The Mental Orgasm We Don’t Talk About

There are few feelings quite like relief.

That moment when something you’ve been carrying finally lifts.

The answer comes.

The conversation goes better than expected.

The thing you were worried about … doesn’t happen.

And suddenly,

Phew.

Your shoulders drop.

Your jaw softens.

You take that long exhale you didn’t realize you’d been holding.

For just a moment, everything inside you seems to loosen.

Relief feels good.

So good, in fact, that I’ve started thinking of it as a kind of mental orgasm.

There’s the buildup.

The anticipation.

The tension.

And then;

release.

There’s actually psychology behind why relief can feel so pleasurable.

Research has found that relief isn't simply the absence of something unpleasant. Our brains can experience relief as a reward. In one brain-imaging study, the pleasantness people experienced during relief was associated with activity in the nucleus accumbens: a region involved in reward processing.

Interestingly, the anticipation mattered, too: the greater the dread beforehand, the sweeter the relief could feel.

In other words, there’s a reason that ahhhhhhh feels so good.

But I wonder how often we actually let ourselves enjoy it.

We can spend hours, days - sometimes much longer - anticipating what might go wrong.

We brace.

We worry.

We rehearse conversations that haven't happened and prepare ourselves for outcomes that may never come.

Then the answer arrives.

And it's okay.

Maybe even better than okay.

We feel that beautiful rush of relief, and almost immediately ask:

What's next?

Another email.

Another problem.

Another worry.

Another thing requiring our attention.

What if, instead, we stayed there for just a moment longer?

Not forever.

Not even five minutes.

Just one extra second.

One more slow breath.

One moment to notice your shoulders dropping.

To feel your body soften.

To enjoy the little space that relief has just created before rushing to fill it again.

Because there will always be another thing requiring our attention.

But moments of relief deserve our attention, too.

So the next time you feel that glorious:

Phew.

Stay there for just one second longer.

Let yourself feel it.

Let yourself soften.

Let yourself enjoy the release.

After all…

you’ve just had a mental orgasm.

Enjoy it.

🌿 Before You Go...

The next time something you've been worrying about finally works out, resist the urge to immediately ask:

“What's next?”

Stay there for one extra second.

Take the breath.

Feel your shoulders drop.

Notice the relief.

Let yourself enjoy the release before filling the space again.

Sometimes the good feelings deserve our attention, too.

- Shannon K. Shinn

Founder, Dignified Reinvention™

Creator of The REST Method™