Season 4, Ep. 10 - Dopamine is Not Desire: How AI & Screens Are Quietly Killing Your Aliveness
What if your low libido, your flatness, and your exhaustion aren’t problems with you... but problems with how we've all been living?
If you've been searching for "low libido as a mom" or "how to feel more alive and present," this one's for you.
You'll learn:
Why stimulation and nourishment are not the same thing, and how overstimulation is quietly killing your desire
How chronic stress and cortisol literally prevent your body from making sex hormones (and how to reverse it)
Why nature is one of the most powerful portals back to your sensuality, and what happens when you slow down enough to let it work
If you're a mother, a high-achiever, or simply someone living a full and busy life who has lost touch with her sensuality, you're not broken. You're overstimulated.
In this episode, Megan explores the science of stress hormones and sexual desire, the neuroscience of dopamine addiction and screen use, and how our digital world is biologically designed to hijack your aliveness.
Whether you're experiencing low libido, emotional numbness, or a general disconnection from your body, this episode offers a grounded, embodied path back, through nature, breath, touch, and radical permission to just be.
If you've been searching for ways to reclaim your desire, reconnect with your body, or simply feel more alive as a woman and mother, this conversation is your starting point.
Listen Now:
Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/episode/6wzLnalQQAiZHOYZ6Rqxeu
Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/dopamine-is-not-desire-how-ai-screens-are-quietly-killing/id1498731180?i=1000758762866
Connect with Megan:
🌐 https://www.megandlambert.com
💌 https://www.megandlambert.as.me/discovery-call
If you’re curious about my offerings, visit me at www.megandlambert.com.
If this episode moves you, please let me know by reaching out by email, Instagram DM (@megandlambert), or leaving a review!
Episode Transcript:
Does the tree have a plan to shoot upward and be as tall as can be? Or does it just follow the dappling of sunlight and where the nourishment lives? What in nature decides? What in nature has a plan or a purpose?
Hello and welcome. Today's episode is weaving together a few things I've been thinking about. The impact of AI, digital discernment, when your desire goes dormant, low libido, motherhood and how that can impact your libido and finding your way back to nature. All of these things have felt like they're floating around in my consciousness the last couple of weeks. And today I'm going to weave them together into an episode about what I'm really sensing and feeling.
When it comes to AI, screens, desire, motherhood, and aliveness, our collective aliveness. So the other day, every night, James and I, right before we go to sleep, James is my husband, we share our magic moment from the day. This is a day when we felt like the most present, the most aliveness, like what was our magic moment? And I was going to bed, it had been a full day. I had been working all day, I'd been like juggling kids, I'd been running around trying to cook meals, trying to, you know, do all the things.
And I lay down and I'm like, I can't think of a magic moment. Was I actually here for one of these moments? And it just struck me that, wow, my day can feel really full and really busy, but not very alive. And that stimulation is not the same thing as nourishment. And I think that's really important for us to be talking about right now because the world we live in is super stimulating, right? There's so much stimulation and news and input and social media and screens.
And how do you meet the intensity of the world we live in, but go underneath it to keep finding your desire and your aliveness? And we're gonna talk about desire broadly and also sexual desire because it's all connected, right? It's the deeper wanting, the deeper wanting for your life, for your aliveness, for your hungry for each day, right? And so many of us, especially mothers, especially those juggling full, busy, beautiful lives, have lost touch with that deeper hunger, that deeper aliveness. So what does it feel like? Well, I think when you lose touch with that hunger, that aliveness, it comes out in a few different signs and signals.
One is obvious, it's low libido, right? You don't wanna be intimate, you don't wanna make love. Pleasure feels like something that is an extra, an indulgent, right? That's one sign of losing touch with aliveness. Another one is this feeling of like, I'm so busy, but I'm not feeling anything, like I'm not really tasting my food. I may not even be aware of if I'm hungry. And it has this kind of like general flatness, like numbness, like the day is going on, but there's not a lot of sensation in it, positive or negative, right? And that flatness is just a sign of like, okay, the liveness has gone quiet. And I'm deep in motherhood, right? I have a two-year-old, a four-year-old. Maybe if you're listening to this, you're also deep in motherhood or parenthood.
It's a particular season, right, where there's so much giving and so much managing and holding and holding other people's feelings and emotions and like holding the schedule and all of that holding can create chronic stress and tension, which is exactly the thing that kills aliveness and desire. I remember Kimberly Ann Johnson, one of my favorite nervous system teachers says that your body cannot make stress hormones and sex hormones at the same time. It literally has to choose. And so if you're running on stress, your body is making way less of the sex hormones like estrogen and progesterone that make you feel juicy and sexy and alive. And it's a trade off. But the good news with that, that I love to tell clients, is that if you are feeling stressed and you're like, my gosh, I can't make sex hormones at the same time, you can also use sex as a way to reduce stress, right? By doing things that turn up your arousal, turn up your pleasure, you are also dropping cortisol and your stress hormones. So that's pretty exciting. Sex is medicine. It can be really powerful. And it's probably one of the last things you feel like doing when you're in that like over stimulation, running, busy, hecticness. Probably the last thing you're gonna reach for is self-pleasure or intimacy with your partner or even just like laying and feeling the sun on your skin and like letting the pleasure seep into your bones. You won't want to do it. It will feel indulgent. It will feel unnecessary. It will feel like you don't have time. That's the moment to do it. That's the moment your system really needs it because your system is probably deep in cortisol. Yeah, and I can I can so feel that and chronic stress and cortisol.
It shrinks your capacity to imagine, to want, to feel. And screens compound this, right? Like they give us this constant stimulation, this constant scrolling, dopamine hits, or even efficiency, right? Like I use AI, I'm really interested in the future of AI. It makes things way more efficient. Because those extra efficiencies, it definitely gives you extra dopamine, which is addictive.
Like our brains can literally get addicted to the dopamine. Maybe you've heard of dopamine detoxing, where you try to do less dopamine. And you know what the vicious cycle of it is. And if you listen to my podcast episode with Alex Nashton, you'll hear this. When you are using screens a lot, when you're on screens a lot, it trains your brain to look for dopamine. And then the natural world, the real life becomes less enticing because it's not, can't hit your dopamine system as effectively as a screen can. And so just sitting and listening to the bird song feels way less interesting than scrolling. And so it can become a bit of a vicious cycle. This is both depressing and empowering. It's depressing because our basic bodily biology can be hijacked by our digital devices. But it's empowering because if you know that, we have some choice and you have some control about your interactions with screens.
Yesterday, my family and I did a digital detox day. We did no screens. It was very strange at first. I realized how many times I want to go to pick up my phone, to put on music, to look something up, to send a quick text message, to check something real quick, to set a timer, to look up a recipe. Like, I'm literally constantly thinking about these things I need my phone for. But by putting it away, I was cooking dinner and I'm like, I don't know the recipe. I'm cooking by heart. How am I going to do this? My dad's like, just wing it. And as I'm cooking, I'm like, oh, I need to taste it more and to know and to trust my intuition. Oh, it needs a little more salt. Oh, it needs a little more lemon. Oh, I could add a little chili. And so I'm in this cooking and I'm tasting and I'm like sensing and feeling into what's needed. And I was like, oh, I'm having way more fun cooking because I'm not following this recipe and I'm not on my phone following this recipe. And I think that's such a cool metaphor for what's possible when we put down our screens for a second and get back in touch with life, get back to being intimate with life.
I had a teacher once tell me, I was at this coaching circle, it was very intense, and she looks at me dead in the eye and she's like, I know what your problem is. I was like, okay, what's my problem? She said, you wanna be more intimate with life.
And at the time I had no idea what she was talking about. Intimate with life, like what do mean? I'm living life every day. I'm like doing the thing, I'm doing the... What I know now that she was pointing to and that's 100 % true, I wanna be more intimate with my embodied experience of life. The texture of life. The things I can taste and touch and feel and sense and my emotions and the way the sun feels on my skin and the breeze and my hair and the bird song that I'm hearing, and that kind of embodied sensual intimacy. That's where aliveness lives. That's what I think so many of us are hungry for. That's what we're craving, is that feeling of like, intimacy with life. I'm right here with life. And I think nature is our portal back. It's one of the reasons I'm so passionate about getting back into nature. It's like when you're in nature, it asks nothing of you. It doesn't need anything from you. It just is, you know? There's nothing to do or produce or prove or achieve. You're just being with all these other living beings hanging out together. And that's, that's amazing. And then your body can change modes from chronic stress and sympathetic activation into a parasympathetic state. And that parasympathetic state is also where desire and eroticism and sensuality and sexuality live.
It's really hard to get turned on when you're constantly in fight or flight, sympathetic activation mode. You have to be relaxed to make love. We know this, right? That's why people take baths before they make love. It's why they take some deep breaths. Your body has to relax before you can make love. And nature is a great place to relax. I wrote this poem recently. We went away to a nature retreat.
And I had 20 minutes. James took the kids. I had 20 minutes. I sat on this beanbag outside, looking at the jungle, drinking tea. And I was like, I'm not going to do anything except for look at the jungle. But I'm sitting. I can feel that restless itch. I need to do something. I need to do something. You know, even my unstructured time, I'm like, maybe I could like journal or like write a piece of poetry or yeah, I don't know, learn about a bird.
It's funny how even the unproductive time can become productive in a certain sense. But I'm like, no, just sit. Literally just sit. Just take a breath. So I just sit for 20 minutes. And I'm watching the clouds float by. I'm watching the river. I was next to a waterfall and a creek. Watching the water run down. Watching the birds and the trees. And a poem comes to mind. And I don't have it in front of me, so I'm going to try and paraphrase it for you here. It's a bit vulnerable sharing my poem unscripted. Well, I'll do my best. I'm like, what in nature decides? Do the clouds look across the sky and decide, I will go left. Or are they just softly floating in the winds? Does the stream plan to meet the ocean or does it just dance across the rocks and let itself be carried?
Does the tree have a plan to shoot upward and be as tall as can be? Or does it just follow the dappling of sunlight and where the nourishment lives? What in nature decides? What in nature has a plan or a purpose? Does the bumblebee know that its purpose is to pollinate all the plants? Or is it just drinking and dancing from plant to plant? Do the worms know that they're here to compost the dead things?
Or are they just munching, squirming, and pooping? And it goes on. The poem goes on, but you get the gist of it. The moment was really powerful for me just looking around at nature, because as I'm looking around at nature, I'm like, I don't know if nature has the same compulsion that us humans do with a purpose and a plan, and I gotta get somewhere, I gotta know where I'm going. Or if nature is just eating, growing, munching, flowing, right?
And what can I learn from being in nature and observing nature about my own beingness, my human beingness, rather than my human doingness? Like where I feel like being in nature and watching it, just all this aliveness just existing, potentially without a purpose, I believe, maybe without a purpose. Just being, it's just being, the trees, I'm looking out at the jungle, I keep looking out because I'm looking out at the forest in front of me, it's really beautiful.
It's just being. It's just existing, right? And there's something about being in nature that helps me remember I can do that too. I can just exist too. Maybe my day is enough if I'm just eating, drinking, munching, playing. Yeah, I was reading about a lot of indigenous cultures and I know each indigenous culture is different. So this is a generalization, but a lot of indigenous cultures recognize that
We are alive just because we're alive. We're not alive to do something, to make an impact, to have a purpose. We're alive just because we're alive. And for the joy of living, the expression of living, I find that really freeing. Maybe you do too. So being in nature, just sitting and sitting with the restlessness that arises, right? Because when we're addicted to our screens, nature isn't that interesting. It can't move as fast as TikTok can.
It can't grab our attention the way Instagram can. It is not as productive as ChatGPT or Claude. It's a slower, subtler frequency. But if we give ourselves permission to slow down to that frequency, we can remember our own aliveness and our own desire and feel our felt senses.
I was recently working with a mama and she was talking about how her days are so busy, she's so full. She's like, I feel really like alive in my career, my purpose, I'm doing so much, but I have lost my sensuality, my sexuality. And she's like, can you guide me through a pleasure meditation so I can remember my sensuality? And I said, yes, but first, first we're gonna help your attention drop from your brain into your body and to create a sense of felt safety. So maybe I'll guide you through that meditation now that I guided her through. It'll just take a couple minutes. If you're driving, just do the best you can. If you're walking, do the best you can. if you're listening to this somewhere where you can stop, highly recommend it. And instead of like pushing yourself to find pleasure right away, which many of us, if our sexuality has felt far away from us, we will push ourselves to drop into pleasure immediately. Pleasure runs away when there's pressure put on it. It's like a shy cat. If you put pressure on your body to feel pleasure, it won't, it will feel pressure. And so the first thing to do is to take the pressure off and to become curious about what's actually happening inside of you. And maybe it's pleasure, maybe it's pain, maybe it's something else, but to let that aliveness arise and meet it without forcing it to become erotic, yeah? Okay, let's do it.
So first thing if you can, close your eyes. Take a deep breath. And if you felt a bit overstimulated, like your tension has been everywhere, like this client did, I want you to wrap your arms around yourself, giving yourself a big hug. And as you do this, imagine pulling all your intention and all your energy right here and holding yourself in this little cocoon. Me, I'm here. And you can rub the top parts of your arms and stroke the top of your arms. This is one of my teachers called this covening. So you're covening, you're creating a little cocoon, a coven for you to feel safe inside of.
And as you do, bring all your attention into where your hands are holding your arms.
If your mind wanders, give your arms gentle squeeze as if to say, back here, come back.
And see if you can invite your breath to deepen just a little. You have to force it, if your breath can deepen just a little.
Let your jaw to relax. You can wiggle your jaw side to side. If that feels good, stretch your tongue out, stick it out.
Your jaw and your pelvis are really linked. When your jaw's tight, your pelvis probably is too. So relax your jaw. And bring your hands down to your thighs. Take a minute to stroke your thighs up and down. You can do it, I recommend if you've been feeling really overstimulated to start with a firm pressure. You might need more sensation to bring your attention into your body. So you could squeeze your legs, you could even scratch your thighs if it feels good.
Overstimulation sometimes needs more pressure to come home. And then bring your hands to your hips and squeeze your hips.
Almost frame your hips with your hands, giving it a warm squeeze, warm, firm squeeze. And this also brings your attention down, down, down, down. I have a body. This is my body right here.
You can rub your belly, it can feel really nice to do some warm pressure against your belly too. Circles, clockwise circles. And as you're doing this, continue to invite your breath to deepen.
So what all this is, this touch, this breath, is inviting your attention to come back down to sensation, to the felt and body experience you're having right now out of thought. And as you're breathing, it might feel good to do a few pelvic floor pulses. So imagine lifting your pelvic floor. If you've never done this, it's like stopping yourself from peeing. Lift and release, lift and release, lift and release. And this naturally brings blood flow and aliveness down into your pelvis. Remember that as we increase your sex hormones, your stress hormones decrease, so this pelvic pulse is actually incredibly powerful. So keep breathing.
You let your hands wander wherever, whatever part of your body wants touch right now. Letting your hands listen. Where in your body really wants a little touch? For me right now, it's my chest. And what kind of touch? Is it tapping? Is it stroking? Remember, this doesn't have to feel pleasurable yet. It can feel anyway. You might feel emotions come up. You might have your mind racing. You might feel sadness. You might feel numb.
All of that is welcome.
I'm do two more breaths here, just noticing what is here. What does your body feel like? As if you're just saying hello to this entity that's your body. Hello, hi body. One more big breath.
Nothing to do, nothing to change, just meeting yourself right here. And then you can do a little bow. Thank you body for that quick drop in, that little breath of aliveness.
Yeah, there's so much more you can do. There's so many more ways you can explore your body and your felt sensation and your aliveness, but it can really just be that. It can just be one, two, three breaths where you tune in, you feel your body. Touch, breath, and movement are three powerful ways back into aliveness. Changing your breath. There's many different types of breath work, but a simple one if you've been feeling stress is just a longer exhale, breath. Touch, listening to your body for how it wants to be touched, imagining your hands are lovers. How would you want a lover to touch you right now? And movement. Is there anywhere that wants to move, roll, circle?
Those are three powerful doorways back into your own aliveness. And so if you've been feeling like this mama I was working with, like your sensuality is far away, I want you to know two things. One, your sensuality is native to who you are. It is in you. It is never far. It might be sleeping, might be dormant or hibernating, but it's never far away. It is absolutely native to your body to be sensual. That is who you are.
And the second one is there are practices you can do to come home to your body. And they're not even that hard. I mean, you can make it hard, you can go deep, but there are simple practices too to come home to your own aliveness and, it's so worth it. Yeah. Your desire hasn't left you. It's just been waiting for this moment of quiet, this moment, this permission to just be for a second to arise. And then you'll find your desire is right there. So
This week I want you to notice one moment when you feel some sensation in your body. Not a thought, not a performance, not pressure, just one moment when you feel sensation. It might even not be pleasurable. It might be pleasurable, it might not be. But just a moment you feel sensation and welcome it.
All right, I hope that was useful. We went on many different tangents about screens, AI, nature, embodiment, and motherhood. But I think the common theme is our culture, our digital world, is designed to hijack your biology and take you into cortisol, dopamine addiction. But, eros and our liveness comes from connection with nature and connection with your body. And that's what, you can be overstimulated but still hungry, because you might have a lot of cortisol, a lot of stimulation, but not that dropped in juicy feeling you're craving. So every moment that you take for Eros and Earth, for your aliveness, for your sensuality, or for nature, is a little moment of cultural rebellion. It's a moment when you say, no, I'm going to protect what feels good in my body. I'm going to protect my feeling, my felt sense, my embodied experience of the world. And I'm going to become intimate with life again. And that is rebellious. It's revolutionary. And it is really powerful. So I hope that episode was interesting, useful, served you. If it did, please leave a review if you loved it. Also, you can reach out to me on Instagram. Send me some thoughts on what you got from it. I love hearing from you. All right, till next time.
I hope this episode touched you. If you loved it, share it with a friend or family member. Or you can leave a review to help get the word out. Thank you. Until next time, root down, open up. Eros & Earth.