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In this episode Karin explains the reason why she took a break from publishing podcasts during this past month. She describes the personal health crisis that struck her family but focuses mostly on what she's discovered to be helpful during this time. She also offers some advice on what to do if you have someone in your life who is going through a personal tragedy or is struggling with a life-threatening disease (see episode #15). She closes with a story about replacing judgment with curiosity in the face of life events, even when it seems obvious that that they are good or bad.
Karin doesn't know when she'll be back to her regular podcasting schedule, but will publish episodes when she can over the next few months. Thank you for listening!
Learn more about Karin:
website: www.drcalde.com
Instagram: @theloveandconnectioncoach
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Listen to Karin and Brooke discuss the importance of friendships and how to bring more of them into your life.
Friendships - including intimate relationships - fortify our mental health and, consequently, our physical health. When we don’t have these relationships, it can have a negative effect on our brain and can become harder to deal with stress and adversity.
Hear Brooke talk about how to attract new friendships into your life and why having one deep relationship, such as with a romantic partner, isn’t enough. She and Karin also discuss how women in midlife can manage the discomfort that comes up when trying to make new friends at a time when their lives are changing and have more available time.
Developing new friendships isn’t easy. Brooke and Karin discuss the importance of patience, intentionality, persistence, and the need to take risks and be vulnerable. And, possibly, most importantly, the need to be a friend to yourself first so you have a healthy, balanced foundation to start from.
Brooke Ledbetter is a writer, coffee professional, dog mom, and aspiring plant mom. She enjoys writing about mental health, spirituality, relationships, and above all, hope.
After a seismic displacement of her core group of friends, she began to ask the question: is there a better way to do friendship? Through a lot of searching, healing, praying, and research, her debut book, "Closer than a Brother," was born. It is a celebration of friendship and an invitation to grow in being a friend. Its estimated release date is March 6, 2025 and will be available for purchase wherever books are sold.
She lives in Lewisville, Texas with her mini aussie Juniper, where she is actively involved in her church and community. When not writing, you can find her at various coffee shops reading, or at home, trying desperately to keep her plants alive. Success rate is currently 50/50.
Learn more about Karin:
website: www.drcalde.com
Instagram: @theloveandconnectioncoach
Learn more about Brooke:
IG: @brooke.e.ledbetter
Follow her on Substack
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This heartfelt conversation starts with how Karin and Matt are coping with the results of the election, which occurred two days prior, including how they are managing the difficult emotions and taking care of themselves during challenging times like these.
Then, because when we take care of ourselves we are also taking care of our relationships, the heart of the conversation focuses on how to build strong, loving relationships.
Hear Matt and Karin talk about how being in love isn’t enough, the importance of understanding ourselves and what we need, the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) framework, how he and his partner overcame some significant life challenges, and how that all informs how Matt helps his coaching clients have strong, healthy relationships.
Learn more about Karin:
website: www.drcalde.com
Instagram: @theloveandconnectioncoach
Learn more about Matt:
FB: @growingmorejoy
IG: @growingmorejoy
The Real, Messy Relationship Podcast (Spotify)
Freebie: Get Your Partner to Open Up Guide
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Tara and Karin have a lively conversation about how people, especially women and people-pleasers, can learn assertiveness, deal with conflict, set boundaries, and confidently communicate their thoughts and needs so they can live the life they want.
Tara talks though the tools she uses to help her clients assert themselves effectively in real time when under stress, including how to identify and regulate their emotions, and practice conflict in a safe, low-risk environment.
Hear Tara talk through how she helped a client struggling with burnout learn to say “no” and reclaim their life, and another to overcome the guilt associated with setting those kinds of boundaries.
Listen to this episode to help you get on the path of living your life, not the life that was prescribed to you.
Tara Alexander, Ph.D, worked as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker for 25 years and a college professor for eight. She is now a certified coach who values curiosity, growth, courage, integrity, social justice and play. When not coaching, she enjoys a number of activities, including martial arts, dance, rock-climbing, and paddleboarding.
Learn more about Tara here:
website: https://www.conquerconflict.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ConquerConflictCoach/
Learn more about Karin here:
website: https://drcalde.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
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Unaddressed trauma can impact all areas of a person’s life, but the impact is felt perhaps most acutely in one’s relationships. Today we talk about different kinds of trauma, how it gets stuck in the body, and how it shows up in our relationships. My guest, Robyn Smith, explains how somatic coaching can help and what somatic work is like.
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://drcalde.com
Instagram: @theloveandconnectioncoach
Learn more about Robyn:
Website: https://consciousthrivingrelationships.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCprnkDKhwO6Nr1YR5rasnBA/videos
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/robyn.smith.relationshipcoach/
*Join her Rock Your Relationships Facebook Group Here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/consciousthrivingrelationships
*Grab the FREE Ultimate Communication Checklist here:https://consciousthrivingrelationships.com/ultimate-communication-checklist/
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Do you want more opportunities, love, and wealth in your life? An interiors therapist can help! My guest today uses feng shui to change the energy in your home so that you can make a shift and invite a different energy into your life.
Suzanne Roynon is an Interiors Therapy expert and member of the International Feng Shui Guild, based in the UK and working internationally. She will help you look differently at the possessions and clutter you keep around you to understand how they can actively harm your relationship, health, wealth, success, happiness and home life. She shares hints and tips to create a home and office space to love and propel you forward, rather than keeping you tied to the past. In addition to her Interiors Therapy and Feng Shui consultancy and teaching, Suzanne is the author of award-winning bestseller ‘Welcome Home, How Stuff Makes or Breaks your Relationship'.
Learn more about Suzanne and her book:
www.interiorstherapy.com
Instagram: @interiors_therapy
Learn more about Karin:
https://drcalde.com
Instagram: @theloveandconnectioncoach
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Today I talk with Leslie Draffin, a former TV news anchor who stopped her cycle of addiction to wine with the help of microdosing mushrooms (psilocybin). She now combines her knowledge of microdosing, women’s cycles, and somatic practices to help women reconnect with themselves and heal.
Leslie Draffin is a somatic psychedelic guide, sensual embodiment coach & menstrual cycle educator focused on helping women embrace their bodies, sex, and psychedelics. She supports conscious women & menstruators who want to heal themselves & connect more deeply with the divine through intentional micro-dosing, womb reconnection, pleasure activation & cyclical living. Leslie believes sacred Earth medicine has the power to bring us home to ourselves, awaken our authenticity and heal the trauma locked within our subconscious.
Learn more about Leslie:
Website: https://www.lesliedraffin.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lesliedraffin/
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://drcalde.com/
Instragram: https://www.instagram.com/wildwoodfacilitation/ &
https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
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There are different ways to approach trauma. Today I talk with Karen Corona about how transformative it can be to use the creative sides of our brains to access our own power to heal. She combines creativity with IFS (Internal Family Systems) to help women reconnect with themselves. She’ll explain how this works, offer techniques you can try, and talk about her new book, HeArt Healing for Radiant Living.
Karen Corona, MA, MSW, is a Holistic Wellness & Transformation Coach. She uses the expressive arts to guide and empower women to heal their hearts and connect to their Authentic Creative Self. Her background is as a psychotherapist with an expertise in helping women heal trauma/emotional wounds through the expressive arts and Internal Family Systems (IFS).
Karen is a recent first-time author of her book, HeART Healing for Radiant Living, which is a creative wellness guide with 52-weekly prompts for emotional healing.
Links to information mentioned in the episode:
https://www.5rhythms.com/gabrielle-roths-5rhythms/
International Association of Arts Therapists
Learn more about Karen Corona:
Website for anyone who wants creativity and wellness coaching: https://www.karencorona.com/
Website for those in Oregon or California seeking a therapist: https://karencoronalcsw.com/
Karen’s book: HeART Healing for Radiant Living
Learn more about Karin Calde:
Love coaching:
https://drcalde.com
Instagram
Psilocybin facilitation:
https://drcalde.com/psilocybin
Instagram
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Dating at age 60 is not like dating at 25! Today I talk with Dating Coach Deb Dutcher about how to start the dating process, what dating apps to try, how to find the right partner for you, and how to make it fun. While she focuses on the boomer generation, what she has to say applies to anyone who is over 45, maybe has been divorced or widowed, and for anyone who has been out of the dating pool for a while.
Deb Dutcher is a former VP of high-tech and a Certified Health Coach, with a best-selling book to her name. Twice divorced and 70+, She found online dating works if you take it on with a system. She calls her system the Finding Mr. Adorable Journey and built a course called the Boomer Gal's Guide to Winning at Online Dating. Now she has helped hundreds use her system to become online dating rockstars! She was named one of the Top Ten Senior Dating Experts of 2024 by DatingAdvice.com. She has made it her mission to help other lonely, single Boomer Gals find their Mr. Adorable. She runs a free Meetup where she hosts weekly calls, and offers her private coaching and online courses to help folks date online safely, have fun and meet their Mr. Adorable.
Learn more about Deb:
Website: https://findingmradorable.com/
TikTok: @debrccoach
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://drcalde.com
Instagram (relationships): https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
Instagram (psilocybin facilitation):
https://www.instagram.com/wildwoodfacilitation/
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.
Episode:
Karin: Hello, everybody, and welcome. Today we are again talking about dating. And every time I record a dating episode, I just get really excited and start thinking about doing dating coaching. And I've done a little bit of it, but it is so much fun. And I have this whole course that I've been creating in my head for this last few months or so, so I don't know, maybe that's to come. But today I'm going to be talking with a dating coach, and she calls herself a boomer dating coach. But what she talks about really does apply to anyone who's maybe recently divorced or widowed or they've broken up with a long term partner and they're entering the dating world for the first time in a while. But it's also applicable to anyone who's maybe a little bit older and they've been dating, but dating isn't working for them and they need a little bit more support. And Deb has dating courses and a book, and she's been doing this for a while. And she does have a course that's coming up, I believe, September 3 or fourth or something. So if you go to our website and if that sounds interesting to you, you can check it out. So anyway, I hope you enjoy this conversation. There's lots of helpful information for daters in this one. So again, thanks for being here. And here we go.
Karin: Welcome, Deb.
[02:22] Deb: Thank you, Karin.
[02:24] Karin: It's nice to see you again.
[02:25] Deb: Great to be here.
[02:26] Karin: So tell us where you are in the world.
[02:31] Deb: I'm here in Rancho Cordova, California, which is currently a very calm and not boiling 90 plus day, 95 to be exact. And I'm near rivers and lakes, and I just have a blast.
[02:45] Karin: Oh, that's wonderful. That sounds very Oregon like. We're having similar weather. And yeah, we've got lots of rivers around here, too, so. Sounds very nice.
[02:56] Deb: It is very nice. Mister adorable lives here very good reason to be there.
[03:01] Karin: Is that what drew you there?
[03:02] Deb: Oh, no, I didn't know him. I moved here three years ago, and I met him 19 months ago.
[03:08] Karin: Ah, okay. So what drew you there?
[03:11] Deb: Getting out of the bay area, being able to buy a house by myself as a divorced woman late in life, and wanting something really different.
[03:21] Karin: Tell us what you do for work.
[03:24] Deb: Currently. For work, I do two things. I'm still a corporate wellness consultant, and I make little forays into corporate culture and give them feedback on how to stay healthy while they're doing all the crazy stuff I used to do in high tech. But I also took on online dating coaching for boomer gals or anyone over 50, because it can be so daunting, and I wanted to give them hope and show them the best ways.
[03:48] Karin: Wonderful. So how did you start doing that work?
[03:54] Deb: I was up here alone after my divorce at 68, going, what the heck is going on in this world? And I decided, oh, these TikToks look really fun. I think I'll just make a TikTok and tell everybody how I'm feeling, and maybe 50 people will care. And so I made a TikTok, and it was called dating online. At 69, at a time of COVID and I had 110,000 views, and I garnered a bunch of followers really fast. And then it was just constant feedback. I would just pop up a video about my dating experiences and what it was like on the dating sites and what the guys were like when I met them in person. And people were loving it, and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger. And I ended up getting people. People asking me to coach them and teach them what I was doing. And why could I get five dates a week when they couldn't get one a month?
[04:49] Karin: So people could really relate or wanted to be able to relate to what you were going through?
[04:54] Deb: Yes.
[04:56] Karin: Yeah. Wonderful. And I was thinking about this interview, and I was specifically thinking about people who are over 45 or 50 who might be or might have been in a long term committed relationship for 2030 or more years. And at some point, they decide they want to find a new relationship. But, yeah, it can be really daunting for them. So where does a woman start?
[05:27] Deb: Well, the first thing I want people to think about is, don't do what I did at 51 after my first divorce, after 30 years of marriage and not knowing how to date since I was 19. And I thought, oh, there's this thing called online dating. Let me try that. And I paid a matchmaker a fortune, and he didn't find me anybody, or that company didn't find me anybody. So I thought, well, let me just see what it's like out there on these little dating app. But they camouflaged it. It wasn't a dating app. It came in as our us scientific Einstein. Take this quiz and find out. And I took this, what was supposedly a personality quiz and ended up giving me my iq and then a list of guys that matched my iq range in my area. And I went, what? So that was my first experience with online dating.
[06:17] Karin: And I gotta interrupt, though. So did you end up dating any of those guys?
[06:22] Deb: Oh, yes. I ended up with a rebound guy, which is someone I ended up becoming intimate with. After 30 years with one man, I ended up with a rebound guy. He was a teacher, he was divorced, he lived close by. We got along, hung out for six months, and then I realized he wasn't meeting my needs. But I also had been dating multiple other people before I chose him. And so I dated about first dates for about 42. And then I went, if you went on a second date, I got you down to about 17. The top 17. If you made it to a third date, I was down to the top ten. If you made it to a fourth date, I was down to the top five. And I teach this in the course because you don't know what you want. So the first thing about having to come out after a long relationship, a one person, monogamous relationship, is you don't know who you are anymore. You don't know what you want. I pretended I was 19 and I just went out with anybody that asked me. We don't do that anymore. Young ladies, please do not do that because it will get you into trouble. I'm lucky I didn't end up on the side of the road somewhere. I made so many mistakes the first time out. So it's really important to sit back and think about what your relationship was, how much was good, maybe stuff you would have changed what you want now in your life, who you are now, what you want to be and who you want to be that with, because it's very, very different. You come out of a long, committed relationship.
[07:59] Karin: Yeah. Yeah, it is really different. And it can feel so foreign when you haven't done it for so long. But also because the dating world is much different than it was when we were 19, of course.
[08:14] Deb: Oh, my God.
[08:16] Karin: And then that's all we know, many of us know, is the last time we were dating, it was when we were teenagers. And so it can really feel like we're that age again, and yet we are not.
[08:30] Deb: It kind of slaps you in the face because you think you can just pull it off. And then not only is it exhausting, but it is demoralizing at times. It's gut wrenching and it's. You almost give up. You're like, why am I doing this? Why am I putting myself through this? When I decided to get divorced again at 68 after marrying a guy that I met online dating, so 14 years later, I'm like, oh, this was a bad move. I need to go away from this. And I started to date again. And it was coming out of the COVID lockdown and people really didn't know who was who. And there had been all the issues with politics. It was another different scene.
[09:16] Karin: Yeah, yeah. So a couple of things that you said, one washing something like the number 42. So how did that happen again?
[09:31] Deb: I was pretending I was 19, so I just would. If some guy clicked on me, I went, sure, who are you? Let's do it. Blah, blah, blah. I didn't know how to screen, I didn't know how to sort, I didn't know how to qualify. And so I would get on dates where, oh, my God, I might tell you some of them later in this conversation, but I can't believe I allowed myself in those situations or that I still sat in the room across from the guy based on what he was saying to me. I can't contemplate doing that. So the next go round, I said, okay, we're not 19 anymore. Let's pretend we're 39. Just before we adopted our children and everything fell apart in the first marriage, we're 39, we're strong, we're fun, we're sexy, we're exciting, we're professional, we're business, we're a professional woman. We know what we're doing in life. We don't need to settle. We can pick out the right guys for us. We don't need to lower the bar. Which I had done to be married a second time because I really, really wanted to be married and I really wasn't discriminating enough. And so the next time around, I put together my little system. The finding mister adorable journey. I did exactly what I wanted other people to do, that I was coaching. And it worked because I didn't have to date 42 people. I only dated, I think, nine. Now, first there was a mister adorable who won the prize for a year, and before him, I dated 42. But the second go round where I said goodbye to him and said, okay, one more time. You're turning 71. You got to get this right. Do not, on any situation, back down from your standards because you're going to end up pushing him away. So I held my guns, but I was able to attract the right type of people in three weeks of joining the sites.
[11:26] Karin: And you did this through online dating?
[11:29] Deb: Through the online dating apps?
[11:31] Karin: Yep. And are there online dating apps that you can recommend for those of us who are no longer 25?
[11:39] Deb: Yes. So it's been interesting because I run a weekly meetup on Mondays, and I have girls from all over the country, and girls, we're in our fifties, sixties and seventies. I've even had an 84 year old join the meetup. And I get really clear, as I hear about where they're from. Minnesota, Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Texas, New York. What was the other one? Southern California is different than northern California. So there's multiple apps. There's so many dating apps now. Way more choices than I had back in my fifties. Now, in our later years, they exploded because of COVID for one thing. But they've also exploded because people move around so much. We don't have our centers of connection, have friends that can introduce us. And if we run away from a marriage, we've moved away. We don't have any connections. So you start out with a clean slate. And if you're in an area that's highly populated, like I am, northern California, Sacramento. I used zoosk. Zoosk and silver singles. They were good for me here. But many of my clients in the Midwest or in the south do not find them good. They're finding them full of scammers. I teach people how to spot those people and get rid of them. The next backup is going to be eHarmony, which can be more global. Match is pretty good. Our time hinge has come up. New Bumble is run by a woman. There's a lot of them out there. So part of it is analyzing who you are, what you want, and whether the guys you want are on those dating apps, which is why we do not do one year contracts with those people, those dating apps, because we're going to waste our money if the right guys haven't shown up.
[13:42] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. And I think I have a friend who I think she said she met her current partner on our time, and that was created for people who are older, right?
[13:53] Deb: Our time was created for people older. There's also elite singles, and they're owned by silver singles. A lot of them are all owned by match, by the way, match owns a bunch of them. That's why I kind of like these little sidebar guys, Hinge and Bumble, which probably will get bought up anyway, but at least they try to retain a little more autonomy around the process. And mainly it's all about you knowing what you want and then creating a profile that portrays you exactly as you are so that you can attract someone who wants what and who you are.
[14:32] Karin: Right? Right. Yeah. And that's one of the things that I hear over and over again from dating coaches, is that, yeah, you want to show people exactly who you are. And it's not about trying to catch someone or make yourself look as good as possible, because that's not who you are, and you don't want to pretend to be something you're not.
[14:55] Deb: Exactly. There is one caveat to that. Many of us who have been in very long marriages kind of get in a lazy habit. COVID lockdown made it worse, except for Zoom calls. Right. We had to get decent from the neck up or whatever the waist.
[15:10] Karin: Right.
[15:11] Deb: But my advice to people getting ready to date, especially when you building your profile, is have a makeover, get your hair cut, put on the makeup before you get in front of the camera, get some cute clothes, three or four cute tops, and some decent bottoms, because when you go on the dating site, you are in competition. There's a lot of people that are on dating sites right now. Some dating sites, more women than men. Some dating sites, more men than women. You want to at least come with your best face forward. You want to look pretty. You want to be attractive because you want someone attractive. Why put yourself out there in a less than great state and think you're going to attract one of the really hot, good looking people? It won't happen. So, yes, you can be yourself, but be the best version of yourself.
[16:06] Karin: Yes. Yes. Absolutely. I like how you said that. Great. So we're talking about online apps. What about the women that say, no way, I'm not doing one of those dating apps. What do you say to them?
[16:21] Deb: Join a meetup. Get out there. If you're an active person like I am. Join a kayaking group. Join a hiking group. Join a walking group. Join a zoo sponsorship. I joined the Crocker Art museum. There's great guys that go there. If I weren't dating my sweetheart, I'd be hanging out at the Crocker. Also Home Depot, believe it or not, Home Depot and Lowe's. And take a cute dog and take your dog through. And my dog is a mantra.
[16:54] Karin: Right? Great conversation starter, right?
[16:56] Deb: Absolutely.
[16:58] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So finding groups that are organized around a particular interest that you might have. And so all of a sudden you're spending time with people that share your, your interests. And so that can be a great way.
[17:15] Deb: And even if there's not guys in the group, you're going to make friends with women who have brothers and uncles and fathers, and you just never know. I say to everyone, never say never, and put yourself out there.
[17:29] Karin: Yeah.
[17:30] Deb: And my, my gals that are in my meetup and my course, the fun thing is I've taught them, before you walk out the door, just make sure that if you run into someone cool, you're not going to repel them.
[17:43] Karin: Take a shower. Usually women are pretty good about that.
[17:48] Deb: I wear baseball caps if I'm not wearing a wig because my hair is poopy, especially in this heat, you know, and the right guys don't care. So I even tell people if I'm talking to them on a site and they're like, oh, I like your hairdo. Oh, great, that's a wig. They go, oh, well, do you have hair? Sure. But it takes terrible pictures. So I wear wigs on camera. Oh, okay. Ahead of time. Yeah.
[18:12] Karin: Yeah.
[18:13] Deb: And I tell them, you don't know who you're going to meet because I might be a blonde or a redhead or a pixie cut or long brown hair. I'll send you a picture the day of the date, and that gets them to send me a picture so I can make sure they're who they say they are when I walk in the room.
[18:29] Karin: And I love that because it's, even though you're wearing a wig and that might not be your true hair color, you are very transparent about the fact that you are wearing a wig and you can talk about that. So that's wonderful.
[18:45] Deb: And the right guys don't care, especially right now. So many people have lost spouses to cancer. They've seen what it can do to someone so it doesn't scare them. And they'll ask me, well, how did you lose your hair? I go menopause, stress, my kid going to juvenile hall every other month and not sleeping. Oh, I get it. Yeah, me too. My hair is thinning. And then I go, and I'm a health coach and it's coming back, but it's going to take a while. I'm old.
[19:17] Karin: So one of the things you said earlier, washington, you're going to run into scammers on some of these sites and you have a way of helping people spot them. Is there one tip you can give us about that.
[19:30] Deb: The big tip is, listen to your gut. If he looks too good to be true, he probably is. Every scammer my gals and I have spotted and gotten rid of, they'll call me up. Oh, my God, he's perfect. He looks exactly like what you and I visualized. He's tall, he has salt and pepper hair. He kayaks, he does this, he does that. He has a garden, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I look at the picture, and I go, that sounds like a guy that hit on me in Sacramento. Stefan here's a widower from Finland, moved to x city umpteen months ago. Wants someone to go kayaking with, blah, blah, blah. I go, what name is he using? Oh, that's Oliver. My guy was Felix. I go, I want you to ask him two questions. So I teach them how to drill down. So if someone is claiming I play soccer, great. What position do you play? Where did you play last? Who won that game? Blah, blah, blah. Pretend you're an investigative reporter, because as soon as you start asking the hard questions, they go away. They take themselves off the site, they run for the hills.
[20:51] Karin: I'm curious, why would people do that on these sites?
[20:55] Deb: Oh, they do it because they're looking for nurses with purses and cougars and sugar mamas and all kinds of reasons.
[21:04] Karin: Okay, but not serious relationships.
[21:06] Deb: Oh, no, no. The ones that are scamming never are looking for a serious relationship. They want to get what they can get, and they're looking for someone vulnerable. Many of my clients and students are widows. And what we do is we work really hard to make sure that is not leaving them vulnerable on the sites. You can say, I'm widowed. I've been widowed seven years. I'm an independent, hard driving, professional woman who does blah, blah, blah, blah, blah so that the scammers go, oh, I don't want to hit on her. But the good guys, like my guy, who wanted a professional, independent woman go, yeah, that's what I want. I don't want a weak old lady. I want someone strong who kayaks and runs and doesn't need my money.
[21:50] Karin: Yes, right.
[21:52] Deb: Scammers want your money. They're going to ask you to send them airfare. You know, do not even talk to someone that isn't within 50 miles unless you plan to pay for airfare.
[22:02] Karin: Yes. Yeah, that makes sense. So what about standards? You said that you were really determined not to lower your standards. Tell us about that and what women tend to do.
[22:13] Deb: Okay, so when we're first available after a long relationship. If we're getting divorced, we're relatively demoralized unless we initiated it. So the first time I was very demoralized. I didn't even have a list. The only thing I had was, they can't be like my former husband. They have to want to get their hands dirty, be able to build something, and I don't ever want to see them smoking a pipe. That was my husband. Right. A beautiful, wonderful, sweet, accommodating professor person. I wanted the opposite. I wanted what I didn't get in my twenties because I got married at 21. I wanted sex, love, rock and roll, and I wanted a guy on a motorcycle, and I wanted a guy who could work on my ranch with me. I wanted what I wanted, and that's what I got. I forgot to ask for emotional maturity, I forgot to ask for open communication. I forgot to ask for tender loving, you know, PDA. I forgot to ask for everything else that was important to me. I simply excluded things.
[23:20] Karin: Yeah, because you were coming from. I don't want that.
[23:24] Deb: I don't want to go through that again. I was betrayed by that. I want someone exciting.
[23:28] Karin: Yeah.
[23:28] Deb: You were not the person who has all the energy in the relationship.
[23:32] Karin: Right. So we're kind of looking back at what you had and you wanting the opposite, but not really thinking that through. So what could help women think that through more clearly?
[23:44] Deb: There's a lot of introspective exercises you can do. Part of it is just for me, it was writing. I wrote a book, and the book was sexy, lean and strong after 50, how I went from fat, depressed and divorced to the best shape of my life, and how you can too. And by writing the book, I realized the kind of betrayal my first husband had done during the divorce cycle. And I went, oh. So I knew that was something I wanted to make sure I didn't go through, and I wanted to make sure of many other things. So you don't have to write a book, but the important thing is to sit down and just make a list. What were all the things I loved about my first husband? What were things I wish didnt happen, whether it was two part or whatever, and really take the time, because a lot of my clients, what they did is they instantly jumped on a dating site because they just wanted to be with someone. They didnt want to be alone. They didnt have that conversation with themselves first. Who am I? What do I want? What do I not want?
[24:58] Karin: Yeah, yeah. And what about women who might have standards that are too high? Do you see that I don't think.
[25:06] Deb: There are standards too high, unless they're so high that they are trying to invent the perfect person. If you say to me, I want them to be ideologically aligned to good, that's not too high. That's what cost me my first mister adorable. We were not politically aligned. We were not ideologically aligned around women's rights or anything. And I overlooked it because he treated me like a queen. But that isn't good enough when you have to look at the long haul. So you have to make a list of everything you want and then you have to prioritize it. Because my list was 48 characteristics.
[25:42] Karin: Yeah.
[25:43] Deb: Because I had gone through so many relationships by then, I was like, okay, you got to get real. This is. And I made this huge list and I went, I can't even keep track of this. What are my top 20? Out of the top 20? What are my ten? No go, go, no go. If I can't get this, I'm not dating the person.
[26:04] Karin: Yeah, yeah.
[26:05] Deb: You got to go through it. You got to take the time. And once you know what you really, really want, then you sit down and visualize, what's that life going to look like? Because you start bringing the energy in.
[26:21] Karin: I also hear, and maybe this was more true years ago when I was younger, but I do hear about women saying, I want him to be over six foot two. I want him to have dark hair and big brown eyes, and he's got to have an advanced degree and have been in therapy for ten years. And I just think, and so too.
[26:47] Deb: Many, too many absolutes. You have to open your horizons. You have to say, I just need him taller than me. I need him not to squish me if we become intimate. So I can't date someone like 250 pounds or over because I'm tiny, for a woman, slender. And I didn't care about hair because how could I care about hair if I wear wigs? I don't care what color eyes. I just want kind eyes. What I tell my gals to do, go throw the description list away, except for height and maybe weight. But don't bound it by one number. Just give it a range, which is the sites help you do that. But the main thing I want you to do when you open a profile of a guy, I want you to look at them. Here's the question I want you to ask yourself. Could I wake up to that face?
[27:45] Karin: Yeah.
[27:46] Deb: Is there something I could adore about that face? Is there a twinkle in the eye? Is there a sweet smile? Is there a little shy demeanor, or is he all bravado? Here I am at 72. I'm awesome. Ladies, come get me. You know, look for something you could fall in love with, but don't get swept away too soon.
[28:12] Karin: Yes, absolutely. That's easy to do. But I love that you're teaching them to be flexible.
[28:20] Deb: Mister adorable comes in all shapes, sizes, colors, gender for some. Right? And I want people to understand, I'm not looking for mister right at this age. I'm not looking for my last love. I'm not looking for the perfect match. I want a mister adorable that I can adore, that will adore me, and we'll care about each other, and we'll grow into something special.
[28:47] Karin: Yeah. And I love that, too. I think that that's so important that, you know, we're not necessarily going to find someone who is at their pinnacle of their self development, you know, but it might be important to us that they're working on themselves.
[29:04] Deb: Exactly.
[29:05] Karin: Are open to growing.
[29:07] Deb: I think they want to try new things. They have maybe once or twice talked to a therapist, and if I'm dating them and I see that there's still a ton of angst over their wife who passed away or a rebound girl who treated them badly, I may coach them into seeing another therapist. I may look at them and say, I adore you and you need some support in this area. I certainly can't do it because we're dating. I want you to go see someone. Here's some therapists I happen to know who might be able to help you. Because I do have therapists because of my health coaching practice. I've got tons of therapist referrals for all kinds of issues that people have that block them from getting to their optimal health.
[29:56] Karin: And why might you advise women to spend some time alone before they start dating?
[30:02] Deb: Because you can get a lot of trouble if you don't. I wouldn't just spend time alone. I would spend time with people who know me well, people who can give me some feedback, people who see me in multiple lights. I would get to know myself again. Not as a couple, as part of a couple. I would get to know myself for who I've become and what I want to grow into. And I would fall in love with myself. I would want to be in love with myself before I went out there to try and find someone else to love me.
[30:39] Karin: It's great advice for anyone, no matter what your sex or gender or age.
[30:45] Deb: Absolutely. Because if we date from a position of vulnerability, we will get taken advantage of, yes, we will make bad decisions.
[30:56] Karin: Yes. I was just speaking with a woman in a group that I run for empty nesters, and she was talking about dating, but feeling like she doesn't need to date. I said, wonderful. The best position that you can be in is not in a position to need a partner, but to want a partner.
[31:16] Deb: Exactly. Because partners add dimension and partners are there when you stumble and you need someone to help you, and partners can do fun things with you that are hard to do alone. Partners can help you in your yard when your peach trees limbs are breaking because you didn't thin the fruit. So my guy came over with supports and propped up all these branches for me. What a sweetheart, you know? And I. Being alone is great, being independent is awesome, and I'm really happy I did that and I love it. And whether I get married again, never say never, but I don't have to. Yeah, I did. The second time I was really committed to being married again because I had loved my marriage and I needed. I thought I needed to be part of a couple, and that was because I did no work, no introspection work, no. No effort to learn anything about who I'd become and what I wanted.
[32:16] Karin: And what are some of the roadblocks to finding a good partner?
[32:20] Deb: The biggest roadblock is saying there's no good guys out there. Nobody's going to want me. And why should I bother if you can get past those? Because there are good guys out there, because I'm coaching them and I've dated them, and someone will want you because you've got something adorable about you that someone will spot and want in their life. And why not give it a go? If you don't like being alone 100%, you don't have to spend 24/7 with someone. I like the 25% rule, but even if you're married, you're really only intersecting maybe 25% to 40% of the time, unless you're one of those rare couples that works together, lives together, sleeps together, etcetera. And they are there and they have great lives. I'm not one of them. I needed my separateness, my things that I wanted to do. So the block is you, you deciding it's right, you're ready to try it, but you want to learn how to do it right first.
[33:29] Karin: Yeah, I think that's really important because if we believe there's no one out there, then we're going to close ourselves off to the possibilities.
[33:36] Deb: Exactly.
[33:37] Karin: And I understand why people do that because it can be disappointing when things don't go well, or you have a hard time finding someone it can. So how do you keep yourself from wanting to give up?
[33:50] Deb: Yeah, that's a good one. Because after I broke up with the first mister adorable, I was turning, I had turned 70 with him. I was turning 71. It was about four months after I turned 70 and I was turning 71. And I thought, I really, do I want to do this anymore? Is it worth it? Do I really feel like the competition? La, la, la. But I'd already started delivering my course and I went, oh, great. I'm teaching them how to find a mister adorable, and I just let go of one. Okay, I'm going to show them how to keep going, despite the fact that I've just had a little bump in the road. I'm going to show them how to stay resilient. I'm going to show them how to stay optimistic, and I'm going to show them how not to take a bad date. A rejection from somebody on the site, a lack of response. Don't take it to heart, you know, you're still amazing. So I teach affirmations, visualizations, the power of manifesting, how you call it to you, how you rebuild yourself. We go through, release, visualize, recharge, rebuild, visualize, and manifest, because it's a constant growth process. And take dating as something fun. So that one didn't work. Let's go try over here. I literally turned people into what I call the miss adorable butterfly. Because if you're a butterfly, you don't care that that flower just died, you're going to fly somewhere else. It's the same thing with online dating. Just be a miss adorable butterfly. Let the dead flowers go and go find another meadow.
[35:33] Karin: Yeah, yeah. And I love that you talked about manifestation. I've been reading some books about, you know, the science of it and how it's not just magic, it's about really visualizing and knowing what you want. And when you do that, your brain and even your unconscious starts looking for things. Exactly. And you also start working on it.
[36:02] Deb: It opens you to possibilities because you stop thinking about being constrained in your current situation, in your current life, and you visualize where you're going to be and then you manifest it. It happens. I've manifested so many things. I call myself the master manifestor, because literally everything I've wanted I've ended up getting with work and effort.
[36:30] Karin: And that's what I want to say, is that I bet you just didn't sit back and wait for it to happen. I bet you also were working toward it and putting effort into it, like.
[36:40] Deb: You said, identifying the steps, putting together the plan, building a way for the universe to bring it to me. Yeah, a road, a bridge.
[36:53] Karin: So how can someone who might have been on a lot of not so great dates make dating fun?
[37:02] Deb: So look at the humorous. I'm going to tell you a story and you're going to be like, you saw him again. Okay, this is, I broke a bunch of rules, but I'm going to tell you this story. I met a guy online. It was between the two Mister adorables. And I liked his profile so much. He was a runner. He was really smart. He had all kinds of great intellectual stuff in his profile. And I'm a sapiosexual. I have to be intellectually attractive to become physically attractive. So we had this amazing conversation on the phone and he said, well, you need to know something. I was going through some tests at Stanford and they had this slippery floor and I was walking around with my little gown on and the little pull cart with the little drip thing, and I slipped and fell and my broke a hip. And so I'm recuperating. So I can't really go anywhere. I modified my car and I can drive to you, but I can't really go anywhere. And I said, you know what? That's okay. We can sit in my living room and get to know each other. I've got a dog. He'll be watching you. He goes, oh, well, I've got a dog. It's a support dog. Can I bring her? And I went, sure. Oh. They get in my house, I sit him in the comfortable chair and put his feet up on an ottoman and I start having a conversation. Next thing I know, his little dog has bounded on my brand new couch and peed all over it.
[38:32] Karin: Oh, no.
[38:33] Deb: Brand new couch. And I mean literally delivered two days before I pick up his dog, I plop it in his lap, I go grab the couch cushions, I run to the garage, I clean them up, I leave them out there. So now I've got to sit on a little goofy chair while I'm talking to him. Next thing I know, his dog is peeing on the ottoman, which luckily I had slipcovered. And I look at him and I go, are you serious? Can't you control this animal? And he goes, well, you know, I don't, and I'm fine. This dog is going in the backyard with my dog. My dog's not going to bother this dog. So the dog goes in the backyard. Everything's fine. Run around, pees on everything. Little teeny dog. I have a border collie. My dog's like, what the heck is this? But it just doesn't care. But we have this decent conversation, and we retrieve the dog, and we agree we're going to get together and he's going to make me dinner to apologize for that date. Right. I'm not even going to talk about the second date because that was the last date with this man. But I literally let him have a second date after his dog peed on my furniture because he was that smart and he was interesting and he was good looking and he was fun and I didn't want to hold his bad dog behaviors against him.
[39:50] Karin: Yeah.
[39:51] Deb: I make allowances for things because I'm interested in the person.
[39:56] Karin: Yeah. And that makes sense to me. I could see how someone might do that. Yeah.
[40:00] Deb: Yeah. Well, I won't do it ever again. But see, I've done all the stupid stuff. That's how I knew how to write the course. When you have that many dates and you're indiscriminate, you learn a lot of stuff not to do.
[40:14] Karin: A question that I'm sure a lot of my older listeners might really appreciate, and I've asked this before on here, is when do you start having sex with a new partner? When do you know it's okay?
[40:28] Deb: Oh, this is my favorite question. I have a whole chapter on this in the course. I call it questions for your suitor before exclusivity, because it's not about becoming intimate. Girls at this age, we want a vow of exclusivity before we agree to become intimate. It's a whole new game because I've done the one night stand, just a few. I've done the date, you know, sex on the third date. Just a few. And I don't advocate it unless you just feel like it. Further physical release. And then I'm not going to put you down for it because, you know, I've had a few of those, but I specialize in creating a long term, committed, monogamous, exclusive relationship. And the guys appreciate it, especially now, especially anyone who's been married a really long time. They're not really comfortable playing around. Morse, guys can play around a little better than widowers. That's what I have found. So you, as part of your exercise of who you are and what you want, you need to be thinking about what would it take to go to bed with some, what do I want to see? And that's totally different. I have 20 questions before exclusivity. It's in the course. I send it to people that are in the course and then they create their own. They borrow some of mine, but I want them to have their own because it's them, not me. They have specific things they're looking for that I wasn't. One of them is. Is he a good housekeeper? I got rid of a really hot prospect because he. He's kept a house like a 17 year old and lived with 240 year olds, and they were all 317 year olds living in this house. And he was 69, you know, and he was brilliant and gorgeous and fun, but no way could I wake up in that house, ever. So it's not only can I look at that face, but further down the line, can I wake up in this house, not regret being here and can I use the bathroom?
[42:31] Karin: So a lot of it is just.
[42:32] Deb: Really thinking ahead, planning, planning. Don't just jump onto the dating sites. That's what gets everybody in so much trouble. I'm lonely. I need a date. I need someone to go out with. I'm going to go get on a dating site. You pull up a site, you answer the questions, you throw in some pictures, and now your profile's up. And now 35 guys hit on you in the first day because you're new. Meet. Soon as you come up as a new profile, you're going to get inundated and then you're going to be, oh, look how cute. Oh, look, they like me. Oh. Oh, no, you didn't think it through. You don't know what you're looking for. You are going to be like me when I was 51. Don't do it. Get some coaching first. Get on my website. There's some free tips over there. Get some information. Before you do that. Get on a call with me. Those are free, too.
[43:28] Karin: So what role does love play in the work that you do?
[43:33] Deb: Love is so huge because one, I love my clients and my students. I love all the people on my TikTok. They're lonely, they're sad, they're where I was after my first divorce. Demoralized, disillusioned, lost. I'm starting to cry and not knowing what to do and too vulnerable. And I want to love them out of that into loving themselves, knowing how amazing they are. And then teach them how to find someone who can appreciate that and grow with them and grow love. Like me and my mister adorable of 19 months. We are madly in love. We just got back from eleven days, 24/7 traveling together, and he wants to do it again. So we're doing it again in August and we're going to do it again in October. He wants as much of me as he can have.
[44:37] Karin: That's a wonderful test of a relationship, as if you can travel together.
[44:41] Deb: Absolutely. Biggest test. And that's all my questions before exclusivity. I'm not giving myself away to someone. I haven't spent a a weekend without sex. So seriously, we get a hotel room, two queen beds, you on yours, me on mine. We might give each other a massage. It will not end in a happy ending. I need to know a I can get naked in front of you, you can get naked in front of me, and we can stay comfortable. So I play this game totally different than I did at 51, where it was all about, ooh, sexy, let's get undressed and let's look at each other. Ooh, ooh, ooh. No, no, no. We're not children anymore. We need to. We need to manage that. We need to manage our heart. We need to manage our emotions. We need to stay a little more head in the game before we give away our love.
[45:34] Karin: And if there's one thing you want people to walk away with after listening to this episode, what would it be?
[45:40] Deb: You know, it's my tagline. You're never too old and it's not too late to find love.
[45:51] Karin: Wonderful. And how can people learn more about you?
[45:55] Deb: Please go to finding Mister adorable. That's mradorable.com and it's all there. We just redid the website this morning. It was too confusing. So I stripped a bunch of stuff away. And it's really, really simple. It's basically, what are you going through? How can you get in touch with me? What do you want to know?
[46:15] Karin: Wonderful.
[46:16] Deb: Poke. Poke. Poke. Book a call. Book a call. Book a call. Because I love to get on the phone with people and just hear their story and then just give them some advice. They don't even have to hire me or take a class, but sometimes they need to.
[46:33] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. Well, great. Well, deb, thank you. This was a really fun conversation with lots of great information for people, so I really appreciate it.
[46:42] Deb: Oh, Karin, I appreciate you. I am so glad we got to do this. I can't wait to hear how it lands.
[46:50] Karin: All right. Thank you.
Outro:
Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love is us. If you liked the show and think others would enjoy it, I'd really appreciate it if you left me a review. You can also sign up for my weekly newsletter where you'll get tips about relationships and personal growth. By going to my website, drcalde.com. I make it easy to sign up and easy to cancel at any time. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be love. The best way to beat love is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.
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Are you an empty nester? Are you feeling lonely? Empty nesters often feel lonely, so you certainly aren't alone! But how can you feel more connected in your relationships? How can you feel more connected to yourself?
In today's episode I talk about the different factors that contribute to feeling lonely in the empty nest. I also offer a few suggestions for how to feel better, including joining my free, new Women Empty Nesters group. For more information, go to Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/women-empty-nesters/
Book on developing friendships during adulthood:
Platonic: How the Science of Friendship Can Help You Make and Keep Friends, by Marisa G. Franco
Learn more about Karin:
www.drcalde.com
Instagram: @theloveandconnectioncoach
Instagram: @wildwoodfacilitation
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.
Episode:
[00:49] Hello, everybody, and welcome. Today I'm going to be talking about loneliness and the empty nest. I've had a couple of episodes so far about the empty nest, one on what happens with our long term relationship during this time. I think it was back in February. And then my last episode a couple of weeks ago was about the change in identity that happens when your role as mom or dad significantly shifts, leaving you wondering who you are and what your purpose is now. I also seem to be attracting more clients who are at this stage of life, which I love. And I love supporting them through this transition, whether they're facing relationship issues with their long term partner, or they're starting to date, or they want to find their purpose in life or some other type of personal growth work. So yes, this is a subject near and dear to my heart, but I'm also really passionate about the subject of loneliness because I was really lonely as a teenager. And every now and then I'll notice that familiar feeling again. And it reminds me that I need to be very intentional about my friendships and other relationships as I get older. And I think largely because of my earlier experiences with loneliness, I put a lot of emphasis on family and my marriage, and that has helped me be really good in those relationships. But I think the flip side of that was that I didn't give as much attention to my friendships until the last, I don't know, maybe five years or so. And it's not easy, but I've learned a lot during that time and I do believe that friendships are really, really important. I've been putting in the work. I talked about loneliness back about a year ago, episode 32 with Laura Giles, and we talked about the rise of loneliness in our world. And we did that just a couple of months after the surgeon general published a report on loneliness. And he talked in the report about the costs to our mental and physical health, our relationships, larger community and a lot more. It was actually really, really interesting. But with that information, some good things have happened. I think there's been more attention put on loneliness, and I think there are more resources available now, and there's more information and studies being done about it as well. So that's the good news. So I'm going to be talking about, of course, loneliness during the empty nest, especially for women. And I'm going to be talking about why women so often do, do feel lonely during this time. And then also offer some suggestions. And if you haven't gone through this, you might be thinking, well, why can't women just reach out to their friends or their partner or other family? But the thing is, is that when you look at it more closely, you'll see that there are a lot of different factors or layers to this that make it a little bit more challenging. So I'm going to be talking today about seven of those different factors specifically, and how all together, they really can make it very difficult to not feel lonely. Not that everyone experiences that, but it is very common. So the first factor is something that I talked about during my last episode, was that loss of that primary role. So many of you who have dedicated a significant portion of your lives to raising kids might experience an identity crisis once your children leave. And this makes sense because your primary role as a caregiver is suddenly diminished, which can leave you feeling a sense of loss and confusion about your purpose. And those types of existential crises can leave us feeling like we're the only ones experiencing that. And it feels lonely. So that is one contributor. The next one is just a change in your daily routine. It once was that your life really revolved, most likely around your kids schedules, and suddenly that's unnecessary. And that can lead to feelings of emptiness. And that lack of structure can add to that feeling of where am I and who am I and what am I doing? And what is my purpose? That can leave you feeling lonely. Number three is the social isolation. So with kids gone, there are fewer ready made opportunities for social interactions. So activities that were once a part of your social life, like school events or sporting events or volunteering at your kids school, they're no longer relevant. And that might have slowly decreased as your kids went from being elementary school students to middle school to high school. But now those social interactions really start to require a lot more, more effort because they're not built in anymore. And that can lead me feeling lonely. The fourth factor is reduced family interaction and specifically reduced interactions with your, with your kids or the number of interactions. So as your kids leave for college or work or whatever it is, those interactions will probably decrease. And it might be that the quality of your interactions decrease. It might be that they're shorter. You don't have longer in depth conversations as you're both standing in the kitchen at night getting a snack at 10:00 p.m. or whatever it is that you used to do. And I do want to urge you to resist that urge to share those feelings with your kids. I mean, it's okay to tell them that you're going to miss them, and that's totally normal and might be healthy for them to know that, but it's not so healthy for you to cry on the phone to them every day or really lean on them heavily emotionally. That's not what your kids are there for. And it can put a lot of pressure on them. At a time when they've got their own pressures, they are, you know, exploring the world and figuring out their place in the world now. And so it's not good for them to then feel like they have to take care of you emotionally. So make sure you get some support elsewhere. That's really important. Okay, so number five, relationship changes when your kids leave. It can also impact your marriage or your long term relationship. And again, I talked about this in a previous episode, but, you know, a lot of couples find themselves having to reconnect and redefine their relationship and maybe even decide whether or not they want to stay together. And that is common for couples at this stage in their lives. So even though you might have a partner around that can actually still be very lonely. Number six, unresolved emotional needs. So this is an interesting time. A lot of women and men find that this is a time when they suddenly have the time and then space to explore some things that they never really looked at. I find a lot of people coming to me sometimes in the psilocybin facilitation space, but just in general, where all of a sudden they want to look at what happened to them when they were kids. Why are they like this? Why is this so hard for them? And it can be an opportunity and a period of significant growth. A lot of women had also been in therapy before this point, but dare I say it, it was probably not enough. And not that I think that you always need to be in coaching or therapy, but I think a lot of people stop when they start getting close to the stuff, or maybe they stop because they haven't found quite the right person to work with. Maybe it was too expensive. Or maybe they just didn't have the time or the energy to really dive in. But this can be such an opportunity. At this point in your life, you might realize that you've set aside your personal goals, your aspirations, maybe your career to focus on your kids, and that was okay. And now you have the time and the space to really do some deep exploring. So even though this might put you in touch with some of those feelings of loneliness and some of those feelings of regret, it's also an opportunity to turn that around. Number seven, aging concerns, or more specifically, menopause. So it seems a little bit cruel. Menopause seems to coincide with all of these changes that are happening in a woman's life. At this point, menopause is like going through puberty in reverse. So you might have some intense mood swings, anxiety, health concerns. You might notice a lot of physical changes happening, changes to your body. That can be a challenge for a lot of women. And the emotional component of this can again amplify by those feelings of loneliness. Now, I want to move on to some strategies to combat this loneliness, and I have four specific ideas. So the first one is the one that you might have heard of, and that is to pursue some new interests, look at some hobbies, some activities that maybe you previously set aside or never had time for explore. It might be that you try some things that don't really fit, and that's okay. You have some time and energy to try on different things. Number two, strengthen your social connections. Reconnect with old friends, make new ones. Get involved in community activities if you struggle with friendships. And again, like I said earlier, it can be hard because there aren't all these built in opportunities. There's not this structure to it. You might need to really put a lot of attention on it and put some energy into it. There's a book that I read called Platonic by Marissa Franco that I can recommend, and that might be helpful. Number three, focus on personal growth. So again, take classes, volunteer, pursue career advancements or that job that you never really thought you had time for as a parent. So think about how you might want to grow yourself. Number four is to seek support, especially if you're really struggling. And there are some women who are going to have a harder time than others, and that's normal, especially if you really struggle with transitions in general. Maybe you had a really hard time when you left home when you were young, and so this can be especially hard for you. So there's no shortcut to all of this. It's a pretty major life transition. I recommend maybe getting some books that can give you some ideas for how to work on yourself. Get a coach or a therapist. But most of all, find community. Find community that revolves around some shared interests. If you love music, I love recommending school of rock. If you want to be physically active, maybe you join a pickleball group. Maybe you love to read. You start a book club. There are a lot of different things on meetup that would suit just about any interest. But if you can't find something that feels really good to you, then start one of those. One of those groups that really fits you. But whatever you do, if you are a woman who is an empty nester or you're about to become an empty nester, I hope that you will check out my new meetup group. So if you go on to meetup, the group is called Women Empty Nesters. We've got over 60 members so far and 14 of us are going to have our first meeting and it will be on Tuesday, August 6 in the evening. You might be listening to this after that time, but no worries because I'm going to be scheduling a lot more of those. So if this interests you at all, I hope that you will come and check it out. I will say that I am planning on making this group private at some point, so I recommend joining sooner rather than later just to make sure that you get in. And of course you can join from anywhere because it's meetup and I am just really excited to see this group evolve. I have grand plans for it so I hope you'll join us and thanks for listening today. I hope you found it helpful and interesting and I will talk with you all again very soon. Take care.
OUTRO
[14:09] Thanks for joining us today on Love Is Us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like. To follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm @theloveandconnectioncoach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be love. The best way to be love is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.
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If you're struggling with the transition of becoming an empty-nester, you're not alone. In the coming months I'll be publishing episodes about the empty nest and how to navigate this life transition. It's a big change! In addition to adjusting to a quiet home, getting reacquainted with a partner we no longer feel close to, or worrying about your kids, you might feel downright lonely without them around. You might also feel depressed and/or anxious about this change and feel like your life suddenly doesn't have the meaning or purpose it once had. But you don't have to do this alone.
Today I'm going to address the topic of identity. Who are you if you're no longer a mom (or a dad)? Why is it so hard to lose this identity, and what can be done about it? Stay tuned for more episodes about the empty nest.
If you're a mom who would like to join my Women Empty Nesters group, you can find more information about it below. Our first meeting is schedule for Tuesday, August 6, 2024:
https://www.meetup.com/women-empty-nesters/?recSource=group_search&recId=ab9e2ae8-422c-495a-9c07-017d69186326&searchId=48404c2d-0a5e-46e4-b596-7744225c4587
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://www.drcalde.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
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If you're dating, this episode is for you! My guest, Kelly Gagalis, recently created a dating safety program called "Swipe Safely" in order to help more women (and gay men) understand how they can take steps to protect themselves so they can enjoy the rewards dating has to offer.
Kelly Gagalis is a Marriage and Family Therapist with over 15 years coaching experience. For the past 17 years Kelly has been a monthly ABC TV dating and relationship contributor. Kelly successfully helps people create safety navigating online dating and rehabilitate their dating game to find a partner who is a phenomenal fit for them.
For more information about Kelly and her Swipe Safely program:
Dating safety program: www.swipesafely.com
Website: https://www.kellymariehoffman.com/
Follow Karin on Instagram:
Relationships
Psilocybin Facilitation
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.
Episode:
Karin: Hello, everybody, and welcome. Today we're going to be talking about dating safety with my guest, Kelly Gagalis. I'm hoping that I'm pronouncing that right. Anyway, Kelly is a long term therapist and dating coach. She really knows her stuff and she is going to be helping us understand what we might need to know when it comes to dating and dating safety. I think that this is a really good episode for anyone who might be dating, but especially those who maybe have been out of the dating scene for a while. Maybe you were married for a long time or in a long term relationship, and now you are dating once again. And, you know, a lot of us as we get older, we think we know how to take care of ourselves, and we do for the most part. But the thing is, is that things have changed in the way that we date and in the way that we get to know people, especially with online dating. So I think that this is a really good one to listen to. Kelly is also just about to launch her swipe safely dating program, which seems to be very unique and very helpful. So if you're interested in that, go ahead and check out her website and get on her. I think she's got a waiting list for that program at this point. So anyway, in the episode we do talk about dating safety. We also talk a little bit about dating in general. So I think it's a really, really interesting one. And I'm glad you're here. And if you are in the Pacific Northwest or somewhere in the west coast dealing with all this heat right now, it's July as I'm recording this and about to launch this episode. So I hope you're taking care of yourself. I hope you can check in on any elderly neighbors and take care of your pets and kids, and I hope that you are taking care of yourself and staying cool. All right. Thanks again for being here. And here we go. Welcome, Kelly.
[03:00] Kelly: Hi, Karin. It's great to be here.
[03:02] Karin: Oh, it's so nice to have you here. Kelly and I have been talking about lots of other things other than the topic of the episode today already and having a lot of fun doing it. Kelly's another local, so I'm super excited about that. But tell us where local is for you.
[03:25] Kelly: Yeah, local is Portland, Oregon, very close to where you are, which is really fun. We moved here as a family about 17 years ago, and it's just been a really great place. Really enjoyed a lot of what Portland is and is about. It's really safe, really fun, really awesome.
[03:46] Karin: Where did you move from?
[03:48] Kelly: I'm from Massachusetts. I was in grad school in Utah, and then my former spouse and I moved here after grad school. It had the demographic we needed to start the business he wanted to start, and it's just been really good to us all the way around.
[04:03] Karin: Nice. And what do you do for work?
[04:07] Kelly: So I have, gosh, like, since I graduated with an MS in marriage and family therapy, and I did that for a little bit, but I transitioned about, gosh, 1012 years ago into exclusively doing dating coaching. So I kind of work with men and women, helping them get their dating life dialed in so that they could find a partner that's usually. People usually want help dating coaching when they can't find someone to be with. Right. It's not like any other situation, so. But more recently, I've transitioned. I still do dating coaching, but right now, my. My message, my mission is the stuff that I've learned over the ten plus years of doing dating coaching for safety. Like, nobody else is teaching it, nobody else is talking about it. And I kind of came up with a system for my clients, and I'm realizing, oh, my gosh, nobody else knows how to do this. When I talk to girlfriends, when I go to parties, people tell me stuff, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is so scary. This is not safe, and you don't know it. So that's kind of what I'm doing now.
[05:10] Karin: I feel like we need to walk this line of not scaring people about dating, because dating can.
[05:19] Kelly: 99% of the people on there are great, normal, you know, with their quirks, people that aren't going to hurt you. Yes. Right.
[05:27] Karin: And it can bring us love. So that's really important. And it's important for people to be informed.
[05:34] Kelly: Absolutely. And I love that you started with that, because my whole goal is not to scare anyone. It's to move everyone from a an unaware prey mindset to a. Just a grounded, confident. This, you know, it's going to be hard to mess with me mindset. It's really as simple as. And it honestly, it goes hand in hand with getting a better level of relationship when you're harder to access, when you have more boundaries, when you have more clarity, it's going to speak to a higher level of person.
[06:09] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. And so you primarily work with women, right. For obvious reasons, yeah.
[06:17] Kelly: But a lot of men don't feel the need for a dating coach, which is totally fine. Women are just more open to being coached, I found, anyway. And that's. I've worked with men. I have worked with very coachable, lovely men just en masse, which is kind of what I do. Women sign up, but for safety reasons.
[06:37] Karin: It's usually men don't feel the need for any kind of coaching around that specifically, unless we're talking about gay men. And they might.
[06:46] Kelly: Yes, gay men. It's very much an issue. There's a lot of unsafety in the gay dating culture, for sure. For men, not as much. From what I've heard from my friends who are lesbian and in the lesbian dating community, it's not as unsafe for the same reasons. It might get unsafe later, but it's not initially unsafe. It's not assault unsafe as much men. It is actually. Men can get stalked and have their life disturbed, but because they're used to being the top of the food chain and they're thinking more about they're safe because they feel physically safe, they're not thinking about what would it be like if this random person that I connected with and gave my information to stalked me for two years and made my life a living hell? Like, they don't. They're not thinking about that because they're not used to being on the receiving end of that, but it is a reality for men. They're just not as aware of it. Yeah.
[07:36] Karin: And then I don't know if you've ever seen the mini series or the. What is it? Baby reindeer.
[07:43] Kelly: Yes, baby reindeer. That was even better. There's another one on Netflix that's another true story about someone being stalked for 15 years by someone.
[07:52] Karin: Yeah, baby reindeer blew my mind.
[07:55] Kelly: Yes.
[07:56] Karin: And that, of course, is a woman stalking a man.
[07:58] Kelly: Yes. Yeah. You can do a lot of psychological damage and create a lack of safety and ruin relationships and make the rest of your family feel unsafe without ever breaking the law. Right. And women that want to do this have the power to do it. So it's unsafe for men, it's unsafe for women in different ways.
[08:17] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. So how did you come to do this work? Specifically, what made you motivated to do it?
[08:24] Kelly: So when I was a therapist, and I really loved supporting people and helping them through trauma or the things that were holding them back, but we got there pretty quickly, and then everyone that was single would be like, hey, now that I feel like I've really got this under control, I need to find someone. Can you help me find someone? And interestingly, I had developed this way of dating because my dating life wasn't working. And I was like, well, here's what I did. And then over the years, I tweaked it, and I realized when I would meet with couples, a lot of times I'm like, oh, I wish they had done my dating procedure because they probably wouldn't have ended up married. These people are mismatched and misaligned, and that's why they're in, and that's why they're in couples therapy. Not always, but sometimes it just kind of was like this feeling of, I really could do some good if I help people. Your highest indicator for happiness is who you choose to spend your life with, who you choose to partner with. And so to ease suffering and humanity, if I can help people make great choices and stay safe, I'm going to alleviate a lot of potential future suffering. And that was what brought me there.
[09:32] Karin: Yeah. And you've heard some horror stories, too.
[09:35] Kelly: I have. I don't know how much you want to go into that, but, yeah, there's been some very, very distressing things that I've heard and been witness to and just want to stop with what I'm teaching in. Swipe safely, for sure.
[09:50] Karin: Wonderful. So what makes online dating more risky than traditional ways of dating people?
[09:57] Kelly: Well, and let's just kind of address the elephant in the room. Dating has always been risky, and as a culture, we've never addressed it. You and I were talking about how date rape was funny, even as far back as the conservative era where people more gentlemanly, quote unquote, like the Annette and Frankie movies had, like, girls, like, trying to get out of the car and men groping them as funny backdrop, as, like, the camera pan. Like, I remember that being something I grew up on loving, like the old. Like, I love the surfer movies and stuff, and there's just this kind of pervasive background, but I just want to interrupt you.
[10:33] Karin: And of course, it was. It's not at all funny, but that how it. That's how it is portrayed.
[10:38] Kelly: Exactly.
[10:38] Karin: In, like, the me in the media.
[10:40] Kelly: Yeah. And then, you know, and, you know, through the seventies movies, eighties movies, it's always been portrayed that there's this funny element to a woman being assaulted or uncomfortable. Right. And so, you know, there's that, that underlying prevalence of that in our culture, which is people are trying. Me too, and everything, trying to shift. It's a big thing to shift. But here with Internet, people can be whoever they choose to be for a certain period of time. And the reason why I feel that safety is so important with Internet dating is because you can create a deep feeling of intimacy over the phone and over text with someone, and the person on the other end has no way to validate and verify you are who you are. Right. With normal. So you kind of, you know, you go into a connection from a dating app, or even if you were to meet someone at a grocery store and you're connecting online, there's. We have so much ability to connect with people, but we don't really see, you know, it used to be we went to someone's house, we saw their reality. We met through friends. We could verify if what they were saying was true. Internet dating connections make it so that a veneer can be put up that really masks who somebody really is and what their truth really is.
[12:00] Karin: Yeah. And I think about all the people who are really unhappy with themselves or self conscious, and so they pretend to be something they're not because they don't think they'll otherwise be able to find someone. But then, of course, they don't really think through how that's going to lay out.
[12:16] Kelly: Right? Yeah, well, no, and, and like I said in the beginning, like, 99% of the time, it's going to be a really great person. Even if they're presenting themselves in a less than honest way, it's. They're presenting who they want to be. They're not. There's no malicious intent behind it. Yeah, it's. It's that, that. So we want to make sure that, like, swipe safely set up so that you can weed out someone that doesn't mean to be a jerk, but is misrepresenting or is someone that is emotionally unstable or unhealthy. You can see that before you put yourself in a situation where they know where you live and have gone on dates and they feel like you owe them something. Right.
[12:54] Karin: Yeah.
[12:55] Kelly: Or just. It keeps you from even meeting up with that person in the first place.
[12:59] Karin: Right, right. So what are some common mistakes that you see women making that they're really not even aware of.
[13:08] Kelly: Yeah. So the biggest thing is, you should never go to the other person's house or a house. Hey, come to my friend's house. They're having a party. They're having a bunch of people over. I have a dear friend whose son went on a date and went to pick up the man he was thinking he was going to go on a first date with and was pulled inside and gang raped, and then he was not treated seriously because he was a man and it was gay. And, you know, there's all that prejudice around it. So you're always a public place, and. And that's hard because people want to. People want every. Everyone on dating apps is like, there's got to be chemistry. There's got to be chemistry. And, like, everyone wants to do what they call chemistry checks. Well, you know, you don't want to be making out in public, so everybody kind of wants to go someplace private, but you just have to figure out how you're going to keep from doing that until you really know who someone is. Because once you're behind a closed door, there's really no way anybody can know that you're in distress. And honestly, it would be very easy for someone, if you were in distress, for someone to play it off. Like, for someone to roof you a drink, that's usually someone under 30, that can happen. But you just look like someone that got a little too drunk. You just look like someone that was sick and your caring, loving boyfriend was helping you to the car. Right. So. So really being aware without being scared, just being aware that, hey, these things can happen. And the right person for me is going to respect my boundary when I say, hey, I'm only drinking water. Hey, I'm. I don't feel comfortable going with you, even though it's your friend's party. Maybe after, you know, we. I go out a few times with your friends or something, and, like, then you're kind of verifying they are who they are.
[15:01] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. Anything else?
[15:05] Kelly: I think the biggest thing is giving. Don't give out your phone number. Do something. Like, do something different. I don't care if it's WhatsApp. I don't care if it's Google voice. Don't give out your phone number. Because the minute you. And this is for you guys, too. There's something called true people finder. If you put in a phone number for a very minimal price, it's like $7 a month or something, you can look people up and see where they live, what their history is. What their job. Find out a lot of information about someone. If you exist, you're on the Internet and there's ways for people to find out about it if you give that personal information. So you don't just. If there's one thing that will keep everyone safe, meet in public for the first month, meet their friends and don't give out your phone number.
[15:48] Karin: Yeah, that's good information about the phone number. It's not something I would have necessarily thought about. That they can look you up and get all kinds of information about you.
[15:56] Kelly: They can. And the other thing that happens and people aren't as aware of this, and this is a little more like psychological. When someone's name shows up in between mom and your best friend, there is a bleed over of trust that they are earning just because they're a name in between mom and your best friend that they haven't actually earned. And, like, I don't know of any studies on this. I just know that it's happened for me. I've asked my friends about it, and I noticed that if I keep who I'm dating separate, then I'm really more able to evaluate them for who they are. And they're not popping up throughout my day. And you're less susceptible to love bombing. You're just, they're just not showing up as someone that's a fixture in your day that you can get addicted to those little notices. Right. Because every time you get that little ping, it releases. Not serotonin. What's the other one?
[16:48] Karin: Oxytocin. Yeah. Sense. I mean, I can understand how that would work. And I don't know what, you know, the word for that or the.
[16:57] Kelly: I don't either term for that would be.
[17:00] Karin: But, yeah, I can imagine when they just show up on your phone along with all those other people you care.
[17:05] Kelly: About that I call it rub off trust. It's just like, it just rubs off, you know, it's like the trust just bleeds over.
[17:14] Karin: Yeah. That's so interesting.
[17:16] Kelly: You know, and then, and then what happens is if they're not a good fit, then you end up with, like, this cluttered phone list. And it's so much harder because then people are like, they want to block someone versus, if you just have it just like, just keep. Keep it tidy, you know, so it's. It's, it's not this big. Like, it's a big deal amongst your real friends. The people that, you know, to block someone takes a lot of effort, and it shouldn't take that much effort to block or stop responding to someone that you've just met online. But if you put them in your own phone contacts, that reluctance you have to disassociate from someone who's in your true field of friendship is going to bleed over into your and become reluctance to disassociate from someone that really shouldn't have that higher level of connection and trust, but is just benefiting from the fact that, like, they're, they're in the trust box and they didn't earn it.
[18:11] Karin: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So what are some red flags?
[18:18] Kelly: A good red flag is anyone that has insistence, they insist on doing it their way in a certain timeframe. And one thing as a woman we have to make sure is like, oh, this just happened to me a couple weeks ago. Sometimes I do this so often and I feel like I know what I'm doing and I, what you call it, like, you know, I don't have to question myself. And whenever I feel myself feeling that, I'm like, okay, you need to make sure that you're not just thinking you're better at this than you are. So I connected with two people that I got the vibe that they weren't going to be a good fit, that there was something off, right? I'm like, okay, I'm going to test it. And so I was actually thinking, oh, maybe I was wrong with this one person. We were having a great conversation. There was a couple things that were yellow flags, but I was like, you know, like, maybe, you know, maybe we just meet for a cup of coffee and I just check it out. And maybe, you know, I'm like, you know, I'm just being curious. And I had, it was my son's graduation. I had family in town. And when I said, hey, this has been a great conversation. I would love to meet with you next week. I'm really not available this week. It's my son's graduation. So in town, he immediately got insistent and said, that doesn't work for me. Why won't you meet me tomorrow? And it's so funny, I do this for a living. And I started justifying myself instead of just being like, whoa, this is, you know, a nice, normal person is just going to be like, oh, that's disappointing. But, you know, that does work for me. That doesn't work for me. If you don't want to meet up, you know, this week, then I don't want to really. Whatever he was, but he was, why are you scared to meet me? And he was like, being belligerent and I was like, okay, I'm just going to see where this goes. But I was like, hey, you know, like, for me, this is a date. This isn't a pop out for a half hour, and I've got friends and family in town and I'm not going to prioritize someone. I don't know, you know, just kind of trying to educate him and see where it goes. And he just got escalated, escalated and more angry and then ended up hanging up on me and I was like, oh, this is so interesting. Like, okay, number one, I can trust myself. But red flags are really when somebody, when you give someone a no, I guess this is the best way to put it. When you tell someone no, but let's do it this way. And they get upset at you, how they respond to your no in the beginning is a template for most likely how they're going to respond to your no later. And respond like, giving someone a no is a really good predictor of how they're going to act in the future. So red flags are when people do not respond well to your no in any situation. And I even went into, like, I like, well, maybe this or maybe that. Like, no, this is. He was showing you who he was. You know, I could see where it would come from, insecurity or, you know, I could see all the reasons, but it doesn't matter. I'm not going to go on a date with someone that can't listen to my no. That's, that's the first safety check.
[21:10] Karin: Yeah.
[21:11] Kelly: That they have to meet.
[21:12] Karin: Yeah, it sounds like you really dug in. Yeah, that's, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
[21:17] Kelly: A red flag and similar to that somebody. So then somebody similar, I was talking with them and they were pushing me to meet and it was during this really busy time. And I'm like, hey, I really don't have the time to meet. If you want to meet next week, I'd be open to it. I was going to type that in and they, they just, they put another, they sent another thing while I was typing it up. And I'm like, you know what? This is, this someone is, this person is pushing. I'm like, so I was like, hey, you know what? I think this isn't going to work for me. We hadn't even talked on the phone. We bit, we just matched. We only had like five or six on the app, back and forth, text bubbles. Like, so this wasn't like, I just don't think this is going to work. You seem like a great person, but, you know, I'm just getting the vibe that we're just not match our pacing, and I don't have as much free time as you're wanting for me to. And he was angry and wrote back, like, how dare you waste my time? You know, that's 45 minutes I'll never get back. Just this entitled feeling, like, if you match with me, then you owe me. So anybody that's telling you that you owe them or that you have an obligation because they've invested time in you is someone that's really, really in their own, serving their own needs, and that's a red flag for narcissism or just. Just being lacking in empathy, which is the number one cause of hurting other people, is a lack of empathy.
[22:37] Karin: Right. And you also said the word pacing, and I think that's an important concept for people to know while they're dating. Could you tell. Tell us a little bit about that?
[22:47] Kelly: Yeah. No. So it's not an accident that I told both of those people that I didn't want to meet up first, because I do recommend pacing. I went out with someone that I later that, like, two days later, I'm like, something's up. And I went out with him on the same day, and it turns out he was in town for the weekend and he was looking to cheat on his wife. Like, I found out through Facebook and stuff. Right. And so pacing is a really good way to learn, and so you have to do it in a particular way that's going to be inviting and delightful to people that do want to connect but is going to be a deterrent to people that, like, just, like, want to get you connected as soon as possible. So pacing is the process of telling someone no, because it doesn't work for you. Right. But leading and being the leader of how quickly we're going to connect in a way that doesn't compromise your safety. But also, I feel like as a society, we've been taught that it's okay. Like, no, you're crossing my boundaries. Do this rough, aggressive. No. Versus the calm, grounded. Hey, this doesn't work for me. No. And watch what the other person does. I did calm, grounded nose, and the two people that I was talking about spun out. I've done those same calm, grounded nose with guys that I've gone out with and had a great time. They were lovely company and they responded beautifully to that. That's a huge way to weed out, to see the flags raise. Like, you. You want to pop the flags. If there's a flag you want to pop it. And it's either going to be green or red. You know, that there's just. Yeah, yeah.
[24:17] Karin: And you want to be with someone who can respect boundaries. And so if they're giving you that information right up front. Believe that.
[24:28] Kelly: Exactly.
[24:29] Karin: Yeah.
[24:30] Kelly: And I just want to say, this is actually, I have swiped safely out, but I'm going to be. This is not a promotion, but, like, nobody teaches anyone how to set boundaries really well. And my treatise on that is we've taught people that when you put up a fence, it's a boundary, and if someone crosses over your fence, you're allowed to get mad at them and push them back off your property. That's what we've taught for boundaries. The best boundary setters are the people that have a pathway that's clear on their property, that's delineated for where it's permissible to walk, and they have clearly posted signs, hey, please stay on the pathway. And they will kind of tell you, hey, you're not on the pathway. And they'll say it in a curious, non angry way. Those people are freaking phenomenal at setting boundaries. So make sure that you learn how to set boundaries and you recognize the hallmarks of someone that's good at setting boundaries. And I just give that as an I will eventually do a boundaries thing, but that's not what I'm doing right now. So that's the second level of safety. Safety really is all about setting delightful boundaries, because we can all set a boundary and kick someone out, but who wants to be in a relationship with someone that only knows how to kick you out? Right. You want to be warned. You want to be given the benefit of the doubt and taught what works for the other person in a lovely way.
[25:48] Karin: Yeah.
[25:49] Kelly: Yeah.
[25:49] Karin: And I would call that rigid boundaries.
[25:51] Kelly: Yeah.
[25:51] Karin: Yeah. And that's something that I've. I've done a lot of work around. And I call it compassionate boundaries.
[25:57] Kelly: Oh, perfect. So then they need to go to your website and learn how to do it. Fabulous. As long as someone's teaching, because I've never. I'm. I'm so glad you're teaching, because I've never. I've been a therapist for 20 years, and I've. I've heard all about boundaries, and I've never heard somebody teach the progression of it. So I love that you're doing that, Karen.
[26:15] Karin: Yeah. And, I mean, it's.
[26:16] Kelly: It's.
[26:16] Karin: It should be a way of, um. Of saying, this is the gate. This is the gate to come in to connect people, rather than creating barriers to relationships. So. Absolutely.
[26:28] Kelly: And your green flies you're looking for is like, oh, thanks for showing me the path. And somebody can say, you know what? That path is too narrow for me. You're lovely, but that boundary doesn't work. And it's not that there's anything wrong with you. It's a, you know, like, you have someone that likes to bigger pathway. That's totally fine. You don't have to be everything for everyone. I think the biggest safety thing is stop trying to force yourself into another person's mold. You're you. Just be you, and you find the person that's like, oh, that's cool. I want that. I want Karen, I want Kelly, I want whoever beautiful person, beautiful human that's listening to this. Just the way you are.
[27:05] Karin: Yeah.
[27:05] Kelly: With boundaries and all.
[27:06] Karin: And I love the way you said that. Yeah. Wider paths are narrower paths.
[27:10] Kelly: Yeah.
[27:11] Karin: So walk us through a dating scenario from, like, deciding to sign up on a dating app to maybe, you know, a couple dates in. You know, what are some good choices that people can make?
[27:25] Kelly: Oh, gosh, great choices to make is to acknowledge chemistry and don't lean into it. It's. You want it. Like, who doesn't want to be in a sexually vibrant relationship? Unless, like, your hormones have shifted and you're like, okay, I have a lot of girlfriends that are married, and that's happened to, and that's totally fine, but if you're not, like, and it's still something that you want to be vibrant, hooray. I am not. I'm not here to be a prude or tell anyone not to be sexual, but can we please make sure we're not. There is nothing more vulnerable for any human than to be coitus. Like, there's your senses. Like, you could, you're very compromised. So can we please vet evaluate that? As delicious as the kissing feels like it's going to be with someone, that it feels just as delicious to have a conversation with them. Just as delicious to go take a walk with them when you have verified it. We don't want to be going on walks in the woods with strangers. There's a whole protocol around that. But I can't teach everyone right now. For now, just don't. Let's make sure that chemistry isn't leading us to open up and be vulnerable mentally, emotionally, and physically to someone that doesn't have the ability to cherish us, period.
[28:51] Karin: Yeah.
[28:52] Kelly: Because what will happen is we want that feeling, that payoff of that chemistry, and then we start compromising pieces of ourselves so that the other person wants to stay with us or be with us, and we'll put up with behavior because the payoff feels so good. So let's not get to that addictive chemistry part until everything else feels good, and then it's. Then it's amazing, right?
[29:17] Karin: Yeah.
[29:17] Kelly: That's what we all want, right?
[29:19] Karin: Anything else? Is there anything that people should do even before they sign up on a dating app?
[29:25] Kelly: Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing is don't use your phone number. Google voice works fine. It's not perfect. And there's some. You lose some ability to, like, you can't. You can't respond to. You can't, like, a message or those reactions. Yeah, the reactions and stuff. But. But what you gain in safety is completely worth it. And you can tell people, like, this is actually the number that I give out when I'm meeting strange men, people, women off the Internet. Like, honestly, if someone said that to me, I've got respect. I'm like, good for you. Like, I am a strange person off the Internet. I don't. If I'm looking for a partner, I don't want someone that's like, dodie do do do, you know, just not looking out for their own interests. So, you know, I remember Joe Rogan, and I've never really listened to anybody's podcast, but I caught it. My son was showing me a clip, and he was like, what I really admire about my wife, you know, and this is, you know, this guy that's into masculine stuff. Like, she's so disciplined. I'm like, cool. Like that. That was what he was. Not how hot she was or her parent or who she was as a wife or a mother is that she was disciplined like you will be when you start having great boundaries and respect for yourself. The people that sit up and take notice have boundaries and respect for themselves, and they recognize it. The biggest thing is undo your programming. Acknowledge that you've got this programming of thinking you're safe and you're not. And it doesn't change that it's there whether or not you acknowledge it. But let's just acknowledge it and do the things that keep us safe and not. And not just bury our head in the sand at the same time. Have fun.
[31:12] Karin: Yeah.
[31:13] Kelly: You shouldn't know on the first date if you're going to be with someone. I remember Josh Wolf is a comedian that said from the first date, he and his wife married for, like, 18 years, and they're absolutely lovely together. And he said, I knew from the first date, but he didn't introduce her to his kids for six months. Like, you still. You still put those boundaries in place even when it feels right.
[31:35] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. And I think this is just really important information, especially for women of our generation and who might have been married for a long time and then. Which so happened. Happened so frequently, is that in midlife, they divorced, and then now they're in the dating pool again. And dating is very different than what it was when you and I were 18 or even 25.
[32:06] Kelly: Yeah, well, and my treatise on that is we actually don't even have a culture of dating in our country anymore. We have a culture, and it starts in middle school. And I think it's just in middle school, you go out with someone, right. This is what my kids experience and I experienced even back to the eighties. And it's okay. You're not slutty. You're not shamed. If you kiss or even do things in the confines of that quote unquote relationship, someone that you had a crush on because they were two seats in front of you and you know nothing about. Right. But as a woman or even a guy, if you break up with them two weeks later because maybe they were being mean to you, you're the slut. Right. Of. And so our dating culture is built around getting in a relationship and making it work without knowing anything about the other person. And for me, my personal crusade, not only in physical safety, is emotional safety. You need to date. Like, really date, not sleep around. But you can do that if you want. I'm not going to judge you, but go. Like, no one says my favorite ice cream is vanilla when they've never tried any other flavor. That's ridiculous. And not that there's anything wrong with vanilla. That's my favorite flavor, too. But you need some comparison. Like, I know I like vanilla because I've tried rocky road and I don't like crunchy things. Right. And. Or I've tried outgoing people and, you know, I'm more of an introvert, or I'm more of an introvert, and I don't like introvert, other introverted people. I need some. Whatever it is you need to date without this expectation that we're going to make this work. Because, people, our culture of therapy has been great and brought us really far. But what it is perpetuated, and I strongly stand against, is the idea that if the relationship's not working, then it means that we need to work on it harder. Sometimes you have two good people who don't enjoy life the same way or the same things. And so this idea of compromise comes up. But what if I feel alive when I go dancing and you feel alive when you read books and you hate dancing and I hate books and we don't have anything else. We don't have any relationship. We don't have any friendship. Right. And it's kind of a simplification. So you want to make sure that you go on dates with people and figure out what, what is my spectrum, what is my range of what works for me and what I can connect with so that I can be happy in the relationship. Because the hardest thing to get a client out of when I work one on one with my, with my dating clients is getting them out of a relationship with the wrong person, who is a great person.
[34:40] Karin: Yeah. Yeah.
[34:42] Kelly: And I, they struggle and struggle and they try to teach the other person how to love them. But if the other person isn't touchy feely and you need touchy feely, you are always going to be angry that they're not giving you touchy feelies and you're going to feel like there's some, it's going to trigger you in ways that the other person isn't intending. They're just not a touchy feely person.
[35:04] Karin: Yeah.
[35:05] Kelly: So that's, I don't know if I kind of went off on that a little bit. That's okay.
[35:09] Karin: But it's good stuff. Yeah, absolutely. So tell us why being polite is something that women really need to be careful with and be aware of.
[35:21] Kelly: Yeah. And so, like, everything. Like, I don't want you to not be polite. I want you to check in and say, am I being polite because it's right to do in this scenario, or am I being polite because I'm uncomfortable? And I'm hoping that polite will, will keep this person from continuing to be impolite to me. Because women tend to go into polite mode to communicate. I need you to respond with politeness. So I'm going to model politeness. The problem is men have not been trained by society the same way. So when a woman goes into polite mode, I actually had a guy think this when I was dating in college. He's like, well, I assume that you like what I'm doing because you're not saying anything. I'm like, I have my arms are crossed. I am in the other seat. You know, like all my body languages, I don't like this because I'm trying to politely give the cue. So make sure that you're not so afraid of hurting the guy's feelings or making him think that you're a jerk, that you're using politeness as a shield because it won't shield you. I had a cop say to me one time, there's a lot of dead women who are really polite before they were. Yikes.
[36:31] Karin: Yeah. And on the flip side, why should women be really aware and cautious when they're dating a man who has all these wonderful smooth moves and is really gentlemanly and.
[36:49] Kelly: Yeah, well, first of all, that's lovely. And if they're lovely and gentlemanly and it's working for you, lean into it. But know that everyone for the first one to three months is on their best behavior. So I always file it away as awesome. This is a really good presentation. How long does this version of them last? Everyone can be a version of themselves for a certain percentage of time. And I tell my clients we're looking for someone that can be their most authentic self, their best version of themselves, 95% of the time or more, it's going to take a real deep stressor to pull them out of it. Right. So the thing that can be really hazardous about that is it can be something that someone knows how to turn on the charm for but doesn't know how to sustain. And then you're constantly thinking, oh, did I do something wrong? I've had clients say so often, like, on the beginning, they weren't like this. So I thought maybe if I just, you know, kind of ignored it and let them calm down, they would go back to being that version and. But the thing is, it's not that they're going back to being that version. They're going back to being the version that they're most comfortable with. They weren't comfortable with that other version. It was a version that took more energy to support and their home base is what you're seeing now.
[38:11] Karin: Yeah. If there's one thing you'd really like people to come away with after listening to this conversation, what would it be?
[38:21] Kelly: You are so important and so precious, and we cannot do anything to unhurt you. So it doesn't matter if you make a mistake and you have to apologize to someone, I'm going to give you the mama bear if nobody ever gave it to you. I'd rather have a guy or a woman. Not in your life. Because you made a mistake putting up a boundary than you, not being the functional, beloved human being that you are, and dealing with trauma from not having set that boundary. You are more important than anybody else's feelings and the right person. If something happens and you have to explain, I'm so sorry. I thought this was happening. They're going to go, that kind of sucks. And that didn't work for me. I don't want to date again, but thank you for telling me, or that kind of sucks. That didn't work for me, but I understand where you're coming from. That's what a reason. That's someone who respects you and anyone else, even if they weren't intending to hurt you, they're not worth your time. Because anybody that doesn't realize how freaking dangerous online dating is for the lesser empowered, the lesser physically powerful person is not going to have empathy for you in those moments where that's going to show up in the relationship anyway.
[39:34] Karin: Also going to be really important for women to value themselves in this process.
[39:37] Kelly: Yes. You are more important than the other person feeling comfortable. You are more important than not making a scene. You are more important than nothing. Hurting the other person's feelings by saying, hey, I don't want you to walk me to my car, because it's a vulnerable being at the car is actually a very vulnerable spot. You are more important than any person's other desires or discomfort. And we want to undo that programming that tells you that, hey, and I get it, because as a woman, this fine line between how do I set my boundary and not trigger this person to, like, behave crazy, you know, in this situation, like, you know, it's, you know, because we can. We can behave in a way that. That the other person chooses to retaliate in an aggressive way. So I get that there. There's a line, and there's Uber, there's the bartender, there's everyone in the place. You are worth more than any amount of discomfort that the other, like, saving the other person any amount of discomfort.
[40:43] Karin: I think that that's a really important concept for women to sit with, that we so often do prioritize the other person's comfort because when they're comfortable and uncomfortable, then we get uncomfortable, and then we do everything to try to smooth.
[41:00] Kelly: Things over because that's our role in society. Like, my first thing I do with my clients is like, okay, it is not your job to be so perfectly amiable that every man that wants to go on a date with you wants to be in a relationship with you, because that's what dating was taught. Like, if every man doesn't want to be with you, you somehow fail. You know, this culture of. And the problem is there are women that are naturally like that, who are lovely women, and we shouldn't denigrate them and their personalities, but not everyone has that personality. It is not our job to put everyone at ease. It's our job to be our best version of ourselves. And sometimes that means we are someone that puts people at ease in a heartbeat. And sometimes we make people go, oh, wow, wow, that's uncomfortable. And that's okay. All of that is okay.
[41:51] Karin: What role does love play in the work that you do?
[41:54] Kelly: I freaking love my clients, and I see the people that have the hardest time setting boundaries are the ones that weren't unconditionally loved and were shamed for having needs or trying to express themselves and getting them to a place where they can feel love for themselves enough to be able to set boundaries and let other people's disappointment in the fact that they can't be manipulated wash over them is very gratifying when I can get them to it, but heartbreaking. To see them struggle with self love is the biggest reason that people don't know how to do this. And they've never had it modeled. They don't know what it looks like to be treated well, so they don't know how to treat themselves well.
[42:41] Karin: Yeah, and I would love to have a whole conversation about that and how to help people with self love because I agree so much else comes from that place.
[42:50] Kelly: Absolutely. Absolutely. Just, I teach my clients curiosity is the cure, and I try to teach them to get in the emotional and mental state of just being curious. Like, oh, hey. Like, with that guy that yelled at me, I'm like, oh, why are you getting so upset? I said, like, why are you getting so upset? I said, I go out with you next week. That's not good enough. Like, oh, it's not good enough for you? He showed his like, I just got curious. I didn't take it personally. I'm like, wow, if you're going to get escalated about these questions, you're showing me who you are, which is the whole point of having a conversation. It's not to sell yourself as a potential dating partner. The whole point of the conversation is to get to know if someone is safe and desirable to spend time across the table talking to, period.
[43:40] Karin: How can people learn more about you and working with you?
[43:43] Kelly: Oh, you're so sweet. Swipesafely.com is I'm going on a big trip, so you can get on the waitlist by going to swipesafely.com for getting the safety stuff. I haven't been taking one on one clients because I've been trying to launch this inside that app, there will be a free component and then you can sign up for more information to get safer through, swipe safely, and then there'll be more information in there to work me through that. But I really want people really want people to get safe. Like, I realize that working with me isn't something that everyone can do, but everyone can stay safe and I can make that really affordable. So there's no reason for anybody not to be safe. And my guiding principle is the harder it is to access you, the less desirable you are to people that want to take advantage of you. And the more desirable you are to people that know that they don't want to be taken advantage of. And they know that someone that has really good, clear boundaries and knows how to set standards is not going to try and take advantage of them. Period. That's how it works.
[44:44] Karin: Wonderful. Great information. Kelly, thank you so much for being here and talking with me.
[44:51] Kelly: Absolutely. You've been so delightful. I'm excited to kind of get to know you a little bit better and dig into your stuff. It sounds like you do some great work and people need this. So thank you for doing this. What a lovely creation you have here.
Outro
[45:05] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on love is us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.
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Have you been hearing the buzz about the latest Inside Out movie? It's not just for kids! In fact, there are some important lessons we can all learn from it about our emotional world and how that impacts our behavior and relationships. Today I talk about 4 of those lessons (plus a bonus) that resonated with me.
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://www.drcalde.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.
Episode:
[00:49] Karin: Hello, everybody, and welcome. Today I'm going to be talking about inside out two. And unless you've been living in a cave, you probably know that that recently came out. I saw it with my husband last weekend. No kids, just us. And I absolutely loved it and he really appreciated it, too.
I loved the first one that came out in 2015. I think I've seen it maybe three times, and the last time I watched it, I just bawled my eyes out. So I was really expecting to cry during this one, but I didn't. I got maybe a little teary. And I've heard other people have really lost it while watching this because it really touches something in them. They recognize themselves in the movie, which is powerful. I mean, it's not that it's necessarily a sad movie, and in fact, there's a lot of really clever humor and so there are lots of opportunities to laugh. It's because they really get to the heart of anxiety and what it feels like to have it. That's the theme of this second one. Therapists, coaches love this movie because they nail it. They really do get it right. They really help you understand how your mind works, why you do the things you do, why you are the way you are. So if you're listening to this podcast, you might enjoy it, too. But then, of course, kids like it, their parents like it, so it speaks to a wide, wide audience.
I am going to give away some parts of the movie, so you might want to see it first before listening to this. I'm not going to be talking about the plot in general. I'm just going to be talking about certain aspects of it. But there are some spoilers, so just be aware of that. And I'm going to be talking about the first movie and the second movie because I think when taken together, it really gives us such a rich picture of the human mind and human behavior, human emotions. So I'm going to be giving four lessons today, and I could be talking about 20, probably, from the movie. There's just so much in there, but I'm going to focus on four plus a bonus, one that I thought came through in the movie, but isn't necessarily hit you over the head obvious.
So, for a little background, the different parts of Riley, who is a pre teen and is the star of the animated Pixar movie, Inside Out. These parts are portrayed as these extreme little personalities that embody different emotions. There's joy, sadness, fear, and disgust. I think I'm getting that right. And all of these emotions are parts of Riley, and they all do something for her. They're all important. And so this is the first lesson. And that is, we are made up of a range of different parts that feel a range of different emotions. And if we try to suppress the ones that we don't like, then we're also going to be dulling the rest of our emotions. We are human beings, and we are meant to feel the full range of emotions. And suppressing one hard emotion might seem like a good idea, because why would you want to feel that? Why would you want to feel sad? Why would you want to feel angry? The things that we tend to not to not really value or appreciate or really enjoy. But the thing is, is that it doesn't work very well. It ends up prolonging our suffering when we push things down, because it's going to keep trying to push through. And also the feelings will come out in ways that we don't necessarily expect or appreciate. And it might come through at times when it's really not convenient. But if you can just allow yourself to feel those hard emotions, that's the fastest way through. And you will get to the other side if you allow yourself to feel. And I really think that was the main theme of their first movie, because Riley is struggling with something that is happening in her life. And she has this predominant part that feels joy, and she likes that part. And yet, when Joy tries to suppress sadness, it just ends up making things worse for her. And when finally she can tap into that sadness, that enables her to then reconnect with joy. And also when she suppresses sadness, it also cuts her off from other parts of herself. And that is really sad. So allow yourself to feel all of your emotions. That's lesson number one.
So lesson number two is also largely from that first movie and is related to this first one. And that is, is that we all have these, you know, what they call islands in the movie. So, for Riley, in the movie, she has a family island friend island. There's honesty, and there's goofball islands. And all of these islands are part of her. They anchor her to who, and they all help her to feel good, to be alive. You know, when I work with anyone, but especially my couples, I really encourage them to develop themselves, to have their own interests, to have their own connect with their own wants and needs, to develop their own friendships, to do the things that they really love to do, to find what lights them up. So it's not just about your long term relationship. It's important. Well, to diversify and to have different things in your life and to not just. Or to not just work. It's really good and healthy to have all these things. You know, maybe you make friends or have a hobby you love, you volunteer, you exercise, and maybe you don't have time for all of that, but make sure you have activities and qualities about yourself that you appreciate. So these so called islands can help anchor you in hard times and also help you enjoy life. And when one thing ends up going away, so maybe a relationship ends, maybe a job comes to an end, you will have other things in your life that will buoy you and light you up. They will help you get through those hard times. Okay, so that's lesson number two.
Lesson number three comes from the second movie. Somewhere in the middle of the movie, we come to Riley's imagination. And imagination is a beautiful, wonderful thing. But when it is paired with strong emotions, like anxiety, or maybe grief or anger or envy or another strong emotion, it can end up feeding that underlying strong emotion and make it bigger. And another way that I talk about this with my clients is the stories that you tell yourself when you are triggered by that strong emotion, and that ends up eating that emotion and making things a lot bigger. And it can make it more difficult to keep your perspective and see things for what they really are. You know, I talk about this a lot with couples because this is exactly what so commonly gets couples into trouble, is that, you know, one person does something that triggers the other one. And then the one that's feeling triggered or activated, they start telling themselves these stories, and then it makes it bigger and bigger, and then that can end up triggering the other person. And so they start telling themselves stories, and suddenly you are so far from what originally happened that it makes it harder to deal with that underlying trigger. So, for example, one person makes a big purchase and doesn't tell the other one their partner notices it while looking at their bank account and might not even know what it is, but you can't believe they didn't tell you or check with you. And so you start telling yourself some stories. Maybe you start making things up about what it is that they purchased. Or maybe you start thinking that, oh, my gosh, maybe they're cheating on me and they bought something for somebody else, or they've got this secret life. And then you start thinking about all the ways that you're really not compatible with this person and all you think about all their flaws, and you can see that it just builds on itself, the reality. They made a big purchase and they didn't tell you. That's all you know for sure. Are you allowed to be angry about that? Of course. So feel those emotions. Allow yourself to feel that and then have a conversation. That anger is trying to protect you, so listen to it, but don't feed it. You know, have that conversation. Check in with them before you go down that road of demonizing them. Your partner probably crossed a boundary. They made a mistake. But have a conversation. Let them know how it made you feel, and then talk about what you need going forward. And then listen. Make sure you also listen to them. So the third lesson is, be aware of the stories you're telling yourself, that imagination that comes in that can make things bigger than they really are. See if you notice when you get hooked by those strong emotions. And see if you can stop yourself from telling those stories which are almost always untrue. Okay, that's the third lesson.
So, the fourth lesson is an overall theme for the second movie. And what that is is that we don't get to decide who anyone else is. None of us is all good. None of us is all bad. We are complicated, messy creatures made up of all these different, beautiful, complicated parts. And all of those parts try to do the best for us, even though that can be hard to see sometimes. And we also can't make choices for others. So being able to accept someone for all of whom they are is really good for our relationships. But maybe most important of all in this lesson is self acceptance. We are all flawed humans, but if we can come to accept all parts of ourselves and recognize that we have done the best that we can, given the circumstances of our lives, that we all have these different parts, then we're going to be better off. We have parts that might be self critical or judgmental or self absorbed. We might get jealous or envious or yell at others or drink too much. And we have parts that want others to be okay, that value honesty, that love, seeing others happy and want to do good in the world. All those beautiful things and they're all wrapped up together. You might have all of those qualities, or just some of them, and that's beautiful, but the sooner you can accept all parts of yourself, the happier you're going to be. So then we come to my bonus lesson. And I thought the movie was maybe gonna go here, and it kind of did, but it's not, hit you over the head, obvious, but that is the importance of our relationships and how that is tied to who we are. Our relationships influence our inner experience, and our inner experience impacts our relationships. It's a two way street. So when we know who we are, so when we're grounded in our values, we know what matters to us, and we generally feel good about who we are, that it makes it easier to connect with other people and have healthy relationships. And when we have good, healthy relationships with other people, that can help to remind us of who we are, what's important to us, and help us feel good about ourselves and about life. So that's a two way street. That's the last lesson.
So the overall takeaway here is that relationships matter and our relationships with ourselves are foundational. Now, I didn't talk so much about the main theme of inside out two, which is anxiety. And they portray it so well and really give you a sense of what it feels like, which can be a lot, but is really insightful. And given how prevalent anxiety is in the world today, especially with young people, I think. I think it's super important for us all to have a good understanding of what that's like and understand how that can affect our behavior and how then we end up interacting with others and the choices we make. All of that. During my internship, when I was training to be a psychologist, I got specialized training in anxiety. So I learned about panic disorder, OCD, phobias, generalized anxiety disorder. And that was really helpful in my work. But also me personally, I have anxiety, too. But what I have learned, I now can be in a room with a spider and not totally lose my shit. I can sing in front of hundreds of people and still feel nervous, but I can do it, and I can have a lot of fun. So that's been super helpful. And as a coach, I no longer diagnose or treat pulp people in general, but it still informs my work and helps support people, and it helps me to recognize how well inside out portrays anxiety.
So, anyway, I think it is a movie that is well worth your time. I hope you'll go see it. I hope you like it and let me know what you think. And that's it for today. I am going to be slowing down just a little bit on my podcasting this summer because the new side of my business, the psilocybin and facilitation, is ramping up and I still love the relationship coaching, and so I'm doing lots of that work too, so it's been really rewarding. I love what I do, but I anticipate that once I find my new rhythm, I'll be more regular with the podcasting. So I do love sharing good information with you all about relationships and self development, and I love connecting with all of my guests. So stay tuned and thanks for being here.
[16:47] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love is us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like. To follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm @theloveandconnectioncoach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be love. The best way to be love is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.
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Today I talk with Dr. Bruce Chalmer, a couple therapist and author of a newly published book about betrayal and forgiveness - a book I highly recommend for anyone struggling with forgiveness. Carrying around anger and/or resentment toward someone is a heavy burden to bear that can sap your energy, detract from your relationships, and steal your joy for life. But how can you forgive someone who has betrayed you? Is forgiveness always possible? Listen in to learn more!
Dr. Bruce Chalmer is a psychologist in Vermont who has been working with couples for over thirty years. Through his teaching, consulting, writing, podcast, and videos about relationships, his ideas have helped thousands of couples and their therapists.
Dr. Chalmer is the author of "It's Not About Communication! Why Everything You Know About Couples Therapy is Wrong", published in 2022, and "Reigniting the Spark: Why Stable Relationships Lose Intimacy, and How to Get It Back", published in 2020. His latest book is “Betrayal and Forgiveness: How to Navigate the Turmoil and Learn to Trust Again.” With his wife, educator Judy Alexander, Dr. Chalmer co-hosts the "Couples Therapy in Seven Words" podcast, available at https://ctin7.com.
Books Bruce mentions in today’s episode:
Whole Brain Living, by Jill Bolte Taylor
The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt
Learn more about Bruce:
Book: Betrayal and Forgiveness
Website: https://brucechalmer.com/
Podcast: https://couplestherapyinsevenwords.com/
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://www.drcalde.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.
Episode:
Karin: Welcome all my listeners. Thank you for being here. Today we are going to be talking about forgiveness. Oof. This can be a really tough topic for a lot of people, no exception to this. But when we hold on to anger and resentment, to that hurt after we've been betrayed, it affects the other areas of our lives and it impacts our relationships, especially when it makes it so that it's hard to trust again, because trust is a fundamental part of our relationships, of healthy relationships, anyway. So I'm really happy to have Bruce Chalmer back. I had him on about a year ago, and he has got so much experience working with couples, and I love learning from him. I read his recent book that he just published. It's called betrayal and how to navigate the turmoil and learn to trust again. And I can say with 100% integrity that this really is a book, and I highly recommend that you read it if you are going through something like this. So I'm excited to have him on. This is a really rich conversation with great information. And again, I'm glad you're here. Here we go. Bruce, welcome back.
[02:18] Bruce: I'm delighted to be back. Thanks for having me on your program.
[02:21] Karin: Yeah, it's really great to have you back. Of course, you were on my show, I don't know, around a year ago or so, and you were talking about communication and couples. And then you had contacted me a few months ago about this new book that you have out, betrayal and how to navigate the turmoil and learn to trust again.
[02:43] Bruce: Yes, indeed.
[02:44] Karin: And you would ask me to read it, and I eagerly said yes and really enjoyed it. I thought it was just very clear, easy to understand and digest, and I really appreciated it.
[02:56] Bruce: Well, thank you. I appreciate that. And I appreciate the really nice blurb that you wrote that appears in the book, actually on the praise pages in the beginning. You're in there. So thank you for that.
[03:06] Karin: I'm famous.
[03:08] Bruce: You are. Absolutely. And actually, as of the time, we happen to be recording this on the day after it is the official release. So now it's out there now. So you're getting more and more famous, at least I hope so.
[03:22] Karin: Excellent. So we're talking about forgiveness today. And there was a time when I worked in research down at Stanford, and I worked in doctor David Spiegel's laboratory. And so that name is probably not familiar to most people, but he's pretty well known in his field. He does a lot with hypnosis and altered states of consciousness in terms of dissociation. But also, he did this really famous study about how social support can extend your life, especially with a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer. So that's what we were studying. But anyway, he would have these really big people come in, like, I got to meet Bessel van der Kolk and stuff like that. But one of the people he had come in worked just locally at Stanford, and I think he was kind of new at this time, and his name was Fred Luskin, and he came to talk to us about forgiveness. And I remember David Spiegel going, well, that's. And I hope that my memory is right. I hope I'm saying this accurately, but he kind of had enough of it. He was like, you know, I've worked with all these women who have had these terrible things done to them, and I am certainly not going to ask them to forgive. And I think that influenced me at the time. I was pretty young, but also, I don't think that I quite got it. And I was left with the question for a long time afterwards, like, what really is forgiveness and what is it not? And so maybe we can start there. Maybe you can talk to us about what it is and what it's not.
[05:18] Bruce: Yeah. In writing a book, betrayal and forgiveness, clearly, I am more than implying, I'm saying very explicitly, forgiveness is a really important part of healing from betrayal. But, of course, what we mean by forgiveness, it really depends on how you're using that term. And I wrote a fair amount in the book about what, at least the way I use the word what forgiveness is not. And I think there are. I suppose I could boil it down. There's two different ways of understanding the word forgiveness, and I go with one of them. And let me. Let me give you the one that I don't go with. A lot of times when someone says, okay, I forgive someone who hurt me, what it means is they've restored their relationship with them. So if somebody has been, oh, even let's say the case of a married couple and somebody is sexually unfaithful, and the person who was the offended party says, well, I forgave them. Meaning when they say it, they're saying, okay, I restored my relationship with them. We got past it. We're going to continue on with our marriage, or whatever it was. That's one way of understanding what forgiving is. I use the word forgiving in a different way, certainly not that rarer way either. But the way I use the word forgiving is it has almost nothing to do with the person you're forgiving. It's only about yourself. It's an inside job, which is to say, forgiveness is when you give up the preoccupation with the anger, the shock, the trauma stuff, when you've healed from the trauma enough so that you can think about it and be reminded of it and not go into a panic. That's what I mean by forgive. You've let go of that shock reaction. And that doesn't mean that you're going to restore the relationship with someone who betrayed you. You may, but what it means is you can think clearly about it. And that's why I say, well, forgiveness is a necessary part of healing, because you're, before you've forgiven, you're feeling this inner sense of pain. One of the people I quote, and many people when they talk about forgiveness, will quote Ann Lamotte, the novelist, and I think she writes essays as well. And one of her famous quotes, is something to the effect that to not forgive someone is like drinking rat poison and waiting for the rat to die. And as I point out, yeah, what you need to do is get the poison out of you, and then you can worry about dealing with a rat. And from that perspective, you can forgive. The way I'm defining forgiveness, it's possible, at least in theory, to forgive anything, no matter how heinous it is, no matter whether or not the person who hurts you has any remorse or deserves any kind of forgiveness in the former sense. So forgiveness is something you can do for yourself to get past the panic phase, and then you can think about moving on. It's very different from trust. You can forgive someone you don't trust. You can forgive someone that you would still take to court. You can forgive someone that you would still divorce. I even say, you can forgive someone you would go to war against, even though it's a tragedy to have to go to war. But you might feel like, well, this is the only way that we can defeat some sort of horrible thing that's happening. But you don't have to. You don't have to be in shock over whatever it is that your enemy did to you. You can work with them. That's how people are able to make peace after wars. They're able to have a sense that, okay, I don't have to be angry anymore. I can have a sense of mutual understanding.
[08:45] Karin: And I love that. It's really about the person who had been betrayed. It's really about, primarily about their healing so that they can move on.
[08:54] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And of course, usually if it's something, someone who has an ongoing relationship with someone, they're in a marriage or a couple hood or they're in a member of the family or something like that, usually the person who did the betraying wants to be forgiven if they've acknowledged that they've hurt someone. But that doesn't determine whether the person who was hurt is ready to forgive them. And that's something only the really, only they can determine. And lots of people will urge someone because of the very things I was talking about. It hurts. Before you've forgiven someone, you're carrying around a real painful burden. And forgiveness, you give up that burden. So anybody who loves that person is going to want them to forgive if they can, but that doesn't mean that they're ready to do so. Sometimes we are not ready to forgive. Sometimes we need the anger.
[09:48] Karin: Yeah. And sometimes it takes a lot of time to get there.
[09:51] Bruce: Absolutely.
[09:52] Karin: Yeah.
[09:53] Bruce: Yeah. And appropriately, you know, it does for good reason. We have the anger for good reason, and it takes a while to get over it for good reason, because it's, you know, it's part of our brains trying to protect us.
[10:06] Karin: And I would think then that would also mean that the size of the hurt or perhaps the closeness of the person who betrayed you might determine how long it actually takes.
[10:23] Bruce: If it was someone, you would think that, wouldn't you? And I say that by way of saying I'm often surprised in both directions. It's funny, just earlier today, I was meeting with a couple where, and I think it was my third session with them, so I've known them. I dont think weve been meeting weekly, but ive known them for maybe a month or so. And its amazing to me how far they had come in such a short time from some really painful stuff. And conversely, ive met folks who seem to be harboring really painful grudges from an offhand comment 25 years ago. So it is often surprising to me the nature of the betrayal or, or the closeness of the person, it isn't perfectly correlated with how long it seems to take.
[11:12] Karin: That's super interesting to me.
[11:14] Bruce: Yeah.
[11:15] Karin: And it also makes me wonder if it has something to do with past betrayals that somehow triggers and brings up for people that that could be. I wonder why, if that's sometimes why it can be harder in some circumstances.
[11:29] Bruce: That's a great point. You know, I don't know. It's an interesting possibility. I don't know that anybody's done specific research on that. You know, everybody's been hurt one time or another in their life to one degree or another. If you've lived long enough, you've probably been badly hurt by someone you love again, one way or another, not always the same ways. And so we all have something of a past, probably. If you're over the age of 20, you've had some past of being, having your heart at least bent, if not broken, to use a silly metaphor, that phenomenon that it's based on past betrayals wouldn't be surprising. I wonder, actually, in terms of what you're saying, I wonder if some of this is like generational. Generational trauma can play a role in this kind of thing as well. It's not just what happened to you as an individual, but the things that your culture is carrying as well can also play a part.
[12:23] Karin: Yeah. Yeah, I would believe that, too. And how is it empowering to forgive somebody?
[12:31] Bruce: Well, I'll answer that a bit and expand on it. That it is indeed empowering to forgive somebody in the sense that it relieves you of that burden. In the Anne Lamott sense, it's like using her metaphor. It gets the poison out of you so that you're no longer walking around with the sense that anytime you're reminded of whatever happened, you freak out or descend into panic. So it certainly is empowering in that sense. The reason that I like to define forgiveness as an inside job is precisely that. It's because that's empowering. To define forgiveness as dependent on what someone else does or doesn't do is disempowering. So when somebody says, I can never forgive this person who did this terrible thing for me, and they are, anytime they think about it, there's this clutch in their stomach and they can't be in the same space with them. And it's like it renders parts of the world unholy ground where they can't foot because that person is there. And that's disempowering. It seems to me it's much more empowering if you're able to say, boy, that really sucked, but I can get past it. And here we are. And there's somebody else I quote in the book is Carl Pillimer, who is a sociologist at Cornell who wrote a book a few years ago called Fault Lines, where he talked about family estrangement. And what he found was, it was very relevant to the stuff I was writing about. He found that, I think it was, it was interesting research. I think he was able to estimate about 25% of Americans currently are going through some sort of major estrangement from a close family member. And he's not talking about divorce. He's talking about other kinds of estrangements and that. And it's always painful. Thats one generalization he could make its way. Everybody expressed pain about it. And he found that the people who at least tried to reconcile, which was just a subset of them, but he found a subset that tried to reconcile. And everybody who tried to reconcile was glad they had tried. And not all of them succeeded. Some of them realized, okay, this just isnt going to work, and they kind of had to give up on it. But the ones who succeeded often, and I found this fascinating, the way they succeeded was they gave up on what they thought they needed. They thought for a long time, estrangements. People think, I need the other person to admit what they did. I need them to apologize. I need them to acknowledge the pain that they caused. I need them to understand where I was coming from. The folks who were able to reconcile often gave up on that beforehand. They just said, you know what? It's been in some cases like 25 years in some of his examples, it's been a long time or a short time, whatever. Let's just see where we're at now. And often when they would do that and reestablish contact and the walls would come down amazingly, then the apology would happen in one direction or both directions. Somebody would say, I've been meaning to say, I'm really sorry about that, what happened all those years ago. I really feel bad about how I reacted. And the other person, who's apt to say, you know, I am too, I think we both kind of lost our cool, and there they are, and it's fine. So I find stories like that inspiring. Stories like that are why I would write a book on betrayal and forgiveness.
[15:57] Karin: Yeah, indeed. So you say in your book that you can't go back to how things were. So I love this concept of being able to accept what has happened, has it happened. But also not wanting things to be different. Can you talk to us about that?
[16:17] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. You know, the scenario that pops in my head when you ask about that is the one where there's been infidelity, where there's been an affair. I see it a lot in my practice. And so, you know, a couple comes in and in the first session very often, I did a kind of seat of the pants guests a few years ago. I think it's like 30 or 40% of the couples I work with in the first session are saying, yeah, what they're there for is because there was infidelity. So a lot of people dealing with that. And some folks will come in and usually by the time they get to my office, the person who cheated has admitted to it. Usually that's the case by then. And theyre very sorry. Theyre really upset, theyre sorry, theyre full of guilt, theyre wanting to be forgiven. All totally understandable. The person who was the one who was cheated on is usually feeling really hurt, angry, confused, shocked, all of the above. And sometimes what they will say is especially the person who did the cheating will say, I just want to go back to how things were before. We had a good relationship before. Lets go back to that. And sometimes the partner will agree and sometimes they won't. But what I do point out, as you're asking about, you can't do that because that was the situation that led you into the problem. And in order to do that, you'd have to somehow manage to forget all the pain you just went through. And you can't really do that. I mean, human beings aren't going to do that for good reason. That's another evolutionary protection we remember when we, so if the couple is going to survive as a couple and want to stay together, they're going to have to learn to not to forget about it or go back to how it was, but learn from it, to integrate it. You're going to say, wow. And this is something I have heard numbers of couples say after a considerable amount of work, they'll say something like, wow, that was really painful, but I'm so glad we went through that because look how much better off we are now. So. And, you know, sometimes they'll say that together. Occasionally they'll say that separately. They'll say, well, we, you know, it looks like we, we were heading for a breakup and this is really what precipitated it. So grateful it happened and here we are and we can take care of the kids if we're okay with each other. Again, we can take care of the kids. Or again, sometimes they'll say, well, we're so glad we can stay together and our love for each other is so much cheaper because we've been through this.
[18:47] Karin: Together and it will be different.
[18:50] Bruce: And it will be different. Yeah. Yeah. That's, you know, Esther Perel points that one out. Lots of folks who've written about recovery from affairs. I think Janice Spring points it out. I have an endorsement from her on the front cover of my book and she's a bestselling author, so I'm psyched about that.
[19:07] Karin: Nice.
[19:08] Bruce: Yeah. But lots of folks will point that out. You're going to have a new relationship, not entirely new. You're still the same people, but you're going to have a relationship that has been, you could say, transformed or enriched by going through a crisis together and coming out the other side and having such a better understanding of each other and of yourself or having gone through it.
[19:34] Karin: Great. And the piece, I think that really stood out to me the most in the book was the piece on self forgiveness.
[19:44] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. I talk, as you saw in the book, I talk about how do you go about forgiving when you are ready to forgive? How do you do it? And I have a oversimple, no doubt, over simple way of describing it in three steps. The first step is indeed forgive yourself because pretty much, maybe I'm over generalizing, but pretty much anytime we get hurt, we tend to blame ourselves, at least in part. And that's true even if there's no rational way in which we could be blamed. I know of adults who had been sexually molested as kids at a very young age, like three years old or something, and as adults, they'll still say, I feel bad, I should have stopped. I mean, really, any adult knows, if you've ever seen a three year old, come on, it was an adult doing the molesting. You couldn't possibly stop it. You could possibly understood to stop it. And yet there'll still be this part of us that blames ourselves. And there's a good reason for that. Even though it's painful, even though it's unfair, there's a good reason for it because it gives you some illusion at least of control. Well, if this is because I'm bad, then maybe if I'm not so bad, I won't get hurt so much. And so that tends to be true pretty much universally when we get hurt. The first step, we need to forgive ourselves so that we're not beating ourselves up over what happened. And usually I think that tends to be the hardest part. And what I say is, when you can do that, when you can accept. What do I mean by forgive yourself? It's basically saying, you know what, I did the best I could under the circumstances. And that last part is important. Under the circumstances. Well, what were the circumstances? Well, I knew what I knew, and I didn't know what I didn't know, and I had the understandings I had, and I, you know, I didn't. I didn't know about stuff I now know about. So if I had known those things, I would have done things differently, but I did. And, you know, I. Who knows what else was going on. A confluence of circumstances, when you can recognize that, okay, well, given what was happening, I guess that's the best I could come up with. I just have to accept that as the human condition. That's what it feels like to forgive yourself. Then you don't have to be overwhelmed with self flame. And then I think it's a relatively short step to forgive whoever hurts you, even though it's like, okay, come on, there's clearly blame there. There's clearly moral. You know, there's. I don't. I don't dismiss morality as unimportant. It's very important. And yet I can accord the same understanding to whoever hurt me. I could say, well, I was doing the best I could under the circumstances. I suppose you were, too. I sure wish you had thought differently. I wish you had been oriented differently in terms of whatever biases and prejudices and bad thoughts you had running around. But that's what you had going on, and so you did what you did. And it doesn't mean I can trust you, but I don't have to be angry at you. I can say, well, I guess that was the best you could do at that point. So that's what lets you forgive someone else again. It starts with forgiving yourself. If you can appreciate that idea that you're doing the best you could under the circumstances, it's very hard to extend that.
[23:23] Karin: Yeah. And I think that it might not be obvious to everyone right away. It really might take some digging and some soul searching to really recognize that there's a bit of self blame. It might be. How could I have let that happen?
[23:41] Bruce: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, there's always something like that going on. And I've talked with so many folks where some horrible thing happens years ago with a woman whose husband committed suicide before I met her, and she was blaming herself horribly, even though there was no. It was one of those very strange circumstances. There was no sign, no sign at all that he was likely to do that. He just was saying, I'm going out to the store, you know, the kind of classic, and went out to the store, never came back. Well, instead of running away, he ended up killing. But she had no clue that this was even possible. And yet she kept saying, I should have gone with it. I should have known. Well, how could you have known? And it was a struggle. I understand. It was a struggle for her to accept that something like that could happen. And actually, that gets to the third step. I mentioned three steps. The first step is forgive yourself. Second step is forgive whoever hurt you. The third step, I give what I claim is sort of a funny name for it. I say, forgive God. And I say, you can think of that even if you don't believe in God. It's not about whether you believe in God as usually described or not. It's about forgiving. The fact that we live in a world where that sort of thing can happen, where you can get hurt so badly and not know it beforehand, not know how to stop. And that's really what faith is about.
[25:07] Karin: Yeah. And that reminds me when I've, especially when I lost my brother a couple years ago, it was, you know, how. How could this. And the world's not supposed to work that way. And so it's like this real, this real shift in how you see, you know, especially if. If you're not particularly religious or don't believe in God, but you probably still have a sense that this is how things are supposed to go.
[25:35] Bruce: Sure.
[25:36] Karin: And so recognizing that piece of it. And. Yeah, like you said, forgiving that this whatever it is that was somehow responsible for making this happen.
[25:49] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. And that forgiveness is trickier, I think, because, again, I use the word God because there's lots of folks that I will be reading this and I work with who are religious again, but you can approach this even from a non religious standpoint, that notion of forgiving God, it's not so simple as to say, well, I guess whatever God was, God was doing the best God could under the circumstances. Well, wait a minute. That is the circumstances that can't be true. It's really about the way I define faith, actually. It's about accepting that reality, even when it's really hard and painful. There's a basic rightness underneath all of it, even though we can't quite understand it all. It's a mindset that reality is essentially right to be what it is. And that's how you get through that. It's like, well, I can't possibly understand it all. I don't have a God's eye view of the universe. I haven't got all the data all the time and all the understanding, but I can accept that this whole business, even death itself, it's baked into the notion of life, and yet that's really sad. It's the basic set to lose your brother. What an awful thing. Sorry to hear that happen. And too young, right? I don't know how old your brother was, but you must have been too young. It's a very sad thing. And yet death itself is part of the nature of life, and somehow we have to accept that that sort of thing can happen, even though it's so painful when it. That mindset is how you get through that kind of stuff.
[27:23] Karin: Why doesn't constant checking work to heal the relationship? So, of course, I'm thinking particularly of situations when there's been a betrayal and the person being betrayed wants to check their partner's phone, ask where they're going, have them check in all of those types of things. Why does that not work?
[27:48] Bruce: Yeah, this is one of those moments where, if I didn't know that Zoom, which is what I use for my telehealth sessions, was hippa compliant, I'd worry that you were eavesdropping on one of my sessions a couple of days ago. But you weren't. I know you weren't. No, because we were just talking about that very thing. It comes up fairly frequently. Yeah. And especially in the context of infidelity. That's the one that's kind of the classic there. It doesn't work because. A couple of reasons. First of all, you can check your partner's iPhone all you like, and they can still cheat. And you know that. And they know that. I'm not saying they want to or you want them to. I'm just saying it doesn't actually protect you. Moreover, what it does is says that, okay, and sometimes people seem to need this for a period of time, but what it establishes is that one of them is the villain and the other is the, you know, the offended party. Well, there's an element of that that's true, but constant checking doesn't reassure you that they're going to be okay. All it does is sets up constant hostility, because if they want to cheat, they can cheat. If they want to hide it, they can probably hide it. And how long are you going to keep on doing that by continuing? It reminds me a little bit of not a little bit reminds me quite a bit of how people who work with folks who have OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder, that compulsion to check the partner's phone is very much. I mean, I imagine if you put somebody in a MRI scanner, they would see pretty much the same brain patterns as when somebody's dealing with an OCD compulsion. And giving into it doesn't help. What do they call the gold standard? Treatment for OCD is long exposure ERp.
[29:35] Karin: Exposure.
[29:35] Bruce: Exposure with response prevention.
[29:36] Karin: Response prevention, ERp.
[29:38] Bruce: And you have to be exposed to it and get through it without giving into it enough that your brain starts to learn, oh, that thing that felt so compulsive really isn't as compulsive as I thought.
[29:51] Karin: Right. And the checking actually can feed it and make it worse. Make you want to check even more. Yeah.
[29:58] Bruce: Because it makes you feel like, oh, there's always something. And then what do you do when you find that there's nothing? Well, that rarely makes people feel better because they're still wondering, when's it going to happen? Or am I missing it? Or last time they hit it. Well, are they hiding it again? It just doesn't help. Having said that, I will note how amazingly understandable it is that people want to do that, but it tends not to help in practice. A related phenomenon that tends not to help in practice is, okay, let's establish all sorts of conduct rules. You know, you're not allowed to do any texting after 08:00 p.m. you're not allowed to go out to the bar unless I'm with you. You know, things like that, again, all understandable, but none of them actually help restore trust. Maybe, you know, again, maybe it gets you through while you're getting over the shock or something gets you through a little bit. But eventually you're going to have to decide, and I'm talking to the party who's been cheated on, they're going to have to decide, do you want to risk trusting or don't you?
[31:02] Karin: Right.
[31:03] Bruce: And that is never an easy question.
[31:06] Karin: Right. And it really does take a leap of faith. It's that decision to trust. And it's so hard after you have been betrayed.
[31:17] Bruce: And you know what I find interesting? What? People, just broadly speaking, people who do well, you know, sort of what distinguishes the folks who do well. It's not that they decide that, well, okay, now I know I can trust you because I know you're not going to betray me again. It's not that. It's that I sure hope you're not going to betray me again. I'll be very hurt if you do. But I know now that I won't be destroyed by. I know if that happens, okay, we'll probably split up. It'll suck, but it's probably okay when somebody's there, then they have some options. Then they've got a little bit of room again. That's what it feels like when you're past the trauma part or another way of saying it. That's what it feels like when you forgive. And it's like, okay, well, I don't have to be furious at you every time I think about you. Anyway, I'd like to be able to trust you. I'm willing to give it a shot. And look, you have to trust me, too. And that's another thing I point out in the book. If you want to heal a relationship with someone who is betrayed, if somebody betrays me and I want to heal a relationship with that person, they're also going to have to trust me. Now, I can be saying, well, wait a minute, they're the ones who did the dirt. And I was just reacting. True in terms of justice. But if my reaction was angry, which it is apt to be when you're betrayed or cold or any of whatever those things were, I was essentially treating that other person quite badly, understandably, but nevertheless badly. And they're now they've been hurt by me. And if we actually want to restore a relationship to one where we both feel good about being in it, they're going to have to learn how to trust me as well. And that involves my doing some soul search. How was I part of the context that was. That existed when they did the betrayal. I'm not saying I'm to blame for somebody cheating on me, but I was part of the context. I better look at that. And that's always a delicate one. Again, I go back to infidelity being the classic example there. It's always a delicate one because you don't want to give the impression to the person who was cheated on that they somehow caused it. Well, you weren't giving him enough sex, and so that's why he cheated. That's not a justification. But if the relationship was lacking in intimacy and they were both participating in that and hadn't done anything about it, that's part of the context. It's not an excuse, but it's like if you want to get back to a good or get to a good relationship where that doesn't happen, you're going to have to deal with that.
[33:58] Karin: Some getting to that part about the betrayed and having them talk about and accept that they had a part to play in this in some way, that's really tough stuff. That's tricky. And not, like we said, not something to rush. And yet, if you're going to get to this new place in the relationship, that's rewarding for both people. That needs to be part of the work, too.
[34:27] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. And it is indeed very tricky because it does. It sure seems like a thin line between justifying bad behavior and on the one hand, and saying, no, wait a minute. But you're both involved in your relationship and yeah, you can't do that until people are ready to do that. But when they are, that's the work of restoring trust. That's the work of saying, wow, can we make this relationship better than it was? And both really want to begin. And when it works well, I find it very inspiring because it takes an enormous amount of courage for people to look at that and not completely freak out.
[35:08] Karin: Yeah, yeah. And what role does compassion play in all of this?
[35:14] Bruce: Well, it's kind of key, you know, compassion, you know, I guess I tie that to that concept of faith. You know, one of the things I tell almost every couple I work with in the first session, and I mentioned in the first session that I tell almost every couple of this in the first session, is that I can already tell we're old buddies because I've known you for 27 minutes. So I can already tell neither one of you is crazy. And I don't mean to make fun of serious mental health issues. And look, the reason I say I tell it to almost every couple is that over 30 years, every once in a while I have met a couple where I wouldn't say that because somebody is psychotic, somebody said some kind of serious delusion, but usually not. The folks who come to see me typically aren't crazy, and they're not evil either. And usually they're not cognitively impaired. They're intelligent and they're decent and they mean well and they're not nuts. So that basic sense of validity, that's how you can. I think that attitude itself is one of compassion. It's like, wow, you know, we all got to be the way we are for is the sum total of lots of forces that we can't quite all understand, but they're all valid. They're all part of the deal. It's like, yeah, it's kind of how life works and we have to work. So I think compassion is really central. You know, that for the therapist to show that compassion is critical, I think. And for that to invite the couple to show that to themselves and each other as well, that's another way of saying, yeah, that's what faith is, and that's how they're going to heal.
[36:56] Karin: And then also self compassion and the importance of the betrayer showing themselves some self compassion as well.
[37:06] Bruce: Yeah, yeah. I have a chapter in the book about what if you're the one who did the betraying? And it really does start with that concept. It's like, you know, if you're just stuck in guilt, guilt again, it's appropriate when you've done something, you know, if I do something that is against my moral values and I know it, I. Of course I should feel guilty. It's a sign I have consciousness. But if I get stuck there, it doesn't do the person I hurt any good. It doesn't let me make an actual effective apology. Not to say that apologies are always available or even always necessary or useful, but they can be really helpful helping both parties heal, but only if they're genuine and only if they're not coming from a place of, oh, my God, I'm apologizing so that. So you'll forgive me. So I don't feel so bad. It has to be about, wow, I'm apologizing because I've learned this and I want to express my sorrow to you and in hopes that that'll help you feel better to whatever extent it will, and invite you to tell me about how it affected you so I can understand it more. That's what effective apologies tend to do. And I give some examples in the book about classic non apology apologies.
[38:26] Karin: Right. Yeah. I think that's really important because if you're still beating yourself up and you're so buried in your own shame, then it's going to be really hard for you to reach out to your partner and really understand their pain and acknowledge that, because it would just be too hard. But if you can show yourself some self compassion and recognize that you are a human being and you are a flawed because you are human and you are going to make mistakes, then it's going to be much easier for you to then deal with what's really going on.
[39:08] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. You can actually show up rather than dissociate from yourself, you know? Yeah. And actually be there. And then you can be responsible and accountable and you could address it with some. And it's interesting when someone can get to that because there someone else I was just working with the other day where they're in a situation where, yeah, they made a misjudgment, but it's a man and his wife, and the man misjudged. He didn't tell his wife about something. He should have told her it wasn't anything to do with infidelity or something like that. He should have told her some financial detail. She was shocked to hear about it. A few months later. She considers it a betrayal. And he feels terrible because indeed, had he been asking me beforehand, should I tell my wife about this, I would have said, well, of course he didnt tell her because he didnt want to upset her, which is kind of classic, and it came back to bite him later on. But that phenomenon of if he initially, all he was doing was just apologizing more or less for existing, and that really wasnt doing either one of them any good because when he gets hold of himself, he can say, well, no, youre absolutely right. I should, I should have told you. I feel really bad about that. It was a mistake. It was a misjudgment. There was a context for that which is important in our relationship. The context for him was his wife had on many occasions, just freaked totally over very small things. And so that was the context. And so, again, you could say, well, that doesn't justify it, but it helps you understand it. And if he's apologizing for everything and, you know, any insult she's ever thrown him, if he's taken to heart and apologizing for it, first of all, he's going to have his own resentments. That won't work because he'll come to resent that, and it won't actually help her understand what's going on either.
[41:02] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. So if there's one thing you'd like people to walk away with after listening to this today, what would it be?
[41:10] Bruce: What a great question. Wow. I suppose that, you know, that we're living in fractious times. We're living in the world is, I guess I'm in my seventies now. Could I have said this 50 or 60 years ago? Of course, the world was messed up then, too, but it just feels like there's such polarization going on, such difficulty, people understanding each other when they, when they sense somebody's in whatever the other tribe is. And I guess what I want people to take away from it is that actually it's possible to forgive someone who's doing something that you just initially can't understand. You know, that's what betrayal is. It's based on a relationship. Somebody's done something you can't imagine they would have. You couldn't imagine they would have done. And I think that idea extends out to understanding wherever somebody is in the political spectrum, understanding what somebody on the other side, how they think without thinking them evil. To me, it feels like sacred work to do that. It's all about making the world better.
[42:21] Karin: Yeah. Beautifully said. Yeah. And I usually ask people at this point, what role does love play in the work that you do? But I already asked you that in our last interview.
[42:34] Bruce: Substitute the word love. Well, in the last interview you did and what we were just talking about, about compassion. I mean, love is everything. You know, I think you said that last time, too.
[42:44] Karin: So instead I'd ask, what are some of the books that you love to recommend to people?
[42:52] Bruce: Yeah. Yeah. I'll tell you the ones that tend to come up, because I'll say this in sessions with folks. I'll say, oh, you know, do you know the work? One of the ones that comes up a lot is Jill Bolte Taylor Bolte, spelled b o l t e. I think that's how she pronounces it. She is a neuroscientist who in her, I think it was in her thirties, which is pretty young for this to happen, had a massive left hemisphere hemorrhagic stroke and lost the use of most of her left hemisphere functions for quite a few years and healed up and, you know, got back to being able to do things like give TED talks. And she gave a viral TED talk back in the, I think, what, 2008 or something like that called my stroke of insight. And the reason that I keep mentioning Jill Bolte Taylor to folks is not based on that first book, but she wrote also a book called my stroke of insight. More recently, I think, three, four years ago, she wrote a book called Whole Brain Living, which I love to recommend. First of all, it's a fun read. Her basic thesis is that based on our neuroanatomy, we're all four different people walking around. And she talks about the different brain structures involved, left and right hemisphere and then sort of upper and lower respectively, like midbrain and the cortisol perspective. So you get four different characters and she gives them funny names for herself. I forgot what she called her names. She suggests that we should all give our own four characters funny names, too. I asked my wife about this when I was reading the book. She hadn't, hadn't read the book, actually, but I asked her, hey, I've been reading about these, you know, I explained a little bit about what it was about what would you call your four characters. She immediately said, john, Paul, George and Ringo. And, you know, there's something to that. You know, that idea that we're, we're all multiple people and kind of the Beatles, you know, they put together these four very different personae and they made this amazing whole, you know, we're all different people walking around. So that when somebody says something really nasty, what Jill Bolte Taylor would point out is, oh, that's character two. That's the one that freaks out. That's the left hemisphere limbic, freaking out. And the other parts are available, too, especially if you haven't had a stroke. The other parts are available, too. And you can learn, what she talks about is you can learn to do a brain huddle. You can get the four parts together and kind of, you know, let them take care of each other so that that one that's freaking out doesn't have to freak out by itself. And so, you know, if she has a whole chapter in the book, as I recall, about how these four characters interact in relationships, you get two people's character, two going at it, and it's not going to go well. And so that's one of the books I like to recommend. Another author to recommend, and I've read a couple of his books, is Jonathan Haidt. I think that's how he pronounced it. H a I d t, who? The first book of his that I read, and this must be about 212 years ago or so, was the righteous mind. And he, if you want to understand how so many different people in the world can think so differently about things, you'd never think we could think so differently about, you know, it explains political polarization or fragmentation. It explains cultural differences. He has a really fascinating theory called moral foundation theory that he and some other folks have worked on. And I find it so useful in understanding how a couple can differ and how, you know, something that someone would do, another person would experience as a betrayal when the other person is thinking, well, this is just normal behavior. And so I also like to recommend.
[46:35] Karin: John, that sounds like an interesting one. I might get that. So thank you. And I'll put those in the show notes as well. So you told us about where to find your book, but I also know you have a podcast and a practice. How can people learn more about that?
[46:52] Bruce: So if my website, you know, my name is Bruce Chalmer. If you go to Bruce Chalmer.com, you will find there's a books tab there where you can find all about my books. Bruce Chalmer.com takes you to my practice page. So if you have any interest in seeing me, I do all my work on telehealth at this point. You can do that for Bruce Chalmer.com and our podcast. It's called couples therapy in seven words. And you will find that you can find information there as a link to it from my, my website as well. But you can get there directly by going to CT in seven, the number seven, CTn seven.com therapy, Ctn seven.com. or you can spell out the whole words, couples therapy in seven words. You know, write the whole damn thing out. And that works too. But I grabbed the website CTN seven a few months after we got into it, and that will CTN seven.com and that'll get you any of our podcasts. And I hope people will do that because we have a lot of fun as you do. We have a lot of great guests and have a lot of interesting conversation.
[48:03] Karin: Wonderful. Well, Bruce, it was really wonderful to connect with you and talk about this topic. It's a really good one and I highly recommend people go out and get your book.
[48:15] Bruce: Well, thank you very much. It's been delightful to be on again. Best wishes with your podcast and your practice.
[48:22] Karin: Thank you.
Outro
[47:27] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on love is us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.
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Do you suspect that you or someone you care about has a sex addiction? Sex addiction is a topic that is being discussed more often nowadays, but misunderstandings are common. Listen to this episode to learn more.
My guest today, Eric FitzMedrud, is a licensed psychologist who specializes in relationships and sexual issues. His specialty is helping men improve their sex lives by learning to regulate their emotions, removing sexual entitlement, and honing their sexual consent and negotiation skills. FitzMedrud is a member of the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, and Therapists. He has been published in an academic book an academic journal and has spoken at multiple conferences. He has also trained therapists and taught many graduate courses in psychology. FitzMedrud has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. He is polyamorous and bisexual, and lives with his wife of twenty-three years and his life partner of six years in San Francisco’s East Bay area, California.
Learn more about Eric:
Website: https://www.drericfitz.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/drericfitz/
Book: A Better Man: A Guide to Consent, Stronger Relationships, and Hotter Sex
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https:www.drcalde.com
IG (relationships): https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
IG (psilocybin facilitation): https://www.instagram.com/wildwoodfacilitation/following/
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.
Episode:
Karin: Hello, everybody. Today we're going to be talking about sex addiction. And this is a topic that other people have come to me wanting to talk about and I have turned them away. And that is because it is not without controversy, and we're going to get into why that is today. But it's really important to me that I bring you good information and not information that might be harmful. And I certainly want to bring you the best information, the most accurate information that I can. So I am really happy to have found my guest today. His name is Eric Fitz Medrud and he is a therapist specializing in relationship and sexual issues, and he's based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and he is also a speaker. He is a member of the American association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and therapists. He's been published in academic books and journals, and he also has a book called the Better Man, a guide to consent, stronger relationships, and hotter sex. And he was just really nice to talk with as well. And I really think he knows his stuff. So there's just one thing that I want to leave you with before we start, and that is we didn't talk too much about a term called out of control sexual behavior, and that is an alternative term to sex addiction. And I'm just going to give you quick definition here that I found online. It's from Douglas Braun Harvey, who I believe is kind of the pioneer in calling it this and describing it. He says it is a sexual health problem in which an individual's consensual sexual urges, thoughts, and behaviors feel out of control. And he saw it as a sexual problem, not a sexual disorder or illness. But again, we're going to get into that in this episode. I hope that you get something out of it, and I hope that you will leave me a review that really helps my podcast get out to more people. So I would super, super appreciate it. Anyway, thanks for being here. And here we go. Welcome, Eric.
[03:09] Eric: Thank you for having me. I'm really glad to be here.
[03:12] Karin: Tell us where you are in the world.
[03:15] Eric: I am in San Francisco's East Bay Area, right next to the East Bay hills, which are still green.
[03:25] Karin: That's a familiar neck of the woods for me. I spent, really, the first half of my life generally in that area. But how long have you been there?
[03:37] Eric: I've been living in the Bay Area since 2002, and I was drawn here for grad school.
[03:46] Karin: And then you just never left?
[03:47] Eric: I never left. I had children. And like a lot of people, my nomadic days came to a sudden and screeching halt.
[03:56] Karin: Right. That happens with kids.
[03:58] Eric: It does.
[03:59] Karin: Oftentimes. Not all the time, but often. So tell us what you do for work.
[04:04] Eric: So I'm a psychotherapist in private practice, I work with individuals and couples, primarily heterosexual and homosexual couples, a few lesbian couples here and there, and some work with non binary trans individuals. And I primarily focus on sex and relationship issues.
[04:23] Karin: And what drew you to doing that kind of work?
[04:26] Eric: Having some of my own challenges in sex and relationship issues. So, you know, I grew up a Catholic. I experienced a lot of sexual shame as a young man. I also had the experience of a lot of relationship turmoil. And my parents, neither of them, they broke up very early in my life, and then they both had a lot of transitory relationships. And I was really clear that I wanted to do something different with my life. And getting into and staying in a relationship was the easier part for me. But figuring out how to navigate my own sexual desire, how to navigate monogamy for the many years that I tried to do that 18 of our years of marriage I was trying to do, that was very difficult for me. And so as I entered grad school around psychology, I started taking, you know, every course that I could here and there about sexuality to try to learn more about what was going on inside of me, what was going on inside of a lot of the men that I knew in my life. And that eventually created a specialty for me that showed up in my practice and continued to fertilize my own personal development around sexuality and relationships.
[05:55] Karin: And I just want to call out, because you said that you struggled with monogamy for many years, and so you then decided to try something else. Isn't that right?
[06:06] Eric: I did. I mean, when I say I struggled with monogamy for many years, I don't mean that I was having chronic, constant affairs, but I did have. I did have two affairs very close back to back in the 2002, 2003 time, shortly after I got into grad school, I then really went into a concerted effort to try to maintain my monogamy. I'm generally a very ethical person. Ethics are important to me. Honesty is very important to me, and I'm a very terrible liar. So I don't do affairs skillfully, which, all in all, it was a pretty good weakness to have. And it was several years later that I found myself in my third affair. And most of that time, it's not like I was thinking of myself as having difficulty in the monogamy. But in retrospect, I didn't realize what I wasn't integrating into myself and into my relationship. And so, yeah, after that third affair, I talked with my wife. We considered a lot of different options. I suggested a couple of different things at that point. I said, perhaps what we should do is leave the Bay Area, respecialize in my practice out of sexuality and into something else, and try to maintain the monogamy in a different way outside of community that included non monogamous people, and outside of service in my practice that serve non monogamous people. And bless her in her low levels of jealousy, ease in repair, and just being a graceful and kind human being, she said, but you're polyamorous, so we should probably try that. It took a lot of preparation and work up to it, but after about a year and a half in that conversation, we tried polyamory, and we haven't gone back since then. So it's been about eight and a half, almost nine years since we began that process.
[08:10] Karin: Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I think, if we can, because I don't think that that is such an uncommon experience, and yet there is so much shame and so much judgment around doing it a different way. And so, you know, normalizing it, talking about it, I think, can be really powerful for people. So I appreciate that.
[08:37] Eric: That's part of what I decided I had to do if I was going to be speaking on a public stage about these materials. It's one thing to be a therapist, not disclosing your personal challenges. That's kind of what we do all the time. But to speak on a public stage, I think, required a different kind of integrity. I had to be speaking about my own difficulties. And I want to be clear, not advocating non monogamy for other people, that was my path to integrity. What I'm advocating for is that people, and a lot of my work is specifically with men, that men take that path of moving towards integrity, whatever that looks like for each of them individually.
[09:21] Karin: Yeah, yeah. And what we're going to be talking about is not unrelated today, and that is about sex addiction. And we came upon this. We originally were going to talk about something slightly different, but then we started talking about sex addiction, and I thought, oh, no, this is really. This is it. What I think would be good to talk about today, because I hear a lot of people talk about sex addiction, and I learned a lot of what I know from a pretty well known psychotherapist and expert in sexuality, and that is doctor Marty Klein. And he's got some very strong opinions about that. And what I learned from him is that it's not sex addiction, it's not sex addiction, and don't treat it as such, or you're going to do harm. And so, and, you know, I listened to him talk about what it really is about, and I think he really has some good things to say about that. But I think it really scared me off of really even talking about it at all because I don't have an in depth knowledge or understanding of it. And so it was really great to hear your take on it and talk to an expert in this area. So I'm really curious what your take is on it.
[10:49] Eric: Yeah. When we're talking about addiction in relation to substances, what we're talking about is a neurobiological result of the substance being the body that causes dependence and tolerance. When a person is substance dependent, when they are addicted in the professional sense, they require continuing to maintain their exposure to the substance, and they experience tolerance. That is, they require more of the substance in order to create the same neurobiological high. And there are a lot of complications taking that framework and applying it over to sex and sexual behavior, among other things. There's some research by Nicole Prowse and others that questions whether neurobiological dependence and tolerance is valid at all for when it comes to sexual behaviors. And the notion of tolerance is also problematic in the sense that while many people do experience something that they equate to tolerance, where, oh, I was looking at porn, and the same porn that I was looking at stopped being interesting to me, so I started looking at other porn. It's very difficult to tease that apart from you were interested in other things and you began exploring a new area of your potential erotic landscape. So I agree with Marty Klein in a lot of senses that sex addiction is a bit of a misnomer. I really like talking about sexual behaviors more like we talk about compulsive food behaviors, because we need to cultivate a right relationship with food. We can't be abstinent from food, like an addiction model would present. And similarly, we are sexual beings. And as sexual beings, we can't eliminate our sexuality. We can't eliminate from ourselves what turns us on. There is no known way of eliminating a portion of your erotic map. We can't change people's sexual orientation. We can't change an aspect of their erotic landscape. In Doug Braun Harvey's term, we don't do erotoectomies. We can't cut out something that causes someone to feel erotic pleasure. And so the notion of addictions, a lot of the twelve step principles around that, for example, as well as abstinence guided treatment, engaging with a client in a way or with a person in a way that says, here are your problematic behaviors. Now, these are the things that you need to not do. You need to not think about them. You need to not be turned on by them. And that ends up creating a situation where a core part of the person's being is getting cut off by the treatment. None of that is to say that it's not causing damage in the person's life or relationship, that it doesn't feel out of control, that there may not be an escalating process. But concretely, in the DSM, the manual for Clinicians to diagnose in the United States, there is not a sex addiction diagnosis. There is not a sexual compulsivity diagnosis in the ICD ten, the International Guide to Diagnostic Frameworks, or the ICD eleven. I think we're on now. There is now a sexual compulsivity, a compulsive sexual behavior diagnosis. But the bar for that diagnosis is far above what the vast majority of clinicians encounter when somebody presents with the client saying, I think I am a sex addict. Specifically, it requires that the person is neglecting core responsibilities of daily living, that they're not eating, sleeping, maintaining employment, housing, and things like that. While there are people who engage in compulsive sexual behavior that way, we recognize that as being more similar to obsessive compulsive diagnoses than we do to a sexual issue or a sexual problem, or the kinds of things that we see most often, most of the time. For example, in my practice, when people show up and they say, I would like to see you for sex addiction, what they're talking about is sexual behavior they engaged in in secret, that their partner recently discovered, and that they're seeking treatment because they want to maintain their relationship. And addiction doesn't seem like the best framework to address those kinds of behaviors and problems.
[15:53] Karin: And why are people drawn to calling it that?
[15:58] Eric: It's a known way of labeling problematic behavior in our culture. Right. We have twelve steps of have seeped entirely into the culture. And it's a wonderful framework. It's very supportive. People in my family have benefited from twelve steps. I'm not anti twelve step at all, and I'm not anti addiction treatment. And I don't think it's the most skillful and appropriate way of addressing sexual issues. So there's a significant gap between people who are researching these issues and people who are on the front lines of trying to address those problems in the culture. And we have this gap. And I think a lot of us professionals are getting onto the idea of like, hey, the term sex addiction is here, and it's probably going to stay. And how we talk about that needs to shift. And we're hoping for the opportunity to shift the cultural understanding of the ways that problematic sexual behavior is different than other kinds of addictive behaviors. Especially when we compare it to substance use.
[17:07] Karin: And it seems like it's an issue not just because it doesn't accurately describe what's going on, but because the treatment approach that people then use ends up being not so effective. Right?
[17:21] Eric: That's right. Because let's take, for example, a person who has kink behaviors. They like looking at bondage videos. They want to engage in bondage practices with a partner or to be bound. And that is a core element for them of engaging sexually. If we were to label that behavior sex addiction because it took place in a hidden way, because a person experiences some shame about it, and because those two things can often create an out of control feeling for the individual, then the addiction model would immediately recommend a treatment of abstinence, or at least harm reduction. In the more enlightened addiction treatment centers around that behavior. Harm reduction is the idea of, okay, well, do it some, but do it as little as possible in order to cause as little damage. And what this does is that it continues to fuel a shame cycle. It tells the person that this interest is something that is not okay. We know that when we apply that kind of framework, for example, to treating gay men for being gay, that we end up causing harm. We increase the rates of suicide, we increase the rates of other mental health issues. Elements of a core erotic nature need to be accepted and integrated, or we are dividing the person. We are taking our external moral principles and we are imposing them externally on our clients. And we're causing harm. When a person can integrate elements of their sexual identity in their erotic math, then they get the opportunity to begin figuring out, okay, well, this interest isn't the problem. There are people who are gay, who have full, vibrant relationships, who have communities, who are vibrant contributors to their lives. That is also true of people with kink behaviors. This is also true with people who are non monogamous. This is also true of people with high drive, high desire, high frequency sexual behaviors. And so it becomes very problematic if we just use this person presented for treatment for a behavior that they don't like or that the people in their lives don't like. We need a framework for treating this that doesn't make us the moral arbiter of other people's sexual behaviors, or we will repeat the harms of our profession from prior generations on judging and pathologizing members of sexual orientation, sexual and gender identity difference, and sexual or neurotic difference.
[20:14] Karin: And I love that you mentioned people who have a high sex drive, wanna have sex a lot. I think that that often gets pathologized. And so could you talk a little bit about that?
[20:29] Eric: Yeah, I mean, there's some research that I really love about this that shows that at the high levels of pornography viewing, there are two different categories of people. One category of people does not have a problem with their high pornography viewing practice. It's not a problem for them. They aren't anxious about it. It's not causing any problems in their lives. And then there's another group of high pornography viewers who have anxiety or shame about their pornography use. These are people who view themselves as porn addicted and who may seek treatment for that. The problem isn't literally and kind of objectively the amount of pornography that the person is using. The thing, the factor that seems to make the difference is whether the person has shame and or anxiety about it. This is especially common, for example, among people with conservative sexual religious backgrounds, conservative sexual cultural backgrounds, and or people with a high level of internalized self shaming behaviors. For example, this comes up with OCD. In a practice that we talk about as scrupulosity. A person wants to do the right thing, and then they get certain frameworks in their mind of what the right thing is, and then they stay oriented. That, and they loop on it obsessively, and it creates a lot of anxiety.
[22:01] Karin: And what role might hormones play in all of this? You hear a lot of people thinking, oh, it must be high testosterone that's fueling this desire to have sex so often.
[22:16] Eric: Yeah. So a lot of blame and identification for male sexuality gets laid at the feet of testosterone in an extremely over simplistic way. Testosterone is not the sex desire hormone that it's played out to be. When testosterone is low, many men still experience sexual desire. When testosterone is high, men may not experience sexual desire. And there are pop up clinics all over the country right now advocating for testosterone supplementation. And when you read the endocrinology literature about it, it's highly problematic because what happens with testosterone supplementation? A couple of things. One, yes, you experience a short term increase in desire, possibly some increase in irritability. Just like if a person is taking steroids and over time the body acclimates to that new level of testosterone that's in the system and resensitizes. All of those gains get lost, and then the person thinks, well, either I need to increase my testosterone again, or they just give up. When you begin testosterone supplementation, your natural testosterone production decreases and your testicles actually start to atrophy. And so you create this dependence on the supplementation in order to just maintain levels where you thought you could use testosterone to create desire. Eventually that desensitization takes place and it goes away. Now, all of that is just background to say testosterone is not the problem. If people are experiencing high desire, it may be more due to their experience of and interest in and pleasure from sexual behavior. One of the greatest predictors of desire is pleasure. So if a man is viewing pornography, finds that pleasurable, masturbates orgasms or not, and finds that pleasurable, probably that is going to continue to increase his desire. If he's not experiencing pleasure in his romantic or sexual relationships, that may decrease his desire in those contexts. Pleasure leading to desire is the primary thing that we need to focus on, not testosterone. We also need to be aware that many women also have high desire. I've worked with lesbian couples where there's a high desire partner and a low desire partner, because remember, it's always just relatively, you might have been the high desire partner in all of your prior relationships, and then you get into a relationship with an even higher desire partner, and now all of a sudden you're the low desire. So high desire, low desire is always just relative to your partner, relative to somebody else's perception of where your desire should be. And you know, women do have a certain amount of endogenous testosterone and sensitivity. But again, that's not the primary determiner of women's desire either. Pleasure is right.
[25:23] Karin: When we hear about sex addiction, we usually hear about men being addicted to sex. But can women also have a sex addiction?
[25:34] Eric: So the exact same experiences of hidden behaviors, problematic sexual behavior, feeling out of control, can take place for people of any gender. And I think because of a number of cultural biases, I think that women are much more likely to self label as love addiction than sex addiction.
[25:54] Karin: Oh, that's interesting. Just a little bit of a twist. So what is underlying the behavior?
[26:05] Eric: So there are five common diagnoses underneath presentation for sex. Problematic sexual behavior treatment.
[26:15] Karin: And of course, I want to just interject real quick, we're talking about when it does start to become common issue.
[26:20] Eric: Absolutely. And it certainly can be. Yeah. So. And the biggest thing that I see in my practice is violated relationship agreements and where the person is doing something in a hidden way that their partner doesn't know about, when they had desires that they were living out online that their partner doesn't know about, when they're doing that with other people that the partner doesn't know about. And that can certainly be damaging and problematic. There certainly are also people who are looking at pornography on their work computers, damaging their career behaviors, having difficulty separating out, viewing pornography or erotic material while they're on video calls at work. These are problematic behaviors that damage people's lives and hurt loved ones. I am not ever trying to undermine that. So what's often going on underneath it? Depression, anxiety or shame. ADHD, OCD, and other substance abuse behaviors. Those five things are some of the most common underlying diagnostic frameworks for the person with depression. They're often trying to self soothe their depression and experience some change in that depressive mood by creating a pleasurable experience with shame, the very withdrawal and swearing off. And self repression cycles create the intensified pleasure that is pursued when the person reengages with behavior later, which creates a cycle of self repression and expression. With ADHD, it's often about novelty and interest and excitement and something new, something pleasurable. With OCD, it's the compulsive obsession and compulsive cycle, including pursuit of purity or the perfect just right video that I'm trying to see. And with substance use as a co occurring diagnosis, it's often that the person has gotten very far out of control of the substance abuse behavior. And they're either connecting that with sexuality, because now I can blame the substance for my sexual behavior, or they're just engaging in the problematic sexual behavior in order to continue getting access to the substance.
[28:35] Karin: And you've mentioned shame a few times, so maybe you could talk about some of the things that you see when really, that's the underlying problem?
[28:47] Eric: Yeah. When shame is the underlying problem, we often need to engage. And this is why I love the out of control sexual behavior treatment model as opposed to a sex addiction treatment model. This treatment model allows us to not be the arbiter of the other person's health, sexual health or the morality of their behavior. We begin by identifying the six sexual health principles, which are consent, non exploitation, protection from HIV, STI's and unwanted pregnancy, honesty, shared values and pleasure. And we begin helping the client identify that there are some people who do this behavior who are able to do that and maintain the sexual health principles for them. And then we ask the client, what would this look like for you? What would your manifestation of the six sexual health principles be? And in doing that, we begin unraveling the shame. We normalize the variety of sexual interest sexual behavior with the shared values principle. We identify that a part of the problem is not necessarily that you are engaging in this behavior, but that your partner didn't know about it. And that's why this behavior came up as a violation and created disruption in your relationship, as well as elements of the exploitation with hidden behavior. You're using the power of your knowledge to continue exploiting your partner's lack of knowledge in order to get consent for them, for their ongoing consent for the relationship and sexual behavior. And so there are all of these different frameworks that we can, that the client can use to understand why their prior sexual behavior has caused a problem and what the different pathways might be for them to maintain those sexual health principles.
[30:46] Karin: Yeah. And like you said, you know, if someone has that, that shame under underlying that, their, their behavior, if they go for, if they use that addiction model for treatment, then that just exacerbates the pain and that is, and the shame. And that can lead to it actually becoming worse rather than actually getting better.
[31:11] Eric: Absolutely. And certainly I have worked with clients where they identified the behavior through the process of the out of control sexual behavior treatment model. They decided that they didn't want to engage in that behavior before they understood that behavior itself may not be a problem, that that's a problem behavior for everyone. The client understands, but it is a problem for me because I have a hard time engaging in this behavior in ways that uphold the sexual health principles. The client decides that. And because the sexual health principles continue to include pleasure, that's allowed. My question for them is, how will you continue to experience pleasure given that plan for what you aren't going to do? I invite the client to come back to the question of what are you going to do? And where will you find adequate pleasure to express your sexual nature? To express your erotic nature, so that you stay whole and so that you're not trying to cut off from yourself parts of yourself. And that allows us, over time, to just eliminate the shame out of the process and to focus on the balance perspective of moving towards health. I love it.
[32:34] Karin: I'm sorry, go ahead.
[32:35] Eric: I was just going to say. And the client defines what that is for themselves instead of me bringing in a moral framework for that.
[32:42] Karin: Yeah, I love what you said about pleasure being so important. And I think that a lot of times in our society, we forget that piece. And it's also, I think the reason why so many couples struggle is because one person isn't experiencing pleasure with the kind of sex that they're having. And so having those conversations is so important.
[33:09] Eric: It is. And that conversation about what our different erotic maps look like, where they are bridged together and where they aren't is extremely important. We can often get into this idea that my partner's sexuality ought to look like mine. But human sexuality is such a vast, diverse and varied landscape that no two partners have an exactly overlapping erotic map. And especially in the long term relationship, it often becomes important for us to find new avenues. And the high desire partner brings a certain gift to the relationship. The pursuit of novelty, of spicing things up, of, hey, we seem to keep doing the same things all the time. Is there another path here? And if those gifts get shut down, shamed or cut off from the relationship, that higher desire partner doesn't have an opportunity to talk about it, doesn't have a way to incorporate into the relationship the full and vibrant nature of their desire. And so shame creates the capacity for the hidden nature and the process of that cycle of problematic sexual behavior.
[34:33] Karin: And I'm curious if you can talk a little bit about how shame can really stem from a certain kind of religious upbringing and how that can have a big impact on a person's experience of their sexuality and sex.
[34:50] Eric: Yeah, this is one of the things that I love working with, because virtually every time, when it comes from religion and an adult client is still struggling with shame from a sexually conservative religious background, it's because this is a person who, in the depth of their heart, wants to be a good person, and they want it so much that they are continuing to bump into the challenge. The problem is that a lot of conservative sexual religious perspectives don't have an accurate map of the reality of human sexual diversity. They don't understand the nature of high desire, low desire sexual relationships between two married couples. And so they'll do things like tell the low desire partner, well, you just have to have sex with your high desire partner, because that's just the right thing to do. That's just how you keep your relationship strong. That kills pleasure instantly. It's also possible, whether there are kinks or variety, or whether the person has a sexual orientation or landscape that doesn't fit into the moral framework, that the person is left with some part of their sexuality where the content of it, the thing that interests me is specifically a thing that's considered bad, sinful, dirty, inappropriate, not allowed. And the consent based frameworks, for example, of kink communities are not incorporated into that perspective. To understand that you can be a good, loving, kind, compassionate human being who cares about the other person and still maybe want to engage in a kink behavior that the conservative religious background has labeled deviant in some way. And kink behaviors existed throughout time, throughout history. It looks a little different based on the culture, and it even seems that exactly the things that are repressed cause certain types of kinks to exist in a culture. The kinks are our pathways over what has been shame, our pathways to pleasure that our minds come up with because we weren't allowed to access pleasure through another means. And so there's this paradox experience where the religious background actually ends up creating the pathways to desire by almost like a photographic negative. So a lot of what I end up doing is just talking about the realities of human diverse sexuality. And it's fine for you to the client to want to continue upholding the principles of your religion, but how will you also accept the variety of human sexual diversity that's out there and also the specific human sexual diversity that exists in you?
[38:02] Karin: Can you talk just a little bit about some of the messages that people hold onto from their religious backgrounds?
[38:11] Eric: It's you shouldn't look at porn, you shouldn't masturbate, you shouldn't have any objectification of a partner. All sexual behavior should be open to or possibly causing conception. You shouldn't be attracted to behaviors that deviate from your gender norms as assigned by the religious background. So, for example, if you're a fembody person, you shouldn't be interested in any experience of dominance, or you shouldn't have high desire. If you're a mask bodied person, you shouldn't be interested in submission feminist feminism behaviors, you shouldn't be interested in dressing up in women's clothes, you shouldn't be interested in being dominated, you shouldn't be passive, you should be on top, you shouldn't be on the bottom. You shouldn't orgasm outside of your partner, only orgasm inside of your partner. And penetrative sex after a certain designated amount of time. And that should feel satisfying for you.
[39:21] Karin: And of course, what comes through is all those shoulds and shouldn'ts.
[39:27] Eric: That's right.
[39:27] Karin: And when people can let go of those and write their own rulebooks, that's where the magic happens, right?
[39:35] Eric: That's right. I mean, these are our pathways to pleasure, the scripts that allow us, you know, you get a person who has gotten messages his whole life, that he should be kind and protecting and not lustful. And his erotic map happens to conform with all of those principles. But it means that he cant find pleasure himself unless his partner desires him so much that his partner is in control of the process. And now that puts him into a role of being passive or submissive, or receiving pleasure. And that doesnt map onto what his culture or his religion told him he should be as a man. All because his heart is kind and loving and compassionate. And his eroticism blended right directly with the pathways to pleasure that we have make sense with who we are at a certain level.
[40:35] Karin: Great. So what can people do when they find themselves in this situation? Either they have a partner who is engaging in these out of control sexual behaviors, and it's impacting their, maybe their job or their relationships. And then if you find you are the person that feels really like this is out of control and it's impacting your life, what can those two different people.
[41:01] Eric: Yeah, let me start with the partner. If you're the partner and you're experiencing that, it's very normal to experience shock, feelings of betrayal, withdrawal, reactive anger at your partner. All of that makes so, so very much sense. And I want to. I never want, as I'm trying to be compassionate to the person with the out of control sexual behavior, I never want to pathologize the person who felt betrayed. Of course you felt betrayed. You were given a story that doesn't conform with the behavior that you've just discovered in your partner. And if you want to recover from that experience, you need to start with, how are you going to protect yourself here? How are you going to create a sense of safety? Does that mean not having sex with your partner for the time being? Does that mean only having barrier protected sex with a condom, for example, with your partner? Does that mean getting into couples therapy to try to heal the wounds of betrayal that are very normal for you to be experiencing all of that is great and beautiful. And over time, you may be interested in now, how do we move forward? One of the most important things that I would encourage you to do, if you were the partner who was betrayed, is to just try to learn what's true. Why did this happen? What does your partner actually desire? What don't they desire? And it's not your fault that they broke your relationship agreements, but you may have the capacity, you may be empowered to change elements of the relationship to prevent this from happening again in the future, to create a relationship that is more sustainable going forward than you created before. And if you can find a way to do that that addresses the reality of erotic life in your partner, you may also find a renaissance of sexual connection with them that you never knew possible. And that is one of the most beautiful transitions people can make if their partner is honest going forward, if they are open to it, and if they have the capacity to forgive, and then if you're the person with the out of control behavior. You know, I have a principle here that I call be a better asshole. And what I'm saying there is, hey, if you have some out of control sexual behavior, you're already maybe all out of integrity in some of your relationships. How can you come into more integrity than you already are in? So if you were engaging in cheating behavior, can you admit that and stop the beh, the cheating behavior? If you can't, can you at least use barrier and protection and get tested and get your affair partner tested to make sure you're not transmitting to your other partner? If you're out of integrity, what's the most that you can do to move towards integrity from here? And that is my principle of not advocating for people ever to do something out of integrity. But the moving towards more integrity is always a good thing. Start.
[44:19] Karin: Yeah, great. And that was perfect because I think that my next episode is actually going to be about forgiveness. So thank you for that segue. But at this point, what's one thing you'd really like people to walk away with? After listening to this episode?
[44:37] Eric: One of the major sources of out of control sexual behavior comes from believing that human sexuality will fit inside of the boxes we think it should, and in particular, that our human sexuality will fit into the boxes that we want it to. It's very important that we take a look at the nature of our erotic map and just acknowledge that we are turned on by the things that we are turned on by then. From there, we can take a look at what are our relationship agreements? What are our community principles. What are the legalities of our community so that we can operate inside of that to the best of our ability to maintain sustainable health for ourselves. It's that dual element of accepting the truth instead of trying to fit reality into a smaller box. That is one of the first and most important things that we can do to begin healing some of the divides and the sources of shame that we experience.
[45:44] Karin: Great. And what role does love play in the work that you do?
[45:51] Eric: I find that loving my clients is and always has been the principle of my work, to witness the pain caused by the behavior, and also to love my clients as wounded and vulnerable human beings, always from inside of a professional and appropriate framework. But ultimately, it's still love of them that helps them learn how to love themselves, that helps them become more skillful in their love and delivering that love and desire to their partners.
[46:31] Karin: And I also love that as a therapist, you talk about that because a lot of therapists are told that you shouldn't, right? You're not supposed to love your clients. Yeah, it's wonderful. So how can people learn more about you?
[46:48] Eric: My website is erickfitz.com You can also find Eric Fitz on most social media and you can find my book, the better a guide to stronger relationships and hotter sex on most online booksellers.
[47:09] Karin: Wonderful. And I'll put that in the show notes as well.
[47:12] Eric: Thank you very much.
[47:14] Karin: Thank you for joining me today, Eric. This has been really enlightening and I think a lot of people will learn something really important from it. So thank you.
[47:23] Eric: I hope so. It's been a rich conversation. Thank you.
Outro
[47:27] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on love is us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.
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Jealousy is a normal human emotion that you likely experience from time to time. But when it starts to dominate your life and interfere with your relationship, it might be time to give it a second look. My guest today, Shannen Bryant, can help you understand what's driving the jealousy so that you can enjoy your relationships and your life.
Shanenn Bryant is the founder and CEO of Top Self, a self-development company offering coaching, courses, and community to those with feelings of low self-worth, insecurity, and jealousy in their relationship.
Using her instructional design certification and nearly a decade of experience in Learning and Development, Shanenn has developed many sales, systems, and development skills courses and delivered more than 400 training classes.
As a relationship confidence expert, and the host of the Top Self podcast, she has inspired thousands to break up with bogus beliefs, crack the control code, and overhaul their insecure habits.
Learn more about Shannen:
Website: https://www.topself.com/
IG: http://Instagram.com/topselfcoach
Learn more about Karin
Website: https://www.drcalde.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
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Getting unstuck from a relationship pattern is often why people seek out coaching or therapy, whether it's on their own or with a partner. While most people find they need support in changing those patterns, there are some things you can do. It's not about trying to change your partner; rather, it's intensive self-work. That's not to say that the issue is necessarily with you, but regardless of what's happening, anyone has the power to shift the dynamic in their relationships (except, perhaps, when there's an extreme power differential). Are you ready to dive in?
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://drcalde.com
Instagram: @theloveandconnectioncoach
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Nearly half of all people are predicted to be part of a stepfamily at some point in their lives. Starting (or continuing) that journey with an understanding of the unique dynamics of blended families can help smooth the ride, improve your relationships, and help to make it a supportive environment for kids and adults alike. This episode will help get you started.
Amy Stone is a mentor and coach for stepparents. She is a mom, a stepmom, and a grandma. She is a certified life coach but it is her personal experience as a wife and stepmom pushed her to create her own unique path to happiness. Today she shares her lessons learned and tools with others who find themselves in a similar situation.
When she’s not coaching she’s usually running or swimming or biking - Amy is a 7-time Ironman Triathlon finisher and an avid marathon runner.
Learn more about Amy:
Website: https://amysaysso.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/amysaysso_coaching/
FB: https://www.facebook.com/theamysaysso/
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://drcalde.com
IG: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.
Episode:
Karin: Hello and welcome, everybody. Today we're gonna be talking about stepfamilies, or if you prefer the term, blended families. And this is a subject that's near and dear to my heart. As someone who grew up as a kid in a stepfamily and at a time when there wasn't a lot of good information about how to do that in a way that works best for kids and the adults as well. But also now, as an adult, I have a stepfamily. I'm not a step parent, but my husband is a stepfather to my kids. And so I see that it's really important for us to have more of an understanding of those dynamics and the challenges that come along with it, with the rewards. So when I started coaching, I was working primarily with step families, and I still work with a lot of step families, but have expanded my audience a little bit. But I'm super excited to have my guest today, Amy Stone. She is a stepmother, a long term stepmother, and now is a mentor and coach to stepfamilies, and she was just a joy to talk with. She really knows her stuff, and she's got a great sense of humor, and I felt like we could talk about a million different things. So I hope you get something out of this episode. Perhaps I will invite her back. She also has a podcast of her own called Amy says so. So I hope you like it. And thanks for being here. Here we go.
Karin: Welcome, Amy.
[02:24] Amy: Hi. I'm so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
[02:27] Karin: Yeah, I'm excited to have you. This is an important topic, and I have been on the lookout for the right guest to have to talk about this, because it's something near and dear to my heart, and I wanted someone who really knows her stuff, and I think that's you.
[02:47] Amy: Thank you. Thank you. I accept that compliment.
[02:51] Karin: Oh, wonderful. And we'll get into your podcast and everything toward the end. But I just want to start out with asking, where are you in the world?
[03:02] Amy: I am in sunny Miami, Florida.
[03:05] Karin: And you said it's getting warm there.
[03:07] Amy: It is. I mean, this is the time of year. Starting in February is the time of year where people are really drawn to the tropics because it's warm here and that's. So that's spring break. Right. So we're finishing out spring break. I don't know if people saw it, but Miami actually did an anti spring break campaign this year, which it was fine. There were still plenty of people. But now, now that we're recording this, right at this start of April, it is, it's getting tropical hot here. But that, that's what drew me here. I came here for warm weather and I try really hard not to complain about the warm weather.
[03:48] Karin: Yeah, I can relate to that. In Oregon, we complain all the time.
[03:53] Amy: About the weather, whether it's cold or hot or it's, you know, I think.
[03:57] Karin: We have this ten degree window where, where people are happy, right?
[04:01] Amy: No, absolutely. And, you know, we sort of on reverse seasons, like, I'm not in the southern hemisphere, but it's, you know, it's delightful here in the winter and then in the summer it gets oppressive. And so, you know, that's the reason the snowbirds are such geniuses. Right. Like, if you have a place to be when it's hot here, that it's not hot. That's like the ideal situation.
[04:27] Karin: Yeah. So tell us what you do for work.
[04:30] Amy: Okay. So what I do, I'd love to share this with you, is I am a mentor and a life coach for step parents.
[04:36] Karin: And how did you come to do that work?
[04:38] Amy: So I came to do that work. The way many people come to mentorship and coaching is that I am a stepparent. My step kids are now adults, but when I met them for the first time, they were quite young. So I've been a stepparent for over 25 years and I was doing coaching, fitness coaching and endurance coaching, and I added life coaching. And then once upon a time somebody said, what is a place where you could really make a big impact? And I was like, oh, you know, there is this thing I've done that was tough. That was tough. And I might be able to really support people there.
[05:19] Karin: Wonderful. Yes. We do need more people who know how to navigate step family life because it is a higher degree of difficulty. It's different than a non blanded family. There are different things to consider. So I appreciate people like you.
[05:39] Amy: Thank you. Yeah.
[05:41] Karin: And why is it helpful for people, even those who are not in a blended or a stepfamily, to know a little bit about stepfamilies?
[05:52] Amy: So this is a great question, and if your audience doesn't know, you actually, let me have this question with a little bit in advance. So I got a chance to think about it, and the first thing, actually, was a little bit of sort of imposter syndrome, where I was like, oh, is it. Is it important that other people would know? But then I was like, okay, no. Here, let me answer this question. The dynamics of existing in a blended family are helpful for people to know because there are so many people who are living in this situation. So I live in the United States. You live in the United States. The data is wonky. And so, like, I just will be upfront about that. Like that you've always got to question information about this, and I encourage people to just question the life out of any statistics I give. But the estimate that I have recently from Pew research is that four out of ten marriages today include a remarriage. Right? So those are people who are potentially stepparents. Maybe not. Like, it's not. It's not a one for one answer, but there are a lot of people who are engaging in potentially this construct, even if. And the other thing I always point out to people is, even if you don't choose this as your path, your kids might choose this as your path. And interestingly, if you have kids and they get remarried and you are an in law, congratulations, you're in a blended family. It's a very, very similar dynamic between an in law and the new family members that it is for a stepparent. So it's a very helpful set of complexity. And what's super interesting is that that mother in law role is vilified just like the stepmom.
[07:33] Karin: Yeah. Yeah.
[07:34] Amy: Isn't that crazy? Isn't that crazy? Like we. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[07:38] Karin: And, you know, I also think about, you know, couples who remarry much later in life or who lose a partner and then remarry, and then they have adult kids. And that adjustment is still really hard for a lot of families.
[07:55] Amy: Still really, really challenging. And it is a different dynamic, without a doubt. Right. You get a totally different set of circumstances when you're talking about, like, 50 year old children versus seven year old children. Completely different set of circumstances. But, yeah, absolutely releasing the idea that the only kind of family setup is the one where it's a first marriage and everybody is biologically related to the children. Is really helpful in a lot of ways, because even outside of the very common ways that you and I just discussed, there are thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of people who are in the daily work of raising children that they're not necessarily related to. Sometimes these are kinship, custodial things where a relative has stepped in. Other times, it's somebody who's not related at all. And so embracing the idea that a family doesn't always have to look like that is helpful for so many people.
[08:53] Karin: Yeah. And there are plenty of people who work with families, such as doctors or teachers, and might not understand that dynamic. And so there are some things that they're going to know, get wrong or miss.
[09:09] Amy: Yes, absolutely. This was an old one. It was the census before the last census. But they. So we don't ask on the census, are you a stepparent? But one of the questions, I don't know if they did in this last one, but the one before it, they asked, are you living with somebody you're not related to? An enormous amount of children said, yes. And so if you branch out away from, you know, the mom, dad, stepmom, stepdad thing, it really encompasses a lot of people, and it's. And then a lot of this kind of conversation is always focused on very young children. But I really work in supporting the adults. And the concept of handing adults a toolbox to help them do this in a, you know, have more things to reach for in some of these very hard situations, to me, is a really empowering place to be because whether you're a first time parent, and this is actually something, every once in a while, people will say, hey, is the advice you give, you know, the tools you offer, is it only for step parents? And I don't know. I don't think that's true. I think that a lot of the stuff I offer is very broad, and I just speak directly to step parents, partly because nobody else is. Like, very few people speak directly to step parents, and. But, you know, it's like, the more tools, the better. The more resources, the better. It was way back in the early nineties, I think, that, uh, Hillary wrote that book that was like, it takes a village. And, you know, that's such a beautiful idea that it takes a village. And one of the just earth shattering revelations that most adults who engage in the family ing and adulting and parenting and step parenting space is that, you know, people turn into a joke. They're like, does the village just show up? Like, when do I find the village where where is it? Like, is there a number I can call? And so the more people who are out there are saying, hey, here are some things you can do, and here's some support. I think. I think the better.
[11:04] Karin: Yeah, I agree. So for those who might be just starting their stepfamily journey, what might be helpful for them to think about ahead of time so they can be a little bit more prepared if there is such a thing.
[11:22] Amy: This is such a good question. One of the things I love about this question is that, truthfully, I thought I was prepared. I mean, I just really. I had this assumption that, uh, that I could. That I was going to be fine. In fact, there were people who, um, who did try to raise the. My awareness that this could be a tough, uh, tough job. Like, I. My mom very specifically said, hey, this. This sounds like it could be a lot. You know, are you sure you want to take this on? And I was like, I. In my youthful exuberance, I took it as a challenge. Her. This is like a highlight of the flaw in our relationship, our mother daughter relationship. I was like, how dare you question my abilities to do this. I think that there's a lot of things you can do. None of them can necessarily guarantee that anything's going to work. But some of the things that are really, really helpful, that are counterintuitive is that I think that the more you know yourself, the better you are going to be at starting a family relationship. And I do think that's probably true for a first marriage in addition. Right? Because I'm upfront with people that a lot of the work that I did that helped me be happy in my family was deeply internal work about what was driving me and what was pushing me and what was allowing my buttons to be pushed. Because it's funny how having those little people around, whether they're your own children or your stepchildren, they push buttons. They. I don't know. Like, it is a special, special kind of thing that kids can do. And so that's something that I think is very helpful. And I offer that with the caveat that I think it's very hard to know that you need to do that or when you're done. Like, I don't know. It's like, I went to therapy, like.
[13:18] Karin: Ten years ago, and I did that. So it's.
[13:20] Amy: I did it. I did it, and it's done. And that definitely mirrors some of my experience. Like, oh, what is this showing up for? But, you know, having kids around brings up your own stuff from your childhood. If it's there, good, bad, middle, you know, everything from your bad experience at the science fair to being bullied on the playground to whatever came up for you. Seeing kids go through their own experience brings all of that stuff back up. And so if there's anything that was undone or incomplete, there's a chance it'll come back up. And I think that that's good. I think the other thing that is helpful, but also really kind of ambiguous and hard to know, is having a concept of what kind of life you want to create is a really helpful thing, because otherwise, there's a sense that life is sort of running you instead of you being intentional about it. But those are ooey gooey, messy, kind of ambiguous kind of things.
[14:26] Karin: But, yeah, creating a vision. This is where.
[14:28] Amy: Creating a vision.
[14:28] Karin: Yeah, we're gonna go, and this is what's important to us. Yeah, yeah. And I love that you said that. It's really important to know yourself. When I was first starting coaching and working with step families, I did a bunch of research and interviewed people who had, you know, all the roles, all the different kinds of roles in a step family. And the thing that was really clear is that those who either did the work themselves and were parents and step parents, they did well, or those who were kids and had a parent who had done their work by far, they did the best.
[15:10] Amy: No, it's like, if you like, it translates really well to other parts of your life. Right. So if you walk into a restaurant and, you know, you are the consumer, you don't feel like you need to jump behind the counter and cook all the food, you know, why you're there and what you're doing, and we don't do that in some places in our adult life. It gets confused. And then when you have these blends where there is. There are legacy roles. Right. There are legacy roles. So my step kids, they have a mom. So when I came in and showed up as another woman, clearly defining for me and them and anybody who happened to walk around, like, how we saw that in my family, was really helpful in making it through the day.
[15:58] Karin: Yeah.
[15:58] Amy: And I didn't know that I fell into it, so I had been done.
[16:03] Karin: Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, I agree. Understanding your triggers and what you do and why that's triggering for you, and then perhaps doing some healing of that old wound, all of that can go a long way.
[16:16] Amy: Right. And it can get really complicated, so. Right. Like, the word mom is a really powerful word, has a lot of attachment to people. Right. So, you know, when you take the word stepmom, a lot of people have really strong feelings about that. People actually will change it. They will say, I'm the bonus mom or the bonus parent. There's other. There's other words, and. And that's. That's easy to talk about here on the podcast. But there's other things that happen, right, which make it really throw the power of those words and the power of the triggers in the limelight. Like, so, like, if you've got fertility issues happening in family and you're really tied to what you're going to do, then these things become very messy, and you're craving for certain things starts to show up and giving yourself permission and tools to be able to talk about it and create a safe space to be this person inside your family. The more you know about yourself, the easier that is. I mean, it's a very, very loaded thing for people who deeply, deeply crave something to actually feel like they can talk about it. So, I am not a fertility coach, but I resonate with people who are. It's hard to stand up and say, I'm struggling with this. My concept of who I am is tied to this thing, and when I see these things, and a similar thing can happen to step parents. I'm struggling with who I am in this situation. I have these emotions. I'm not sure it's okay for me to share with you that. I feel, like, a little freaked out right now. You know, it's hard.
[17:51] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. And what are some of the struggles that stepdads face?
[17:59] Amy: So, stepdad. Never have lived as a stepdad myself, but I'll share some that I hear. Stepdads, it's a. I mean, they have a. It depends on their, you know, view of the world, but a lot of stepdads struggle with what they're allowed to do. Right. So if you walk into a family and your concept is that if you're a man, you're supposed to be the disciplinarian and the head of the household. Right. And there's other people doing some of those things where you're not sure if you can do that, that can really be a tough spot for some men to sit in. You know, like, hey, if I feel these kids are not behaving the way I want to, am I allowed to. To voice my opinion? Am I allowed to be a disciplinarian? What are the rules? What am I not allowed to do? It can be unclear how to demonstrate affection. So it's okay for a woman socially, sociologically, in a group setting. We're pretty accepting of women being physically affectionate to children. It's not as clear for some men. Like, so if I'm living with you, what are the rules? There's that, like, amazing scene in there's an Adam Sandler movie. I'm forgetting the title. And he's like, taking care of a young kid, and he is not bathing. And then he find the kid begins to smell, and he ends up in the bathtub. And the kid looks up and he's like, why am I wearing a swimsuit? And Sandler's like, I'm really unclear on the rules here. And, you know, that's like a, you know, that's one of the things that men really struggle with. But how to hold on to your view as the man and in the family? And what does that mean when you may not be the father of those children?
[19:46] Karin: Yeah. And so do you coach people to simply have a conversation and figure out what works for them, or do you have specific guidelines that you recommend?
[19:57] Amy: So. I don't have guidelines that I recommend for other people. I'm very an open book about how it worked out in our family. But I do. I suggest that people, and this depends on how old the kids are. Right. Because it's a different conversation. If you're stepping into a family and the kids are teenagers, teenagers are able to share their opinions. But being open about, you know, what are we gonna call me? Am I gonna be the stepmom? Are you gonna call my, what's my name? What is, you know, what is your ex gonna call me? What is my role? What are the job responsibilities? What are the things you're hoping I'll do? What are the things that I'm hoping I'll do? What's important to you in the family and opening that up when it's appropriate so that the kids have a chance to voice what they think and the questions they have. Because sometimes as adults, we just assume that we're just going to show up and the kids are going to understand. But kids have a lot of questions about what's happening in their houses, and, you know, they are very able to figure things out. But it's so helpful sometimes to sit down and say, this is what we're doing, and these are the rules. And what do you think about it? It doesn't work as well as you might think to say, this is it, and that's the way it's going to be, and you're all going to love her. She's your new stepmom right? It's not.
[21:20] Karin: It works great.
[21:21] Amy: Yeah. And what works even better is when you walk in, you're like, hey, these new people you just met last week, they're going to live here and they're your siblings. Congratulations. You know, you should love them. Go. You know, these are actually things we can't force, but you can open the conversation and do that. If you ask a twelve year old, what do you want to call me? They might have an answer. They might say, this feels weird. My step kids called me by my name. They always did. And I never really thought about it. And I tell the story that we were at an amusement park, a video place, and they needed an adult who could give permission for them to go on the ride. And the teenager behind the counter was like, who says, you can do this? And they were like, she does. Because I was the person around. And they were like, is she your stepmom? And they were like, yes. And I was like, all right, let's go with that. Here we go. Yes, fine, you can go on the ride. And that's the first time we had that conversation. It's not the way. That's not an intentional conversation, but. Yeah, right, right.
[22:33] Karin: And what are some of the issues that you hear about from step parents and parents?
[22:39] Amy: So the number one issue that brings people to me is people come in and say, we have different parenting styles that can be the step parent and the biological parent that they're partnered with. It can be the ex, it can be the in laws, it can be anything. Right? That's a catch all phrase for saying we don't agree about what we're doing. And another thing that brings people to me is disagreements about discipline and behavior. Right. So they'll say, often people will say discipline. I would broaden it to say behavior in the family, children's behavior. Manners come up a lot. Food comes up a lot. Sleep comes up a lot. Respect comes up a lot.
[23:23] Karin: How do you help people with that issue, specifically?
[23:26] Amy: Respect. Which one? Respect. Oh, respect. So similar. It's how do I help you? When we talk about respect, we sort of have to figure out what it is they're looking for. And then. And then what's going on? I openly share with people that one, I did not have kids when I became a step parent, so they were four and eight when I met them. I openly shared that I thought that these kids should be quieter, should eat more varied foods, should sleep a little longer in the mornings, and, you know, and have better table manners. And I also, with people that I was wrong about all of those things. I didn't understand. I didn't have any baseline for what was age appropriate behavior. So, like, when somebody comes and says, oh, they're not being respectful, the first thing we do is actually figure out what's going on and what's showing up and then figuring out whether or not there's like a. Is there a real behavioral issue that's going on that needs help? Are the things that are expected for everybody clearly to find. Right. Like what? Is there something that's setting something off and what can we do? Have you, if somebody doesn't know what's expected of them, they are less likely to be able to do it. So if you and, you know, small children are not, they don't know how to do anything. So there's a period of education, and then you'd think that when they got older, right, that the kids would be better able to do it. And to one extent, they are. But then there's this great period of the parenting journey, which is called adolescence. And adolescence is tough because does a teenager know how to pick up their wet towel off the floor? I have been told that they do, but four kids have gone through my house, and I will confess to a 0% success rate in getting them to do this without being told or bring all the spoons down or cups down from the roof. You know, like, there's, you know, it is. There are frustrating parts of living with.
[25:31] Karin: Children and how do you help them navigate these behavior challenges?
[25:36] Amy: So some of it is offering, you know, tools for actual behavior challenge. And other things are actually being very intentional about the relationship that you want to have with the people in your family. Right. So. And I think that this is something I very much did not understand when I began cohabitating with children. But there is a point where we each have a choice where it's like, how long do I want to fight about this? You know, what? How do I want to show up when the movie of my life is played out, played back? Do I want to see a video of me yelling at these kids 3 hours a day? Like, what do I want to do? What do I want to create? And that's the shift that when you start to look at it away from focusing on the behavior as it's showing up and being able to create a family environment that supports everybody. So. And that's going to be very different depending on what it shows up in sort of the behavior. So if it's like, not sleeping, that's a different thing. You know, not eating well, talking back, screaming, being loud, all of those things will have different tools that can be used. But identifying what you don't like is just a small piece of creating what hopefully you do like. You know, are you engaging in combat with your kids? Then you want to stop? That is the. Is there nothing for them to do? There was a season in my life as a stepparent where I became very aware that the kids, my step kids at this point, before I had kids, they had aged out of all of the toys that were in our house. And so they were like, they were looking for something to do in our house because the things that were there, they didn't want to play with anymore, you know? And so if you had asked me in that moment, I would have said they were misbehaving. When I look back, I can say, oh, wow. We really. We had gotten out of sync with who they were at that point. They needed stuff to do.
[27:34] Karin: So what's an example of some of these tools that can help to ease some of that tension around? I want a clean kitchen, and maybe the other one doesn't matter so much, you know, between the two parents. And now the kids are, all of a sudden, there are all these expectations, and so there's conflict. Right. So how do you help parents with that?
[28:00] Amy: So we define. We look at what conflict means to you and how it's showing up, right. And what you think is reasonable because everybody comes to a relationship with a slightly different communication style, an expectation of how other people will communicate around you. What is. Okay, are you allowed to fight? Are you not allowed to fight? Can you yell? Does yelling mean you're angry all the time? Right. This can look a million different ways in a bunch of different families. I grew up with a very quiet family, and so I misinterpreted many, many things from my husband's very loud family. I was like, oh, my gosh, what is going on? And so redefining that was a big piece. So conflict is really complicated. So there's no scene. The first thing I do is try and remove from the table the idea that there's probably a situation that you desire where you agree all the time, right, that doesn't kind of exist. And it. Or if it did, you might not want it, right? Like, it's like if you agreed on every single thing all day long, that would be, for most people, a very, very non interesting experience. And so what we're actually doing is creating, trying to figure out what it is that you want, where you're not being heard and where you're feeling like you can't function in the house. And how will we get through that, right? So if you have, I think you mentioned the kitchen, like, cleaning the kitchen. So it's a really, really big point in a house like that, you know? Well, first of all, let's address the fact that it's the greatest fake out of all adulthood, that there's ever a period where the kitchen stays clean for more than, like, 20 minutes. Like, it's like the craziest thing. There's always dishes, there's always laundry, and it's super overwhelming. It's, like, super overwhelming. It's like the greatest fake out of adulthood. I mean, I see. I think I remember as a kid that there would be times where things would be finished, but as an adult, I never get to that point. So, anyway, acknowledging that. That you feel like that's one of the things figuring out, often there's a sensation of an unfair displacement of work, right? Like, I'm. No one but me ever loads the dishwasher, that kind of thing. Right? The kids never clean up after themselves, those kind of things. Giving. Getting a feeling for what is actually pushing your buttons and what's driving it out. And then figure using the. Figuring out what works depends. Depends on what's going on, what tools I offer. True story. Once upon a time, I was working with a couple. I have permission to show this story because I love it and it's hilarious. And they have, between them, they have eight children, so there's ten people all in one house. And they came to me and they were like. They were fighting. There was huge fights about the laundry, and they had a calendar, and they had worked with a therapist, and they had family meetings and all of these things. They're going through this and they're making the presentation. I'm doing math. I'm like, what in the world? And they paused for a second. I was like, I don't think there are enough hours in the day, you guys. Like, you know you're going to be doing laundry at 03:00 in the morning? And they were like, what do you mean? I was like, I don't think this is a chart. I was like, I think you need to send some of this out or buy another laundry machine. Like, buy another washer or dryer. I have no idea. Like, is there a place you could put this? And all of a sudden, like, as I was doing it, it was like, they were like, we could get another washer or dryer. They did have a place. They had enough space. Not everybody's going to have that. So in that instance, though, my advice was like, go to Home Depot and buy more machines. Right. And they laughed about it with me for months. They would send me pictures of, like, the installation going in. Right. There's not always a deep, emotional solution to some things. Like, they did not have enough resources. Like, of course, they were fighting about who was going to do laundry at 11:00 because there was too much laundry for the machines. Sometimes I offer very pragmatic tips. Other times I take people through tips on how to have a conversation without it being a fight. Like, one of the most powerful things I offer to teach people is how to talk about stuff without it being a fight to move it forward.
[32:26] Karin: And what are some of the common missteps that you see step families make?
[32:31] Amy: So one of the missteps that I see a lot, I mean, there's a couple of really common ones. One of the ones that I see people make, and one of the ones that I can confess to making myself is that I jumped in to do things before knowing what would be helpful or how I fit into the family. And. And that eventually became problematic for me. And I had to sort of walk back that cat in some ways. So, you know, that's one, like, it's like you jump in, you offer to do things. Sometimes it's well received, sometimes it's not. Sometimes you realize that you've signed yourself up for something that you didn't actually want to do. And I didn't understand the dynamics or what it would mean for me long term. Right. So that's something that I see people do before it shows up a lot, that people in a stepparent role will do that and then find themselves in a position where they feel like they're not appreciated for the work that they're doing. And, I mean, I did experience that. Like, so that's. That's an easy place for people to. To do. I think that. I think that when you bring kids to the family, so if you have two groups of parents who have kids, bringing them to family, both of those people understand how much work it is to raise kids. When you have somebody like me who did not have kids yet, who joined a family, I really did not understand the reality of the 24, 7365 days a year, how much work it was. And so that's one of the things that I think is easy to underestimate, and I think that it's easy to underestimate how hard it is to bring people together to cohabitate. I think that that's an easy one to underestimate the different relationships. Incorporating all the relationships can be really hard. And the one that gets all the attention that everybody always thinks about is it can be very complicated to have relationships with somebody who still have attachments to a previous relationship. So the relationship with the ex spouse can be a level of complication, and that's the one that everybody always talks about.
[34:40] Karin: We could have a whole episode on.
[34:42] Amy: I think there are books and movies.
[34:45] Karin: Yes, yes, absolutely. And I love that you mentioned how, you know, you didn't really understand going into it, how hard parenting is and how much work it takes. And I think once people realize that, they give one another a lot more latitude to not be perfect.
[35:06] Amy: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I wish there was a way. I truly don't know if you can fully understand that until you've walked a little bit. I mean, that's the reason. That's the saying. It's like walk a mile in somebody's shoes. But it is. It's a marathon. You know, it's. It's 24 hours a day, 360. I mean, that once you've been through having a house full of people with the stomach flu, you have a whole different understanding of the experience. Like, it's like, you know that 03:00 a.m. Moment where you're like, where is my fairy godmother? Exactly. Because if she ever wants to show up, this is a good time, right?
[35:47] Karin: Yeah. What are some of the challenges that the primary parent faces.
[35:56] Amy: So then, within a blended family? That's this question. So that's really interesting. So it is, depending on how it is, their own discrepancy between what they thought their life would be if there was that. So if there was. There's not always divorce in a blended family, but if there is divorce, there can be legacy feelings from that that, you know, I never thought I would be here. It's. It's the mirror of. Of the step parent. Like, this is not what I expected. I thought that I was married forever, and now I'm not. And is it my fault and what do I need to do? There's a tremendous. I call it divorce shaming, like, which is the action of, like, you know, just. We have just pounded people with the message that divorce is wrong and you shouldn't do it and all of these things over the years, and you're damaging your children and all of these things. That's a heavy weight. That's a really heavy weight to be out from underneath. And so that is a big pressure for people who are primary parents who are then remarrying, because it's like we talked about, you know, knowing yourself and knowing your triggers. You know, that's a big one. It's a big one. If you're starting every conversation with your kids from a position of, I've already screwed this up. You're going to do different things than if you're starting from a position of, you know what? Some stuff changed, and we're moving forward.
[37:20] Karin: Yeah.
[37:21] Amy: Yeah.
[37:21] Karin: And one of the things that I've seen and experienced myself is, you know, I'm in a. I'm in a blended film family where I'm the primary parent and my husband is the stepdad. And I can feel that pull of her. He wants something to be done a certain way, but the kids have maybe always done it that way, and. Or they don't understand why he would want. And you don't want to cast him as the bad guy.
[37:54] Amy: No. 100%. Yeah, there's that, too. Yeah. I call it the invisible traditions. Right. It's like there is a legacy culture between the primary parent and those kids. They don't know. Right. Or sometimes you will, and sometimes you won't. Right. But, like, sometimes you don't even know that you've got the legacy culture going on in the house, and then the step parent comes in, and they don't have any idea, so they have another view of how they want to do it. And this can be. This can show up in big ways. It can also show up in really, really small, innocent ways. In my family, it showed up in seats on the couch. Right. So I was sitting in a place on the couch that my stepdaughter thought was her seat. How in the world was I. There's no way for me to have known that, right. And she was a kid, so it was not anything that she could verbalize for me. Right. So we had all of these, like, weird little awkward moments that I was like, I don't understand. She didn't understand. And my husband was like, I just want you to love each other, and all, like, all of these things, right? And it went away by accident when we bought a different couch, and all of a sudden, everything was reset. It was like, this is a new couch. And, like, you know, and she was. And that's what. And I. The only reason I noticed is that the kids walked in, and they're like, we get to pick new seats. And I was like, you had seats? I didn't have a seat. What are you talking about? There were seats. Who said there were seats? Like, but of course. Right. We have our unspoken seats on the couch. You have your unspoken seat in the car. You know, all of those things that you carry forward. And so, yeah, that can be a tricky road to follow. The tool that works really well. There is curiosity, but that's, like, a super vague, coachy thing for me to say. Right. That's a really super vague, coachy thing for me to say, but it's like, all right, so can you tell me a little bit about what's going on here, you know, or why is this important to you? And so, like, if you have a way that you've done things in the past and your new husband has a way that he wants to present, allowing a space for everybody to put their ideas on the table and forge forward is the tool in a blended family. So it's honoring what came before. Like, oh, wow. You always sat in this seat before. That's great. Right? That's super good. Where should I sit? What can my seat be like? What if, you know, can we make a new one? Like, that's one of the ways that. That works.
[40:24] Karin: That transparent communication goes a long way, doesn't it?
[40:28] Amy: But, yeah. You don't know that. You're not being transparent, though. That's why it's tricky. Right?
[40:31] Karin: Like, you don't have any idea unless someone speaks up.
[40:35] Amy: Yeah. And when someone speaks up, unfortunately, and this is. We talked about conflict. Right. So when someone speaks up, often that's because their feelings are hurt or something has gone wrong, and then it's highly emotional. Right. And so highly emotional communication, we often put under the. The thing of conflict. But figuring out how to walk your way through that and not be really hard on yourself when it happens. Yeah.
[41:01] Karin: Yeah. What are your thoughts about step parents? You said you don't really like the term disciplining, or you think there's a broader term in terms of behavior management or.
[41:13] Amy: Behavior management. Yeah.
[41:14] Karin: Yeah. What are your thoughts about that?
[41:17] Amy: So I think that. Okay, so I think I'll start with the. For the step parents who are listening. Right. I think that when you're living with people and you're an adult, you need a voice at the table for what the behavior in the house, like, what the expectations for what's happening around you is. Right. So, like, if you live with somebody, you have a right to say, I don't want to be punched in the face. Right. That's, like. Right when I say it like that, that sounds really, really obvious, right? So I do find that a lot of people mix the words up. They say discipline when they actually mean punishment. And so, you know, like, they say, oh, I think that the. This kid needs to be grounded or needs a timeout or the phone needs to be removed or they need to be told they can't do this. Well, those are punishments, right? Those are punishments. Those are consequences and punishments which may have a place. It's not my. I don't have any, any. Any issue on how other people are enforcing the rules in their house. But when we're talking about house rules in a blended family and behavior in a blended family, agreeing on what the standards are is where we want to start, like, what is going on and what do we want to go on, and then agreement on how it will be enforced. And discipline. Discipline is actually, like, when it works, is creating that structure of education and informing, like, spreading the word. Right. Of what they're going to do. And discipline is setting up something so that the kids succeed. Right. So people come to me and they'll say, well, he broke the rules, and this is supposed to be the rule. And so the other person said that they would enforce it, and they're not. And so I'm being disrespected, and I don't agree with their parenting style. And, you know, you sort of have to walk that back and say, okay, so who made the rule? Right? Like, did you guys really actually agree on this? Is the household? What's the purpose of this rule? Like, what went wrong? Like, why is it important? Do you guys actually agree on what the consequence will be? Because a lot of times, there's incomplete communication in a family, and somebody's like, one person is yesing the other, you know, so you've got, like, the one person thinks there's agreement and there's not. Right. The person just like, oh, yeah, sure, we'll do that. Well, do that. Or if you've got, like, a parent who is worn down, you know, they've. They've got more experience. If you. If you like it. Listen, if you've never tried to remove the phone from a child, you may not understand how hard that is. Right. You have to be ready for the battle. It's not that you shouldn't do it. It's just that, you know, you got to be ready for that. You know, telling a kid it's time to turn off the tv, you got to be ready for that. And so if a stepparent walks in and is like, do you want me to do it, the other person might say yes. And all that means is, oh, yes. Anybody? Anybody else do it? Sure. And so coming to agreement on all of those things and making sure that it actually has the impact that you want it to have. So we talked about the difference between discipline and punishment, right? Removing a phone is a punishment. Right. What's the reason for removing the phone? Okay, so maybe the goal is that the kid actually needs to do their homework and do better in school, right. So there is a chance there, right. That if you focus too hard on removing that device, that you don't actually positive impact the homework because you spend 3 hours a night fighting over the phone. Right. And so having that conversation about what are we trying to accomplish? What do we want the kid to learn? What is the, what is the environment for the house? And are we actually aligned and how we're going to do this. So the standard, the old fashioned vernacular, like what the rule is if you open most magazines, is to let the parents parent, right. And it's this default setting that a step parent should allow the discipline and the parenting to come from them. And on face value, if everybody agrees, that's fine, right. But there is a hidden possibility there where the step parent feels extremely disempowered and without a voice in the house, it may not matter. Right. There are times like there's 10,000 million things that have gone on with my step kids where I didn't have a voice and it was fine. I didn't have a place, it wasn't my purse, I wasn't upset about it at all. But there's also times where I had to live through the aftermath of whatever was going on, right. So, like bedtime, right. If the kids don't go to bed and I'm expected to stay up, that impacts me. To tell a stepparent that they can't be involved in that decision has consequences for the stepparent. And so that's something to be aware of. It doesn't mean that the stepparent should decide or be the enforcer, not by a long shot, but it's something to consider.
[46:09] Karin: So again, it's important for the parents to have a conversation about that and decide what makes sense.
[46:16] Amy: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, yeah. 100%. 100%. And again, it's not going to come up because everything is going well and everybody's happy.
[46:24] Karin: Yeah. Right, right. And like, I tell some of my step parents who, you know, they've decided that they don't want to be involved in, you know, when. When something happens and there's a possible punishment, they say, okay, well, then own your feelings about it.
[46:40] Amy: That's right. No, it's. And listen, it's so hard to do that. And then the thing is, is if you don't want to be involved, and the only way for you to not be involved is that you go sit in, like, your closet by yourself or you take a shower or you leave the house, and that makes you feel yucky. Own your feelings about that, because, like, that comes back to, like, creating the life that you actually want. It's like, listen, I don't need to be involved in this punishment. I also don't necessarily want to feel like I can't walk through my house while this punishment is happening. You know? And, I mean, I can remember somebody in my family was like, don't give up punishments that you don't want to enforce. And I was like, yeah, great. And then I remember the first time that clicked in, I was like, oh, well, now I have to stay home, too. Like, I did not. Okay, this sucks.
[47:32] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. It can be tricky to navigate.
[47:35] Amy: Yeah. Yeah.
[47:38] Karin: So I want to veer off a little bit and talk about something that I think is really common for kids. It was something that I experienced as a step kid, and that was really hard. And that is loyalty binds.
[47:52] Amy: Yeah.
[47:52] Karin: Can you talk to us a little bit about what those are?
[47:55] Amy: So my understanding of loyalty bonds is when a kid feels loyal to one parent or both parents or a grandparent or somebody or a sibling. Right. And loyalty bonds can create strange dynamics in families. Right. So it's actually from a distance. Right. A loyalty bond is a conditional form of love. Like, my love for you is conditional on me demonstrating my loyalty to you. And so if I'm loyal to my mom, I can't also like you, or I can't call, have a. You can't give me a nickname because you're not my mom, and only my mom is allowed to do that, or only my dad is allowed to do that. And so nobody, I don't think anybody, wakes up and says, you know what? I don't want you to love your parents. Right. We do all want that. But a loyalty bond can get mutated and misunderstood for kids, especially if it's not defined. And so that's where it is. So it's a misinterpretation of an attachment bond between usually a kid and a parent or a kid and a stepparent. Right?
[49:19] Karin: Yeah. And it's oftentimes a perception, but sometimes, yeah, it's the perception based in some reality.
[49:27] Amy: Absolutely.
[49:29] Karin: Your biological mom does not like your stepmom and don't like it when you say good things about them.
[49:39] Amy: 100%. I wish I could tell you that bad things did not happen like this, but I would be a liar. I would. Liar, liar, pants on fire. But most of us, nobody told me, like, all of these things. Like, this is this weird thing. You figure it out as you go. And so everybody has things that they do with their kids and their family that if they knew better, they wouldn't do them. Right. And when. When you have a relationship, like a marriage that splits, there are very frequently a lot of wounds. It hurts. It hurts. And so sometimes people don't do. Sometimes probably all the time, people don't do a perfect job in reestablishing new relationships. Right. There's. It's hard. It's really, really hard. And the kids are in an environment where they want to love their parents and they want to be loved by their parents. And so it shows up in. In funny ways. My. Okay, so my stepdaughter, we were getting a haircut. I'm very fortunate that there's a pretty decent relationship between my husband and his ex, but they're, like, the oldest kid, which is where some of this shows up, because the younger ones can follow the leads of the older kids. Right. So you often find that this is. This is more prominent in the older kids. We were getting a haircut and. And the teeny bopper assistant in this salon. I don't even remember why we were doing it, because this normally would be. I don't even know. Anyway, this teeny bopper assistant in the salon said, oh, well, she looks like you. You could pass as her mom based entirely on the fact that we have the same hair color. That's the. That's the only. That's the only thing that's going on here, right? And that we're both whatever women. I don't know. Like, whatever. And my stepdaughter was so freaked out by this, and she was like, shiz. And she was really, really scared by this. And. And I just. I very fortunately, I was like. I looked right at her. I was like, listen, she's got a mom. I'm not this kid's mom. I'm, you know, with her dad. And she calmed down. She heard me. Right? She heard me. But I think it's scary for kids if we remember that the kids, they're not fully formed adults. Right? It would be, if you love your mom, you don't want somebody stepping in to take them away. And in a great situation, the adults involved would be self aware and healed enough to not do that right, to not put their kids in that spot. But there's lots and lots of times where that's not going on, and so it can be hard to spot. But similarly to defining the roles of who's who in a family, adults who are aware and who are loving, they can lovingly remind the kids that it's okay to love all of the people in this family. Like, so if you've got a parent who is speaking poorly about another adult in the family, you can say. You can say, you know, it's okay for you to love your mom and share with me what she says. It's okay for your mom not to say nice things about me, but it does hurt my feelings. And, you know, you're never gonna get in trouble for telling me what your mom says, you know, like, this is a safe space for you. It's okay for you to be a kid. It's also okay to tell kids, hey, you know, I appreciate you telling me this. Like, it's okay. This is a grown up thing. Like, you don't have to handle this. I'm gonna take care of it.
[53:18] Karin: Yeah. And I think it can be really confusing for kids to experience this, and they can feel. They feel really badly because of something that, you know, maybe they're getting pressured from their stepmom to call them or something.
[53:37] Amy: Right. Okay.
[53:37] Karin: So it's really stressful for them, in that case, or. Yeah, maybe there's some parental alienation going on or whatever it is. And so that's a really hard place to put a kid in.
[53:51] Amy: It's a really hard place. One of the places definitely shows up is so kids like to talk about what they're experiencing. Right. So if a stepmom makes delicious cookies, they go back to the other house and tell their mom, oh, we had yummy cookies. Right. Sometimes, people, it makes the adults feel really, really called out, and, like. Like it's a competition, and it hopefully is not a competition. Right.
[54:20] Karin: Yeah.
[54:21] Amy: So. But being aware and being able to create a safe space for that is really interesting. Once, like, my. My step kids once brought their mom. They wanted to show their mom their room at our house. We got do. We had, like, gotten some things, and they wanted to show. And I remember at the time feeling like, oh, my God, what is going on? But at the end of the day, it was that they just wanted her to see. Right. They just wanted to see. It's just them being kids the same way they will bring you into their classrooms and doing all of those things. And if you can take a step back and remind yourself that it's not a competition, you know, it's really not. Even when people are doing this is a hard thing to swallow. But in my opinion, in my perspective of the world, even when people are doing a really crappy job, they're probably doing the best they can.
[55:05] Karin: Yes.
[55:06] Amy: And so, you know, and sadly, it's not helpful for anybody. Never has anybody been doing a bad job at something and somebody's showing up and saying, you know what? You're really doing a terrible job. That has never helped. Never ever.
[55:20] Karin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Shaming is not productive.
[55:24] Amy: Right.
[55:25] Karin: Yeah. And I think it's really a good idea for both parents and step parents to understand the concept of a loyalty bind. And if a kid is treating a step parent poorly, there's a good chance that that might be at the root of what's going on. And so to maybe do a little bit of investigating, talking about that and not immediately going to punishment.
[55:50] Amy: 100%. 100%. Yeah. It's very. It is a complex dynamic, and you'll never know, really, what's happening in the other house. And so approaching these kinds of things with curiosity and some of this comes back to self confidence and self compassion. Right. So the more you know yourself and the more strong you are in who you are and your position in your family, the easier this is going to be. Right. So one of our kids came back from grandma's house one day saying, grandma wants to bite me. And all of the adults that listened to this, we were like, this is. No, we know. We knew, right. We knew that this was not actually a thing, right. And. But it was over and over again, and we were looking around, so, like, we didn't, like you were saying, we didn't jump on it. We didn't punish anybody. We didn't do this. We were just like, what is going on? And then a long time later, like, weeks, months, whatever, we were all together, and we saw grandma, and she was like, ah, that's so good. I just want to eat you up. And I remember I was like, there it is. Right? There it is. And so, you know, and so that's a really innocent thing where we all had compassion and good understanding. But you can imagine that with just even the teeniest, tiniest bit of doubt, there's a huge space for misunderstanding. You know, why don't you have clothes for school? Why don't you have the lunchbox. Why didn't you send back the shoes? Why? Why did you send back with, you know, to the socks that don't match, you know, why did you, you know, all of that space that can be turned into massive space for argument or it can be allowed as the fabric of a family.
[57:43] Karin: Yeah. And that's why it's so good. If you can create a good relationship with.
[57:53] Amy: Yeah, it's not always possible.
[57:54] Karin: Yeah, it's not always possible.
[57:56] Amy: Yeah, it's not always possible. And that, you know, if you don't have a family where there's, like, there are families that are dealing with really, really serious things in them, and if you don't have that going on, consider that lucky. Like, if you're fighting about lunchboxes and stuff like that, that's great. You're in a good spot.
[58:12] Karin: Yeah.
[58:12] Amy: Yeah.
[58:13] Karin: Agreed.
[58:13] Amy: Agreed. So.
[58:18] Karin: How long, and I'm guessing that this is a question you get because it's a question I get, how long does it take for a step family to. I feel like a cohesive unit. Things are working.
[58:33] Amy: So, you know, the answer that they offer for this is, like, four to seven years is the thing. I think that it's a really, really weird answer because it also lines up with stress in marriage for first children in a family. Right. So, like, I don't know if it's actually blending that takes seven years or it takes seven years for parents to feel like adults, to feel like they know what the routine is with living with kids. I really, honestly don't know. I will say that for my. I think that blending is a weird word to use because it's. We don't actually become like a smoothie. Right. We don't mind everybody up. And it depends a little bit on what you do. So in my family, I very quickly added two more kids to the mix. I got, like, I was a stepmom and then we got married, and then I had kid one and I had kid two. And each one of those was like a reset on the I don't know what I'm doing button. Right. And so there was uncertainty and new dynamics we were doing in my house. We were doing preschool and college all at the same time. Like, there were days where I was like, I don't know if I'm coming or going. And so for me, it was. Right. It was probably closer to, like, ten years before I was like, oh, yes, I'm in it, and I know, and I know what I'm doing. But if somebody had told me, if somebody had told me, ten years, when I started, I would have been run for the hills. I would have run for the hills. And so I think that the more helpful thing to offer is that there were good parts. There were enough good parts of each day, let's say, hopefully, even though I wasn't keeping a log. And thanks for that. But, you know, every day, I was figuring out, like, am I still in it? Is this still what I want to do? And that makes people really nervous sometimes when I say that that was definitely what was going on, but I think that, for me, it was front of mind. It was like, yes, I'm still committed to this. I'm working on it every single day. And if there had been a time where it was like, this is not working anymore, and I can't do it, then it would have been a different story.
[01:00:56] Karin: Yeah. And I think that it's also. It's just. I'm going to say one of those coachy words again. It's a journey.
[01:01:03] Amy: It is a journey. So it's not like all of a.
[01:01:05] Karin: Sudden, you get to a destination, and I'm done.
[01:01:08] Amy: We're a family. We're a family, right? So the Gottman's did that famous study about bringing home baby, and that's where this is the thing that makes me wonder about the four to seven years. So they saw that people who had kids that were under the age of six, they all described that they were very dissatisfied with their family life, and so. And we say four to seven for blended family. And I'm like, I wonder how much of that is the adjustment to another person. Like, I just. I just wonder. I don't. I don't know. I don't know that there's. That there's also. In divorce research, they say five years. Like, when you look five years, most people are adjusted and back online. And so I don't know how much of it is related to the construct of the family and how much of it is a general transition. Like five years. Right. And we ask people when they get a job interview, like, where do you see yourself in five years? And everybody pretends that they have any idea when the truth is, none of us have any idea.
[01:02:01] Karin: Absolutely.
[01:02:02] Amy: Yeah.
[01:02:03] Karin: I love that. So if there's one thing you'd like people to walk away with after listening to this conversation, what would it be?
[01:02:11] Amy: You know, I don't know that I've done a convincing job of conveying this, but the thing that I would love for people to have a sense of is that they have all the power they need to create what they want. It sometimes really does not feel that way in the adult life, but we all have that within us to make the decisions and take the actions to get to the next phase. And I don't mean that as, like, a magical kind of thing, but there's no external force that ever shows up and is like, here's your answer. You know, it's always within us.
[01:02:48] Karin: Yeah, let that. And what role does love play in the work that you do?
[01:02:54] Amy: You know, I love this question. I don't have. Love is so on both things, love is probably the most important thing. But it starts with love for yourself, right? It's love for yourself that drives this, so many of these things. And we question ourselves with our family, have deep roots in what we think about ourselves, right? So it starts with that love for ourselves, love for the concept of the family that we have, love for the people that are around us, love for the institution of the family that we're creating, if that's important to us. And so it's also there. But then love sometimes gets translated into that, like, sort of romantic y feeling, and that. That, weirdly, is probably not enough in most cases.
[01:03:38] Karin: Yeah.
[01:03:38] Amy: Yeah.
[01:03:38] Karin: I have to agree.
[01:03:40] Amy: Yeah.
[01:03:41] Karin: And how can people learn more about you?
[01:03:44] Amy: So send me a smoke signal. No. My name is amy, and I call my company Amy says so because I'm very bossy. I'm actually not very bossy, but I think it's funny. So amysetso.com is my website. That's where you can find my podcast, which is the Amy says so show. That's where you can find my free resources. I have lots and lots of free tips. I have a book about my blending experience. The things I learned, I think, over 20 years. And you can find that [email protected] and reach out. I'd love to help.
[01:04:18] Karin: Wonderful. Thank you so much, Amy, for being here and sharing all your wisdom.
[01:04:24] Amy: Thank you.
[01:04:28] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on love is us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram, where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Aly Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today, because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be loved. The best way to be loved is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.
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Your sexual fantasies contain wisdom. Tune into this episode with Artemisia de Vine to learn about your sexual fantasies and how listening to their innate wisdom can help you change your life in ways you never imagined.
Artemisia is a Certified somatic sexologist, BA in anthropology and former sex worker and professional dominatrix. She’s also a sexual fantasy expert who teaches the world's leading sexperts the meaning of our sexual fantasies, and how to bring them out of our heads and into our beds. Understand how stories work and you understand why we have sexual fantasies - and how to create powerful, real-life transformative sexperiences that satisfy the real desire behind the story symbolism. Artemisia de Vine is the author of upcoming book: The Spirituality of Smut: The surprising wisdom of sexual fantasies.
Learn more about Artemisia:
Website: https://www.artemisiadevine.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/artemisiadevine/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ArtemisiadeVine
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://www.drcalde.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.
Episode:
Karin: Hello, everybody. As you begin to listen to today's episode, I want to urge you to put aside all your judgments and tap into your curiosity if at all possible. Now, if you struggle with that and you notice a critic or judgmental part of you popping up, just notice that and see if that part of you or those parts of you can make some room for you to listen to this episode with an open mind. Because my guest today, Artemisia divine, is onto something big here. And I think there's a good chance you're going to learn something today that, for some of you at least, could be life changing. I certainly learned something from talking to her. She is so smart and insightful. This is about way more than sex and sexual fantasies. But by tapping into them and really listening to them, you just might unlock something really important for yourself. I am grateful for her and the work that she's doing. I hope that you will let me know what you think of it by visiting me on Instagram where I'm the love and connection coach. Where you can leave me a message as well. And you can also let me know what relationships and self development topics you'd like me to cover in upcoming episodes. I would love to hear from you. So thanks for being here.
[02:11] Karin: Buckle up.
[02:11] Karin: And here we go. Welcome, Artemisia.
[02:16] Artemisia: I am delighted to be here with you.
[02:19] Karin: All right, people might have already guessed, but tell us where you are in the world.
[02:25] Artemisia: My accent gave me away. Did it? I am in Australia. I'm in rural Victoria, outside of Melbourne. So right down the bottom. And I live in the future because it's already tomorrow for me. The time's over. There you go.
[02:44] Karin: And have you always lived in that region of Australia?
[02:49] Artemisia: Oh, I've lived and worked all around Australia. But probably this has been one of my main homes. This and Sydney probably feel like my homes. Oh, my goodness. I've got a croaky throat. First thing in the morning, it is early because we have different time zones. Yeah.
[03:08] Karin: And what keeps you in, Victoria? What do you like about it?
[03:15] Artemisia: I'm in a beautiful space. This is. We're going in again on the flip side of the other side of the world. We're in the opposite seasons to you. So we're just entering into autumn right now. And this is one of the most beautiful magical places with so many autumn leaves and gorgeous mists that make you believe fantasies and an awful lot of interesting fungus that grows around here.
[03:39] Karin: So tell us what you do for work.
[03:42] Artemisia: So I am a sexual fantasy coach. I am an expert that teaches the sexperts in how to understand and engage sexual fantasies. Because really, if you want to have mind blowing sex, you have to understand the role the mind plays in sex. So I am somebody who has created an entire system around understanding and being able to bring fantasies out of your head and into your bed.
[04:13] Karin: So how did you come to do that work?
[04:16] Artemisia: It's not exactly typical work, is it? Being a sexual fantasy coach, how did ask that question? A lot. And it's a good reason, I think I actually. Well, initially I started because I was afraid of sex and I had my own sexual fantasies that seemed to go against the way that I wanted to be treated in real life and the way that I wanted to treat other people in real life. And I couldn't make sense of them. To be honest. When I very first became interested in fantasies, I was trying to solve the problem about what they were about. And I actually have spent over 30 years now delving into the erotic and trying to understand the erotic. Partly because I was confused about my own thoughts, but partly because I was experiencing desire as something that was taken from me for somebody else's benefit, not something that was for my benefit. And I was experiencing. I was hurt. I wanted to understand why on earth this was happening, why did we have this disconnect between what we were fantasizing about and the actual humanity relationship that was going on. And that took me on all sorts of adventures. And I worked in sex shops and became a certified somatic sexologist. And I learned from some of the most amazing sexperts from all around the world, read everything I could get my hands on, and had a lot of sex in my personal life. And eventually I decided to become a sex worker. And the most powerful, powerful time for me to understand the erotic psyche was the twelve years that I spent as a full time sex worker and as a professional dominatrix, where I was paid to live out the sexual fantasies of thousands of people, which gives you an entirely different perspective than learning about it at university. And what made me interested in it was my client's reactions when I actually trusted their fantasies the way that they are and created a really safe consensual container to live out the essence within them. Notice I said essence within them, not literally live them out. Notice that they would start to have these really powerful experiences that were far more profound than either of us expected. So, you know, it's not like you're expecting a smutty fantasy of using strap ons and threesomes and forced bisexuality to end up in a spiritual experience with your heart expanded and your mind expanded and feeling one with the universe. But it kept happening. And I was like, what is happening here? This is. What is this? And so I set out to try and understand what sexual fantasies were, and how could we actually harness them to get the most out of them.
[07:20] Karin: So maybe we can go there then, at this point. What is a sexual fantasy?
[07:26] Artemisia: Well, let's just start with what it is on a practical sense first. So a sexual fantasy is anything that you think about that gets you sexually aroused. So it can be a full blown story of thinking about, you know, you're threesome or you're having sex with a girl next door or whatever it is, somebody with a particular body type. Or it can be, you know, being rescued from, by a excellent fire person, you know, or a martial artist from some villain and being swept away. It can be all sorts of different things. It can be the whole story, but it could also just be you remembering having different kind of sex than you're currently having with the same person that you're having sex with right then. So you're same lover, but you're remembering what they did last Tuesday. And that was super exciting to you, and that gets you excited now. Or you could be imagining what you might be doing together this Friday night, on date night, and you're starting to imagine that and get yourself starting to get worked up. That's also part of being a sexual fantasy. So people have more sexual fantasies than they think they do. Even people who think they don't, they really do.
[08:41] Karin: There really is a wide range of fantasies. I mean, it can run from seemingly mundane to something really exotic.
[08:50] Artemisia: Yes, yes. You can have talking parrots and everything. It's quite. There's such a richness in the human mind. I tell you what, it's wonderful, but really what I've discovered is sexual fantasies are just stories and stories, they're transformational stories, they're designed to actually overcome fear of vulnerability so that we can open to the moment, we can actually connect intimately. We can just let go into the flow and have sex. Well, you know, like dance like nobody's watching, have sex like no one's watching, except they are, because that might be exciting to you, but.
[09:34] Karin: Right, so that's one kind of fantasy, voyeuristic one. What are some common themes that you notice in people's fantasies?
[09:45] Artemisia: There is a lot of. Well, the themes actually come through because of how fantasies work to transform us. What they do is they have to include our fear of being vulnerable and resolve that fear for us so that we can let go from being standoffish and lose ourselves in the moment, lose our sense of self and connect to a bigger sense of self and just become pure experiencing in the moment. So the themes about sexual fantasies tend to be all centered on our fear of vulnerability, our natural, normal fear of vulnerability. What I do that's different is it's very common for people to immediately default to thinking, oh, fear of vulnerability. That must be about something that's about my unfairness finished childhood business or my adolescent business. I must go and get some therapy then, and fix it, and then I'll be able to have sex without fantasies. I'm having this kind of fear of vulnerability because I've had this kind of life experience. And yes, absolutely true, these things do influence our sexual fantasies 100%. But what I do that is different is non pathologising. Those ones are kind of making it a little bit wrong. It's focused on something that needs healing or changing what I'm looking at and what I'm got this piece of it that has not been talked about before, which is the sexual fantasies are actually resolving a natural double bind mechanism that's just inherently in the sexual experience. So it doesn't matter what kind of childhood you had, you could have had the perfect childhood sexual fantasies. You'll still have sexual fantasies of non consent or power dynamics, or being turned on by being dominated or doing taboo things and being naughty or having more than one lover or even cheating, even if you had the perfect childhood and you have nothing to resolve, because there are inherent psychological mechanisms that need to be overcome to move from being closed off to open to another state of consciousness. And being sexually aroused is another state of consciousness. You think about things in a different way, you experience yourself in a different way, your nerve endings respond in a different way. Meaning making is done in a different way. When you are sexually aroused, but horniness is just the beginning of the whole umbrella of erotic states of consciousness that are possible. And when you understand the story of sexual fantasies, you understand that it's giving you the perfect map. It's giving you exactly what your particular ego fears about vulnerability and the exact antidote to that particular fear so that you can resolve it the way that's a way that's going to make sense to you in particular. So there's common themes that you can recognize. Like there's a lot of people, it's really recorded now, but there's a lot of people who have big fantasies about some form of non consensual sex where they're forced to experience the pleasure that they really want to experience. Oh, poor victim. There's a lot of themes around multiple people. There's a lot of themes around being used. There's a lot of themes around using somebody else objectification. And this is not how we want to be treated in real life or how we want to treat other people in real life. So there is an art form to understanding how these poisons and antidotes create this transformation of consciousness and bringing that psychological mechanism out of our heads and into our bdsm or sexual play experiences.
[13:50] Karin: So, you know, you talk about these, these fantasies of things that are not allowed in society, right? And so when someone has this fantasy of, oh, I want to be overcome, I want someone to overpower me. And, you know, there might even be sexual assaults going on, something like that. What is the typical response you see in people when they have that kind of a fantasy?
[14:21] Artemisia: Well, they're probably both very excited by it and also confused by it and having no idea how to actually bring it out, out of their heads and into their beds, they have no idea how to live it out. And often the first attempts to do that with a trusting partner have gone pear shaped because they don't understand what their fantasy is really trying to say. So they might, for instance, have a fantasy about, oh, I get ravished, I get tied up, and you have lots and lots of sex with me, and there's three of you, and you have lots and lots of sex with me, and I can't help it, and it's not my fault. In their fantasy, all of those characters, those three characters are actually just another aspect of them. And they're simply. They only exist to support your own psychology. And changing a real life person has their own agenda going on. So if in the fantasy, those three people end up touching you in exactly the way you want to be touched, for as long as you want to be touched and being. Being forced to take. It relieves you of any guilt of being too big and taking too much and taking up too much space. It relieves you of any guilt of focusing on yourself rather than trying to look after everybody else in the room. It relieves you of any guilt of being a slut because it's not your fault they made you do it. So now you can be a primal lusty being. And so, in reality, in the fantasy is actually being a kind story that is literally just creating the ingredients you need to give yourself deep permission to let go. But when they try and live that out, they say, well, what's your fantasy? Well, it's. My fantasy is just being used by three people and being tied up. So they try and go, okay, well, let's just do that then, shall we? And when the real people do it, they go, okay, well, she wants to be used, so I'll use her. And they do it literally. They include the poison, which is the fear that they're using. They have not included the antidote, which is being used in exactly the way she wants to be used for as long as she wants to be used. Right.
[16:30] Karin: So there's. So I think that that's a really important thing to say, is that in the fantasy, it's really important that the person actually be the one to have the control over the situation ultimately. Would you say that?
[16:43] Artemisia: I think that we really need to set a container where they. Absolutely. The thing is, the whole event is actually created to support their psyche. Whoever's fantasy it is, you're creating the experience to support their psyche. And they absolutely have. It's so important to create a safe, solid container around that and have safe words in place so that if anything goes a little bit unexpected and wrong, you can immediately stop or slow things. But it's also simultaneously just as important to genuinely let go, because if you are the person who is trying, if you're in too much control, you don't surrender. And the only way to get to those expanded states of consciousness is to surrender. So there's a real art form in being able to hold somebody in the right level of risk and safety at the same time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
[17:39] Karin: And I want to go back to this idea about it not being literal, because I think a lot of people, they have these fantasies and they feel so guilty. They're like, but I believe in, you know, equal power for. For all genders. And yes, I want to be controlled by a man in the bedroom. What is wrong with me? Or I am someone that likes to make all these decisions and to be in control. And so why is it that in the bedroom, I want someone else to be in control and to be helpless? Okay. And then they often have these feelings of guilt or they're conflicted about it.
[18:19] Artemisia: Yes, you ask brilliant questions, by the way. This is a lovely conversation. Okay. I would actually like to ask you a question at this point. So you have some experience with deliberately creating safe spaces for people to go into expanded states of consciousness in ways that benefit them. Are you aware that there is a transition phase moving from one state to the other and that there is internal resistance that needs to be overcome to move from one state to another?
[18:47] Karin: Oh, absolutely.
[18:49] Artemisia: What's your experience around that? What have you noticed?
[18:52] Karin: Well, there are different ways to explain it or frame it, depending on what kind of tradition you come from. But you're essentially moving through these states of consciousness.
[19:02] Karin: And there are a lot of levels, ranging from being here, being fully present, being aware of who you are, and that you're in your body to a complete ego death. And not everyone goes through all of those levels. But in order to have this experience, you need to be able to let go and have some trust and safety that you will be okay if you let go. And for some, especially for those who are new to these kinds of different states of consciousness, it can be really uncomfortable and scary. And. And another way that I often talk about it is, you know, with parts, there might be parts of us that come up that get in the way of us transitioning. So it might be you have an anchors part or an analyzing part or something like that that says, you know, no, I'm not ready for this. So that's part of the work, is working with those parts and working with a person to figure out how they can trust and let go and get the most out of the experience.
[20:08] Artemisia: Yeah. And one of the ways that has been in the psychedelic assisted therapy community has that transition. That resistance has been described as ego resistance, or as a part, at least the part of you that creates and defends your sense of self, your sense of identity, self identity, self worth and social status, they can get in the way of this surrendering and the natural mechanism of moving from one state or another. It means that those things, the social status, the self worth and the self identity, need to be addressed and released so that you can move through. So a sexual fantasy is the exact story that includes your natural fear of your threats to your social status and your self worth. And your self identity, and it resolves them for you so that you can then let go of your normal sense of self and expand into this bigger sense of self. Once your ego mechanisms are in the backseat of the car or sometimes even right out of the car, and with these expanded states of consciousness, you're right. Sometimes you can go so far beyond that, you don't even have a body anymore. But sometimes you can go so deep into having a body that every little touch is an exquisite ripple through every cell in your being. You can be really fully present in here, but you're a bigger, expanded sense of self. Okay, so if you think, okay, if my psyche was going to come up with the exact story, pretend you are the part of the psyche that's trying to come up with the exact story to convince your ego to stand, it's safe to stand down for a minute. You're going to have to include a story that includes both its fears and the antidotes, and you're going to have to include their fear of surrendering, because egos are always against all forms of vulnerability. That's what egos do. They defend against vulnerability because they think it's a threat and that's a healthy ego. I'm not against egos at all. We need them. They're important. But it's still in the way. If you're trying to get to this period, if you're trying to move from I to we, if you're trying to merge with somebody else with and even go even deeper into those merging with life itself and having one of those oneness experiences, you have to let go of self, you have to lose yourself, you have to surrender. And we have natural fear of that. So if you're going to tell a story that creates that, you're going to bring in characters who are in control when you're not, and forcing you to surrender, you're going to bring in them being characteristics that you fear. But somehow it's resolved and you have the exact opposite end result to the thing you fear. You have actually safety and pleasure and a connection and intimacy and opening up. So this is the part that I'm focusing on rather than your childhood wounds, which is quite a radical difference.
[23:24] Karin: And so in order to do that, you really do need to have a lot of trust. And like you said, safety with the person with whom you're having or enacting.
[23:34] Artemisia: This fantasy you do. And most people think that that means that you need a really long relationship with somebody in order to build that trust. But as a sex worker in a professional dominatrix. I ended up having these expanded states of consciousness on a semi regular basis, like fairly regularly pretty with my clients, and I just met an hour or two ago. And so if you have the right skills and the right container, you can actually create the real safety that you need to be able to let go. And one of the ways that I do that is I trust their fantasies. I don't try and change them into something that is politically correct or how I think the world should operate or how I want to be treated in gender wise, you know, or for whatever reason, I don't try and change it. I listen to the story and I hear how it's achieving that. Sit them down on my red velvet couch and ask them all sorts of questions about how it works for them. And they give away all sorts of things they don't realize they're giving away. Then we create this wonderful consent container so I have freedom to be able to explore that. And they don't necessarily know exactly what's going to happen, but it's the right sweet spot of risk and safety so that they can still let go. And they absolutely can veto anything if they need to with their safe words, but they need to be able to surrender or it doesn't work. So I'd ask them all about body language and attitude. Discover their emotional aphrodisiacs, notice what their poisons and their antidotes are. Notice any inherent paradoxes within the story that they've come up with. Then I would create an experience that actually brings those aspects to life. I'm not trying to look like their ideal fantasy person. I'm not trying to even necessarily live out the thing that they're fantasizing about. What I'm doing is creating a lived play experience, an embodied, here and now present, connected experience that creates the same psychological mechanisms so they can let go. And that's when the magic happens right there.
[25:47] Karin: It sounds like it can be a very powerful healing approach for people.
[25:52] Artemisia: Yes, absolutely. Suddenly you're not afraid of yourself anymore. You don't feel shame and guilt about being turned on by some, you know, you think, oh, my God, I'm a sophisticated thinker. I'm not so, you know, base as that, but I was totally turned on by 50 shades of Grey. Who am I? Why am I so excited by the, you know, sociopathic billionaire who wants to dominate me? That what's so exciting about that? And we don't want that in real life. But as far as a character that's going to support our own internal transformation. That's an ideal character. Right. And it's as long as it's in support of our transformation from one state to another. But if you think about it, all of those beautiful expanded states of consciousness require surrendering and ego dissolution. As we said before, there's two different ways to make your ego let go. One is to make it so small that it disappears. So you become the submissive, somebody else is taking over, and it lets go. The other way is to make it so big, it's as big as the sun, and you're so invincible that there is no threat anymore. And then you let it go and you can go into the flow. So the fantasy of being the dominant also can get you there. Okay.
[27:21] Karin: I love that.
[27:21] Karin: Okay. Yeah, that makes sense to me.
[27:23] Artemisia: Yeah. Yeah.
[27:25] Karin: And so, you know, I think this is coming out as you're explaining this, but maybe you can address it directly. You say there's wisdom in fantasies. So what do you mean by that?
[27:40] Artemisia: Well, initially I didn't trust the fantasy. I just. It sounds like smut. Okay. You know, the name of my upcoming book is the spirituality of Smut, which I think is so fun, but it's about trusting their fantasies. When clients came to me, I often had peers who had gone and learnt sexological bodywork. They'd gone and learnt tantra. They'd gone and learned conscious sexuality. And they were trying to solve the confusion around people's turn ons, patterns of turn ons and sexual fantasies by making their fantasies holy. So, for instance, if somebody was really excited by being embarrassed and humiliated, and then they might say, okay, I'm willing to do that because it's your fantasy. But then they would also include within the play reassurance that they're not actually humiliated, and that they'd be like, you know, good boy. Oh, you've really done well. They've tried to impose their own holy version of what should happen on the play itself, and they haven't trusted the fantasy. And what happens then is they've experienced the poison and the practitioner believes they've given the antidote, but they haven't because they haven't trusted the way in which that client's fantasy came up with their own antidote. They've imposed their own on it. So I want to believe in the wisdom. I believe deeply in the wisdom of their own psyche. Their own mind came up with this story. It is the perfect story for them. How did their mind resolve this problem for them? And how can I trust the wisdom of that? And create that experience for them, rather than trying to use the wrong organ of the psyche and figure out a way that I think would therapize it and make it nice for them.
[29:43] Karin: And so related to that, you mentioned earlier about the essence of fantasies and how you're able to kind of extract that and then play that out. So can you give us an example of the fantasy someone might bring to you and then how you've taken the essence of that and what that actually looks like?
[30:05] Artemisia: Sure. So let's say that somebody has got a fantasy. Let's say it's a heterosexual male who's actually not romantically or generally sexually attracted to men, but they've got a sexual fantasy which confuses them an awful lot about being forced by a mistress to go and be used in a glory hole where men can come along and use them. And they are thinking, well, am I really gay or am I bisexual? They might not be worried about being gay, but they're confused about whether or not they are and not necessarily right. Where's the essence in this? What is the role that the men are playing in here? So remember how we've got three guards we've got to get past in order to be able to let our egos go so we can experience the bigger sense of self, social status, self identity and self worth. What does that, the other men being used by other men signify when you look at it through those three lenses? What are they? What do they symbolize to you? And the example might be, okay, this client might have the belief that they need to be manly. Their identity is, I'm a manly man. And if I am going to be vulnerable enough to open and surrender to anal play, which is, you know, everybody likes anal play, no matter what your. Well, once you learn how to do it properly, it's a pleasurable part of your body, men's bodies. That's their g spot. And lots of people feel deep shame about touching their own. It's like the equivalent of a g spot. Imagine being shamed to touch your own g spot because you would lose your own status in your role in life if you touched a certain part of your genitals. He has to come up with a story that enables him to be able to be vulnerable enough, let go of his identity as a manly man, lose his social status as one of the boys, to be able to be vulnerable enough to experience this wonderful anal pleasure that he's. That is naturally available to him. So this story has created this scenario where you're living out his fear of vulnerability. If I touch this part of myself, I I'm going to be girly. I'm going to just be used. I'll be like, treated like a whore. I won't be a manly man anymore. I'll be beneath them. The pack will just use me and disregard me. You know, liking this stuff is gay. That's part of my fear as well. All of this, this, all of these fears are there. So there's your poison, but they need to be transformed. So a mistress comes along, a heterosexual woman comes along and forces him to feel this pleasure that he wants to feel so that he can surrender and let go and just disappear into the pleasure of it. And she is not. She is accepting him, not disapproving of him. So she's getting excited seeing him do that. So it's the opposite of rejection. She's becoming sexually excited. Okay, let this client's come to see me. I don't have a glory hole or, you know, a whole bunch of men I can bring out of my cupboard suddenly, nor do I want to. That's not the point of this fantasy. Indeed. So the essence, the essence is I'm going to need to include his fear of being vulnerable, of him losing his manliness if he's vulnerable, of what could happen if he's vulnerable. He's not protected anymore. He's completely, everybody can just use him. He's not going to have any status anymore. He's going to be on his hands and knees and just used right. And also include the right body language and the right attitude towards him and the right kind of dirty talk while he's having that. So I would then create the essence by creating an experience where he does gently, even though he's fantasized about being forcefully. I'll say forceful words, but I'll use gentle technique to open his anus gently and look after him and keep him safe and help him access this pleasure while running the story. And just in the ways, like, I'm training you right now, and I might even. I might even in future use you in the glory hole. Glory hole. But I'm going to. But I will be using the, the right ingredients, saying the right things that I know, his ego in particular fears, and listening to the way that his is resolved. So I'm not being rough like his fantasy is. I'm not including real men. I'm not using. He's not actually being used, but the essence of it has come to life. All of the mechanisms that he needs to completely let go and end up in throws of full body orgasms from anal play.
[35:19] Karin: Excellent. And so in that situation, what kind of transformation might you see in the client after you've enacted this fantasy with him?
[35:30] Artemisia: Okay, there's two different levels to that. One is the immediate transformation that just transforms your state of consciousness. And, oh, my goodness, some incredibly powerful things can happen. I can't believe it. Some people, I could get clients who, you know, when you're a sex worker, a random person comes in, you don't necessarily even like their personality when they first come in the door. Like, really, you don't? Let's tell the truth here, right? Some of them are lovely. Some of them are just. They rub you the wrong way, just personality wise. But once they have transformed, their personality is not even in the door anymore. It's out of the house. This bigger sense of self. And I would go down the rabbit hole with them, this whole play process, even though I'm following their psyche, I was going down the rabbit hole with them, and we would end up both in astonished states. It felt like, and it felt like we were looking at each other's eyes and we were seeing each other's souls, not each other's personalities. It felt like we were our higher self and our primal self right here, right now. And our ordinary, everyday self was out of the way.
[36:43] Karin: Those defenses are down. Sounds like all those protectors that come in. Yeah, okay.
[36:49] Artemisia: Yeah, exactly. That's beautifully described. Yes. So it is this, that immediate thing which has its own benefits, as you know, with your work with psychedelic assisted therapy. There's deep benefits in being able to just go into that state. You can think differently. You can feel differently. You can access valuable parts of yourself you normally cannot access, and you can share that with someone else in these kinds of sexual scenes, which is one of the most intimate things you can do. So that transformation's already happened. You've moved from defensiveness, standoffishness, to open and connected and in sync and in a mate. And I could feel my heart expand sometimes. It felt huge, like I felt like I'd expanded around them. And as I said before, I didn't even necessarily like them when they first walked in the door. But that still happened. If you followed this process, which is.
[37:44] Karin: Pretty powerful because you got to connect with their essence.
[37:48] Artemisia: With their essence, they really are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Then if you've had a lived experience like that, you don't come back unchanged. You come back with a sense of knowing that there is. Well, in those experiences, you feel like you're connected with something bigger than yourself. That kind of experience changes you once you know that you can connect with something bigger than yourself, that you have a bigger self at all. And you've been able to see yourself with compassion and wonder and awe. And you've been able to see each other with compassion and wonder and awe. You don't come back unchanged. This actually ripples out into your whole life. You trust your own mind better, you trust your own body better. You have a different relationship to life itself when you are in relationship with your own creative life force, because that's what sex is. It's tapping you into your own creative life force. So this does transform you in ways that ripples out into your relationships. It ripples out into your own creativity in your business work. It ripples out into just having meaning and purpose. So it's so much more than having an amazing orgasm. It's about forming a relationship with who you are, all of who you are, by trusting your own erotic psyche and creating a safe place to explore that through play.
[39:18] Karin: Wouldn't it be wonderful if we were at a place in our society where everyone did this at some point in their life?
[39:27] Artemisia: Well, I am on a mission. I am training people to do this. That's one of the things I do. Oh, I love it.
[39:34] Karin: Yeah, I think it sounds really beautiful. A couple things. One of the things that I'm thinking in, and of course, I'm looking at the work that I do with psychedelics now. And a really important part of that is follow up sessions where you do integration work where you talk about what were the insights and how can you then apply that to the rest of your life? Is that a piece of the work that you do?
[40:03] Artemisia: Similar? Yes, a little bit different, because erotic is different. But I definitely would set up a. First of all, the first thing you need to do is set up aftercare, so slowly integrate them back. You do not send a client out the door before their egos back in, in the car because they have no skin. They need their protectors back in place. That's necessary. We need to ground them and bring them back. But then after, and as they do that, as they're slowly getting dressed and they're showering and I'm giving them a cup of tea and maybe a bite or something to eat to bring them back before I send them out, I'm asking them questions so that they can ground and remember the experience. Because otherwise it's like a dream. It just dissipates and you can't remember it because it's so beyond our normal way of being in our mind, then afterwards, we would have a date two or three days afterwards. Probably two is the ideal, where they've had a chance to let it settle inside of them. And they would call me for a conversation, a half an hour conversation on the phone, where we would then integrate what happened and we'd relive some of the highlights. We do this process I call panning for gold. We go through. They can talk about anything that was difficult. But what we do is we go through the experience and we like, just like you do with a pan, you bring up a whole lot of sand, and there's gold in it as well. You focus in on the gold and you go, okay, I really loved that part. When you did this, I got to feel this, and I didn't expect that at all. And, wow. And that made me start imagining, what would it be like if I did this and I felt myself craving for you to do that. And that's when we'd learn, oh, this is where we could go next time. Oh, this part of you that is speaking right now, this is not your. Your mind, your logical mind, trying to decide what to do next. It's the part that's craving, following. Oh, I really loved it when you held my wrists down for a moment and you looked at me with such a cheeky glint in your eye. I was imagining at that moment that you would bite my neck. That would be so exciting. And I felt myself just really on the edge of letting go an even deeper layer, the. At that point. And I imagine. I just started imagining and craving you giving me a slap on the. On the butt right then. And I think that would tip me over the edge. Are you up for exploring that next time?
[42:27] Karin: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So not only looking for this gold, as you say, but also looking at how you could explore this further.
[42:40] Artemisia: Yeah. Yeah. Following their own. Their own wisdom of their own desire in the moment. Because if you just ask them what they want to do next time, the wrong organ of the psyche, if you like, will answer the question. Right? So you have to follow this. Yeah. So we've got to do it this way. But also in that aftercare time, if something difficult has come up, because we didn't hit all of the poisons and antidotes, maybe we hit some of them, but not all of them. And now they've got some. Some things that are, you know. Oh, I'm feeling guilty that I was so excited by, you know, being peed on. Mistress, what's, you know, and we can talk through and work through that. And there's another piece of that as too, is if you go really deep sometimes you use up all of your happy chemicals and you can have a little bit of a drop afterwards, a day or two afterwards. And having somebody there to talk to you and work through that is a really important part of the process too. Although I've got to say, when I followed this method, quite often, that drop didn't happen anymore. Quite a different thing would happen. Even after they'd have. Some of them wanted orgasms and some of them didn't. Laws are different here in Australia, by the way. It's all completely decriminalised. I can talk about this. They may have had an orgasm and normally they might just go flat and want to sleep after an orgasm and it all just drops. But actually following this method, a different thing would happen. They'd feel like, wow, I've had an orgasm and actually I feel on top of the world. I feel incredible. I didn't know I could feel like this. I feel like I'm on drugs, except not because this is the most real I've ever been. What is this? What even is this? So, yeah, this is why I trust the wisdom of the erotic psyche and I trust people's sexual fantasies. They're actually so much wiser than we first think.
[44:35] Karin: That inner intelligence, I tell you.
[44:39] Artemisia: Right?
[44:39] Karin: Yeah. Beautiful. And so I have to ask, how can couples, like long term, committed couples, bring this into the bedroom? Are there pieces of this that they can do? And do you coach couples on how to do it?
[44:56] Artemisia: Yes, my primary people that I coach are sexperts and I have a lot of therapists. Actually, I don't officially advertise for therapists, but therapists keep finding me and seeking me out because they can see that I've got a missing piece and they want to explore it both for themselves and also be more skilled with their clients. Teach sex workers and pro doms and sexologists and sex educators, but also people who just want to have a deep self discovery journey using the lens of the erotic. And they want to be able to share this level of themselves with their long term partner. And the first thing that we need to do with long term partners is create a different source of safety for them to be able to share their turn ons, because we want our partners to be turned on by exactly the things we're turned on by, or it feels too vulnerable to share them with someone.
[45:57] Karin: Yeah, I bet that's a source of rejection for some people, right?
[46:02] Artemisia: When you don't. If you get all, you know, you work up the guts and tell them your sexual fantasy and they go, but that doesn't turn me on. I don't do that.
[46:11] Karin: That's weird, right?
[46:12] Artemisia: Yeah. Right.
[46:13] Karin: You've just rejected that.
[46:15] Artemisia: You've just rejected that person's internal process. That is the exact story. They need to be able to move and open up, move past their guards and open up to you and share that most intimate part of yourself. You don't have to be turned on by each other's turn ons. In fact, nobody's turned ons are the same because everybody's pattern of turn ons and their sexual fantasies are the exact story you need to hear. Your ego needs to hear, not their ego. Everybody's got different egos, everybody's got different defences. So the stories are going to have to necessarily be different. Your arousal stars are going to be different. It's going to be different. So we need to form a new sense of safety from the very first thing and say, okay, we don't want to get safety from us being turned on by the same things. We want to get creative safety from us wanting to be here playing in the flow of play state together. I want to be here doing this with you, I want to share this part of myself with you and I want to share back. And it does not mean that you have to do sex acts that you don't want to do. It absolutely does not. It just means that you need to take a deeper look at each other's fantasies and understand what they're trying to achieve and create ways that are inside both of your consent boundaries that you can actually play with those. So it's. You don't have to have threesomes, you don't have to suddenly have six pack abs, you don't have to have a boob job in order to live out somebody's fantasies. It's not around.
[47:54] Karin: Right.
[47:55] Artemisia: But the very first thing that you can do, actually, I've got a freebie I want to give to your clients, if that's all right, which is I guide people through the very first step. And I know it's a bit intimidating to actually start by confessing your fantasies. So this is a little exercise where we. I'll guide you through step by step the kinds of things to look for when you google somebody that you find attractive, find a celebrity. Right. That you find attractive. Go on Google images and see how instead of focusing on their physical appearance, though, that's fine. To start with. Let's assume you're attracted to their physical appearance. Appearance because you know they're your type. Let's look at several different pictures of the same person at the when they're about the same age, like, not when they're vastly different, but when they physically look the same. Why are you attracted to some pictures more than others? What's going on there in the body language and the power dynamic and the unconscious symbols in that moment that is making that picture more exciting to you than that picture? Let's and I will help you break that down so that you can begin to understand your particular erotic wiring. What's the story that you're making that your erotic psyche is making up to give you permission to let go? And then you'll have a couple of little steps that you can try to get just by taking on body language and attitude there together. And you can get that [email protected]. If you're interested in getting that one.
[49:30] Karin: Wonderful. What's one thing you'd really like people to walk away with? After listening to this conversation again, I.
[49:38] Artemisia: Really want to emphasise that the wisdom of your sexual desires and your sexual fantasies is not about living it out literally, this part of you. It's about changing your internal state, not giving you instructions for how to literally behave in the outside world. And if you understand that, you can begin to trust it. You cannot follow your internal wisdom until you can trust it. So you need to be able to understand, and it takes some doing. It's actually the very first thing I teach my elite practitioners of the erotic arts is to form a new relationship with their own desire, their own inner voice on an embodied level. Because desire is wanting, and the force inside of you that makes you want things doesn't always appear to be very wise, does it? It kind of makes you want to spend all of your tax money on hats and so eat all of the chocolate and none of the Brussels sprouts. It's not known for its wisdom, but actually it's super wise when we understand that it's not. It's not a map for how to behave in the outside world. It is the exact map to change your internal state of consciousness so that you can open deeply and even have oneness experiences.
[51:15] Karin: And what role does love play in the work that you do?
[51:19] Artemisia: I think it's one of the most loving things you could possibly do to accept somebody's erotic psyche and share your own internal psychological workings with somebody else. In delicious play enthusiasts, imagine somebody want to be there for you, want to understand how your unique psyche works, want to enthusiastically play with it with you and create all of the experience of safety and the deliciousness so that you can deeply open. I think that is probably one of the most intimate, loving things that you can do for another human being.
[52:01] Karin: And how can people learn more about you and working with you and your book?
[52:06] Artemisia: Oh, thanks. Well, you can always just check out my website, which is artemisiadivine.com. But I really recommend starting back with that freebie that I mentioned earlier on and doing that exercise that will get you on my mailing list as well. So that [email protected] and that will also make sure that you know when my book is coming out, the spirituality of smart, where I'll tell lots of stories about how I figured this stuff out with sex, work, clients and other kinds of adventures that I've had and give you lots of actual practical tips for you to be able to start integrating this into your life as well. So yes, absolutely. If you want to do that, check out my fantasyis.com.
[52:55] Karin: So wonderful to have you on. This just exceeded all my expectations. So thank you so much.
[53:04] Artemisia: It was so fun. Thank you so much for having me.
[53:09] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love is us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Ali Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be love. The best way to be love is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.
Outro:
Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love is us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Ali Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be love. The best way to be love is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.
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Learn more about Brenda:
Website: https://www.brendawinkle.com/
Podcast: https://www.brendawinkle.com/podcasts/your-yes-filled-life
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brendawinkle/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brenda.winkle111
Learn more about Karin:
Website: https://drcalde.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theloveandconnectioncoach/
TRANSCRIPT
Intro:
Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love Is Us.
Episode:
Karin: Hey, everybody. Today we're going to be talking about breath work with my friend Brenda Winkle. And Brenda had been on my show back during episode number 38 where we talked about boundaries. And I'm so excited that she agreed. Come back and talk about her work as a breath work facilitator. And the reason I'm so excited about this and the timing is that I've been learning about breath work just in small bits over the past few years. You know, one step at a time. And the more I learn about it and the more I experience about it, the more I appreciate it and can see how powerful it can be for a lot of people. So the timing of this episode is really interesting because during, during my practicum training in becoming a psilocybin facilitator, we had four days of the practicum, and for an hour and a half each morning, we did breath work. This facilitated breath work experience, and it was a little bit different than I think Brenda does. It's called Vivation. There are lots of different kinds of approaches you can take, but it was incredible to hear everyone's experience of it. You know, people talked about their back pain disappearing and feeling like they were in this state of bliss. During the experience, you know, someone else talked about how they were able to relax for the first time in months after some really difficult experiences. I felt like I was able to let go of some of the trauma that I had experienced back in January, and it was a very physical release and it felt incredible. And then someone else talked about how there was, you know, this thing in her childhood that always upset her and nod at her, and it just seemed to not bother her anymore after this. So it was really incredible to hear people's experiences and, you know, it can be used in different ways. It doesn't have to be that you do it for an hour and a half or even an hour. It can be just a simple technique, like Brenda walks us through toward the end of the episode. So I hope you like this one, and I hope you will leave me a review. I would love to get some more reviews, and I really appreciate, appreciate you being here. So here we go. Welcome back, Brenda.
[03:13] Brenda: Hi, Karin. Thank you for having me.
[03:16] Karin: I'm so glad I get to be able to say welcome back. I think you're the. My second repeat guest, so I'm excited to have you back and talk about breath work this time, because last time we talked about boundaries, right?
[03:33] Brenda: Yeah, that's right. I'm excited to talk about breath work, too. So thank you for having me back. It means a lot. Well, good.
[03:39] Karin: I'm glad to have you here. In case someone missed the last episode. Tell us where you are in the world.
[03:45] Brenda: Well, I live in Lake Oswego, Oregon, which is a suburb of Portland, which.
[03:50] Karin: Is really close to me.
[03:53] Brenda: In fact, that's how we met. We were on your podcast the first time and realized that we were, like, 20 minutes apart. And so we became friends in person after that podcast episode, which was so fun.
[04:06] Karin: Yeah, super fun. And you even got to come over and spend Christmas with my family.
[04:12] Brenda: That's right. It was so nice.
[04:14] Karin: Yeah. We've gone on some adventures together since that time, so that's really fun, too.
[04:19] Brenda: It is. It's been great.
[04:20] Karin: Tell us what. What keeps you in Lake Oswego nowadays?
[04:25] Brenda: Well, I don't know what keeps me here. That's a really interesting question. Um, I have a dog. His name is Bentley, and he's about a year old, and he is a greyhound, an italian greyhound mix, and he loves to run. So it's interesting that you ask me what keeps me in Lake Oswego, because right now, what's alive for me is Bentley really wants to run in a yard. And so I don't know for sure if Lake Oswego is the. Is the ending place, because Bentley needs a yard. So we'll see.
[04:58] Karin: Yeah. So do you think you'll stay in the Pacific Northwest?
[05:02] Brenda: I think so. And also, I'm open to something different. If something different were to present itself, I'm trying not to control outcomes. And, you know, whenever I get ready to embark on something that's a change, I have to remind myself not to control the outcomes, because it's really easy for me to think I'm not going to control the outcomes. Except for this one and this one and this one. Ah, yeah.
[05:30] Karin: I can relate to that. So tell us what you do for work.
[05:34] Brenda: I'm an energy healer. I work with high performers, helping them set better boundaries, take on less from other people so they can determine what's theirs and what's not. And I help people heal their nervous systems, and I do this through somatic coaching, breath work, and energy healing.
[05:50] Karin: Yeah. And so that's what we're here to talk about today.
[05:53] Brenda: Yeah.
[05:54] Karin: And tell us how you came to do breath work.
[05:57] Brenda: Well, so this is such a long, twisty story. You know, the short answer would be that I met my mentor at a retreat and decided, like, what is this? I have to have more. I have to learn more. But the long answer is, I was an educator for 26 years, and in 2008 or 2009, I discovered this new classroom management methodology called Yoga for editing. And a lot of it I didn't end up implementing in my classroom. Some of it I did. But one of the things that made me really curious as a practicing yogi was, could I incorporate the breath part in my music classroom? And so I started to incorporate the breath part mostly as a way to manage my own stress, and realized that not only did it help me manage my stress, but it helped my students manage theirs. So in 2008, I started to use breath, not knowing there was a term for it in my classroom. And I carried that up until I ended my career up in 2022, which is also when I began to get training as an official breath work facilitator. And if you would have said you're going to be a breath work facilitator, I would have laughed at you, because I would have said, that's a job. Like, someone's job is to help do breath work. And yes, indeed, that is a job.
[07:21] Karin: Yeah. Yeah. And you said that you started noticing it for yourself and for your students. What did you notice in your students when you did breath work?
[07:32] Brenda: I noticed that, number one, any unwanted behaviors started to dissipate, which was a real surprise. I was doing the breath work in my classroom to manage my stress. I was going through a divorce. I was navigating, being a single mom of a really young kid, and I just needed some relief. And so it was really, it was really self serving. I just knew I needed to breathe. And what I saw was that the behavior started to go down. I saw that the student engagement started to go up. And then the really interesting thing was that I only had to request them to do the breath patterns one or two times. And then for the rest of their time with me, they would walk in and request it. They would say, I've had this kind of day, can we do this thing? And so they began to use the breath as a tool. And even then, I didn't know it was called breath work. I just thought it was something we were doing, you know? But breath work is any time that you take control over what is an autonomic nervous system response, we don't usually think about breathing. And so when we start to think about breathing, we can call that breath work.
[08:49] Karin: I love how it also really fits in well with the kind of teaching you were doing, like, what you were teaching as well, right?
[08:58] Brenda: That's right. I was a music teacher, a choral music teacher. And so when we think about the breath, we have to breathe in order to sing. And so we talk a lot about diaphragm, which is the muscle that is in your belly that connects to the bottom of your lungs. And it's the. The muscle that's shaped a LIttlE bit like a bowl. And when you use the diaphragm to breathe in, it pulls the lungs down and out, creating more space. And when we use the diaphragm on the exhale, or if we're singing or vocalizing or speaking, that diaphragm turns inverted. So it's like an upside down bowl forcing the air up and out through the lungs as the lungs, it contracts the lungs, because the lungs are tissue, not muscle. So the diaphragm is the muscle that makes the lungs work, so to speak.
[09:50] Karin: Maybe you can expand a bit more on what breath work is so people have more of a feel for it.
[09:57] Brenda: Yeah. When we take control over the autonomic nervous system through the breath, we're practicing something called a somatic experience. Soma is the root word, the greek root word of SoMAtic, meaning in the body. So we're getting into the body, and this is known as a BoTToms up approach. So talk therapy or behavior cognitive therapy, I might have that, those words mixed up in order, but that's considered a bottom or, excuse me, top down approach, where we're starting with the mind, with breath work, we start with the body. We know that our bodies store experiences, whether they're positive, negative, or traumatic. And when we go into the body using the breath, we can help move that energy.
[10:47] Karin: Also, the nervous system has everything to do with this as well. So maybe you can give us just a little bit of an orientation to the nervous system.
[10:56] Brenda: Absolutely. So your nervous system really has one job, and that's to keep you alive. So when your nervous system's one job to keep you alive, it's going to do this in one of two ways. It's going to either activate the sympathetic nervous system or the parasympathetic nervous system. So the sympathetic nervous system is the nervous system that comes online when our body or our mind perceives a threat. It could be something like we're running from a tiger, or it could be preparing for a major presentation. When our body perceives stress, we go into what is known as a stress response, fight or flight. And so that would be the hyper activity of the nervous system would be fight or flight, hypo activity. In other words, an underactive nervous system would cause us to go into freeze or fawn, fawning, being people, pleasing, like your life depends on it because your body thinks it does. And so when we're in a stress response, our body is trying to conserve resources. And in order for our resources to be conserved, a lot of the normal systems go offline, like our digestion, like our conscious ability to make decisions using our whole body. That's why we can make really crazy decisions when we're under stress, is because we don't have access to our whole mind. So the stress response is something we all experience, whether it's fight, fight fees or fun. And interestingly, we don't get to choose. We don't get to say, I'm going to, I'm in a fight today. That's what my nervous system is going to do. No, that's not how it works. Your body is just going to respond to whatever other load it has and then make a decision from there. So what we would love to do is to bring ourselves into homeostasis, into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is really related to the vagus nerve. The vagus nerve is the largest, longest nerve in the body. But it's not just linear, it's like a tree. It starts at the base of our spine and it goes all the way up to the base of our skull, like in those little lumpy things at the back of your head. And it has like tree branches that go all through your body, regulating literally everything from your voice to your digestion, to your sexual function. So when your vagus nerve is online, you have access to all of those body systems. When you're in a stress response, the vagus nerve goes offline as a way to conserve resources. And so when we are engaging in breath work or other somatic practices, the end goal is to bring back the vagus nerve so that we can activate the parasympathetic nervous system or homeostasis. And sometimes that's known in a yoga class as rest and digestion.
[13:53] Karin: How does breath work tie into all of that, and how does breath work impact the nervous system?
[13:59] Brenda: Breath work is really nourishing for the nervous system. So I'm a trauma informed breath work facilitator, and that's important to name because breath work can activate a nervous system as well as soothe a nervous system. And so there's not a one size fits all breath pattern or approach, because every body is unique, and the body that you have today is not the body that you had yesterday is not the body that you'll have tomorrow. And so there's not going to be a one and done formula. But in really general terms, breath work helps the body bring the vagus nerve back online to reduce the stress response. And we also know there's new data being, I mean, there's. There's scientific research happening all over southern California in particular, that suggests that we can reach non ordinary states of mind using breath work that are very similar to different types of micro dosing. But it's with only the breath, like.
[15:01] Karin: Holotropic breath work, right?
[15:02] Brenda: Exactly.
[15:03] Karin: That's right. Yeah. That's something I'm familiar with, with the work that I've started doing lately. But maybe we can get into a little bit of a personal story. So, as some of my listeners might know, a tree fell on my house in January, and I watched the whole thing happen. It was really traumatic, and Brenda was a really wonderful source of support for me. So maybe you can, you know, tell people what was happening and what we did to help with that.
[15:35] Brenda: Yeah. So when you're in a stress response, especially caused by trauma, and the trauma is active in your body. And before we go too much further, let's define trauma. Trauma, according to me, is anything that's too much, too fast in a way that exceeds our nervous system's capacity to cope. In our bodies, there's no hierarchy of trauma. We try to create hierarchy, and we try to talk about big t and little t trauma. And really, the only thing that that refers to is how long it's going to take you to heal the trauma. But your body just doesn't care whether it's big t, little t, or anywhere in the middle. If your body experiences trauma, your body is experiencing trauma. The end. So this was a traumatic experience because you watched a tree that you love fall, and not only did the tree fall, but there was, you know, animals that no longer had a home, and that was very, very emotional. And then your. Your house was damaged and I thought I was.
[16:33] Karin: I was done. You know, as it came toward me, I did think I was going to die. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was pretty big.
[16:40] Brenda: It was really big. And so what we did is we just took some slow, deep breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. And when we put presence on the breath, we can begin to slow the thought process that's in the mind sometimes. It's like a boulder rolling down a hill. And so if we can begin to slow that boulder rolling down the hill just a little bit with the breath coming back into the body, it can help us release some of the energy behind the boulder rolling down the hill. And the boulder is usually emotions. And we're so scared. And I'm saying we, because this happens to me, too. When we're really experiencing strong emotions, our first go to, if we think about, like, our ability to process pain, our first go to is to push it away. I don't want to feel it. I don't want to know it, I don't want to see it. And if we can allow ourselves to get present with what is, and experience the pain, whatever that looks like emotionally, we know from lots of scientific and neurological research that the emotions will last around 30 seconds. Excuse me, 90 seconds. And this isn't to say that in something like this, that 190 2nd thing of breath is going to heal you. That would be a lie. That's not true. But 90 seconds of breath can release some of the emotional charge, and then another 90 seconds can release a different level of emotional charge. And so if we think about, like, grief, for example, is a really big emotion, we're not going to solve grief in 90 seconds, but we can get through this wave of grief in 90 seconds, and we can use the breath to get to the other side of this wave of grief, because when we.
[18:33] Karin: Skip over the body's need to regulate, we really can't process even at any other level.
[18:42] Brenda: Right, right, exactly. Because it overrides our thinking brain. And so then we're in total survival, and we make decisions based on our survival. We're not making decisions based on anything other than how can I stay safe right in this moment? How can I stay alive right in this moment? And that's why we say things we don't mean to the people that we love. That's why we make decisions that aren't in keeping with how we really feel about things when we're in those stress responses and we're only using our brainstem.
[19:16] Karin: Yeah, and I just want to make the connection to relationships like you started to do as well. That is, you know, when we're in conflict with someone, especially with someone we love, we can feel really triggered, and that can activate our nervous system, put us in that sympathetic mode, and then it's hard for us to think and communicate and connect because our bodies are too activated. And so that's why, you know, one of the things that I often do with couples that I work with is teach them a breath pattern and recommend that they do that together and co regulate, and that can be really helpful so that they can then connect and work through conflict and. Yeah, feel. Feel a lot better.
[20:08] Brenda: And, you know, the institute of Heart math has done thousands of studies on heart coherence. And the way that we create heart coherence with another person is through the breath. So when you're telling couples to breathe together or it's so healing on every level because it creates that heart coherence, that co regulation. So that's so, so important. And such a good, good tip.
[20:34] Karin: Yeah. And I'll recommend that couples, you know, practice this regularly and try to practice it together at least once a day. And if they can do it holding hands, great. But if they can do it heart to heart, even better.
[20:46] Brenda: Yeah, I would love that.
[20:48] Karin: Yeah.
[20:48] Brenda: That's amazing.
[20:50] Karin: How can people incorporate this into their daily lives?
[20:55] Brenda: It's really easy. So, you know, let's say you had something kind of upsetting happen. You got an email that just made you feel upset. The next time you have three or five minutes, whether it's you're at work, you're in an office, you're in a cubicle, or whether you're at home, go walk. And as you're breathing, create a pattern of your footsteps to your breath. So maybe you're. You're taking four steps on the inhale and forceps on the exhale. Breathing in through the mouth. Excuse me. In through the nose and then out through the mouth. So you can just create, like, a cadence that you're breathing to. And, you know, the more upset you are, maybe the faster you want to walk. Slash, breathe. And then as you find yourself calming down, you can slow that pace a little bit. But you could do this in a bathroom stall. You can do it in the grocery store. You can do it as you're walking through from your cubicle or your office down the hall. You can do it even as you walk from your home office to the kitchen.
[21:55] Karin: That's so interesting that you say that. Cause I have this memory that is coming up for me of when I was a kid, and I'd be probably walking home from school and doing that, matching my breath to my steps. And so it just makes me think that this is something that our bodies want to do.
[22:17] Brenda: Absolutely. We're so intelligent and we know so much, especially when we're kids, about how to self soothe. And then somewhere along the line, we kind of forget. And, you know, one of the things that I'm noticing as I'm, as I'm going into conferences and breathing large groups of people is that we feel self conscious about even allowing our breath to be heard. And so there's this whole group of people, professional people, who are scared to let people hear them breathe. And, you know, if you could just get courageous. Not you, Karen. I'm talking to our listeners. But listeners, if you could get really courageous and just let someone hear you take a deep breath, you'll feel so much better.
[23:07] Karin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's funny. I'm going back to that story, walking home. As a kid, I always thought that that walk home was so long. I was always wishing for, like, a magic bed that I could ride home so I not have to. And so I'm just imagining that was something that I did to kind of get me through that, what seemed like this forever. Walk home.
[23:34] Brenda: Yeah. You know, I walked to and from school, too, and mine wasn't a bed. It was a magic carpet.
[23:40] Karin: Yeah. And you did you have to walk uphill both ways as well?
[23:45] Brenda: Yeah. In the snow.
[23:46] Karin: Yeah. Right, right. So, so one of the things I also recommend to clients, and I learned. I started to learn breath work when I was working as a therapist, and I was specializing in helping people who had panic disorder. And one of the things that I would help people do is just keep their overall anxiety levels down so they didn't hit up against that upper limit. That would then propel them into panic mode. And one of the things that we would teach is diaphragmic breathing. So breathing low all the way so that your, when you're breathing in, your stomach goes out. And we would teach them to do that, like, three, four times a day in all different kinds of body positions so that they weren't just doing it when they felt bad, because then they would start to associate breathing like that with when they were feeling bad.
[24:52] Brenda: Right, right.
[24:54] Karin: Yeah.
[24:54] Brenda: And one other thing that is really helpful with anxiety is lengthening the exhale. When we elongate that exhale, it creates a. We lower the blood pressure, and we slow the heart rate. So you can increase your heart health and your heart rate variability by lengthening those exhales. I've done that for years when I'm getting my blood pressure drawn or my blood pressure taken, because I have to admit, sometimes I get a little nervous in the doctor's office, and I know that I don't have high blood pressure, and so I don't want them to think that I do. So I'm always like, okay, I'm going to take a really long exhale right now, and I just. I don't talk to the nurse. I just breathe. And my blood pressure is great.
[25:38] Karin: It's great. Yeah. Yeah. We are all human, aren't we? And, yeah, I really love that longer exhale as well, and I have been using it daily, especially since this happened in January. So, yeah, that has been a gift to me, for sure.
[25:57] Brenda: That's so good.
[25:57] Karin: Yeah. And another human story. I don't like getting my blood drawn, and I think, I don't know if I told you this story, I had to get my blood drawn shortly after this whole tree incident, and my body was just, you know, I was going through the roof and. And so I woke up the morning, I had to get my blood drawn, and I used that pattern, lengthening the exhale, and I felt completely different afterwards.
[26:31] Brenda: That's so good.
[26:32] Karin: Yeah. And I felt so jazzed that I could do that, that I was even, you know, singing and celebrating on the way to get my blood drawn, which is.
[26:42] Brenda: Oh, that's so good.
[26:44] Karin: Not a usual story for me. So that's how powerful it can be.
[26:49] Brenda: It is powerful, and it's empowering. When we realize that we can do something so simple as modify our breath and we can make better decisions, we can step into our own power. We can change how we feel about something, and we can eliminate that sense of fear or dread that comes with non preferred activities like getting your blood drawn or whatever it might be. It's so empowering.
[27:16] Karin: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So is there. Is there anyone for whom breath work is not recommended?
[27:26] Brenda: You know, I always like to tell my clients it's really best if you visit with your doctor first, just because if you're under a doctor's care, your doctor's gonna know best. But in general terms, it's safe for everyone, with specific modifications for a few things. So if you have known cardiovascular things, there are certain breath work patterns that are not going to be safe for you. So you'll want to let your facilitator know that that is the case for you, so that your facilitator can help modify to make sure that the breath pattern is safe for you.
[28:02] Karin: So can I, can I interrupt for a second? So you're talking about like arrhythmias and high blood pressure, that kind of thing?
[28:08] Brenda: Anything with heart.
[28:09] Karin: Okay.
[28:10] Brenda: Anything with heart. You want to make sure you let your practitioner know because there are certain activating breath work patterns that are not going to be appropriate for you because they raise the blood pressure, which wouldn't be safe if you have different kinds of heart conditions. Pregnancy is another one. Breath work is absolutely safe to use in pregnancy. But again, there are certain activating patterns that are not going to be appropriate. And we also want to always think about when we're pregnant that we're moving energy from the top of the head down through the root. So any breath work pattern that would move energy from the root up would not be appropriate during pregnancy because we want the energy to always come from the head down because the baby will eventually come down.
[28:58] Karin: Tell me more about that. I'm curious why that is.
[29:01] Brenda: There is a breath work pattern that you can activate all of your chakras, like all your energy centers. And so you, in doing that, you're starting at the root and you're lighting up all of the upper chakras and then coming out through the crown of the head. And that one would not be appropriate in pregnancy.
[29:19] Karin: Okay.
[29:21] Brenda: So, but other than that, it's generally appropriate. But if you have health conditions, like a neurological disorder, like multiple sclerosis or something, you want to make sure you communicate with your facilitator because they're going to help you modify things. And there are some cases of neurological things like multiple sclerosis or ALS or different things like that, that your doctor may not want you to do breath work. And so if you're under a doctor's care for something like that, it's important to work with your facilitator and your medical practitioner.
[29:57] Karin: Okay. And I'll just say that in a previous episode, I talked about how I will be starting to do work as a psilocybin facilitator. And one of the things that we've learned and talked about a lot in the training is bringing in breath work.
[30:15] Brenda: Yeah.
[30:16] Karin: Especially for people who might be having some challenging experiences, because it is so new for people to have this expanded state of consciousness and to, you know, move through the stages of consciousness that can feel very different. Different and a little bit scary sometimes. And so that breath work is really important, and it's really important for people to practice it ahead of time so they can more easily. Then go ahead and jump into it if they need to.
[30:47] Brenda: That makes so much sense that you're teaching the skillset before you need it, and I think that's good practice anyway, right? Like, when I was teaching kids, I never taught kids when they were escalated. That's not when you teach something new. You teach something new in the calm moment when you don't need it, so then you can use it as a tool when you do need it.
[31:07] Karin: Right. So how have you seen breath work help people?
[31:11] Brenda: So I've seen breath work literally change lives. It changed mine. It absolutely changed mine. When I discovered breath work, I was losing a dog. And so I'm the mom of one human. She's 23, and she was getting ready to move out. And my companion for the last 13 years was a dachshund named Hutch. And as she was approaching getting ready to move out, he was dying, and I knew it. And between her getting ready to be, like, out on her own and me losing this dog, I didn't know what I was going to do. And I was in this mastermind call, not realizing that anything was going to happen. And this woman popped into the call and led us through a breath work session. And I didn't know what happened, but I knew that from the time that I logged on the call and the grief was so acute, and I felt like it was crushing and so heavy to the time that I ended the call and I felt light. I felt like I could access my thinking brain. I could think clearly. I still had a little bit of sadness around what was happening, but I had capacity to cope. And so I was like, I don't know what just happened, but I'm curious. And then she came in again, and a similar thing happened. And then I met her in person at a retreat in Malibu, and decades of trauma left my body, and I felt like I was a totally new person. Things that I was totally aware of were holding me back, were no longer holding me back. And it was so interesting because I could feel myself thinking, oh, I would normally be doing this to sabotage my effort, and I'm not. And it was wild. And so now, as I'm bringing into clients, and it's been about a year that I brought it to clients, I'm seeing their lives transform. There's one person who came to me because she had such debilitating back and neck pain that she just couldn't function. She couldn't do anything. That was fun. She went to work, she came home, and she sat as still as she could until it was bedtime, and then she went to bed, and she did that every day. So she started working with me just because she needed some pain management. Now her pain is managed. She has started a new business. She is happier than ever. She has new friends, a new lease on life. She just opened up a Reiki studio in her town in Nebraska, and she's flourishing in ways that she never dreamed. And so it's just. It's literally life changing.
[33:54] Karin: So it can help with chronic pain, it can help with trauma. What else can it help with?
[33:59] Brenda: I would say almost anything. It can help with relationships, it can help heal inner child wounds, it can help heal. And that one, sometimes you need support to move through, depending on what your inner child wounds are and how accessible they are to you. I have found it to be kind of the magic bullet for just about everything. And it sounds improbable, but, like, if I have a headache, I'm going to go do breath work. If I have a stomachache, I'm going to go do breath work. If I'm upset or sad or angry, I'm going to go do breath work. If I get into a conflict with somebody, I'm going to go do breath work and then come back. If I needed a new idea, if I want to energize and amplify something, I go do breath work. It's just we. We have this in our bodies. Like, we are the drug that we've been looking for. It's so cool.
[34:54] Karin: And so can you walk us through one that you'd like to share?
[34:58] Brenda: Yeah. So I'm going to do something really gentle with everything in mind that I told you, because I don't know what our listeners are listening with. So this is going to be a very gentle, easy. And when I say easy, not necessarily easy for you, but easy in your body. And so what we're going to do is we're going to breathe in through the nose, and we're going to breathe out through the mouth. And what we're going to do is connect our inhales to our exhales, creating almost an idea of a circle. So it's called the halo active breath because it creates that circle of connecting. Inhale to exhale. And so I won't use any music, but I'll have us actively breathing for about four minutes. Does that sound okay?
[35:43] Karin: That sounds great.
[35:43] Brenda: Okay, so the first thing I'd invite you to do is to decide, would you like your eyes to be open, or would you like your eyes to be closed? And if you're doing either one, I would invite you to just look around your room, notice colors and textures and shapes. And then on a scale of one to ten, I'd invite you to rate how safe you feel. And if you feel anything less than a ten, can you change something to increase your felt sense of safety? Can you add a blanket to your lap? Can you close a door? Can you lower a blind? Can you adjust a light? And sometimes those really simple things can make us feel so much safer.
[36:32] Karin: So go ahead and pause if you want to do that, and then come back.
[36:37] Brenda: Yeah, just get yourself really cushy. And however that feels. You can lay down if you want, but there's no need because we'll just be here for about four minutes. So, invitation just to start to notice your body. Let's start at your feet. Maybe just wiggle your feet connecting with the ground or your socks or your shoes, and just feel the bottoms of your feet connecting with the earth. And then let's bring your awareness up to your bum. Feeling the bum in your chair or on your couch or your bed. And just feeling that connection and noticing if it feels easy to notice the connection or if it feels difficult. No judgment, just noticing. And then an invitation to bring your awareness to the tip of one finger. Doesn't matter which one. And then perhaps you could bring another finger next to that one. And maybe you wiggle them together or touch them together. Just notice that sensation. And now, invitation to bring your awareness to your nose. Noticing the outside of your nose. Maybe one nostril has more airflow than the other. Maybe they're the same. Just notice. And when you feel ready, I'll invite you into a breath. In through your nose, out through your mouth, connecting. Inhale to exhale. And for these first few breaths, we'll try to eliminate the pause between the inhale and the exhale, just connecting them into a beautiful circle. You get to choose the perfect depth for you and the perfect pace for you. Notice if you want to sigh or take a bigger breath or yawn, it's all welcome. Keep that breath circulating in the body. And if, as you slow down to breathe, you start to notice emotions or sensations or little aches and pains, that's okay. They get to be here. Sometimes when we slow down, we start to notice things that were running in the background. It's all welcome. Keep that breath circulating in the body at the right pace and depth for you. That's it. We'll do a few more rounds of breath just like this. Now I'm going to invite you to create a pause between the inhale and the exhale. Whatever length of pause feels right for your body. Maybe it's a short pause, maybe it's a little bit longer. That's it. And as you breathe and you keep that breath circulating in the body, invitation to notice if your body wants to move. Does it want to shift position? Does it want to shake out the hands as their energy ready to release. And full permission to give yourself whatever your body needs. A yawn, a sigh, a shake, maybe a cry. And then keep that breath moving in the body with a gentle pause of the perfect length for you between the exhale and inhale. And maybe you notice you need to take a big, deep breath. Maybe you notice you want to sigh. It's all welcome. Invitation to do what your body's asking you to do. That's it. Just keeping your attention on the breath. I know you've got thoughts going in the background. That's okay. They get to be here. That's what our minds do. And just bring your attention back to the breath. Always back to the breath. Invitation to play with the pace of your breath. Perhaps it would like to slow. Perhaps the pause would like to grow, maybe not. Invitation to listen to your body. And when you're ready, I'm going to invite you to take the deepest breath in you've taken yet today. And to let it out, however, feels good. Just notice what's here now. How do you feel now compared to four minutes ago? Yeah.
[43:08] Karin: Thank you, Brenda.
[43:08] Brenda: That's good.
[43:09] Karin: Yeah, I appreciate that.
[43:12] Brenda: Yeah, you're welcome. I have a way that people can get a little bit longer experience. I have a free course called breath work to strengthen and trust intuition. And you can access [email protected]. Breathe. And that might be fun for people to try. And there's a couple breath patterns in that course where you can choose your own adventure.
[43:35] Karin: Yeah, absolutely. And I was hoping you would, you would tell people about how they can, can learn more. And, you know, I usually at this point, ask my guests, um, if, well, two questions. One is, if there's one thing you'd like people to walk away with after listening to this, what would it be?
[43:56] Brenda: The thing I would really like people to walk away with is a deep knowing that they can impact their lives positively simply by mindful breathing. You don't have to know a specific pattern. You don't have to have a facilitator. You can just take some deep breaths. Any time in the day that you start to feel tension or anxiety or any unwanted emotion building up, and you can change the course of your day with your breath.
[44:28] Karin: Great. And I usually ask about the role of love and the work that you do, but you already answered that last time, so I want to ask, and I think you might ask a similar question on your podcast is, what kind of books or podcasts are you into right now?
[44:49] Brenda: So I'm bringing out an oldie, and this is from, I think, twelve or 13 years ago. It's called e squared. It's by Pam Grout, and it's one of my favorite books. It's got 13 energy experiments in it. And I had her on my podcast, and one of my friends was listening to that episode, and it made me think, I want to go back through that book. So I'm rereading e squared right now. And then I'm also reading a book called made to stick, and it's about why some messages stick and others don't.
[45:26] Karin: Oh, that's. Yeah, that's interesting. There's another book called make it stick. And when I was working as an academic coach, that was one of my go tos, but I think they're similar. So that's interesting. Do you like it?
[45:42] Brenda: I do. So this one has, it looks like a piece of duct tape across the COVID It's not, but it's, like, raised and it's textured and it's pretty cool. And it's with two brothers who are teaching why some things really stick in our minds and why some things don't. And so if you've ever wanted to think about how can you get grippy with a blog post or a podcast or a social media post or something that you're writing, I think it's a great book.
[46:14] Karin: No, great. Awesome. And when you told us how we can join you in some of this work, how else can people learn about you?
[46:27] Brenda: I'm on Instagram, erendawinkle, and every Tuesday at 02:00 p.m., Pacific, I offer breath work. And I'm getting ready to expand on that and offering a zoom link so we can have some music, because with Instagram rules, we can't. We can't add music over Instagram. So every Tuesday at two on Instagram, you can join me live for breath work. You can ask questions, you can bring in certain scenarios and different things you want to breathe into. And then I'm also on all the other platforms, but Instagram is really where I hang out the most.
[47:00] Karin: Okay, wonderful. Well, thank you, Brenda. This was really wonderful. I think that people will get a lot out of this.
[47:08] Brenda: Thank you for having me and thank you for being interested in this. It's so cool and I'm so excited that you're bringing breath work to people in your psilocybin work. It's really, really cool. Congratulations.
Karin: Thank you.
[47:21] Karin: Thanks for joining us today on Love is us. If you like the show, I would so appreciate it if you left me a review. If you have questions and would like to follow me on social media, you can find me on Instagram where I'm the love and connection coach. Special thanks to Tim Gorman for my music, Ali Shaw for my artwork, and Ross Burdick for tech and editing assistance. Again, I'm so glad you joined us today because the best way to bring more love into your life and into the world is to be love. The best way to be love is to love yourself and those around you. Let's learn and be inspired together.
- Visa fler
