in a certain way. It’s a really fun, creative way that takes out the whole, like, I have to think of something part that can feel like homework. There’s so many ideas already out there.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Oh, it’s, I love this advice so much because even in thinking about, like, fantasy, like you’re talking about, like, one is the creation of the fantasy, but two, sometimes, if couples haven’t talked about this, sometimes I find that there’s this apprehension or almost this, like, fear that comes up around starting to share their fantasies for the first time. So when it’s, like, initially presented as, like, hey, I read this in a book, like, what do you think about it, it has a different sort of energy of, like, bringing something to the table to, like, co-talk about it from, like, a yes/no/maybe way versus, like, wow, I’ve been fantasizing this for years. And I think those things are also great to talk about, but as an intro, sometimes it’s, like, okay, what is the softer, easier first step to getting into it, and I absolutely love, love, love this advice so much.

Overcoming Apprehension in Sharing Fantasies

Dr. Diane Mueller: So is there anything, we’re actually getting close to the time here, it just goes so fast. Is there anything, though, in this episode, and then everybody, we are, for the Modern Libido Club, going to be talking about part two with August, which is all going to be about your brain on orgasms. So I’m going to ask August here a question around, like, what are we missing, what do you guys need to know, and talk to you, talk to you guys a little bit about where to get a hold of her, how to find some of the literature she’s talking about, her podcast, all these amazing things. And just remember, if you go to mylibidodoc.com/club, you can get access to part two. So without further ado, August, like, what do you think from this conversation today? Is there anything that we did not say that we’re, like, we got to say this today for the audience?

Teaser for Next Episode: Brain and Orgasm

August McLaughlin: I will share the tiniest teaser for the orgasm MRI brain stuff we’re going to talk about because this is an important fact that we can dive deeper into, but fantasy and imagination are just as powerful, sometimes more, than the physical act. So knowing that, give yourself permission to fantasize, to get creative, and to just daydream about the sex life you want. It is so freaking powerful, and it’s this freedom because it’s all just, like, this mental cloud of your sexy thoughts, and it can really put a spark in your day. Just spend even a few minutes a day or maybe, like, once a week, and if you feel like it, add journaling to that same mix. I think that it’s a really powerful combination.

Dr. Diane Mueller: That’s such good advice. I can’t wait for part two, you guys. Okay, so where do people get a hold of you?

Where to Find August McLaughlin’s Work

August McLaughlin: The best kind of spot for all of my things is augustmclaughlin.com. It’s M-C-L-A-U-G-H-L-I-N.com, and you can find my podcast by searching Girl Boner or Girl Boner Radio with spaces in between on any podcast app, and my show releases every two weeks, and we have so many fun, steamy stories, and I can’t wait to share yours coming up soon.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Yeah, amazing, and we’ll have all those links for you guys in the show notes, of course, for easy clickability. And thank you so much, August. Thank you for sharing your wisdom with the world today. Such a pleasure.

August McLaughlin: Thank you so much for having me and for your great questions.

Dr. Diane Mueller: Amazing, and everybody, take good care, and we’ll see you real soon on another episode of The Libido Lounge. Bye-bye.

Closing Remarks and Call to Action

Dr. Diane Mueller: Thank you for listening to The Libido Lounge. Please don’t keep me a secret; please share this with your friends. You can find me on YouTube, on Instagram, and check out our Modern Libido Club for so much more!