Nicole McNichols

I was focused more on this idea that people were stressed out and overwhelmed with technology.

And how did you kind of help people break through from those patterns?

I was, practically speaking, teaching multiple classes in the psychology department at the University of Washington.

And about two weeks before the start of winter quarter, the professor who taught the course for about 30 years before me fell and broke her leg.

And so an SOS email went out in the department and no one wanted to do it because it was considered a very awkward subject at best to teach, filled with landmines and numerous ways that it could go terribly wrong.

But I looked at it as a fun activity.

opportunity and so rationally or not I kind of raised my hand Katniss Everdeen style and said you know offering myself as tribute here let's do this and it was interesting because right away Max I really realized that people were struggling with so much shame and stigma and fear and anxiety around this topic that was so central to so many people's lives

And that if I could help heal people from this trauma, from the shame, from the sense that sex was just a hopeless situation that was never going to get better, I could actually achieve the goal I originally set out to work on, which was to help people feel less lonely, more connected, and more integrated.

So it was like I quickly realized just how

central sexual well-being is to our mental health.

I mean, not to mention the physical benefits of it, you know, improving cardiovascular health, it leads to longevity, it protects against degenerative brain disease, it is a really good tool for improving immunity, all of those things too.

But from a psychological standpoint, its ability to make us feel like we have the skill set to show up authentically in a connected real way in our lives,

And then from that position of power, connect with other people in real authentic ways was really something I recognized and just wanted to go deeper into.

Yeah.

So I mean, at that point, when I first inherited it, it had a couple hundred students twice a quarter.

And I just kept adding and adding.

Because the thing was, I knew it was a popular course.

But I didn't want to limit access to it in any way.

So I really wanted to encourage it to grow if given or at least just meet the demand that existed.

At the same time, I was diving into all of the literature.