We Need To Talk About Sadsturbation

AKA, sadsturbating, mastursobbing, or whatever you want to call using masturbation to distract yourself, to feel better, or to straight up induce a cathartic cry by helping your hormones go haywire through a good ol' trusty orgasm.

It makes sense as a concept, sure, but I hadn't realized it was an actual, recognized, Urban Dictionary-defined behavior until not one, not two, but THREE of my friends responded to my complaints of crushing existential despair by telling me to masturbate.

Obviously, masturbation feels good on a physical level, but there's a lot going for it that makes it a pretty effective response to sadness.

"It relieves stress, it helps you feel more relaxed, and it does boost endorphins and testosterone levels, which can improve your mood," Dr. Madeleine Castellanos, psychiatrist specializing in sex therapy and author of Wanting to Want, told BuzzFeed Health when I called for an #expert opinion on whether or not this was legit.

There are a ton of reasons this might happen and it'll be different for everyone, but according to Castellanos, when you orgasm, there's such a shift in hormones, oxytocin, endorphins, etc., that it can easily trigger a strong emotional reaction.

So, that response might be related to an emotion (like feeling happy, sad, lonely, overwhelmed, generally verklempt, etc.), or it might just be because you've been a little emotionally stuffed up lately and your body finally has a way to let it out thanks to that orgasm. So, tears.

And if the tears come, Castellanos definitely recommends letting it out and feeling your feelings because not only is crying itself a great stress reliever and cathartic AF, but also, suppressing emotions is good for NO ONE. "If you keep yourself from the full expression of it, you never really fully give it release, so it sticks around," she says.

Think Pavlov's dogs, says Castellanos: If you're masturbating every time you're sad, sadness might start to trigger some internal Marvin Gaye and your body will be all, "Oh, sad again? Guess it's time to masturbate! LET ME JUST GET HORNY REAL QUICK."

So just...keep that in mind.

"If you use it for the purposes of making yourself feel better, it’s important to allow yourself to really celebrate feeling vital, feeling sexy, feeling powerful, feeling pleasure, and to understand that that feeling can be beyond masturbation," says Castellanos.

If you do all that — and enjoy in moderation — go ahead and EMBRACE SOME SADSTURBATION.