For a long time, I let the stresses of my job rule me. Unfortunately, my rush to ensure that everything was completed in a timely, yet thorough fashion led me to develop some very unhealthy habits.
Chief among them was the fact that at the height of my stress, I wouldn’t take breaks.
Ever. Not even the lunch break that I was entitled to. If something needed to be done, that was all I could think about and I used the fear that it wouldn’t be completed in time as a fuel to push myself even harder.
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A no-break life is not sustainable.
Surprise surprise, this made me miserable and there came a point where I knew I had to take a step back and actually think of my own well-being. I think I’ve got a good handle on it now, but one Australian woman met a similar goal in a very different way.
Nadia Bokody is the global editor of a content website called SheSaid.
The site was founded in 1999 as a means of sharing women’s stories and Bokody describes herself as “a passionate advocate for destroying mental health stigma and sexually empowering women, and has absolutely no concept of TMI.”
Now that we know that, an article that she posted late last year seems very on-brand.
In it, she admitted that her job can leave her tense, which is partially due to approaching deadlines.
So, as she writes, “I slip out for my daily ‘coffee break.’ Only, I’m not going for a coffee, I’m going for a wank.”
Remember how I said she’s only partially tense about deadlines? Well, the other part comes down to sexual frustration.
She said she writes and reads about sex as part of her job, but this only serves to ignite what she described as “a very healthy libido.”
So, she takes advantage of the fact that she lives within walking distance of her office and goes home at lunch to satisfy more than one type of hunger.
She said that a “quick dalliance with her vibrator” tends to do the trick, but she also said that on occasion, she finds it difficult to wait until the middle of the day.
When she finds this to be the case, she heads off to the bathroom and satisfies herself in a stall.
She’s also worked out how to do this in silence to deflect any suspicion. She mentions that anyone else who’s curious about doing this can make use of silent, pocket-sized vibrators that are sometimes disguised as lipsticks.
From there, it’s simply a matter of putting on headphones, finding something she likes on RedTube and going from there.
I can’t imagine the kind of confidence it takes to be able to pull this one off. Especially if I was on the company wifi.
After about fifteen minutes, she said she becomes brighter and more focused on what there is to do that day.
And she pointed out that this has less to do with her particular libido than you might expect. She then referred to a study in The Journal of Sexual Medicine that found that orgasms stimulate all parts of the brain.
Although the study in question involved women, they referenced similar research that had the same findings in men.
So it looks like that’s one way to re-energize and re-focus on work. I personally will probably stick with a quick mid-day coffee, but the science backs Nadia up on this one.
She’s not the only one who finds masturbation helpful for relieving stress at work, either.
As HuffPost reported , researchers at the University of Michigan found that regular masturbation influences the body’s hormones to reduce the stress hormone cortisol.
It’s pretty popular with the experts.
Both Mark Sergeant at Nottingham Trent University and psychologist Dr. Cliff Arnall explicitly recommend masturbation breaks as a means of increasing productivity and making the work day more pleasant.
Besides, it’s not as if bosses can tell employees are doing it unless the office bathroom stalls look like this.
It’s also a good idea to check your contract for any clauses regulating how you’re supposed to spend your break time.
Read the fine print.
In the absence of those regulations, it’s generally not within an employer’s rights to dictate how you spend the break time you’re given.
h/t: SheSaid
