Losing our senses….
Desensitization sounds like a big word, but it means the loss of our senses to the degree we need to have them for healthy interaction. For most of us we are born with 5 main senses that we use to live a more fulfilling and aware life. Those senses are sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch. Normally we refer to the 5 senses and for the women that have that special intuition and feel something we call it the 6th sense! You women know what I’m talking about and you guys do too. These senses are tied into our emotions through nuero-transmitters like oxytocin, serotonin and many others. This blog is not meant to go through each of the 5 senses, but to address the issue of desensitization that occurs to all our senses when we are over stimulated.
Have you ever really desired something that pleased your senses? Of course we all have and we place great value in things that amaze our senses, until we have over loaded our senses and lost the ability of appreciating it. Do you like chocolate like I do? A little chocolate really hits the spot at the right time, but what if my desire for chocolate was so strong I had to eat it all the time, what do you think would happen? Well it wouldn’t be satisfying as much anymore and I would take on the risks of indulging in a high sugar food such as obesity, diabetes and my body would not get the nutrition it needs to function. So how could something so good to my senses all of a sudden be so unsatisfying and bad? It is what happens when we over indulge in something and we dull our senses into it not being fulfilling anymore. This doesn’t just happen with chocolate you can name anything that affects your senses and that is what happens when we over stimulate ourselves. It then takes even more of the same to stimulate our senses the same way.
So should we talk about sex? What happens when a person has so much sex with so many people the thrill of act has been changed to just an action with no emotion, thus devaluing the activity. You then need more and more to stimulate yourself until nothing stimulates you anymore. This is not a healthy place to be and a point in time when bad habits develop like addictions.
We need to understand there are many things we must enjoy at the right time and in moderation to experience them at their best. When we overly indulge our senses, we believe we are living the good life, but what we fail to realize is that nothing good is coming from overly stimulated senses and that they become dull from abuse.
I have chosen to speak on desensitization as it relates to food and sex because these two areas have become so abused that many people have become so desensitized. They find they now have to indulge in them in excess to trigger the nuero-transmitters the same way thus dulling their senses and devaluing the activity. When this occurs the senses that feed our emotions are turned off, not allowing us to even emotionally connect due to the abuse of our senses and thus is called desensitization.
Remember, not all good things in excess are good for you, so moderation is the key to enjoying things at their best! Desensitization expands way beyond the way I have presented it, but is a real concern in any area of life when we have lost our ability to sense things in life in the proper way. This is not a topic you hear about and there is little research written about it but I encourage you to do your own research and to evaluate your own life and see if you have become emotionally dull or disconnected due to obsessive and bad behaviors?