JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

Hello,

My name is Amanda Testa, and I'm a Sex, Love, and Relationship Expert + Trauma Resolution Guide.

My goal is to support you to heal your relationship to your sexuality so you can eliminate shame and guilt, own your sexy confidence, feel like a Goddess/Goddex in your skin, and have the deeply connected relationships you desire.

My unique proven process, The Feminine Fire Method™ combines the latest in neuroscience and somatic healing with ancient practices from Tantra and Taoism to facilitate rapid and lasting transformation. 

 I'm also a Senior Teacher for VITA Coaching, a ReBloom trauma resolution coach, Mama to a gorgeous 10 yo girl, Wife to my sexy hubs, and the Host of the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast.

I believe deep in my soul is that sexuality is the missing key in personal growth and development. 

I believe your sexuality and sexual energy fuels your creativity, confidence, and power. It is a vital part of your holistic health and vitality.

When we own our sexual power our pleasure and creativity flourishes.  Our confidence and body image soars.

Our relationships deepen.

And when you can connect to that power in yourself, it’s life-changing.

Have a topic or question you'd like Amanda to address on a future episode? Submit it on this anonymous form.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

If you've been interested in learning more about coaching with Amanda, she's now booking coaching clients for 1-1 support in creating the relationship and orgasmic pleasure of their dreams.   If you’ve been thinking about it, maybe we should talk!  Link here to book a free call to see if we’re a fit. 

EPISODE 223: Trust Yourself

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

Would you like to stop second guessing yourself and your worthiness? If you're looking to grow your self-trust, then listen in to this episode. I’m gonna share why so many women-identifying people suffer from not-enoughness and lack of self-trust and how to build this muscle to feel more confident and have more trust in yourself. I’m your host, Amanda Testa, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast.

So I want to share a story with you about when I was little. I remember, when I was a kid, my sister and I loved to go to the beach. So we would drive from our house in Georgia to the beach which was always, like, around a three-hour drive, and when we would get there the first thing we would do is jump out of the car, blow up our rafts, and run as fast as we could into the water. 

0:01:07

We loved it so much, just feeling free in the ocean, and I don't know if you remember those old school rafts that were sewn together with some kind of cloth-type material that ripped up the inside of your legs, but we would spend hours out there riding the waves, pretending that our rafts were horses, having the time of our lives and just floating along with the current and trusting our ability to swim, trusting that we were safe, right? We didn't even think twice about the ocean or what could be in the water, and I remember we would just float on down and down with the current. My mom would be chasing us down the beach screaming at us to come back, and we had zero worries in the world, right? There is a time, at some point in our past where we had that full capacity of trust, and through our life we just get disconnected from that, and there’s a lot of reasons why.

0:02:03

It’s from our culture, number one. It’s not our fault, right? It’s our culture so much of the time, and that’s just the way that our lives imprint these ways of being onto us that keep us from trusting our true selves. And so, when you don’t trust yourself, it feels like you're not good enough, right? You can really come down on yourself. You can have a really harsh inner voice, feel guilty and ashamed when you make a mistake, have a really hard time making decisions, and constantly asking others for guidance. There’s a lot of fear of making the wrong choice or disappointing other people, feeling like you need someone else to tell you what to do even if it may hurt you in the long run, and feeling overly self-conscious, right? That’s some of the ways that it can show up. When we do trust ourselves, we have a lot of wisdom, we have clarity on who we are. We have this natural blueprint of health when it comes to self-trust: clarity and choice. 

0:03:00

One of the archetypes that I love that demonstrates this (through the ReBloom body of work from Rachael Maddox that I’m certified in) is the natural blueprint of the Sage.  This blueprint of health for the Sage is having a clear sense of who you are, knowing who you are, having a clear sense of what you know, what you want, and what your options are at every moment. You make decisions from a place of alignment with your whole-hearted values, embodied wisdom, and mental discernment. You are the validator of your experiences. You trust your perceptions to be true and know that your feelings and opinions matter. You take time and space to yourself or with trusted support to get clarity when you're feeling unsure or uncertain, and you have inner authority and knowing. You choose and consent with yourself first and foremost. You trust others from a place of trusting your own integrity first, and you are empowered through access to the truth.

Oftentimes, in our lives, what can happen is we all have different experiences of growing up, but even just in our culture we get taught from an early age not to listen to our own body’s wisdom. This can happen, just for example, when you're a kid and you go to school and you can only go to the bathroom at certain times, right? 

0:04:08

You can't necessarily drink water when you want, so you start to lose those internal urges to care for yourself, and that is a very simple way, but that’s how it can happen, right? Maybe when we’re little and we’re forced to hug people we didn't want to hug, you kind of stop listening to that inner voice. 

Those are just little ways that it can happen over time, but in your life, if you’ve been shamed or if you’ve been guilt tripped or have been faulted all the time or having others’ moodiness blamed on you, being projected on, all the things, being bullied. All these things can show up, and there are a few different ways that this manipulation control can show up, right? There is the hyper-response which this is when we have a healthy nervous system, typically more often than not, we’re ranging in the range of resilience (the window of tolerance) which means when things happen and disrupt us, we can go through an experience, and we pretty quickly come back to a place of calm, of feeling resourced again, but when we get triggered, we can usually react in a couple of ways.

0:05:16

One is we can shoot up into a hyper response where we’re really anxious or stressed and there’s just a lot of energy, and then we maybe crash down into a hypo response which is below the window of tolerance which is where you're feeling really shut down or confused or all of those things, right? And so, how this can show up when it comes to self-trust is if you're having a hyper response, it can be hypervigilance, right? You can not trust people. You can not trust yourself. You can be extremely skeptical about everything. You can think that other people are just trying to take advantage of you. You can be really stubborn about doing things only your own way. You can be controlling and really want to control things, want to control situations, want to control relationships. 

0:06:04

Perhaps, you are very hyper-guarded or isolate yourself out of fear of being hurt. So it can feel really hard, when you are having this hypervigilance, to let go and trust another person or to trust the mysteries of life or even trusting yourself, right?

Alternatively, the hypo response can be feeling confused, feeling like blind following of others, looking to others constantly for validation, feeling extreme self-doubt, having trouble knowing what’s true and what’s not, wanting to be saved by someone who knows what’s going on. It can feel really hard to trust yourself, to sense your own truth, to align to it, and to feel safe following your own guidance, right? Feeling like I don't know what to choose, I need someone to tell me what to do, all these things. These are normal reactions that we have in life, and so, just so you are aware of this. 

0:07:04

Also, it can just be words that we’ve heard, things that have been told to us (maybe that have hurt us), being wounded by words of others, and this causes us to hold back ourselves and who we are.

And so, I share all this because A, just to normalize the fact that this is very common in our culture and also to realize that, you know, it’s not all our fault. It’s really not our fault, but what we can do is we can have choice in how we reclaim our self-trust, right? We can choose to create new relationships with ourselves, and we can choose to create this new experience where we really empower that sage part of us, the wise part of us, the part that does know how to choose what serves us, the part of us that does know how to make choices that serve us, right? 

0:07:56

I love this mantra around the sage about, “I see the truth. I speak the truth. I align to the truth. I am clarity. I am choice. I am integrity. I trust myself.” So even noticing as I say those words how they land on you. If it feels resonant or if it feels hard, and it’s all okay. It’s all awareness, right? It’s all awareness.

So one of the first things that I think is really important in dealing with building your sense of self-trust is, first of all, kind of being aware of what’s happening, noticing when you have those internal voices coming up, noticing if you're feeling more hyper vigilant and lacking of trusting others and just being with what is, like, having real self-compassion. Number one, self-compassion and self-kindness is so important because that is the way we move forward. We’re never gonna make the right decision all the time. In fact, we probably won't a lot of the time, and that’s okay because it’s not about making the right decision, it’s about just moving forward and trusting that you can deal with whatever happens, right? There never really is a wrong choice because it’s all learning. It’s all growth, and I, too, know what it’s like to be stuck in that indecision because I’ve been at that place many times in my life.

0:09:07

And so, what I find to be really helpful here is just being aware, right -- just being aware of when these patterns are arising, and, oftentimes, it can be younger parts of us that are triggered that are coming up that want to run the show, and we can remind ourselves that we are adults, right? We can tap into the part of us that has compassion, that has forgiveness, and trust the nudges that we have.

My husband was telling me about a book he was reading about special forces and decisions and how, oftentimes, they make the wrong decision, but the thing is they just keep moving forward. You don't really have time a lot of the time to assess all the decisions, so you have to be quick to make decisions in that environment. Gratefully, we’re not always in that environment all the time, but we can still use that concept of looking at what’s true, noticing what’s true, and making decisions based on that. 

0:10:04

One of the things that I think is a really powerful way to make these decisions for yourself is by, first of all, learning to tune into what’s going on below the surface. Now, this is a learned skill and it can take time, but I love the process of interoception. That means knowing what’s happening on a sensational level in your body. Now, this can be any sensations that you're noticing (your felt sense). So, for example, if I am going to make a decision, and I feel like the part of me coming up that is judgy, that is my inner critic, that wants to tell me I’m gonna make the wrong choice, that wants to tell me I’m gonna disappoint others, that wants to tell me I don't know what to do, I could be aware of what that feels like in my body. So, for example, as I feel those thoughts, I notice my chest gets tight. I notice that I feel like my shoulders curl in. I notice that it feels like my breath gets more shallow. So when I can pay attention to those things, that’s really good information for me, right? 

0:11:03

If I’m thinking about moving forward from that type of physical experience, that even just a physiological experience, then that’s probably not gonna be the best way to move forward, right, because I’m in a very closed, clenched body position. 

Even just that noticing is like, “Okay, well, what if I just spend a little time with this clenching in my chest. What’s happening there?” You can even just spend a few minutes noticing the sensations. I notice that when I bring my awareness to the sensations in my chest, even just bringing awareness there kind of invites some openness, and that can be the first simple step. I love this process of just, like, bringing awareness to what is, can often bring about some change, bring about some openness.

So that’s just one example of learning to be with what shows up in your body, having that skill of interoception because then you can kind of learn your cues, right? If you are making a decision, and you are going against what your, maybe, inner voice is telling you, you might feel tight, you might feel constricted, you might feel differently than if you're making a choice in alignment with what feels true to you, right? 

0:12:10

‘Cause when I’m making a decision and I’m thinking about, okay, what really feels most in alignment for me, maybe I feel more openness, maybe I feel like a little bit of space is expanding in my throat, right? These can just be little things to start to notice, and it can take time because, for some of us, it might not feel very comfortable to be in our body, and that’s okay too. You can just be aware and start to notice, because I think these are just little nudges that you can trust, right? 

What happens when you trust? What happens when you don't? What happens when you do follow the inner nudges that you get and taking evidence of your successes in this exploration, I think this is a really important way to kind of notice. Like, when you're going to make a decision, let’s see what our inner voice is telling you or when you're getting a nudge of some sort, do you follow it or do you not and just making notes. “Okay, I had this urge to do XYZ and then I did XYZ. Here’s what happened,” right? 

0:13:04

Or, “I had the urge to do XYZ, and I didn't do XYZ. Here’s what happened.” This is just good information to collect for yourself because it can really help you trust yourself by knowing what’s true in your experience and what’s not, right? 

Sometimes it might be important to maybe remove yourself from situations that make you feel uncomfortable, that make you feel unsafe - giving yourself permission to create the space you need to feel honor and express your truth, right? That’s an important thing. 

Also noticing what you are tolerating and what do you not want to tolerate, right? Those are important things too. It can be hard sometimes especially if you're in situations that feel like it’s really impossible to get distance from, there are always ways to do it. 

You can always start in baby steps. You never have to make huge decisions, right? You can make baby steps. I always think that’s just a good way to do it because as you make the baby steps, you can determine how that’s feeling, as I just talked about. Creating the evidence of what supports you and what doesn't.

0:14:09

So another benefit of really tuning into your own experiences is, then, you can change that locus of control from outside of yourself to inside of yourself which is a really important process of cultivating that self-trust, and as you cultivate that connection with yourself, it makes it easier as well to cultivate that connection with others and really tuning in on who are the people that I can trust who honor and validate my experiences, and developing these systems that support you. Like, I really love that little collecting evidence thing. If I’m getting the nudge, am I following it, what happens, am I not following it, what happens, and just using it as information, right? This allows your trust to grow slowly over time. As you do this, you build that courage, the courage it takes to honor the truths that you hear even when they're hard, and so, I think it can be so, so key to grow that inner trust.

0:15:18

I see this so often with clients is just a lack of trusting themselves, a lack of wanting to put themselves out there because of feeling like they will be judged, like they will be harshly criticized, right? This can all be stemming from that lack of self-trust, so it’s such an important key skill to build. I was just recently teaching a retreat. One of my joys in life is being on the senior teaching team for Layla Martin and the VITA Coaching Certification, and so, we just had four weeks of retreats, actually, for our students, but I was there looking out the window one day (we were in Costa Rica), and I was watching these monkeys, and this one money -- and it was so interesting ‘cause we were literally talking about trust in that moment, and this one money literally leapt, his arms flying, and flew, like, four trees over, and landed on a branch. 

0:16:14

That, right there, is self-trust, right? We are animals at our core. We have this natural blueprint of health, that blueprint of trust, that blueprint of knowing. Throughout our life, it gets dulled, it gets tarnished so we don't have that same level of trust. We don't want to leap uninhibited. We’re too afraid to leap, but we do have that ability within us, and I loved that image of that monkey ‘cause I was like exactly. That is exactly what trust is - just leaping and knowing you're gonna land. That comes from practice because knowing, you know what, if I make the wrong choice, I’m gonna figure it out -- if I make the right choice, I can celebrate myself. Whatever happens, it’s learning, and there’s no wrong decision, right? So I just really love that image of the monkey. Just bring that to mind whenever you're like, okay, what’s standing in the way of you trusting what you're inclined to do, trusting what your instincts are?

0:17:16

The other thing, too, is when you're kind of looking to affirm your inner trust, your inner wisdom is just tuning in to maybe feeling in what is something you want an answer to, right? Maybe there’s a question that you want an answer to, and you can just have a little journaling activity about this and just tune in. Ask yourself, if my wisest self were to answer this question, if all the wise parts of me can share what they know to be true, what would you write? Just see what happens for five minutes, right? There’s no wrong way to do it. 

0:18:01

It’s just a way of tuning in, and then you can often get a lot of insight because I think we are (in different experiences) more and more able to tap into these different parts of ourselves that do know that blueprint of trust, that are able to tap into that more easily, right?

And so, another thing that I want to share around protecting your trust (which I think is really important) is protecting your confidence, right - protecting your confidence. My husband actually shared this with me, but I love what it means ‘cause what it means is don’t indulge in things that make you feel bad about yourself, right? Protect your confidence. So, for example, if you go on social media, and you find yourself comparing and despairing and feeling like poop, that’s a good note to be like all right, well, maybe I need to spend less time on social media. I was joking because while I was away I was also 75% less on social media, and I think my happiness went up 75% which is just a good note. I always notice. Less time on social media is really healthy for your brain and more time in the real life is good. 

0:19:02

So just noting that. Like, what am I doing that might be pulling away from my confidence, and how can I stop doing those things? I think that’s a big one. Also, more resourcing in what feels good. Really make a list of things that make you feel good, that support you to feel in your body, that support you to feel grounded, that support you to feel capable, and do those things more often, right? Maybe whatever that practice is for you, tuning in. 

I love bringing in pleasure because I think that’s a beautiful way for me to get into my body, and you know I love that. [Laughs] So I think that’s one of the things I talk about a lot because I feel like it’s so important. Give yourself permission, too, to tune into your needs on a regular basis because I think that is important. We don't often do that enough, and you know I talk about tuning into your needs and creating your desire list on a regular basis because it does help keep you aligned to what you want and need. It can be really easy to get disconnected from that in our busy lives.

0:20:00

The other thing is really allowing yourself to be vulnerable, allowing yourself to feel, allowing yourself to go there so that you can trust that you can feel the feelings and move through them because they are like a tunnel and sometimes it feels like we don't want to feel something, and we avoid it at all costs, and that can make it even worse, but oftentimes if we just allow ourselves to feel what’s there, we can move through it and be on about our day in no time at all. 

Also, making sure that you are creating the boundaries that support you, knowing that if people are pulling away from your confidence or making you feel bad about yourself, maybe give yourself some distance from those people in the ways that you can, right? We’re never gonna be perfect. We’re always gonna make mistakes, but that’s okay, right? We are gonna be kind and compassionate with ourselves. We are gonna be kind and compassionate with ourselves.

Really, to wrap all this up -- because I know I’ve been kind of rambling a bit, but I do feel like it’s all related to this trusting ourselves and how to cultivate self-trust, right? 

0:21:06

Number one, we need to remember that we have the ability to trust in our systems. Our bodies. We have to reconnect to that sometimes. We have to trust that we can be with ourselves in what’s coming up, learning that tool of interoception, trusting our felt sense (what we experience in our own bodies as a result of something), really starting to collect our evidence when we are following your nudges and when we’re not. Like I said before, “I had the urge to do XYZ. I did it. Here’s what happened.” “I had the urge to do XYZ, and I didn't do it. Here’s what happened,” right? It’s just a good way to kind of track your successes as you listen to yourself. Protecting your confidence, resourcing what feels good, self-forgiveness and self-kindness is so, so key, and always, self-compassion. This is a tool we cannot cultivate enough. Really understanding when our bullying inner voice is coming to the surface, and maybe it’s got some points. 

0:22:04

You can say, “Listen. I hear you. These are some valid points you’re sharing. It’s understandable that I would be thinking these thoughts based on my lived experience. However, I’m going to have you sit over in the corner for a minute because I’m gonna tune into my wise sage self, and we’re gonna have a little discussion about what is true and what I know to be true and how I can find a way to move forward in this situation,” right? These things that sound pretty simple are, but it sometimes takes time to learn. 

So if this is something that you are wanting to cultivate more of, and cultivate more self-trust, then I invite you to reach out. You can always book a free call with me, and I’m happy to give you some strategies at amandatesta.com/activate, and I can walk you through some strategies, but even if you just implement the things that I’ve shared here on the podcast, it should be really helpful for you. I also have a great meditation around cultivating trust in your body that if you’d like to get that, again, shoot me an email and we will send it out to you (info@amandatesta.com), and you can put in the subject line “Trust Meditation” and I will send that your way.

0:23:09

As well, I’d love to hear you share with me what some ways are that you have cultivated trust in your own life and how that has benefited you. I always love to hear your own stories as well so please don't hesitate to share those with me. Again, sending you so, so much love. 

As we leave, I’m gonna reshare this mantra with you one more time because I love this mantra from the Sage archetype on really being in your truth-aligned leadership, making choices and taking actions that are in impeccable alignment with your truth, right? Letting go of what’s misaligned for the sake of honoring what is true for you and just noticing how this lands. I’ll invite you to play with this. “I see the truth. I speak the truth. I align to the truth. I am clarity. I am choice. I am integrity. I trust myself.” 

0:24:12

Sending you so much love, and we’ll see you next week!

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. This is your host, Amanda Testa, and if you have felt a calling while listening to this podcast to take this work to a deeper level, this is your golden invitation. I invite you to reach out. You can contact me at amandatesta.com/activate, and we can have a heart-to-heart to discuss more about how this work can transform your life. You can also join us on Facebook in the Find Your Feminine Fire group, and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends. Go to iTunes and give me a five-star rating and a rating and a raving review so I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself.

0:25:02

Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

EPISODE 223: Trust Yourself

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

Would you like to stop second guessing yourself and your worthiness? If you're looking to grow your self-trust, then listen in to this episode. I’m gonna share why so many women-identifying people suffer from not-enoughness and lack of self-trust and how to build this muscle to feel more confident and have more trust in yourself. I’m your host, Amanda Testa, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast.

So I want to share a story with you about when I was little. I remember, when I was a kid, my sister and I loved to go to the beach. So we would drive from our house in Georgia to the beach which was always, like, around a three-hour drive, and when we would get there the first thing we would do is jump out of the car, blow up our rafts, and run as fast as we could into the water. 

0:01:07

We loved it so much, just feeling free in the ocean, and I don't know if you remember those old school rafts that were sewn together with some kind of cloth-type material that ripped up the inside of your legs, but we would spend hours out there riding the waves, pretending that our rafts were horses, having the time of our lives and just floating along with the current and trusting our ability to swim, trusting that we were safe, right? We didn't even think twice about the ocean or what could be in the water, and I remember we would just float on down and down with the current. My mom would be chasing us down the beach screaming at us to come back, and we had zero worries in the world, right? There is a time, at some point in our past where we had that full capacity of trust, and through our life we just get disconnected from that, and there’s a lot of reasons why.

0:02:03

It’s from our culture, number one. It’s not our fault, right? It’s our culture so much of the time, and that’s just the way that our lives imprint these ways of being onto us that keep us from trusting our true selves. And so, when you don’t trust yourself, it feels like you're not good enough, right? You can really come down on yourself. You can have a really harsh inner voice, feel guilty and ashamed when you make a mistake, have a really hard time making decisions, and constantly asking others for guidance. There’s a lot of fear of making the wrong choice or disappointing other people, feeling like you need someone else to tell you what to do even if it may hurt you in the long run, and feeling overly self-conscious, right? That’s some of the ways that it can show up. When we do trust ourselves, we have a lot of wisdom, we have clarity on who we are. We have this natural blueprint of health when it comes to self-trust: clarity and choice. 

0:03:00

One of the archetypes that I love that demonstrates this (through the ReBloom body of work from Rachael Maddox that I’m certified in) is the natural blueprint of the Sage.  This blueprint of health for the Sage is having a clear sense of who you are, knowing who you are, having a clear sense of what you know, what you want, and what your options are at every moment. You make decisions from a place of alignment with your whole-hearted values, embodied wisdom, and mental discernment. You are the validator of your experiences. You trust your perceptions to be true and know that your feelings and opinions matter. You take time and space to yourself or with trusted support to get clarity when you're feeling unsure or uncertain, and you have inner authority and knowing. You choose and consent with yourself first and foremost. You trust others from a place of trusting your own integrity first, and you are empowered through access to the truth.

Oftentimes, in our lives, what can happen is we all have different experiences of growing up, but even just in our culture we get taught from an early age not to listen to our own body’s wisdom. This can happen, just for example, when you're a kid and you go to school and you can only go to the bathroom at certain times, right? 

0:04:08

You can't necessarily drink water when you want so you start to lose those internal urges to care for yourself, and that is a very simple way, but that’s how it can happen, right? Maybe when we’re little and we’re forced to hug people we didn't want to hug, you kind of stop listening to that inner voice. Those are just little ways that it can happen over time, but in your life, if you’ve been shamed or if you’ve been guilt tripped or have been faulted all the time or having others’ moodiness blamed on you, being projected on, all the things, being bullied. All these things can show up, and there are a few different ways that this manipulation control can show up, right? There is the hyper-response which this is when we have a healthy nervous system, typically more often than not, we’re ranging in the range of resilience (the window of tolerance) which means when things happen and disrupt us, we can go through an experience, and we pretty quickly come back to a place of calm, of feeling resourced again, but when we get triggered, we can usually react in a couple of ways.

0:05:16

One is we can shoot up into a hyper response where we’re really anxious or stressed and there’s just a lot of energy, and then we maybe crash down into a hypo response which is below the window of tolerance which is where you're feeling really shut down or confused or all of those things, right? And so, how this can show up when it comes to self-trust is if you're having a hyper response, it can be hypervigilance, right? You can not trust people. You can not trust yourself. You can be extremely skeptical about everything. You can think that other people are just trying to take advantage of you. You can be really stubborn about doing things only your own way. You can be controlling and really want to control things, want to control situations, want to control relationships. 

0:06:04

Perhaps, you are very hyper-guarded or isolate yourself out of fear of being hurt. So it can feel really hard, when you are having this hypervigilance, to let go and trust another person or to trust the mysteries of life or even trusting yourself, right?

Alternatively, the hypo response can be feeling confused, feeling like blind following of others, looking to others constantly for validation, feeling extreme self-doubt, having trouble knowing what’s true and what’s not, wanting to be saved by someone who knows what’s going on. It can feel really hard to trust yourself, to sense your own truth, to align to it, and to feel safe following your own guidance, right? Feeling like I don't know what to choose, I need someone to tell me what to do, all these things. These are normal reactions that we have in life, and so, just so you are aware of this. 

0:07:04

Also, it can just be words that we’ve heard, things that have been told to us (maybe that have hurt us), being wounded by words of others, and this causes us to hold back ourselves and who we are.

And so, I share all this because A, just to normalize the fact that this is very common in our culture and also to realize that, you know, it’s not all our fault. It’s really not our fault, but what we can do is we can have choice in how we reclaim our self-trust, right? We can choose to create new relationships with ourselves, and we can choose to create this new experience where we really empower that sage part of us, the wise part of us, the part that does know how to choose what serves us, the part of us that does know how to make choices that serve us, right? 

0:07:56

I love this mantra around the sage about, “I see the truth. I speak the truth. I align to the truth. I am clarity. I am choice. I am integrity. I trust myself.” So even noticing as I say those words how they land on you. If it feels resonant or if it feels hard, and it’s all okay. It’s all awareness, right? It’s all awareness.

So one of the first things that I think is really important in dealing with building your sense of self-trust is, first of all, kind of being aware of what’s happening, noticing when you have those internal voices coming up, noticing if you're feeling more hyper vigilant and lacking of trusting others and just being with what is, like, having real self-compassion. Number one, self-compassion and self-kindness is so important because that is the way we move forward. We’re never gonna make the right decision all the time. In fact, we probably won't a lot of the time, and that’s okay because it’s not about making the right decision, it’s about just moving forward and trusting that you can deal with whatever happens, right? There never really is a wrong choice because it’s all learning. It’s all growth, and I, too, know what it’s like to be stuck in that indecision because I’ve been at that place many times in my life.

0:09:07

And so, what I find to be really helpful here is just being aware, right -- just being aware of when these patterns are arising, and, oftentimes, it can be younger parts of us that are triggered that are coming up that want to run the show, and we can remind ourselves that we are adults, right? We can tap into the part of us that has compassion, that has forgiveness, and trust the nudges that we have.

My husband was telling me about a book he was reading about special forces and decisions and how, oftentimes, they make the wrong decision, but the thing is they just keep moving forward. You don't really have time a lot of the time to assess all the decisions, so you have to be quick to make decisions in that environment. Gratefully, we’re not always in that environment all the time, but we can still use that concept of looking at what’s true, noticing what’s true, and making decisions based on that. 

0:10:04

One of the things that I think is a really powerful way to make these decisions for yourself is by, first of all, learning to tune into what’s going on below the surface. Now, this is a learned skill and it can take time, but I love the process of interoception. That means knowing what’s happening on a sensational level in your body. Now, this can be any sensations that you're noticing (your felt sense). So, for example, if I am going to make a decision, and I feel like the part of me coming up that is judgy, that is my inner critic, that wants to tell me I’m gonna make the wrong choice, that wants to tell me I’m gonna disappoint others, that wants to tell me I don't know what to do, I could be aware of what that feels like in my body. So, for example, as I feel those thoughts, I notice my chest gets tight. I notice that I feel like my shoulders curl in. I notice that it feels like my breath gets more shallow. So when I can pay attention to those things, that’s really good information for me, right? 

0:11:03

If I’m thinking about moving forward from that type of physical experience, that even just a physiological experience, then that’s probably not gonna be the best way to move forward, right, because I’m in a very closed, clenched body position. 

Even just that noticing is like, “Okay, well, what if I just spend a little time with this clenching in my chest. What’s happening there?” You can even just spend a few minutes noticing the sensations. I notice that when I bring my awareness to the sensations in my chest, even just bringing awareness there kind of invites some openness, and that can be the first simple step. I love this process of just, like, bringing awareness to what is, can often bring about some change, bring about some openness.

So that’s just one example of learning to be with what shows up in your body, having that skill of interoception because then you can kind of learn your cues, right? If you are making a decision, and you are going against what your, maybe, inner voice is telling you, you might feel tight, you might feel constricted, you might feel differently than if you're making a choice in alignment with what feels true to you, right? 

0:12:10

‘Cause when I’m making a decision and I’m thinking about, okay, what really feels most in alignment for me, maybe I feel more openness, maybe I feel like a little bit of space is expanding in my throat, right? These can just be little things to start to notice, and it can take time because, for some of us, it might not feel very comfortable to be in our body, and that’s okay too. You can just be aware and start to notice, because I think these are just little nudges that you can trust, right? 

What happens when you trust? What happens when you don't? What happens when you do follow the inner nudges that you get and taking evidence of your successes in this exploration, I think this is a really important way to kind of notice. Like, when you're going to make a decision, let’s see what our inner voice is telling you or when you're getting a nudge of some sort, do you follow it or do you not and just making notes. “Okay, I had this urge to do XYZ and then I did XYZ. Here’s what happened,” right? 

0:13:04

Or, “I had the urge to do XYZ, and I didn't do XYZ. Here’s what happened.” This is just good information to collect for yourself because it can really help you trust yourself by knowing what’s true in your experience and what’s not, right? 

Sometimes it might be important to maybe remove yourself from situations that make you feel uncomfortable, that make you feel unsafe - giving yourself permission to create the space you need to feel honor and express your truth, right? That’s an important thing. 

Also noticing what you are tolerating and what do you not want to tolerate, right? Those are important things too. It can be hard sometimes especially if you're in situations that feel like it’s really impossible to get distance from, there are always ways to do it. 

You can always start in baby steps. You never have to make huge decisions, right? You can make baby steps. I always think that’s just a good way to do it because as you make the baby steps, you can determine how that’s feeling, as I just talked about. Creating the evidence of what supports you and what doesn't.

0:14:09

So another benefit of really tuning into your own experiences is, then, you can change that locus of control from outside of yourself to inside of yourself which is a really important process of cultivating that self-trust, and as you cultivate that connection with yourself, it makes it easier as well to cultivate that connection with others and really tuning in on who are the people that I can trust who honor and validate my experiences, and developing these systems that support you. Like, I really love that little collecting evidence thing. If I’m getting the nudge, am I following it, what happens, am I not following it, what happens, and just using it as information, right? This allows your trust to grow slowly over time. As you do this, you build that courage, the courage it takes to honor the truths that you hear even when they're hard, and so, I think it can be so, so key to grow that inner trust.

0:15:18

I see this so often with clients is just a lack of trusting themselves, a lack of wanting to put themselves out there because of feeling like they will be judged, like they will be harshly criticized, right? This can all be stemming from that lack of self-trust, so it’s such an important key skill to build. I was just recently teaching a retreat. One of my joys in life is being on the senior teaching team for Layla Martin and the VITA Coaching Certification, and so, we just had four weeks of retreats, actually, for our students, but I was there looking out the window one day (we were in Costa Rica), and I was watching these monkeys, and this one money -- and it was so interesting ‘cause we were literally talking about trust in that moment, and this one money literally leapt, his arms flying, and flew, like, four trees over, and landed on a branch. 

0:16:14

That, right there, is self-trust, right? We are animals at our core. We have this natural blueprint of health, that blueprint of trust, that blueprint of knowing. Throughout our life, it gets dulled, it gets tarnished so we don't have that same level of trust. We don't want to leap uninhibited. We’re too afraid to leap, but we do have that ability within us, and I loved that image of that monkey ‘cause I was like exactly. That is exactly what trust is - just leaping and knowing you're gonna land. That comes from practice because knowing, you know what, if I make the wrong choice, I’m gonna figure it out -- if I make the right choice, I can celebrate myself. Whatever happens, it’s learning, and there’s no wrong decision, right? So I just really love that image of the monkey. Just bring that to mind whenever you're like, okay, what’s standing in the way of you trusting what you're inclined to do, trusting what your instincts are?

0:17:16

The other thing, too, is when you're kind of looking to affirm your inner trust, your inner wisdom is just tuning in to maybe feeling in what is something you want an answer to, right? Maybe there’s a question that you want an answer to, and you can just have a little journaling activity about this and just tune in. Ask yourself, if my wisest self were to answer this question, if all the wise parts of me can share what they know to be true, what would you write? Just see what happens for five minutes, right? There’s no wrong way to do it. 

0:18:01

It’s just a way of tuning in, and then you can often get a lot of insight because I think we are (in different experiences) more and more able to tap into these different parts of ourselves that do know that blueprint of trust, that are able to tap into that more easily, right?

And so, another thing that I want to share around protecting your trust (which I think is really important) is protecting your confidence, right - protecting your confidence. My husband actually shared this with me, but I love what it means ‘cause what it means is don’t indulge in things that make you feel bad about yourself, right? Protect your confidence. So, for example, if you go on social media, and you find yourself comparing and despairing and feeling like poop, that’s a good note to be like all right, well, maybe I need to spend less time on social media. I was joking because while I was away I was also 75% less on social media, and I think my happiness went up 75% which is just a good note. I always notice. Less time on social media is really healthy for your brain and more time in the real life is good. 

0:19:02

So just noting that. Like, what am I doing that might be pulling away from my confidence, and how can I stop doing those things? I think that’s a big one. Also, more resourcing in what feels good. Really make a list of things that make you feel good, that support you to feel in your body, that support you to feel grounded, that support you to feel capable, and do those things more often, right? Maybe whatever that practice is for you, tuning in. 

I love bringing in pleasure because I think that’s a beautiful way for me to get into my body, and you know I love that. [Laughs] So I think that’s one of the things I talk about a lot because I feel like it’s so important. Give yourself permission, too, to tune into your needs on a regular basis because I think that is important. We don't often do that enough, and you know I talk about tuning into your needs and creating your desire list on a regular basis because it does help keep you aligned to what you want and need. It can be really easy to get disconnected from that in our busy lives.

0:20:00

The other thing is really allowing yourself to be vulnerable, allowing yourself to feel, allowing yourself to go there so that you can trust that you can feel the feelings and move through them because they are like a tunnel and sometimes it feels like we don't want to feel something, and we avoid it at all costs, and that can make it even worse, but oftentimes if we just allow ourselves to feel what’s there, we can move through it and be on about our day in no time at all. 

Also, making sure that you are creating the boundaries that support you, knowing that if people are pulling away from your confidence or making you feel bad about yourself, maybe give yourself some distance from those people in the ways that you can, right? We’re never gonna be perfect. We’re always gonna make mistakes, but that’s okay, right? We are gonna be kind and compassionate with ourselves. We are gonna be kind and compassionate with ourselves.

Really, to wrap all this up -- because I know I’ve been kind of rambling a bit, but I do feel like it’s all related to this trusting ourselves and how to cultivate self-trust, right? 

0:21:06

Number one, we need to remember that we have the ability to trust in our systems. Our bodies. We have to reconnect to that sometimes. We have to trust that we can be with ourselves in what’s coming up, learning that tool of interoception, trusting our felt sense (what we experience in our own bodies as a result of something), really starting to collect our evidence when we are following your nudges and when we’re not. Like I said before, “I had the urge to do XYZ. I did it. Here’s what happened.” “I had the urge to do XYZ, and I didn't do it. Here’s what happened,” right? It’s just a good way to kind of track your successes as you listen to yourself. Protecting your confidence, resourcing what feels good, self-forgiveness and self-kindness is so, so key, and always, self-compassion. This is a tool we cannot cultivate enough. Really understanding when our bullying inner voice is coming to the surface, and maybe it’s got some points. 

0:22:04

You can say, “Listen. I hear you. These are some valid points you’re sharing. It’s understandable that I would be thinking these thoughts based on my lived experience. However, I’m going to have you sit over in the corner for a minute because I’m gonna tune into my wise sage self, and we’re gonna have a little discussion about what is true and what I know to be true and how I can find a way to move forward in this situation,” right? These things that sound pretty simple are, but it sometimes takes time to learn. 

So if this is something that you are wanting to cultivate more of, and cultivate more self-trust, then I invite you to reach out. You can always book a free call with me, and I’m happy to give you some strategies at amandatesta.com/activate, and I can walk you through some strategies, but even if you just implement the things that I’ve shared here on the podcast, it should be really helpful for you. I also have a great meditation around cultivating trust in your body that if you’d like to get that, again, shoot me an email and we will send it out to you (info@amandatesta.com), and you can put in the subject line “Trust Meditation” and I will send that your way.

0:23:09

As well, I’d love to hear you share with me what some ways are that you have cultivated trust in your own life and how that has benefited you. I always love to hear your own stories as well so please don't hesitate to share those with me. Again, sending you so, so much love. 

As we leave, I’m gonna reshare this mantra with you one more time because I love this mantra from the Sage archetype on really being in your truth-aligned leadership, making choices and taking actions that are in impeccable alignment with your truth, right? Letting go of what’s misaligned for the sake of honoring what is true for you and just noticing how this lands. I’ll invite you to play with this. “I see the truth. I speak the truth. I align to the truth. I am clarity. I am choice. I am integrity. I trust myself.” 

0:24:12

Sending you so much love, and we’ll see you next week!

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. This is your host, Amanda Testa, and if you have felt a calling while listening to this podcast to take this work to a deeper level, this is your golden invitation. I invite you to reach out. You can contact me at amandatesta.com/activate, and we can have a heart-to-heart to discuss more about how this work can transform your life. You can also join us on Facebook in the Find Your Feminine Fire group, and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends. Go to iTunes and give me a five-star rating and a rating and a raving review so I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself.

0:25:02

Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

Krista is a master certified life coach, post-traumatic growth and grief expert, widow, mom, and host of The Widowed Mom Podcast. She never anticipated grief and post-traumatic growth being a part of her life until her husband died when she was 40, but through her traumatic experience and spousal loss, she was able to personally transform so much on her own. In 2017, she quit her corporate job and became certified as a coach. In her work, she’s guiding others in moving through sex after loss, post-traumatic growth, and dealing with grief.

Connect with Krista and learn more below!

• Work with Krista 

• Listen to The Widowed Mom Podcast - 

• Free course - https://www.coachingwithkrista.com/navigating-grief-course/

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If you've been interested in learning more about coaching with Amanda, she's now booking coaching clients for 1-1 support in creating the relationship and orgasmic pleasure of their dreams.   If you’ve been thinking about it, maybe we should talk!  Link here to book a free call to see if we’re a fit. 

EPISODE 222: Krista St-Germain

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to the podcast. Today, we are going to be talking about post-traumatic growth and sex after loss, and I am really looking forward to talking with Krista St-Germain. She is a master certified life coach, post-traumatic growth and grief expert, widow, mom, and host of The Widowed Mom Podcast, and so, we are gonna dive into, really, how you can move into healing from deep loss and kind of talk about some myths around sex and grief. Krista’s gonna demystify some of those lies that widows have been told about their sex lives and grief and how to support yourself and get the support you need. So welcome, Krista. Thank you for being here today.

0:01:04

Krista St-Germain: Thanks so much for having me. Not everybody wants to talk about grief but me, so I’m glad to be here.

Amanda Testa: Well, you know, I appreciate it because, you know, I think that it’s a very important thing to talk about, right?

Krista St-Germain: I agree.

Amanda Testa: And so, I really appreciate all that you're sharing, and I ‘d love if you wouldn't mind just sharing a little bit about your story and what led you to be so passionate about what you're doing.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, grief and post-traumatic growth are never things that I ever really anticipated being a part of my life until my husband died. I really wasn't planning on it, but I was 40 years old, and it was my second marriage. He was kind of my redemption story. The first marriage did not end as well as one might hope, and he was just kind of proof that it actually can be amazing. He was amazing. We were coming home from a trip. We had driven separately. I had a flat tire on my car, and I pulled over on the shoulder of the interstate, and being the stubborn engineer that he was, he did not want to wait for AAA to change my tire. He’s like, “Maybe I can change your tire. It’s not a problem. You know, it’ll take less time.” 

0:02:04

And so, he was trying to get into my trunk to get access to the tire, and a driver (who we later found out had meth and alcohol in his system) did not see us, did not brake, crashed into the back of Hugo’s Durango and trapped him in between his car and mine, and so, in less than 24 hours, my perfect, I-love-my-life was just completely evaporated.

So, as one does, I went back to therapy immediately, and that was really helpful to me in terms of being able to tell my story and kind of come to peace in my own brain that it wasn't just a terrible nightmare and that it really had happened. I got back to that functioning place but was also feeling kind of hollow and robotic and really worried that my best days were behind me, right, and I should probably just be grateful for what I had because it probably wasn't ever gonna be that good. I think I just happened into the exact right program at the exact time I needed it which was a life coaching program. It was so powerful for me that I decided people need to know this stuff, right? 

0:03:07

People need these tools. I mean, you get it, right, ‘cause we’re in the same line of work. We get it. 

Yeah, and so, I just kind of transformed so much in my own way of living and seeing the world that I decided this was what I wanted to do. That was in 2017, and I quit my corporate job and certified as a coach, and I’ve been coaching widows ever since so here we are.

Amanda Testa: Yes, well, first of all, I really appreciate you sharing your story, and I’m very sorry for your loss.

Krista St-Germain: Well, thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Amanda Testa: I can only imagine, you know, the road that you've been on and the healing journey.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: I think that being able to help others in your situation, you probably have learned a lot around sex and grief and just in general how you move forward. You know, I think from what I’ve heard from people that have experienced a deep loss, it can be really challenging. Some people find their way back, and some people don't, and so, I’m wondering for you, well, what do you think has been the most supportive thing that you've done to move forward?

0:04:06

Krista St-Germain: You know, I think it’s a couple of things, but two kind of jump out. So one is I made the transition from believing that feelings were problems I needed to solve to seeing them as just experiences that I could allow, and I wasn't brought up that way. Not that I had terrible messaging around feelings, but I think I, as most humans, had bought into the idea that happiness is the goal and that when you aren’t feeling happy there’s something wrong and you should fix it.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

Krista St-Germain: If that’s what you go into grief thinking, that feelings are problems and you're supposed to solve them or that you're wrong for having them, yeah, it results in a lot of suffering, right? So I made that transition. Then, the other major transition that I made was being able to see myself as separate from my own thinking. Before coaching, I was so busy thinking my thoughts that I hadn’t really realized I wasn’t my thoughts, right? 

0:05:02

And so, being able to see myself as the thinker of my thoughts, that’s what allowed me to see thoughts like, “My best days are probably behind me,” right? Instead of experiencing that as a truth, I transitioned into experiencing that as just an optional sentence in my mind that I could pick up or put down and then I could get leverage over it and then I could actually choose to believe if I wanted to, which I did, eventually. It took a while, that, no, my best days could be ahead of me. I could choose to believe that, and those two things, changing my relationship with feelings and changing my relationship with my thinking, were what I needed to create something completely different.

Amanda Testa: Yes, I think both of those things are easier said than done, right?

Krista St-Germain: Oh, no doubt.

Amanda Testa: So it’s all about the work into that.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, and nobody taught me that until I got to coaching, and I had to do that work. Not only did I have to get coached, but I had to actually practice those skills and learn them, and you're right, it’s not just a switch that we flip.

0:06:00

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: And I think, too, we talk a lot about relationships and sex on this podcast and really what it takes to feel good and flourish in your sex life, and I think, you know, a lot of times, at least something that I notice, is if people have gone through a trauma that it can be challenging to allow themselves pleasure or to allow themselves to feel good. I’m wondering how you help people navigate that or what you might want to share around that if you would.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, I think a lot of it is exploring what have we been believing about pleasure, what have we been believing about sex, what are we taught to think about pleasure and sex, and then, of course, mixing in the grief part. So what does it mean to want pleasure or not (want sex or not) about you and grief? Most of what holds people back in that regard, especially my clients who are specifically widows, is just all the judgements and all the worries that they place on what does it mean if their libido is not where they think it should be by now, right? 

0:07:03

Does it mean they don't love their partner enough if they want to have sex? Does it mean they’ll never want to have sex again and something is wrong with them if they aren't interested? We’re told so many unhelpful things. You know, you should wait until you’re not grieving to have sex. What? I mean, first of all, that implies that grief has an end. 

Amanda Testa: Right, right.

Krista St-Germain: Which it doesn't, right?

Amanda Testa: Exactly. [Laughs]

Krista St-Germain: [Laugh] Okay, so, basically, what you're saying is if I ever want to have sex again, I’m wrong and I should wait, or we’re told the only reason you would want sex is if you're trying to escape your grief. Well, that’s not helpful or accurate or, “You're just confused.” It’s fascinating how many times I’ve heard this one. “What you really want is a massage. You just want human touch. You don't actually want sex.” Wait, what, right? Yeah, just so much conditioning that we come to a grief experience with that then shows up and it’s worth looking at.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Krista St-Germain: There’s a lot of it.

Amanda Testa: Right, and, I mean, I know you're also a mom as well, and so, not only is there all that to navigate but also being a mother and being sexual, that’s also a lot of conditioning around that too, right?

0:08:08

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, totally. 

Amanda Testa: [Laughs]

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, yeah, and I think, also, it’s different for every woman that I work with, and I work with women that are all ages, but I notice sometimes, too, there are many that maybe were never with any other person than the one that they lost, and so, there’s a whole bunch of discomfort and new territory that we’ve got to explore, right? Your self-confidence sometimes takes a hit. You start second guessing yourself and doubting yourself. It’s a recipe for a lot of opportunities.

Amanda Testa: Right.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: I’m wondering what advice you have for women around kind of creating their own path around that or navigating what feels right for them.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, ultimately, what I help women figure out is, like, nobody else is gonna know what’s best for your life, but you do.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

Krista St-Germain: Right? What prevents you from living into what’s best for your life is just some garbage in your brain that you picked up like a bad penny, right? 

0:09:04

And so, I don't ever act like I know what’s best for someone’s life. What I see my job is, is helping my client see the garbage in their brain that’s holding them back from their own internal knowing, right, and helping them shine a light on it so they can get some leverage over it, and then we can get it out of the way, and then they can really live into what they know is true for themselves which is different for every person, and it’s not right or wrong or good or bad or superior or inferior. It’s not a moral issue, right? It’s just that we have a way that we want to live our lives, and the only thing that holds us back is just some junk in our brain.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm. I think that’s a very loving way to view it as well, right? You have been a lot easier on yourself when you can make that distinction.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, and what’s the benefit of not being easy on yourself? There isn’t one, right, but most of us are pretty good at it.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm. Yes.

Krista St-Germain: Yes, for sure.

Amanda Testa: All the internalized misogyny and whatnot that we like to throw at ourselves.

0:10:04

Krista St-Germain: It’s fascinating how much the more I coach, the more I see it. Even things like I was coaching someone last week, and we were talking about how she had gone to her high school senior incoming freshman’s college orientation, and everyone in the room (in her mind) was wearing a wedding ring except for her, and I see this a lot where we have so much conditioning around that it’s better to be partnered, you're supposed to be in a relationship, you can only be happy if you are, that when we lose that, all that conditioning shows up, right? Then, of course, we have all these desires to throw ourselves into new relationships because of that conditioning, and unraveling all of that, yeah, phew, hello, misogyny. Hello, patriarchy. It’s a good time. [Laughs]

Amanda Testa: Right, well, I mean, it’s so interesting because that’s so what we’re taught, right? It’s so what people taught, yeah.

Krista St-Germain: Totally. Yeah, totally. The most important day of our lives is our wedding day, right? 

0:11:01

I mean, what’s it about to be a woman? I mean, yeah, right, but I see it, also, as a good opportunity, right? It’s not exactly the way that people would probably choose to start to sort that stuff out for themselves, but it sure does bring it up, and I think it gives you the ability to really decide, okay, if this was the conditioning that’s showing up in my brain, is it what I want to keep? Is it moving me toward what I want in my life? Is it taking me away from what I want in my life? If the answer is away, then just because stuff appears in my brain doesn't mean I have to keep believing it and letting it fuel me. Then, we start seeing, ah, we’re so much more powerful than we thought, and that’s really fun to be a part of.

Amanda Testa: Definitely. 

Krista St-Germain: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: I think, too, you know, because something that comes up a lot around sex in general is shame, and you talk about, too, there’s a lot of myths that people have heard around sex and grief. Maybe could you share some of those myths that people have been told about sex lives and grief and how they are your recipe for shame and guilt and what to do about that?

0:12:04

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, so, I mean, there’s so much of it, but just to hit a few points, that what you want, in terms of your sex life, has anything to do with your goodness or badness, your intelligence or lack of intelligence, your neediness or confidence -- we draw so many unnecessary conclusions based on what we’re taught to believe about ourselves and how we’re supposed to be. It’s not our desire or lack-of or our sexual behavior or lack-of that causes the problem. It’s our judgment. It’s what we make all of that mean that causes the guilt and causes the shame. It’s when we tell ourselves there’s something wrong with us because we’ve bought into the, “You just want to escape your grief because you can't handle the feelings,” or, “You didn't love your person enough,” or, “It’s too early,” or, “Good girls don't do that,” or, “You should at least wait a year.” Any of that nonsense, when we use it against ourselves, that’s what creates the guilt and the shame, and it’s just unnecessary.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

0:13:05

Krista St-Germain: And then we have these culturally (to me) abhorrent terms like wid-hoe. Have you heard this one?

Amanda Testa: I have not.

Krista St-Germain: I cannot stand it. I know some people think it’s funny, and some people think it’s empowering, and if it’s empowering to you, you go, right? But I’ve just always hated it. A lot of people will go through what they call their “wid-hoe” stage which means that they are having more sex than they were before for some particular reason, and I just guess it bothers me so much because I don't like the idea that we would even consider calling someone a hoe because they're having sex when they want to have sex.

Amanda Testa: [Laughs]

Krista St-Germain: There’s a grown woman, right? Why are we calling her a “hoe?” I know that it’s tongue-in-cheek and some people really do see it as empowering, but, to me, it’s just a sign of all the judgment that exists in the first place about women and their bodies and what they should or shouldn’t be doing with them, and I don't like the idea of feeding into that with a term like “wid-hoe,” but, man, if you ever jump into a widow or widower’s Facebook group, you will see that term left, right, and center. It is everywhere. It’s fascinating to me.

0:14:14

Amanda Testa: Very interesting. Yeah, it is such a double standard.

Krista St-Germain: Right? Yeah, we never do that with men!

Amanda Testa: [Giggles] No!

Krista St-Germain: And the statistics -- I need to look this up and actually get some math behind this, but men remarry and/or date so much faster than widows do, right? Widowers get in new relationships and marry way faster than widows do. I think part of it is just because of the judgment that we have. What we make it mean, that we might have that desire, find someone attractive. Some of the women who are struggling the most are the ones that come to me and they are already dating or in a relationship, and they have so much judgment about themselves for doing that or they fear so much the judgment from others. 

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, and then that’s largely a product of the way we were socialized.

0:15:02

Amanda Testa: Right, ‘cause I can see how that would come up and just feeling like, well, what does this mean about me and what will people think. All the things that we put in our brains that don't need to be there, but they're easy to put there, right?

Krista St-Germain: Yeah. Yeah, if you think there’s a right or wrong way of doing grief, which (spoiler alert) there is not, right, but if you have bought into this idea that there is a right or a wrong way, then it’s so easy to see why women would say, well, I want sex too much or I don't want sex enough, right? They will see their own belief of “I’m doing it wrong” reflected in all areas of life, including their sex lives.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, right.

Krista St-Germain: ‘Cause that’s what their brain is looking for is evidence of how they're doing it wrong which is impossible.

Amanda Testa: Right. I’m wondering, too, when it comes to -- ‘cause, I mean, I think the thing that is true about grief is people want it to be over or they want to, like, “When will I know that I’m healed from something?” I think, like you say, it’s not a linear path. It does not look the same for anyone. It’s very much a personal journey.

0:16:07

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, and unless we are capable of time travel and we can somehow go backwards in time and make the loss not happen, right, it’s the natural human response to a perceived loss. The loss happened, and we’re always gonna have a response to it, so it’s not gonna be something that has a finish line or an end.

I was even listening to a podcast the other day from a so-called expert, and,  “There’s a beginning and a middle and an end of grief,” and I wanted to reach through my phone and punch him. [Laughs] It’s just perpetuating the untruth, right? Or we only know -- I don't know how much grief interests you or if it’s something you’ve spent much time around, but I didn't know until I started doing my own grief research that there were multiple theories about grief. I had only heard of the five stages of grief (Kubler-Ross and David Kessler), and so, I really thought that I think I’m supposed to be in denial, and then I’m supposed to bargain, and then I’m supposed to get angry, and then depression, and then acceptance, and whatever. 

0:17:08

Just like there are probably many theories about weight loss or whatever, there’s lots of theories about grief, too, and when we only know about one of them, we try to put square pegs in round holes, and it doesn't really help the griever at all, right? Yeah, so there’s so much misinformation. We kind of suck at grief as a culture.

Amanda Testa: Agreed.

Krista St-Germain: That’s okay. We’re fixing it, Amanda.

Amanda Testa: Well, also, too, just in general, the expectation that you just go back to normal after two weeks or whatever, right, or you should move on, yeah.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, no, none of that happens, and the misunderstanding of what’s actually going on in your brain and what’s happening hormonally, and what’s happening in your body, we’re so unprepared for that, that when it happens, we think there’s something wrong with us. I find grief fog can be really intense, especially for my clients, and most of them had no idea that was a thing until they were experiencing it and they couldn't think clearly and they couldn't remember clearly, and instead of being prepared for it and realizing, “Oh, this is just grief fog,” they, then, think there’s something wrong with them, right, because we just aren't familiar with what happens to a human who is grieving.

0:18:12

Amanda Testa: Right, and I think in grief, extreme stress actually has been proven to reduce your IQ points because your body is processing a huge stress, right?

Krista St-Germain: Yes. Yeah. You literally cannot process what you could process before. It is so taxing on your ability to use the executive functioning part of your brain. it’s just an unfair ask.

Amanda Testa: Right, but I appreciate you talking about this because people -- and I think, too, oftentimes -- well, I can just share from my own personal experience which isn't the same at all, but just in dealing with grief, my dad was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s. So he was diagnosed when he was 48. So he was sick for a very long time, and then was in a nursing home, the support care place.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Amanda Testa: And I hesitate to call it a nursing home ‘cause he was young, but, anyways, grief can hit in different ways, too, right, because then there’s extended grief if someone’s sick and then they die.

0:19:08

Krista St-Germain: Anticipatory grief.

Amanda Testa: And then you're like, oh, well, you should be grieving, but then you're not, right? It’s like all these things that it is so nuanced and complex, yes.

Krista St-Germain: Yes, lots of different theories about grief, lots of different types of grief, and lots of differing opinions about grief. Even people who do grief for a living don't always agree, right? Every single human has a different experience which doesn't make them right or wrong or good or bad. It’s just that grief is unique to every human, and so, to try to generalize it or expect it to go one way and then weaponize it against yourself when it doesn't is just such an injustice, and it’s something I hope we can change.

Amanda Testa: Right, when it comes to post-traumatic growth -- because I do want to touch on that too because I think, oftentimes, it’s not talked about enough - the ability to flourish after a traumatic event, the potential for that.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah.

0:20:02

Amanda Testa: I’m wondering if you might share a little bit more about that.

Krista St-Germain: Absolutely. I remember learning about post-traumatic growth, and it was kind of one of those moments when you're like eerk. Like, the record scratched and you're like, “What? What did I hear?” Because I think most people are familiar with post-traumatic stress disorder, but post-traumatic growth is newer and it’s less talked about so they don't even know it’s a possibility, but, basically, post-traumatic growth is this idea created by a couple of researchers (Tedeschi and Calhoun are their last names), and before their work, what was commonly thought was that when someone experienced a trauma, the goal after that trauma (what was possible after that trauma) was to simply get them back to the same baseline of wellness that they had experienced before the trauma, right? So we were doing okay, and then we hit a low spot, and now we’re trying to get back to okay. 

Then post-traumatic growth came along, and these two researchers started seeing that oh, wait, some people aren’t getting back to the wellness baseline anyway. 

0:21:00

Some people are getting back to that baseline of wellness, but then other people are actually reporting that they're more satisfied with life following the trauma of what’s happening here. And so, it kind of blew the minds of those who thought the goal was just to get back to baseline and helped us reconsider the idea that, no, actually, in five specific domains of life, we can use any trauma that we have been through as a way to bounce forward, not just back, right? So we can have increased personal strength. We can have better relationships, increased spiritual development. We can have a greater appreciation for life. We can open up to possibilities that we never opened up to before. 

I like to think of it like -- I live in Kansas -- if a tornado comes and blows your house down, right -- which just happened a few weeks ago down the street from me, but  anyway -- you could rebuild the exact same house that you had. That’s a possibility, right? There would be nothing wrong with that.

0:22:00

It wouldn't make you better or worse. That’s one option. You could also take what you learned from having lived in that house -- do I want more windows, do I want more electrical outlets, do I like where the master bedroom is, do I want an extra bedroom, do I want a bigger closet? What do I want that’s different? What do I value here? If I’m gonna start from scratch, then what if I actually leaned in and used that information from the prior chapter of life and leveraged it to build something that’s even more aligned with what I value and what I want? That’s post-traumatic growth, and, to me, it’s amazing, but a lot of times people will make even the idea of being more satisfied with life after their person died mean something about their love for their person, like, “Who am I to be happier, and what does that say about me,” and that’s where I come in and try to help them sort through that and show them that those two things aren’t connected.

Amanda Testa: I think that’s huge right there.

Krista St-Germain: Right?

Amanda Testa: ‘Cause I know just in my life I can think of people who I know that just don’t feel okay about moving on because they think that’s a disrespect to their person that died.

0:23:08

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, I bet that nine times out of ten, if we could have a conversation with that person who died, what would they want for their loved one? Most of them would want them to be happy, right?

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

Krista St-Germain: But yeah, it's different to be in the situation, and it’s different to, again, not see all of that garbage in your brain as optional because you're just living it as truth, and sometimes it takes somebody outside of your own brain to point it out to you and help you get some leverage over it.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: I really appreciate the science behind what you're saying, too. It’s like, obviously, we have ways that our brains and bodies respond to things, and there are tools that you can use to navigate how to move forward.

Krista St-Germain: Totally.

Amanda Testa: I love the term positive neuroplasticity that I saw on your website.

Krista St-Germain: Mm, yes.

Amanda Testa: Which there’s a lot around neuroplasticity in our brain. 

0:24:00

We literally have the opportunity to change the way our brains work, and so, I would love if you would share a little bit more about that if you don't mind.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, so basically, most of us are walking around living programing that exists in our brain, right? Neuropathways that are on autopilot, essentially, it’s the reason we can drive to the grocery store and not remember the drive, right? We don't have to consciously think about it because the pathway exists in our brain, and the brain likes to be efficient, and so, whatever it does often enough and on repeat enough, it doesn't have to consciously choose to do anymore which is good for us because that part of our brain that makes decisions and has those higher functioning skills does have such a limited bandwidth anyway. We need that part of our brain to be efficient and on autopilot, but a lot of what’s on autopilot isn't necessarily moving us towards the life experience that we want, right? A lot of it’s actually holding us back from what we want, and so, this idea of positive neuroplasticity just basically means we can uncover those old patterns that are different for the individual, right, and it’s not universal because what one person might like, another person might find un-useful, and when we find something unuseful, we can create a new pathway, right? 

0:25:11

We can learn to believe and feel in such a way that we cement a new pattern in our brain, right? We can create kind of new highways, if you will, and the science supports that, that just because we believe something now doesn't mean we have to keep believing it. We can actually use our brain to believe new things and create new pathways, and they can be positive.

Amanda Testa: Yeah. 

Krista St-Germain: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: I’m wondering, too, for those who may be finding it hard to reach out for support, what are some of the benefits, ‘cause I know you said you immediately went to therapy, and you got support. How can maybe people open up towards that?

0:25:56

Krista St-Germain: Well, so what I would say is that remember we live in a culture that doesn't really understand grief, and so, it’s really easy to think that what’s happening during grief is indicative of some sort of internal flaw or problem with our character, right, or it’s just us. And so, that’s what often holds us back from asking for support, is we make whatever’s happening mean there’s something wrong with us, and then we have some shame around it, or some worry around it which is the exact reason I specifically love work in groups, right? This is what happened to me. I coached one-on-one for a long time with individual clients, and then I had so many of the same conversations over and over and over, and I struggled to help women see that what was happening wasn't just them. They wouldn't believe me, right, because I’m the coach, but when I could get them together, and they could see -- not me, I’m not making it up -- they could see, “Oh, that’s happening to that woman too. It’s not just me. There’s nothing wrong with me. This is just a part of it,” right, then we make progress so much faster because we get past all of the stuff that everybody’s got in common, and then we can get into the stuff that actually is specific to you. Things move so much faster when you don't try to do it alone because seeing that it’s not just you and you're not flawed will block your progress every time.

Amanda Testa: Right.

0:27:28

Krista St-Germain: So I went back to therapy simply because I already had a good therapist. When I got divorced the first time, I had searched around and found a therapist that worked for me, and so, it was really easy for me to go back because I knew that having someone to listen to me would help. I also felt like I would be a burden. I thought that I would be a burden to other people around me. I just didn't really want to share all that stuff with them, and I loved having a space where I could just go and not be judged and let it all out, and that’s what I needed in acute grief, was just to puke it out. Then, later, when I could think about my thinking, and I was ready to start making changes, and I didn't really just want to talk about what happened anymore, that’s when I think coaching -- I’m just so glad I found it. 

0:28:13

That’s when coaching can come in because, you know, as coaches, I think we’re empathetic. That’s part of our job, but our job is literally to not believe the things that our clients believe that hold them back, right? Our job is to believe that more is possible, and they can create what they want, and it’s a totally different experience.

With the age of online -- and I think COVID helped, but even before COVID, for me, all of my work is on Zoom. So whatever the issue is that you want help with, there is a group somewhere for you --

Amanda Testa: Right.

Krista St-Germain: -- that will help you make progress faster, right?

Amanda Testa: It is true.

Krista St-Germain: There is totally.

Amanda Testa: There is still so much about healing in community. It’s so amazing. I mean, I can just share the same. Like, when I work with women in groups, it never fails there’s a, “I thought I was the only one!”

0:29:02

Krista St-Germain: Yes, yes!

Amanda Testa: And everyone’s like, “Oh, my gosh! It’s not just me!”

Krista St-Germain: Yes.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, there’s like the chats going wild of, like, “Me too! I’m so glad you brought it up! I was embarrassed to talk about it.” Whenever we talk about sex in my group, it’s exactly the same thing that happens, right? And so, I can only imagine what happens in your coaching where it is such a stigmatized subject that when people have a safe environment to be honest about it, and other people are being honest about it, then I can only imagine how liberating that is and how much progress you're able to help people to make that’s just so much harder in a one-on-one environment -- and, literally, almost impossible. If you're trying to go it alone, it’s gonna take you forever.

Amanda Testa: Right. I do feel like just getting support is so important. I think it’s amazing, the communities that you've created. I’d love if you would share a little bit more about how people can connect with you and how you work.

0:30:00

Krista St-Germain: Totally, and before I do that, it just reminded me of something. Right before I hopped on the phone with you, I was doing a podcast interview for my own podcast with one of my clients who’s graduating, and one of the things she said is, “I’m kind of an introvert.” We were talking about why coaching in a group was powerful for her, and she said, “I’m kind of an introvert, and so, what was really nice for me is to be able to come and not have to be the one that a coach had to pull conversation out of, right? I could sit there and kind of watch and absorb and benefit from just being there without having to be in the hot seat,” and, you know, how powerful that was for her.

But anyway, I had a podcast called The Widowed Mom Podcast. It is, of course, serving a very specific woman with a specific story, but I try to cover a lot of grief and post-traumatic growth-related topics and make it very useable for anyone, so definitely people can come and listen to the podcast, and I have a free course on grief. For anybody who’s new to grief or maybe wants to support someone in grief, they can go to coachingwithkrista.com, and if they scroll down on the homepage, you put your name and email in there, and you’ll have access to a free course which is just kind of meant to dismantle some of those most basic myths and get people a little bit more prepared to support themselves or someone else. So yeah.

0:31:14

Amanda Testa: Amazing. I’m wondering, too, if there’s any question that you wished I would have asked that I didn't ask or any other words you want to make sure to share?

Krista St-Germain: You know, because I serve such a specific niche, I would love to learn more about what your clients struggle with as it relates to grief and sex. What do they bring to you?

Amanda Testa: You know, a lot of it, honestly, when it comes to grief, it can show up in so many different ways, like you say, but a lot of times it’s around maybe grieving something that they’ve lost through illness.

Krista St-Germain: A non-death loss, yeah.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, or grieving just maybe ways they feel like their body has betrayed them or if it is a loss, it’s allowing themselves access to pleasure or how they can find ways to feel good in their bodies again. 

0:32:04

And so, a lot of the work that I do in that lens is around that, but for the most part, the trauma-resolution work that I do has a lot to do with sex-related things.

Krista St-Germain: Yeah. Sure.

Amanda Testa: You know, there’s a lot of trauma in that window, and so, I feel like when you work with sexuality, that’s just a part of it, you know?

Krista St-Germain: Yep.

Amanda Testa: One in three people is affected from sexual assault in some way, and there’s a lot around that that I work with, so more so than just specific to grief.

Krista St-Germain: I’m so glad you brought that up, though, because I do think that oftentimes people associate grief with only death losses and they forget -- and even as I’m talking about it I’m not doing it any service ‘cause I’m so in the world of death with spousal loss -- but that grief really is our response to a perceived loss, and a perceived loss can be so many different things to so many people. I have a friend who coaches weight loss. She’s so good at it, and people will grieve the body they thought they were going to have when they lost all the weight and how it’s different from the body that they actually have when they lost all the weight or grieve not eating the way that they used to eat or the satisfaction that they used to get, the emotional high they used to get when they ate particular foods, and so, yeah, really expanding our idea of grief.

0:33:21

Another friend of mine, she made a million dollars in her business after working for several years to do it and then cried for a week, right? The reason that happened -- it was grief. She didn't see it that way, but she thought when she hit that level of success, she anticipated a different experience, and when she got there she realized, “Oh, actually, I’m still the same human person --,”

Amanda Testa: Right, right.

Krista St-Germain: “-- and this idea that some number is gonna change my life… it didn't go that way. I expected it to go one way, and it went the other way, and it felt like a loss,” and so, enter grief. So, yeah, just broadening up that definition, I’m so glad you did that. 

Amanda Testa: Yes, well, thank you so much, again, for being here. I’ll make sure to put in the show notes, as well, where everyone can connect with you and, yes, if there’s anything else that you feel would be supportive as a last word?

0:34:08

Krista St-Germain: You know, I’m always here, so if somebody has a question or they need a resource and they're not a widowed mom -- maybe you've got somebody in your life that you're trying to figure out how to support, don't be bashful. I may not have the exact answer, but I can point you in the right direction and get you the right resource. So don't be afraid to reach out.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, I think that’s good, too, because maybe you are supporting someone who’s grieving, and that also brings up a lot for people who are like, “I don't know what to do,” or, “I don't know how to show up,” or, “I don't know what to say,” all those things that could be coming up.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

Krista St-Germain: Yeah, absolutely.

Amanda Testa: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much, again, Krista. It’s a pleasure to meet you, and I really appreciate all your wisdom.

Krista St-Germain: Thanks for having me.

Amanda Testa: Yes, and thank you all for listening, and we will look forward to seeing you next week!

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. This is your host, Amanda Testa, and if you have felt a calling while listening to this podcast to take this work to a deeper level, this is your golden invitation.

0:35:05

I invite you to reach out. You can contact me at amandatesta.com/activate, and we can have a heart-to-heart to discuss more about how this work can transform your life. You can also join us on Facebook in the Find Your Feminine Fire group, and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends. 

Go to iTunes and give me a five-star rating and a rating and a raving review so I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself.

Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

Amanda Testa is a soulful, heart-centered expert when it comes to sex and relationships. She helps overwhelmed professional women and couples reconnect to themselves and their partners.

Her unique proven process, The Feminine Fire Method combines neuroscience and nervous system regulation, with ancient practices from Tantra and Taoism, to help women heal their relationship to their sexuality so they can eliminate shame and guilt, own their confidence, feel like a Goddess in their skin, and have the deeply connected relationships they desire.

• Find the resources mentioned in todays episode below:

  • Fire Up Your Desire Challenge Replays - www.amandatesta.com/junereplay

  • Feeling Supported When Life is Scary - https://www.amandatesta.com/leabettamandatesta/
    

  
  
  
  

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EPISODE 221: Pleasure as Power

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

Hello, and welcome to  the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. It’s your host, Amanda Testa, here. Today, I’m going to be talking about pleasure as power. I know for the past few weeks there’s been a lot going on -- and actually, it’s not just been the past few weeks, let’s be honest. It’s been a hell of a lot for a long, long time, and what I do know is I’m seeing a lot of people that are grieving, a lot of people that are confused, a lot of people that feel scared. A lot of my clients that are feeling just uncertainty, and one of the things that I wanted to talk about in this episode, to address that, is ways that you can move from feeling so overwhelmed to feeling more stable, more secure, more resourced in your nervous system, more able to find a place to safety in yourself.

0:01:06

I get it. This is not an easy practice, but it is doable, and so, what I know is that when we focus on what we want to happen, when we focus on kindness and openness and curiosity and possibility, so much can come from that, and when you're in a place of survival, it’s really hard to figure out what the next step is and how to come together in a community of support because, honestly, so much is in the world out there around just working on each individual’s own psyche, but it has to be a communal thing. We cannot heal in isolation. We have to do it as a community, and I think that’s one of the things that’s lacking in this day and age. People aren’t connected like they once were, so coming together, even with people that we don't agree with, is one of the ways that there can be potential in possibility.

0:01:55

So what I do know is in my own experience, my practices of pleasure, the things that I do to come back to my own body and my own being are transformational, right? I can be in the bed, crying, barely able to move forward, and I do a practice, and I’m able to transmute a lot of that, and to come out on the other side feeling hopeful, feeling inspired, feeling grounded, being able to move forward with my day, right? Because we all have to continue. Oftentimes, we don't have that luxury of just lying in the bed, moping around, right? We have lives and jobs and people to take care of and all the things. So the key is, is these practices I’ve found are just phenomenal. They're life-changing, and what I see if people don't often take the time to do the things that serve them, and there’s numerous reasons why, right? I get it. It’s not always easy, and it can be a privilege to be able to make time for the things that are important to you. However, when we can really look at our lives and prioritize what is most valuable and important, everything can shift, right? 

0:02:58

And so, for me, and I know what I’ve seen in all the women that I’ve worked with over the years is seeing when you can cultivate pleasure as a practice, it’s night and day. How people come into the work and how people leave on the other side, it’s night and day. What I do believe is that pleasure is medicine. Pleasure can be so healing for our nervous system. Pleasure can be activism. Pleasure can be power. Pleasure is knowledge. Pleasure is freedom. Pleasure is a healing balm. Pleasure is love. Pleasure is connection. Pleasure as connection, a sacred connection to the divine. Pleasure as liberation. Pleasure as creative expression. Pleasure as possibility. Pleasure as inspiration. Pleasure as respect. Pleasure as honoring. Pleasure as joy. Pleasure as resource, right? Pleasure as nourishment. What I see is when you can make time for these kinds of practices in your life, so much can shift, and where the work really comes in is making the time, dealing with all the things that come up in resistance, and holding yourself through those kinds of things. 

0:04:02

Sometimes, that’s where you often need help, and sometimes you might want community to do that with. So know that if this is something that is challenging for you, you're not alone, and, like I said, I’ve been seeing a lot of clients recently who are feeling really overwhelmed, really hopeless, and just feeling like a lot of the things that they took for granted, potentially, around what was important, thinking it was important to others, but it was not, feeling a lot of, maybe, betrayal. So when these things happen, that’s why it’s so important to find a way to come back to a place of resource, a place of feeling good in your own body and being. 

And so, as I know it can be so challenging in times like this to find that connect back to yourself, I’m gonna share with you right now a Simple Pleasure Practice that was part of the free Fire Up Your Desire Challenge that I just did. You can catch those replays at amandatesta.com/junereplay, and I will also put that in the show notes, so don't get overwhelmed. You can find that in the show notes. I’ll put everything that I’m gonna share here, all these resources around feeling supported when the world is crazy, I’ll put those in the show notes, and you can find all the show notes for this episode at amandatesta.com/portal.

0:05:20

So stay on this podcast and enjoy this pleasure practice. I will share the resources in the show notes for Feeling Supported When Life is Scary. That is a video series that I did with practices and tools to soothe your worried mind and to tune into some simple strategies to invite in more layers of support when the world feels in chaos. So these are really great nervous-system-regulating skills and tools that can just be healing and, really, so needed right now, I know. I get so much amazing feedback on these practices, that they are helping people reconnect to feeling okay in their bodies, finding ways to feel more safe and just inspired. And so, I will share all these with you, and enjoy this practice.

0:06:03

[Soulful Chorus Music Continues Under Dialogue]

Hello, and welcome to Day Three of the Fire Up Your Desire Challenge. I’ll invite you, just as you come to this session today, to create the intention of connecting to yourself, your feminine power, the goddess within you, the god-X within you, the life force, the divinity, the perfection that lies within you. Nothing can take that from you. Nothing can ever change that. You are whole. You are divine. You are beloved exactly as you are. Just let that possibility sink into your body, into your cells, into your bones, every fiber of your being is worthy, is valuable.

0:07:09

When challenges come up, the world seems chaotic and crazy. Coming home to yourself can be a resource, to remember who you are, what you're capable of. Nothing will stop you. Nothing can stop you. Letting your intentions be in alignment of the highest good of all, the highest good of all.

0:07:58

Potentially allowing your body, your being just to settle here, maybe noticing where your hands are drawn to go (if anywhere) on your body, feeling the weight of you in your chair, the perfection of you in this moment, exactly as you are. Maybe inviting in any gentle movement that might feel good, just creating that ring of support around you as we move into our ritual space today, creating that ring, feeling yourself supported and held in this space. This is just for you. Your most supported guides are welcome here. You get to choose what comes in and what stays out, and what do you want out of this space? Push it out. It is not welcome here.

0:09:12

And what do you want to invite in? Allowing that in. Allowing in what feels good, what feels nourishing for your soul, for your body, for your being now? What feels good in this moment? Saying yes to that and inviting it in. Anything else that helps you to feel supported and held, invite that in. [Deep breath in and out] Connecting to that original essence within you, that perfection, that blueprint of health, of aliveness, of goodness.

0:09:57

As we move in today, today is all around gentle pleasure, sensual pleasure, creating a space for you to connect to your own being, your own physical body because that is such a huge part. When we want to reconnect to our desire, we have to reconnect to our physical body. We have to learn how to be inside of our bodies. That is not always easy, but I’m gonna invite you now to just try on that possibility of being here in this vessel that is animated with your life force right now. Letting that be enough, knowing you are enough. Just inviting in the potential of whatever gentle pleasure your body wants to receive today. We’re gonna do just a sort of practice to connect to pleasure in whatever form feels right. Maybe it’s just simply listen to these beautiful voices, a beautiful chorus.

0:11:07

Maybe it’s just allowing that possibility of connecting to that blueprint of health that is available. Maybe, if it feels good to you, bringing your hands to your low belly, the energy there, or just bringing your awareness there. [Inhales and exhales] Taking some breaths into this space here. [Exhales] Letting the act of bringing in air feel good. [Exhales] With each breath, fresh energy, fresh aliveness fills your body, fills your being. [Exhales]

0:12:09

With each exhale, just allowing whatever wants to release to go. Whatever you no longer need to hold onto, allow it to [Exhales] exhale, leave your body. [Exhale] Breathing in what you desire and breathing out. [Inhales and exhales] 

[Music changes to a melodic, whimsical choral song]

Again, maybe connecting to your intention. Maybe it’s just a feel good now, to have a minute of presence with your body, with your being, with all of you. Holding your physical body, potentially, if that feels good to you. Sometimes it can feel good just to hold the frame of your body, pressing into your skin with whatever pressure feels right. 

0:13:02

Maybe you want a light touch. Maybe you want to gently touch your face. Maybe you want to gently bring your hands to your body. Maybe you just want to hold your hands across from each other. Maybe you just want to bring your awareness to your physical body. As you invite in touch, allowing your hands to be a gift, allowing your own touch to be a gift, a gift of acknowledgement, a gift of appreciation, a gift of love, a gift of pleasure, a gift of sensation.

0:14:09

And just being curious. How might your body want to be touched in this moment? How might you want to offer touch to yourself? Honoring whatever’s here now. If it feels okay to you, maybe bringing your attention to your heart space, breathing in and out of this space, your beautiful heart that beats for you, that pulses the life through your veins.

0:15:04

Noticing if it feels okay to offer some gratitude to your heart, some acknowledgement for all it does for you, the capacity that lies within your heart, the potential. Potentially feeling into anything you might want to bring into your beautiful, precious heart. Maybe if it feels good, inviting in a gentle massage of your chest, your breasts, and as you do, maybe massaging down on the outside, up on the inside, just being present with your body. 

[Music change to harmonious rhythmic song]

0:16:10

[Exhales] Maybe noticing, is there anything you want to release from your heart space? [Vocal exhale] Just allowing a gentle sound, a gentle movement if that feels right. [Vocal exhales] If it feels good, potentially, reversing that direction. Going up on the outside of your chest, down on the inside, up on the outside of your breasts, down on the inside.

0:17:05

[Exhale] Perhaps, inviting in a deeper breath. Bringing in all of those qualities you might want to bring into your heart space - compassion, kindness, love, whatever feels right. [Exhale] It’s okay for whatever to be here, to be here. If there’s any emotion, just allowing being with it. Everything is welcome. Your beautiful being can hold whatever is here.

0:17:57

Potentially, if needed, call into those supports that are here with you, those loving, protective supports that want you to thrive, that want you to be fully thriving, fully supported, fully loved, and knowing that. [Exhale] Again, potentially bringing your awareness, your breath, to your low belly as if you can breathe in and out of this space. 

0:18:59

Again, if you are able to or want to bring in more of a connected breath, you can do so. If you have any health conditions, just continue to breathe normally, but if you want to, invite in a connected breath (that’s breathing in and out without a break between the inhale and the exhale). [Exhale] Breathing in and out as if your lower belly can breathe. Inviting in that fresh aliveness, that fresh life, that gift of life force into your low belly, into your being, into you. [Exhale] Letting it fill you with your potential, with your worthiness, with the perfection of you in this moment exactly as you are. 

0:20:04

You are enough. You are wanted. You are worthy. You belong. Letting the parts of you that believe those words, to let them land. If it feels challenging, that’s okay too. You matter. Your needs matter. You are important. Maybe even repeating after me: “I am here. I am here. I am now. I am now. I matter. My needs matter. My wants matter. 

0:21:00

My desires matter. I matter. What I want is important. What I need is important.” [Exhale] Letting some fresh life, some fresh aliveness in on that truth. [Exhale] Again, potentially inviting in some gentle pleasure where that feels accessible. Touching your face, holding your body, maybe bringing one hand to your forehead, one hand to the back of your neck. Can your touch be a balm for you? Can your touch soothe? Can your touch offer pleasure, be a gift to you? Letting your hands remind you of your right to exist, to take up space, to have what you want, to feel good, to have pleasure. 

0:22:17

Try bringing your awareness, if it feels good, down to your perineum, to your root, to your genitals, letting some fresh breath, some aliveness enter the space in whatever way feels right. [Exhales] Connecting to the magic of you, the potential, the presence, the perfection of you in this moment. [Exhale] 

0:23:07

Breathing as if you could breathe in and out of your perineum, breathing in and out of your genitals as if you could breathe in and out of the space, allowing that aliveness to flow into your body.

[Music change to a rhythmic, vibey chant-like song]

[Exhale] On the exhale, allowing anything to release, allowing any sound, any movement, [Exhale] any emotion. [Exhale] Letting your body have a little shake if it needs. Inviting in your being to breathe in something good, something necessary, something needed. 

0:24:06

What might you say yes to? What might you want to breathe in? Again, letting your breath, letting your awareness travel from your perineum to your low belly. Letting your breath travel up through to your heart. Letting that breath come up to your throat. Letting that breath bring aliveness, bringing pleasure to your voice. [Exhale] Is there any sound that feels good to make? This gift of your voice to speak your needs, to speak up for what you want, to say yes, to say no - honoring your voice. 

0:25:11

Maybe even just noticing how it might feel to breathe in [Inhale] and hum on the exhale, [Humming exhales] letting that vibration travel through, offering some sensation, offering some aliveness, some breath, [exhale] some sensation, potentially some aliveness, some goodness and pleasure through your system. [Hums] Bringing your breath up from your throat now into your head, your brain, your pineal gland, your third eye, letting your breath, letting your attention, letting your awareness come to this place to wisdom, this place of awareness. [Exhale] 

0:26:33

Letting your breath shine light on your own wisdom, your own knowledge, trusting it, trusting your own self. [Exhale] Again, noticing if your hands want to move any specific way. Again, allowing a little freeform movement. Allowing yourself to be with whatever is here. You can hold it. You are capable of so much. You matter. You’re important. Ah, there is such power in you. Oh, my god, it’s so flipping gorgeous. Just know as you breathe and connect to that within you, that possibility becomes more and more real. 

0:27:25

As you awaken this within yourself, though, too, you inspire others, and now, more than ever, women in touch with their power is so needed, so key. Our pleasure is so needed, so key. Maybe noticing what does your body need in this moment? What can you offer yourself in this moment? [Exhale]

[Music change to a soothing, uplifting choral song]

0:28:15

Giving yourself just a moment here to just come to stillness. Just taking a moment to honor yourself and celebrate yourself for giving yourself this gift of being present in whatever way that looked like, trusting how it was meant to unfold today, celebrating yourself. You are enough. You are worthy. You matter.

0:29:02

You are divine. You are perfect exactly as you are. You are needed. 

Just taking three breaths here to close your practice. [Inhales and exhales] Offering yourself a little thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. 

0:30:15

Such a gift to be able to be able to connect to ourselves in this way. No matter what’s going on, this can be a place of resource, a place of refuge, a place of replenishment, of nourishment. [Exhale] Also, knowing if that doesn't feel the case for you now, it can. It is possible. If you want more support in that, I’m here for you to remind you that you have what you need within you.

0:31:05

And you are so loved. You are divine perfection. [Exhale] Thank you, thank you, thank you. [Vocal exhale] Wishing you a beautiful rest of your day or evening, wherever you are in the world. Thank you.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

0:32:10

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. This is your host, Amanda Testa, and if you have felt a calling while listening to this podcast to take this work to a deeper level, this is your golden invitation.

I invite you to reach out. You can contact me at amandatesta.com/activate, and we can have a heart-to-heart to discuss more about how this work can transform your life. You can also join us on Facebook in the Find Your Feminine Fire group, and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends. 

Go to iTunes and give me a five-star rating and a rating and a raving review so I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself.

Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

Kate Carson is a Teacher, scientist, and chemical engineer,  she is a story-teller activist for abortion rights, a support-person at (for TFMR), and (for all womb-grief), and holds others through grief transformation through somatic love, sex, and relationship coaching. 

In 2012, when she lost her daughter Laurel, choosing to terminate a wanted pregnancy for medical reasons, she began a grief-journey that has shaped her in ways she couldn’t even imagine at that time.  Service to grieving people and communities have been central to her own healing.  She found an internal landscape of strength, peace, and love beyond anything she could have imagined if grief never cracked her wide open.  She hopes to help others find the same.

Important Links: 

• Work with Kate - https://www.nightbloomcoaching.com

• Find out more about the Ending A Wanted Pregnancy support group - https://endingawantedpregnancy.com

• Reddit TFMR Support - https://www.reddit.com/r/tfmr_support/

• The NAF Hotline - 1-800-772-9100

• Hyperemesis Gravidarum - @hgloss

• TFMR Doula - Sabrina Fletcher - https://www.thetfmrdoula.com

• Time To Talk TFMR Podcast - https://talktfmr.podbean.com

• If you or anyone you know is having a hard time, reach out for professional support

Have a topic or question you'd like Amanda to address on a future episode? Submit it on this anonymous form.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

If you've been interested in learning more about coaching with Amanda, she's now booking coaching clients for 1-1 support in creating the relationship and orgasmic pleasure of their dreams.   If you’ve been thinking about it, maybe we should talk!  Link here to book a free call to see if we’re a fit. 

EPISODE 220: Kate Carson

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the podcast today! We are going to be talking around healing after grief, healing after loss, and I am ready excited to be talking with Kate Carson who is just an amazing human. She’s a teacher, a scientist, and a chemical engineer, as well as a sex and relationship coach, and activist for abortion rights, and a mom. She has just so much wisdom to share here, and what we were just discussing before we started recording is really finding connection around taboo topics and really finding healing and pleasure again after abortion or a babyloss or whatever it might be. 

0:01:00

Especially with all that's going on in the world, and who knows at the time of this publication -- right now, it's June 22nd, so when this pod comes out, we are not quite sure what's gonna be going on, and sadly, Roe v. Wade might be overturned. And so, we've got a lot to hold, and just giving space for all of that too because it is intense. I feel very passionately about this because part of feeling confident and free in our sexuality is having autonomy over our bodies and choice, and this is heavy.

So we also are going to talk about finding pleasure again after it all because there are ways to find that connection and find pleasure again. So welcome, Kate. I'm so excited that you're here.

Kate Carson: Thank you so much, Amanda. I'm glad to be here.

Amanda Testa: Yes, and I had the pleasure of meeting Kate through a coaching certification, and she is just such a brilliant -- with work, such a brilliant woman and has just such a powerful story. I'd love, if you wouldn’t mind, just sharing a little bit about  your story and how the current events are affecting families and how you became to be so passionate about this work.

0:02:03

Kate Carson: Absolutely. So a decade ago, ten years ago last spring, towards the end of May, I had just graduated with my master's. I remember going to my graduation ceremony wearing that big gown, [Laughs] and getting heat stroke right away. Like, before they even started the ceremony, just sitting to the side and getting heat stroke and having to, like, go home and call it a day because I was pregnant. I was pregnant when I graduated with that degree, and I had actually chosen to get the master's instead of a PhD because I was deciding to invest more of my time and energy in my family.

It was only about a week after that that I went to the doctor to have an ultrasound because I had just had a horrible feeling about it the whole time. I was trying to have a birth-center birth (a natural birth), and my midwife kept being like, “Great!” We were getting all excited, and I was like, “I still feel like this is a disaster.” She was like, “Okay, okay. We’re just gonna give you an ultrasound. You're gonna be able to come in confident knowing your baby’s okay.”

0:03:00

So I went to this ultrasound by myself, and it took a long time. It took, like, an hour, and at the end, two doctors came in, and they said, “We are so sorry, but your baby has brain malformations. Her brain didn't form properly. This is quite a serious thing. We can offer you adoption or we can offer you abortion --,” oh, no. “We might be able to offer you an abortion, but we just don't know.” I was 35 weeks pregnant, and then they said, “Of course, otherwise, we’re gonna fast-track you to the high-risk and you're gonna get a neonatal neurologist, and they're gonna give you a C-section. It’s gonna be, like, [INDISCERNIBLE] intervention, but I just remember them saying, “adoption, abortion,” and being like, “Do they have the wrong room? Do they have the wrong room?” I have had three miscarriages trying to get pregnant with this baby, and I was finally pregnant with my second daughter (I had a two-year-old at the time) and just feeling like my world was falling down around me. 

Further testing revealed that my baby had Dandy Walker Malformation and agenesis of the corpus callosum. 

0:04:03

What that means is she had two separate brain anomalies. Either one of them is sort of a spectrum disorder, and has a wide variety of outcomes, but the two of them together (and each of them presenting kind of severely), the prognosis for my baby was that she would not walk, talk, eat, or swallow. So she would be significantly disabled. When the doctor was telling me this, and he was telling me all the things she wouldn't do, I remember just [Exhales] sort of taking a deep breath, and looking at him, and being like, “What will she do? What does a baby like my baby do? Does she just sleep all day? If she can't do all of these things, does she just sleep?” He winced, and he said, “Babies like your baby are not often comfortable enough to sleep.”

So, there I was, 35 weeks pregnant, and I remember telling my genetic counselor, “This is very sad, but if she can't eat, if she really can't swallow, then we know what we want to do, and no interventions. It’s awful. She’s gonna die of starvation and dehydration.” She was like, “Oh, you can't deny a baby a feeding tube. That's not legally a possibility here.” 

0:05:04

So my obstetrician called me, and she had found me a healthcare provider who does provide abortions at this stage in pregnancy out in Colorado, and I am from Boston, so I am surrounded by medical care, medical schools. My husband and I had to get on a plane. We had to fly to Colorado, and we had to show up with $25,000 to get this abortion. It’s a four-day procedure, and I did not know if it was legal, and I did not know if it was safe. I just knew that I was up against intervention for my baby. Her name is Laurel. Intervention for her in her condition, it would have been painful. It would have never made her well, and that just wasn't the life I wanted for her. So I ended up getting an abortion between 35 and 36 weeks of pregnancy which is a very extreme thing to do because I was in very extreme circumstances.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

0:05:57

Kate Carson: [Exhales] Since then, I’ve found a support group, thank goodness. There’s something about peer-to-peer support, especially for something so unusual and so misunderstood as later abortion. There’s something about people being like, “We understand. We’ve been there. You're welcome here, and you're safe here.” Very quickly, after a few months, I started doing Modding for that support group. And so, I’ve been Mod and Admin of Ending A Wanted Pregnancy for almost a decade. Almost a whole decade I’ve been a brave mother. That means that I’ve held several thousand moms and dads through this exact same situation. Not necessarily -- I mean, mine’s extreme dates-wise, but they're getting a diagnosis or if you're having a maternal mental health crisis and not being able to see your way through the pregnancy -- so if something medical comes up, some crisis arises and the pregnancy is just not tenable anymore, and that’s really why all pregnancies are ended. There’s a pregnancy, and maybe the pregnancy itself is the untenable piece, but there’s this thing that’s just not tenable, and so, that’s really why people end their pregnancies.

0:07:02

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Kate Carson: So that is actually what brought me into coaching. Holding people on a volunteer basis for so, so long and seeing the problems. This is a babyloss community. That’s how I would describe it as a babyloss community. These are people whose babies died, right? They died in the body, and they died with a choice, right, of the timing or of the death, but they died. And so, holding these, mostly, moms (but some dads and couples) for so long has really shown me that there are huge consequences to that in terms of sex, love, and relationship.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Kate Carson: It puts a huge strain on relationships to try to navigate a shared loss because we expect there to be shared grief, and there’s just not. It’s not possible, as far as I’m concerned, to share your grief with anyone. Grief is very lonely, but we have no examples for that, right? You look around, and there are really no examples in media, in books, of couples who lose -- yeah, they're usually when you lose -- one part of the couple is feeling it more than the other, but this is really a shared loss.

0:08:09

Then, sexuality, too. There’s this real phenomenon of disembodiment, right? It’s like a kind of dysphoria, actually. It’s like a kind of dysphoria in the body where all of a sudden you hate your body. I am one of those lucky people who never had an eating disorder. I’ve had a very healthy relationship with myself, with my body, and with food my whole life. That’s pretty rare for a woman, but after my loss, after I lost my baby, I just wanted to unzip my body and float out of it. I hated my body so much because I really was putting all the blame for building a broken baby on my body. There are consequences in your sexuality from that, and in love, it’s hard. Sometimes we self-punish, and we don't let ourselves love ourselves. We don't let ourselves receive love. So it made a lot of sense for me to go into sex, love, and relationship coaching because I saw these big gaping wounds that weren't necessarily being competently addressed in the babyloss world.

0:09:02

Amanda Testa: Yes, well, I just want to take a moment and just hold some space for all that you've been through, and also, just honoring Laurel and your beautiful work that you've done all these years, too, in holding other parents who have been through similar experiences where there’s loss, and, like you say, it’s not tenable in some way, shape, or form, and it’s -- you know, I think, too, honoring the different ways people grieve, and I appreciate how you said, you know, grief is a lonely thing because everyone does process differently, and I think knowing that -- and if you're listening, and this is resonating in any way or -- also, for the listeners, just holding whatever might be coming up in you because the truth of the matter is, is that grief is a huge topic, and it can be so encompassing. Having that feeling of your body betraying you in some way, I know, I talk with a lot of clients that feel that no matter what the situation of, like, my body has broken me or something about it has made me disconnect, and whether it’s through grief or loss or illness or whatever it can be, you know, finding that road back to yourself and to process all that you’ve been through is not an easy road. 

0:10:19

And so, that’s one of the reasons, too, why I feel like it’s so important to have these conversations and to be aware of the support that is out there, right?

Kate Carson: Gosh, thank you.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

Kate Carson: At this moment, when I’m in my baby-loss space, when I’m in the Ending A Wanted Pregnancy support group, one of the hard things about this particular loss is that it’s so politicized. You know, a loss by abortion. I call it abortion. Some people even in the group who’ve gone through this are like, “No, it’s a termination,” and I really respect their choice around their words, but, for me, my story is an abortion story.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Kate Carson: But it’s just so hard to feel like what word you choose determines whether or not you’ll be held in your community, determines whether or not people will try to put you in prison, determines, in some cases, whether or not doctors might treat you fairly when they look at your record, right? 

0:11:08

It’s really scary to have something so personal be so politicized. So it’s a fraught time. It’s a fraught time for my support group right now and for my clients.

Amanda Testa: I mean, and I can only imagine how much more fraught it is about to become.

Kate Carson: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: That, to me, I have no words.

Kate Carson: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: I just feel this huge clenching in my whole throat and chest and body. It’s like ugh. It’s just so disheartening, and so, when you feel like, yes, it’s a personal choice, but it is very politicized, and I feel like our personal choices should not be politicized no matter what they are, and so, I’m curious. What advice are you giving to the people in your groups now or just anyone with a womb who might be facing choices that they want to be able to make and might not have the liberty to do so?

0:11:58

Kate Carson: RIght. So if you’re post-loss, I really recommend insulating. I really recommend not just receiving whatever the computer and the phone and the radio want to give you. [Laughs] So one of the ways that I did that is to call my brother and to call my best friend from childhood, and to be like, “If there’s abortion-relevant news, I need you to tell me what it is so I feel safe to turn this off.” I will get a call -- I’m sure, ten years later, I won't have to remind them. I will get a call from one of them without having to check myself if/when Roe v. Wade gets overturned. Learning how to ask for help in general is a wonderful thing. Making it specific is very helpful to the person who wants to help you, and this is a beautiful place to help protect yourself because you don't owe anybody full access to your emotions. 

So if, however, you are worried that you may need abortion support in the future, just even a medical procedure, right now -- we had a few states already strike it down. 

0:13:08

So Texas (I think you can get an abortion up to six weeks, which is insufficient for many, many people), Oklahoma, and then Missouri. There may be more, but just three states in our country shutting down access to abortion care has already overburdened clinics (like the one I went to in Boulder) who now have five-, six-week-long waiting lists, maybe even longer since I last talked to my provider. So I would say, a resource that you should know about is NAF (National Abortion Foundation). They have a hotline that you can call to sort of get an idea of who’s taking patients, what is the waitlist. They will not refer you to anyone sketchy, so, please, if you are looking for out-of-state care, always call NAF first because, unfortunately, the less legal this is, the more sketchy providers there will be. I hate that that is the case, but it is the case. Abortion, when performed legally by experienced practitioners, is much safer actually than carrying a pregnancy farther. 

0:14:08

It’s much safer than a supposedly healthy live birth.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Kate Carson: So it should be a safe procedure, but the less legal it is, unfortunately, the less safe it’s gonna be.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Kate Carson: So I would just say that that’s who I would start with. Unfortunately, people in states that you may feel you're safe in are affected by this too because, now, fewer clinics are serving way more people.

Amanda Testa: Right.

Kate Carson: So you also might just want to be aware of the NAF. Please, please, please, if you're in a state where abortion is illegal, don't ask your doctor. Please don't because, even if they support you philosophically, it puts them in a weird legal bind where they don't want to go to prison either. So please, please protect your own privacy even with your medical providers -- especially with your medical providers. Protect your own privacy with your friends and family. Only talk to people about this who you know are gonna show up for you and people like at the NAF.

0:15:01

Amanda Testa: That’s beautiful advice that I think is important and that I might not be aware of. Not everyone might be aware of that. I’m wondering, too, when it comes to kind of healing post-loss, what are some of the things that can help on that road to healing -- the healing path after abortion, after infertility, after a babyloss?

Kate Carson: Mm, so I remember going through this and having this realization that I did not know how to mend a broken heart. I did not know how to heal my heart, but I knew how to heal a body, and so, this is coming right up against that sensation that I hate in my body, and this was its fault. My body couldn't do it. It had three miscarriages, and then it built a baby all wrong. That is not scientifically accurate, but that was my emotional understanding. So I had to, basically, make peace with the body first, and though I couldn't do it -- it’s not like you flip a switch and you suddenly are nice to your body. I knew some actions I could take that would be kindness to my body.

0:16:06

I have a beautiful friend, Margot, she’s also an Admin at Ending A Wanted Pregnancy. She said, “You know, sometimes eating the ice cream is a kindness to your body, and sometimes it’s a cruelty. Sometimes going for a run is a kindness, and sometimes it’s cruelty. Sometimes having the glass of wine is a kindness, and sometimes it’s a cruelty.” So really feeling in your body for what is kindness and what is cruelty to the body.

I would get up every morning -- I am not a runner. I hate running. [Laughs] I would get up every morning (once I was cleared ‘cause I was postpartum for a while, so after, like, two months), and I would go to a field, and I would just run sprints. I didn't want to go for a long run, but I would run across the field, and I’d get all breathless, and I’d just calm down, and I’d do it again, and then I would do some yoga and cry, [Laughs] and just sob, and then I would do a few more sprints, and then I would go home. It took about a half an hour. 

0:17:00

I think I only did, maybe, six sprints. That’s not that much. I didn't go that far, but it was a way -- we work a lot with trauma responses in coaching, and I think this was literally giving embodiment to my flight response. There were so many times in my experience, especially when I was trapped in medical areas like when I got that diagnosis, when those doctors came in and told me my baby was not okay, I had a flight response that I had to suppress. When I got on the airplane to go to Colorado, I really didn't want to be doing that. I wanted to be running away. So much, you're trapped in the seat. There’s literally a seatbelt, feet are in the stirrups, right? Getting your cervix dilated, your feet are in the stirrups, and it hurts, and I just wanted to run away. 

And so, this was almost every single day giving the somatic experience of running away. For some people, it might be beating up a punching bag or a pillow, right? Whatever the body wants to do, letting it do it. 

0:17:58

That kind of exercise also felt like a sort of healthy way to, like -- if I had the self-punishment inclination, at least I wasn't really harming my body. At least I was just making my lungs hurt ‘cause I was breathing hard. Okay, okay. Then, I would feel better. Would I feel high vibe? No, but the days I did that whole running and stretching and crying routine were sad days, and the days I didn't do it, I was so deep and dark that I thought I’d never get out. So that’s a difference, right? When you can actually be with your sadness, that is a difference.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Kate Carson: Another thing I would say is asking for help -- learning exactly how to ask for what you need from your friends, and I gave an example of that earlier with the media, but a lot of people, when you've gone through a loss and they know about it -- not everyone knows about this kind of loss because sometimes it’s a secret, but if they know about it, they will call, and they’ll be like, “Oh, if only there was something I could do. I know there’s not anything I could do or if there’s ever something I can do…” and you just, at that moment, you're like, “Yes! Yes, there is,” and you think of something. 

0:19:01

I remember asking a friend, “Would you please call me every Tuesday night at 7:00? I can’t promise I’ll pick up, but would you just do it for a few months?” I told another friend, “Yes, come take me for a walk on Wednesday. I have no idea what I’m gonna be like, but please come take me for a walk in the woods.”

Nature is another one. Nature is a huge resource because you can belong to nobody, but you still belong to nature, and as for the couples, ugh, it’s so hard. It’s so hard, but don't measure your grief by your partner’s grief. My grief was messy. I couldn't hold down a job. I was a wreck, right? I would cry and fall on the floor, you know? I was getting out of bed to take care of my two-year-old, but other than that, I was barely functioning. My husband goes to work. I don't know what he was like at work, but it probably wasn't that different from the way he normally is, and he’d come home, and he’d just sort of be like -- I could tell he was scared. He would look at me and feel afraid, right, ‘cause he didn't even know me anymore.

So when I respect my grief, I’m not measuring it against his (my low-functioning, his high-functioning) -- I’m not being like, “I’m an insufficient person because he can still go to work,” and when he looks at me and is afraid, that’s him measuring my grief, right? 

0:20:11

I don't internalize that. I let him have his feelings. He can have fear. He can be afraid. Heck, if I’m honest, I’m probably afraid too, right? Being like, okay, I respect myself so much that I am going to fall on the floor crying, and I respect him so much that I’m not gonna yell at him for not caring about our baby because he’s not. 

Amanda Testa: Very powerful, and very self-aware. I think that to even have that --‘cause that’s probably not easy for everyone, right?

Kate Carson: I will tell you; I did a lot of yelling at him for not caring enough about Laurel to grieve before I figured this out [Laughs] so it’s not like I got straight there. [Laughs]

Amanda Testa: Yes, and I also appreciate the really specific things for people to do for you.

Kate Carson: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: Because I think that extra piece there is so -- just allowing yourself to be held, even if you might not want to be held at the time. 

0:21:02

You're like, “Call me at 7:00 on Tuesday. I may or may not answer, but if I’m available, that would feel really good,” or, “Help me for a walk. Who knows how I’ll be, but just show up and be with me,” right? I can remember some times of grief where I had friends, and I would just sit on the trailhead and cry for three hours, and my friends were just there, and that’s what you need sometimes, right?

Kate Carson: Totally.

Amanda Testa: Just to be held in whatever your experience is. Not having to change it. Not having it to be any different, and that is a talent for people to be able to do that for your friends, to be able to offer that, right?

Kate Carson: Completely.

Amanda Testa: Just be there, right?

Kate Carson: And it supports the partner too, because my husband was fatigued by having to witness me cry so much and worry, he would never have any happy moments with his wife again. So when I could turn to other people, I was casting a wide net instead of just putting it all on my husband. Okay, I have friends. I have friends from high school. I have friends from college. I have friends from my community. Ask them to show up. They want to show up. Tell them how. For some people, they're not gonna want so much contact. They're gonna want to retreat, and so, asking for space is the thing, right?

0:22:04

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Kate Carson: But yeah, if you're one of those fine people who is able to just be in the presence of a friend who’s crying for three hours, oh, my gosh, what a gift. What a gift it is.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, and I’m wondering, too. You know, being able to hold your own grief -- isolate as you need, really protect your own self in the ways you need to which I really appreciated your tip around not looking at news, having someone share with you news, and just really allowing yourself to be in your experience. You know, so those are kind of some of the starting steps that you went on to be able to kind of be kind to your body again or how to slowly start to heal your body, and I’m wondering what came next after that?

Kate Carson: Well, I do think there’s space for pleasure here, many different kinds of pleasure, and you’ll find that grieving people often, when they start to feel pleasure, they reject it quite violently. 

0:23:02

For example, they’ll catch themselves laughing and be like, “Oh, no. I can’t launch because it means I don't love my baby,” right? “If I’m not all grief all the time, I must not love my baby.” That’s very normal. You shouldn't feel bad or wrong if you do that, but just notice, right? Notice that we can laugh even when we grieve. Notice that sometimes it doesn't feel the same as a belly laugh did before, but there’s this special morbid sense of humor that totally got me through the clinic, right? [Laughs] I laugh a lot when I tell these stories. It’s not all self-protection. 

Part of it is that I’m allowed to hold it, but then there’s the physical pleasure as well. I’m lucky in this one way, and it’s that my husband and I -- probably because we were pretty bad verbal communicators at the time -- but I could enjoy intimacy with him. I could enjoy physical touch from my husband, and so, we actually made love a lot more than at other times in our lives. That is a minority experience. 

0:24:00

Most people actually have huge, long dry spells after this. So both are normal. I would say, like 15% and 85%. Either way, I’m not saying have sex if you don't want to have sex. That is the no. The real no is absolutely important, but to begin to notice where you're shutting down pleasure because you feel like you don’t deserve it. What pleasure can you accept? Go accept it. It might be as simple as sitting in the sun and feeling the sun on your face.

Amanda Testa: I think that is very powerful, and also knowing if you’re someone listening and maybe having a hard time, when you can reach out for professional support.

Kate Carson: Totally.

Amanda Testa: If it feels like you are denying yourself any joy or pleasure. Also, honoring the time it takes, right? The time it takes to move through things can also have the same -- as you mention honoring, we can hold multiple things at once. I can be both grief and pleasure in whatever way feels accessible, and, like you say, even if it’s just being able to enjoy a breath or being able to feel your body experience warmth or whatever it might be, right?

0:25:10

Kate Carson: Yeah, and I will tell you that the turning point for me -- ‘cause there was a single moment that was a turning point for me, and it was, ironically, when I let myself feel all the way sad. It happened in September, and I know -- it must have been September or October ‘cause I just remember this bright red/orange tree against the blue sky. It’s very vivid in my memory. I just dropped my daughter off at preschool which is a house of horrors for Brave Mom. [Laughs] A brand new preschool with all the babies and pregnant bellies everywhere, and I was walking home, and I was fighting in my mind. I was having a debate or a fight. I used to play, almost as though I was on trial, I would play this imaginary loop of me on trial for what I have done which is torture, right? It’s horrible. 

0:26:01

I might have been doing that or I might have just been getting really jealous or angry, but there was a lot of strife in my head, and finally, just seeing that tree and seeing the sky and stopping at the top of the hill and being like, “I give up. Okay. Okay. I give up. I’m gonna feel it. I’m gonna let it in,” -- it sounds silly. I really thought I might die. I really thought that my sadness might kill me. I thought I might just drop dead right there or maybe really float out of my body. It feels that scary, and I got this vision of a title wave of grief and sadness, just, like, an ocean of sadness pressing down on me, and I was at the bottom of all of this water. Then, all of a sudden, I was floating to the top. Then, all of a sudden, I was looking around to the horizons, just water in all directions. It was just this knowing -- knowing that my sadness was boundless, that it was as big as the universe, and that I was big enough to hold it.

Amanda Testa: Yes, that just gave my full body chills.

0:27:04

Kate Carson: It’s one of these things, Amanda, where I’m sure when you coach you have had people make realizations like that. I’m sure you know what I mean.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Kate Carson: We don't get to stay there. I don't get to stay floating on the sea of my sadness. It’s such a peaceful place. It's deeply, beautifully peaceful. I don't get to be there all the time, but just knowing that it’s there, knowing that I did it once and I could go back, it’s life changing. 

Amanda Testa: Exactly. It’s, like, knowing that you can be with that and survive, and I’m wondering after that turning point. What else shifted for you?

Kate Carson: So one of the things that -- [Laughs] what’s funny is I did not have good therapy at this moment. [Laughs] I had a therapist. She was so nice. I don't mean to say she’s not a good therapist, but she was not for this, right? She was just someone you talk to. I have plenty of people to talk to. I write. I’ve got plenty of people to absorb my words, so it was not really helping, but what I noticed was that a lot of the things I came up with when I went through the training, I was like, “Oh, that’s what I figured out, and that’s what I figured out!” They’re all, like, well-established trauma strategies.

0:28:14

So when I looked at this one, this sea of my sadness, one of the things that became very clear was that I had sort of split into a bunch of personalities, and I don't mean -- I was not schizophrenic, but I had become aware of my sub-personalities around this trauma event, and the one that was giving me the most trouble, I call her my guard dog. She’s, like, sort of a bitch. [Laughs] She’s a real nasty girl, and she was so mean to everyone all of the time, and I was really wishing that she weren’t in me for a long time. What this did was show me, oh, this is what she’s protecting. She’s protecting this vulnerability, right? 

0:29:01

Asking her to step back like I’m really ready to feel it. That was another piece of this moment with the tree and the water was, like, no, you know what? I’m really ready to feel it. I promise. She wouldn't have let me if I was not ready, but I was. So she stepped back, and I felt it.

So, from then on, I could actually make a relationship with this part of me. So when I find myself being really nasty and mean and angry and vicious, I’m like, “Oh, there she is,” and I love her. I love her because she’s there to protect me, and if I didn't have her, I might just have my vulnerable places on display all the time which would not be healthy and well-integrated. 

So that’s one way it changed for me is, like, now, okay, I’m gonna deal with myself a piece at a time, and I’m going to learn to appreciate what my parts are doing for me. This is Internal Family Systems, [Laughs] but it’s just, like, out of necessity, right?

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Kate Carson: [Laughs] It’s also tantra. It’s like parts-work, right?

0:30:03

Amanda Testa: Exactly. I think it’s so interesting how wise our bodies and beings are. Even just, like you mentioned, you might not have had the therapy, but you figured things out, and then when you learn you're like, “Oh, wait! I was doing this!” But also, just that wisdom of your body from day one. Trusting, like, something’s not right. I need to listen to what my body’s telling me.

Kate Carson: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: Right? And really trusting that and trusting your timing, trusting when your body’s ready to feel and that it can, and when it’s not, that’s okay. We have our own timing. We have our own way, and we can hold it all even though we think we can't. If we could only go as fast as the slowest part of us is ready to go, right?

Kate Carson: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: That is the truth, and I’m wondering, too -- it sounds like, for you, you were in an experience where it did feel okay to have sex with your partner and to feel connected in that way, but for those who might feel like sex feels really heavy or scary, what might you offer for those people?

0:31:12

Kate Carson: Really good question. First of all, one of the reasons it might be scary is because you're afraid of getting pregnant again and you're also afraid of not getting pregnant again, right?

Amanda Testa: Yes.

Kate Carson: So you can't win. [Laughs] If sex is too tied to fertility in your body-mind, it’s just gonna be fraught. So if you desire to be intimate with your partner, but it’s such a hard “no” around that, sometimes I think -- a lot of the people I work with are long-married adults -- I think we forget that it doesn't always have to be a penis in a vagina, right?

Amanda Testa: Yes.

Kate Carson:  Some people who go through this also got pregnant other ways, like, by sperm donation or by IUI or by IVF, but sometimes we forget (we who can get pregnant by having sex with our spouse) that there are other kinds of sex that you can still have with your spouse that are not so high-stakes when it comes to pregnancy.

0:32:10

So one of the things I really recommend for people who are ready to feel pleasure in the body is oral sex, is massage, is making out for a long time, cuddling, hugging, spooning, foot massage. Get it way out to the extremities if it’s too scary to be in it at the root of you, right? Then a self-pleasure practice, too, 'cause another source of fear is we are in a postpartum body after this loss, after this particular brand of loss, and the postpartum body is not the same as the pre-pregnancy body. There can be a lot of, I think, fear that you’ll find something different, emotions to process when you do find something different, right? So taking it so slow and just meeting yourself exactly where you are. 

0:33:05

Not so much comparison to the way you were before.

There’s this very simple exercise where you would run your fingers on your arm or on any part of your body, and you can change your perspective. You can be in the fingers. I’m, right now, running my fingers over my forearm, and if I’m in my fingers, what I feel is a little roughness towards the wrist and then softness towards the elbow, a little bit of -- I can feel the hairs, and then I can be in my arm. What I feel is the gentle stroke of my fingers. That kind of really intricate -- we deal with this all the time when we’re children. Make yourself a child again. I mean, I know we’re talking sexuality, but just bring it back to the basics as though you have a body for the first time. How are you going to explore?

Amanda Testa: I love that, and just re-exploring your new -- 'cause every day we’re like a new body in some ways, right? It’s like how can I just be curious and explore what I am today, who I am today, what my body is today?

0:34:05

Kate Carson: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, that’s beautiful, and I think, too, what’s so important (and I think I heard you mention this) is really finding a community of like-minded individuals to support you, like peers, people who have been through something similar just so that you can get the support you need. And so, I’m wondering if you might share some resources or how, potentially, people can connect with you, to work with you. What’s available?

Kate Carson: Absolutely. So you can work with me. My company is Nightbloom Coaching so you can find me at nightbluecoaching.com (N-I-G-H-T-B-L-O-O-M-C-O-A-C-H-I-N-G dot com). I do one-on-one work. Sometimes I do group work. I’m expanding my offerings, so we’ll see. Occasionally, I run retreats. I am one person. If you would like peer-to-peer support from many people, I help run the group Ending A Wanted Pregnancy. You can get in. It’s a Facebook group so, unfortunately, you have to have Facebook to join it, and you would go to the website endingawantedpregnancy.com, and there is an application form. 

0:35:11

If you are not into Facebook, then I think the Reddit TFMR support (T-F-M-R stands for Termination For Medical Reasons support) is an excellent forum. It’s very well-moderated. It’s actually moderated by an abortion provider. So, unlike the one I -- we don't let you ask medical questions in our group, but you can ask medical questions in that space. He’s not your doctor, probably, but it still is great.

For example, there are a bunch of Instagrams. @hgloss (hyperemesis gravidarum loss) is a handle on Instagram. Hyperemesis is when you throw up a lot. It’s pregnancy sickness. We hear so many triumphant stories of women who overcome that, but in some people’s bodies, it is so severe and so scary that they really have to end the pregnancy to be safe and survive. 

0:36:05

One of the Brontë sisters, actually died of hyperemesis so it can be a very -- you can have organ failure. It can be a very, very serious diagnosis. So if you have experienced that kind of loss, definitely check out @hgloss on Instagram. There’s the TFMR Doula. She’s based out of Mexico, and her name is Sabrina. Who else have I got?

Amanda Testa: I’ll make sure to add these, too, in the show notes for people.

Kate Carson: Yeah, thank you. Yeah, there’s a UK-based podcast as well, TFMR - Time to Talk TFMR.

Amanda Testa: Beautiful.

Kate Carson: So those are the basic places I would recommend. Also, if you've gone through a loss like mine, you belong in general infant and pregnancy loss groups as well. Unfortunately, just because you belong doesn't always mean you’ll be welcome. Unfortunately. I hate that that’s true, but this is a great time to ask a friend for help. “Would you please find me a support group? Call ahead, and make sure I’ll be welcome there.”

0:37:00

Amanda Testa: Mm, yes. Very good. I’m wondering, too, if there’s maybe a question that you wished I would have asked or anything else that you want to make sure that you share?

Kate Carson: Mine is such a sad story, right? I lost this daughter, and it was scary and frantic. I’m telling you there’s a time where what was once rare is about to be common. People are already traveling all over the country to have abortions. Pretty soon, it’s gonna be even worse, and accessibility is going down. It’s very easy to feel really freaking sad, and that’s appropriate, but I also just want to talk about how there are gifts to this, and I ‘m not trying to shine the turd. I’m not trying to be like, “Ooh, look at the silver linings of my dead baby.” 

Amanda Testa: [Laughs]

Kate Carson: [Laughs]  But there are gifts, and you never need to be grateful for losing a loved one ever. That never has to be part of what it means to be grieving, but I would encourage everyone just to accept the gifts that come. 

0:37:59

Like, you know what, this isn't what I thought I wanted, but I’ve earned it, right? I have earned my ability to sit and listen to hard things. I don't think I was such a good listener before this. I have earned a much deeper compassion and appreciation for all sorts of hardships, right, but I have also earned -- this is the thing that is sort of surprising -- I am happier now than I think I would have been if this hadn’t happened to me. I am also sadder. So I feel like the richness of my emotions just got deeper and more colorful because this happened to me. If it hadn’t happened, I wouldn't have had to go through the shit time that was horrible. I wouldn't have had to walk through it and feel so uncomfortable for so long, but I actually do get to live a richer life on the other side. It doesn't matter. I don't have to be grateful for that. I don't have to be like, well, I’m glad this horrible thing happened.

Amanda Testa: Right.

Kate Carson: But because it did, I’m committed to living it deeply.

0:39:02

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Kate Carson: My marriage, too, was stressed and strained for a couple of years there. It was very, very hard, and I’m really glad. I’m really glad I came out the other side. Just ‘cause my marriage lasted, and I think it’s great doesn't mean that everyone’s should, but when things are really hard, wherever you are, the only thing I can promise is that you will be somewhere else soon.

Amanda Testa: Yes, that is true. Well, first of all, I just wanted to honor you and all the work that you've put in, too, and all that you've done to be with yourself and to move through and heal and to keep living, right, keep moving forward, and also, in your relationship as well. I’m wondering if there is maybe just one small tip you could share with relationships and moving through grief.

Kate Carson: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: In this type of grief in particular, what supported you in your relationship or maybe what’s one thing people could do?

0:39:59

Kate Carson: Yeah, definitely the casting a wide net. It’s counterintuitive because you’ll read a lot of relationship books that are like, “If you're going to your friends instead of your partner, this is terrible.” It’s not terrible. We are undergoing more than any one person can hold, including ourselves, right?

Amanda Testa: Yes.

Kate Carson: So, really, [Laughs] reconnecting to many, many layers of community, family, and cultural support is the best thing you can do to support your relationship. It’s the other best thing you can do because -- well, because what it does it is gets you the support that you need, and I will tell you, it is a million times better to get the support you need from your second choice, third choice, five-hundredth-choice person than not to get it at all. So, really, really, showing up for your needs and letting yourself have needs is the best thing for your relationship because it takes the pressure off of the partner.

Amanda Testa: Mm, so good. I love how you mention, like, even if it’s your 500th choice you need to get what you need. [Laughs] Yeah, yeah.

0:41:05

Kate Carson: Yeah, and just the more I learn to love myself in it, the more I could look at my husband and really love him too. Until I was okay with me, I couldn't be okay with him, and I don't know what he was doing on his end, but it felt like I was the one who was strategically improving the relationship, and I think that’s probably the case. If the relationship is coming from a healthy place (which ours was) it only takes one person to start in the right direction.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Kate Carson: If the relationship is unhealthy, then that may not be true, and definitely trust your instincts, and stick up for yourself, and do what you need to do.

Amanda Testa: Yes. Well, thank you so much, again, Kate, for being here. I will, again, make sure to share how everyone can connect with you and work with you. Thank you for the beautiful work that you are offering the world.

Kate Carson: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure to see you again. I love to be on your show, and I love to see you and talk to you. Thank you, Amanda.

0:42:02

Amanda Testa: Yes, and for all of you listening, thank you for being here, and please, if there’s someone who you think could benefit from this episode, please share, and be good to yourselves, and we will see you next week.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. This is your host, Amanda Testa, and if you have felt a calling while listening to this podcast to take this work to a deeper level, this is your golden invitation. 

I invite you to reach out. You can contact me at amandatesta.com/activate, and we can have a heart-to-heart to discuss more about how this work can transform your life. You can also join us on Facebook in the Find Your Feminine Fire group, and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends. 

Go to iTunes and give me a five-star rating and a rating and a raving review so I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself.

Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

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Born and raised into a musicians’ family in Bulgaria, Alexandra Dotcheva came to the US in 2000 after earning a bachelor’s degree in Music from the National Academy of Music in Sofia. She earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in Violin Performance from Louisiana State University in 2007 and decided to pursue a career in nursing in 2008.

Alexandra Dotcheva has been practicing as a registered nurse since 2011, with a strong passion for educating patients on acquiring optimal health. She also has interests in martial arts, fitness, finance, and investing. Her mission is to help people overcome self-imposed limitations that prevent many from realizing their goals, finding peace of mind, and acquiring prosperity. By sharing her own journey to achieving control over the most important aspects of life, Alexandra’s goal is to inspire others to turn away from various forms of fear and self-doubt and go after their dreams instead of leading lives subdued to conventional ways of thinking that have long been proven outdated, inadequate, and damaging to a person’s self-esteem and self-confidence. 

Important Links: 

• More about Alexandra - www.holisticselfconfidence.com

• Purchase Holistic Self-Confidence - https://www.holisticselfconfidence.com/shop

• Read Alexandra’s blog - https://www.holisticselfconfidence.com/blog 

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EPISODE 218: Alexandra Dotcheva

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

If you are looking to stop getting stuck in self-doubt and grow your confidence, then kickback and enjoy this episode because this week on the podcast I'm talking with Alexandra Dotcheva on holistic ways to more self-confidence.

Hello, hello, and thank you for being here. I'm your host, Amanda Testa, and I just welcome you, Alexandra. Thank you so much for being here.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Thank you for having me, Amanda. I greatly appreciate it.

Amanda Testa: Yes, and I'm gonna have her share a little more of her story in a moment, but she is a hospital nurse and a one-time celebrated concert violinist in a very competitive world of symphony orchestras. So she is no stranger to self-doubt and low self-confidence, and so, she's gonna share a little bit from her own journey about how she really turned that around, made herself a self-made millionaire as well as really becoming an expert on her holistic health and wellbeing, and so, welcome! Thank you so much for being here.

0:01:11

Alexandra Dotcheva: It's a pleasure. Thank you. 

I will make the story of my life very short so you can actually ask the questions that will be relevant to your listeners, but yes, I was a violinist for 26 years before I decided to pursue nursing. I came to The United States in 2000 from Bulgaria. I had already earned my bachelor's degree in music. I earned my Master's and Doctoral in Violin from Louisiana State University, and then I moved to Syracuse, New York. I was employed with the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. In 2006, the market started shrinking, the orchestra started bankrupting, and I figured, well, something bad is really gonna happen. So in 2008, I figured, well, 2 of my closest friends and colleagues from the professor we worked with in Louisiana, they started pursuing finances and medicine respectively. They were two of the most gifted musicians that we had in our class during our study time, and I had to wake up and say I am really stuck in a field where I can't make any more progress because of my bad self-inflicted history, twenty-years-long of self-doubt and stage fright. 

0:02:06

I really struggled with stage fright quite a bit. I was able to give decent recitals, but when it came to orchestra auditions for the really competitive orchestras that would make a difference in my financial life -- you compete between 4,500 people, and I realized around 32 years old, if I don’t try something new now, I'll greatly regret 30 years from now.

So nursing was one option that you don’t get stuck in school forever. I had been in college for eleven years, mind you, before I made that decision, and it's a profession in high demand. My parents were terrified over the telephone. "Wait, what do you mean, nursing? You know this is one of the hardest professions imaginable? Do you know what it is to deal with human suffering? Do you have any idea what you're getting into -- or death?" I said, "Yes, I would like to do that because, honestly, guys," I told them over the phone, "I really have not developed any clear idea about real life and real people's problems being a violinist for 26 years. I need to change that so I can grow my self-confidence by learning to solve problems that I haven’t been willing to solve up to this point."

0:03:04

So nursing school, that was interesting because I had no science basis whatsoever. I had only learned music subjects. It was funny, the community college, they said, "Oh, we can probably use your music theory as one of these credits." I said, "No, guys. It has absolutely nothing to do with science, so everything here starts from scratch, literally." A late starter, right? That's what the book I wrote is all about, the late starters in life, the people who try to change their life, decide to change their life, even if they're in their 30s and 40s, in spite of you being told, "Oh, it's too late to learn something new." Learning starts when you get a grasp that you are responsible for your life and that if you don’t help yourself, nobody else will help you, right?

So nursing school, then I became a nurse in 2011, and I stopped playing the violin. The orchestra bankrupted in 2011, and I had a job waiting in the ICU at that point. Ironic timing, but great timing for me, not so much for my colleagues who didn’t pursue any other skills, unfortunately. So with nursing, I had encountered a double standard of hypocrisy of the contemporary Western healthcare system. 

0:04:00

I saw how chronic diseases are treated as very profitable venues for the industry. I learned that healthcare is the most profitable business in this country and is the first cause of personal bankruptcy in the US, which I found very disturbing. Okay, so I figured besides the job, I need to do something to secure my retirement but not the stock market, not a 401K because we know what happened in 2008 with 401Ks when people in their sixties lost their entire retirements. You can't recover when you're in your sixties and try to wait for a recovering market. It never recovers as fast as it crashes so I became an investor. I started investing in rental real estate. I have three real estate businesses right now which I manage happily by myself with my boyfriend who's a great, great sport. I've learned so much from him. He's been a nurse for 30 years now in the nursing home.

So, currently, we're completely financially independent. I also create options, right? So all this learning came over the past 10, 12 years because we wanted to expand our knowledge to have more and more options for multiple streams of income. 

0:05:02

The relationship has only strengthened from that because we're not worried anymore about, "What if I get fired tomorrow?" "What if the employer wants us to do something that we find profoundly unethical and we don’t want to go along with it and get fired or invited to resign," you know? So we don't have to worry about that anymore, and along this process of creating optimal health for ourselves with our organic whole foods, vegan diet for the last four-and-a-half years now, our crazy fitness routines and our financial freedom, we have also learned to very carefully select our relationships -- very carefully because time is your most valuable asset, and if you lose it, you can't get it back. If you waste your time on people who constantly argue with you, who defend their old ways of thinking against the status quo and conventional thinking and stop you from your own progress, you will not flourish in your life, and you will not be holistic, and you really have to align your existence with people who are like-minded even if they pursue different goals, but they are just as task-oriented and determined and self-reliant and resilient as you are, and they inspire you and you inspire them in return. So that's in a nutshell.

0:06:12

Amanda Testa: Yes, well, I know that's the Cliff Notes of a very long journey, and I just really want to celebrate, like you even say, that decision to go down a path where you had no experience to try to solve problems you'd never solved to get over the self-doubt, and to also have options of ways to not be stuck, financially too, you know, and that we're never too old to learn something new.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Exactly, exactly. Yeah, thank you.  

Amanda Testa: Yeah, and I'm wondering, too, if it feels okay to share, maybe if you could kind of talk a little bit more about some of the ways that you noticed your self-doubt changing as you kind of decided to follow a new path --

Alexandra Dotcheva: Of course.

Amanda Testa: -- of solving problems you'd never solved before.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Absolutely. It was an interesting combination of desperation, fear, inspiration and curiosity that -- that's a strange amalgamation of factors there, a heck of a combination when they hit you at the same time at the right time in your life, but you either embrace it or you let them crush you because if your fear and desperation are stronger than your inspiration and curiosity, then you're screwed, right? 

0:07:12

But if you manage to equalize them and kind of transform your anxiety from the fear of failure into something that will motivate you to keep yourself accountable, you make it an ally, and the longer nights that you can't sleep, you gradually reconcile and say, "Okay, I’m anxious right now, and my fear is completely normal, but I have to dive into this new field. I have to solve these problems because otherwise I will not build my self-esteem, I will not build my character," which I really recognized that I was lacking character. I was very afraid of failure. I was extremely insecure, as if somebody cared if I failed or not. Once I realized that nobody gave a, you know, crap about me, I figured I'm my most important self-advocate, and that's where it all started.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Alexandra Dotcheva: I will do my path ethically and morally. I won't hurt others in the process, but I will pursue my path as long as I have a plan and goals. 

0:08:02

So I realized I needed a plan and I needed goals. Once that was in place, and you start following that, that's the latter. You might modify it, but you never lose sight of your final destination and your craziest dream. I learned I had to have crazy dreams that just build my first move and my second and so on, which is completely possible, and it's not about the money, it's about your ability to make that journey and recreate yourself and believe in your abilities to create a better life than your parents had and an example that they gave that you may think is nice, but in some cases it's not so nice because you think you're stuck in that same predicament, and you really aren’t. You really shouldn’t be.

Amanda Testa: Yes, and I think one of the things -- I love the term "holistic" because it does take into account all the different factors happening, and so, when you are speaking to holistic self-confidence, what do you mean by that?

Alexandra Dotcheva: For the sake of simplicity, I have divided life into five important pillars. The health, the spirituality, the career, the finances, and the relationships. 

0:09:02

So without optimal health, you won't be able to work and create multiple streams of income. So you won't be able to perform properly in your career field because you will not meet the capacity to match up with your peers and really deliver to your clients or patients or whoever your clientele is. Will you be able to appreciate your efforts and your work if you're not optimally healthy? A lot of medical bills will suck your bank account, and you won't be able to build your financial foundation for further streams of income so you can retire richer than you were when you were working as opposed to poorer. Many people carry the mindset of once I retire, I'll be poorer than when I was working, and that's why they keep working until their 70s and sometimes their 80s right now. It's just really, really heartbreaking to see people in their 80s and late 70s. They work because they have to, but not necessarily because they want to, right? 

As far as the career and building multiple streams of income, when you have the financial stability, then you can allow yourself to not work yourself to the bone for an employer and go to the fitness, to your diet, to your own cooking instead of relying on outside food which is really unhealthy. 

0:10:08

The restaurant food -- we don’t touch restaurant food. For years we haven’t. I mean, super few exceptions maybe once a year, but it's never our constant lifestyle. If I don’t buy the ingredients and cook them myself, I don’t touch it, right? That's the healthiest way to live and the most economical, honestly. Even if you have a lot of money, if you learn how to feed yourself economically and support your household like a very highly-efficient operation, the better for you and the more your wealth will grow without you necessarily displaying status in society because that's never been my thing. You know, I don't drive a Lamborghini for a Ferrari. They say, "Well, why don’t you buy this expensive car?" Well, because that's not in alignment with my values at all. Status has never been my thing. I just want to be completely independent with my health, my spirituality, my finances, my career, my relationships so I don’t have to rely on anybody, and that's the beautiful aspect of life. I'm the expert of my own life. That's all I need. Does that make sense?

0:11:02

Amanda Testa: Yes, that does make sense. So you have the five pillars, and they all build upon one another.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Exactly.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, and I think that's so important, too, when it also comes to, like we were talking earlier, relationships and sexuality and all the things. Everything affects everything, right? 

Alexandra Dotcheva: Yes.

Amanda Testa: We're not living in silos with just one aspect of ourselves, yeah.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Correct, correct.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, and I'm wondering, too -- because, often, there are things that we can control and things that we can't control. I'm wondering when it comes to resilience and self-confidence in handling the unknowns or the things that life throws your way that are unexpected, what are some tips you have around staying confident when that happens?

Alexandra Dotcheva: My tips are that many people think that they can't control things that they actually can control. First of all, you need to learn to control yourself. Now, in my case, I have to share that I was a martial artist for almost 12 years, and that tremendously helped with my self-control. Martial arts, people misunderstand. You know, oh, yeah, you can beat people. Yeah, you can, but that's not the point. The point is to, first of all, control yourself, and then you are able to defend yourself if need be, but the perseverance and the resilience and the control of yourself is what will allow you to better distinguish what you really can't control, and then you have to adapt to that if it is within your ethical and moral standards. 

0:12:16

If it's not, then you probably can take yourself away from a situation and create a new circumstance that can work for you, ethically and morally. It's a big game, a brain game, a spirituality game, if you wish, and it's a constant debate within yourself, and if you give me a more specific example of what you can or you can't control, I can give you a more specific answer, but because everybody's life is different, that's kind of a hard question to answer.

Amanda Testa: Yes, but I do appreciate that just kind of really focusing on the things that you can control and not letting the things that you can't control kind of sway that, but, you know, one of the things I was just thinking is in my own personal life, my husband is in holistic healthcare, and he's super -- he eats very healthily, he works out, he does all the right things, right? Then, he had a stroke last year which was unexpected and, thankfully, he's fine, right? 

0:12:59

So I think for him, that threw him for a loop thinking, “Oh I thought I could control my health because I do take such good care of myself, and I work out all the time, and I do all the things that are right,” but yet, still, there are some things that we just can't control, right? So I think in that aspect, in some ways, I would say the blessings from that were, A, that he totally recovered. It has been a little bit of a journey of just kind of coming back to, well, we really can't control anything. We can control some things, like we can control our daily habits and rituals and routines that support us. We can control who we surround ourselves with, right? We can control what we put into our bodies. We can control what we move away from. So there is actually a lot that we can do to give us that sense of comfort and confidence even when things outside might feel hard, I guess is what my question is in a deeper sense.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Right, that's the struggle. I'm very sorry to hear that. I mean, I know there are three types of strokes. I would love to look through a person's diet if I know they had a stroke and they think they ate healthy. We chose to eat completely plant-based with no added oils whatsoever to prevent strokes. Now, hemorrhagic strokes, that's a different story, right -- different reasons, but as far as clotting strokes and embolic and thrombotic strokes, these are very tightly linked to fatty animal and processed food products 'cause the plants don’t have that type of fat, and then when you exercise and all that, I know the stroke risk is exceptionally low in that case. 

0:14:15

Of course, I don’t know your husband's case. My respects for him recovering, and I wish him very lasting health from now on. A scary event for sure, and if you recover, that's very fortunate for you, and I hope he is fully functional.

Amanda Testa: Yes, yes, thank you. Yes, thank you. Yes, and so, what I'm wondering, too, when it comes to finding the things that you can focus on that you can control even when it feels hard, what would be some tips on the days where you're just like, "Yeah, it's hard today." How do you go forward and reconnect to the will and the persistence when it feels challenging?

Alexandra Dotcheva: I recreate my whole path of creating goals and the most important goals, and I focus on them once again. During my day, I really try to enjoy and appreciate the very small things that happen that many people may not notice, okay? 

0:15:03

For everybody that's different, but you can play your mind to make yourself laugh or cry if you want to because only you can control your thought process, okay? You can only influence others so much depending on the circumstance, if you can't control, you will have to try to make the best out of it because those problems are the ones that make us grow the most if we utilize them properly, like, learn from what happened, what are possible solutions, what can you solve, what can you do differently next time to avoid this from happening, right? It's very important to analyze the situation instead of just, "Oh, my gosh, what happened," and to completely freak out. It's hard to do sometimes, but the sooner you get control over your thought process in such a situation, the better off you will be for the rest of your day and the better you will sleep that night.

Amanda Testa: Yes.

Alexandra Dotcheva: The less you let it overwhelm you, the shorter amount of damage and the shortest amount of time you allow this event to cause you, the better off you will be. It's the same -- like, it's opposite when you say you meet a horrible attacker in the street, that you have to handle your goals to cause the biggest amount of damage in the shortest amount of time. 

0:16:05

But when you get that event that you can't control, then you control your mind over it. Consider it staying healthy in the event that you are able to make your own decisions, right, if a situation offers.

Amanda Testa: Yes, I do love the mindset piece. I think mindset is so important in everything, right? Whatever you are focusing on in your life, having those goals and really letting your mindset support what you want, right? It's very easy to have those negative thoughts or those self-critical thoughts or the thoughts that maybe were the voices of whatever the inner critics that we have, right?

Alexandra Dotcheva: You've just got to prioritize. What is the most important thing for me to do and understand in the moment so I can move forward to the next step and get out of the situation. Prioritization, yeah.

Amanda Testa: Yes, and I think, too, when you were talking about enjoying the small moments, I think that's such a huge thing. I'm wondering if you could maybe talk a little more about that 'cause I feel like, as someone who's devoted to pleasure, I think that is such a great way to tap into the core of it. 

Alexandra Dotcheva: Yes, it's a great way. For example, I like the drive between patients' homes, especially if I know that the next patient is gonna be a train wreck. So the ride, I try to look at every tree, every flower. In some familiar areas of the area that I live in Phoenix I know which seasons in certain landscapes they plant the certain flowers that I like. 

0:17:19

So I make my way to look at the flowers and smell them if I’m at a traffic light, but I've been in the profession for almost eight years now, so I know where I'm driving and what I'm doing without prolonging the trip between me and the patient because I have to be at the patient's home on time, but you create nice moments during the drive, and then once you get to the patient (which is your real performance and your real test), you try to make them as comfortable as possible by being genuine, such as my behavior with patients is very different from what you see from me right now because the patient is the sacred person right now that you absolutely have to help. So that gives me pleasure too, when I see that the patient is responding, and they appreciate that I genuinely care. 

0:18:02

Being a homecare nurse, honestly, allows me to teach patients more than when I was in the hospital. Other small things that you notice is the relief when the job is well done. You have communicated properly with your client (what they need to do, and hopefully they do it), but then, you realize if you don’t do it, that's not your responsibility anymore, so that's the matter of a source of relief. I mean, constantly, you create little things that you will see. Okay, I did this, but as far as pleasure, to me, the pleasure is if I can control right now pretty much everything I do which I didn’t feel I was able to for a very long time. So that alone gives me satisfaction, and I kind of -- it's not like you're coasting. You're always vigilant because things can go wrong very quickly before you even blink. That's happened to me too.

So constant vigilance is great, and then at the end of the day you're happy because you were able to be vigilant and not screw things up on the way, and everything went the way you planned or a little bit different but, still, it was under control. 

0:19:00

When they say life is what happens to you on top of what you plan -- while planning for life, life happens to you, right? So you have to be able to balance these two realities and still make it work for yourself, and then you're doing great if you can do that.

Amanda Testa: I think that balance piece is key of being able to, you know, kind of have a plan and be aware of what's happening in the moments, and also allowing for when the unexpected happens that you can get your mindset to support you in keeping moving forward by focusing on the things that you can control, yeah.

I'm wondering, too, you mentioned that you feel like you can work more with a patient being a home nurse than in the hospital system or another system like that. I'm curious why do you feel that way or what about it makes it easier to do?

Alexandra Dotcheva: You don’t have five call lights ringing at you at the same time.

Amanda Testa: Right.

Alexandra Dotcheva: You focus on the very same patient for an hour, an hour-and-a-half while in the home. You can answer all of their questions. You can thoroughly address their needs if you see that they have missed something that they could have done differently, and so you validate their ideas, they have the time to validate your ideas, and you can also tell them things that they won't normally hear from their doctor or from the healthcare system. 

0:20:10

For example, with the diet, I mean, there's such a discrepancy. Nutritional science is something that I have embraced, and many doctors and nurses have not because of the way we're schooled and dictated by the pharmaceutical industry. It's a very different approach, so I gear towards making people as independent from drugs as possible because I don’t take any pharmaceutical drugs. I'm 46 years old. My boyfriend's 50 years old. He doesn’t take any pharmaceutical drugs, but he did have two conditions that were potentially very damaging, hypertension and diabetes type two -- prediabetic, he became, and that's where he freaked out. That's when we started the vegan diet four-and-a-half years ago, and four months later, he didn’t have hypertension, he didn’t have high cholesterol, he didn’t have prediabetes anymore, and the cholesterol and hypertension had been problems for fifteen years from him. Now, he's free of those at age 50 which sounds crazy, but, again, with the proper direction and nutrition -- so when you say one-to-one patient care is much better quality of the delivery through a message for true health, but you also need to have the knowledge, and you also have to live 100 percent by your own example. 

0:21:11

I can't teach people nutrition and exercise if I don’t exercise like a fiend and I'm not completely physically fit because they notice right away. I won't tell you how many times patients have said, "Oh, thank you for not being a morbidly obese healthcare professional." It's like, "Oh, I'm not sure that's a compliment, but thanks for saying that," you know, because they have seen the double standard when they go to the hospital. Oh, we have these people, you know. You can tell they're sick and they're overweight and they teach us how to be healthy. How do they have credibility? Well, we don’t get credibility if we don’t live by personal example. So this is where the homecare nursing becomes very useful.

The other thing that's very good about homecare nursing which many people don’t realize, is they say, “Oh, well, that's a specialty. That’s a specialty because you're in the patient's home.” If you see how some people live, that you just -- in the emergency room where my boyfriend is, you see people with every disease known to man because you go to house where there are all sorts of sick people. All sorts of sick people come to the emergency room in a much more acute state. 

0:22:06

So we're not really specialty in terms of specializing in one condition, you see everything and you learn from everything. If you're willing to learn instead of saying, "Oh, I don’t want to learn about this condition," because some people get overwhelmed, right? You see all sorts of diseases, and you get overwhelmed, and you pick and choose your favorites. No, you get exposed to everything. You hear their problems, you listen to them because many of them really just crave to be listened to.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra Dotcheva: And I cannot tell you how much I have learned from patients, even more at this point than what I learned while I was reading, eight to nine hours a day, my nursing textbooks and doing clinicals for twelve hours.

Amanda Testa: Yes.

Alexandra Dotcheva: You can never underestimate your experience and what you can learn from your clients, in my case patients. 

Amanda Testa: Yes, so true. I'm wondering, too, you know, it sounds like one of the things you mentioned, too, is one of the pillars is spirituality.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: I'm wondering how do you integrate spirituality into your goals and your career and all the things?

Alexandra Dotcheva: If I achieve what I want in a legal and ethical manner, that's a very spiritually uplifting path for me and keeps me going. 

0:23:04

I like to meditate. That is my way to clean my mind. In the spiritual chapter of the book, I have discussed, of course, meditation as a way to detox your mind and clean it away. Then, inspiration is the nourishment part of mind. That is in chapter eight. Then, chapter 13 is about lifelong learning. That's also part of spirituality because that's the brain's fitness strategy. You keep learning all your life, and your brain stays alive, awake, and vigilant and flexible and all that. You don’t fall into old patterns and you don’t get old that way if you keep learning, but as far as spirituality, there are two components, to me, at least. It's the freeing of your mind through meditation because you have to get rid of these heady thoughts, the ones that don't contribute to your personal growth. Those thoughts have to be removed every day, and then to allow your mind to get inspired and nourished, it's best to start fresh, clean the next day and to be able to absorb anything that will help your personal growth and the growth of those around you.

0:24:02

Amanda Testa: I'm curious, for you, what are some of the things that inspire you that you use to kind of fill your brain with inspiration and motivation?

Alexandra Dotcheva: Other people's successes inspire me very much.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Yeah, it used to be the other way when we were growing up. You know, we are envious of other people's successes, but if somebody has achieved something from nothing, I get very inspired, and I push myself to do more because I said, "Ah, clearly they can do it. I can do more," right, instead of being resentful. So that's very inspiring when I see people succeeding and really benefiting others in the process. I think that's great.

Amanda Testa: Yes, I love that. I think that's such a great thing to observe because I think in this day and age with social media and all the things and people can find it really easy to compare themselves to others. That can be a real damaging thing to your self-confidence and self-esteem. So I wonder what you might have to say around when you -- maybe sharing a little bit more about how you turned that thought around from being envious or resentful to being inspiring.

0:24:56

Alexandra Dotcheva: The fitness helped very much with that because after having done martial arts for 11 years, I hit the gym very, very hard because I had sustained two injuries which I resolved to remove from my body which I did, but the fitness, interestingly, I had a very intense instructor (whom I’ve described in detail in chapter six on exercise). My master was Greg Tearney and his wonderful, wonderful wife, Master Judy Tearney. She was the first blackbelt karate woman in America, but he taught us mind over matter, and when I went into fitness, there were two things out of everything. You won't believe, but during the black belt cycles, he was making us do over 500 push-ups and 500 sit-ups in between all the sparring rounds, which are ridiculous. He made us run uphill for a 5K the first day of the black belt class. We were preparing for this for years, of course, but the gym, when I went, I figured, you know, I've never done pull-ups and dips, so I felt very embarrassed about that because I was otherwise very strong, but pull-ups and dips, these are among the hardest things, especially the pull-ups with full-range motion. So I started doing them with the assisted pull-ups machine, and I saw people were looking at me, especially the young ones because I was older, right? 

0:26:01

I was 41 at the time, and that's where I made a decision. You care what others think about you. It's not your business. Let them watch all they want. You are focused on your pull-ups. You want to be able to do 100 pull-ups a year from now. You need to focus on the pull-ups. Don't focus on these people, and I adopted that mindset with every other thing that I did at the gym and in my job as well, as soon as I did well, and now I'm able to do over 100 pull-ups in a session without a problem, without any assisted pull-up dip machine, and nobody's watching or laughing. They watch it, but they don’t laugh anymore. [Laughs] It's the opposite --

Amanda Testa: Right, that's impressive.

Alexandra Dotcheva: -- because here I am 46 now, you know, and 100 dips, 100 pull-ups, 8 to 12 miles on the bicycle with the highest resistance from start to finish without even stopping for a water, I mean, these are things that you build with consistency or you stop caring about what others think about you, 'cause those who still care what others think about them, they're exactly where they were six years ago at the gym. They're now the same exact way. They're doing the same exercises. They think they're exercises; they're like mild warm-ups as far as I'm concerned, right? 

0:27:06

But this mindset, you transfer everywhere in your life, in every other aspect, and once you have experience with many things that you are doing, you need to be able to connect the dots and see how all of them relate, and you can have the same mental approach with everything you do, and it works. It's just that very small switch in mindset that you've got to stick with and believe it and just trust it.

Amanda Testa: Yes, and I think the practicing is the key, right?

Alexandra Dotcheva: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: The continued practice and focus. 

Alexandra Dotcheva: Not compromise.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so I'm wondering, too, if there's any other question that you really wish that I would have asked or if there are any other words you want to share about the book or about what you want people to know.

Alexandra Dotcheva: With respect to the book, I wrote it because people started asking all these questions, right? So I eventually organized and said what if I just tell them what I did because they always ask me, "How are you so physically fit? How are you able to do this diet? Where do I start with being on a vegan healthy diet?" There is a whole chapter with recipes from my own household, super simple recipes. I'm very -- I can't imagine cooking every day. No, we cook twice a week. It takes me 45 minutes to cook, and then we eat.

0:28:09

So investing chapters and all that, it's also drawn completely from my personal experience so people can see how you can start investing, how you can learn or get involved, and I believe I have exhausted pretty much the five aspects in a comprehensive way that gives you a system, and it's based on experience. There is no BS. Your experience will be different, but I want you to see that I struggled a lot with tremendous self-doubt to the point of self-humiliation just to earn some approval from others, and that was in my teenage years and early 20s and late 20s. If people are hesitant to start something new or they're in a midlife crisis, that's the best book for them, truthfully, right now because it's very organized, it's very methodical and easy to read --

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra Dotcheva: -- is what I'm told from everybody who has bought it so far, and that's just it. You can always afford to buy a book. 

0:29:00

I have it on electronic and paperback versions so whichever suits you best, give it a try, and see what fits!

Amanda Testa: Beautiful, and, you know, one other question that I wanted to ask, too, is around the financial aspect in finding the money habits that support you. I'm wondering if you might just share a little bit about some ways that -- 'cause, again, like you mentioned, if you don’t have the financial wellbeing or there's constant fear, then that's gonna affect your health, and that's gonna affect your relationships and everything else. So I'm wondering if you were to share just maybe one or two tips around creating the money habits that serve you, what would you share?

Alexandra Dotcheva: Yeah, you need to make a difference between things that bring value in your life and those that don’t bring value in your life. So, for one thing, you want to stay away from credit card debt, but you can have debt when it’s rental properties. Tenants pay for this debt and you provide a nice place for them to live, an affordable place to live, I have to say. Don't bank on your tenants if you want them to respect you. Right now, this is very relevant with what happened with the COVID crisis and everything, but when you save money, first of all, you have to save much more than 10 percent of your income if you really want to get anywhere faster, but the saved money, you first invest in your financial education, and by financial education I mean all of my teachers, all of my mentors are self-made millionaires. 

0:30:12

I didn’t go take a financial college class because I know the professor earns a salary to make ends meet. I already knew how to do that, so I didn’t want somebody to teach me how to make money when they're relying on a salary themselves, so I need to know how the self-made millionaires made their money from scratch so I can become one of them. 

So I paid a couple of them for their online training, information products you buy, and you apply these strategies to your life, and it helped me. I was told, "Oh, these are scammers. Don’t do that, The Rich Dad Company. I studied with The Rich Dad Company, Robert Kiyosaki. I was warned against their teachings by people that were just as poor and financially ignorant as I was. As much as they were very well-intended, I decided not to listen to them, and said, "Well, let me see. I can risk some money and buy the courses." First, I read six of his books, of course. Then, I decided to buy the courses online, and the best money ever spent. 

0:31:04

They teach you how to prioritize. They teach you financial statements, and I'm not advertising, necessarily, The Rich Dad Company courses. There are other investment programs that you can do, but just research for yourself. Don’t be afraid to learn, read reviews, spend a little money, buy their books, see if you can trust them, and really don't buy things just to show off what you have. Create financial goals, realize how much you want your net worth by the time you're 60 or 65 or 55, again, depending on your goals. I, personally, am not very fond of the net worth concept. I really like the -- I'm a cash flow investor more so than capital gains and net worth. I mean, your net worth grows naturally, but cash flow, multiple streams of income that you can rely on for the rest of your life, and you want assets that are -- the income is slowly taxed, not like the earned income, that is the highest tax income. You have income from rental real estate. That's the lowest-taxed income because it's passive. Learn the difference between commissions and passive income and portfolio income. 

0:32:03

There is so much to learn in the financial world, but it all depends on your goals and plans, and most people don’t have a goal because they don’t know what will really make them happy. They have these generic ideas, "Oh, I want more money," but why do you want more money? "I want to be in good health." Why? Do you want to achieve something amazing that you need the good health for, like the really hardworking and successful people need their health to achieve all they achieve, or do you just talk to make yourself liked to your friends and neighbors? It's really interesting when you hear people talk, when you realize they really don’t have much in terms of goals.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

Alexandra Dotcheva: The financial aspect is no less. People are so irresponsible, financially. Look at the credit card crisis in this country right now. It's not a new thing, of course, but I never had credit card debt. My bank pays me every month to use their card. I've never paid interest in my -- for the last six years, I have not paid a penny of interest to my credit card or bank, but I get their cash rewards every month. They pay me to [Laughs] use their card. I've written in detail about this in chapter ten, the financial discipline, education, and education.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

0:33:04

Alexandra Dotcheva: And then the next chapter is about financial growth and investing.

Amanda Testa: One of the things I just want to share about that is, you know, like you say, you're never too late to learn something, and it can sometimes feel overwhelming, but really, it's not when you take it simply and just step-by-step, right? You can learn anything, and I think -- 

Alexandra Dotcheva: Just don't stop after step four! [Laughs] Keep on with five, six, seven.

Amanda Testa: Yes, well, that's the thing, too. I was listening to someone the other day -- I can't remember who -- but talking about that's what the master knows. When you're at the mastery, there is never a stop to the learning, right?

Alexandra Dotcheva: No.

Amanda Testa: There is never a stop, and that's what the master knows. You're not gonna stop learning. You're gonna always learn new things, and you’ve got to continue the learning process.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Yes, ma'am, and my most favorite from martial arts is, “The difference between the master and the beginner is that the master has failed more times than the beginner has even tried,” and this is such a true statement. There's a lot of failure in life, but if you treat it as a learning curve, then it's not really a failure. It's just you discovered one more way that it didn’t work. That's what [INDISCERNIBLE] said once upon a time. [Laughs]

Amanda Testa: Yes.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Yeah.

0:34:05

Amanda Testa: Well, thank you so much for being here and for sharing all of these beautiful inspirations and also to share more about your book, Holistic Self-Confidence. I'm wondering if you could just let everyone know where the best place to find you is and learn more about how they can get the book.

Alexandra Dotcheva: I do have a website. It's www.holisticselfconfidence.com, no dashes. The book is purchasable in paperback and eBook formats. I also have a blog that people can read. I just recently posted the sixth blog post 'cause I just started, right? They can read the blog. It's free, obviously, so they can see if they are interested in trusting me or not before they buy the book, but, like I said, the book is one of the most affordable ways to learn, then you buy courses from other people. That's a little bit more challenging for your financial organization, but I started through books. That's how I started my learning. I was clueless about finances, about health in many ways 15 years ago, and piece by piece, you just build your knowledge and make better decisions.

0:35:00

Amanda Testa: Yes, and that's what I love about the library, too, right? You don’t have to have a bunch of money to put in to learn. You can even just go to the library and get books which is great.

Alexandra Dotcheva: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's right. That's right.

Amanda Testa: Well, thank you so much again, and I'll make sure to put in the show notes where you can find more about Alexandra and how to connect and get her book. Thank you all for listening, and thank you again for being here, Alexandra.

Alexandra Dotcheva: A pleasure to be here. Thank you so much for having me, Amanda.

Amanda Testa: Yes, we will see you all next week.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. This is your host, Amanda Testa, and if you have felt a calling while listening to this podcast to take this work to a deeper level, this is your golden invitation. 

I invite you to reach out. You can contact me at amandatesta.com/activate, and we can have a heart-to-heart to discuss more about how this work can transform your life. You can also join us on Facebook in the Find Your Feminine Fire group, and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends. 

0:36:03

Go to iTunes and give me a five-star rating and a rating and a raving review so I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself. 

Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

Jayson Gaddis is a relationship expert and sought-after coach, as well as the Founder of The Relationship School and host of the successful Relationship School podcast. Jayson leads the most comprehensive relationship training in the world of intimate relationships and partnership, as well as trains and certifies relationship coaches. He has a master’s in psychology and lives with his wife and two children in Boulder, Colorado. Keep reading about Jayson here.

Get his book, Getting To Zero, HERE.

Follow Jayson on instagram HERE.

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If you've been interested in learning more about coaching with Amanda, she's now booking coaching clients for 1-1 support in creating the relationship and orgasmic pleasure of their dreams.   If you’ve been thinking about it, maybe we should talk!  Link here to book a free call to see if we’re a fit. 

EPISODE 217: Jayson Gaddis

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

Hello, and welcome! If you are wanting to resolve conflict more easily in your relationship, then you are going to be in for a treat today because, as you are well aware, conflict in relationships is unavoidable, but there are ways to move through it to emerge stronger and more connected. So, today, I'm thrilled to be talking with Jayson Gaddis. He's a relationship expert, founder of The Relationship School and host of The Relationship School Podcast. He's also the author of the book Getting to Zero: How to Work Through Conflict in Your High-Stakes Relationships. So welcome, Jayson. Thank you for being here.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, thank you for having me, Amanda.

Amanda Testa: I'd love if you wouldn’t mind just sharing a little bit about why this topic is so near and dear to your heart or why you're so passionate about this work.

​​0:01:02

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, well, it's something we all struggle with (including me), and it's just the uncomfortable part of relationships, and there's a tremendous amount of opportunity with any uncomfortable thing in relationships. So I love it as a personal-growth vehicle, and also I have a history of being difficult and struggling with conflict in my family and also growing up and then as a young man. So it's just a complicated thing that I want to figure out.

Amanda Testa: Yes. I feel like it's unavoidable and, often, we aren't giving good models of how to resolve conflict or how to -- I mean, some people are, but many of us are not. I fall into that category, and so, I know there are so many different ways people react when they're triggered or when their partner triggers them or someone at work or a friend. Specifically today, I'd like to talk about this in romantic relationship and long-term relationship because I think we can fall into these patterns that we repeat again and again, and I'm wondering if you wouldn’t mind sharing a little bit about some of the main ways people typically respond when they're triggered and why.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, yeah, I say there's four ways we disconnect with our, what I call, The Scared Animal, 'cause we're social mammals. We love being together even though we're difficult with each other sometimes. So the worst thing we can do is be cast out or rejected from the herd, so we react, and it's really understandable. Some of us get big. Some of us get small. So I call them the four disconnectors: we posture, we collapse, we seek, we avoid, or we might have a hybrid of several of those.

Amanda Testa: And would you mind going into a little more detail about what each one of those means?

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, so posture is like we kind of puff up and get loud, maybe a little aggressive. We yell. We raise our voice. We get intense and pursue the person, and that falls under the seeking person which is also the person who feels anxious, and they want to get the connection back, and they might not posture so much but they usually are using words, and their energy, it feels -- their partner might judge them as needy or clingy or desperate or sensitive or whatever. 

0:03:02

Then there's the collapsers, and they typically shut down and get really quiet, and they might stay in the room, but they sort of freeze and don’t say anything. Then the avoiders are another version of collapsing but they typically run away (either literally or in their mind they'll dissociate) or they will leave the room. If anything gets hard, they slowly walk out of the room, and they just keep avoiding having the conversation, and they often have a really hard time coming back to get back to a good place.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, and I'm curious, too, because I know I'm definitely -- I hate to say it, but it's true -- I'm one of the puffers. My immediate response, typically, is to get real loud and work on it and, of course, even after all the years of work on it I still am a human.

Jayson Gaddis: Oh yeah, very normal.

Amanda Testa: I have tough work still to do, but I laugh -- and my husband is the same way, so we laugh 'cause we both are very similar in how we respond (my daughter, too, in little ways). So we laugh a lot about that in our house because we are very aware, but it still will happen, and so, I'm wondering if people are listening and they're like ooh, I can maybe resonate with this style -- and, oftentimes, the way we respond might be with someone who's very different than we are.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah.

0:04:10

Amanda Testa: And so, there can be a lot of that or else, you know, also like passive-aggressive type of things where maybe they never speak up that they are upset but their partner walks by and, like, mutters things and they kind of wish they could just talk about it.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: And so, there are so many ways to (and why) our brains act the way they do, but I'm wondering when it comes to maybe if you recognize yourself in any of these, what would be some of the itty baby steps you could take to start to bring awareness to what you're doing and how you can work towards coming back to a place of balance or less charge, so to speak -- coming back to zero, as you say it. I love that.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, I call it zero, right? All of us want to get back to a good place with other people, and it just feels better in life to sleep and just go about our day when we're in a good place with the people we care most about. Yeah, so what you're describing with your family, for example, again, it's normal. 

0:05:00

We all have our flavor, our style, and I find that, over the years, it doesn’t change all that much. Sometimes it can change in terms of if we talk about attachment styles (seek and avoid being the two main ones) that can flip depending on the level of commitment we have in a relationship, but the first thing we have to do is to understand and have compassion toward ourselves and our partner that they grew up for 18 years in a certain family system in a culture where conflict and stress was done a certain way, and to sort of just change that with a snap of a finger because you read a book is unlikely gonna happen. So we need to just be kind to ourselves, and when we understand the human body and the nervous system and the brain, I think it's really helpful 'cause then we stop judging ourselves so intently, and then the next thing is we want to have a commitment (as a family or as partnerships) to get back to a good place. We always return and repair no matter what. That should be one of the number one agreements in a partnership is that when things get hard we always stay with it, and we get to a good place, and if we need outside help we'll hire it 'cause we just want to live our lives in a good place. 

0:06:06

It's amazing that most couples don’t have that agreement in place, and there is no talk of that even at the wedding or anywhere near that, sadly. 

So once we have awareness and then we have an agreement like that, then it's really less about the raising of the voice or the shutting down, and it's more about how quickly you can come back and repair whatever was hurt, and you want to both apply effort, and I like to start with listening first to the other person. You know, I often say the most resourced person listens. It doesn’t have to be the most resources, it's just the person who's willing to listen first and without scorekeeping like, "I've listened first the last 100 times, and you’ve never initiated." We don’t want to do that 'cause, again, we're asking our nervous system partner that's wired a certain way to be more like us, and that's not gonna work. So if we have to lead for the rest of our lives, then we lead, and we agree that this person is more of the champion for the repair, and we -- listening first is a big one. 

0:07:01

If we're gonna speak, the first thing out of our mouth needs to be what our part is, like, "My part is…" is my favorite sentence. Finish that sentence: "My part is…," and "I raised my voice." "I was a jerk." "I didn’t text you back." You know, that kind of thing.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

Jayson Gaddis: So those are a few pointers.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, and you just mentioned something that made me think of -- I love in your book how you talk about personhood and you talk about how you can't expect someone to change who they fundamentally are, right? Behaviors, you can work on, but how it's really unfair to ask that of someone.

Jayson Gaddis: Yes.

Amanda Testa: I wouldn't mind if you went and talked a little bit more about that because I see that happening so much with couples.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah. Yeah, completely. We do, and it's, again, kind of a dumb move for us in partnership but we do tend to ask our partners to be different because we really have a belief that if they would just change then things would be smooth sailing or better, right? And so, it's understandable why we do it, but it's not a good enough reason to do it or continue doing it. I call that, as you probably saw, reasonable request for behavior change. You get to ask for behavior change if it's reasonable, and I think it's very reasonable to ask your partner to return and repair and work on it and work on becoming a better listener and communicator. 

0:08:05

That's a reasonable request. What's not reasonable is to say, "Hey, you need to come to my church and the things I believe in." "Hey, you're a messy person, and you are disorganized, and you are dissociated, and you have a short attention span, and all that needs to be different for me to be in a relationship with you." It's like, no, they're a work-in-progress like you. They're probably not gonna change that kind of stuff much, but they could respect and not leave their socks on the floor. That's something they could probably do, but to ask them to be more like you (OCD or whatever) then I just don’t think that's a good idea.

Amanda Testa: What would you say to someone that's finding themselves asking that of someone? How can they take a step back and say, "All right, well, what am I willing to put up with and what am I willing not to," right?

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: That's kind of a question that I would have them come back to, but you know what else about that or even just agreeing to be where they are. 

0:09:01

Like, I agree to be here in this situation. I'm not gonna do anything about it or I am gonna do something about it or --

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, I mean, I like kind of edgy experiments. So here's one (it's a little edgy). Look your partner in the eye, and just say, "I really want you to change who you are, and I don’t accept you as you are." Just notice what it's like, what the impact of saying that is like on them. They probably might cry or feel defensive. 'Cause that's essentially what you're saying with your actions when you keep trying to change people. It's like then be direct. Just tell them, "Hey, I'd love you to be different, and I would love you more if you were different." That's honest, as you're saying that with all your other kind of sideways comments. So we could start there. 

If that feels a little too risky, then we need to ask ourselves, "Look, can I live with and grow old with or be in a relationship with someone who is kind of fundamentally like this?" They're just slovenly or they have a hard time -- they have an addiction. Can I live with that or do I have some non-negotiables where I'm like I'm unwilling and unable to and I will not live with a person who blank. 

0:10:07

That's fine. We get to have our preferences, but sadly, a lot of people stay in these tension-filled marriages trying to change each other for years on end, and I just think that's a recipe for a lot of heartache and resentment and burnout, and it just sucks.

Amanda Testa: I mean, I think if people had more skills around communicating more clearly or being more direct, there's so much that can be done there. I think that's a hard thing for a lot of people.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: I'm wondering, too, because one of the things that -- I am sure you hear this a lot -- but I hear a lot of women who come to me and they really want to make some changes or they want to do work on their relationship but their partner's not necessarily always on board.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: I'm wondering what maybe you would share around having more of a buy-in from your partner to kind of work together on things and work together on resolving conflict more peacefully. How can you go about those conversations and bringing them onboard?

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, great. I mean, this is really common, right? I like to call them Enrollment Conversations.

Amanda Testa: [Laughs] Yeah.

0:11:03

Jayson Gaddis: Enrolling our partner into how we want to do our partnership, and let's just use the classic kind of traditional male-female-gendered conversation where the woman is listening to your podcast, she's reading my book, and the man is, you know, just for whatever reason not interested. It's not a value of his, but men will come around. I always think, is this kind of an asshole kind of a guy or is this a good man in hiding? A good man in hiding will come around if he's enrolled in a way that works for his values and he sees that by putting attention on you and your feelings and the relationship, he actually will improve his life 'cause so often a man sees that as a threat. He interprets an ask for, "Hey, can we connect more," or, "Hey, I'd love to spend more time, and you're always going out with the guys, but you won't spend time with me," or whatever, he sees that as a threat, and it's understandable given his values and probably if we knew his history and what he grew up with and his relationship to the feminine or his mother, and guys are kind of asleep to that 'cause personal growth is not as sexy. 

0:12:08

I mean, it's getting sexier for young men, especially, to be into self-reflection and personal development. So we just have to help a man see how considering feelings, connecting, and prioritizing his female partner is gonna help him. So I always tell women, "Look, you’ve got to understand his highest value (and let's say it's work, that's a lot of men's' highest value), you’ve got to help him see how having a better connection and spending time and energy and going to therapy or coaching and reading books together on the relationship is actually gonna help him make more money. It's gonna help him get a raise. It's gonna help him be a better leader. It's gonna help him be a better boss. It's gonna help him be a better friend to his people because, look, we're living in a world where relational intelligence is really needed right now more than ever.

Amanda Testa: Yes.

Jayson Gaddis: And thanks to people like Brené Brown, a lot of men are starting to wake up to the fact that, shit, if I'm a male leader in this culture and this time, I've got to be way more tuned-in relationally, I've got to be more sensitive, I've got to consider feelings, I've got to slow down, and it's not my natural thing 'cause I grew up as a boy who my father told me to shut my feelings down, and I got made fun of on the playground. 

0:13:13

So men are up against all their conditioning.

Amanda Testa: Yeah. Yeah.

Jayson Gaddis: But, again, a good man in hiding, he's gonna come forward if enrolled in the right way, and then if not -- if it turns out he's not a good man in hiding, and he continues to stonewall or gaslight or whatever, it's like why in the hell would you want to be in that relationship, you know? Don't settle for that shit.

Amanda Testa: Yeah. [Laughs] It's true. I like that, and I really do love how just taking that reflection of what are you willing to put up with and what are you not, and putting yourself -- having that, I think, self-awareness and self-honoring to stand up for what's important to you and your values and speaking those to one another versus being afraid to and living in misery. It's easier to -- sometimes there's that fear of having the conversation of doing some work around it, but actually on the other side, it can be so much more connected and so much better (like you say) for all areas of your life because how you do anything bleeds over into all the different areas of your life.

0:14:07

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: It really does. Yeah, and I really love how you talk about getting to zero because that's just a skill that can serve you in so many areas, right, whether it's your partner that triggers you or someone that pulls out in front of you in the road or whatever it is.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: So I'd love it if you'd share a little bit more about how you can go about doing that from a physiological perspective too, but I know there's a lot of aspects involved with that if you'd share a little bit more about that if you don’t mind.

Jayson Gaddis: Sure. I mean, to be in an adult partnership these days there's so much stress and demand from our external world, and then there's stress from what's going on in the world and the news we watch, and some of us are numbed out to that, and some of us are ultra-sensitive to that. Regardless, we have to, I think, look at how becoming more relationally focused and sensitive to how our nervous system operates in relationship with others and how the other person operates in relationship to others, I think we can set ourselves up for success. So I talk about self-regulation and interactive co-regulation. 

0:15:07

So self-regulation is when I get triggered by you, it's my ability to be with all the discomfort that arises when I'm triggered by you or triggered by the person that cut me off or whoever. I'm gonna be a stronger human, a stronger parent, a stronger leader if I can not react and instead, I can just be with. Ooh, this is really hot and fiery and uncomfortable, and ooh, I feel rage, or I feel sad, and just be with it without needing to do anything. That's self-regulation, and a lot of mindfulness these days is about self-regulation.

Amanda Testa: Mm-hmm.

Jayson Gaddis: Which I love the mindfulness movement. And then there's interactive regulation or being there for our partner's nervous system 'cause often they can't regulate themselves (they don’t know how 'cause they grew up in a family where that wasn't on the menu) so it's a big ask to help them regulate their feelings, but we can help, and how we can help is by looking at them in the eyes 'cause then we don’t go into memory (negative memories and associations). 

0:16:03

So eye contact is actually really important. Even though it can feel threatening, it's often a really good move. Not a staring contest, I'm just talking about looking at the eyes and occasionally looking away. It's like titrating. Then there's physical touch which is huge. Moving our body and the position of our body -- so if you're sitting down and I'm standing up, I look intimidating, so I don’t want to do that, especially if you get scared around me and my voice. So I'm gonna sit down next to you and not face square-off with you. I might sit next to you to be less threatening. I might put my hand on your shoulder or hand on your leg and say, "Honey, is this okay? I know I'm mad at you, and you're mad at me, but I want to see if we can cross this chasm of this connection by just physically being close. How would that be for you?" 

Some of us would rather move away from the scary person, and that's really understandable, but if we can do an experiment and push ourselves to move toward the person physically and have some kind of agreement ahead of time that physically we're gonna just make contact -- like we're gonna hug even though we kind of feel like enemies right now. 

0:17:03

We're gonna hug and take three breaths, and we're gonna see if our bellies can touch and if we can start to let down and let go because we're usually gripped in this moment. So there are a number of things we can do to try to do this, and then there's obviously things we can say such as, "I raised my voice," like, owning stuff. "I was kind of mean there," or we can say, "Tell me about how you're feeling and how what I did made you feel. I'm really interested." All these gestures are basically us saying, "I care about you, and I want to get to zero. I want to get back to a good place."

Amanda Testa: Yeah, and I think, oftentimes, they're not that difficult to do when you can remember to do them, right?

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: So, oftentimes, I think practicing some of these tools, if you have that agreement -- like, we really want to work on having better conflict resolution and to be on the same page with repairing, so can we practice some of these things when we're not in a state of crisis or chaos so that we could remember them when we need to, right?

0:18:01

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, totally. Yeah, and if you have a partner who's anti-tools like, "Oh, you're just telling me all these tools," 'cause some people are like that -- 

Amanda Testa: Yes.

Jayson Gaddis: -- it's like cool, all I care about is the end result, honey, which is I need my nervous system to relax, and I need to feel connected again, and so, I don’t care how we get there. I care about the destination, which is getting there, and if we can be respectful in the process, and if you can be creative, great, but it's gotta work, and this is where people get really annoyed with how difficult the other person is. We get so mad because it's like god, no one ever did this for me as a kid, and now I've got to somehow learn about your nervous system and what makes you tick and what helps you calm and soothe, and it's like yeah, if you want to be in a good marriage, yeah, that's kind of required I think. If you want a mediocre marriage or if you want to just be roommates, no, you don’t have to do that. You can do whatever you want but seriously, a good, secure relationship is built on conflict repair, conflict repair, conflict repair, over and over. That actually builds security. It's the same in parent-child relationships.

0:19:03

Amanda Testa: Yes, I mean, all of those things that you shared about regulating your own self and your nervous system so you can be there for your partner or your kid, I mean, it's the exact same thing. It benefits so many relationships, and I think if you do have kids, having this kind of skill is even more important, oftentimes, so then they can witness it and learn from it as well.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, and sadly, so many kids now are going to their phones to regulate, and it's good that they know how to calm down with their phone. I'm always bummed when I see parents hand their two-year-old a phone when they're crying or something 'cause I'm like you're actually teaching your kid to not regulate and regulate through a screen, and so, now, anytime they're uncomfortable or dysregulated, they're gonna want the phone because that's what soothes them the most, and being social mammals, we want to be able to soothe through other humans. It's way more long-lasting, it's way more fulfilling, it sets you up for successful adult partnerships, so I feel it's kinda dicey these days with kids and their phones and the lack of eye contact. 

0:20:06

There's a lot of downsides, right, that I perceive, especially for their adult relationship life. I can just see where that's going.

Amanda Testa: Yes, I'm with you there, and also, too, you know, in adult relationships there are a lot of problems with the phone there as well.

Jayson Gaddis: That's true.

Amanda Testa: You know, we're just waiting to shut -- you know, so addicted to the phone or whatever, using it way too much.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, right, and totally. I would say to the listener, if that's you -- let's say you have a partner who's -- you guys fight and talk and connect while someone's constantly looking at their phone or they're multitasking on their phone, you’ve been tolerating that so you’ve got to stop tolerating that. You can make requests (again, reasonable requests) which is, "Honey, will you set the phone down just while we're talking about this subject? It would mean a lot to me. I'm starting to feel like you're not as interested, and I think you are, but it would help me to feel more of your presence here." Again, a good partner is gonna understand that kind of request. Wow, this is gonna help us. This is gonna help the relationship.

0:21:02

Amanda Testa: And I really appreciate you, and when you say that you're always kind of mentioning why it's important, like, the reasoning and here's why it's important to me.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah,

Amanda Testa: I think that helps a lot with getting enrollments in whatever you're asking, right?

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, that's right.

Amanda Testa: And so, I'm wondering, too, kind of in that same vein of making these reasonable requests, if it's something that you've not done before and you're not very good a maybe setting boundaries for yourself or asking for what you need, how could you encourage someone to start doing that? What are some baby steps they could take or some movements in that direction to make those reasonable requests more often?

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, well, get in touch with what you want, and most of us want a secure long-term relationship. So if that's true, notice how your behavior, your daily actions are not lining up with that desire, and then start taking off your behaviors that you're colluding with an old strategy of yours or you've agreed unconsciously or implicitly with your partner that we just talk and fight and we're both on the phone and somehow we just figure it out and we wait for five days and it gets better and then we're good again. 

0:22:05

It's like look, you've trained this person for so many years that it's okay to kind of walk all over you or to treat you this way, and they've basically trained you that it's okay for you to treat them this way, and so, you’ve got to put your foot in the sand here and say, "Look, I'm not gonna do that anymore," and I think the first boundary, really, is with ourselves -- like what we will and will not do ourselves. Okay, I'm not gonna blame anymore. I'm gonna lead every conversation with a personal responsibility statement. "My part is…," for example, instead of, "You always, you never." That could be one little thing that we can start to work on to change, and that goes a long way, and whenever we put attention on something like that, we start noticing everywhere how many people do it, and then we start to get irritated by it, and we're like, "Wow, I can't believe so many people are just in blame, and that was me. Whoa," and it's really enlightening. This is an amazing thing to model to children because children need to see the big people change and transform too and get interested in this kind of stuff 'cause it's good for their relational health and mental health. 

0:23:06

So yeah, it's sort of like what do you want, and start looking at what's in the way, and start setting some limits around that, but here's the thing with boundaries (which you probably know about) is it's one thing to set a boundary and say it; it's a whole other thing to follow through consistently.

Amanda Testa: Yeah.

Jayson Gaddis: Like I have a friend who's parenting a 14-year-old girl, and it's around her phone, and he just won't take away the phone, and he keeps threatening to take away the phone, and he keeps not doing it because he's afraid of more conflict, right, and that she'll rage on him which is what she does when he sets boundaries. It's like yeah, well, you're gonna have to tolerate some of her rage when you finally take away the phone, but that's ultimately what's gonna be better for her in the long run is you being consistent with your boundary, because every time you set a boundary and you don’t follow through with it, you're untrustworthy, and young people learn to not trust big people because they say one thing and do another. That's everywhere. This is why I love teenagers when they're rebelling 'cause I'm like yeah, you're so tired of fucking adults being hypocrites.

0:24:04

Amanda Testa: [Laughs] Yes, that's so true, oh, my goodness. I can relate to that myself, too. I was a very rebellious kid.

Jayson Gaddis: [Laughs]

Amanda Testa: [Laughs] And so, you know, I think, too, like you say, making that commitment to yourself again and again, so that when you show up through each interaction, you can say, "Am I upholding my values? Am I sticking to what I'm asking? Am I sticking to my boundaries? If not, using the tools like you teach, that's so important. So many of us teach around regulating your own nervous system (being with yourself, being able to be with the hard emotions), and I love that you have some really amazing tools that you have in your book and in your toolkit that goes along with the book to really practice that -- like the meditations, too. What does that look like? How do you do it, right? People might be listening, "Yeah, that all sounds good, but how do you do it," you know?

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, having a hammer's one thing; using it's a whole other thing, right?

Amanda Testa: Yes. I think that's -- I don’t know. I find the practice of these things is the most important thing 'cause it can just be one little thing that you practice again and again that is a huge change.

0:25:06

Jayson Gaddis: I mean, it's unbelievable what I see in our students through -- we have a nine-month course, for example, and people come into that course scared and skeptical, of course, and then nine months later, they're an altered human being because they know how to listen differently, and it's a permanent life-upgrade, and to see a person go from kind of being a blamer to an extremely good listener is really powerful, but it takes practice just like you're saying. That's why we make our students practice. Like, look, between classes you have to do a practice call with a peer and actually flex that muscle over and over for the game (when it counts) which is under stress with your partner at home. That's when the rubber meets the road, right? But if you’ve been getting your reps in, in the meantime, you're more likely to be successful when it counts.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, and would you be willing to share a little more about where people can learn more about you and find out some of these programs that you are offering? Also, I know you have a coaching program as well. I do feel like there's a good amount of coaches that are listening to the podcast as well, maybe you can share a little bit about that 'cause I think it's an amazing program.

0:26:06

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so relationshipschool.com is our main website, and you can find the podcast and blog and lots of courses there. That's probably the easiest place to go. I'm active on Instagram @jaysongaddis. Once a year now we train people to become relationship coaches, and these are people that are brand new that have never been a coach before as well as people who are life coaches already as well as nurses, doctors, and we seem to be getting more and more psychotherapists and counselors and social workers come into our trainings because they -- like me, I did a three-year master's degree in psychology, and I didn’t have one class on relationships. So I've got that coupled with I didn’t learn this ever in undergrad or high school or elementary school or middle school, so I was like okay, I'm gonna create a school where we do this. This is all we do. So I'm trying to educate the planet to get better, here, at relationships, and that's my mission, of course.

Amanda Testa: Yes, yes.

0:27:06

Jayson Gaddis: So I'm training people to become relationship coaches in nine months and be a certified relationship coach that can charge money and actually start to work with clients 'cause you're always gonna have job security, right? There are plenty of people who need help here.

Amanda Testa: Yes, yes. I love, too, what you're doing with kind of trying to get this information to people younger and younger.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, absolutely.

Amanda Testa: Because how amazing it would have been to learn this all along in school, right? I'm trying to get better with the social-emotional learning these days, but definitely not when we came along or when I came along, that was not something we were taught.

Jayson Gaddis: Me neither, yeah. Yeah, I mean, my health class was one class on sex ed, and it was so bad, and I grew up in Utah, so it was really censored, and there was one class. I mean, just there was nothing about relationships in health class, I was like are you -- that's so vital now. We know this through neuroscience and research that the quality of our relationships is really paramount to the quality of our health and wellbeing --

Amanda Testa: Yes.

Jayson Gaddis: -- over the lifespan.

0:28:04

Amanda Testa: Yes. Well, I so appreciate your time, and thank you for being here. I'm wondering maybe if there's a question that I didn’t ask that you wished I would have asked or maybe anything else that you wanted to share?

Jayson Gaddis: I would just share this. We sort of covered it, Amanda, but I would just say it again in a different way which is let's say you read my book, and you're like, "Okay, cool, what do I focus on? There's so much here," or you listen to this podcast, I would say if you only had to do one thing, it would be repair. If you just focus on how to get back to a good place with your family members, your friends, or, specifically, your partner or your ex-spouse (who you're co-parenting with or whatever) or your kids, it's so vital for relationship health and security that, I mean, really, what my whole book is about is how do we get back to a good place, how do we get to zero, and I just think it's a great kind of focus if someone's struggling in a relationship or wants to work on something in the next relationship. A lot of people say, "Communication! We need to communicate better." 

0:29:03

Well, that's probably true, but you already communicate fine; it's that you don’t communicate very well under stress --

Amanda Testa: Yes.

Jayson Gaddis: -- and you don’t know how to clean up the mess after you create one or they create one. That's where you should put your attention -- how to clean up the mess effectively, and plan on it being for life, not, "Oh, it's a stage. We're just in the kind of challenging stage of our relationship." No, for the rest of your life you're gonna experience conflict with a spouse and kids and family, so get good at it. Get good at the repair part, and you will change your life.

Amanda Testa: Yes, I can attest. It's an amazing thing when you can do that and have that experience that you can share with the people that you love, too, that they can learn from because there's always gonna be something, right?

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, that's right.

Amanda Testa: There's always gonna be something.

Jayson Gaddis: There's always gonna be something.

Amanda Testa: So, you know, one other last thing that I just had a question about is because, you know, you mentioned when people are doing this work and they want to practice, and maybe they are having a hard time getting their partner on board to practice, I love how you mentioned, like, is there a friend that you can practice with.

0:30:01

 Just finding someone who is open because it doesn't really matter as long as you do the reps of learning it, and then you can more easily bring it to whatever conflict you're dealing with. So…

Jayson Gaddis: Exactly. You could be one of Amanda's podcast listeners or maybe you’ve done a course with her. Find someone in that community and start practicing, 'cause, let's face it, some of our, quote, "friends" think it's weird or they don’t want to do this 'cause they don’t see the value in it yet, but find a willing person who's like, "Yeah, I could use that too," and then you become practice partners.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you so much, again. I'll make sure to share in the show notes with everyone where you can find more about The Relationship School and all the wonderful work that Jayson and his team are up to. Thank you, again, for being here.

Jayson Gaddis: Yeah, you're welcome. Thank you.

Amanda Testa: And thank you all for listening, and, yes, please take some nuggets and find some practice partners or just digest one thing you could implement or get the book if that's all you do because it is an amazing book. It's called Getting to Zero, and, as you can tell, both me and my dog love this book. [Laughs] It's so good. So thank you again, and we will see you all next week!

[Fun, Empowering Music]

0:31:05

Thank you so much for listening to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. This is your host, Amanda Testa, and if you have felt a calling while listening to this podcast to take this work to a deeper level, this is your golden invitation. 

I invite you to reach out. You can contact me at amandatesta.com/activate, and we can have a heart-to-heart to discuss more about how this work can transform your life. You can also join us on Facebook in the Find Your Feminine Fire group, and if you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please share with your friends. Go to iTunes and give me a five-star rating and a rating and a raving review so I can connect with other amazing listeners like yourself. 

Thank you so much for being a part of the community.

[Fun, Empowering Music]

JOIN IN THE DISCUSSION ON THIS EPISODE AND MORE IN MY FREE FACEBOOK GROUP, FIND YOUR FEMININE FIRE HERE.

Elena Sonnino is a life coach, yin yoga teacher, and author. But what most people say about Elena is that she brings delightful sparks of energy to everything she does. 

Elena is on a mission to help you transform the walls of survival mode into doors of possibility so that you can step into the spotlight of your life as your most rooted and nourished self. Her work helps you get out of your head and into your body as your source of wisdom, and moves you from beyond shoulds and into delight, one day at a time. 

At home, Elena enjoys watching the sunrise, tending to her many plants, riding her Peloton bike, and impromptu kitchen dance parties.  

Learn more about Elena at www.elenasonnino.com or by reading her new book, Inhabit Your Joy: A Book of Nudges.

And please - if you have a question you'd like Amanda to address on a future episode, submit it on this anonymous form.

If you liked this episode, please consider giving me a 5 Star Review on Apple Podcasts! It truly does help the podcast grow. 

If you've been interested in learning more about coaching with Amanda, she's now booking coaching clients for 1-1 support in creating the relationship and orgasmic pleasure of their dreams.   If you’ve been thinking about it, maybe we should talk!  Link here to book a free call to see if we’re a fit. 

EPISODE 216: Elena Sonnino

[Fun, Empowering Music] 

Amanda Testa: Hello, and welcome to the Find Your Feminine Fire podcast. I am your host, Amanda Testa. I am a sex, love, and relationship coach, and in this podcast, my guests and I talk sex, love, and relationships, and everything that lights you up from the inside out. Welcome!

Hello, everyone, and on this week’s podcast, I am going to be exploring some themes around feeling broken and maybe when you are struggling to find pleasure or if there have been experiences in your life that have really disconnected you from that or that have involved pain. That’s a very real part of life, and so, what I’m really looking forward to today is I’m talking to Elena Sonnino, and she is a life coach, a Yin Yoga teacher, and an author, and her most recent book is called Inhabit Your Joy: A Book of Nudges. I just love that name. [Laughs] We’re gonna kind of dive into a little bit of the journey of pleasure and what that looks like and what we might think we might want to do to ourselves that might not be the most supportive and what, actually, are some beautiful ways to kind of move through this journey because, really, there’s never a destination. 

0:01:14

There’s always gonna be the road, and so, really, it’s around kind of finding your way and finding the joy in the process.

So welcome so much, Elena. Thank you for being here.

Elena Sonnino: Thank you so much, Amanda. My heart was smiling as you were sharing that, and it is so much about the journey and that process, right? So thank you. I’m delighted to be here.

Amanda Testa: Yeah, and so, I’d love it if you wouldn't mind maybe just sharing a little bit of your story and kind of why you have such a passion around this.

Elena Sonnino: Yes, I mean, passion is such a good word for it, right? I do have passion around this because this has been a journey I’ve been on -- oh, my goodness -- for 25 years without me even really realizing it. So in my early 20s, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma. 

0:02:05

At that time, I was kind of starting, right? You're in your early 20s. At that time I wanted two things: I wanted to be a mom, and I wanted to be an elementary school classroom teacher. Then, there I was, relatively healthy and being diagnosed. That time in my life changed everything I thought to be true about my body. 

The first six months of chemo actually weren’t a huge deal. The worst thing about them were that I gained a lot of weight and I lost my hair, but I felt relatively good, but what happened was even my relationship to receiving pleasure -- because my body was changing so significantly, my drive for pleasure or passion kind of felt nonexistent, and I was newly engaged at the time, and it became everything about pleasure felt like I needed to armor up for -- there was something already wrong with me, and here I was in my early 20s, and my life hadn’t been filled a lot with pleasure. 

0:03:08

I hadn't really started to experience pleasure through sensuality until about that time, and it felt cut short so abruptly. I went on to heal, and then I recurred, and when I recurred, I ended up having a bone marrow transplant, and because of that, theories around me being able to have children kind of came off the table, I developed blood clots which meant, in the long term, I wasn't ever going to be able to take estrogen because there was a clotting risk, and my body essentially (even though I survived) started moving towards early menopause in my very early 20s, and so, my body literally started changing from the inside out. 

Again, pleasure felt unaccessible to me, passion felt unaccessible to me, and I just kept being told by doctors -- honestly, by my partner -- we are just gonna kinda have to push through this. I was, to some degree, a bulldozer in my life. [Laughs] 

0:04:07

I was that person who saw a situation and -- as my dad said to me once, “You're that person that can do anything she sets her mind to,” and I believed him at the time, but what I’ve realized since then is that everything that I’ve achieved in my life had nothing to do with my brain. Yes, our brains are super powerful, but the moments of the most aliveness that I’ve experienced have come from that very deep place within me where I embodied possibility or I embodied hope without certainty, right? 

When I found out I was pregnant, we had been going down a path of a donor egg. I was weeks away from receiving a donor egg, and that created its own obstacles to receiving pleasure, right, because suddenly everything became very mechanical, all of it.

0:05:01

The doctor -- I burst into tears when they told me over the phone that in the ultrasound, to figure out what my body was gonna be doing, that they saw something, that that’s not what they thought they were gonna see. So he makes this call, and he tells me, and I’m sobbing, sobbing, crying, and he lets me cry, and then he says, “Look, you have a choice. You can grieve or you can celebrate until the day you can’t.” It was instantaneous for me. I knew. “Option B, please,” right? [Laughs] 

And so, I knew I was learning this lesson again and again to show up for the possibility even in uncertainty, but when it came to passion and pleasure and desire in my body, there were big, big walls that I built up because it felt like I was constantly needing to defend myself, and that I couldn't possibly be soft or vulnerable, and I really couldn’t depend on anybody else. So I kind of walled that part of me off, and then I started experiencing (after a hysterectomy that I had) significant vaginal pain during intercourse. 

0:06:06

I’ve listened to so many of your episodes that talk about how this isn't the only way to receive passion and pleasure and to be intimate with your partner, and yet, that was what I thought to be true, and over time it became so significant that more walls got put up.

And then somebody said to me, “You are not broken. This does not define you, and this does not mean that you can’t experience pleasure and passion and desire and have a healthy, intimate relationship with my now-husband.” Hearing that -- when a pelvic floor physical therapist said that to me about a year ago, I could feel the wall -- it didn't come crumbling down. It wasn't like a magical flipping of the switch, but suddenly there was a little sliver of light, and the more we started to explore breath work and really look at the system as a whole -- things aren’t fixed. 

0:07:16

There is still pain, and I am still very much in this process, but I’m so passionate about this because I know so many women who, for whatever reason, have created walls around themselves to protect themselves and feel like, “Oh, no, pain? I’m just gonna have to be there, and I need to be fixed, and I need to keep seeing doctors, and I’m gonna try this one more thing ‘cause that will make it all okay,” and, I believe without a shadow of a doubt, that the thing that we actually need has nothing -- doctors are amazing. My dad is a retired doctor. Doctors can do magical things, and yet, I don't know that that’s where the answers lie. I feel like the answers are within us in a much deeper place.

Amanda Testa: Yes, yes, yes. Well, I am just very touched by your journey and your story. 

0:08:05

I think there are probably a lot of listeners that can relate to having pain or to having experiences that wall you off -- those experiences that cause you to be more hypervigilant about what you're gonna let in and be more self-reliant and not really trusting others. Another thing, too, that you mentioned, and I want to kind of loop back to this because what I hear from a lot of clients that have had trauma with their bodies (autoimmune or cancer or disease or things like that), that it's when you find there's a disconnection with your own body because it's not doing what it's supposed to do in the way you want it to, right? 

Elena Sonnino: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: And so, that can bring up a lot as well. And so, I'm wondering if it feels okay to maybe share a little about your journey to reconnect with your own body and to find that -- you mention embodiment a lot which is such a big thing -- but embodying that possibility amongst all the unknown that you are experiencing.

0:09:03

Elena Sonnino: Yeah, absolutely because (you're so right) it is that exploration, right, of starting to look for other ways and redefine our relationship with ourselves because, as you were saying, I could almost see myself bracing for things, and now realizing that that's just not gonna be the journey -- and so, for me, I think the process started -- pelvic floor physical therapy was the first doorway for me, and we discovered a few things: that my pain was kind of surface level. It wasn’t deeper. The muscles -- there was some clenching because -- when we really went back to it, it started around that hysterectomy and feeling like this thing had been taken from me, and I needed to protect myself, and so, breathwork was the first opening where I started to realize okay, I have the capacity to create opening and to create possibility within me, and I know breathwork to be powerful in my practice in general and in my body, but there was this -- it literally felt like something that I could open and close when I chose to, right, and that I could allow it, and that I could allow expansion. So breathwork was the first doorway.

0:10:14

The second was just experimenting with kind of redefining what I saw and felt as pleasure, and almost going on, like, a pleasure scavenger hunt, and being out in nature and seeing something that I found pleasurable and letting that live inside me for a moment or allowing touch to feel pleasure, but really starting to retrain my brain to say, "Actually, I can receive pleasure," and collecting evidence in all sorts of different places around it. And then, I think, the path that continually surprises me is noticing the relationship between the energy centers in our body, right? 

0:11:00

So we think of the sacral areas being that place where our sensuality, creativity, pleasure, passion, desire live and exploring that. Recently, I had a moment after I had gone to yet another doctor because there was going to be a procedure that held hope to reduce my pain, and the doctor’s appointment didn't go particularly well. It was pretty disheartening, and I actually went to a pretty dark place. I came home with my husband, and I'm like, “We're too young to never be able to experience penetration again,” and he just kind of looked at me and allowed me to have my mini temper tantrum. [Laughs]

Then, I paused, and I recognized that my body was asking me to listen, and what my body really wanted me to know -- it was like a whisper. My belly literally said to me, "You know, maybe you need to move me a little bit. Maybe you need to explore what could be possible in different ways," and I was having a conversation with somebody, and this whisper -- it was maybe a little bit more than a whisper. It was a loud nudge -- belly dancing was the message! I was like belly dancing? 

0:12:06

I remember I said that out loud, and the person I was talking to was like, "Belly dancing?" So I did what I do, and I just wrote it down. I had to let it be 'cause I needed to not overthink it 'cause I can do that. [Laughs]

Then, the next day -- 'cause I ask myself this question on a regular basis of where can I be curious today -- I wrote down: "I'm gonna get curious about belly dancing." So I started Googling it and, lo and behold, there was a studio that, among other things -- they teach pole dancing and all sorts of things which was also something that I had done years ago once and discovered that that is a workout, and my upper body was sore for days, right? [Laughs] But I realized that this studio had a four-week belly dancing class that started the subsequent Sunday, and I was just gonna go, and when I got there, the instructor said to me, "We're gonna go through movements, and I'm gonna show you things, and there's gonna be choreography, but at the end of the day, my intention is that you fall back in love with that energy that's inside you," and it was like everything aligned in that moment. The puzzle pieces, I could feel them coming together, right, because that's what it is. It's redefining that it is love and it has to start with me. 

0:13:14

I have to be in love with all the parts of me before I can receive and experience and savor pleasure and passion with anyone else, from myself, and that that's the way to self-partner, to recommit to that.

Amanda Testa: Mm, I love that following of curiosity because that's such a key piece, right? It can be so challenging if you really want something, if you really want the pleasure, if you really want that penetration (if it is) or if it's orgasm or whatever it might be.

Elena Sonnino: Yeah.

Amanda Testa: And our culture is one of a lot of do, do, go, go, so it's very common that we approach a problem by, like, all right, here's the thing. If we're gonna fix it, I'm gonna force myself to do this. I'm gonna make myself do these things, and that is the exact opposite of what works, right? I mean, our body, often -- this is a lovely thing that one of my teachers Layla Martin says, and I think it's so true especially when it comes to healing is that you can only go as fast as the slowest part of us is ready to go.

0:14:10