Sex With Emily - How Your Brain Sabotages Your Sex Life! l Dr. Daniel Amen Explains

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

In this episode of Sex with Emily, renowned psychiatrist and brain expert Dr. Daniel Amen joins us to explore how our "hidden dragons", the unconscious patterns from our past, are secretly controlling our happiness, relationships, and sex lives. Based on his latest book, "Your Brain is Always Listening," Dr. Amen reveals how childhood experiences, family trauma, and even ancestral patterns get written into our brains and show up in our intimate relationships. We dive deep into the most common dragons people face, including the anxious dragon, the abandoned and insignificant dragon, and the codependent dragon. Dr. Amen shares his personal journey with these patterns and explains how understanding your dragons can transform not just your mental health, but your sexual wellness too. We explore the connection between brain health and sexual function, why ADD can impact orgasms, and how negative thought patterns become "bad habits" that sabotage intimacy. This episode includes practical tools like positivity bias training, the power of rewriting your story, and specific breathing techniques that can reset your nervous system. Dr. Amen also addresses a listener's question about cheating addiction and explains how brain scans revealed the neurological patterns behind compulsive behavior. Whether you're struggling with commitment issues, sexual anxiety, or just want to understand how your brain affects your love life, this conversation offers both scientific insights and actionable strategies for creating healthier relationships. Show Notes: 00:00 - Introduction to Hidden Dragons 01:02 - Dr. Amen's Personal Dragon Story 04:40 - The Abandoned & Insignificant Dragon 08:26 - Most Common Dragons People Face 11:07 - The Ancestral Dragon & Epigenetics 14:18 - Rewriting Your Story & Focus 16:06 - Positivity Bias Training 19:07 - Happiness as Moral Obligation 21:22 - Brain Health & Sexual Function 24:02 - Building Better Mental Habits 27:59 - Listener Q&A: Cheating Addiction 35:12 - ADD & Relationships 38:20 - ADD & Female Orgasms 40:30 - Breathing Techniques for Regulation Join the SmartSX Membership : https://sexwithemily.com/smartsx Access exclusive sex coaching, live expert sessions, community building, and tools to enhance your pleasure and relationships with Dr. Emily Morse. List & Other Sex With Emily Guides: https://sexwithemily.com/guides/ Explore pleasure, deepen connections, and enhance intimacy using these Sex With Emily downloadable guides. SHOP WITH EMILY!: https://bit.ly/3rNSNcZ (free shipping on orders over $99) Want more? Visit the Sex With Emily Website: https://sexwithemily.com/ Let's get social: Instagram https://www.instagram.com/sexwithemily/ X https://twitter.com/sexwithemily Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sexwithemily TikTok https://www.tiktok.com/@sexwithemily Threads https://www.threads.net/@sexwithemily Let's text: Sign up here https://sexwithemily.com/text

You know I've always said that pleasure is wellness. Well, now science backs me up. Magic One just released the results of a groundbreaking study, the first of its kind, measuring what happens to your mind and body when you use a vibrator every day for a week. And here's what they found. Stress levels dropped, sleep got better, connection increased with themselves and with partners,

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Research shows it makes you feel better. Results are live and go check them out today at magicwondstudy.com. And get your magic wand today to join the pleasure revolution. That's magicwondstudy.com. What does an orgasm require? It requires focus. You have to pay attention to the feeling long enough to make it happen. But if your brain is all over the place and many people with ADD are hypersensitive to

the environment, their senses are heightened, so they hear too much, they see too much, they feel too much. My first wife had ADD and I just thought she didn't like me. I mean, I don't think she really liked me that much anyway. But it was really hard and many ADD women, they have to sleep with white noise. I do. Yeah. Have you ever wondered why your sex drive just disappeared? Like you used to be the person who was always in the mood, always ready to go, but now you're

lying there thinking about your grocery list or that work email you forgot to send or literally anything except what's happening in your body. And here's what nobody talks about. It might not be about your relationship. It might not be about your partner. It might not even be about the sex at all. It could be about your brain. It might not be about your partner. It might not even be about the sex at all.

It could be about your brain. I mean, think about it. Your brain controls everything. Your mood, your energy, your ability to focus, your stress levels. So why wouldn't it control your sex life too? But here's the thing. Most of us have never thought about optimizing our brain

for better sex. We'll work out for our bodies, eat well for our health, but when it comes to our brain, we just kind of hope for the best. Today, I'm talking with Dr. Daniel Amon, one of the world's leading brain health experts and all throughout your brain is always listening. Dr. Amon has scanned over 200,000 brains and he's here to share the fascinating connection between brain health and sexual wellness. We're diving into how stress literally hijacks your arousal, why your negative thoughts might

be killing your libido, and the simple daily prefaces that can transform not just your sex life but your entire relationship with pleasure. Plus, Dr. Eamon is sharing his game changing approach to identifying what he calls dragons and those are those hidden patterns that sabotage our happiness and our sexuality. So if you've been struggling with desire or focus or just feeling disconnected from your body, this episode is going to change everything. Let's get into it. So we're here to talk about your new book, Your Brain Is Always Listening, Tame the Hidden

Dragons that Control Your Happiness, Habits, and Hangups. I devoured this book. I saw myself in so many of these dragons. So first, let's just talk about the book and then we can talk about identifying our dragons. You know, I actually wrote this before the pandemic. I was just finishing it as the pandemic started and went back and revised it because the pandemic is spawning a whole new level of dragons breathing fire on our emotional brain. So the idea is your brain is always listening

to the dragons from the past, from the they, them and other dragons. It's people alive and dead that your brain is still listening to. Like I still listen to my grandfather who died 30 years ago, I still listen. And it's not a psychotic process. But I still hear his voice in my brain and my dad and their birth order and sibling dragons.

Your brain is always listening to your habits, what you do day in and day out. There's a whole chapter on the scheming dragons, which is it's listening to the news, it's listening to the food pushers who try to sell you cheeseburgers with half-naked women. And so I really just wanted to teach people your brain is always listening.

Here are the influences you get to control. We're both huge fans of you know people getting into therapy and examining their history and their background and you know some people just don't want to look at oh my childhood was perfect or I have it all figured out but the fact that you were able to share that your birth order had such an impact or the way your brother your older brother bullied you or your dad you know you, you weren't the first born. So you definitely weren't, you know, the preferred child. It's like, I think that when people read your book, they're really going to see parts of themselves in all of these dragons. And it's not a bad thing

either, right? Like we were going to have struggles in our lives, but when you're able to kind of flip it, you know, like you were able to look at like shaming, for example, like if we, if we pull up the shaming dragon about how we all have shame, but you were even able to show some positive sides to it, how we cope with it. I love that you have affirmations. I love that you have the movies that if you identify with this dragon,

these are the movies you're gonna watch. And then you have the meditation to help heal with it. And I'm gonna use this book as a guide to just flip up. And like, I have a friend who's going through a grieving process right now. So I've been trying to help her. And I was like, okay, I literally looked at your grieving chapter and I like sent it to her. I was like, these might be some helpful affirmations. So I really think that this is going to be such a great book for people just to have, to open to whatever you're

struggling with, shame or grief or judgment or all of them are in here so it's it's really well done thank you great resource well thank you my friend it's a very personal book but you know I found the older I got that those are actually more meaningful when people can relate to you as a fellow traveler along the road. And if they can get inside my head in a more real way, like my primary dragon is the abandoned invisible and insignificant dragon came from my childhood. And so I spent my whole life working to be significant. And sometimes it causes you to overwork or over attach to the work you do at the expense of important relationships. And so if you know it, so yes,

there's an upside to that dragon. And, you know, it's caused me to do really good work for people. really good work for people, but I have to be careful with it and see myself as special. And ultimately, the story turned out great because my dad was harsh. I think a lot of people have harsh fathers, but the last five years of his life, he did everything I asked him to do and got well and turned out to be my best friend. Yeah. That was such a beautiful story that you were able to say, you said that I should visit my dad, I should visit my dad, and then you said I get to visit him or I want to visit him. It's such that reframing of language that is so helpful.

I often try to remember that like, don't should all over yourself, but I get to, so that was really helpful. And then the other thing I want to say, going back to you sent me a dragon quiz. And I think first off, it is so well done. I enjoyed taking your quiz and we're going to put in the show notes where people can take the quiz.

But we have the same primary dragon because mine is also abandoned, invisible or insignificant dragon. And then I go to the inferior or flawed dragon. Are these in order of our dragons? I'm the anxious dragon. But I think the should or shaming dragon, I mean, there's so much to unpack here. How we've both individually handled it. Abandoned, invisible, insignificant. So imagine when you're in a relationship with someone and the average number of dragons

people have is six. Oh, okay. So Tana actually has ten. Tana, we love Tana. Okay. So if you have a lot, it just means there's good work to do. But imagine your dragons interacting with your partner's dragons or your children's dragons or your own parents' dragons. And so it causes you to be kinder. I had my whole executive team

take the dragon quiz. And I just, it just, just knowing each other's dragons helped us to not wake them up, you know, not- How not to trigger each other's dragons helped us to not wake them up. You know, not how not to trigger each other. Yeah. Is there a common dragon that most people that you find like that's more predominant in most people? The most common dragon is the anxious dragon. The anxious dragon. Okay. By far 30% of the population before the pandemic struggled with significant symptoms of anxiety. Now that's more than half the population. And in the dragon quiz takers,

it's like 65% of them have the anxious dragon. The responsible dragon is also very high. That's the codependent dragon. It's growing up, you worried about someone and you wanted to take care of them, but struggled. And so you end up taking care of people, but sometimes to their detriment, where you can actually create codependence

when really the best strategy is helping people take care of their own lives and not making them dependent on you. I felt that the co-dependent dragon is a person who is always helping and they always feel drained because they've done so much for people and then they start to resent them because of that. I mean that's a really tough one to kind of and you have great affirmations in there for dealing with it. So you can kind of reset because it's just something that it becomes your way of being and how you get love. But ultimately it's detrimental, truly. I guess they all are right to the extremes of all of them.

They can cause great emotional pain. I think the most interesting of all the dragons, I actually have him with me, is the ancestral dragon. And this is where the issues you have, they're not your issues. You got them from your grandmother, your great uncle, or your dad. For example, I tell the story in the book of my grandfather, who immigrated from the Middle East as a teenager. And when he was 19, his brother was killed when his car collided with a train. And my grandfather never drove. And my grandfather was angry at his sister

who loaned his brother the car. And that level of angst and anger and unhappiness and anxiety was in my grandfather before he made my dad. So it actually was written in his epigenetic code. And as a child, I was anxious all the time. Now yes, I have an older brother who was beating me up and I wet my bed. And so those didn't help. But I just have this sense that my grandfather's unresolved anxiety and grief impacted my nervous system.

And I think it's really important for everybody to know their family history. Yes. And before my dad died last year, I spent a lot of time just talking to him about his childhood and about his mom and about his dad. And you know, as a psychiatrist, I like doing that. We're talking about epigenetics, how like each generation they say, aren't certain

things transferred? Like they say seven or eight generations, like perhaps if you had incest or rape in your family or trauma, it carries on for that many generations. And so you said you spent time with your dad understanding it. I was thinking I've got my 23andMe test sitting here, I haven't taken it yet. Is that what we're talking about?

It's kind of understanding where you came from and then having talks with your family to understand. Understand the story and just know if you're struggling with something, it might not be yours. It might be you're struggling with something, it might not be yours. It might be you're carrying the burden from another generation or you may be carrying the strength from another generation because both good and bad get written in our genetic code.

How do we deal with it then? So what do we, how would you say we kind of work on that? Because it's not ours, but it's, it's in us. Well owning what's yours and blessing and sending on what's not yours is, it's just freeing. So I think the knowledge and there's a section in the book on how to rewrite your story because the dragons create the stories we tell ourselves, but you and I love to create content. Well, you can create a different ending.

And where you bring your attention will determine how you feel. You know, I think it's just one of the most powerful things I've ever heard. Where I focus will determine how I feel and if I focus on being a failure or I focus on being less than, I'm going to feel bad. But if I focus on where I want to go, I'm going to feel more hopeful. It's such good advice because I spend a lot of time, I think a lot of us do, on what could have been or what's wrong or the negative thoughts. That's a big one for me too. So that's why I quote you on your ants all the time, automatic negative

thoughts. What helps me too is just having notes in my phone too. You actually gave me some great new affirmations to put in. Like when I do my meditations in the morning, I often have statements that I'll say and it's there's such people might be hearing this and go, oh that's so woo-woo and then you want me to light some incense and do yeah I actually do want you to do some of this work because if you're the only one who's left in charge programming your brain, you're the one who's saying all the negative thoughts and that's all that you're hearing all day, it would be great for you to have something just to turn to in your phone.

Like I have a note page of just the things that you want to replace it with and I love expanding that with writing your own story. Like what is your reality? Where do you want to go? And you train your mind and often negative thinking is a bad habit and it's just sort of the habit that you're repping. You had a negative mom or negative dad or you didn't have the right guidance. And so you allowed your brain to go to a dark

place. And then it does it your brain does what you teach it to do. And there's a whole chapter, a whole section of the book on the bad habit dragons and how to rewire your brain. And negativity is one of the worst bad habits. In the hopeless and helpless dragon section, I talk about something I love called positivity bias training. Okay, let's talk about it. Start every day with today is going to be a great day. And that way your mind will start looking for what's right

rather than what's wrong. And then before you go to bed at night, go what went well today and write it out. Just find three things that went well. And I love that exercise so much that I turn it every night into a treasure hunt. And so I put myself to sleep starting at the beginning of the day, go, so what went well today?

And all days for everybody is filled with good things and bad things. Yes. But don't put yourself to bed with the worries because it'll mess up your dreams and it'll mess up your dreams and it'll mess up your sleep. And so I even look for the micro moments of I figured out how to make brain healthy hot chocolate and just the first taste, I'm so happy with myself. Always one of my micro moments. But it could be looking in Tana's eyes. It could be having an interesting conversation

with one of the kids. You know, it's the day-to-day stuff that you appreciate. And let me tell you how powerful this can be. So May 5th last year, I lost my dad. And you know, he's obviously a central figure. He shows up in a lot of my books. And it was just the worst day. And part of it

was COVID. And when I went to bed that night, because it's my habit. So this is the point. We do things that we allow ourselves to do. And I went to bed, and I said a prayer, and then I went what went well today. And then the other part of my brain, and we all have it, I actually give my mind a name. Hermi, after my raccoon when I was 16. Hermi holds up a sign like, seriously? You're gonna talk about what went well today? You obviously didn't love your father.

You're a terrible human being. But then, because it's my habit, I went to an interaction between my mother and the police officer. Quite honestly, it was hysterical. That even after this horrible thing happened, the police officer said, Mrs. Amon, we have to do an investigation

because someone died at home. And she looked at him with a straight face, even though I knew she was kidding. And she said, do you think I was having an affair with my 89 year old mother? Do you think I had him murdered? And it was just terrible. And then I remember the hundreds of texts I got from my friends when I found out. And then I remember sitting with him before they took him away and holding his hand. I just remember how soft his hand was. And then I went to sleep.

So no matter what the situation you're in, you can still train your mind to look for what's right rather than just focus on what's wrong. And that's not a bad thing because happiness is a moral obligation. Now, wrap your mind around that. I just, my mind just blew. I just blew my mind. It's the moral obligation. If you've ever been raised by an unhappy mother or been around an unhappy co-worker, you know the devastation that causes. And so

it is incumbent upon us to work on the negative thoughts because they're contagious. Yeah. We leak. Wow, that's so powerful. I mean, I always say like pleasure is our birthright, but being happy and controlling your negative thoughts is just like it's our duty. If we want to be good partners, good lovers, good citizens. Yeah, and our sex organs work so much better when they're not stressed. I mean, you know that when your stress did negatively impacts blood flow, and it gets us distracted. And I'm working on a new study, you'll love on happiness and the brain. If your brain is healthy, you're way more likely to be happy. And you

know, we often you and I went on your show, we talked about blood flow and whatever's good for your heart, is good for your brain, is good for your genitals. Well, it's good for your level of happiness, that the better blood flow, especially to the front part of your brain and your emotional brain, the better blood flow. Have you ever avoided traveling somewhere

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The happier you are, which I think is interesting. So sugar is not an agent of happiness because sugar lowers blood flow to the brain. Yeah. You've helped me realize the power of movement and exercise and dance and doing other kinds of things to stimulate the blood flow in my brain. And I just look at it so differently right now. I mean, everything, because it's probably been about a year, right? Since we've been doing it. And it's just so, we just don't think about, we don't, you know, you're right. We don't think about the brain, which is sort of insane, right? It's

insane. Insane. Because your brain controls absolutely everything you do. And when it works right, you work right. And we always think of people in four big circles. So what's the biology? That's why we looked at your brain. And if I don't look, how do I know? Right. Psychiatrists all around the world

are giving people drugs without ever looking at the organ they treat. No other medical doctorates. That's what shocked me. And so learning how to control those negative thoughts, because even someone like myself who knows that that is probably my biggest challenge is that I just go to the negative. My team, my staff knows it. I'll be like, this is wrong. I immediately see what's wrong. And so I have to work on that as well. But if I'm doing it to them, I know that I still do it to myself, even with meditation and journaling. But I don't think I have a habit because I know it takes

how they say it takes 21 days to build a habit. I think sometimes for me, it's about 40 days. But to have that exercise at night, even when your father died, to be able to flip it is so helpful. Like I actually want to do that tonight. I want to start that for real because I have journals everywhere. I often just don't stick with it, starting new habits. So I'm wondering if someone's just like hearing about this right now, like where could they even start?

Three things. And you know, I've been working with BJ Fogg at Stanford at the persuasive tech lab on how people change. And he's like, make it small. Right, exactly. persuasive tech lab on how people change and he's like make it small So on the top of your to-do list every day just right today is going to be a great day So if you forget to say it when your feet hit the floor in the morning It's as soon as you're looking at something look Today is going to be a great day and for those of you that have children do it at breakfast

You know go with the kids. So why is your day going to be a great day. And for those of you that have children, do it at breakfast, you know, go with the kids. So why is your day going to be a great day? That's great. Set it with your kids too. Yeah, first thing. And as you go through your day, and you know, Hermi for me, when your mind goes up with the negative signs,

just go, well, is it true? If you could just keep those three words with you, right? So these are all three second habits. Today is going to be a great day. Is it true? So I get the thought, oh, you're a bad son because you're going to look at what went right on the day your dad died. Is that true? It's like, no, I loved my dad. And he loved me. I'm not a bad son. So it's a lie. And I want to tell myself the truth, right? It's never really about positive thinking for me. It's about accurate thinking. Accurate thinking and habits.

And before you go to bed, what went well today? And you'll just notice you're a better boss, you're a better partner, and you like yourself more when you are training and you know you and I both want to be physically healthy right work out try to eat right you can't do that once right people who come to see me sometimes it's like well they don't feel better the first time they don't come back right because they just expect like a miracle. Right. And so I work on it every day. Every day. Why shouldn't we be working on our minds every day? If you want to be physically healthy, you have to eat right most of the time. If you want to be mentally healthy, you have to think right most of the time. And it's a practice. So if you have a diet of negative thoughts you're gonna have the consequences of that like if

you have a diet of fast food right you're gonna have a fast food mind. Right. God and you know what I was thinking about is that how people sometimes say to me oh I tried therapy it didn't work. I'm like did you did you go for a year and commit every week? Oh I went three times I didn't like it. So it's just like people saying, yeah, I go to the gym. Yeah, once a year, you're not gonna have the abs that you want, I suppose, or the health. Dr. Eamon, will you help me answer a few emails from our listeners, questions?

Anything you like. Okay, I love it. All right, this is from Ryan. Hi, Dr. Emily. I've talked with a counselor before, but they only came up with ideas that I'd somehow been scared in childhood or had a family member influence me in a negative way. But the issue is I cheat. Mainly, I have several women I start to sleep with at the same time and then a relationship slowly forms with one but I don't end it with any of the others.

So this last time I started to see a therapist and ended up working through things with my girlfriend and we got back together It's been over a year and I haven't cheated but it's a struggle daily I would compare the urge to what I would imagine a drug addict would have if he went too long without a fix I find myself yearning for more kinky stuff I don't have with my partner, but I don't want to bring it up because she gets mad that I watch porn from time to time I'm not sure what to do. I can give you more information if you need it. I'm trying to give you a little intro. Let me know if you can help." So this is a combination of like having the impulse

to cheat and addiction. It truly is. You know, he went to a counselor who said, oh, it's a scared childhood, but he's not giving him steps. And what I'm thinking about is maybe you're addiction dragon or helping him with some of this pattern and just thinking like what are the small steps? Cause it's his brain that's telling him him this is a struggle. I want something

else I can't have. Sex addiction is real and odds are I'm just thinking of this story I did with Dr. Phil on compulsive cheaters and Jose who I evaluated cheated on his wife eight times in four years that we know about. That we know about, right. His wife had a gun and was gonna kill him, and so I made a great Dr. Phil. Great Dr. Phil, yeah. And so I saw Jose, and he had damage to his frontal lobe. And he played football in high school and college,

he was a mixed martial artist. He used to have a party trick of breaking beer bottles with his forehead. He could like, boom, break the bottle, insane. And when we fixed his brain, he did so much better. He had all these tattoos on him. He tattooed on his forearm, then what?

If I do this, then what happened? So consequences. Because his goal was to be married. He didn't want his daughter to be raised in a broken home like he was because his dad was a cheater. So there were brain issues. There were social modeling issues. And he also had the inferior and flawed dragon.

And so he used the affairs to tame the inferior flawed dragon and created the angry dragon in his wife. Right. But now this was 10 years ago, they're married, he's not cheating. And he went back to school and now he's a nurse anesthetist. I'm so proud of him. So with Ryan, do you think it's similar than like he,

and this is what it is, because I used to be a cheater. I don't know if I've told you this, but I've told my listeners this. I mean, like years ago, I kept finding myself like in my twenties, I would just cheat. And I never got caught, I didn't have consequences, but I just knew, I'm like, this doesn't seem right to me.

I don't want to be this person. And then I realized that for me, a lot of it was about wanting to get the attention and feel more significant or feel desired and wanted because it was just like a fix, right? Oh, this person wants me and maybe things got hard in my relationship. So with Ryan, I mean, it's like he's getting somewhere

and I love that he's seeing a therapist, but he's kind of saying it's a daily struggle. So would you say like the micro change here would be or the little mini habit could be thinking about and that like, what does he want? Because he's saying he wants to get married and he wants to be in his relationship and he's gone a year so far, which is pretty good if you're talking about, you know, not cheating, but like, is there a practice maybe thinking of writing his story of what he wants? And when your frontal lobes are sleepy, it's hard to control your impulses, even though you want to.

And so first thing to do is what do you want? Write it down. Like if you want a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship, well, you know, cheating isn't going to get you what you want. So that's what your frontal lobes do. It creates goals and then it matches your behavior consistently over time to get them. And so the little habit is, does it fit? Does my behavior fit the goals I have? So not what you should do, not what somebody else thinks you should do. Well, what do you want? And if you want a kind, caring, loving, supportive, passionate relationship, you cheat, you're gonna blow that up.

Because if your frontal lobes are sleepy, you probably will get caught. Mine were sleepy, you told me that. Mine were sleepy when I came to see you, but I don't think they're sleepy anymore. So it's excitement seeking for you. And nobody knows it, right? I mean, when you're really bright, like you're really bright,

you come up with all sorts of explanations about your behavior that may have nothing to do with the truth, because no one's ever looked at your brain. People with sleepy frontal lobes can be drama driven, excitement seeking, negative seeking. I think maybe we talked about that. I never thought of it that way, that the negative was like, I have to beat myself up to get myself to do

something and it never made sense to me. Why? Why couldn't I just be nice to myself? But it's because it was an intense reaction. It was like it made me so mad. I was making myself so caught up in it that I had to act. And that's so common with kids who have ADD. If they have a bad morning at home, which means mom's yelling at them a lot, they have a good day at school. But if they have a good morning at home, like there's a lot of kindness and sweetness

and cooperation, they often have a bad day at school. So they're actually using mom's anger as a little bit of riddling. And that's a bad thing. Oh my God, I never thought of it. That's stunning to me, that fact. That is, and then it makes so much sense. You know, we've also gotten questions lately,

because I mentioned on the show recently that I had ADD, I mentioned I had ADD, and it was like a throwaway comment. But you are also the leading, I believe, ADD expert in the country. I'd first read about your clinics in the 90s, and I was like, I want you to just check in and live there if you can help me with this ADD. And so what about ADD in relationships? Are there any just like a

few things we could talk about or how it comes up in like a romantic partnership? Because it's often the missing link to what people struggles so much. It's so common and you know you know you have ADD, short attention span, but not for everything. It's short attention span for regular routine, everyday thing, homework, paperwork, chores, routine stuff. For things that are new, novel, highly stimulating, interesting, or frightening people, they need to pay attention just fine because they have their own intrinsic dopamine. But short attention span for routine things, easily distracted, tend to be disorganized for time and space, procrastinations, their middle name, they put things off, put things off, and impulsivityivity and sometimes restlessness.

Now, all of us have some of those every once in a while. People who have ADD have them all the time. And in relationships, initially people are drawn to them because of their spontaneity, but over time, the unpredictability grates on them. And I must say this five times, please to my patient, please don't say everything. You just get, oh, supervise, supervise.

Don't say, cause I don't want to forget. So here's everything. Yeah. Right. Always good to filter it with, will this bring me closer to my partner or will it horrify my partner? So having a filter is a good thing. And when it comes to sex, this is very important.

Tommy, yeah. You know, apparently we'll talk about this. But after I treat women for ADD, when they come back, they have this smile on their face. And I know what it means. It means they can have an orgasm. As women with untreated ADD, what does an orgasm require? It requires focus.

You have to pay attention to the feeling long enough to make it happen. But if your brain is all over the place and many people with ADD are hypersensitive to the environment, their senses are heightened. So they hear too much, they see too much, they feel too much. My first wife had ADD and I just thought she didn't like me. I mean, I don't think she really liked me that much anyway. But it was really hard and many ADD women they have to sleep with white noise. I do. Yeah always. The winner, the fan. Yeah white noise and even when I'm home and there's no me I listen I have my headphones on even when I'm

reading at home and there's no one, I listen, I have my headphones on, even when I'm reading at home and there's no one here, like I have to block out everything to focus. Yeah, so classic. And senses like, I can't wear wool, like if anything itches me or makes me uncomfortable since I was like five. I'm like, mom, take off the tags, you know? F-A-D-D, because they were just,

from the time they were little, they were taking their clothes off. Yes. You know, seams would bother them. And then when we treat them, you know, with a little bit of a stimulant, they can focus and their sex lives are better. That's happened to me. Exactly.

I couldn't focus. You're like, oh, that feels good. But look, who's someone coming in the door? What? Oh, I have an itch. Oh, do I look? It's true. It is focus.

I thought you were going to say also letting go, but we're pretty good at letting because that's also an ingredient to orgasm It is focus. I thought you were gonna say also letting go, but we're pretty good at letting, cause that's also an ingredient to orgasm, but focus, being able to breathe. That's why breath is so important for, for, for me, for orgasm and for everything. It's sort of redirects when I remember to take a deep breath, it just sort of stops my thoughts. There's a specific breathing pattern I want you to try. Okay. Three seconds in, hold it for a second, six seconds out. So big breath, hold it, and then six seconds out, then hold it out for a second. Repeat that ten times, it'll reset your nervous system. Do that just a couple of times a day.

Like nothing we have talked about is more than two minutes max. And that breathing pattern will trigger a relaxation response. I already felt that and I know it. I've taken breath work classes, but that already helped me because we just don't know how to breathe correctly. So I don't I know I'm like a shallow breather. I try to breathe in the morning. That was very helpful. And that helps with with everything.

I think even before you have sex or you with your partner before you have sex or when you're trying to have a conversation with someone, if you breathe together, I've done that with partner sometimes just to kind of, it resets. And it helps to be intentional. Your brain is always listening. It helps to be intentional to guide your brain rather than to let it be a victim of our crazy current society. Dr. Daniel Amon, thank you so much for being here. I always feel wiser, more grounded, better, smarter after you're on the show., thank you so much for being here. I always feel wiser, more grounded, better, smarter after you're on the show.

So thank you so much. Thank you for being here for my listeners, for being my doctor and so many others. Your brain is always listening is your latest book and everyone should get it. We're gonna put a link in the show notes and also everyone should take the dragon quiz. We're gonna put that in there as well.

KnowYourDragons.com. Thank you for being here. Thank you, my friend. That's it for today's episode. Thanks so much for listening to Sex with Emily. If you love the show, please like, subscribe and leave a review wherever you get your podcasts. And hey, share this with a friend or partner. It just might spark something. You can find me on Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and X. It's all at Sex with Emily. And I've been told I give really good email. So sign up at sexemily.com for free guides, articles and more ways to prioritize your pleasure. Have a question about sex, dating or relationships? Call my hotline 559-TALK-SEX. That's 559-825-5739 or leave a message at SexWithEmily.com slash ask. And hey, was it good for you?

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