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Does jealousy affect you in your relationship? Or has it impacted you in the past? One thing is for sure, jealousy has a destructive impact on any relationship, leaving both partners feeling unsafe and under attack. So - how do you know what's really going on when one of you is jealous? And how do you get to the other side, so that you can experience a relationship where you can experience the freedom to be yourself AND the safety of a secure partnership? Whether you're getting jealous, or on the receiving end of your partner's jealousy - this episode will lead you through the steps of discovering what's really going on - and how to reconnect in a healthy way. Resources Episode 47: How to Come Back into Balance When You're Triggered The Relationship Alive Community on Facebook FREE Guide to my Top 3 Relationship Communication Secrets Guide to Understanding Your Needs (and Your Partner's Needs) in Relationship (ALSO FREE) Amazing intro music provided courtesy of The Railsplitters

How do you separate fact from fiction when it comes to creating and sustaining sexual desire? In this episode of Relationship Alive, our special guest is Emily Nagoski, author of the New York Times bestseller "Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that Will Transform Your Sex Life." Her work has been cited by both John Gottman and Esther Perel as a must-read for understanding how desire works, and how to nurture a sexual connection over the long term with your partner. Emily Nagoski and I dispel some modern-day myths about sexuality, and then we reveal some of the new science to help you create more pleasure in your life. And, as Emily says, "Pleasure is the Measure!" Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. What if everything that you've been told about sex and desire was wrong? Or maybe not quite wrong, just missing really important bits of information that would help you understand the big picture. As it turns out, there's a lot that we've come to know through science about what turns us on and what turns us off. But this information is relatively new and hasn't quite made it out to the mainstream or the cover of Cosmo, at least not yet. How do you know if what you're experiencing is normal? And what can you do to discover more about who you are as a sexual being and to find more connection and sex in your relationship, without creating pressure on yourself or on your partner? Today's guest has many of the answers to these questions. Neil Sattin: Her name is Doctor Emily Nagoski and she's the author of the New York Times bestseller "Come as You Are", which John Gottman says is the best book he's ever read on sexual desire and why some couples stop having sex. Esther Perel also refers to Emily's work. So, if John Gottman and Esther Perel, who, at the moment, come from different camps on the question of sexual desire, if they can agree on Emily Nagoski's work, then you know that she's done something truly magnificent. There's gonna be a lot to cover and, as usual, we will have a detailed transcript and action guide for this episode available to you at neilsattin.com/normal. Or you can text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions to get your copy. Emily Nagoski, thank you so much for joining us today on Relationship Alive. Emily Nagoski: I'm so excited to talk to you. Neil Sattin: So let's start at the very beginning. Emily Nagoski: Very good place to start. Neil Sattin: Exactly. Where did this book come from for you? It's about desire and it's about understanding what makes us tick. And in particular, it's written for women and about women's sexuality, though there's so much relearning for men to do as well. And I'm wondering if you can just create our garden here for us for this conversation. Where did this book come from and why was it so important for you to write it? Emily Nagoski: Sure. I'd been teaching sexuality in some form and some context, for at least 15 years when I started teaching a class called Women's Sexuality at Smith College. Smith is a women's college so I had a class of almost entirely women, 187 of them. And Smith students are not ordinary human beings. Smith alums include Gloria Steinem, and Betty Friedan, and Catharine MacKinnon, and my favorite, Julia Child. And so the very first day, I'm teaching the anatomy class, of course, I just start with the anatomy. And a student raises her hand and says, "Emily, what's the evolutionary origin of the hymen?" And 15 years I'd been a sex educator, I had never even wondered the answer to that question. So I knew it was gonna be an intense, interesting semester. And it really was. They pushed me really hard. I shoehorned in as much science as I could into this beginner level class. After a semester of really hard work, my last question on the final exam was just tell me one important thing you learned. It can be... Just take the question seriously, you can have your two points no matter what you say. Just tell me one important thing you learned after all this cutting edge science. Emily Nagoski: And I thought they were gonna say the evolutionary theory, or attachment theory, or arousal non-concordance, or responsive desire, or any of these other things. And more than half of them, of 187 extraordinary students, more than half of them just wrote something like, "I'm normal. I learned that I'm normal. Just because I'm different from other women doesn't mean I'm broken. I can accept my sexuality as it is, and my partner's even when it's different from mine." I'm grading final exams with tears in my eyes thinking, I don't know what happened in my class, but I think it must have been something extraordinary and I wanna do it again, and I wanna do it on a much bigger scale. And that's the day that I decided to write "Come as You Are." And five years after that is when "Come as You Are" actually got published. Neil Sattin: And I love these... There's so many quotes from your book, and one thing that I really enjoyed about reading "Come as You Are" is that literally every chapter revealed something new. So while it all builds on itself, at the same time, I felt like I was walking through a labyrinth and around every corner I found some amazing gem, which is just so exciting when you're reading a book. But this quote toward the end really was powerful for me. And all it is, is this, "The sexuality you have right now is it and it's beautiful, even especially, if it's not what you were taught it should be." Emily Nagoski: Yeah. Neil Sattin: And that really hit me hard because I think so often we do get lost in thinking it's supposed to be some other way. And when we learn to tune in to what is actually happening in our bodies and accept that, and then use that as the springboard for what happens next, there's so much power in that moment. Emily Nagoski: And in one way it's really obvious that the fastest, easiest way to shut down your sexual well-being is to judge and shame your own sexuality as it - is like is that gonna be a turn on in your brain? For you to hate what's happening in your sexuality, obviously not. But if you can release the judgement and shame and be like "Oh, look, here's my sexuality. Being what it is, doing what it does, I know that I've been given a sort of like phantom sexual self of what I'm told I should be, what I'm supposed to do, what it's supposed to be like, and I know I'm supposed to beat the shit out of myself until I meet that standard, but what if? What if just hypothetically I stopped beating the shit out of myself and just enjoyed my sexuality as it is?" It turns out our ability to stop demanding that our bodies be different and allowing them to be as they are, is maybe the single most powerful thing we can do to maximize our sexual well-being. Is it easy? Nope. But it's almost magical in it's power. Neil Sattin: And this might be a good time to start with talking about the dual control system. This is something that probably most people don't know about in terms of how they think about their own sexual operating system. Can you speak a little bit to what is the dual control's mechanism and how does that affect whether we're into sex or not into sex, or feeling desirous and aroused or not feeling desirous and aroused? Emily Nagoski: Yes, absolutely. This is the fundamental hardware between our ears in the way our sexuality functions. It's a model developed at the Kinsey Institute starting in the late '90s, early 2000s, by Erick Janssen and John Bancroft, and it basically posits that sexuality works the way every other system in our central nervous system works. Which is a dual control mechanism. If there's a dual control mechanism, how many parts are there? Neil Sattin: Two. Emily Nagoski: There's two parts. Exactly, right? The first one is the sexual accelerator. And if the first part's is the accelerator or the gas pedal, the second part must be? Neil Sattin: The brakes. Emily Nagoski: Brake. Exactly. The accelerator is the part most of us are already sort of familiar with... It notices everything in the environment that it codes as sexually relevant. This is all the things that you're seeing and smelling and tasting and hearing and, crucially, imagining, that your brain codes as a sexually relevant stimulus, and it sends that turn on signal that activates arousal and desire. But at the same time that that's functioning, there is also a brake that is noticing all the good reasons not to be turned on right now, everything you see and hear, smell, touch, taste, or, crucially, imagine, that your brain codes as a potential threat, a reason not to be sexually active right now. And it sends the turn off signal. So your level of arousal or desire at any given moment is this balance of how many ons are turned on and how many offs are turned off. Sexual well-being is maximized, that is to say, sexual pleasure in the moment is maximized, when you're turning on all the ons and all of the brakes are turned off. And when I was talking about self-criticism and contempt for your own sexuality being a turn off, obviously, if you're judging your own sexuality, is that hitting the accelerator? Almost certainly not. That's one of the very common things that hits the brakes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And I think what is confusing is that it's common for us to idealize one and to completely ignore the other. Or, one thing that was really enlightening in reading about these, is that we come with our own set level for these things. So some of us could have an accelerator that's really sensitive and easy to turn on, whereas others may not. And that doesn't necessarily represent a problem that needs to be fixed. And same with the brakes. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that and why that... Why that's so. Emily Nagoski: Yeah, there, there are individual differences in the sensitivities of the brakes and the accelerator in each person's brain. As far as we can tell from the science so far, they seem to be pretty set. They're not as set as IQ, but we don't know of any specific interventions to change their sensitivity. Let's just assume they're like personality traits like introversion and extroversion, they are what they are. Most of us are heaped up around the middle. We're just sort of all about the same, but a handful of people, for example, will have really sensitive accelerators, and a person with a sensitive accelerator, vroom, right? That's a person who is easily activated, which can be great under the right circumstances and can be pretty dangerous under the wrong circumstances. If a person is experiencing a lot of negative effects, stress, depression, anxiety, loneliness, helplessness, repressed rage we've all got it, and they don't have good mechanisms in place for coping with that negative emotion - they may begin to use sex as an outlet, a way to avoid experiencing those negative emotions. Emily Nagoski: And that's where sexual risk taking and sexual compulsivity can come into play, in those folks who have higher sensitivity accelerators. And on the other end of the spectrum, there's the folks, for example, who might have really sensitive brakes, where the least stray thought, stray fingernail, stray noise in the hallway can just shut everything right down. And those are the folks who struggle most with sexual dysfunction, desire disorders, desire differential in their relationship. For most of us though, it's not that our brakes are overly sensitive. It's that we have just a truck load of stuff hitting our brakes all the time and it's much more common. The usual party line about sexual issues is that, well, you should try adding more stuff to the gas pedal. Try role play, and lingerie, and toys, and porn, and fantasy, and all the things, and those are great and you should try them if you like them. Great. And most people when they're struggling with sexuality, it's not because there's too little stimulation to the accelerator, it's because there's too much stimulation to the brake, which is gonna be - some of it - is that self criticism and body shaming. Emily Nagoski: For some people, it's a trauma history. For some people, it's straight up stress. 80 to 90% of people find that stress and other mood and anxiety issues negatively impact their sexual desire. For some people, it can actually increase it, but that's a different story. And relationship issues, of course are the major factor in things that hit the brakes. Neil Sattin: What's a good way for someone listening right now to get a sense for themselves of what we're talking about and how it impacts them? Like how do I identify what my brakes are and what my accelerator items are? Emily Nagoski: Yeah, most people have a good sense - if they just sit down and think about it... I'm interested in sex when these things are happening and I am not at all interested and don't experience pleasure under these circumstances. You can start in a general way with just lists, like what are the things that stress me out that prevent me from being interested in sex? What are the relationship issues that get me stuck so that when I get in bed with my partner, I'm not just getting in bed with my partner, I'm getting in bed with this laundry list of crap, that's just like gunking up the pipes, and you gonna clean out the pipes before you're gonna be interested in sex. Another concrete specific way rather than just generically...if you could think about one really awesome sexual experience you've had, doesn't have to be the best one you ever had, just like a really great sexual experience. Consider what the context was that might have been hitting the accelerator and keeping the brakes off. So what was your own mental and physical state? What were your partner's characteristics? What were your relationship characteristics? What was the setting? Was it in person? Was it in public? Was it over skype? Was it texting and photos? Emily Nagoski: Was it in the closet at a stranger's house, at a party, against a wall of other people's coats? Or was it in your own bed with the door shut and the kids over at somebody else's house? What was the setting that worked? Other life circumstances is a really important factor. How stressed out and exhausted were you from work and impending nuclear holocaust? What was your overall stress level? And then my favorite relevant factor is that called ludic factors. Ludic related to the word ludicrous. It just means play, how curious and playful and fun could you be? What games were you playing with your partner that were really working for you? There's actually, if you go to my website, there's worksheets, the worksheets are in the book and you can also just download them for free, that walk you through these contexts. I recommend that you think through three great experiences and three not so great experiences, not three terrible sexual experiences just three like, "meh" kind of experiences and look for what wasn't working for you. And when you actually... It takes some time. But when you sit down and take the time to think through what contexts were really working for me. I don't know why that made that sound. Could you hear that? Neil Sattin: No, what did you hear? Emily Nagoski: Oh, sorry, my sister is texting me and the alert came on. Neil Sattin: Okay. Emily Nagoski: Sorry. Neil Sattin: That's okay. Emily Nagoski: It distracted me. Let me go back. It takes a little time to sit and actually think through six different sexual experiences, but people really do have surprising insights. People who really feel like they know a lot about their own sexual functioning, when they sit down and think in this concrete, specific way, will notice things they never heard before. A friend of mine went through it and what she realized... She's in a long distance relationship, and when she actually did get together with her partner, what she noticed was that the expectation that, "Now that we're finally together, we should be having sex." That expectation, that sense of obligation, was absolutely the key to her shutting down her sexuality. And she only figured that out by thinking critically through the factors that were hitting the accelerators and hitting the brakes. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And that's huge, you talk about that particular one like how you feel about whether you are or not having sex, or how you feel about whether or not you should want to have sex in this moment as being another really important factor in whether your accelerator's on and your brakes are out of the way, or your sexual car's coming to a screeching halt. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: I'm curious to know from, yeah, from your perspective. One thing you just mentioned was the people who do have a really light touch accelerator and the danger for those people that sex could become a compulsion if it's that's easy for them to get turned on and to potentially use it as a way to mitigate and cope with the stress and things that are going on in their lives, and in my experience with my clients, and people I talk to, and in my own experience as well, sometimes that those people tend to find themselves in relationships with people who do not have as light touch of an accelerator, and in fact often have quite the opposite. I'm wondering what do you do, and I think part of this is maybe in what you were just talking about with that, the way that you think about whether you should or shouldn't be having sex, but what do you do to give someone hope who is in a situation - and you describe in your book one of the amalgamated characters, someone named Olivia, a woman who it's really easy for her to get into the mood to have sex and she's with a partner named Patrick for whom it's not so easy. And how do you give a couple in that situation Some hope around shifting that dynamic in a way that, that feels positive for both people? Emily Nagoski: This actually touches on what has turned out to be one of the most important ideas in the book, which is the nature of desire itself, how desire is supposed to function in our bodies and our relationships. In the case of Olivia, who is the composite character with a sensitive accelerator, she represents about 15% of women who have pretty sensitive accelerators, it means that she also happens to be a person who, when she is stressed out, her interest in sex actually goes up, which is true for, again, about 10-20% of people. And there's not a gender differential on that one. And she's with a partner, as so many of these folks are, for whom the opposite is true. So if they're both stressed out at the same time, Patrick's interest in sex hits the floor and Olivia's hits the ceiling. And that's not in and of itself a problem, but if they start having opinions about which one of them is doing it wrong, that's when things can get really tricky. Because it's... If you don't have a judgement about who's right and who's wrong and you're just like, "Well, our brains are wired differently. That's how it is," And you can rationally negotiate a compromise, great. Emily Nagoski: But if you start feeling bitter and resentful towards your partner for either being too demanding or too withholding, and you're judging and shaming yourself for wanting too much and being too much, or you're judging and shaming yourself for not wanting enough and not being enough, that's when things get really sticky, which is why the "You are Normal." Mantra comes back over and over the book, You are normal, nobody's doing it wrong. Both people are right and healthy and fine. The emotional weight that we attach to different experiences of sexual desire is just a social construct that we're laying on top of it. You get to feel again, totally normal about the way you're experiencing desire. And the practical solution is just to negotiate. What are we gonna do about the fact that I would like to have the sexy sexes and you are not interested in having the sexy sexes right now? How about we compromise in some way that works for both of us, where you stay with me and put your hand over my heart while I masturbate to orgasm? That way you don't have to do anything you're not into and I get to have the connection and the sexual release. Emily Nagoski: How's that sound? If we can let go of our judgments of what sex is supposed to be and what desire is supposed to be, that's a perfectly reasonable compromise. That's a really helpful compromise. It's only not helpful compromise if you're like, "But it doesn't conform with my expectations about the aspirational culturally constructed ideal of what my sex life is supposed to be." Neil Sattin: Right, right. And so this is great because I'm wondering if you can suggest a good way to notice that in oneself. How do I know whether what I want is culturally constructed, or what I actually want, and what would be really important to have on some level? Emily Nagoski: Dude, I don't know. [laughter] Emily Nagoski: That's the million dollar question, right? I would say that the distinction we're thinking about here is not so much what I want, versus how I feel. The word that I use in the book, that comes from John Gottman's research is meta-emotions. There's how you feel. There's how your sexuality... And this is also language I came up with after I finished Come as You Are. I was traveling all around the country and I was talking to students all over, and a student raises her hand and says, "You say in the book, Emily, confidence and joy. Over and over, you use these words, confidence and joy. Can you tell us what you mean by confidence and joy?" And I was like, "No, I have no idea what those words actually mean." And I had to think about it for a long time. And I finally realized that confidence is knowing what is true, knowing that you have a sensitive accelerator and your partner doesn't, or you have a sensitive brake and your partner doesn't, knowing that the context that works for you is one that is really safe, and familiar, and calm, and quiet, whereas the context that works for your partner is one of novelty, and adventure, and risk. Emily Nagoski: And okay, now you know what's true. Joy is the hard part, and that's loving what is true. Even, as I say in the book, when it is not what you were taught, it was supposed to be true. Even if it's not what you wish were true. Boy, would things be simple if two partners always all the time wanted the same level of sex. Desire differential is the most common reason why people seek sex therapy. Desire differential is also really universal. There is no such thing as two people whose desire tracks the same day-to-day. Emily Nagoski: Sometimes you have a rough day and your partner doesn't, so you're not interested in sex and your partner is. Some days the opposite is true. There is no such thing as people with exactly the same desire all the time. Just being like, "Hey, that's cool." That's what's true. Fortunately, I also love my partner, and so, we're gonna work it out together. We're gonna have conversations that can be calm and loving and affectionate, because we understand what's true about ourselves, about our accelerator, about the context that work for us, and we love each other and the things that are true about our two different sexualities. There are no judgement, there's no shame, there's just accepting that we are two different people, and it's not just that people vary from each other, it's also that people change over time. When you're in a relationship that lasts over multiple years, you and your partner's sexualities are gonna change and they may not necessarily change along the same trajectories. Joy is loving what is true about both of your sexualities and the ways that they change, whether that feels comfortable and easy or not. Neil Sattin: And this conversation, I appreciate that you brought up the requirement to as much as possible have it in a loving way, because those desire differentials can create a lot of stress. And as you just mentioned, for most people, no matter where they are in terms of brakes and accelerator, I think somewhere between 80% and 90% of people, that stress it's going to turn the brakes on. Emily Nagoski: Yeah. Neil Sattin: Can you talk a little bit about this... How the stress that we're carrying around with us every day... What can we do about that? Why is it so important to do something about it, rather than just sweeping it under the rug or pretending it doesn't exist? Emily Nagoski: Right. Neil Sattin: And what's on the other side of doing something about it? Emily Nagoski: There's a whole lot of telling ourselves not to, in a lot of aspects of our lives. We tell ourselves not to feel that way about sexuality. We try to force ourselves to feel a different way than we actually feel. We fight against the truth and reality, and we do that with our stress too. We tell ourselves that we're supposed to experience, "No, I don't need to be stressed out about that." You try to tell yourself, "Relax, just relax." When your partner, if you're stressed out and your partner is like, "Why can't you just relax? Just relax." Is that helpful? Does that help? Does that make things better? Neil Sattin: No, right. Emily Nagoski: No, it doesn't make things better, right? No, obviously. What has to happen is, instead of trying to just like not be stressed out, you have to move in the direction of the stress, sink down into it, and allow your body to experience it. Stress is a physiological process. It's like digestion. It has a beginning and a middle and an end. And if we don't interfere with it, our bodies will move through that entire cycle in a healthy, normal way that doesn't interfere with our lives. But as human beings with giant prefrontal cortexes and massively social tendencies to wanna control our emotions in order to make other people feel good, we tend to keep the brakes on, on our stress in the same way they keep our brakes on, on our sexuality. And so, we're walking around with all these activated stress response cycles, stress is the adrenaline, and the cortisol, and the hypervigilance, and the muscle tension, and the digestion changes, and the cardiovascular changes, and like your whole body, and your immune system is suppressed. Emily Nagoski: Every body system is influenced by the fact that these stress response cycles have been activated. And if you just tell yourself not to feel it, those stress response cycles will stay spinning inside your body waiting to finish and they will wait forever. Most of us are walking around with decades worth of incomplete stress response cycles, just sitting like rocks somewhere in our body waiting for us to let them go. Fortunately, there's lots of research that tells us what the effective strategies are for completing the stress response cycle. For example, physical activity. This is the obvious one, because the stress response cycle is designed for us to survive threats like being chased by a lion. When you're being chased by a lion, what do you do? Neil Sattin: Right, you get the hell out of there. Emily Nagoski: You run. Yeah. Our bodies do not differentiate between stressors, so your body responds basically the same way to a lion as it does to your boss or to your partner shaming and guilting you about sex, right? It's basically the same physiological stress response. It turns out, dealing with the stress itself, the physiology in your body requires basically totally different things from dealing with the thing that caused the stress. There is the calm, rational planning and negotiating that you have to do with your partner and then there is the dealing with the physiological stress itself. Just because you've dealt with the stressor doesn't mean you've dealt with the stress. Physical activity is the single most important thing that you can do - when people tell you that physical activity is good for you, that's for real-sy, every day, 20 minutes if you possibly can, literally any form of physical activity, even if it's just like jumping up and down in your bedroom, any form of physical activity is helpful. Emily Nagoski: We know that sleep is effective, creative self expression, writing and painting, music. We know that sleep is effective, did I say sleep already? Oh, and affection. So, calm, trusting, especially physical affection, but it doesn't have to be physical affection, it can just be the loving presence of another human is great. You know what's also great? The loving presence of a dog. You know what's also great? Loving presence of a God. If that's what makes sense for you. Whatever counts as a loving presence for you sitting and being with that presence helps to return your body to a state of calmness so that your body knows this is a safe place to live. I am safe right now. But it takes doing something for real, not just telling yourself. Neil Sattin: Right. And if you're doing that over and over, especially finding a way to regulate with another with your partner, then that brings about its own level of healing in terms of your right brain coming back online and your ability to operate from the parts of your prefrontal cortex that... Emily Nagoski: Right. To think critically, to be curious and creative, all of that comes back only when you have reduced the adrenaline and cortisol levels and reduce the threat level so that the creativity can expand instead of being so focused on just survival. Neil Sattin: Exactly. Just for your reference listening, if you want to learn more about healing trauma and ways modalities that can help with that we did have Peter Levine on the show, the creator of Somatic Experiencing, that was episode 29. So it's something for you to bookmark and listen to later, and he'll be coming back on the show as well. But somatic experiencing is just one. There are all kinds of modalities if you wanna work with a practitioner to help you... Emily Nagoski: Pat Ogden is another really key person in body based therapy. Pat Ogden and somatic... I forget what it's called. Pat Ogden is amazing and great, and does really, really good work around healing trauma through the body. What I love about body based strategies for dealing, not just with stress but with a trauma is that you don't ever have to have insight. You don't even necessarily have to think about whatever it is that caused the stress or the trauma. It's a different process. You can choose an insight process if you want to, but if you don't wanna go there, if you don't wanna think about it, sometimes you can release this shit from your body without ever having to think about the event that activated the stress. You can just deal with the stress itself without dealing with the event itself, especially if the event is in the past and there's nothing you can do about it now. Body based therapies are wonderfully gentle, indirect, tremendously effective strategy for helping to return your body to a safe state. Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm, big recommend from me as well. Emily Nagoski: There's a chapter on stress and love, and the stress section is pretty much entirely based on the polyvagal theory and Peter Levine's work, somatic experiencing, and Pat Ogden's work in the body-based approach to stress. Neil Sattin: Great. Yeah, and if you wanna learn more about the polyvagal theory, which Emily just mentioned, check out our episode with Steve Porges, which is episode number 34. Emily Nagoski: And so you've just interviewed my entire shelf of reference books. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Basically. That's my goal, Emily. [chuckle] You shouldn't have sent me that photo of your bookshelf, and actually send me more 'cause I don't wanna run out of people. I'm curious if we can talk now about the... 'cause one of the concepts that you discussed that was so fascinating for me was how you broke apart the process of arousal and desire into these different systems in our brain, and there was the enjoying system, the expecting system, and the eagerness system. And I felt like taking it apart like that made it so much easier to understand in a way that's actually practical for people. Can we dive in and just give a little bit more information to our listeners about what I'm even talking about? Emily Nagoski: Yeah. When you read sort of mainstream popular science journalism about brain science, they'll refer to this thing, the pleasure centers of the brain. And if they do that, it's a pretty good cue that they either don't know what they're talking about or they're simplifying it in a way that's really unhelpful, because it's not just the pleasure center of the brain. And calling it the pleasure center is like calling your vulva the vagina, like there's so much more to it, and if we ignore the other parts, we're ignoring some fundamental aspects of how the thing works. So if we break it down, yes, there's the pleasure part, which is just the part of your brain that responds to whether or not stuff feels good, and that's a little more complicated and we can talk about the ways that your brain responds differently to different stimuli as pleasurable or not depending on the context. Should we do that now? Or should I wait? Neil Sattin: Sure. Yeah, let's... Emily Nagoski: Okay. Neil Sattin: And I'll bring us back. Emily Nagoski: Yeah, the pleasure piece of it is slightly complicated because the nucleus accumbens shell in your brain has an affective keyboard. Everybody's asleep now, sorry. [laughter] Emily Nagoski: So the deal is, if you're in a sort of a neutral mental state and somebody tickles you, meh. If you're already in a fun, flirty, sexy, positive, playful, trusting state of mind and your certain special someone tickles you, that even if tickling is not your favorite, in principle, like that could feel fun and lead to other things happening, right? 'Cause your brain interprets that stimulation as something to be approached with curiosity and pleasure because you already feel safe, and trusting, and playful. But if you are pissed off at your partner and they tickle you, you wanna punch them in the face. It's exactly the same stimulation, right? The same tickling stimulation but the state of your mind is different, your brain state is different and so your brain interprets the sensation entirely different, not as something to be approached with curiosity and pleasure, but as a potential threat to be avoided or even attacked. Neil Sattin: Right. Emily Nagoski: And the only thing that is different is your state of mind, so pleasure is not simple. Pleasure is sensitive to the context in which you're experiencing it which is why hot and heavy early on in the relationship, you're in the middle of making dinner and your certain special someone comes over and starts kissing on your neck or whatever. And your knees kinda gets off and you're like, "Oh, that's cool." And things happen. 10 years later, you're trying to make dinner and you've got kids waiting for food and screaming at you and you got 10 years of accumulated frustrations in your relationship. Your certain special someone comes over and kisses on your neck then. You're like, "I'm trying to... Get away from me. What are you doing?" And again, it's exactly the same stimulation, but because the context is different, you experience that sensation in a totally different way, and that is a normal way for us to experience sensations. Emily Nagoski: The problem is not the way we experience the sensation, the problem is that the context changed. And it's not that the context is broken, that's just life. There's always the solution, we don't have to change us in order to find a solution, we just notice what it is about the context that's hitting the brakes and making our brain interpret the sensation as something that makes you wanna smack the person in the face and change the context if you possibly can to something that makes you interpret this person's sensations as something pleasurable to be approached with curiosity. That's the pleasure component of it. The nucleus accumben shell, woohoo. The second part of this pleasure center is actually the desire part. Eagerness, I called it in the book. Kent Berridge, who's... Have you interviewed Kent Berridge? Neil Sattin: Not yet, no. Emily Nagoski: Oh my God, that's the next guy on my shelf. Neil Sattin: Okay. Emily Nagoski: Kent Berridge or Morten Kringelbach. Neil Sattin: Okay. Emily Nagoski: They're the two key authors on this batch of research that distinguishes between wanting and liking. We talked about what liking is and the ways that it's dependent on context. Wanting is moving toward, is the actual activation, the desire, approach piece of it, not just the liking of, like, "Woo!" Or "Gleh!" Right? The classic example, that I actually cut from the book, so this is a thing that you will not read in the book, just to differentiate between wanting and liking, in an experiment, they gave... I always imagine it as one of those beer hats where there's a bottle on one side and a bottle on the other side and straws going into your mouth, do you know what I mean? Neil Sattin: Uh-huh. Emily Nagoski: So they gave one of those to a rat, it's not really like that, but just imagine it's like that. And in one of the cans, there's sugar water, which is delicious to the rat, and in one of the cans with a straw going into the mouth, there's salt water with the salinity of ocean water. How does that taste? Neil Sattin: Salty. Emily Nagoski: Yeah, it's gross. [laughter] Emily Nagoski: It's just a really innately disgusting flavor, because it's a dangerous flavor, it will give you way too much sodium and make you sick. They teach the rat that certain bells are associated with the sugar water coming in. When they get the sugar bell, they get excited. "Yay, here comes the sugar." And when the salt bell comes on, they go, "Ah! - gaddigah - I don't want the salt." But then they give the rat a drug that reduces their salt level. Now, so this is an animal that has zero pleasurable experience with the salty water. It's gross, they don't like anything about it, but when you deplete their salt levels, they will go over to the salt bell and start pushing it and gnawing on it and trying... Be like, "Make this... " They want the salt desperately because you've depleted the... You have a sodium drive that makes you desperate for salts if you don't get it. If you don't have the right sodium levels, you can literally die. So their whole body is in this huge activated, "I want the salt." Though they have zero experience of liking the salt. Does that distinction make sense between wanting? Emily Nagoski: So pleasure, liking is the pleasure part, enjoying. And then there's eagerness, there's desire, there's moving toward and they're overlapping certainly, but they are not identical and it is really important that we distinguish it. And then the third component of this mechanism that we usually just call the pleasure center is associative learning, is basically what it is. When I do PowerPoint presentations, I represent it with a drooling bulldog because of Pavlov's dogs. He trained them to drool with a ring of the bell, all you do is you put food in front of the dog, it automatically starts drooling and you ring a bell. Food, bell, drool. Food, bell, drool. And eventually, you just ring the bell and that's all it takes to get the dog to start drooling. Does that mean that the dog wants to eat the bell? Neil Sattin: No, of course not. Emily Nagoski: Does it mean... Right, of course not. Of course not. Does it mean that the dog finds the bell delicious? Neil Sattin: No. Emily Nagoski: Of course, not, right? It just means that the bell has been made food-relevant. It's associated with food stimuli. So it's now a food-relevant stimulus. Our genital response, blood flow and all the rest of that, is the associative learning component where if you're presented with a sexually relevant stimulus, you will get genital response. This is your activating, this is a sexually relevant accelerator response. It turns out there is a not very relevant overlap, there's not much of an overlap, between what counts as sexually relevant stimulus and what is actually liked, particularly in heterosexual women, so that a person's body can respond to sexually relevant stimulus... In the research, it's almost always different kinds of porn, sometimes it's visual porn, sometimes it's like they're being read an audiobook of an erotic story, sometimes they're even watching bonobo chimpanzees copulating, right? And women's genitals will respond to this, not as much as to the human porn, but significantly above baseline. If their genitals are responding, does that mean they find the bonobo sex like they really want to have sex with the bonobos? Does that mean they like monkey sex? Neil Sattin: This is so important. This is like one of the things in your book that... Not about bonobos necessarily, but... [laughter] Neil Sattin: But this question of how does our genital response correlate to our actual desire, and this might be a great time to talk about non-concordance. Emily Nagoski: Right. And for a lot of people the answer is, it doesn't - particularly for women. There's about a 50% overlap between genital response, and perceived arousal, or subjective arousal in cisgender men. And about a 10% concordance overlap between genital response, and subjective arousal in heterosexual woman. One of the pieces of research that's come out since Come As You Are was published, is the distinction that this arousal non-concordance appears to be a factor really just in straight women. We have no idea why there's a difference sexual orientation, why there's a difference in gender. It doesn't matter why there's a gender difference. We do have this tendency, like is anybody who's sitting here and thinking right now, "Really, there's that much of an overlap for guys, what's the matter with men? There must be... I mean, that's so strange that they have so much concordance between their genital response and their subjective desire. What's going on with that?" No, everybody automatically thinks, "Really, women have 10% overlap. That's really - what's wrong with women?!" Emily Nagoski: That's the patriarchy, that's the androcentric model of sexual desire, arousal, and response that all of us got raised in, assuming that the way a man works is the way a woman is supposed to work. And the extent to which a woman differs from a man is the extent to which she is broken, and needs to be fixed. And that's just not true. When a person's genital response doesn't overlap with their perceived arousal, when their genitals are responding, and they're like, "Nope. Not doing it for me" - what that means is that they've been presented with a sexually relevant stimulus that they do not want or like, which we can only understand if we know that this pleasure center of the brain does have these three separate channels that interact, of sexual relevance, sexually pleasurable, and sexual desire. They're related to each other, but they don't necessarily overlap. And we live in a pretend... In a fucked up enough culture that we're presented with plenty of sexually relevant stimuli in contexts where we neither want nor like what is happening. Neil Sattin: Right. And I would think that another way of looking at the statistic for men, the 50% concordance, is that men have the potential to be victimized by their sexual... By their genital arousal, basically. Emily Nagoski: Yes. Yeah. This narrative shows up a lot in stories of sexual violence against people of every genital configuration. The typical model is a person with a vulva being sexually assaulted, and the perpetrator says, "Well, but you were wet. So obviously, you wanted it or liked it." I cannot tell you how many students have told me, "Oh my gosh, this explains that experience I had where I was like, "Eh, this isn't doing it for me," and my partner was like, "No, you're turned on. You're wet." As though a person's genital response tells us more about what they're experiencing than the person does. And the same thing happens when a person has a penis. If blood is flowing to their genitals, they've been taught that that's an indication of who they are. Like their whole identity is tied to that, and it certainly indicates that they must want or like what is happening. But no, it's a reflex. We would never tell someone, if they bit into a wormy old apple, "Well, your mouth watered when you bit into that wormy old apple, so you must have actually really wanted or liked it. We would never do that. When your doctor taps your patellar tendon and your knee kicks out, nobody is like, "But deep down though, you really wanted to kick your doctor." We don't make this assumption with any physiological reflex, except for genital response. And we do it no matter what a person's genitals are, and it perpetuates a lot of myths around sexual violence. Neil Sattin: Yeah. In fact, I loved your rewrite of Fifty Shades of Grey. [laughter] Neil Sattin: Which I can quote here. In the next edition, Emily thinks that Grey should say to Ana instead of... 'Cause he, right, he spanks her, and she gets wet, is what basically... Emily Nagoski: Yes. She consents to it. She doesn't want it. She doesn't like it. There is not a single word about pleasure. Her face hurts 'cause she's squirming so hard to get away. And then, Christian Grey, the spanker/hero/douche bag, puts his fingers in her vagina, finds that she is wet, and says to her, "Feel this, Anastasia. Your body is soaking just for me." Neil Sattin: Right. "See how much your body likes this." Emily Nagoski: "See how much your body likes this." Likes this. "See how much your body likes this, Anastasia." Neil Sattin: Yeah. So, you're... Emily Nagoski: And I wanted to say. Neil Sattin: Yeah? Emily Nagoski: I want the next person to say, "See how sexually relevant your body finds this. Which tells me very little about whether you want it or liked it." [chuckle] Emily Nagoski: Did you want it, like it? No? Double crap! Double crap is a thing they say a lot in Fifty Shades Grey. [laughter] Emily Nagoski: Let me say that I am a romance reader. I read it with an open mind. It wasn't for me. I value a lot of things the Fifty Shades did for opening up a conversation about erotica and sexuality for women, and it also sold many millions of copies and perpetuated this myth that genital response... 'Cause here's the really bad thing about the book, about this particular aspect of it, is that even though she, in an email, goes on to describe the feeling of being debased, degraded, and abused, still, because he said, "Your genitals responded. Feel how much you like this." She believes him instead of believing what her own internal experience was telling her. 'Cause isn't that what we all get taught, is to believe other people's opinions about our bodies, what they are and what they should be, more than we trust and believe what our bodies are trying to tell us? Neil Sattin: Yeah and that theme runs throughout your book, of learning how to shed the messages that you've been given and the ideas about how things should be, and learning to more deeply trust what comes out of you, what you know about yourself, and what does give you pleasure and what doesn't, and to bring that to the conversation. Emily Nagoski: And I'm remembering the question you asked about how do we tell what's socially constructed and what's what you actually want and like. And sort of almost everything is socially constructed. Nobody is born with any innate sexually relevant stimuli other than just plain old genital sensations. Like nobody is born being turned on by cars, or high-heeled shoes, or smoking cigarettes, or power play. That's all learned from culture. That doesn't mean that it's not real for you and it's what you really do want, it just means that that is what you learned, it's what your culture taught you. And some of those things are just sexually relevant. Like your brain has been taught that those are sexually relevant stimuli. And some of them are things that, in the right context, really do give you gigantic pleasure, and you really do desire them in the right context, in one that facilitates pleasure. Somehow my go-to example of this has been if you fantasize about being cornered by five strangers who just want you sexually and so they take you. Emily Nagoski: If you're alone, safe in your bed, masturbating to that fantasy, in reality, the context is you are 100% safe and in control of that. Whereas if, in reality, five strangers cornered you and wanted to have you sexually, that would be physically unsafe, your stress response would kick in, you would only want to get away, it wouldn't actually be sexy. And the difference is the context. You can, if you wanna create that fantasy for yourself, you can ask five friends to participate in the role play, and communicate really clearly about what everybody's limits are. But that's, again, a really different context from five actual strangers. Neil Sattin: Yeah, so it's important to revisit for a moment... When you were describing context at the beginning, you were talking about all the factors that shape context. It's not just like, "Oh, well, the context is the bedroom's messy and the kids are knocking at the door, so I'm gonna send the kids to Grandma's and clean the bedroom." There's more than just the physical context, there's all of that... Emily Nagoski: Yeah. The stuff in the here and now tends to be the easy stuff to fix, the easy stuff to address. I heard someone joking at a romance writers' conference, "Characters in romance novels have sex when they're being chased and shot at by the Mafia, and I can't have sex if there's still a dish in the sink." [chuckle] Emily Nagoski: That's the easy stuff. The difficult stuff is when what you're bringing to bed and bringing to the context is years of shame, or years of judgement and blame, or relationship conflict, or a trauma history, or body shame, or gendered roles and ideas about how sex is supposed to work and if it's not working that way then it's working wrong. Those are longer term projects. And most of them can be undone through simple, daily mindfulness practices. It does take time. In the same way that it took time to get you to this place, it takes time to shift you out of that place and into a different, more neutral, self-accepting, partner-accepting place. But noticing the gunk, as I call it, the gunk that gets in the pipes, and making a decision to consider the possibility that you could live without the gunk and maybe clean it out is the way to clear up the channel, so that when you get to bed, the context is not one that's bringing with it all of this historical shit. Neil Sattin: Yes. Emily Nagoski: I've been swearing a lot. Neil Sattin: You have! Emily Nagoski: I don't know if that's okay. Sorry. Neil Sattin: This is an explicit show. It's totally fine. Emily Nagoski: Oh good. Neil Sattin: I'm wondering if, before we go, since you just brought up mindfulness, if you could offer just a simple approach to how you've seen mindfulness work. What's something that someone can do that, over time, will effect that great kind of change? Emily Nagoski: The simplest version is simply... So when you're in the process of a sexual experience, you will notice that maybe body-critical thoughts, or sexuality-critical thoughts, or partner-critical thoughts will enter your mind. You just notice them and are like, "Oh, hey! There's that critical thought. I'm gonna have that critical thought literally any other time that I want. For the moment, I'm gonna put it in the back, and I'm gonna return my attention to the pleasurable sensations happening in my body." And another critical thought will float through your mind, and you'll be like, "Oh, hey look! There's another critical thought. I'm just temporarily, I'm gonna put that in the back, and I'm gonna return my attention to the pleasurable sensations happening in my body." And with practice, over and over, we become really skilled at noticing those emotions before they dig deep, and even reducing the frequency and intensity with which they float into our minds. It makes a tremendous... There's a huge body of research. Another person for you to interview, Lori Brotto, does all this research on the impact of mindfulness on women's sexual well-being, especially women who are in recovery from gynecological cancers, and breast cancers, and other diseases, the impact it has on their relationships and their sexuality, and how to use mindfulness and sex education as a way to maximize sexual well-being in the recovery process. Neil Sattin: Amazing. Amazing. And I loved how you brought that in your book as well, not only in how you just described, but also in talking about how important it is to see the ways that you do judge yourself and you're critical of yourself, and how all of those responses are turning your stress inward. You're creating more stress for yourself, which is putting the brakes on for yourself and gets you in that negative feedback loop. Versus... Emily Nagoski: And it takes... Neil Sattin: Being able to heal it through your mindfulness. Yeah? Go ahead. Emily Nagoski: It requires the decision to prioritize turning off the brakes. You have to decide that it matters to you and to your relationship that you access your own sexual well-being. The couples who... What we learn in John Gottman's research is that the couples who sustain strong sexual connections over multiple decades are not couples who, hot and heavy, can't wait to stuff their tongue down each other's throat all the time. They are the couples who, one, have a strong foundation of friendship for their relationship, and two, prioritize sex. So they decide that it matters for their relationship that they set aside this half hour when they stop dealing with the kids, and work, and family, and friends, and Game of Thrones, and all of the other things that they could be paying attention to. They stop all that and they just pay attention to each other in this, frankly, pretty silly, fun way that humans do, because it matters for their relationship that they have that time to play, and touch, and connect. It's not the case for every couple that connecting in this way matters for their relationship, but the couples who sustain strong sexual connections, it's what they do. They make the decision that it matters that they cultivate sexual pleasure and curiosity. Neil Sattin: Well, you're blessing us with a great way to end our conversation, while at the same time reminding me of all the things that we could have talked about. I just wanna say... Emily Nagoski: We could talk about responsive desire, oh... [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Yeah, oh my goodness. Well... Emily Nagoski: Read chapter seven. That's all. Just read chapter seven. They know enough for that to make sense now. Neil Sattin: Do you have time to give a quick blip on that before we go? Emily Nagoski: Okay, really quick. Yes. Neil Sattin: Thank goodness. Emily Nagoski: The standard party line about desire is that it's spontaneous. It just sort of comes out of the... You're walking down the street. You're eating lunch and... Erika Moen, who is the cartoonist who illustrated Come as You Are, she draws this as a lightning bolt to the genitals. Just kaboom! You just want the sexes. And so you go to your partner with, "I have a kaboom. Can I have the sex? Uh?" And your partner's like... [vocalization] Emily Nagoski: So, that is, absolutely, one healthy, normal way to experience sexual desire, is to have it just be... Feel spontaneous and kinda out of the blue. And there is another, totally healthy, normal way to experience sexual desire, it's called responsive desire. See, spontaneous desire emerges in anticipation of pleasure. Responsive desire emerges in response to pleasure, bearing in mind that pleasure is sensitive to context and not simple. The way this works, there's really sort of two narratives of how it works. One is the sort of cuddle, snuggle narrative, where you're just sitting on the couch watching Netflix and your partner comes over and starts touching you, and your body's like, "Ah, that feels really nice." Emily Nagoski: And your partner starts doing other, more interesting things, and you turn and maybe start kissing on your partner, and your brain receives all this stimulation, it's like, "Ah, that feels really nice." And you turn and do maybe some more things, and there's a hand that goes up a shirt, and your brain's like, "That's... You know what, how about the sexy times?" Right? It's kaboom that emerges in response to pleasure. The cuddle, snuggle model. And then there's the Liz Lemon, "Let's do this," model, Where you dump the toys in the toybox, it's 3:00 on Saturday afternoon, you'd said that you would. "You, me, and the red underwear, here we go. Let's just get in the bed and go." [laughter] Emily Nagoski: And you put your body in the bed, and you put your skin against your partner's skin, and you remember that you like this. You like this person. You enjoy these sensations. And you allow your body to remember that this is fun and good. That's responsive desire. And all three of those are 100% normal... Neil Sattin: Normal. Emily Nagoski: Healthy ways. Right? That's... Many people feel that if you have to set appointments, if you don't already crave it when you get in bed, then there's something wrong. Nope. That's how it works sometimes. Most people will experience all of these different kinds of desire in their life. Some people never experience spontaneous desire. Some people have no experience of responsive desire. What matters is that you just notice that there are differences, and there are changes, and they are all 100% normal. And you can maximize responsive desire. The main way to maximize responsive desire is not to judge or shame it, but simply allow it. You allow desire to emerge from pleasure. My three-word... It rhymes and everything, so you can remember it and tell your friends, is, "Pleasure is the measure." Pleasure is the measure of sexual well-being. It's not how much you crave it, it's not how often you do it, or where you do it, or what you do, or how many people, or even how many orgasms you have. It's whether or not you like the sex you are having. Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm. Emily Nagoski: There's this sex therapist in New Jersey named Christine Hyde, who uses this party metaphor, she says to her clients, "If you're invited to a party by your best friend, of course you say yes 'cause it's your best friend and it's a party. But then as the date approaches, you start thinking, 'Ugh! There's gonna be all this traffic. We gotta find childcare. Do I really wanna put on pants on a Friday?'" [chuckle] Emily Nagoski: But like, you go because you said you would and it's your best friend and it's a party and what happens? Most of the time you have a good time at the party. If you are having fun at the party, you are doing it right. Pleasure is the measure of sexual well-being. Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And just as a quick addendum because I love how you suggest this in your book and it's something we've talked about on the show before, sometimes in that context taking sex off the table or making it okay to... That this isn't leading to sex, this is just about exploring pleasure that can, I think... That's one of those things that takes the brakes off. Yeah. Emily Nagoski: It reduces the performance demand. Yes. Absolutely. Neil Sattin: Yeah. So... Emily Nagoski: I have actually started recommending that couples, when they... If they set an appointment, they set a date of like Saturday at 3:00, you and me, we're gonna do something, they set very firm limits on what they're allowed to do. Sometimes, it means not actually touching each other. Sometimes distance is... And this is the reason why I find both Esther Perel's model and John Gottman's model to be helpful, because people vary a lot in what works for them. Some people crave the closeness in order to facilitate desire and some people really long to have distance to have a bridge to cross to move toward their partner. People just have different strategies in the same way our brakes and gas are different. So figuring out what to do in that chunk of time that you set aside for you and your partner to do something or other that feels good, is gonna be different for you versus from everybody else that you know. Neil Sattin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So take the time to get to know yourself and what you might actually want in that circumstance. Emily Nagoski: Yeah. Right. Neil Sattin: Oh, so many things, and yet we have run out of time. Emily Nagoski, it is so great to chat with you. I think your book, Come As You Are, is really required reading for people to just come to understand themselves as sexual beings in a totally new, actually based on science and not based on fable, way. And especially if you're a woman, especially if you're in a relationship with a woman, and even if you're a man and not in a relationship with a woman, there's just so much in here that I think will help you... Neil Sattin: And non-binary people too. Neil Sattin: Yes. And anyone, wherever you are on the spectrum, this will help you come to understand yourself and how that all works within you. I'm so appreciative of your contribution through writing the book. And if people wanna find out more about you, where can they find you on the interwebs? Emily Nagoski: The main place to go is my website, which is just emilynagoski.com. Neil Sattin: Great. And we will have a link to that, along with a detailed show guide, if you visit neilsattin.com/normal, though I'm tempted to make it Pleasure is the Measure, but neilsattin.com/normal, or you can text the word Passion to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. Emily Nagoski, thanks so much. Hope to have you back again sometime! Emily Nagoski: Thank you so much! Resources: Check out Emily Nagoski's website Read Emily’s book Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science that will Transform Your Sex Life www.neilsattin.com/normal Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Emily Nagoski Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out  

We're all empathic. What this means is that you can catch emotions and states-of-being like a cold. But if you don't know that what you're feeling isn't actually yours, just something you caught from someone else, then you could be in trouble. Wouldn't it be nice to know, with as much certainty as possible, that your all-important feelings and beliefs actually come from within you, and represent your own truth - instead of just being something that you picked up along the way? In this episode we're going to talk about the science of empathy, as well as two quick, powerful ways to keep yourself clear. Other episodes that I refer to: 34: Science of Safety - Stephen Porges 57: Mastering Mindfulness in Your Relationship - Dan Siegel 13: Resolve Conflict and Create Intimacy through Attunement - Keith Witt 29: How to Heal Your Triggers and Trauma - Peter Levine 116: Sex, Love, and Dating: From Addiction to Health - Alex Katehakis 16: Expanding Your View of What's Possible in Relationship - Gabrielli LaChiara Sponsors: Zola.com - a free, easy-to-use website that offers you the chance to create a custom wedding registry that represents YOU. Choose from over 500 brands and over 50,000 gifts and experiences, allow your guests to pitch in together on big gifts that will have an impact on your life, or to simply donate cash towards your honeymoon, house downpayment, etc. Zola is offering a $50 credit towards your registry if you visit https://www.zola.com/alive and get your registry started. Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy. Resources:   Our Relationship Alive Community on Facebook Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out  

There are some fears that are inherent to being alive. They might be big, they might be small, but they definitely are there, within you. Two of these fears that are closely-related to each other are the fear of loneliness, and the fear of abandonment. How are they impacting you in your life? And how can you find your way through the fear, so that your decisions aren't impacted by it? In this week's episode, we are going to dive deep into the fears of being alone, and of abandonment, so that the path to the other side is clear. This episode also features a song I wrote awhile back (called - wait for it - "Loneliness"). You can hear the whole thing at the end of the episode. Sending you light during this holiday season!  Sponsors: Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy.  

Let’s get practical for a moment. You’ve heard about the importance of courage and vulnerability in taking your relationship to the next level. How do you do that in a way that actually makes you stronger? How do you truly overcome feeling like a victim - in your life and relationship? How can you literally become a “yes” to everything - the painful moments as well as the joyful moments - to create new levels of spark and connection in your relationship? In today’s episode, you’re going to learn a way of showing up that helps you face your fears and heal the patterns that no longer serve you, no matter what's going on in your relationship. Our guest is Jett Psaris, co-author of the book Undefended Love, and her work clearly illuminates the path to wholeness, healing, and deep authenticity - especially in relationship. I’ve been excited to speak with Jett Psaris ever since the beginning days of the Relationship Alive podcast - and it was well worth the wait. Plus as an added bonus, you’ll get to hear us sing the “Namaste” chant together at the end of our conversation! As always, I’m looking forward to your thoughts on this episode and what revelations and questions it creates for you. Join us in the Relationship Alive Community on Facebook to chat about it! Sponsors: Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy. Resources: Check out Jett Psaris's website Read Jett’s book Undefended Love and check out her new book Hidden Blessings: Midlife Crisis As a Spiritual Awakening www.neilsattin.com/undefended Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Jett Psaris Amazing intro/outro music (not including the Namaste chant) graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out Transcript: Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. How do you take your relationship to a totally new level where you actually transform, where you get past the things that hold you back, that keep you from shining your brightest? And that keep you from supporting your partner in doing the same? We've talked a lot on this show about how to evolve into a relationship that creates deep safety, and trust and respect, so that you can be fully in the moment with your partner. And yet, even then, some of us feel like, well, maybe there's something more or maybe there's like, "I'm disconnected from this place within me and I'm not quite sure how to get there. I've heard about relationship as a vehicle for transformation, and I could really use some help doing the transforming and knowing what that process is like." Neil Sattin: Well, on today's show, we are going to dive deep into the black hole of transformation with Jett Psaris, who is one of the co-authors along with Marlena Lyons of the book, "Undefended Love". This book will truly open your eyes as to what is possible. Not only in partnership but also in how you reveal to yourself the ways that you are holding yourself back from being centered in your essence and operating from there. And also, how to bring that kind of clarity into your partnership and to see ways that you can stop defending yourself and instead be undefended, vulnerable, courageous and alive. So with that, we will dive right in. I do want to let you know that we will have a detailed transcript and an action guide for this episode, which you can get by visiting neilsattin.com/undefended. And you can always text the word "Passion" to the number 33444 and follow the instructions to also get a link to this show guide and all the other show guides from Relationship Alive. Neil Sattin: Jett Psaris, so happy to have you here with me today on Relationship Alive. Jett Psaris: And thank you so much for the invitation, I appreciate it. Looking forward to it. Neil Sattin: Great. And it's my pleasure. And just so you know, listening, this is a conversation that actually started a couple of years ago because I knew very early on in the inception of this podcast that I was really hoping to have either Jett or Marlena here on the show to talk about "Undefended Love". So with a little patience and waiting for the timing to feel right, here we are. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: I'm excited. And Jett, I'm wondering if we can start right out by talking about this concept of... We're talking about undefended love, but what is defended love? What is being defended and what are we defending ourselves from? Maybe that's a good place to dive in. Jett Psaris: Yeah, in fact, yes it is. The reason we titled the book "Undefended Love", is really because most people, while they're aware of defensive behaviors and actions like reactions, getting angry, withdrawing, most people are aware that those are defensive but unaware that our entire perspective is born out of a defense. For example, if our orientation or role or sense of self that we adopted as a child was to be super competent, that itself is a defense against feeling not good enough. And so, while we can catch ourselves in defensive behaviors or being triggered or reactive, we seldom know that we're going through each moment of every day oriented around protecting ourselves from an experience we had as children that we could not endure. And so, I often point out that these roles that we play and ways of perspectives that we have taken on, they actually got us to this place in our lives. They helped us survive. But now, if we don't relinquish those roles, self-concepts, worldviews, and emotional coping mechanisms, we don't relinquish them - then it's a little bit like an acorn husk, if it doesn't give way, the seed possibility for who we can be, ourselves and in relationship, will never be realized. So undefended, undefended love, is the work of recognizing and dismantling those defense structures which will then dismantle, and the defensive reactions and behaviors will no longer be necessary. And I love the way you did this introduction, it was very subtle, but I want to point it out to listeners. The introduction that you gave, Neil, is you very subtly wove in that the starting place is with ourselves. The starting place is not getting the other to be different. The starting place is that relationship and love call us to a profound inner transformation. After which, we can relate to others in an undefended, or in a non-provisional way. So that's our starting point. Neil Sattin: So many places that we can go from there. I'm curious... Well actually, maybe a good place to go from here is... A lot of people were asking me, "What can you tell me about 'Undefended Love'?" They were like, "What are you reading now for your upcoming interview?" And I was like, "Alright, well basically, when you're growing up, things happen that lead you to form erroneous conclusions about yourself which you call the cracked identity." And it's this sense, and it can be distilled often down to simple statements like, I'm not lovable, or, I'm not worthy, or I'm not valuable, or I'm always wrong. I think those identities, they're not things that are there all the time for us, but from that come our personalities. And one thing that I loved about what you wrote about was how you showed that the personality - things like being a really generous person - are actually there to help us avoid feeling the pain of this underlying cracked identity. Jett Psaris: Exactly, right. Yeah, what you're speaking about here is there are two main layers to our identities, self-concepts or what we created in order to manage our childhood. And the one, the deepest one, the one that is the most gnarly are these self-concepts that are deficient. And it's very interesting to me that the way these are born. I'll give you an example, is, let's say that your dad comes home from work. He's had a rough day at work. You're five years old, you're just excited to see him. And so, you run up to him and he pushes you away, tells you to give him space, not now. And so, here you're wide open, your arms are out literally, you're reaching for the person you love the most in the world, and you experience a physical punch; it feels somatic when he says, "No, go away." Jett Psaris: And so, then the child is left with a dilemma. How do I make my world make sense? And so, what they do is they actually do a kind of translation and say, "I must have been too much in that moment." And so, that's the birth of a self-concept as deficient. "I am too much." And then what they do is they create a compensation to manage themselves. "Since I'm too much, I need to control, contain, suppress, repress my natural emotions, exuberance, actions." And so now, we're beginning to build this self-concept of being restrained, that's the compensation. But that's built on top of, "I'm too much." And so, we do that basically... This is the most important part for me. We create that in order to maintain our relationship like this child in the example with his father. He wants to stay in a relationship with his father, so in order to not make the father wrong for his impatience and anger, the child makes himself wrong and says, "I'm too much." Jett Psaris: And so, you see the impulse is to maintain the relationship. But the way we maintain that, psychologically, produces a self-concept that we just build on over, and over, and over again. And maybe later in the show, we'll talk about how we do that in partnership, how we maintain that entire mistake. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And with that, I thought another great example that you offer in the book is just because you might be listening and thinking, "Well I'm not shut down. I'm a really generous, giving person, full of exuberance. So this probably doesn't apply to me." So what would you say to that person? Jett Psaris: Well, I think there is a case study in this book, I'm not sure if it's this one, or the next one, where a minister saw himself as... His self concept, he was generous, and probably everybody he knew would consider him to be generous except his wife actually. And so, I said, "Well, tell me what happens with your wife if your generosity isn't appreciated." And he said, "Well, actually, I get angry with her and I withdraw." And I said, "Uh. Well, essential generosity has no strings attached. So because you are committed and attached to being seen as a generous person, that's where we have the clue that that is something you developed, and that you are reinforcing because if it doesn't get reinforced from your wife, you actually separate; you sever the relationship, you punish her or you withdraw in some feelings of reactive hurt." Jett Psaris: And so, that's where we begin to see that. We're not actually working purely with essential generosity here. But I want to hasten to mention that we cannot develop a concept of generosity unless we have that essential quality. So the truth is, he does have that essential quality and it's apparent if you sit with him for a number of minutes, you can see that he has that essential quality, but especially with his wife, it also has become a compensatory identity. That has become an obstacle in their relationship because he is more focused on being seen as generous than making authentic contact in a given moment. I just want to mention one more thing about this just coming to me, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Neil Sattin: Sure. No, go ahead. Jett Psaris: Is that the other thing about this is that when he is giving to his wife and she receives that, it's actually not enough. So there's a little backside here, it's a nuance, but he is more attached to a constant stream of validation, and if that stream is broken, then we begin to see the cracked identity underneath that compensation. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Can you chat a little about how that compensatory identity, so you'd think, "Okay, I'm great. I suffered under my parents. I became... I learned how to hold myself back a little bit", or "I learned how to be really generous." But at the same time, these compensatory strategies, they actually perpetuate that underlying belief as well. Jett Psaris: That's exactly right. It's very rarely understood that if our emotional survival strategy is to seek approval, every time we seek approval, we reinforce our deficient identity as not good enough, or not smart enough, or not generous enough. So it's like we're putting coats and coats of paint on that deficient identity and we keep... It's a little bit like an addiction. We keep having to fill that hole, H-O-L-E of deficit. "I'm not good enough so I need to constantly hear from you and everyone around you that in fact I am." So it actually does the opposite. The approval just gets us by for that moment, but it never is going to fill that hole. Neil Sattin: Yeah, and so let's make the leap, at least in this moment that the way that we typically find ourselves in relationship is driven by some aspect of this personality, the compensatory strategy. Jett Psaris: That's right. That's right. A good question and if we take this into a little bit more concrete example is, if you ask yourself, what experience am I trying to get in this moment with my partner, or what experience am I trying to avoid in this moment with my partner? Then you will begin to see the workings of the compensatory and the cracked identity, because authentic and essential interactions are never trying to get something and they're never trying to avoid something. Neil Sattin: So yeah, so now I'm wondering, and you're probably wondering if you're listening, where we're headed with all of this 'cause alright, great, you've got this, I have these cracks in my identity and then my personality came up and there are things about it that are great and maybe there are things about it that are not so great. If I'm gonna be delaminating all of these coats of paint that Jett was just talking about, where do I get with that? What possibilities actually open up for me if I'm willing to go through this process? Jett Psaris: Well, the one piece is that we through this process, we develop ourselves into a much larger, we become much larger. And I often use this example of, if you picture a glass of water next to a large pristine blue mountain lake, and where we start this journey really as that glass of water. So if you picture putting maybe a teaspoon of salt into that glass of water and drinking it up, you'll be repulsed. But that same teaspoon of water into that blue mountain lake, that water is just going to be as refreshing as it always was. Jett Psaris: So life delivers us and also of course relationship on a daily basis, things that don't taste good. If we're that glass of water, we're gonna constantly be saying "no" to everything that comes toward us that we believe is going to produce discomfort and displeasure. But as we become that large, blue pristine mountain lake of our beings, all the things that come to us, they become absorbed and refreshed. And we actually become a source of nourishment and refreshment to everyone around us. Jett Psaris: You can see this a little bit with people who have gone through cancer a number of times. The first time they get the diagnosis, they panic, usually reach for whatever treatment is offered, and go into kind of a trance state and just try to survive. The second time, well, they have their medical team together, they know what worked and didn't work. They move a lot more slowly, generally speaking. And they have the ability to recognize that life is continuing, and this recurrence has also come into their lives. But they have much more stamina and capacity to show up for what's happening. Jett Psaris: And the third time, they'll come into my office, and then say, "Well, there's been a third recurrence, and I feel capable of taking the necessary steps, and I also want to talk about what's happening currently in my marriage." And so, the capacity to be with what life offers becomes larger and larger. We're less likely to feel resentment, we're less likely to feel collapse, we're less likely to feel emotionally defensive or reactive. We develop a general "yes" to everything, because we are so large and have already experienced our capacity to show up for life, that we're no longer afraid of life, as we are when we begin this journey. Neil Sattin: So, as you peel back these layers, you get to reveal essential qualities about yourself that are larger, and deeper, and more constant, more resilient. Jett Psaris: Yes. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And the capacity, also... Neil Sattin: Go ahead. Jett Psaris: Everyone knows what it feels like to have these essential qualities bubbling up in them. And I often use the example of the first time you fell in love. And if you can remember that, the first time you fell in love, a lot of us will focus on what the other person was like. But if you focus for a moment on what you felt like, that experience of yourself, when you first fell in love, that openness, that joy, that capacity, that willingness, that love and all of that, that's actually the destination of this journey. When we fall in love we glimpse that possibility for who we can be with another, and within ourselves we glimpse that possibility. And then, the hard work of realizing that possibility begins. And so, in short form, the answer to your question is, who you were when you first fell in love, the experience you had of yourself, that's actually the destination of this journey. Neil Sattin: That would make sense. And it's making sense to me on this deep level of, right, of course, I've been summoned by this vision of potential. And then, I think often couples find themselves heeding the call, being summoned and then a year or two or 10 later, totally forgetting what called them into that relationship to begin with. Jett Psaris: Right. Neil Sattin: So what happens when we get stuck? And as I did mention in the intro, which you heard, Jett. A lot of what we've talked about on the show has been about creating safety in relationships, so that people really feel freedom to be vulnerable, to be courageous. And yet, I couldn't help but notice that further along in your book you talk about "REACT", and basically identifying all of these qualities of a safe container. And talking about, how maybe those are great to get you to one place, but then you have to find ways to shed those qualities. Jett Psaris: Yeah, and you need a ratio of what I call closeness and intimacy. The closeness is the safe container you're talking about, that holding environment, where you feel like you can rest in the relationship. And the intimacy really is that transformative edge. So the hallmarks of a close relationship are things like reciprocity and the capacity to make and keep agreements. And those very same things that are capacities in a healthy, close relationship can also prevent intimacy. So for example, yes, while it is wonderful to have a relationship where both of you are doing the work. If you maintain, "I will if you will... " Neil Sattin: I'm working with a couple right now who are very mired in "I will if you will", and that is not gonna move forward. We actually have to have a fidelity to our own unfolding. And assuming there is nothing violent or damaging going on in the relationship, we have to be willing to continue to unfold, and reveal, and tell the truth about what we are experiencing, and explore. We have to be willing to do that even if our partner is not willing to do that, otherwise there is a... What creeps in is an unhealthy dependency where we are requiring the other person to be a certain way in order for us to feel safe. When technically speaking, we don't really need another person to be a certain way in order for us to feel safe. Safety is found in that large lake of our being, or the ocean of our being, it is not found in a temporary ability to manipulate or coerce our partner to show up in a particular way. So we need a balance, we do need someone who is not chronically going to be attacking us but we also need the ability when we experience someone like our partner being critical, we have to have the ability to say, "Okay, what is true about the criticism that you are telling me about?" Instead of, "No, I'm not that way." "What's true about that?" Jett Psaris: And also, "In the presence of your criticism, what essential quality or aspect of being do I lose access to?" And clearly, that would be curiosity. So in order to have a fidelity to our own unfolding, we have to say, "Okay, in this moment in the face of your criticism, I have lost access to my essential curiosity. And so now, what I want to do is I want to try to access that curiosity and apply it to your criticism," and then you'll notice that the whole relationship moment, the tension will soften because you're willing to listen to what your partner has said even if your partner has said it in a way that is not simple. Neil Sattin: How do you avoid then, this becoming totally one sided in a relationship where one person is willing to do the work and where the other will happily dish out criticisms and ways of trying to control their partner to make life easy for themselves? Jett Psaris: Well, the truth is you don't avoid that, you don't avoid anything in this approach. And what you do is you establish this fidelity to your own unfolding, and that's primary. And then, what actually happens is one of two things, you outgrow your partner and that becomes very evident and then the question is of whether I should leave or not really becomes moot, becomes obvious, or your partner sees who you're becoming and jumps on board. And I can tell you that happens more than... The latter happens more than the former. The experience they have of your openness, your clarity, your kindness, your skillful means, they begin to say, "I want to be more like that. I want to find that in myself. I want to join with you in this enterprise that you have initiated." And I can tell you when that happens, often the turn is quite dramatic, and then you have established a new chapter on your ground between you based in the shared value of being allies, intimate allies in this journey. Jett Psaris: But it is true that there are those who resist and defend and say, "You know, I don't want to do this work." And then the person who is doing the work, they become stronger, clearer and then they have a choice. Do I want to stay with you and accept you 100% as you are? And then of course, they also have developed the abilities to set boundaries and the rest of that, or is this really no longer... Has this taken us where we could go together, and do I want to actually step outside of this relationship now and move forward on my own? And that's a scary place for people. But it's a lot scarier not to take the journey because if you don't take the journey that seed acorn of you will wither and die. Neil Sattin: So journey or death? The choice is up to you. [laughter] Neil Sattin: And guess what, we all die anyway. Jett Psaris: We all die anyway. It's a series of deaths. Of course, this is a totally transformational process, we get very good at dying psychologically and emotionally speaking, over and over again, that's we become part of the cycle of life, and that's why I think we all long for intimacy so much because it's so fresh, it's so new, it's so exciting, there's no longer, been there, done that, everything becomes sacred. And that's when I think life really becomes everything that we've read about. Neil Sattin: So what does the process look like? And I think this would be good to complete our overview of what someone's gonna go through and then maybe we can offer some actual beginning steps for you, listening, so that you can get a sense of how to take this journey. Jett Psaris: Yeah. Can I blend those two together? Neil Sattin: Please. Jett Psaris: Yeah. The first step, it's just non-negotiable. The first step is that your starting point is "Whatever is happening is about me, not about my partner." And I have to tell you that that can be an easy step for some, and a very, a very large leap for others. For a period of time, at least as an exploration, take on the task that this is about you and not about them. And later on, when you have done that thoroughly, you can examine what part is also about them, but initially you cannot do that. I ask my couples to go on a detox diet of not critiquing, complaining, evaluating, noticing, psychoanalyzing their partner. When you stop, even doing this verbally or in your mind, when you stop focusing your attention on your partner, you're left with having to explore, which is difficult, what is actually going on for you. So the first task is "This is about me, not about you." Jett Psaris: The second one is to stop critiquing. Stop that outward flow and that is very important. The next task is to recognize that there's more to you in that moment than you think. So whatever you think is going on, there's a lot more going on than that. And so, your work is to inquire into the experience you're trying to get in that moment and the experience you're trying to avoid in that moment. Once you do that, it will bring you naturally down into whatever the contraction is that is keeping the self-concept in place. So I'll use an an example. So if you come in... Oh actually can I use you as an example? Neil Sattin: Sure. Let's go for it. Jett Psaris: Okay. [chuckle] Good. Can you give me an example of a reaction that is familiar to you, you have it with your wife, and it happens periodically? Or everyday? [laughter] Jett Psaris: Because a lot of these reactions they happen everyday. Neil Sattin: Right. Well, this almost never happens but... Jett Psaris: Okay. [laughter] Jett Psaris: Good. Neil Sattin: Yeah, sure. Let's go with, I'm working and I'm working a lot and, I get a complaint from her that that I'm working too much and I haven't prioritized our connection enough. Jett Psaris: Okay. Neil Sattin: Let's say in that day even. Jett Psaris: Yes. And let's say in that moment, you're not in your most conscious and spacious self who would probably say, "Oh, you know, I hear that you are wanting more time with me," right? So in our most conscious self that's what we would say. But let say that you're actually working really hard and you're trying to get somewhere, accomplish something, and so this interruption actually threatens what you're trying to accomplish. What's the first thing you experience was the reactive experience when she interrupts you with her complaint? Neil Sattin: That she doesn't value what I'm doing. Jett Psaris: Right. And how is that familiar for you? Neil Sattin: Well, it's a pattern that certainly came up in other relationships that I had before. And I think it connects me... In this moment, I'm seeing my parents very clearly and thinking about how I had to justify my choices to them. Yeah, things that were interesting to me that I wanted to pursue that they didn't necessarily approve of. So, in those moments I would feel like they didn't value what I was doing. I had to do something different to get their approval. Jett Psaris: Right. So in that moment when she has that complaint, it brings you back to an old area of sensitivity that who you are and the choices you make are not valuable. So, in that moment, you lose access to your intrinsic value which is your essential trait and you experience the part of you that wants to make his own choices, but also his choices in some way threaten the stream of goodwill and approval from the other, whoever that is, parents or your wife. And so in that moment, if you don't become reactive and push against her complaint, you don't value me with your own complaint, that's how we separate from each other. If you were to use her complaint as an invitation to drop back in your history to the young boy who had passions and desires that were disapproved of, what vulnerable experience would you have there? What was the vulnerable experience of that young boy? Neil Sattin: He felt alone and self doubt comes up for me. Yeah, like maybe I... Yeah, a lot of uncertainty and confusion almost, like if I can't... I guess, I can't trust myself. Jett Psaris: Yeah. So the self doubt comes up in order for you to maintain the relationship with your parents or your wife. But the vulnerable feeling that you're talking about is you feel lonely. You feel like they severed the relationship with you in that moment. You lost access to the common ground you once shared. And you also lost access to the feeling of passion that you were engaged with when you were in your own little world alone. And so, that's a moment of trauma. And if we can use your wife's complaint to bring you back to to that moment of trauma, and to just simply feel it, what you will find is there'll be a little unwinding, the contraction will soften, and there'll be more space to actually experience the real message that your wife is conveying which is, "I miss you." Jett Psaris: It would be great if she could say that, but it's equally important that she can't because you need to develop the ability to stay in contact with yourself without defending against what she says, and to stay in contact with yourself and also it will bring you to deeper contact with her because she said, "You know, I hear what you're really saying is you miss me. And that is actually what I wanted in the beginning." And so, then the two of you can be allies, "You know, I hear that you miss me and actually now that you're saying that, you've kinda jogged me out of this addiction to my work. And let me just finish this up and let's spend some time together." Or you'll say, "I miss you too, but this is a priority for our family. And so can we kinda support me around completing this project, and then let's plan some extended time together so that we make sure that we're also nourishing the well of our relationship." So then you become resourced. Neil Sattin: How helpful is it to, when going through that inquiry, to let my partner know that that's... Like to let them know what I'm going through or what I'm experiencing, what I'm seeing? Jett Psaris: Well, if you have the emotional strength to reveal your process and there is a welcoming environment to do that, I would say do that. If it feels too risky, then I suggest that clients say to their partner, "Listen, something's just come up for me. I just feel triggered in this moment. It's not about you. I'm gonna spend the next hour to diving in into that and can we meet up at 3:00, so that I can reveal that to you and we can talk about it." It is very important to let your partner know that you're in process. And if you don't have the strength to reveal that process or that process needs some incubation time to protect its space. But you maintain the relationship with a promise to do your work and come back into discussion about what just transpired. That is very important. Neil Sattin: And just to be clear, the process of diving in, there wasn't some magical mantra around the experience that I was having. It's more about simply being with that experience to get to the other side. Jett Psaris: Yes. It's well said, first of all, I just want to also appreciate, I mean how many... Just to, this is a note to the listeners, how many podcasters you know who willing to enter the process personally, so a big thank you for that. It is about freshly meeting each experience with the knowledge of the patterns but the willingness to let this step outside those patterns. And so, there is a mix. You have a knowledge of familiar patterns which you are able to quickly identify. And that's very important, because patterns are always a result of the compensatory and cracked identity. But there's also the willingness to have a completely fresh insight and a completely new experience of that moment where you lay down the pattern, and maybe for the first time, come into contact with the original heart of the moment when you were disproved of, or not appreciated, or rejected. Neil Sattin: So what are some ways that that could manifest? So that if you're going through this at home, you're probably wondering like, "All right, what could that look like for me if I'm willing to just be there? It sounds scary." I have to say, as I was reading your book, I was feeling mixes of elation like, "Wow, this is amazing." And I felt very viscerally the fear coming up of my parts responding to, "Ooh, that's gonna be scary when you do that [chuckle], or that could be frightening when you just rest in that with Chloe. Chloe's my wife. So yeah, it brings up a lot. And you call it the black hole, and I'm sure there's some good reason behind that. Jett Psaris: [chuckle] Yeah. Well, the black hole is where we really drop into that core sensitivity, and it feels very uncomfortable. And it feels uncomfortable to the compensatory identity which has just failed at its mission to keep you out of that discomfort. That's the whole idea of the compensation is for you to actually maintain control, feel safe, and feel comfortable. And so, when you drop into these core sensitivities, most of us scramble quickly to get out of them. You know, that's okay too. What happens is, in my experience, we don't drop into the black hole in a way that is annihilating. It's a little bit more like a snake shedding its skin. When we're ready to drop into the black hole and reveal that piece that's needing our attention and healing, there really already is a substantial experience of ourselves ready to pick that... Pick something up to, in essence, rises up to carry the day. And so we're not gonna drop into the hole and go into a self-destruct. It will absolutely feel uncomfortable, and it feels uncomfortable every single time. Jett Psaris: But what happens is, we develop the capacity of making that transition, and the rewards on the other side are... They're so positively reinforcing, because we get to have that experience of ourselves like when we first fell in love. And so, it is something that happens over time. It's very helpful if you have a therapist, or a spiritual guide, or close friend to do this work with, because it is helpful to have a kind and gentle holding environment. But over time, you just begin to look for the opportunities to fall into that place and recover the sense of self as infinitely loving, open, generous, kind. And so this work really builds on itself. Neil Sattin: Yeah. You talk about the, I think you call it the flip where your fear of not doing the work outweighs the fear of facing into those experiences that you were initially trying to avoid. Jett Psaris: Yeah. I call it the flip. Other traditions call it the spiritual warrior. You develop the commitment to your own unfolding, and you place that over these passing discomforts. At that moment, you have shifted your center of gravity away from a protective, controlling, predictable sense of self and life into a more fluid, more surprising, definitely more spontaneous, and exciting way to be. It's a little bit like moving from the land which is predictable. We walk on land, it's predictable, and jumping into water, where there are all kinds of new, and interesting, and exciting, but also scary movements that occur, you're not in control anymore. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Chloe often... I've heard her recount this story of snorkeling in Bali. I think it was Bali. And being right at the edge of this drop-off from... It went from, I think, the coral reef down into who knows how many thousands of feet and just seeing the shadows lurking just below the light and how terrifying that was. Jett Psaris: That's a wonderful experience. And I often use snorkeling, because most of us when where based in our self concepts, we're like looking at the surface of the water, and this work you're putting on some gear and you're dropping below the surface and there's an entirely new magical, beautiful world. And so, at some point, we long for our depths and for that magic, and mystery, and largeness, and relationship definitely is the sacred path to that experience. Neil Sattin: I have to say, it was kind of funny to me thinking just now about how so much of our time can be spent trying to avoid conflict, and in that situation that I described with Chloe, we would probably make some agreements that would be around like, "Okay, on Mondays I only work until 6:00 PM," That sort of thing to avoid... Coming across that circumstance and what I hear you saying is, well that could be great and you get this magnificent opportunity by being in the discomfort of failing or where you're compensatory strategy is. The things that initially brought you together with that person because you complimented each other so well, where they start to fall apart. Jett Psaris: Yeah, beautifully said. Basically, my way of saying that is, if you can make an agreement and keep the agreement, by all means go ahead and do that. When you make an agreement and you can't keep them, then you know that you have created false ground between you and that there's something deeper that's actually needing to be seen and addressed. And so, when the agreements fall apart which they will, if it's a repetitive deep issue, then you want to ask yourself, what does the agreement protect you from experiencing? And usually that will be as you said earlier discord, it protects you from experiencing that you're having a different experience than the other, and we want to protect ourselves from that. Neil Sattin: Are there core agreements that you think are important in relationship? Jett Psaris: I think, I encourage all couples to address that question, more kind of maybe in terms of core values which might cover the same area. So, some relationships have a core value of telling the truth as we know it, creating a receptive environment for the truth, becoming conscious of underlying motivations and behaviors, so it depends. It should be born of the specific couple not kind of universal, I think, core agreements, but doing the work of forging those core values in agreements is probably as or more important than when you come up with on your list. It's saying, this is how I want to be in life with you, and can we agree to that? And if that seems to change, can we speak about what's changing? Neil Sattin: And it makes me curious to know, like those situations where an agreement is broken, and that could be something like, "I said I was gonna stop working at 5:00 and it turns out I planned an interview for 6:00." [chuckle] Or it could be something more that feels bigger like a betrayal, an emotional infidelity, an affair, something, I gambled all our money away, like those kinds of things. How do you apply... 'cause what I heard you saying earlier is to help someone realize, "Well, this isn't about the other person, this is about me." And how do you merge that in a situation where there's maybe some shock or trauma going on from an agreement having been violated? Jett Psaris: Well, I'll been meeting with a couple tomorrow, where it's a man and a woman. And the man has apparently gambled away their life savings, and she feels deeply betrayed by that. But I have to say that her starting point in asking for the session is that she said, "I recognize that I contributed to the outcome I'm experiencing. I did not take an active role in finances because I was afraid. I knew all along that he had tendencies around gambling, and I didn't want to look at them. We have two children, I didn't want that as another issue to have to deal with." And so, right out of the gate, she's recognizing that this has to do with her. It doesn't mean she doesn't feel betrayed, because she has a pattern, as you talked about earlier, her father also gambled. And so, the narrative is very personal for her, but her starting point is one of taking personal responsibility for what occurred, and wanting to explore what occurred, instead of just making him into a rotten, horrible human being. Jett Psaris: And so, that's the rigor of this and that can be very hard when we talk about gambling away one's life savings. It can be very hard when you talk about having an affair. These are the areas that hit us the most deeply in our psyches, and touch into the deepest of our sensitivities and traumas. And they're the ones that really provide generally the most transformation because they are touching so deeply. So again, the content of what's occurring is not as important as the commitment and the fidelity to unpacking... I love your phrase "delaminating," I'll have to use that. Delaminating these places that we have become hardened and separate from life. Neil Sattin: So now, I'm listening to us and I'm driving in my car, and I'm thinking about this conversation that's touching down into the core of my essence, and I know it's there. What can I do in this moment to take a step in that direction of getting clear on where my work lies, and also maybe how to... Well, I understand you're saying, Jett, that it's not required, but how might I invite my partner into that with me? Jett Psaris: Well, I think the best invitation is by example. And so, the strongest invitation is this is the way I want to approach what has just transpired between us. I want to look at how I became a part of this narrative with you and how it's familiar in my own life so that I can be more awake, and conscious, and resourced when things like this occur, and so that we together can create a digestive system that can digest what life brings to us. And so, I think that's kinda the answer to your second question. The first question is not quite so clear. If you just experienced a betrayal and you just found out about that, the first thing you're gonna experience is shock. And so, when we experience shock, that is something has come into our field that feels larger than what we can handle. Jett Psaris: And so, the first thing we need to do is not scramble and to actually do the opposite which is very hard to do, which is stop and rest and wait until our warm animal body calms down. And we can walk, we can meditate, we can bathe in warm water, whatever helps us calm our animal body, which always is the one that bears the burden of these shocks. And when we begin to feel like we're coming out of the shock, then we begin by slowly wondering, what does this situation have to do with me? How is it familiar? And we begin to apply that essential curiosity and interest to what has transpired and recognize that the content of our lives is there to grow the context of our lives, our being, our openness, our resourcefulness, our genius, our capacity to love and care for ourselves and each other. The more we recognize that the content is there to rub us in a way, create a friction to enlarge that context, the more likely we are to use what happens between us, what arises within us, to actually do the work that I'm describing in undefended love. Neil Sattin: And one quick addendum question to that. How do I stop from victimizing myself? I want to inquire, I don't want to blame myself. Jett Psaris: You don't want to blame anyone. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Jett Psaris: Because this isn't actually a problem. This is the way transformation occurs. The only way we can see what we can't see is by bumping into it and suffering the discomfort of it. [chuckle] Jett Psaris: So, we don't want to become a victim, we don't want to identify as a victim, we don't want to victimize others, we want to join together. And it's all hands on deck, and do what's necessary to wake up and to use the weather of our lives, that's what I'm calling the content, the weather of our lives, to see that which the weather is happening in. So, if I have a feeling, I don't have to become anger, I'm just feeling angry; it's something that is occurring within me. I don't have to... If I have a thought, "This isn't right," that's just a thought. That thought is occurring within me, and there're gonna be thoughts, 60,000 according to Stanford, additional thoughts before the end of the day is up. And so, we become larger than these passing inconveniences or moments of disruption and confusion. Neil Sattin: And then, you get to experience yourself as bigger than all of those things. Jett Psaris: Yes. And more resilient and more skillful. Neil Sattin: And more able to show up for love with your partner. Jett Psaris: Exactly. Well, all those things is love really. We become love instead of being a consumer of love. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Then you embody it in what you do. We're not gonna have a chance to talk about it today, but I loved your discussion of needs versus desire versus wants versus desires, and how we progress through that to get to a place where we're actually good with how life is, which doesn't mean we don't desire things. Jett Psaris: Right. Neil Sattin: But we welcome it. Jett Psaris: Exactly. Neil Sattin: The big yes that you mentioned earlier in our conversation. Jett Psaris: That's right. Neil Sattin: Well, Jett Psaris, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a pleasure. I could talk to you for another hour I'm sure, but your tree crew showed up. [laughter] Neil Sattin: And I'm just so delighted to have you here. Jett is, as we mentioned the co-author of "Undefended Love" along with her partner Marlena Lyons. And you can get links to her websites through the show guide for this episode. Again, you can visit neilsattin.com/undefended, or text the word "Passion" to the number 33444 and follow the instructions. Neil Sattin: Jett, is there anything else currently going on in your life or your world that you'd like to tell people about? Or if they want to find out more about you, where should they go? Jett Psaris: Oh yeah, my website is www.jettpsaris.com. And I just published a new book this year which I'm very excited about, "Hidden Blessings: Midlife Crisis As a Spiritual Awakening", that has won a couple of awards already. And for those in midlife, over the age of 40, that might me something if you like this approach, basically. It's an undefended approach to the midlife passage which I believe is arguably the most transformative passage of one's lifetime. So, do take a look at that, if this approach is of interest you. Neil Sattin: Well, I definitely will, and I encourage you listening to do the same. And thank you so much for your time and wisdom today. And I look forward to speaking again at some point. Jett Psaris: Thank you so much. I appreciate you and the work you're doing. Neil Sattin: Thank you! Sponsors: Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy. Resources: Check out Jett Psaris's website Read Jett’s book Undefended Love and check out her new book Hidden Blessings: Midlife Crisis As a Spiritual Awakening www.neilsattin.com/undefended Visit to download the transcript, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Jett Psaris Amazing intro/outro music (not including the Namaste chant) graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

How important is it to find the "right" partner? If you're inspired by thoughts of how amazing a relationship could be - but wondering what to do next - this episode is for you. Today, we talk about the most important ingredient for having a conscious, authentic, amazing relationship. It's something you can do whether or not you're in a relationship. And doing this gives you the power to create exactly the kind of relationship that you're looking for.  I'm NOT saying that anyone could be right for you. But what I AM saying is that you have more control over your relationship destiny than you think - even if you're already in partnership. The thing is, though - it requires effort, and attention. You can't coast your way to an amazing relationship.   This episode is a follow-up to last week's episode - "Crafting an Uncommon Bond and Soulshaping - with Jeff Brown" - and inspired by a conversation with a friend of mine about that episode. Sponsors: Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy. Resources:   What are my top three Relationship Communication Secrets? Download for FREE here. Want to understand the needs that drive you, and your partner, to do what you do? Download that for FREE by clicking on the "Send me the Action Plan button here. Our Relationship Alive Community on Facebook Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

What do you do when you want to shift your relationship from the mundane towards something more transcendent? Is this something you could experience with just anyone? And if not, how do you know if your relationship has this potential? Also...what happens when the podcast guest starts interviewing the host?! In this week’s episode, we’re diving deep into the question of conscious relationship a bit differently, through a conversation with writer, seeker, and spiritual activist Jeff Brown.  Jeff is the author of the books Soulshaping and An Uncommon Bond, and director of the documentary Karmageddon: The Movie. His words and wisdom shine light on the journey of becoming more and more who we are meant to be, should we choose to follow that path. It’s not meant to be easy, but it is totally worth it - and in today’s episode of Relationship Alive we detail some of the important steps along the way. Neil Sattin: Hello and welcome, to another episode of Relationship Alive. This is your host, Neil Sattin. On this show, over and over again, we've been talking about the topic of conscious relationship. What does it mean to evolve your relationship to some place new, some place different? How do you recognize the patterns that are just about unhealthy relating, things that you've inherited from the culture, from your parents, from your friends, from your karma and how do you identify those things and get to a place where you can move past them to unchartered territory - that's about coming together clearly with your partner and helping each other, heal, grow and have a mission in the world, that's maybe something you do together or maybe it's supporting each other in your separate missions, but in the end, wanting both you and your partner to shine more brightly in the world and to do that in a way that enhances your connection as opposed to growing you apart? Neil Sattin: On today's show we are having a very special guest, Jeff Brown, who is the author of An Uncommon Bond which is a novel about conscious relationship. He's also the author of Soulshaping and he is followed by thousands and thousands of people on Facebook and elsewhere who tune in to the way that he writes and how it evokes new insight, new states of consciousness and it's a real pleasure to have him here with us today to talk about his book, to talk about conscious relationship and to talk about soul shaping and how we can craft our growth and development in a way that's generative for you and for the world around you as well. So thank you, Jeff Brown, for being here on Relationship Alive with us today. Jeff Brown: My pleasure Neil. I'm also quite grateful for this amazing work you're doing in the world, trying to raise awareness of conscious relationship and really deepen into the dialogue. I think it's such an important step forward for all of us. Neil Sattin: Thank you. Thank you, yeah, it's something I'm incredibly passionate about and it's always a pleasure to have, to be able to sit down with someone like you who also is equally passionate about, thinking about where we're going along with where we've been. So maybe we could start by just, I've already mentioned your books and, oh by the way, we will have a show guide for this episode so if you're interested in downloading that, you can visit Neilsattin.com/soulshaping or you can text the word 'PASSION' to the number 33444 and follow the instructions and we'll get that show guide to you. So, let's maybe just start with, what is soulshaping? Since that is at the core of your work. Jeff Brown: Soulshaping was really, I mean, when I had begun to write my first book, I was just trying to make sense of my own experience and what ultimately made sense to me at that time was that, as I looked back on my life, it seemed that I had some internalized what James Hillman called the innate image or what I have come to call 'soul scriptures', that I had some encoded sacred purpose, that included key relational figures, particular callings to certain work in the world, certain archetypal transformations that I was here to go through as though I was somehow shaping my soul towards wholeness and as I looked at every stage of my life, there were a lot of seemingly insignificant experiences in moments but there were these very fundamentally relevant and significant moments, externally sourced but also often coming from within, that seemed to be pointing me in the direction of a particular encoded path that I was here to walk in order to move in the direction of a more inclusive and whole centered consciousness. Neil Sattin: And so part of your work, I know you do soulshaping sessions with people as well, so you're writing about it and then you're also helping people discover that path for themselves? Jeff Brown: I am but I defined it very broadly. I think what shifted for me when I began, is I was very focused on callings. The calling to write Soulshaping, your work in the world right now. You know, Oprah Winfrey has worked to bring that message, whatever that message is or was, to the world and what I've come to believe and understand and so much of my session work is focused on, is really dealing with the unresolved emotional material. Because for me, I grew most in my spirituality through the evolution of my emotional processes. For me, emotional maturation and spiritual maturation are synonymous. I don't distinguish the two, that's why I'm so deeply opposed to split off or dissociative views of spirituality, ideas of enlightenment that exist, independent of the emotional body, the unresolved ego, the story that is yet to be processed, because for me, this is where most of the transformation happened. Jeff Brown: At the end of a deeper profound emotional process, I found that I was able to hold the space for the everything in a much more inclusive way. So soul shaping for me now is more than callings and archetypes. It's really, really about getting into that material that we hold individually and that we bring forward from the unresolved collective and doing the work that allows us to transform our individual and collective consciousness, so that we could move individually and collectively in the direction of a more inclusive or whole centered consciousness. Neil Sattin: And that's one thing that I really appreciated in reading An Uncommon Bond and I think you even mentioned it in your own notes at the end. This need to bring spirit into your embodiment, and so much of what I talk about and what my partner Chloe and I work on in the world is, allowing your body to be included in that experience, not in a way that is dissociating from your body, but where your somatic experience is actually intrinsic and gives you such a wealth of information about what's happening with you on those more subtle levels. I like how you did that in your book, and emphasize that... Jeff Brown: Well, I don't even understand how one has any experience of anything independent of the body. I think that all of that is just nonsensical for me. If I look back at the experience that inspired An Uncommon Bond that profound opening, all of it happened through my somatic structure. I felt as though I entered and opened and we opened together into some kind of a portal of experience, that seemed to transcend my embodied experience, but I'm not so sure that's true, I wasn't trained in the art of ecstasy, when ecstasy came my way, I didn't know how to hold it or contain it somatically and somehow imagined it was happening independent of my body. Jeff Brown: But in fact, every single piece of that experience was happening through the body and the self hood, that was the container for the experience and I'm not so sure that we're going to get anywhere, particularly if we're trying to break through the patterns that obstruct our ability to actualize love between ourselves and others, if we don't go deep back into the somatic structure and work the selfhood and work the story and work what's held in the cellular structure, in order to transform it in the direction of being able to be more open and available and sustaining of love when it arises. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I think for us, one thing that's been so profoundly transformative has been what happens in the quietness that, when Chloe and I are together, and I'm just speaking from my experience here, in the quietness and paying attention to what arises, what sensations arise, and even just speaking to those without labeling them, but just saying like, "Oh, this is where I'm experiencing some tension right now." or "I'm feeling this heat in this part of my body... " Those sorts of things end up becoming... The word that's popping into my head is transportational. They bring us somewhere to different levels of experience that wouldn't happen if you were focusing on the kind of intimacy that's just about getting each other excited and getting each other off. Jeff Brown: Right. Neil Sattin: I'm curious for you, the title of your novel is An Uncommon Bond and I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit more about what that even means, to have An Uncommon Bond? Jeff Brown: I think we may have to rely on definition, it's a little bit lengthy but maybe the first part of it. I had an experience in '98 and I had no words for this experience but this experience changed my life and I was doing a masters at Saybrook. I was at Saybrook University in San Fransisco doing a Humanistic Psych degree, a masters and it just so happened that, right at the seeming end of that connection, Jeanne Achterberg, who had written about uncommon bonds and had co-defined the term, I believe with Donald Rothberg, I was doing an Uncommon Bond weekend and I was oblivious, I had no language for this profound experience and I was in a really profoundly confused place and walked in that room and suddenly felt like somebody understood what my experience was. Let me just read the first paragraph maybe of the definition. Neil Sattin: That would be great. Jeff Brown: Yeah, "Uncommon Bonds are love connections that are sourced in the transcendent and transpersonal realms. The couple feels destined to have met, their connection is sourced in grace. This often leads to an experience of parapsychological or paranormal events, such as synchronicity, soulendipities, and non-local communications that defy known laws of time and space. There's a knowing of pure recognition of the other, a feeling of being cut from same cloth, a sense of having occupied the same body in a previous life, or perhaps one soul residing in two bodies. The lovers experience a prayer of gratitude and a sigh of relief as though coming home after decades of wandering, a transpersonal energy dances within and between the couple, spiritual practice is important to them, since the relationship is often experienced as the premiere spiritual engagement, an outgrowth of a relationship with the absolute." Jeff Brown: And then it goes on to say that, "The relationship polishes the rough diamond of the soul, for this reason, the relationship is sometimes dark, arduous, complex, accompanied by many dark nights of the soul. At the same time, there's a sense of the soul work could not happen in any other way than through the relationship, repeated dancing back and forth, no self, no disappearing wave to particle and back, characterizes the growing, changing, polishing and refining process." Jeff Brown: It's the profound crack open in the presence of another who feels destined to have walked your way in this lifetime. Feels deeply familiar even if you don't believe in past lives, you have this experience and you're certain that they existed and at the same time, at this stage of human development, because of where we're at in terms of understanding the shadow, they are remarkably difficult to sustain and particularly if one or both people in the dynamic are not egoic-ly strong enough to hold to their center and the merging, usually the studies indicate, Jeanne's studies that usually they end up breaking up unless they encounter each other or re-encounter one another at a much older age. Neil Sattin: Interesting. Jeff Brown: It's just too much to hold. It's just too much to hold. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And I think because, and this is why these kind of connections can sometimes just knock you on your ass, it's like it can... It takes you to that place where you have to recognize at some level, your dysfunction, as well as those transcendent states of, oh my God! I just met the most amazing person and they're... If it has all those feelings of reconnecting on a deep, mystical level. Jeff Brown: And that's part of the problem. And what you said earlier was true, they knock you down to your ass. Basically, they pull you up and out and that may just be because we just don't know how we get to orient that experience or to have that experience in a way that's integrated with our humanness, right? We don't have that training and I just don't know if we're at that stage developmentally where we can hold all of that at one time, that's the work. That's the work of conscious relationship. To be able to bring together the... Something called the transcendant, if in fact there is any way to transcend and the imminent. And in my experience, that's exactly what happened. Was a transport of experience or what you call a transportational experience but the opening into the light, the light was so powerful and profound, it could not help but reveal the shadow. And of course, not only our shadow, we were walking into the collective shadow in that experience because you can't have one without the other. You can't have a spirituality that only allows you to have ecstatic experience without also having the portal open to the shadow, the emergence of the shadow. Jeff Brown: So we entered into both of those places and then it just simply becomes a question of whether we're equipped, whether we're supported, whether we're capable and how toxic is our unresolved emotional material. Because if it's too toxic, if there's too much in the way of an abandonment wound, or a jealousy wound, or a betrayal wound, or whatever it is that you're carrying, it becomes almost impossible to sustain it because it just becomes too painful. Neil Sattin: Now, we spoke a little bit before the interview officially started and I come down pretty strongly on the level of, not that everyone has to stay together, like if you find someone and you fall in love that somehow you're like, you have to be together for the rest of your lives, that's not where I am. However, I do feel like there's a journey of skill building and opening and healing that could actually bring most people to this transcendent place. That's just my belief and I'm curious to know where you come down on that in terms of, do all connections have the potential to be Uncommon Bonds versus not. Jeff Brown: Yeah. I'm writing about this on an individual level in my current book. It is very similar to what people are doing individually, they're trying to pull up and out of the humanness in order to have some kind of an ecstatic or inclusive or unity consciousness experience. And then they find it's unsustainable when they try to come back into the world and they have to integrate with the world, and they have to confront their material. The unresolved material that they're actually carrying in their bodies. Jeff Brown: I think that the problem is this, if I think of dynamics I've had that started really on a ground or pragmatic level, they didn't have that element of pull up and out. They didn't have what we might call a mystical aspect. Usually, there's not enough charge in the connection to want to go through that process or to believe that you're gonna land at a place where you're going to have an expansive experience together. So usually, it starts with something that pulls you up and out that feels like there's some profound joy potentially waiting for you, if you can do some work along the path. Jeff Brown: But what I do believe, what does make sense to me is that something happens in the earth bound work, the relational work, the work that you're doing in your partnership, I'm sure, around the unresolved material that emerges, the social anxiety, the discomfort. All the levels of triggering that are happening in dynamics that have some charge to them. That if you can see that process through, and I don't think a lot of people have. We don't have a lot of love elders to talk to about this yet Neil, but I think that they do, that I have a feeling that they do integrate back into an experience of that ecstatic union in a way that feels more real to me, more sustainable for sure and may have a remarkably different tenure or resonance than the experience, for example, that I had in the initiating Uncommon Bond experience. Jeff Brown: I'm stuck with this. I'm not exactly sure which way to go with... I can't really fully answer your question because I'm still trying to figure that out myself. But I do know for sure that if you don't come back and do the earth bound work and you don't weave all the threads together within you and break through all of the obstructions within you that, for sure the experience that you're having is unsustainable. Neil Sattin: Can we get really practical for a moment and talk about what that process of resolving could look like for someone? And maybe even what's a step or two that someone could take after they listen to this episode of the podcast that would help them move along that journey. Jeff Brown: Okay, so let's say you've met somebody and you've had this awakening, we'll call it an awakening experience with them. And you feel like you've entered into some portal that feels beautiful, delicious and at the same time feels vulnerable and terrifying, or something. Then I think, probably what you would begin to do if you wanted to sustain it and deepen it and grow through it without knowing necessarily if this is someone who'll be with you for life, you don't know that really yet, is you would begin to work probably somatically to uncover all of the levels of material that are getting in the way. Jeff Brown: So for example, if you find yourself in that opening, suddenly feeling super triggered by the fact that this other person is presumably looking at other women, for example, and they may feel like they're just looking at them as they passed by them on the street, but a jealousy trigger might arise because now you have so very much to lose because your heart is so deeply opened. You have two choices, you either continue to sustain the reactivity that comes up rising in the trigger, or you decide you're going to work on your historical material. Past life aside, working on that, I don't know so much about that, but working somatically with a somatic-based psychotherapist, maybe a bioenergetic or core energetic or somatic experiencing therapist to really go deep into the caverns in the body to find out where the material is sourced, where it comes from and to try to work your way through to a more healed or transformed experience around it, so that when you re-engage in the connection and your partner happens to look at a woman walking down the street, you're not so triggered that you're going to obstruct the development of the connection. Neil Sattin: Yeah. So there's so much there in terms of being able to recognize that you have a trigger even happening and going through some sort of process to resolve whatever is stuck there that's causing the trigger. And with a jealousy trigger, it could be that there's something there, there's some reason that your safety radar is activated and that would be something to address in your coupleship. Jeff Brown: And to determine whether or not it's based in reality, or whether it's based in your holdings, right? Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Jeff Brown: The way I think of it more broadly is that if I think of my grandparents or my parents, they were organized relationally around a survivalist construct. They defined who they were by what put food on the table, and whatever roles or duties have been culturally conditioned into them, and the way that the system held that. Now, we're at the very beginning of this bridge crossing. And as a result of that, moving in the direction of authenticity as our orienting principle, that is we relate on the basis of who we really are, not on some basis of some role, duty, adaptation, disguise, or mask that allows us to get through a survivalist world. We're opening the door to a whole range of material that was really never been attended to by mostly anybody in historical terms. Certainly not in our family lineage, at least not most of us. This is the hardest time for everybody because it means if you're going to go on what we're calling a conscious relationship journey, which for me is an authentic relationship journey, you're going to confront a gigantic tsunami of unresolved material that you're holding and that's deep within the collective. Jeff Brown: You need to be brave, you need to be patient, you need to be incredibly realistic. And a lot of people are not realistic, they're dealing with fire, they don't understand what that really means. It means it's gonna go on for years and years and probably always be part of your interface because we're the first path travelers crossing the bridge towards an authentic connection. And we're carrying an enormous amount of baggage with us. Neil Sattin: Yeah. I'm letting your words wash over me because... And I'm thinking about how our parents and grandparents, because they were oriented around survival, then that was an orienting principle that allowed them to brush things under the rug or to live in pain without resolving it. Jeff Brown: They had a system. They had a system and a number of premises and beliefs that just allowed that to happen. "Don't look back." There's a million cliches that relate to that experience. They didn't expect anything different. They have no idea that anything else could even exist in that world and probably it wouldn't have been congruent with the way the world was organized. It's still really not. It takes a lot of time that we don't have to do this deeper work. And my concern is that people get an unrealistic vision of possibility for how quickly they're going to get there. I think that we need to understand we are doing the work of generations, we need to not be so damn hard on ourselves when we can't quite work a piece out, we need to allow ourselves to just step back and celebrate our little tiny victories 'cause in collective terms, they're humongous and not hold to some vision of possibility that's not sustainable or possible sociologically in one lifetime. That's not to be discourage us from doing the work, it's beautiful, it's beautiful work. But let's also be realistic about it. Neil Sattin: I was like, and yet we're gonna try. And there's... Jeff Brown: Absolutely. Neil Sattin: And there's some tension in there too because the temptation would be to, now that you're not orienting around survival necessarily but you still have to maintain. So you still have to somehow survive... Jeff Brown: We're still in a survivalist world Neil. We still have to adapt and mask and make a living and the whole culture economically is built around masking and branding and putting on a show and putting away your feelings and not throwing tantrums in the marketplace and all that stuff. It's mostly inauthentic. So that's hard stuff and then you gotta come back home to and wanna reconnect to the subtle realms, you wanna do conscious armoring, you wanna reach a stage where you go into the marketplace, you put on the armoring you have to, but you're conscious enough to know to come home and take it off. Not always that easy to take it off if you're trying to make a living and striving and grinding it out in the marketplace. And sometimes I know couples that get into this place where they're so impatient with each other because the partner comes home and they're saturated in the energy of the marketplace. Well, that's because we're just at the beginning of authenticity as a way of being and our social structures and economic structures aren't even built around any of this yet. Jeff Brown: So we have to be realistic. Let me just say my experience... My initiating Uncommon Grounds experience taught me two things, two amazing things in all of that suffering and all that ecstasy. One is the possibilities that exist between two humans, in my view are so much more profound. I mean all this work that's been done around Wilber sketching models of consciousness with men sitting in meditation caves, I'm not interested in any of that. To me that is just patriarchal spirituality, it's safer, it's easier. I know why they focus there but to me it's the tiniest fragment of possibility compared to what's possible between two hearts. Because my experience was not only did we open to another portal, I felt as though there was a way in which if we could have kept going we could have actually co-created some aspect of this universe with love as the transformative device for that. It is... We're singing about love not knowing what the hell we're talking about, but we're moving in the right direction. I mean there's a reason why we're here and we feel love for one another. It is the direction to go. We're not just here together to keep each other company, we're here together to show each other God. Jeff Brown: The other thing I learnt is how far we are for being able to sustain and deepen into that experience because of the stage we're at in the collective. Because the shadow is everywhere. Everyone is a trauma survivor if we compare their human experience to the realm of the most subtle humane vulnerable heart open possibility. So, we're going in the right direction, we got a real super long way to go and then we just have to decide if it's worth the energy that it's gonna take to get us some part of the way there. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I think it's worth it. I totally think it's worth it. Jeff Brown: You do, yeah, well, that's why you're doing this podcast. And I think it's worth it, and I also understand why some people who are carrying too much stuff or have too many practical challenges or don't have enough relational support because there is very little relational support out there for this kind of work, I can understand why they say, "Fuck it, it's not worth it. I'm just gonna have a more practical connection and put my energy somewhere else because the relational field is so challenging." It's all most people can do to manage and identify their own material. To put that two people in a room trying to do that and then weave the dynamic piece together and what comes up in the dynamic, it's extraordinary. Hard, brave, profound, terrifying work. Neil Sattin: Something that I think is ironic, 'cause I'm just pondering like well, why... How did we even end up here in conscious relationship land? And I think that the irony at least as I'm seeing it right now is that, it's the the cultural idea that you can meet someone and they can be your your hero, you can have that love that lasts forever, that engages you in like the practical question of well, how is that really possible? And especially if you're not willing to settle for... Well, my grandparents were together forever but they never had a kind word to say about each other or that sort of thing. Or frequently had an unkind word to say, [chuckle] let's just say it that way. So it's diving into that question around what gets you to the long term that I think takes you out of the common way of experiencing relationship which we center around - like how much dopamine we get from it, how much exhilaration we feel, how romanced we are and it moves us because that in and of itself isn't sustainable. Its sustainable when you merge that with the kind of healing work that you're talking about that takes energy and attention and intention 'cause it doesn't just happen on its own. Jeff Brown: Right. Neil Sattin: I didn't mean to monologue there. [laughter] Jeff Brown: Oh it's no problem. I didn't wanna respond I think what you said was absolutely true. Neil Sattin: So it gets me wondering then, if that's true, from your perspective, how would a partner bring attention to this, to... Like if you're in a relationship and you're caught in, like the first part of your book "An Uncommon Bond", I was frustrated, it was almost like how... Because it's portraying, this aspect of relationship and it... To me it almost felt like how there are all these songs on the radio that I can't even listen to anymore, that used to be themes for my life but now I just... I hear it and it just... I'm kinda like ugh, I don't wanna listen to that. So there's this question, if you know you're in that dynamic what's a pathway? What's a step in the right direction? Especially how do you bring that to your partnership? Jeff Brown: Sorry, define that dynamic? Neil Sattin: If you recognize like "Oh, We're just all over the map and we're getting triggered left and right and what we need to do is actually come to a recognition that what's required is attention and intention on our healing journey as well as our romantic journey. How do I bring that to a partner? Jeff Brown: Well, that depends on the partner. Probably, gently at first but at some point probably very directly. There really isn't a choice. If you're not going to fall back to a survivalist framework for a dynamic. The term "conscious relationship" doesn't work for me 'cause consciousness is so bloody relative, you know? And it implies everybody before was unconscious and like "we're conscious". And I mean, compared to where we're gonna be in 300 years, we're also unconscious. So, I think of it as just getting authentic, an authentic form of relatedness, and I think that every couple decides how far they're gonna go in the direction of authenticity, of getting real with who they are and what lives below the surface and all the stuff that they see flying around in the dynamic and taking it seriously and understanding that it's real. Not looking at it through the lens of ungrounded spirituality which pretends that everything about the personality is unreal, but the ecstatic experience is real, well that's just ungrounded and nonsensical. And not moving in the direction of pragmatism, where you decide to just accept that's just the bullshit of life and you're gonna keep yelling and screaming and abuse each other and keep moving forward. Jeff Brown: But every couple has to decide that, they have to have the conversation, somebody has to have the conversation, and we've all been part of that. I've been part of that conversation when I absolutely and utterly refuse to do the work. And I've been part of the conversation and the experience that initiated bond that then inspired Uncommon Bond, with somebody who absolutely refused to do the work. I had both experiences. At some point you just have to decide, you're either gonna break up, you're gonna embrace survivalism as a way of being, or you're gonna move in the direction of an immoral wakening, and authentic connection. Just initiate the conversation as gently as possible, it will often end up being a shouting match, because somebody very often, this was the experience with the Uncommon Bond studies. One partner wanted to really go forward and deepen into the shadow work and the other one absolutely and utterly refused to. It's rare to find two people who in a dynamic that is super charged and brings up the light in the shadow in really intense ways where both people are absolutely and utterly willing to do the work on the deepest deepest levels. I've encountered very few couples like that in my life. Neil Sattin: Yeah, it's something where I certainly feel blessed when I realize that with my partnership. Jeff Brown: If you got that, you're blessed. But it also means that you're gonna have a... In some ways a very hard path. A beautifully fulfilling path if you guys can see the process all the way through and not stop half way. Neil Sattin: Yeah. There are moments where it's really hard, and then there are moments where it's really beautiful. Jeff Brown: You're doing the work for my Bubbe and Zeda. Of course it's hard. You're doing the work for everybody. Really, that has never been able to do that work, or even be aware of that, existence of that work. It's really amazingly remarkable, couples who do this work really need to just go out and have congratulatory dates and just give themselves a break when they can't quite get it right just because they're doing the work for everybody. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And there's something that's coming to me too around how the container of your relationship is so important too... And establishing that container is often one of the most challenging initial parts of a couple embracing this kind of journey together, is creating the safety that allows them to do that so that, when I look at my own experience, the things that are hard now are still hard but they're not hard in a way where I feel like everything is just gonna potentially fall apart like I did in those initial hard moments. Jeff Brown: Because your container is solid. Neil Sattin: Yeah, Exactly. But it took a lot of work to get there, to the solid container. Jeff Brown: And what would you define as the key elements of that container? Neil Sattin: Key elements of the container. One, well there are the prerequisites to the container, so first is developing your presence and by that I mean an embodied presence. Although I think there are times when a more dissociative mindfulness can be helpul, particularly when you feel your trigger coming up and you're right there with your partner. But for the most part it's the kind of presence that is about really being solidly in your body and knowing what is coming up when you're with your partner. So that's pre-requisite number one. And number two is establishing your communication, the kind of communication that's based on presence and that already has a backdrop of establishing safety. So you're shifting your communication paradigm where you recognize, okay, how we talk to each other about whatever is coming up for us. Like, our mission is to keep each other safe in that conversation. Not that we avoid things to keep each other safe but we bring things up in a context of safety. And if you get knocked off the rails, you figure out how to get back in line. Jeff Brown: Got it. So it can be uncomfortable but not hurtful. Neil Sattin: Exactly. Exactly. Or if you slip and you're hurtful you're like, "Woah! I fucked up. Sorry". Willingness to bring that into your awareness of how you communicate. Jeff Brown: So the capacity for self reflection is very important in this process? Neil Sattin: Exactly. Jeff Brown: Okay. Neil Sattin: Those two things along with a whole bunch of curiosity, I think get you to a place where you can start looking at the container. And that's both in terms of how you close your exits...so that means even seeing what your exits are in your relationship. The way that you put energy elsewhere or leave the relationship... Especially in the hard moments. And then on the flip side of container, it's like imbuing it with the beauty of your vision and what you want and what you crave and what you hope to embody together, or what you wanna amplify that you already have. It's a combination of those two things that I think get you to a place where now you can dive into harder work and that structure holds you. Jeff Brown: And what do you feel... I know I'm turning this around on becoming the podcast questioner...but you have the wealth of experience in it. So how do you feel about the whole question of boundaries in terms of creating a safe container around monogamy versus polyamory. Can this work happen if one or both parties is engaged in the polyamorous lifestyle? Neil Sattin: That's a great question. I think that it really depends on the couple. I have friends who are happily polyamorous. And I've had some clients who are happily polyamorous. But happily polyamorous also includes always being or, I shouldn't say always but very frequently being stimulated in the way that your partner being with someone else brings up your abandonment trauma or your need to be acknowledged or seen or... There are all kind of ways that that can still tap into your deep primal issues around safety. The question in the couple is, are you in agreement around it? And can you... If you're in agreement around what you're doing then you can have conversations that either restore your safety because something did jeopardize it in terms of being polyamorous. Neil Sattin: Or you recognize like, "Oh, what I'm experiencing right now actually isn't about my partner at all. It's this deep issue that I've held within me that has no relationship to my partner except that they're stimulating it right now. And I'm gonna deal with that." That being said for myself and for a lot of people, the path of monogamy focuses energy in a way that I think is just... It's different. And I'm coming from a place too where I have two young kids and honestly, I can't imagine having the time to deal with all of that. I'm gonna do this conscious relationship thing but with more people in the mix. It seems on a practical level really challenging. Jeff Brown: Yup. Neil Sattin: And opening up to challenges. All the challenges around... And you brought up the word boundaries so maybe we re-visit that in a moment. But I think it introduces a set of challenges that create amazing growth. But that is not the growth that I personally choose. Jeff Brown: Yup. I think it really depends on where you're wanting to go. And I think if you're wanting to go to the place of trying to explore and possibly develop the capacity to sustain the most profoundly inclusive kind of love experience. One that opens the portal to the everything, one that explores the portal to the everything, that it cannot happen in a polyamorous union. What I think they're exploring is more a preliminary stage work which for many of us is absolutely and utterly necessary. But I think because of the collective carry forward in terms of abandonment, betrayal and jealousy material, that you absolutely have to have a monogamous container if you're wanting to go all the way. Whether that'll be true in a thousand years, once we clear some of this debris, I don't know. Although I suspect it will be. I feel like what's happening in the poly-community is, apart from the whole self avoiding aspect of that for many of them, which is shrouded in all kinds of spiritual fancy talk. I just think they're not going to the same place because I don't believe humans can hold that portal open, that most profound deeply vulnerable portal open unless there's a monogamous container. Neil Sattin: I think there's also a biological shift that is part of evolving a monogamous relationship. The way that the dopamine pathways in your body start to change where polyamory could potentially be counterproductive to that because... Well, here's where I come at it from. There are a lot of clients that I work with where their relationship has grown stale and what they long for, they think, is the rush of how it felt to meet and to be romanced and to have that huge sexual charge that I would say most people, not all but most people do experience in the beginning of relationship when they connect with someone. And they long for that and it's not there. And the challenge that I think... And so those people often come to me and say, "Do you think we should open up our marriage, so that we can get some more of that spark happening?". Jeff Brown: No, they should enreal themselves and enreal their dynamic and go deeper and clear the debris so that when they connect sexually, they're actually present in a way that they never were able to be in the beginning. Neil Sattin: Yeah, so let's go there. Talk about enrealment. Jeff Brown: That's my bias. Right? And I'm just writing a chapter about it in my new book and yeah, I just think that it's very easy to go to staleness and then go to spark, staleness, spark, staleness, spark. It's a life, right? It's a way of life but they need to at least have one experience of their lifetime of trying to go deeper into the shadow material together, clear the debris and develop a container or capacity, an experience of intimacy that's quite a bit different than the one that happens in the beginning when you don't really know one another. You don't know one another's shadow. For whatever reason we're transported to a place where we bypass that or crack through that or avoid that, whatever we're doing. But I think to move to the next place where you're actually deeply seeing of the other on every level. And if you're doing the work together loving them, devotionally, beautifully 'cause you have so much regard for the courage that they bring to the moment to moment experience of the connection doing that work, I think that the intimacy just starts to flow from a completely different place. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Jeff Brown: But because there was no space to do that work and there's no modeling for doing that work and there are no love elders out there who can really support us in doing that work, we're at the beginning of that journey, it's easy to understand why they go back to spark because something's alive because the other spark, the spark I'm describing is the more sustainable depth-full integrated embodied woven spark that travels through us on every level. And to get there as you know, you have to do all the individual work to be able to be integrated and woven best between mind and body and all your aspects as an individual. It's so much work to get to that stage. You understand why they run away and go to spark again. But I think now we're having this conversation because we're at the beginning of trying to lay down the framework for how we go back to a different kind of spark while staying inside of the same union and beautiful but... Neil Sattin: Yeah, there's a reason we're having this conversation and... Jeff Brown: Yeah. Neil Sattin: There's a reason you're listening to this conversation and I invite you, if you're listening and you're poly, from my perspective, I'm in no way gonna say, "Oh, you can't experience transcending conscious polyamorous relationship". I just invite you to examine the dynamics that are at work and see if that's what's happening or not. Jeff Brown: Well you can have all kinds of extraordinary experiences. I mean, for a lot of people and it may be true for most of us at this stage of human development, not really individually prepared for the kind of work required by one monogamous connection. The poly's the path to gather information about who we are from various types of dynamics, to explore different portals, how different connections bring out different parts of us is beautiful, magnificent. Don't misunderstand me but if we're wanting to go all the way through to that uncommon bond experience sustainably, that's what I was saying, I don't think we can do it in that form. Can I ask you a question Neil? Neil Sattin: Of course. Jeff Brown: You mentioned earlier, you were talking about this idea that maybe what we need to do is do this groundwork, the shadow work, the working through the material work in order to have a more real experience or a more truly sustainable experience of say, great love. Right? Neil Sattin: Yes. Jeff Brown: When you ask that question, then I ask the question to myself, where does this sort of thing that just exists between two... 'Cause when I hear that I think well you can throw any two people into an elevator and if they both have the willingness to do the work, we're assuming that they can go to that place. And I'm not sure that's true because I do think there has to be something that exists between the two people. And I always ask myself, what is that thing that needs to exist between the two people? Because it can't just be any two people. At least it's my experience it can't be. And what I came up with when I was writing the Uncommon Bond was fascination or what you may call curiosity. That with some people you just have this intrinsic fascination about this. So let me read you a quote. I'm interested to hear what your experience of this is. Neil Sattin: Great. Jeff Brown: You can connect from all kinds of places. Energetic harmony, sexual alchemy, intellectual alignment, but they won't sustain love over a lifetime. You need a thread that goes deeper. That moves below and beyond the shifting sands of compatibility. That thread is fascination. A genuine fascination with someone's inner-world. With the way they organize reality, with the way they articulate their feelings, with the unfathomable and bottomless depths of their being. To hear their soul cry out to you again and again and to never lose interest in what it is trying to convey. If there is that, then there will still be love when the body sickens, when the sexuality fades, when the perfection projection is long shattered. If there is that, you will swim in love's waters until the very last breath. So that's from an Uncommon Bond. How do you feel about that? Does that feel true? Or do you feel as though sustaining fascination with another's inner-world for a life time is unrealistic? Neil Sattin: Well I remember reading that and actually doing the translation... The way I translated that was curiosity. Or and now that I think about it even more, it's like, the word that comes to me is willingness... And part of that maybe involves the will because sometimes it is an act of will to bring yourself back and to remind yourself that there is a reason that I'm here. But what I also like about willing is that it implies for me, some vulnerability and openness. And that to me, leads to the curiosity. So it may be that and I'm just... This is just what's coming to me right here in this moment, I think it's true though especially that you'll do a different dance at different times. You're not gonna tango from now until the end of time although if you're Sue Johnson maybe you will do that cause she's really into the tango but I think that you are... There are moments where you are in your sexual realm together. There are moments where you're in your emotional realms, there are moments when you're in your intellectual realms, there are moments when all of those things intertwine and yes there are moments that will challenge us around illness, or if not... Between in you or in your partner, could be in a loved one or the way that what's unfolding in the world affects us. Jeff Brown: You're right. Neil Sattin: Things that require us to be called back to... Oh wow yeah there's something even deeper than that, that springs out for me and [chuckle] you know people who... You've been listening to this show for a while then you know I'm kind of a mystical guy so I'm really glad we're having this conversation Jeff, cause it allows me to go there. Jeff Brown: But Neil, let me ask this. Neil Sattin: Yeah. Jeff Brown: I guess what I'm asking is apart from the safe container, apart from my view that to go all the way to that most expansive thing monogamy is required, which many people won't agree with. I'm already ready to receive the emails of disagreement. [chuckle] Jeff Brown: But... And that's fine, I'm open to that. But apart from all of those things that we put in place to hold it safe so we can do the work, whether it's in monogamy or in polyamory, whatever it is, does there have to be some fundamental spark or some soul essential feeling, forget love at first sight 'cause it doesn't have to happen in at moment but does something have to exist, some kind of energetic or soululer or karmic or cosmic charge that just some thing that pulls two people together that they feel like they're meant specifically to be doing this hard ass work together? Neil Sattin: So, I think I missed your question initially, which was kind of like... Jeff Brown: Not two people in an elevator... Neil Sattin: Right, right. Jeff Brown: Not just two people in an elevator, who make all these agreements but they don't have that thing or does that thing not really matter if you do this work with any other person, what about chemistry or what I call "karmistry" or "karmastry", I mean it's multi-languaging but what about that piece, where is that piece in all of it? Neil Sattin: Yeah well then the question comes up for me like what led those two people to be in the elevator at the same time in that moment? [chuckle] Jeff Brown: And my answer is one of them works on the 11th floor and one of them works on the 8th floor. [chuckle] Jeff Brown: But anyway... Neil Sattin: Exactly. What led to that and what led to that? That's where I get my mind blown on occasion when I think about how circumstances lead to where we exist... Jeff Brown: But what about attraction, Neil? Clearly they're on the elevator... I'll go with you... They're on the elevator together for some reason, it was all destined, it was encoded, it was all... Fine. That doesn't mean they are supposed to be intimate partners. So where does attraction, where does... Neil Sattin: Agreed. Jeff Brown: The organic attraction fit into all of it? And where does attraction come from, in fact? Neil Sattin: Yeah... Jeff Brown: That's a whole other show, I'm sure. Neil Sattin: It is, in fact I was just thinking, wow we just had our 100th episode with John Gottman and Sue Johnson. It was totally focused on attraction and even their take on attraction was just their take on attraction. Jeff Brown: Right. Neil Sattin: Yeah, I... Okay so I harbor the thought that it's possible that if two random people on an elevator really opened their hearts that they might experience the attraction or the spark that I think is necessary for it to lead to this, to create the energy that sends two people off in this direction. They had one trajectory or they each had their own trajectory and it takes a little extra energy coming into the system to send their trajectories off in parallel or intertwined directions. So yeah, I think it's necessary and at the same time, there are people who are convinced that they've lost the spark with a partner and rediscover it. And how different is that from two people who just aren't open to the spark with each other but they could be? I'm not sure, I would love to do that study. [chuckle] Jeff Brown: You have a powerful mind Mr. Sattin. These are all good questions. To me, the important thing is that we keep the inquiry open at this stage. I don't think most of us know much of anything, and I might include myself in that. But these are the right questions to ask, what is the basis for attraction? What are we moving from? Is it just societal conditioning? Is there something karmic and internal that really knows this is one of the beings we're here to encounter? And then the next question, is this somebody who we're supposed to do a short amount of work with or appear at a time as part of the journey, Or is this the person we're supposed to do decades and decades of work with? And how do we distinguish the two? Neil Sattin: Yeah. How do we? Do you have a thought on that? Jeff Brown: I have all kinds of thoughts on that but I don't have a definite answer. I do think there's something to be said for a knowing. And that we have to be careful, we have to have gone through enough in our own experiences to know the difference between sort of an immature knowing and one that's really a seasoned knowing, like an informed innocence rather than just a naïve innocence. And you do enough work and you've had enough experiences and you've learned enough lessons and been through enough disappointments that you do reach a stage where it's clear and clearer, where it's sustainable and where it just... For me, when I had the initiating Uncommon Bond experience, I couldn't imagine, it was unbearable to imagine that that was only there for a short period of time. Impossible. Jeff Brown: I couldn't even hold that in my consciousness for more than it is, it was too painful. And it didn't make an ounce of sense to me because based on my experience, my limited experience with crack open love and my societal conditioning, if you had that kind of experience, of course you were supposed to marry and have children together. The only possibility that made any sense. Jeff Brown: Now having been down the road a little longer and written a book about these processes, I can very safely and clearly say that I was absolutely not supposed to spend my life with her. No way. No how. Not possible, that's not what that was about. But you only know that by living. Neil Sattin: Yeah. And I love how you address that in the book too. The rush to... Like, "Okay, now it's marriage". And then it's babies and it's like there is something in us that wants to... I don't know what that is, I think you say, control, it's about controlling that experience to make it last. Jeff Brown: Well, it is and it's also not being trained to know what to do with that amount of feeling so it wants to move somewhere, it wants to express itself in other forms and some people make the mistake of thinking that form has to be marriage and family life, which is not always true for every dynamic and... Neil Sattin: Yeah. Jeff Brown: Because when that feeling comes and you haven't had an experience, an uncommon bond experience, very few people have had that experience. It's all you can do to figure out where to send that energy because you're just not trained in the art of holding it. Neil Sattin: Yeah, yeah. There is one passage that I actually dog-eared here in my book that I wanted to read 'cause I think it speaks to what we're talking about, which is, may I? Jeff Brown: Yeah, of course. Neil Sattin: Quoting Jeff Brown. "You don't measure love in time, you measure love in transformation. Sometimes the longest connections yield very little growth while the briefest of encounters change everything". Maybe two people in an elevator, that's not in the book. "The heart doesn't wear a watch, it's timeless. It doesn't care how long you know someone, it doesn't care if you had a 40 year anniversary, if there is no juice in the connection. What the heart cares about is resonance. Resonance that opens it, resonance that enlivens it, resonance that calls it home and when it finds it, the transformation begins. Jeff Brown: Somebody made that into a song, he had a singer sing that. I love the song version of that piece. And how do you feel about that piece? Neil Sattin: I hate it. No, just kidding. Jeff Brown: Yeah. I hate it a little too sometimes. [chuckle] Neil Sattin: Well, it has that... There's the potential, right? Of just being, "Oh, you know, it was meant to be" or this is the silver lining talking. I'm just gonna say this... I had to grow from this and it was only meant to be, whatever. I spoke those words a lot when Chloe and I were going through our break up. Break ups, I should say 'cause it happened several times. I guess, this is what was meant to be and I guess this is what I was supposed to learn. But on a deeper level, the way that that speaks to me, is less about the time element of it and more about the resonance, the way that it brings our attention to how do we foster resonance. That's, I think, so key to the longevity of a connection, is your ability to foster it and I think that is through what we were talking about at the very beginning which is, how do you embrace your embodiment? How do you bring yourself right back into your body in the way that it and your partners bodies and experiences vibrate in resonance with each other and where they don't and how do you address that with each other? Jeff Brown: And the absolute necessity of it. If you're just gonna do the transcendence bypass together, you're gonna be crashing down to earth pretty hard and harsh, right? You absolutely have to bring everything back into the body and we know what happens when we open the lines in the body, you don't have to do a bio energetic session with Al Lowen to know that it's gonna break everything up that's held within the container. This is the work right here and you're doing this work and this is the work that John Welwood's been writing about. Steven and Ondrea Levine have been writing about for years. Gay and Kathlyn Hendricks have been writing about for years, which is what we do when we come back down to earth. And how willing are we to do the work to get back into our bodies and deal with what lives inside of us? Jeff Brown: At this stage of human development, resonance is... We need resonance in order to be... Feel the energy or the willingness or the hopefulness to go back into the shadow and do the work and hope that there is something in that connection that will still be there or even more deeply there later. But what we need more than anything are models and blueprints for what relational consciousness looks like and how we deepen it and how we sustain it and what has to be cleared through. This is the work of our lives and I'm fairly convinced that if we keep focusing on individual path, whether it's economically, as an economic accumulator or master of the economic realm or spiritually, individual practice and the meditation as road to God, that we are going to take ourselves farther and farther in the direction of the destroying this planet, 'cause we're not aware of anything horizontally outside of ourselves. And we're not going to know this realm of possibilities that exist between us. The profound realms of possibilities that exist between us, we have to develop blueprints for doing this shadow work and for knowing what embodied presence feels like and knowing how to hold to it and sustain it without running away from one each other in dynamics and that's the work right now that has to be developed. Neil Sattin: One thing I loved about and An Uncommon Bond was how it transformed from something that was really frustrating me, into a healing journey and so much in the middle towards the end part of the book is about the healing path and how important that is. Jeff Brown: Because Lowen had a choice - as did the author who was inspired to write the book. Either go back to armor and see the ending of the connection as more evidence of how impossible love is in this world and God knows we all have experiences that would fortify or support that belief or, and I remember the moment of my own experience when I had to decide, am I gonna walk away from this and close down and just stay shut down for good or am I gonna somehow find a way to walk right into that web of pain and try to find my way to love that experience forward in some other way in my life. And that's the moment of decision we make as individuals in a breakup and that's the moment of decision we make in a dynamic when the connection gets difficult. Neil Sattin: And for you, where did you find the courage to make that choice? Jeff Brown: It just didn't make sense to me, Neil. That... I guess I'm just not cynical enough or something. It just didn't make sense to me that this experience which seemed so... On so many levels, things happened that I didn't even put in the book that any normal person in the world would think that I'm insane to describe them, as true. Things happened that were radical. It's like we entered another realm and all kinds of things happened that never happen otherwise. And, it just didn't make sense to me that all of that could have happened just for me to spend my life suffering. There had to be some positive reason for this. And you know, I had beautiful grandparents who kept bringing me back to the light in my life, despite my difficult and challenging parents and they had something to do with that. I had enough of an experience with the light to know that there was some possibility that this was intended to take me to the light in a way that I could not possibly foresee in the heart of the darkness. I just believed it, I leaned towards that maybe 53% versus 47% in the other direction, that was enough. Neil Sattin: The word that I didn't speak when I was mis-answering your question before was, there's a lot of faith and you could call it belief or you could call it faith but... Jeff Brown: I had great faith. And I have great faith in humanity and I always, despite Donald Trump. I still have great faith in humanity. Neil Sattin: Me too, me too. Jeff I'm wondering if you can just tell us a little bit about what you're working on now and how people can find you and find more out about you? Jeff Brown: I'm writing, probably my last long book, a book about spirituality where I challenge through my own journey on grounded spiritualities, things that we've talked about a bit here and I make an effort to try to craft a model or a framework or more relational inclusive grounded framework going forward. So I'm hoping to have that book out in the Fall of '18. I'm continuing to publish other authors through Enrealment Press, you can see our books at enrealment.com. We just published Andrew Harvey and Chris Saade's book "Evolutionary Love Relationships" which I think you would love. Neil Sattin: Yeah. He was on the show to talk about it, actually. Jeff Brown: Oh. He was. Okay, great. And I'm teaching at Soulshaping Institute. I'm gonna develop that quite a bit more after the book is done and they can find me at soulshaping.com as my main website or on my fan page on Facebook. Neil Sattin: Great. And I'm reminded too of your movie that you did which I haven't seen yet. I watched a few trailers and excerpts from it. It looks like it's fascinating. But it's about this question of spirituality and... Jeff Brown: Yeah. And what is... It really, that is the question and it weaves the personal into it as the movie proceeds. It's a very intense watch. Definitely wear a tin foil hat while watching. But it does endeavor to speak to through the journey, this question of "What is real spirituality? Grounded spirituality? And what is dissociative spirituality?" I mean, that's really at the heart of the film. Neil Sattin: Well, Jeff Brown, thank you so much for your time today and I feel like we could easily just talk for another hour which I'd love to do. But I know that you have commitments and I have commitments too. But that being said, I hope that we can chat again. Jeff Brown: Great. Neil Sattin: For the podcast. And if anything has come up for you listening, reach out. You can get in touch with Jeff through his website. You can always reach me, neilius, N-E-I-L-I-U-S, @neilsattin.com. And if you want the show guide that summarizes this conversation and along with takeaways, you again can visit neilsattin.com/soulshaping or text the word "Passion" to the number, 33444, follow the instructions and we'll get the show guide to you. Thanks again Jeff. Jeff Brown: Thanks Neil Sponsors: Zola.com - a free, easy-to-use website that offers you the chance to create a custom wedding registry that represents YOU. Choose from over 500 brands and over 50,000 gifts and experiences, allow your guests to pitch in together on big gifts that will have an impact on your life, or to simply donate cash towards your honeymoon, house downpayment, etc. Zola is offering a $50 credit towards your registry if you visit https://www.zola.com/alive and get your registry started. Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy. Resources: Check out Jeff Brown's website Read Jeff’s book An Uncommon Bond www.neilsattin.com/soulshaping Visit to download the show guide, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the transcript to this episode with Jeff Brown Our Relationship Alive Community on Facebook Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

What are you projecting onto the world around you? How do you figure it out? And how can you use what you discover to grow, to live with MORE integrity? In this week's episode, I'm sharing with you a simple, powerful practice to get in touch with your strengths - and your weaknesses, through the way that you project these things onto the other people in your life. It may sound simple, but you can find deep healing, and disconnect from toxic patterns (and toxic people). This week I also share some of my experience with using the service provided by Talkspace.com, one of Relationship Alive's sponsors. Especially here in the holiday season I'm finding it useful to have an extra layer of support - simply being able to write to a therapist and have them get back to me, daily, has already been helpful for me! As a reminder, Talkspace is offering $30 off your first month if you use the coupon code "ALIVE." Finally - it's Thanksgiving week here in the USA. I'm so grateful for your time and attention each week - and your feedback that helps make the podcast what it is!

Can you be addicted to love, or sex, and - if so - what does that mean? How does the way that your parents raised you - especially when you were really young - affect your sex life? How do you define your own version of healthy sex - so that you’re not just following along with what culture has handed you? And finally - how do you step away from the dopamine and novelty-seeking of dating - and, when you find someone, make the switch to a monogamous relationship? In today’s episode, we are speaking to one of the world’s experts on sex and neurobiology - and especially the treatment of Sex and Love Addiction - Dr. Alexandra Katehakis. Alex’s book, Sex Addiction as Affect Dysregulation, is a must-read for therapists looking to understand the latest on how to approach sex addiction treatment in therapy, and her work at the Center for Healthy Sex in Los Angeles fosters a sex-positive approach to re-discovering sex in a way that’s right for you. Alex is also the author of Erotic Intelligence: Igniting Hot, Healthy Sex While In Recovery from Sex Addiction. Noticing addictive behaviors: An addiction can be defined as something to which we have a strong predilection for and have little control over our actions in relation to the desire. We may find ourselves preoccupied in our thinking, and find that much of our time is spent either engaging in the addiction or in preparation for the experience of it. Furthermore, unlike other things which we strongly enjoy, an addiction has a certain secrecy and shame surrounding it. This is especially true when the behavior we are engaging in violates our own personal value system. Love as an addiction: Love is an addictive process. This makes sense in evolutionary and biological terms as it ensures that we bind together with a mate in an intense enough way as to invest in procreating and raising a family. The profound longing and desire that can be involved in falling in love is not necessarily problematic, however thinking about love through the addiction model can help shed light on the pain of breakups, divorces, and endings. Love withdrawal: How many times have you said, or heard a friend say, that it feels like a limb has been cut off when we lose someone. During endings many people experience the emotional and psychological distress as physical pain- as if their heart is actually breaking. This is true because the same neural pain centers in the brain involved in physical injury are involved in our attachments to others. While it can be very helpful to create boundaries with exes through such actions as blocking and/or deleting numbers, the pain can be visceral. Changing our automatic patterning: People realize they are in the cycle of addiction when they find themselves doing things they do not want to do anymore and yet, can’t stop engaging in the behavior despite wanting to. It is important at this stage to understand that 1) you do have the capacity to change and 2) it will be a slow process. Changing our automatic patterning is not like turning a speed boat around, rather it is more like turning around a large barge. Neuroscience research validates that this shifting is possible through repeated behavior. The saying is that ‘neurons that fire together, wire together’, meaning that you must do something over and over again to build new neural pathways, and thus, new patterns. The more you engage in the new behavior the more tenacious the neural networks will become and the more integrated this way of being will feel- to the point that it will become the new automatic. As you focus increasingly on the new behavior, the old neural pathways associated with the negative addictions will begin to prune. This is the beauty of neuroplasticity- have some patience with it! Attunement is essential in building secure attachment. The predilections for addictions of all kinds are often established in early childhood. This is true because, human beings, more than most animals, are nearly entirely dependent on their caregivers for survival. As we now understand from the research on attachment, the first few months of a child’s life are critical in setting up a healthy nervous system. It is the job of the caregiver to be an interactive regulator- giving opportunity for attunement and safe interactions so that the right brain can develop over the first 18 months. There are many ways that parents fail to attune to their child- the severity of the impact depends on frequency, intensity, and ability to make repairs. Depending on the type of engagement from parents children will develop a tendency towards high sympathetic arousal (fight or flight responses) or parasympathetic responses such as freezing, collapse, and dissociation. This dysregulation can then lead to a higher dependence on external supports- thus helping to explain how addictions often stem from an attempt by an individual to regulate affect. Adaptive strategies for soothing. Early childhood experiences of attachment lay the groundwork and the wiring for lifelong relational patterns. Children who were not met with regulated and present caregivers inevitably find strategies in order to survive and often carry these patterns into adulthood when it comes to handling arousal state throughout their lifetime. Insecurely attached individuals either experience 1) a constantly seeking mentality and dependency on external soothing and/or 2) a high distrust that others will ever meet their needs. Trapped by the ‘rescue fantasy’: If you had a parent who was dismissive, or avoidant, you likely learned at a young age that you had to manage yourself, by yourself. You may have resorted to creating a rescue fantasy in which someone came to rescue you from the chronic emptiness and loneliness you were experiencing. This may have been a coach, a teacher, a rockstar, a neighbor, or a fairy princess- someone outside of yourself and your family who had the power to alleviate your pain. This is a brilliant soothing strategy in childhood, however it becomes increasingly maladaptive in adulthood in that it creates unhealthy desires and harmful expectations in our relationships. In cultivating the ability to imagine the ideal caregiver, a child feeds their need for attunement, however adults who idealize their lovers as saviors tend to miss critical cues that allow them to assess whether the person they are attracted to is available, safe, and stable. Need for reinforcing attachment: Only 54% of people in our culture today are securely attached- and this number is likely to shrink further as more families experience increasing stressors and there are fewer two person systems raising children. The fullness, high speed pace, and distraction of daily modern life is making it increasingly difficult for parents to insure they are able to provide their children with adequate attunement. Note that the majority of insecure attachments are not caused by outright abuse or neglect, but rather from an accumulation of misaligned and misattuned moments- microassaults that go without repair or acknowledgment. Human beings need other human beings for regulation: One thing we know from the accumulating data is that people can develop a secure attachment in a love relationship. It is in our relationships where we a second chance to practice getting our needs met in healthy ways. With a present, grounded, and  growth oriented partner it is possible to become more securely attached, love more fully, and have deeper intimacy. That said, long term relationships are not flower fields! As many like to say, if you want to not have any issues then it is best to live alone! Relationships turn up the heat on our underlying issues and bring our habits, patterns, and old beliefs to the surface. While much of our healing, especially of childhood wounds, are our responsibility to mend and tend, this does not have to occur prior to entering a relationship. In fact, some aspects of deep healing depends on the relationship given that we need coregulation to repair. Be on the lookout for a partner who does not have a martyr complex, nor a need for you to be helpless so they can be the ‘fixer’. Look instead for someone who shares your values and is willing to stay present through the pain and discomfort of growing. How do you switch from courtship into monogamy? We live in a culture that provides ample opportunity for novelty, and relies on a promise of more and better. This creates excitement, yet havoc in the dating world as there is a tendency to doubt what is in front of us in hopes for the newest and shiniest thing that may be waiting around the corner- or one more tinder swipe away. If you are interested in moving from dating into a longer term committed relationship, it is critical that you get clear with yourself about your values. Can you make a list of your top 3 non-negotiables? Example: education, spirituality, wants kids, doesn’t want kids, sense of humor… Get super clear with yourself. This clarity will help you to recognize when a person who fits these values shows up, and will help to ground you in the reality of the person in front of you, thus helping to alleviate the gnawing and often overwhelming urge to keep searching for some fantasy version of a partner. What to do when you are jonesing… Dating apps, along with porn, offers a dopamine rush that is hard to compete with. When you begin to shift towards wanting to dive deeper into a relationship you may struggle with feeling a lack of this exciting surge. Learn to be fully present with your somatic experience- noticing what is happening for you, what you are craving, and in what ways this helps show you that you are dysregulated.  Own your internal experience, and then commit to being more present to your partner. Let the distractions and urges be reminders to yourself to come back to your present experience- there is a plethora of feel good hormones (including dopamine) that can be released when you connect in with your partner and spend time finding out who they are without making assumptions, and getting that juicy surge of oxytocin that comes with intimate connections. Putting bodies, hearts, and souls together: We need each other to regulate. People know, at least technically, how to have sex- there has been enough emphasis on this throughout our culture- however they may not know how to have quality and truly connecting intimacy. We can put our bodies together, but are we capable of putting our hearts and souls together in a way that has meaning, promotes a sense of safety, while also being arousing and erotic? In order to move into a fuller experience of intimacy, we must learn to track ourselves and our partners. By paying close attention to our internal experiences we can learn to notice moments of dysregulation and from this becoming curious about the underlying need that is being somatically communicated. Once we notice this, we can name it to our partner and from this learn that we can in fact, get our needs met. The experience of getting a need met not only leads to healing, but also to an incredibly erotic, arousing, and passionate sense of deep connection! Multidimensionality of healthy sex: Healthy sex requires a thorough investigation of who you are sexually at this moment in your life, what you like, and from this putting together a new roadmap for yourself. What is healthy for you right now is likely to be different not only from other people, but even from yourself at an earlier point in your life. Get raw and honest with yourself. What feels good? What kind of touch turns you on? In what ways is the sex you are engaging in a celebration of your sexual values, and in what ways is it not? Look at the multidimensionality of sex- the physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual aspects. Tune into your arousal cycle, your current genital functioning, and any other physical cues that need to be paid attention to. Your sex life will not be fulfilling unless the sex practices you are engaging in aligns with your personal and sexual values. Get support and go on a sexual diet. If you suspect yourself to be in an addictive cycle when it comes to love, sex, and/or dating apps be sure to reach out for support. Find a therapist, a sex therapist, and/or a support group in your area or online. Love and sex addictions are the result of attachment wounding and thus, are best healed in relationship. Seek out safe others. There may be a time in your healing process in which you may benefit from taking a break from your compulsive patterns (even consider celibacy) in order to gain perspective on your own urgings. This pulling away time is a raw state as you will feel the void of not having ‘that thing’ you are so accustomed to running towards for relief. In these times fellowship can be incredibly helpful- search out people to surround yourself with that know what you are going through. And remember- the brain is capable of rewiring towards healthier habits if you are able and committed to putting in the time and effort needed to refocus your attention and train your brain! Sponsors: Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy. Resources: Check out the Center for Healthy Sex Read Alex Katehakis’ newest book Sex Addiction as Affect Dysregulation: A Neurobiologically Informed Holistic Treatment Find more about Allan Schore’s work here www.neilsattin.com/healthysex Visit to download the show guide, or text “PASSION” to 33444 and follow the instructions to download the show guide to this episode with Alex Katehakis Our Relationship Alive Community on Facebook Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out

Does perfectionism get in the way in your relationship? How do you navigate the gap between how things are - and how you'd like them to be? What do you do if you find yourself being judgmental of your partner - or if they're judging you? In this week's episode, we talk about how to get related to the imperfection in your relationship in a way that will foster deep connection and compassion. Rather than getting lost in shame, and blame, discover a way to bring vibrancy to your relationship by getting clear, courageous, and vulnerable about who you truly are. Also, in this episode we are starting a new series, featuring the music of talented, lesser-known musicians as a way of diving even more deeply into the experience of whatever we're talking about on the show. If you know an amazing song by a local, regional, or independent act that's relevant to the conversation about relationships, communication, dating, sex - etc. - let me know! If it feels right (and the musicians would like the exposure of being on the podcast), then I'd be delighted to feature them in an upcoming episode. This episode features the song "Uncertifiable" by David Grant and the Reveals - from their new album "Because Tomorrow".  David Grant and the Reveals on iTunes David Grant and the Reveals on Bandcamp David Grant and the Reveals - Because Tomorrow - on Spotify Sponsors: Talkspace.com - Online therapy that matches you with your perfect therapist. You can communicate with your therapist daily - so they can be there for you during the moments you most need support. Visit talkspace.com/ALIVE and use the coupon code “ALIVE” for $30 off your first month of online therapy. Resources   Our Relationship Alive Community on Facebook Amazing intro/outro music graciously provided courtesy of: The Railsplitters - Check them Out