Latest / Barnyard Language / Sex, Rage, and Puppets w/ Author and Sex Educator Emily Nagoski

Transcript

Sex, Rage, and Puppets w/ Author and Sex Educator Emily Nagoski · Barnyard Language

• 0:14
  Caite: Welcome to Barnyard Language.
• 0:15
  We are Katie and Arlene and Iowa sheep farmer, and an Ontario dairy
• 0:19
  farmer with six kids, two husbands, and a whole lot of chaos between us.
• 0:23
  So kick off your boots, reheat your coffee, and join us for some
• 0:26
  barnyard language, honest talk about running farms and raising
• 0:29
  Arlene: families.
• 0:30
  In case your kids haven't already learned all the swears from being in the barn,
• 0:33
  it might be a good idea to put on some headphones or turned down the volume.
• 0:37
  While many of our guests are professionals, they
• 0:39
  aren't your professionals.
• 0:40
  If you need personalized advice, consult your people.
• 0:45
  Hi, and welcome to another episode of Barnyard Language.
• 0:48
  After lots of back and forth, Katie and I have finally figured out how to
• 0:53
  actually be able to record, surprisingly, when it's summer holiday for your kids.
• 0:58
  And they're all home all the time.
• 1:00
  It's a lot harder to find a few quiet moments to record.
• 1:03
  So, Katie, what's going on in your house these
• 1:05
  Caite: days?
• 1:06
  Uh, mine are thankfully not home at the moment.
• 1:10
  Um, yes.
• 1:11
  But yes, they're gonna be home all day tomorrow.
• 1:14
  Um, we're at that weird point of the summer where it's like we're past
• 1:20
  the halfway point, so now we're into that downhill slide of, um, doctor's
• 1:26
  appointments and dentist visits and all that before school starts.
• 1:29
  You know, they have to have all their well-child checkups sort of things.
• 1:33
  And talking about, you know, back to school shopping.
• 1:38
  Um, when
• 1:40
  Arlene: do your kids actually go back?
• 1:41
  Caite: They start back middle of August, August 23rd.
• 1:44
  But the girl child has Okay, two weeks of summer school before that,
• 1:48
  um, I think because she had a, a fairly substantial speech delay.
• 1:56
  She is, A little bit behind on some of her sound recognition for learning to read.
• 2:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 2:04
  Um, and so for many reasons, our school is very proactive about things like
• 2:10
  summer school and after school tutoring.
• 2:12
  And she loves it because she loves school.
• 2:16
  Um, so she's very excited to go to summer school and, you know, get
• 2:19
  more school than the other kids get.
• 2:21
  She's, she's very excited about
• 2:23
  Arlene: that.
• 2:24
  Take that other kids Yeah.
• 2:26
  Caite: To heck with you guys.
• 2:27
  She's getting more school.
• 2:28
  She could be even smarter than most of you.
• 2:30
  Yeah.
• 2:31
  Um, but that's starting out pretty soon and I signed them both up for
• 2:37
  gymnastics, so I'm sure there's gonna be some, you know, doctor's notes for
• 2:41
  that and just getting all that hoo-ha.
• 2:45
  Ready.
• 2:45
  And we're getting to that point where the combine got pulled
• 2:49
  out of the shed last week.
• 2:50
  Um, obviously not ready to run it yet, but we're moving in
• 2:54
  that, in that general direction.
• 2:57
  Arlene: So, yes.
• 2:58
  Yeah.
• 2:58
  Making sure things are kind of ready.
• 3:00
  Yep.
• 3:01
  Caite: Yep.
• 3:01
  And Oats will be ready to, to run through probably pretty quick.
• 3:07
  They're looking pretty brown, so they'll be ready to go pretty soon.
• 3:11
  Um, in the big excitement, apparently a uh, jack lantern and it got left
• 3:17
  on the back step too long last year has sprouted a pumpkin patch in my
• 3:22
  flower bed next to the front door.
• 3:23
  So the boy child is now lobbying perfect for the purchase of a pumpkin harvester.
• 3:28
  If anyone knows where we could purchase one that might be suitable for one plant,
• 3:34
  Arlene: um, yeah.
• 3:35
  How many pumpkins does he think are gonna come outta this plant?
• 3:38
  Caite: Well, so far only one, which I'm really praying, right.
• 3:41
  There's a second one on there.
• 3:42
  Because if we get one pumpkin for two kids, it's gonna be ugly.
• 3:47
  Um, yeah.
• 3:49
  I don't know how many pumpkins he's anticipating.
• 3:51
  I suggested that we could do it by hand, but he was not having it.
• 3:55
  Um, yeah.
• 3:56
  The only
• 3:57
  Arlene: other just pick it up.
• 3:58
  That's
• 3:58
  Caite: too much.
• 3:59
  The only other update he found a, a patch of bare dirt in the yard the other day.
• 4:03
  And so he brought all his tractors out and I shelled some corn for him, you
• 4:07
  know, and off an ear from the grain bin.
• 4:09
  And he planted it and he watered it and he put in a little
• 4:12
  sign for it and everything.
• 4:14
  And, and then he left with daddy to go get some supper.
• 4:17
  And about the 30 seconds after the car pulled out of the driveway,
• 4:21
  looked out the window and my chickens were out there packing all the corn
• 4:24
  out of the ground and eating it.
• 4:26
  So hopefully he won't notice if nothing grows.
• 4:29
  Yeah.
• 4:30
  Arlene: But he didn't actually see it happen.
• 4:32
  So he doesn't have a uh, no, have a grudge against the chickens right now.
• 4:36
  Caite: No, not yet.
• 4:37
  But I'm sure any day now it'll happen.
• 4:40
  So how are things in your world, Arlene?
• 4:44
  Arlene: Thanks for going well.
• 4:45
  Um, we've got a few, like I said last time, cow shows are on the calendar.
• 4:50
  My husband and daughter have a few judging events that they're
• 4:54
  going to over the next few weeks.
• 4:56
  And my oldest, my daughter actually ended up getting a job working for someone else,
• 5:02
  um, kind of in preparation for, and at one of the big summer shows here in Ontario.
• 5:07
  So she's gonna be gone for about two weeks, I guess.
• 5:12
  Um, they, they left this afternoon to go to a judging competition, and then
• 5:15
  they'll, they'll drop her off at that other place on their, on their way back.
• 5:18
  So, It means a few more chores for the rest of us, but we bet, we'll,
• 5:22
  we're gonna have to get used to it cuz she's going away in September and
• 5:25
  so we need to be ready for, uh, to take on all the jobs that she has.
• 5:29
  Uh, so expertly taken on over the last few years.
• 5:31
  So that's gonna be adjustment for, for everybody.
• 5:34
  And we got, uh, a request in from our next door neighbor for some chicken checking.
• 5:39
  Well, they go on vacation.
• 5:41
  So my 15 year old being very, um, uh, industrious maybe, I'm not
• 5:46
  sure if that's the right word.
• 5:47
  Anyway, I told him how much she was willing to pay per visit
• 5:50
  and that she didn't need him to check on them every single day.
• 5:54
  And he's like, but if I go every day then she'll pay me for every day.
• 5:57
  Right?
• 5:57
  And I was like, well,
• 5:58
  Emily: maybe not.
• 6:00
  Arlene: I think, think she'll pay you what she's willing to pay you.
• 6:03
  So if you go every day, that's fine.
• 6:04
  But if she says they don't need to be checked that often, then maybe not.
• 6:08
  So we have to go over there this weekend and, uh, check on what
• 6:12
  her expectations are for, for chicken chores over at their place.
• 6:15
  We don't have any birds left at our place.
• 6:17
  So.
• 6:18
  We get to keep the eggs too.
• 6:19
  So that's an added bonus.
• 6:21
  I don't know if he considers that part of the payment, but as the mom who's
• 6:24
  making sure that those chores get done, I will, I'll happily accept them.
• 6:29
  And what else has been up lately?
• 6:30
  We went to my parents' cottage on the weekend, so that was fun.
• 6:34
  My parents bought a cottage last summer, and so this is our first full summer
• 6:39
  with them having access to the water.
• 6:43
  And they don't have a, there's no motorized, uh, boats yet, but lots
• 6:48
  of kayaks and some canoes, and lots of swimming is going on there.
• 6:51
  So that's been pretty fun.
• 6:53
  No, uh,
• 6:53
  Caite: no creepy guys with axes in the woods this time.
• 6:57
  Arlene: Uh, not that I've
• 6:57
  Caite: seen, no.
• 6:58
  Like at my, uh, my visit with your brother-in-law, uh, for our listeners, we
• 7:03
  spent an evening at Arlene's, folks cabin.
• 7:05
  It is lovely, but I looked out the window and there was a man
• 7:10
  that I did not know with an ax.
• 7:12
  Or perhaps a hatchet directly outside the window staring in at us.
• 7:17
  Um, thankfully the rest of them knew who he was because I was not
• 7:22
  quite prepared for this, this sort of a greeting from the locals.
• 7:26
  Yes.
• 7:26
  Um, but indeed it was our last brother-in-law who is a lovely gentleman.
• 7:30
  Yeah.
• 7:30
  Arlene: But yeah, not, not so scary when he is not holding a hatchet for sure.
• 7:34
  No.
• 7:34
  No.
• 7:35
  And I don't know if we've actually talked about it here or not, maybe it's
• 7:39
  come up in passing, but we have talked about the fact that I grew up on a
• 7:43
  farm, and when we're talking about the cottage, uh, I will say that my, the
• 7:49
  farm that I grew up on has been sold, my parents sold it a few years ago.
• 7:54
  And having a cottage is kind of, I'm not saying that it would be one or the
• 8:00
  other, but it's not something that I could have pictured them doing if the
• 8:03
  farm was still something that was in the family, I guess you should say.
• 8:08
  So I know that you and I, Katie, talk a lot about, you know, Hoping that
• 8:13
  farms stay in the family and that maybe our kids will take over or maybe not.
• 8:17
  Who knows what, what's gonna happen in the future?
• 8:18
  Right.
• 8:19
  But I also wanna say for people who are maybe in that place where the
• 8:22
  family farm is not going to continue, that there is life after the farm and
• 8:28
  that it's not, well, it's important.
• 8:32
  And you know, a lot of us value that, that it's not the be all and end all.
• 8:36
  And that if, if farms don't stay in the family, the family is still the
• 8:41
  more important part of that equation.
• 8:43
  So I'm not gonna go into any details, obviously on why things happened
• 8:48
  the way they did, but yeah, it's enough to say that the family part
• 8:54
  is more important than the land
• 8:56
  Caite: sometimes.
• 8:57
  Jim and I did some, um, we went to a, a farm couples weekend before we
• 9:02
  had the kids, and one of the big.
• 9:05
  Things was about to set, you know, your really top priorities for your
• 9:10
  family rather than just for the farm.
• 9:12
  And realizing how much our family was a higher priority than the farm.
• 9:19
  I mean, ideally they would both be successful, but to really
• 9:24
  literally put it in writing that doing, and I mean, obviously
• 9:30
  families split up and shit happens.
• 9:34
  I mean, that's, that's just what it is.
• 9:36
  But whatever we can do to, to not let the farm come between family
• 9:40
  members, let's put it that way.
• 9:43
  Um, that that's our higher priority.
• 9:48
  Because we know a lot of families who are estranged because of farms, and that's
• 9:56
  a family farm doesn't mean much if the farm is what rips the family apart, so.
• 10:02
  Mm-hmm.
• 10:03
  You know,
• 10:04
  Arlene: um, Yeah.
• 10:06
  And people's health be that mental health or physical health is more important too.
• 10:12
  Right.
• 10:13
  You can't, you can't sacrifice yourself for something that, I think we've
• 10:20
  talked about this before too, to, to honor your ancestors doesn't mean to,
• 10:25
  to put yourself in the ground early.
• 10:27
  Right.
• 10:27
  It doesn't, doesn't do, doesn't, you don't, you're not honoring
• 10:30
  yourself or your ancestors if, if you can't, if you can't live the life
• 10:35
  that you are meant to live because you're trying to maintain something
• 10:37
  that, that is beyond your capacity.
• 10:40
  And I'm not saying that it's easy to know when, when that line has been
• 10:45
  met, but that's the one of the hard truths that some of us will have to
• 10:50
  deal with at some point, I suppose.
• 10:51
  Caite: I know, um, whether it's the farmer, an off-farm job or whatever too.
• 10:56
  It can be, and I'm certainly guilty of this real easy to say, well,
• 10:59
  I'm doing this for my kids, but if.
• 11:02
  If it ruins your relationship with your kids or your kids don't know
• 11:05
  who you are, or they're learning priorities that are not the priorities
• 11:10
  you would be teaching them, if you were being more clear-minded about
• 11:14
  it, um, it's not really for your kids.
• 11:19
  And I am, I'm absolutely guilty of my kids saying, oh, mommy has to work now.
• 11:26
  And it being a very negative thing because especially working from home, and this is
• 11:32
  obviously absolutely true when you live on the farm, it's way too easy to let
• 11:38
  that work time just seep into everything.
• 11:42
  You know, it's, it's not a nine to five and mm-hmm.
• 11:45
  It can be real hard to back away from that.
• 11:50
  But yeah, for it's very important.
• 11:54
  Well, this has been a deeper intro than we normally go
• 11:57
  Arlene: for.
• 11:57
  Yeah.
• 11:58
  No kidding.
• 11:59
  Wow.
• 12:01
  So this episode that we have coming up for you is one that Katie and I are
• 12:06
  really excited to share with you guys, and I am gonna give all the credit to
• 12:10
  Katie for being the person who, when she finds someone out in the world
• 12:14
  that she wants to talk to, she just goes ahead and asks the question and
• 12:17
  asks if they wanna be on the podcast.
• 12:19
  And this person said yes, and we were both nervous and super excited to talk to them.
• 12:26
  So we can't wait for you to, to hear this interview.
• 12:29
  So enjoy.
• 12:31
  Caite: Yay.
• 12:35
  Arlene: Yeah, just,
• 12:35
  Emily: just put some lube on it.
• 12:38
  I'm like, I'm here for Lou, but sometimes that is not enough.
• 12:41
  Arlene: Yeah, that's right.
• 12:42
  We're gonna leave that in because that's a good way to get started.
• 12:45
  So today, that's an awesome way to get started.
• 12:47
  I feel like
• 12:47
  Caite: that's a good, um, I don't wanna say warning, but a good, uh, yeah.
• 12:53
  Emily: Intro.
• 12:54
  It sets the tone.
• 12:55
  Yes.
• 12:55
  Arlene: Yeah, for sure.
• 12:56
  So today we are very excited to be talking to Emily Naski, who's the author of the
• 13:00
  bestselling book, come As You Are, and it's Associated Workbook, and also is the
• 13:04
  co-author with her twin sister of Burnout, the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.
• 13:08
  She's also the author of romance novels under the pen name Emily Foster.
• 13:12
  And she has her PhD in health behavior with a focus on human
• 13:15
  sexuality and can be found on multiple podcasts, TED Talks, and Netflix,
• 13:18
  including ours, which is so exciting.
• 13:21
  So Emily, we start each of our interviews with the same questions,
• 13:24
  so it works really well for farming people, but also for non-farming guests.
• 13:28
  So we always ask, what are you growing?
• 13:29
  So this can cover families, careers, businesses, and also crops and
• 13:33
  livestock if you happen to have a farm.
• 13:35
  So Emily, what are you growing?
• 13:39
  Emily: Uh, I am currently growing my book, which is about
• 13:42
  six weeks past its deadline.
• 13:45
  That's a good time.
• 13:45
  I'm sure your publisher's fine with that.
• 13:48
  I, you know what?
• 13:49
  Actually my publisher has been amazingly supportive.
• 13:52
  My editor is so here for me and the feedback I'm getting is really helpful.
• 13:56
  And the book is just taking the time it needs to become the book
• 14:00
  that it always needed to be.
• 14:01
  Exactly.
• 14:02
  You can't rush those.
• 14:03
  But that doesn't mean I'm not like terrified and
• 14:05
  Arlene: exhausted.
• 14:07
  Caite: Yes.
• 14:07
  I'm sure.
• 14:07
  We really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us in the midst of this.
• 14:13
  Emily: Oh God.
• 14:13
  I will take any procrastination that seems like productive
• 14:18
  that I can get my hands on.
• 14:19
  I am
• 14:19
  Arlene: delighted to talk to you.
• 14:21
  Caite: It's, uh, marketing, you know, little tiny bookcase.
• 14:26
  Emily: Okay,
• 14:27
  Caite: sure.
• 14:28
  So before we go any further, is that a giant set of lady parts behind your
• 14:34
  head or am I just like right here?
• 14:36
  Emily: Yeah.
• 14:37
  Yes.
• 14:38
  So that is one of my three vulva puppets.
• 14:42
  Um, so these are made.
• 14:44
  By, uh, I think her name is Dory Lane.
• 14:47
  Uh, howso Chicks is the original website.
• 14:50
  The vulva puppets, uh, are originally sex education and sex therapy tools.
• 14:55
  So if you hand someone a puppet that represents their genitals,
• 14:59
  it's this very like, approachable, gentle way to strengthen your
• 15:05
  relationship with your own body parts.
• 15:07
  And the vulva puppet is part of that.
• 15:10
  This particular vulva is, uh, black lace and silver satin
• 15:15
  with purple satin inner labia.
• 15:19
  Her name is Cassandra and she is my most recent vulva puppet acquisition.
• 15:23
  I have a slight problem with collecting vulva puppets.
• 15:26
  I have at least four or five.
• 15:29
  Ultimately,
• 15:30
  Caite: it seems a little more approachable than, uh, what movie was that?
• 15:34
  Fry Green Tomatoes, where the women all go and get handed a mirror in
• 15:38
  a big circle and are expected to, you know, inspect their lady parts.
• 15:43
  Seems a little.
• 15:44
  Emily: Yeah, that can be, that can be a lot for people.
• 15:47
  So when I was 18 years old and getting my original training, my earliest
• 15:51
  training as a sex educator looking at my own genitals in the mirror
• 15:55
  was a homework assignment for me.
• 15:57
  Annie Lomax, my trainer, the group said to the group, your homework is go home, get a
• 16:01
  mirror, and go look at your own genitals.
• 16:03
  And um, I received only very regular sex education.
• 16:08
  I was not explicitly taught to feel ashamed of my own genitals.
• 16:12
  Uh, and yet when I went to look at my own genitals in a mirror, I felt
• 16:18
  like I was going to confront an enemy.
• 16:21
  Where did that message come from?
• 16:23
  I don't know.
• 16:24
  No explicit messages just seeped into me from the broader culture.
• 16:28
  And then when I actually did look, I instantly burst into tears.
• 16:34
  I.
• 16:34
  Because it turned out all this times my genitals were just this regular, ordinary,
• 16:39
  integrated part of my body, like the soles of my feet or the backs of my elbows.
• 16:45
  And I had spent all these years with this fear feeling, with the sense that it was
• 16:49
  the enemy and I felt this sudden grief for the negative messages I had been
• 16:54
  sending it and all the sort of discord I had built between me and this part of my
• 17:00
  body that was just a normal part of me.
• 17:03
  And that moment actually is sort of the foundation of my work as a sex
• 17:07
  educator, knowing that anytime I have a question, the answer will ultimately
• 17:12
  come from me turning toward my own internal experience, turning toward my
• 17:16
  own body with kindness and compassion.
• 17:19
  Caite: And folks, that's why Emily, uh, has a book deal and you know,
• 17:23
  I'm sure it's taken bajillions of dollars telling us about vulvas.
• 17:27
  I'm sure it's just a disgusting amount of money.
• 17:29
  Emily: So that actually we had to replace our roof and it helped with that.
• 17:32
  Yeah,
• 17:33
  Caite: we've been, we've uh, done a roof project recently too.
• 17:36
  It's, um, it's a lot.
• 17:37
  It's a thing.
• 17:38
  Yeah.
• 17:38
  Um, so that actually leads perfectly into my first question, which is how
• 17:42
  did you get into this line of work?
• 17:43
  Because I'm, you know, like I'm writing these questions and I'm picturing you
• 17:46
  like, trotting to your sixth grade career, day fair or whatever at school
• 17:50
  being like, I'm gonna be a sex educator.
• 17:54
  You know, like how, and what, what was your parents' reaction when
• 17:59
  you, I mean, presumably by now they do know what you do, right?
• 18:04
  Emily: Oh yeah.
• 18:05
  They, they have known what I did cuz I've been doing this.
• 18:07
  Uh, so I started when I was 18, my very first semester in college.
• 18:12
  I, I did not, like if you asked me in the sixth grade when I was gonna be, uh,
• 18:16
  I would've said, uh, an English teacher.
• 18:19
  The answer would've stayed English teacher until my 12th grade
• 18:22
  advanced placement English class.
• 18:23
  Uh, when my English teacher was so bad, I decided, oh shit, I
• 18:27
  don't wanna be an English teacher.
• 18:29
  Uh, but, uh, I knew I was a nerd.
• 18:31
  So when I got to college, uh, I knew that I needed some sort of like
• 18:35
  volunteer work on my resume to look like a good candidate for grad school.
• 18:39
  Knew I was going to grad school, no idea for what.
• 18:42
  But this guy on my floor was pre-med and he said, Hey, come be
• 18:44
  a peer health educator with me.
• 18:46
  And I was like, I like health, why not?
• 18:50
  So I applied and I got accepted and I got trained to go into residence
• 18:55
  halls to talk about all sorts of health topics like stress and relationships and
• 19:00
  communication and nutrition, physical activity, and also sex, condoms,
• 19:04
  contraception and consent essentially.
• 19:07
  And while I was getting my, my degrees in psychology with minors and
• 19:11
  cognitive science and philosophy and.
• 19:14
  I actually use it all the time.
• 19:17
  I love the brain stuff, but the work I was doing academically couldn't
• 19:23
  make me like who I am as a person.
• 19:26
  The way my work as a fledgling little sex educator made me like who I am.
• 19:31
  I could see in the moment how this really basics education was changing
• 19:35
  people's lives right in front of me.
• 19:37
  Um, so that's the path I chose.
• 19:41
  Oh, and my parents, uh, so my, um, mostly my parents don't
• 19:45
  ask me about my work itself.
• 19:48
  Uh, there was one time when my mother said, Emily, please don't
• 19:51
  talk about work at the dinner table.
• 19:54
  We get pulled back.
• 19:54
  They're otherwise supportive.
• 19:56
  Yeah.
• 19:56
  Caite: Yeah.
• 19:56
  It's usually about cow sex.
• 19:58
  I think.
• 19:59
  If not, Humans
• 20:00
  Emily: best, but same general.
• 20:01
  Yeah.
• 20:01
  We've talked before about there are times for me when it's about other animals.
• 20:05
  Yeah.
• 20:06
  Arlene: We've talked before about how semen is a, is a semi-regular
• 20:09
  dinner table conversation in some farm families, but in a, in a different sense.
• 20:13
  Yeah.
• 20:14
  So this is why we
• 20:15
  Caite: don't go out for supper.
• 20:17
  Emily: Yeah, that's right.
• 20:18
  Yeah.
• 20:19
  I'm gonna ask a few questions about
• 20:21
  Arlene: the stress side because as much as they Oh yeah.
• 20:24
  You know, like they aren't linked, they're so, they are so much linked.
• 20:28
  Both, both of these, these topics obviously.
• 20:32
  I mean, one without the other or you know, preferably you could
• 20:36
  have more of one without the other.
• 20:38
  So in your book you talk about completing the stress response
• 20:42
  cycle in the book burnout.
• 20:44
  And the one thing that, I mean, it's so early in the book and yet it was
• 20:48
  mind blowing to me and shouldn't be, but it talk, you talk about how.
• 20:51
  You have to complete the stress response cycle.
• 20:53
  And that doesn't mean removing the stressors from your life because, I
• 20:56
  mean, obviously they're right, most of them aren't going away, right?
• 20:59
  I mean, for farmers, like the weather is gonna do what it's gonna do.
• 21:02
  World markets livestock as parents, our kids are not leaving anytime soon.
• 21:06
  And even if they leave the house, we're still thinking about them.
• 21:09
  So can you talk about what it means to complete the stress response
• 21:12
  cycle even when our stressors are still right there in front of us?
• 21:17
  Emily: Yes, it's, it's both a good news and a bad news situation.
• 21:21
  Yeah.
• 21:22
  So, Uh, so the stress response cycle is the complete beginning metal end of
• 21:27
  what we're used to thinking about as the fight or flight response, right?
• 21:30
  Like we all know that, uh, when a threat is present, your body will flood with
• 21:35
  adrenaline and a lot of other chemicals.
• 21:37
  It will activate like an increase in your heart rate and increase in your
• 21:40
  blood pressure, and it'll slow down your digestion and slow down your
• 21:43
  reproductive system and slow down every other organ system your, uh,
• 21:48
  even your central nervous system like your cognition changes because your
• 21:51
  attention gets focused on solving that one problem until that problem goes away.
• 21:56
  And in the environment where we evolved most of our stressors that activated this
• 22:01
  physiological process, you know, had sharp teeth and could run 30 miles an hour,
• 22:08
  and there's only really just one thing that you do when you're being chased by
• 22:12
  something like that, and that is you run.
• 22:14
  And it's easy to imagine that escaping the predator.
• 22:22
  Is what completes the stress response cycle.
• 22:24
  That is the beginning and middle and an end.
• 22:26
  There's the activation, there's all the chemistry that motivates you to engage in
• 22:29
  some behavior or other, and then there's the relaxation response, which happens
• 22:33
  when you complete the stress response cycle, but it is not escaping the predator
• 22:37
  that completes the stress response cycle.
• 22:39
  It is, in this case of the running itself that does it.
• 22:44
  So nowadays we're, it's pretty rare that we get chased by something
• 22:50
  with sharp teeth that can run 30 miles an hour, like not usually.
• 22:55
  Our stress, our stressors now are our kids and all the things you were saying
• 23:01
  and the weather and the markets and the global political climate and our family
• 23:08
  and employers and commutes and traffic and like money and like all that stuff.
• 23:16
  Even though those are really different kinds of stressors, our physiological
• 23:19
  stress response is very similar.
• 23:23
  So when you're being stressed out, not by being chased by a lion, but instead
• 23:28
  by, um, a drought, what do you do?
• 23:33
  You got pretty much the same chemistry.
• 23:36
  So you can't actually just make it rain, but you can deal with the
• 23:43
  stress that's happening in your body.
• 23:44
  And physical activity is the, you know, when people say
• 23:47
  exercise is good for you, it is.
• 23:49
  Exercise is good for you.
• 23:50
  If it's available to you, I highly recommend it.
• 23:52
  And this is why.
• 23:54
  It's because it communicates to your body that you have escaped
• 23:57
  the stressor, whether or not you actually have escaped the stressor.
• 24:03
  So the, but the good news here is that you can do something and I'll
• 24:07
  talk about many other strategies for completing the stress response cycle.
• 24:10
  The physical activity is not for you.
• 24:12
  I am a natural exerciser.
• 24:13
  I have always had the experience where I know if I just put on my
• 24:16
  shoes at the other end of run or the cycling or the rock climbing,
• 24:21
  I'm gonna feel so much better.
• 24:22
  If I could just put on my shoes and go do it, I'm gonna feel great.
• 24:26
  Uh, I have an identical twin sister, the co-author of Burnout, who has
• 24:29
  literally never had that experience and thought I was lying when I described it.
• 24:33
  She is not a natural exerciser.
• 24:35
  So if you're not a person for whom exercises something that's your
• 24:38
  preferred thing or even available to you, Amelia is now, um, disabled by Covid.
• 24:44
  She has, uh, chronic fatigue syndrome and a variety of other energy,
• 24:49
  sort of metabolic issues where like exercise will only make her sicker.
• 24:55
  Um, so.
• 24:56
  The good news is that you can complete the stress response cycle,
• 24:59
  even if the problem still exists.
• 25:02
  It also means that your stress might continue even after
• 25:07
  you have solved the problem.
• 25:08
  So like you're a grownup and you have a very adult rational conversation with,
• 25:13
  you know, your romantic partner about the dishes and when they're gonna be
• 25:18
  done and like you're like being very reasonable and calm and a grownup, or
• 25:23
  you're talking to your kids and you're like, you need to put your shoes on.
• 25:26
  Were they waiting five minutes?
• 25:27
  I need to put your shoes on.
• 25:28
  Two minutes to go.
• 25:29
  It's time to put your shoes on.
• 25:31
  I need you to put your shoes on, and the next three minutes,
• 25:33
  I'm gonna count to three.
• 25:35
  And you're gonna put your shoes on.
• 25:36
  Like you're being so calm and rational and inside your chemistry is doing
• 25:42
  the thing it does when you are being threatened for your life and
• 25:45
  your body kind of wants to go, ugh.
• 25:48
  Right?
• 25:49
  Yeah.
• 25:49
  Does that, does that make sense?
• 25:50
  Yeah, that sounds familiar.
• 25:51
  So, Even though you have dealt with the stress, like your child puts on their
• 25:55
  shoes, your partner does the dishes.
• 25:58
  Woo.
• 25:59
  Your body is still in that escalated state.
• 26:02
  And look what happens to your body when you stay in that escalated state.
• 26:05
  Your heart rate stays increased, your blood pressure stays increased.
• 26:08
  Your digest system stays slow down.
• 26:10
  Your reproductive system stays slowed down.
• 26:12
  So just take one organ system.
• 26:15
  Um, your cardiovascular system, your blood pressure increases, which creates the
• 26:21
  blood vessels, are designed to mostly deal with like a steady trickling stream of
• 26:26
  blood flow, um, with the stress response.
• 26:28
  It's like a, a fire hoses and it's only gonna last like 15 minutes in
• 26:33
  the way that it's evolved to work.
• 26:34
  And then your relaxation response kicks in, your blood flow returns to normal
• 26:38
  and your blood vessels have a chance to repair themselves from the damage that
• 26:41
  got done by that high blood pressure.
• 26:44
  But if your blood pressure stays elevated for a long time, not only.
• 26:49
  Does it keep getting damaged, but also your immune system, yet another
• 26:53
  organ system doesn't kick on fully because it too is suppressed during
• 26:58
  the fight or flight response.
• 27:00
  Um, so you're increasing the damage done to your blood vessels, you're reducing
• 27:05
  your immune system responsibility, its ability to heal that damage.
• 27:09
  And so over time just the stress itself causes heart disease.
• 27:14
  It's just stress, but it's a cause of disease, which is how just stress
• 27:20
  is more likely to cause US disease and even death than many of the
• 27:26
  things that cause the stress itself.
• 27:30
  Does that make sense?
• 27:30
  Yeah, that does make a lot of
• 27:31
  Arlene: sense.
• 27:33
  So you talked about, you know, physical activity is obviously one of the
• 27:37
  ideal options, but I'm thinking of, you know, like people who are working
• 27:41
  in physical jobs all day, you know, some of our farming listeners who.
• 27:45
  It feels like all day is physical work, and that actually is the stress.
• 27:50
  So can you talk about some of those other options, like you said, for people with
• 27:55
  Emily: physical disabilities?
• 27:55
  There's so, there's so many.
• 27:57
  Yep.
• 27:58
  Yes.
• 27:59
  Yeah.
• 27:59
  So if, if for any reason you're like, I'm not gonna exercise my stress away, cool.
• 28:04
  I get it.
• 28:06
  I actually have, uh, a balance disorder that's degenerative.
• 28:09
  The older I get, the worse it gets and the less physical
• 28:11
  activity becomes available to me.
• 28:13
  So I really rely on these other ones now.
• 28:15
  Um, one is sleep, and that's, I've just started with a really complicated one.
• 28:21
  Yeah, sounds, sounds so easy.
• 28:22
  Lazy,
• 28:23
  Arlene: right?
• 28:23
  Just sleep.
• 28:23
  Yeah.
• 28:25
  Yeah.
• 28:26
  Emily: You guys didn't already know that sleep is really important, did you?
• 28:29
  No.
• 28:29
  Never heard that.
• 28:29
  Oh, no.
• 28:30
  No.
• 28:31
  Yeah.
• 28:31
  Everybody knows that sleep is important and yet so many of us are sleep deprived.
• 28:37
  And the reason for that, well, partly it has to do with physical limitations.
• 28:41
  So, for example, I'm in perimenopause now, and one thing that, uh, Many doctors do
• 28:46
  not share with you is that once you get to perimenopause and into menopause, your
• 28:50
  sleep is gonna be, uh, messed up for a while there just because of the hormones,
• 28:56
  because of the changes that are happening.
• 28:58
  Um, but it's not just physical reasons, it's also because I kept, in
• 29:03
  sociology they call it the third shift.
• 29:05
  So there's a first shift where you work a job, job, your second
• 29:07
  shift, which is where you take care of the family and the household.
• 29:10
  And the third shift, which is the time of night when people
• 29:13
  are supposed to be sleeping.
• 29:15
  But some people have more permission to sleep than other people do, right?
• 29:22
  Yeah.
• 29:22
  And we know that there's gonna be social rules about who's more
• 29:25
  entitled to rest than other people.
• 29:29
  Amelia and I have, that's my sister Amelia and I have lost count of
• 29:32
  the number of women who've told us that they feel guilty for sleeping.
• 29:37
  And our culture does not reward us for like showing up to a social event.
• 29:42
  Somebody asked how you are and you're like, you know what?
• 29:44
  I've been getting seven to nine hours of sleep every night for
• 29:47
  the last month, and I feel great.
• 29:49
  Their response is not like high five go you.
• 29:51
  It's Oh, that's so nice for you.
• 29:54
  Yeah.
• 29:54
  I have been staying up like baking the cupcakes for Becky's birthday party,
• 29:59
  but no, self-care is really important.
• 30:03
  Good for you.
• 30:05
  Yeah, like all these messages about self-care and then you
• 30:09
  take care of yourself and they're like, mm, musts be nice.
• 30:12
  Yeah, it fucking is.
• 30:16
  So sleep we know is complicated, but also, and and like we
• 30:21
  can talk about sleep forever.
• 30:22
  I literally have an hour long talk just about sleep.
• 30:24
  So whatever questions you have, I will be more than happy to answer.
• 30:27
  But So a third strategy, a big old cry.
• 30:32
  You know how like sometimes you're like just barely holding it together
• 30:35
  and then you like lock yourself into a space where you can just cry and you
• 30:39
  let yourself cry for, I don't know, just five, 10 minutes and you're, it's
• 30:43
  like you've drained away all the stress and you're like, and you feel better.
• 30:51
  That's your body completing the stress response cycle.
• 30:53
  People say crying doesn't solve anything, and those are people who don't know the
• 30:56
  difference between completing the stress response cycle and dealing with the thing
• 31:01
  that caused the stress in the first place.
• 31:02
  No cry only under really specific life circumstances.
• 31:06
  Does crying deal with a stressor or, but what it does is complete the stress
• 31:12
  response cycle so that your body can recalibrate down to the relaxation
• 31:16
  response so that you are well enough to deal with whatever it was that activated
• 31:20
  the stress response in the first place.
• 31:22
  So that's three four, a big old laugh, the not the like, socially
• 31:27
  posed, polite kind of laughter.
• 31:30
  It's the helpless belly aching laughter.
• 31:34
  Uh, that's like if you look embarrassing, it's usually with other people that
• 31:41
  sort of like helpless laughter has a lot of the same characteristics as a
• 31:45
  big old cry where you get to the end of it and you feel physically like,
• 31:49
  oh, like something really big happened in your body, moved all the way
• 31:52
  through something and got to the end.
• 31:54
  All of these things are a practice in, like a stressor happened.
• 31:59
  I wa I felt unsafe in my body and then physiologically I transitioned into
• 32:04
  a place where I felt safe in my body.
• 32:07
  Even if you are not actually safe, because a lot of us live in a world
• 32:11
  we are where we are never fully safe when we go out into the world.
• 32:16
  People of color, transgender and non-binary people, people with
• 32:19
  disabilities, when they go out into the world, they're never fully
• 32:23
  safe, but they can return to a place of feeling safe in their body.
• 32:28
  Given the opportunity to complete the stress response, and especially
• 32:31
  to do it within the safety of other people who care for them as much as
• 32:35
  they care for the people around them.
• 32:38
  We have, so we're up to four.
• 32:39
  We've got physical activity, we've got sleep, we've got a big old
• 32:41
  cry, we've got a big old laugh.
• 32:44
  Uh, imagination is five and it's one of my favorite.
• 32:47
  It's actually the one that really made the difference for Amelia.
• 32:50
  We wrote the book together because when I wrote Come As You Are, I like traveled all
• 32:55
  over talking to people, anyone who would listen about the science of sexuality.
• 32:59
  Um, but people kept coming up to me after these talks I would do and saying, yeah,
• 33:03
  all that sex science is great, Emily.
• 33:05
  But that one chapter, chapter four about stress and feelings, that was
• 33:09
  the one that really changed everything.
• 33:10
  And I told Amelia and she was like, yeah, no kidding.
• 33:15
  Remember when you taught me that stuff and it, you know, saved my life?
• 33:18
  She said twice.
• 33:21
  She said, and I was like, oh, we should write a book about that.
• 33:24
  So Amelia's situation is right.
• 33:26
  That, that seems important.
• 33:27
  Yeah.
• 33:27
  It's, and I was like, then this is, this is an important message.
• 33:31
  She, uh, has a dma, a doctor of musical arts in choral conducting
• 33:36
  from a program where she remains the only woman ever to finish that
• 33:40
  program, because that's just how misogynist classical music training is.
• 33:45
  Uh, and in the process of finishing that degree, she was hospitalized
• 33:48
  twice with quote unquote just stress.
• 33:50
  She had an elevated white blood cell count, but they
• 33:53
  couldn't find any cause for it.
• 33:54
  So they told her to go home and just relax.
• 33:58
  And she was like, why is my body trying to kill me?
• 34:00
  And I've got a PhD in public health?
• 34:02
  Like, I felt very bad that she did not already know.
• 34:05
  Like, so I, I showed up in the way our family knows how to express love by giving
• 34:10
  her peer reviewed science about the impact of stress on her physical wellbeing.
• 34:15
  And, uh, she.
• 34:18
  Learned somehow, she did not yet know that stress is, is not just an idea.
• 34:24
  It's not just, um, like a, it's not a personal failing.
• 34:27
  It's a physiological event that happens in your body and has real
• 34:31
  physiological consequences in your body.
• 34:34
  And if you accumulate too many incomplete stress response cycles
• 34:37
  at a high enough intensity, it will.
• 34:40
  Uh, activate disease processes and that's ultimately what it did for her.
• 34:45
  And she ended up in so much pain.
• 34:47
  She thought she was gonna die lying on the bathroom floor in the hospital.
• 34:50
  And she began physical activity I mentioned like does not,
• 34:55
  is not a thing for her.
• 34:56
  She doesn't get it.
• 34:56
  But she was still like, you know, on the elliptical machine five
• 34:59
  days a week cuz she's a good girl who does what she is told.
• 35:02
  So she started integrating imagination into her workout.
• 35:06
  So instead of like watching TV or reading a magazine, she got on the elliptical
• 35:11
  machine and visualized herself as Godzilla tromping on the ER's office.
• 35:19
  And the.
• 35:21
  Arlene: Parking lot and her advisor's
• 35:24
  Emily: office.
• 35:25
  So she imagined herself into her own stress response and she conquered
• 35:31
  her enemy and her imagination and human minds are so powerful.
• 35:36
  Well, we already know that the imagination can activate a stress response cycle.
• 35:40
  Anytime you've experienced a physiological stress response activated in your body
• 35:45
  just because you were worrying about something, there's nothing bad happening
• 35:50
  right now, but you can be plenty worried about a bad thing that might happen.
• 35:54
  We know that the imagination can activate a stress response.
• 35:57
  The good news is it can also complete a stress response.
• 36:00
  You just really visualize yourself viscerally so that you can
• 36:04
  feel it happening in your body, conquering some enemy or other.
• 36:10
  And this is all.
• 36:12
  Really well established in the performance research in both music,
• 36:16
  other arts, and in athletics.
• 36:18
  The visualization is a powerful way to help your brain to imagine its
• 36:24
  way through an emotional response.
• 36:26
  To get all feelings or tunnels, you have to get all the way to the
• 36:28
  end to get to the light, right?
• 36:31
  So she could imagine her way through a stress response assisted by light
• 36:36
  physical activity on the elliptical machine, and that got her to the end.
• 36:42
  So number five is imagination.
• 36:45
  Number six goes right with that.
• 36:47
  That is creative self-expression.
• 36:50
  If a therapist has ever told you to journal, um, You may, I I have
• 36:54
  had therapists tell me to journal.
• 36:55
  Do they mean that the construction of sentences is inherently like
• 36:59
  good for your emotional health?
• 37:01
  No, they're providing an opportunity to take all those activated emotions
• 37:06
  that are inside you, move all the way through them, put them on the paper
• 37:10
  so that they're not inside your body, they're in a place where they can't
• 37:13
  do any harm to you or to anyone else.
• 37:15
  Creative self-expression is about taking all that stuff and putting it into
• 37:20
  something that is meaningful for you.
• 37:22
  It's writing for me.
• 37:24
  Uh, for Amelia, it was music for a long time.
• 37:26
  Then she became a professional musician and it had to become something else.
• 37:30
  Um, so she turned it into like cooking and writing and other
• 37:34
  forms of creative self-expression.
• 37:35
  For some people it's gonna be sculpture.
• 37:38
  For some people it's gonna be, uh, performance arts.
• 37:41
  So, So whatever your thing is that you're like, I know, like I can
• 37:45
  sit down, I can knit my booties of rage and I will have made something
• 37:50
  and gotten the rage out of my body.
• 37:52
  Creative self-expression.
• 37:54
  Does that make sense?
• 37:56
  Arlene: That does.
• 37:56
  I think, and for that one, I like how you mentioned that once music became
• 38:01
  her job, that couldn't be her creative self-expression anymore, right?
• 38:03
  We have to stop that idea of, oh, I can make this thing and it helps me
• 38:09
  de-stress, so now I'll start selling it.
• 38:10
  Or creating a side hustle or turning it
• 38:13
  Emily: into something else, right?
• 38:14
  It can just be key tip is that like to prevent yourself from taking
• 38:17
  something you really love doing and turning it into a side hustle, choose
• 38:21
  a form of creative self-expression that you were not very good at.
• 38:25
  Yeah.
• 38:27
  Or just make one huge scarf.
• 38:28
  It just, it never ends.
• 38:29
  Yeah.
• 38:29
  You, you'll never be good enough at it to be able to make any kind of money.
• 38:32
  So you just, Amelia uh, also does horseback riding.
• 38:36
  Mm-hmm.
• 38:36
  She will never be any good at it.
• 38:39
  Like she will never be able to compete.
• 38:40
  She will never be able to participate in a group of people doing it.
• 38:44
  But it's physical activity.
• 38:47
  It's, it's also connection, which is like maybe the biggest strategy for
• 38:52
  completing this stress response cycle.
• 38:53
  Cuz remember, all of these are about shifting your body into a state where
• 38:57
  it feels that you have returned to a place of safety inside your own body
• 39:01
  and connection with a loving presence.
• 39:05
  Isano like these hu humans are spectacularly social as a species.
• 39:10
  For some people, connection really does mean connection with other people.
• 39:14
  People who listen to the podcast so that they can have that sense
• 39:17
  of connection with other people who are similar to them, who understand
• 39:21
  the things they're going through.
• 39:22
  That connection is helping them to return to a place of safety inside their body.
• 39:27
  Uh, the research suggests something like a 32nd hug.
• 39:31
  It's, it's not about the 30 seconds, but it is about hugging for a duration
• 39:36
  that would be, Potentially very awkward if you don't really like and
• 39:41
  trust the person that you are hugging.
• 39:43
  Right, and that's the point, Suzanne, I ascend.
• 39:46
  The sex therapist calls it hugging until relaxed, where you just
• 39:50
  press your body against the other person and breathe with them until
• 39:54
  you feel the shift in your body.
• 39:59
  That's one way that connection can help to ground your body in
• 40:04
  an experience of feeling safety.
• 40:06
  When I'm with this person, I am so safe that I have come home, but there's
• 40:12
  also connection with animals, so.
• 40:14
  Much as I adore my husband, I'm very lucky.
• 40:17
  He's a wonderful, wonderful human being.
• 40:19
  There are times when like the purity of my dog's joy at seeing me when
• 40:24
  I come home just cannot be matched by anything A human can express.
• 40:29
  Their faces all soft and glowing and their tails wagging.
• 40:33
  That sense of joy just like connects with me and makes me feel like
• 40:38
  I have come home in a way that connecting with any human can't match.
• 40:41
  For Amelia horseback riding is like that when you go see the same horse
• 40:45
  every week and you groom it and you ride the horse and it just feels like
• 40:49
  you're connecting and she's physically connecting, trying to tune her body
• 40:55
  into the same rhythm as the horse.
• 40:58
  That experience is really similar to her, her musical specialty.
• 41:02
  She's a choral conductor and which she conducts.
• 41:04
  She tries to tune her body to the same rhythm as her choir and
• 41:10
  that experience of connection.
• 41:12
  Not only is it good for her in terms of feeling like she's grounded in a
• 41:16
  sense of safety in her own body, it also brings her a sense of meaning
• 41:20
  and purpose, which music doesn't have for me, but it does for her.
• 41:24
  Meaning and purpose is like a whole other chapter in burnout.
• 41:27
  Um, but so connection with humans, connection with mammals,
• 41:31
  connection with landscapes.
• 41:33
  For me it's the beach.
• 41:34
  For some people it's the mountains or the desert, or a lake or the forest.
• 41:39
  People have landscapes where when they go to that place, their body
• 41:43
  resonates with it and it just feels whole and connected and like, oh, I
• 41:50
  have come to a place of safety because I am in this kind of earth scape.
• 41:55
  Um, and finally there's connection with the divine.
• 41:58
  Many people's experience of their spirituality is being
• 42:01
  held in a loving family and that connection when it's happening.
• 42:08
  In your brain when you experience it, it is real, it is happening.
• 42:12
  Um, and can bring up in the same way that animals can have a sort
• 42:17
  of more pure and uncomplicated sense of safety and connection.
• 42:24
  Our connection with a divine can have that more pure, uncomplicated, simple sense of
• 42:32
  safety of being held in a divine family.
• 42:35
  So connection.
• 42:37
  Yeah.
• 42:38
  Arlene: I had a question about connection and the, the, uh, and
• 42:43
  co co-regulation at the same time.
• 42:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:44
  Because you talk in your book about co-regulating and I live with my four
• 42:49
  kids and my husband, and one of the things that is one of my stressors
• 42:54
  is taking on the emotions of other people and how they're feeling.
• 42:58
  And then, you know, inevitably how that makes me feel if
• 43:01
  they're not feeling great.
• 43:03
  And so that.
• 43:05
  Kind of ends up making me feel like I want to connect less almost.
• 43:09
  Yeah.
• 43:09
  Like it makes me feel like I wanna pull away from them.
• 43:12
  So how do, how do I satisfy my internal need for connection?
• 43:16
  So, When what I actually end up feeling like is I want to turn away from
• 43:20
  Emily: those feelings because it makes me feel worse.
• 43:22
  Yes.
• 43:23
  This, uh, brings up one of my favorite messages in the book, which is that
• 43:26
  wellness is not a state of being.
• 43:29
  It is not the state of being connected or not connected.
• 43:31
  It is not a state of mind.
• 43:33
  It is a state of action.
• 43:34
  Wellness is the freedom to oscillate through the cycles inherent
• 43:39
  and living in a mammalian body.
• 43:40
  We are not designed to like rest all the time or to work all the time.
• 43:45
  We're built to oscillate from.
• 43:47
  Rest into activity, back to rest and back to activity.
• 43:50
  Were not built to stay in a state of like always being full.
• 43:55
  We're designed to eat and then digest, and then eat and then digest, and we're
• 43:59
  designed to oscillate into connection and back out to autonomy, back into
• 44:04
  connection, and back out to autonomy.
• 44:06
  And just as each of us has different appetites for all those other
• 44:09
  things, different sleep needs, different meta, metabolic food needs,
• 44:14
  different kinds of bodies, we all have a different need for connection
• 44:18
  and a different need for autonomy.
• 44:20
  Introverts are the people whose natural appetite for connection is smaller.
• 44:25
  It uses up energy for them to be in connection with people
• 44:28
  and they gain energy being.
• 44:31
  Autonomous being alone, and extroverts are the people who gain energy being with
• 44:35
  people and then drain energy being alone.
• 44:38
  But everybody needs both Amelia and I are not just extrovert,
• 44:43
  are not just introverts.
• 44:44
  We are both strong introverts.
• 44:46
  We're also on the spectrum.
• 44:48
  So our connection needs are really out of balance from how most people
• 44:53
  relate to the idea of connection.
• 44:54
  And yet even we writing this book could not help coming to the conclusion
• 44:59
  that connection is actually, it's, it's the most important thing is the
• 45:05
  cure for burnout is not self-care.
• 45:07
  It is all of us caring for each other.
• 45:10
  And one of the ways that we care for each other is by taking up
• 45:14
  slack when someone we care about really needs some time on their own.
• 45:20
  Caite: So, Emily, I'm gonna jump in here.
• 45:22
  I don't know if you actually, um, got a chance to read the outline
• 45:26
  of questions or if you're a psychic or if we're just like, Separate.
• 45:31
  I did read it Earth somehow.
• 45:33
  Yeah.
• 45:33
  Um, as someone who is also a neurodivergent introvert, how do we ma
• 45:40
  I don't wanna say make myself, but how do I prime myself to want to connect
• 45:47
  with others because it is so much work.
• 45:50
  Yeah.
• 45:51
  And I, it's, it is very much like the responsive desire
• 45:55
  that you talk about that.
• 45:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 45:57
  Once I am connecting with people, I enjoy it and I feel very fulfilled by it.
• 46:01
  Gen generally depending.
• 46:04
  Yeah.
• 46:05
  Generally I've gotten rid of basically anyone I don't like in my life.
• 46:09
  Emily: That's a really healthy move.
• 46:10
  Caite: I work from home and I'm a neurodivergent introvert, so I just
• 46:13
  don't deal with people I don't like.
• 46:15
  Yeah.
• 46:15
  Easy.
• 46:16
  Um, but how do I get myself in the head space to want to connect with people
• 46:23
  because it is, It's so much work and it's so much planning and it's uh, and
• 46:28
  then a lot of times you have to leave the house, which is, you know, and it's,
• 46:34
  Emily: I have to say the way Amelia and I finally, uh, we
• 46:38
  were not diagnosed until 2021.
• 46:40
  Um, and the thing that motivated us to be like, you know what, actually
• 46:44
  there might be something going on here and we should probably go ahead
• 46:46
  and get evaluated, was the fact that the pandemic was hitting us really
• 46:50
  differently than how it was hitting.
• 46:52
  Pretty much everyone else we knew, we were like, this is amazing.
• 46:56
  I just wanna stay home by
• 46:57
  Caite: myself.
• 46:59
  But that wasn't just me.
• 47:01
  Cuz same, it was like, I feel really horrible for all the people
• 47:05
  who are getting sick and all these horrible things are happening to
• 47:07
  them and it is really inconvenient.
• 47:10
  Yeah.
• 47:10
  But this is pretty awesome.
• 47:12
  Like yeah, they want us to stay home and make sourdough done like,
• 47:18
  All right, sounds good to me.
• 47:19
  Emily: Yeah, you know, so the motivation, so I actually use this metaphor I learned
• 47:24
  from a sex therapist named Christine Hyde, um, when client couples will come
• 47:29
  to her where one partner is interested in sex, and the other one is like,
• 47:32
  ah, I'm really struggling with desire.
• 47:35
  Um, and she puts it this way, imagine that your best friend invites you to a party.
• 47:39
  You say yes because it's your best friend and it's a party.
• 47:42
  And then as the date approaches, you're like, Ugh, there's
• 47:46
  gonna be all this traffic.
• 47:48
  We're gonna have to find childcare.
• 47:50
  Am I gonna wanna put on party clothes at the end of a long week?
• 47:54
  Am I gonna wanna leave the house?
• 47:58
  But you know what you said you would go, so you put on your party
• 48:02
  clothes and you show up to the party.
• 48:04
  And generally what happens is you have a pretty good time.
• 48:09
  You benefit the way you.
• 48:12
  Want to benefit from the experience of going and being with people
• 48:16
  you genuinely care about.
• 48:18
  Even for neurodivergent people generally, if it's somebody you care enough about
• 48:22
  to like follow through and show up.
• 48:25
  Uh, my sister has this happen when, when her kids were still
• 48:29
  in high school and junior high.
• 48:31
  Um, she's the mother of three stepchildren who are all now in their twenties.
• 48:34
  But when they were in junior high, she would show up.
• 48:36
  She's a professional musician, and she would go to their, like high school
• 48:39
  musical, like it's physically painful for her to sit through a high school
• 48:44
  musical, and she would like check off each number on the program as it
• 48:51
  finished counting down to the end.
• 48:54
  But she was always, even though it was difficult, she wanted
• 48:57
  to be there for the kids.
• 48:59
  She genuinely loved seeing them in the show, and she could
• 49:03
  always honestly say when the kids asked, so what did you think?
• 49:06
  How was it?
• 49:07
  She can say, I loved seeing you in it.
• 49:09
  I thought you were great.
• 49:12
  So if you understand like, what am I, what is it that I'm looking to get out
• 49:16
  of this experience, you know that it's not necessarily to have a good time.
• 49:22
  And I'm saying this to other neurodivergent people with social
• 49:26
  differences, not to the neurotypical.
• 49:28
  People are like, but I have a great time.
• 49:30
  I love seeing all the kids in STA on stage, and I love going to a party.
• 49:34
  Like there's a lot of us out there who are like, no, I get
• 49:37
  home and I just feel exhausted.
• 49:40
  But you stay focused on what's meaningful about that experience for you.
• 49:43
  We're back at chapter three, like what is the meaning of this?
• 49:46
  What does this contribute to your life and your purpose on earth?
• 49:50
  That's the way I do it.
• 49:53
  Caite: Well, and I, I think this is such an interesting conversation getting
• 49:56
  into the, the sex side of your work, because I feel like there's this,
• 50:01
  obviously consent is a tremendously, tremendously important thing.
• 50:05
  Yeah.
• 50:06
  But I feel like there's this.
• 50:11
  Especially for those of us who I think weren't really raised with consent as
• 50:15
  being as big a thing as I think a lot of us are raising our kids to be now,
• 50:20
  that if we're not super enthusiastic about sex going into it, that it's the
• 50:26
  same as not consenting where, I mean, I might not be excited to go to that party,
• 50:33
  but I showed up willingly and it's, you know, it's not like I was kidnapped.
• 50:38
  Right.
• 50:39
  Emily: Um, and so here's my question.
• 50:40
  You show up to the par, and this is how Christine Hyde uses
• 50:42
  the analogy with her clients.
• 50:44
  Like, do you have a good time at the party?
• 50:48
  If you had a good time at the party, you were doing it right.
• 50:52
  And my thing is, if you're not having a good time at the party, there is
• 50:56
  no amount of being really excited about going to parties that would
• 51:00
  make that party worth going to.
• 51:04
  So the, the, the, uh, Thing for me is to forget entirely about
• 51:09
  desire and how enthusiastic you are about going to the party.
• 51:13
  Sometimes you're like, fine, I will.
• 51:15
  It's like how I feel about exercise.
• 51:17
  I'm gonna put on my shoes because I know if I just put on my shoes and I go out
• 51:21
  the door, I'm gonna be so glad that I did.
• 51:25
  If you put on your party clothes and you have show up, you put your
• 51:29
  BO in this in terms of sex, you put your body in the bed, you let your
• 51:31
  skin touch your partner's skin.
• 51:34
  If it feels good, if you enjoy yourself, you get to the end and
• 51:38
  you're like, that was a good idea.
• 51:40
  I'm really glad we did that.
• 51:42
  You were doing it right.
• 51:44
  The short way to say this is pleasure is the measure, pleasure is the
• 51:48
  measure of sexual wellbeing, not how often you do it or who with, or in
• 51:51
  what positions or how horny you are, or even how many orgasms you have.
• 51:55
  It's whether or not you like the sex that you are having.
• 52:00
  If you are having fun, you are doing it right.
• 52:03
  Caite: So, What about, I'm just gonna like lay my whole personal
• 52:06
  history just right out on the table.
• 52:08
  Great.
• 52:08
  I love that.
• 52:08
  Um, I, funny story when I told my husband that we were doing this show and I was
• 52:14
  like, you know, I would like to know where your boundaries are about how much
• 52:17
  of our sex life I talked about Yeah.
• 52:19
  In front of all these people.
• 52:21
  He somehow took that to mean that I thought that he should talk to
• 52:26
  Arlene's husband about what our sexual boundaries and come to
• 52:31
  our mutual understanding somehow.
• 52:34
  Yeah.
• 52:34
  Like, no.
• 52:35
  Are they sex partners?
• 52:36
  No.
• 52:37
  I, I don't need you to talk to Hugh about our sex life.
• 52:41
  Please
• 52:41
  Emily: don't.
• 52:42
  They've
• 52:42
  Caite: never even met in person, so.
• 52:44
  No, it's not as far as I know.
• 52:45
  Yeah.
• 52:45
  Boundary done.
• 52:47
  Um, so for my husband and I, we started trying for a baby, like
• 52:53
  on our wedding night, basically.
• 52:55
  Like we weren't.
• 52:57
  Really preventing for a month or so before that, but you know, mm-hmm.
• 53:01
  Now we're married and we're good Midwesterners and we're
• 53:03
  adults and we can do this.
• 53:05
  And, and then four years of fertility treatments, which is basically four years
• 53:11
  of people saying, give us all your money.
• 53:13
  And do really embarrassing, bizarre physically and emotionally painful things
• 53:19
  while we tell you to relax because it's your own fault that you're not getting
• 53:23
  pregnant because you're not relaxed.
• 53:26
  And then miraculously having two babies in a space of 16 months in a high risk,
• 53:33
  very physically difficult pregnancies.
• 53:38
  Where do I even start with ever wanting to have sex with ever again?
• 53:44
  Because I, you know, and I've had this conversation with my husband,
• 53:48
  but like, you know, it's not you.
• 53:51
  It's me.
• 53:51
  Is it crazy?
• 53:52
  No.
• 53:52
  You've been traumatized, but fuck.
• 53:57
  Emily: You know what I love is that you're asking the question the right way.
• 54:00
  Way.
• 54:00
  Where do I even ever start?
• 54:03
  Where do I start?
• 54:04
  Cuz?
• 54:05
  So, especially since the pandemic, I've been getting this question
• 54:08
  of like, how am I supposed to want to have sex with my partner when
• 54:12
  I'm so angry about so many things?
• 54:13
  How am I supposed to want sex when like basically the whole world is on fire?
• 54:17
  Yes.
• 54:18
  And the answer is you are not supposed to want sex under any circumstances.
• 54:23
  You explore where pleasure is and you follow it.
• 54:29
  So you begin with sex off the table.
• 54:32
  Like sex is not gonna happen anytime in the foreseeable future,
• 54:36
  but you can touch each other.
• 54:39
  You can hug and kiss and get to know each other's skin.
• 54:43
  You can independently reconnect with your own body.
• 54:46
  Don't start with your sexual or reproductive anatomy.
• 54:49
  Start with every other part of your body.
• 54:52
  Cuz if you have been the birth parent to children, it's not just, there have
• 54:56
  been physical changes, it's the whole meaning of your body has altered.
• 55:02
  So your relationship with every part of your body is brand new.
• 55:06
  Your relationship with your partner is brand new.
• 55:09
  You are starting entirely from scratch with a new body and a new relationship.
• 55:14
  So it makes sense that it would be difficult.
• 55:16
  It would be particularly difficult because you spent so long with the fertility.
• 55:23
  Treatments and trying are for people who are inter gamy producers, where one of
• 55:29
  you's got sperm and one of you's got eggs.
• 55:32
  And the expectation is you're gonna have sex by getting the
• 55:35
  sperm to the eggs via intercourse.
• 55:38
  Like it just can be so destructive to a sexual erotic connection.
• 55:44
  So part of it is rebuilding your relationship with your body, beginning
• 55:48
  from scratch, with your relationship with your partner, and releasing, remembering
• 55:55
  that there is actually other reasons to have sex besides having babies.
• 56:00
  And that is pleasure and connection.
• 56:03
  So, Um, there's an, so one of the things that I ask people
• 56:07
  is what is it that you want?
• 56:08
  When you want sex?
• 56:09
  What is it that you like when you like sex?
• 56:12
  These are important questions that I think people should spend a bunch of time with.
• 56:15
  Um, and there's sort of four big categories of answers.
• 56:18
  The first is connection.
• 56:20
  So finding a way to, there are lots of other ways to connect with
• 56:23
  people who really matter to you.
• 56:25
  Um, and, but sex is one of them.
• 56:27
  For some people, sex is a really important mode of connection.
• 56:30
  I don't know if it's important for you, but it is one, and it might
• 56:33
  be important for your partner.
• 56:34
  So that's one thing.
• 56:35
  A second thing is they want the pleasure of it.
• 56:38
  Um, and when sex has been as stressful, as exhausting, as sort of existentially
• 56:46
  threatening as it has been when you've been through so much of a fertility
• 56:49
  process, and people talk to me about this all the time, doctors are always like, how
• 56:53
  do I make sure my partner, my, my patients still have a, a decent sex connection
• 56:57
  after they get through this process?
• 57:00
  Um, so it's very common.
• 57:01
  Um, so.
• 57:03
  It might be difficult to access pleasure through your body that way.
• 57:06
  And it just takes practice, basically.
• 57:09
  Um, it's like a phobia.
• 57:13
  Tell me if this makes sense.
• 57:15
  Right?
• 57:15
  So you get in a car accident and now every time you approach a car, your body's
• 57:22
  stress response activates and you have to go through a process of graded exposure
• 57:27
  where you get, you think about cars and you practice relaxing and you stand next
• 57:32
  to a car and you practice relaxing and you sit in a car and you practice relaxing and
• 57:37
  you gradually get closer and closer to the experience of driving while training your
• 57:42
  body to be relaxed in that new context.
• 57:45
  You do the same thing with sex.
• 57:47
  You like, Lie in bed with your partner fully closed and allow your body to relax.
• 57:52
  You do breathing exercises, you practice meditation, whatever it
• 57:56
  takes for your body to be in a relaxed state while also physically present
• 57:59
  and in contact with another person.
• 58:02
  You practice relaxation while you are touching different parts of your own body.
• 58:06
  You practice being relaxed while you are skin to skin with another person.
• 58:10
  You practice being relaxed while you are alone and unclothed you
• 58:13
  practice in the shower or in the bath practice being with your own body and
• 58:18
  experiencing sensations while still being relaxed and not stressed out.
• 58:22
  And gradually from there, if you can be calm, relaxed, peaceful with your
• 58:27
  body and its sensations, then you begin exploring where the pleasure is and
• 58:32
  letting it come out from hiding because it's been hiding because, uh, it's been
• 58:35
  associated with stress for so long.
• 58:38
  Does any of that make sense?
• 58:41
  Caite: Well, I'm just over here trying not to cry because I feel like.
• 58:47
  I have become, it's become so ingrained that now when I even, I don't wanna
• 58:54
  say when I even see my husband, but when there's any amount of contact,
• 58:59
  my brain just goes straight to offer, fuck no, I'm not having sex with no.
• 59:05
  Yeah.
• 59:05
  You know?
• 59:06
  And so I skip everything that should be in between there.
• 59:11
  And I feel like for me, the, honestly the biggest struggle of
• 59:16
  fertility treatments was the anger.
• 59:19
  Because as women, we are not allowed to be angry.
• 59:23
  And as mothers, like the one thing you cannot do is be angry.
• 59:28
  And especially if you know it's irrational and you're getting so
• 59:33
  angry with friends because they look at their husband and they got
• 59:37
  knocked up in the backseat of the car.
• 59:39
  You know?
• 59:40
  And like, I'm happy for them.
• 59:41
  It's not like they're having a baby meant that I couldn't.
• 59:45
  Yeah, but for fuck's sake, I've, yeah.
• 59:48
  Never felt rage like trying to have a baby gave me.
• 59:53
  Yeah.
• 59:55
  Emily: And I'm gonna send you the new book.
• 59:56
  It's not done yet, but I'm gonna send it to you.
• 59:58
  Caite: Thank
• 59:58
  Emily: you.
• 59:59
  Because there's this whole section on rage.
• 1:00:02
  Oh my God.
• 1:00:02
  Has to be.
• 1:00:04
  So there was, it's actually part of what I call the emotional floor plan.
• 1:00:08
  Rage is one of the primary process emotions.
• 1:00:10
  It's one of the fundamental emotional spaces in our brains.
• 1:00:14
  And the actual like biological motivation of rage is to move toward and destroy
• 1:00:21
  something that is in our way when we hate.
• 1:00:25
  It's because something is in our way.
• 1:00:28
  We're trying to get to something and we can't.
• 1:00:30
  And so we're in that state of like attacking the thing that is in our way.
• 1:00:36
  Does that make
• 1:00:36
  Caite: sense?
• 1:00:38
  Yep.
• 1:00:38
  And we were actually talking on our social media the other day about what
• 1:00:41
  the word would be for the anger that comes from being afraid and finally
• 1:00:46
  just went for hangry, you know, like hangry, because it's, yeah.
• 1:00:52
  I've, I'm on a medication.
• 1:00:54
  You're angry, your fear Yeah.
• 1:00:55
  For dysautonomia because my body just cannot fucking even anymore.
• 1:01:00
  Just cannot even, yeah.
• 1:01:02
  And so it blocks my adrenaline response.
• 1:01:04
  So I, I don't feel the fear the same way, but I sure get
• 1:01:10
  the anger that comes after it.
• 1:01:11
  Yeah.
• 1:01:12
  And that's, it's really shocking when it happens because
• 1:01:15
  Emily: there's no, so let me add to that, the third major, uh, what I
• 1:01:19
  call them pleasure adverse spaces, but they're the difficult emotions
• 1:01:22
  that we are motivated to avoid.
• 1:01:24
  One of them is rage, one of them is fear.
• 1:01:26
  And the third one is panic grief, which is a technical approach
• 1:01:31
  to thinking about loneliness.
• 1:01:35
  This comes from when?
• 1:01:37
  So, so love is a biological drive.
• 1:01:40
  We require connection, uh, to stay alive.
• 1:01:45
  Even people like us who are on the spectrum, we require some
• 1:01:48
  connection in order to stay alive.
• 1:01:50
  And you know how infants, um, whale to, and they need to be picked up and held
• 1:01:55
  like babies will die just of loneliness.
• 1:01:59
  And as adults, it's no longer true that, uh, our survival
• 1:02:03
  depends on our adult caregivers.
• 1:02:05
  But our bodies don't know that.
• 1:02:07
  Our bodies are pretty sure that if we don't get connection with our
• 1:02:10
  attachment object, that we're gonna die.
• 1:02:13
  They call it heartbreak for a reason.
• 1:02:15
  So underneath all of that, um, fear and all of the anger and like, let me
• 1:02:22
  just add that there's an injustice.
• 1:02:26
  Where your rage is grounded like a real unfairness happened to you
• 1:02:31
  and so rage makes perfect sense.
• 1:02:34
  And also the process of trying to bring a child into the world it sounds
• 1:02:39
  like was this major cause of emotional separation between you and the person
• 1:02:46
  you picked to spend your life with.
• 1:02:48
  So I hear isolation in that, like buried underneath the rage at the fear is
• 1:02:56
  the despair of like an infant who has been crying and their adult caregiver
• 1:03:01
  hasn't come and hasn't come, and their attachment object isn't there.
• 1:03:05
  And so they switch from the panic of, I need some help, I need some
• 1:03:08
  help, I need some help to, no one is ever gonna come to help me.
• 1:03:14
  Are you
• 1:03:14
  Caite: gonna bill me for this therapy session?
• 1:03:17
  Emily: Because just an educator,
• 1:03:19
  Caite: I feel like I'm gonna get a bill in the mail for like $700 or something.
• 1:03:23
  Like shit.
• 1:03:24
  Should have, should have asked if this was covered by insurance.
• 1:03:26
  Emily: Someday I'm gonna finish writing this book and it'll only be like 20 bucks.
• 1:03:30
  Caite: Cool.
• 1:03:31
  Cool.
• 1:03:32
  And yes, that was me just totally deflecting.
• 1:03:35
  Um,
• 1:03:35
  Emily: no I get it.
• 1:03:36
  I make jokes too.
• 1:03:38
  My therapist has this like polite laugh that she does when I make
• 1:03:41
  a joke about something cuz she knows when I make the jokes.
• 1:03:43
  It's because uh, something has gotten really close to the hardest part.
• 1:03:47
  Caite: Yeah.
• 1:03:48
  Yeah.
• 1:03:48
  That's probably the thing that people ought to know about those of us who
• 1:03:51
  make jokes about things is right.
• 1:03:52
  The harder we're joking about it, the closer you are to
• 1:03:55
  whatever the actual problem is.
• 1:03:57
  Right.
• 1:03:57
  Um, yeah, I feel like this whole process of becoming apparent for me
• 1:04:03
  changed my fundamental understanding of my own personality so much and I
• 1:04:08
  just haven't had time to catch up.
• 1:04:10
  And it's, wow.
• 1:04:13
  It's a whole thing.
• 1:04:14
  Yeah.
• 1:04:15
  Yeah.
• 1:04:16
  It's a whole thing.
• 1:04:17
  We're just gonna leave it there.
• 1:04:19
  Emily: All of that.
• 1:04:20
  And it, it does like, it takes so much time.
• 1:04:22
  And the irony is that you are now much busier, caring for others than you
• 1:04:27
  ever have been before, at the same time that you need to be taking more time
• 1:04:31
  to reflect and understand yourself.
• 1:04:34
  Caite: I will say that my, my big driver for starting the podcast
• 1:04:40
  was a, a fear of my own mortality.
• 1:04:44
  And my big drive for having you on was to thank you for giving us
• 1:04:49
  concrete steps to deal with this shit.
• 1:04:51
  Because being put into this and then being told to, to go to therapy, which
• 1:04:57
  I finally quit with the blessing of my therapist because I logically, I've
• 1:05:02
  therapy my way through everything, but my, my body has not, yeah.
• 1:05:06
  Caught up.
• 1:05:08
  And then, You know, take a bubble bath and light some candles and meditate.
• 1:05:14
  And why are you still angry?
• 1:05:16
  You took a bubble bath.
• 1:05:18
  Yeah.
• 1:05:19
  Like,
• 1:05:20
  Emily: cool.
• 1:05:20
  Yeah.
• 1:05:20
  You gotta, do you, do you have skills in place for what you do
• 1:05:24
  when to process the rage each day?
• 1:05:27
  Caite: No.
• 1:05:28
  Okay.
• 1:05:31
  No, but I'm working on it.
• 1:05:34
  Yeah.
• 1:05:34
  And that's, that's what I can do.
• 1:05:37
  Emily: It's a huge step that you recognize that you have rage, you
• 1:05:40
  know what it feels like in your body.
• 1:05:42
  Like you can recognize, oh, here's how I know that rage is the thing
• 1:05:45
  that's happening right now, as opposed to fear or as opposed to loneliness.
• 1:05:50
  Uh, that's a great first step.
• 1:05:53
  The next thing is understanding what pushes you into that emotional space
• 1:05:57
  and how you pull yourself or how someone can help pull you out of that space.
• 1:06:02
  Those are, those are sort of the three pieces of it.
• 1:06:04
  What does it feel like when I'm there?
• 1:06:06
  How, what got me into here and how do I get out?
• 1:06:09
  That's how you, you know, your feelings are tunnels.
• 1:06:12
  Caite: You have
• 1:06:12
  Emily: to go all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end.
• 1:06:14
  And can you hear my cat on the
• 1:06:16
  Caite: desk?
• 1:06:17
  Yes.
• 1:06:17
  Speaking of cats and looking at the cat, who started this whole problem last night?
• 1:06:22
  Oh, not the whole problem.
• 1:06:23
  Emily: Turning at my camera.
• 1:06:24
  You can see her?
• 1:06:25
  Yeah.
• 1:06:26
  Oh
• 1:06:26
  Caite: yeah.
• 1:06:27
  Yellow cats, they're always a problem.
• 1:06:29
  Um, when you think you're on top of the tunnel, just kinda like having a stroll
• 1:06:36
  and then it collapses underneath you and you're just right back in the middle.
• 1:06:38
  Because what I find for myself is that I'll be going along, just everything is
• 1:06:43
  fine and, you know, everything is fine.
• 1:06:46
  And then last night, like the cat clawed me in the face.
• 1:06:49
  It's not his fault.
• 1:06:50
  He's a cat, he's dumb, you know, whatever.
• 1:06:53
  But I am uncontrollably sobbing.
• 1:06:59
  Like, you know, my entire family has just been run over by a garbage
• 1:07:05
  truck or something, you know, like I am just losing my mind.
• 1:07:09
  Over the cat scratching my face, which whatever.
• 1:07:14
  So how do we, how do we deal with that?
• 1:07:17
  Emily: Because that's, yeah,
• 1:07:18
  Caite: but the cry, the crying was completing
• 1:07:20
  Emily: the stress
• 1:07:20
  Caite: response cycle, right?
• 1:07:22
  Am I getting it right here?
• 1:07:23
  Yes.
• 1:07:23
  Was the crying, the crying
• 1:07:24
  Emily: was good for you?
• 1:07:25
  The crying, when you're crying to that intensity from something
• 1:07:30
  that in and of itself is not that serious, you know that you're not
• 1:07:35
  actually crying about the cat, right?
• 1:07:37
  You're crying just because you have all of this rage inside you and it wants to
• 1:07:42
  get out and it's like the cat created this tiny little channel for the rage to come
• 1:07:47
  out of, and it just like opened the little space for the rage to start coming out.
• 1:07:51
  It's not that it's actually rage about the cat, it's just the generic
• 1:07:55
  rage that you have inside you that so many of us have inside us.
• 1:07:59
  Especially like if, as raised as girls, were taught that anger is.
• 1:08:05
  Not allowed.
• 1:08:05
  You don't even have any anger and by the time you notice and acknowledge that you
• 1:08:10
  do have rage, you've got this back stock.
• 1:08:13
  Like your body is just like very politely.
• 1:08:15
  Hang on.
• 1:08:16
  She pushed a button.
• 1:08:19
  At least you didn't hit the mute button.
• 1:08:20
  Oh my god, cat, can I just get up and like give her some
• 1:08:22
  food because Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:08:24
  I'll be
• 1:08:25
  Caite: right back.
• 1:08:25
  I'm sorry.
• 1:08:25
  I know what cats are like.
• 1:08:29
  Sorry about that.
• 1:08:30
  Okay.
• 1:08:31
  No, absolutely.
• 1:08:32
  Emily: So the gift of our amazing human brains is they will just
• 1:08:36
  like hold on to our incomplete stress responses indefinitely.
• 1:08:41
  So a lot of us are walking around with just decades of incomplete stress
• 1:08:46
  response cycles that are no longer differentiated into like, oh, this is a
• 1:08:50
  fear response, this is an anger response.
• 1:08:53
  It's just stress.
• 1:08:55
  It's just this big glob of undifferentiated negative
• 1:08:58
  emotion in our bodies.
• 1:09:00
  Um, For a lot of people, those will set up camp in a particular organ system.
• 1:09:05
  For me, it's musculoskeletal and it shows up as lower back pain.
• 1:09:09
  Felia, it's generally her digestive system or her reproductive system.
• 1:09:13
  So it shows up in people's bodies in different ways, but let our bodies will
• 1:09:18
  just hold onto it for us for a really long time until we gradually learn the skill
• 1:09:23
  of completing stress response cycles, purging that stuff from our bodies so
• 1:09:29
  that our body can recalibrate itself.
• 1:09:31
  And it actually really does help to have a supportive other person
• 1:09:37
  there with us when we need it.
• 1:09:40
  So if, if I were the one giving advice and I'm not, I don't wanna
• 1:09:43
  really do advice, I'm not good at it.
• 1:09:45
  Um, cuz like I can't project myself into other people's lives very accurately.
• 1:09:49
  I don't have kids, I don't know.
• 1:09:51
  But, uh, a combination of the people you are already really close
• 1:09:56
  friends with who can stay calm with you while you are in distress.
• 1:10:00
  And maybe not a talk therapist, but um, a somatic sensory therapist, like somatic
• 1:10:07
  experiencing or somato sensory therapy where your body is actively involved.
• 1:10:12
  Doesn't even have to be therapy.
• 1:10:13
  It can just be yoga.
• 1:10:14
  Yoga, and basically moving your body or more evidence-based treatments
• 1:10:21
  for depression, for, uh, moderate depression than any medication.
• 1:10:31
  How you feeling?
• 1:10:31
  Be we lose here?
• 1:10:32
  Are we all just waiting for somebody else to something?
• 1:10:34
  I, I
• 1:10:34
  Caite: think, I think we're all just having a pause.
• 1:10:36
  Yeah.
• 1:10:37
  We were just having a moment.
• 1:10:38
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:40
  Emily: So you think it's gonna be about relationships?
• 1:10:42
  You think it's gonna be about like, you know, how to like,
• 1:10:45
  wear sexy underwear, whatever.
• 1:10:46
  No, it's about how to like, cope with the fact that our bodies
• 1:10:49
  are full of difficult feelings.
• 1:10:51
  Being a human is incredibly difficult.
• 1:10:53
  We both desperately need to be connected with each other and we
• 1:10:57
  both desperately need to be separated from each other and all of that.
• 1:11:02
  Like, that is not a contradiction.
• 1:11:04
  We ju we need to oscillate, we need the freedom to move
• 1:11:06
  through all of these cycles.
• 1:11:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:11:10
  Could you
• 1:11:10
  Caite: not just make the next book about buying sexy underwear and taking
• 1:11:13
  bubble baths so we can stop having all these feelings and dealing with all this
• 1:11:16
  shit just like I'm gonna the underwear?
• 1:11:23
  Emily: It's just about the underwear.
• 1:11:24
  It has nothing to do with how you feel about your body.
• 1:11:27
  Caite: Yeah, that's right.
• 1:11:28
  Oh my God.
• 1:11:29
  She wants us to do yoga and like therapy and embrace our feelings and get,
• 1:11:34
  Emily: I don't want you to, here's how I feel about yoga, fucking yoga.
• 1:11:39
  Like it's so goddamn good for you.
• 1:11:41
  Like it's, it's just, it's, it's just so good.
• 1:11:44
  It's that pesky
• 1:11:45
  Caite: science, right?
• 1:11:46
  It's the science challenge.
• 1:11:47
  Yeah.
• 1:11:47
  Emily: Stupid evidence-based interventions.
• 1:11:49
  Stupid science.
• 1:11:49
  Yeah.
• 1:11:50
  Yeah.
• 1:11:50
  Caite: Oh god.
• 1:11:50
  Going from
• 1:11:51
  Emily: walks outside.
• 1:11:52
  Yeah.
• 1:11:53
  Caite: So I wanna, I wanna talk about the science because the one thing you
• 1:11:57
  talk about a lot in cu as you are, is that a lot of things are normal.
• 1:12:00
  Like there's no, like genitals don't have to look a certain way.
• 1:12:04
  Sex is not the same for anyone, all that kind of stuff.
• 1:12:06
  Yes.
• 1:12:06
  And yet, the one thing you bring up a lot about not being normal
• 1:12:09
  is that sex should not be painful.
• 1:12:10
  Right.
• 1:12:11
  And yet, so often after people have children, especially, What medical
• 1:12:16
  providers sometimes tell us, or other people will tell us, or media will tell
• 1:12:20
  us, is that a certain amount of pain is normal and you just have to deal with it
• 1:12:25
  or get through it, or you're not relaxed enough or, you know, the blame comes
• 1:12:29
  back on the person who brought children.
• 1:12:32
  Exactly.
• 1:12:33
  Like we started off with a bit of lube and a glass of wine and it'll be fine.
• 1:12:36
  So talk to us about the fact that pain is not normal.
• 1:12:40
  Yeah.
• 1:12:40
  Because I don't think we should
• 1:12:41
  Emily: accept that.
• 1:12:42
  It's, it's one of the very, very, uh, I actually have a definition of
• 1:12:45
  normal that is the main one I use now.
• 1:12:48
  Are you ready?
• 1:12:48
  Normal sex is sex between peers or among peers where everyone
• 1:12:55
  involved is glad to be there.
• 1:12:58
  Free to leave with no unwanted consequences, no physical consequences,
• 1:13:03
  and also no emotional consequences.
• 1:13:05
  No emotional blackmail, no.
• 1:13:07
  Oh, come on, no guilt.
• 1:13:09
  Free to leave with no unwanted consequences.
• 1:13:10
  And there's no unwanted pain if it's wanted.
• 1:13:13
  Pain, if you are having closed pins attached to your nipples and
• 1:13:17
  you love it, if you're having your hair pulled and you love it, great.
• 1:13:20
  Do you?
• 1:13:21
  But if you're experiencing pain and you don't want it, that is
• 1:13:25
  outside my definition of normal sex.
• 1:13:28
  Uh, there are a wide variety of effective evidence-based interventions
• 1:13:32
  for the many different types of pain people can experience with sex.
• 1:13:37
  Uh, many of them are offered by pelvic floor physical therapists,
• 1:13:43
  uh, which is a great starting point.
• 1:13:45
  Assume if you're having genital pain in particular.
• 1:13:49
  Especially if it's after you've given birth or had some other, like major
• 1:13:53
  trauma to your genitals that, uh, physical therapy is your first line of
• 1:13:58
  intervention and then you go from there.
• 1:14:01
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:14:01
  But it's the idea that it's normal for sex to hurt, especially if you were
• 1:14:07
  raised with an, it's a girl kind of body.
• 1:14:10
  You were taught that it's your punishment to bear pain and suffering.
• 1:14:17
  We just assume that some degree of discomfort is normal.
• 1:14:22
  And when I was teaching, I had a student, uh, with a mobility disability.
• 1:14:29
  Uh, she had chronic inhibitory tone of her pelvic floor muscle, which is often,
• 1:14:33
  uh, described with the word vaginismus.
• 1:14:35
  Um, and.
• 1:14:37
  She was told by her doctors that there was no treatment for it.
• 1:14:41
  And I don't know if there's something about her condition
• 1:14:45
  that made her vaginismus.
• 1:14:47
  Not at all treatable, but I feel very confident that she, if, if she were a 19
• 1:14:51
  year old boy with genital pain who, uh, couldn't have sex because of the pain,
• 1:14:58
  uh, that she would not have been dismissed and told it was just untreatable.
• 1:15:02
  Yeah, prob pretty likely it's the patriarchy is the reason
• 1:15:05
  why we believe pain is normal.
• 1:15:07
  And I'm here to, I'm, I'm not here for the patriarchy.
• 1:15:11
  I'm here for us to live in a world where women are not taught that their bodies
• 1:15:14
  are the enemy and a source of suffering, but instead our bodies are a gift and
• 1:15:20
  are a potential source of great pleasure.
• 1:15:23
  All the pleasure that we choose to participate in
• 1:15:27
  that our body can experience.
• 1:15:31
  Caite: Yes.
• 1:15:32
  Thank you.
• 1:15:34
  And that's the message we need Circling.
• 1:15:38
  Yes.
• 1:15:39
  Circling back to the closed pins.
• 1:15:41
  Um, a lot of us, we've now, I'm curious in more conservative rural areas, so
• 1:15:49
  how, oh, that's where you're going.
• 1:15:51
  I thought you were gonna cross your husband's boundary.
• 1:15:54
  No, no.
• 1:15:57
  Um, how do we balance being sex positive and being advocates not only for our
• 1:16:03
  own children, but for, I don't wanna say for other people's children, cuz
• 1:16:07
  that sounds a lot like, I'm gonna throw condoms at your kid, no matter
• 1:16:10
  what your personal beliefs are.
• 1:16:11
  Um,
• 1:16:13
  Emily: do we, some person believes or not that you should condom at their kid, you
• 1:16:16
  should, uh, just hide the pockets away with the kids' consent in their backpack.
• 1:16:21
  Yeah.
• 1:16:22
  Caite: Sounds good.
• 1:16:22
  That's the solution.
• 1:16:23
  So how do we advocate for things like sex ed that's actually useful, um, without.
• 1:16:31
  Becoming knows people.
• 1:16:35
  Yeah.
• 1:16:35
  Emily: So I mean, here's my definition.
• 1:16:37
  H of sex positives have those people.
• 1:16:40
  Yeah.
• 1:16:40
  So sex positivity for me just means that everybody gets to choose how and when
• 1:16:45
  they are touched and everybody gets to choose how they feel about their own body.
• 1:16:51
  Just it's, you know, Bo autonomy is what sex positivity is.
• 1:16:55
  It is not even a little bit radical.
• 1:16:58
  It is not saying that all sex is positive, that is demonstrably obviously untrue.
• 1:17:05
  It's saying that everybody should get to choose.
• 1:17:07
  Everybody deserves the information they need to make choices for themselves.
• 1:17:14
  And I think advocating for that is not complicated, except that a lot of people
• 1:17:18
  disagree that everybody should be free to choose how and when they're touched.
• 1:17:24
  Caite: Right.
• 1:17:25
  Emily: Yeah.
• 1:17:26
  I'm wondering too, how, and let's talk about what it means to have
• 1:17:28
  sex education that is useful.
• 1:17:31
  Like, what is sex education for young people supposed to do?
• 1:17:34
  Uh, let's say prevent unintended or unwanted pregnancies,
• 1:17:39
  prevent the spread of STIs.
• 1:17:43
  Those are two pretty good goals, right?
• 1:17:45
  Um, if you wanted to, we could even add the goal.
• 1:17:47
  This is one of my favorite pieces of jargon.
• 1:17:49
  Delay sexual debut.
• 1:17:51
  For some people, that's an important outcome.
• 1:17:54
  Uh, increasing the age at which people have their first sexual experiences.
• 1:17:59
  If you wanna do any of those three things you wanna give people as
• 1:18:02
  comprehensive a sex education as you can get, talking about all the
• 1:18:08
  various forms of contraception, all the various sexual identities, and gender
• 1:18:13
  identities and sexual orientations.
• 1:18:16
  And you wanna talk about communication skills.
• 1:18:18
  You wanna do, uh, values exercises where people think
• 1:18:21
  about what's important to them.
• 1:18:23
  Communication exercises where we talk about who is allowed to say yes
• 1:18:29
  and no to what, what pleasure means.
• 1:18:31
  Teach people what pleasure feels like in their own body so they can recognize it.
• 1:18:36
  If someone ever says to them, does that feel good?
• 1:18:41
  That's what useful sex education does.
• 1:18:43
  And there are absolute, like, I, I think most people would be
• 1:18:47
  like, yes, let's prevent STIs.
• 1:18:49
  Let's prevent unwanted pregnancies.
• 1:18:52
  Uh, and, but.
• 1:18:54
  Let's not do it by giving people any information.
• 1:18:56
  Let's just rely on them making the choices that we would want them to make
• 1:19:01
  without giving them any of the tools they need to make those decisions.
• 1:19:05
  I have a lot of big opinions about this, obviously.
• 1:19:09
  Well, I'll say just, I mean, just cause it's like what I do for a living.
• 1:19:12
  But the thing is, we know exactly how to achieve these goals of reducing
• 1:19:17
  pregnancies when they're not wanted.
• 1:19:20
  We know how to prevent STIs.
• 1:19:21
  We have known for 50 years.
• 1:19:24
  We do not lack the knowledge.
• 1:19:26
  We lack the political will.
• 1:19:27
  So what we need is really for moderate people who are like, I
• 1:19:30
  would prefer that my child not get pregnant before they really want to.
• 1:19:34
  And I would prefer that my child not have a sexually transmitted infection
• 1:19:38
  to be like, actually it's completely fine with me if you talk about gay
• 1:19:41
  kids and, and like gay people in history and trans people in history.
• 1:19:45
  Because if that's what it takes to help my kid feel comfortable with
• 1:19:48
  themselves and able to say no to the things that they do not want, and yes
• 1:19:53
  to the things that are right for them because I'm raising my child to be
• 1:19:56
  aware of their own personal values to protect and defend their own values.
• 1:20:02
  And I trust that given the right information, they're gonna make a
• 1:20:06
  values aligned choice for themselves when it comes to sexuality,
• 1:20:10
  pleasure, and reproduction.
• 1:20:12
  Caite: I feel like too, one of the things we miss so much with sex ed
• 1:20:17
  is that we don't teach kids jack shit about how to get pregnant when it is an
• 1:20:23
  appropriate thing for them to be doing.
• 1:20:25
  You know, I mean, I'm of an age where our sex ed was literally, you know,
• 1:20:30
  don't touch boys, you'll get pregnant.
• 1:20:32
  Don't look at boys, you'll get pregnant.
• 1:20:34
  Here's some overhead slides of terrifying, terrifying things Yeah.
• 1:20:39
  That you will catch if you touch boys and then, you know, to go to
• 1:20:44
  the fertility clinic and to realize that even, you know, I was lucky
• 1:20:48
  enough to get more comprehensive sex ed in high school with, uh, sex ed.
• 1:20:55
  That actually meant something.
• 1:20:59
  How much I still didn't know about how babies are made.
• 1:21:03
  I mean, I know how babies are made.
• 1:21:06
  Yeah.
• 1:21:07
  But it's a fucking miracle that anybody is ever actually created.
• 1:21:10
  Seriously.
• 1:21:12
  Emily: And like it's the, and the thing is like, like you were
• 1:21:16
  saying, some people get pregnant.
• 1:21:18
  Literally the first time they have p and l vaginal intercourse
• 1:21:20
  with ejaculation into a vagina.
• 1:21:22
  Like it just happens the way they scare you about, and for other
• 1:21:27
  people it takes years of struggle.
• 1:21:30
  Caite: Well, no, I know when I got to the clinic and we were talking about it, one
• 1:21:35
  of the clinicians was totally without, um, violating privacy, was telling me about
• 1:21:42
  a couple who came in who had such a poor understanding of how reproduction works,
• 1:21:51
  that the husband had been ejaculating on his wife's stomach, not understanding
• 1:21:56
  that that would not ever get her pregnant.
• 1:21:59
  And this had been going on long enough that they got referred
• 1:22:02
  to the fertility clinic, which generally takes at least a year.
• 1:22:05
  So this poor couple had just thought that they were unable to conceive a
• 1:22:09
  baby, had gone through all this testing, had gone through all this stress.
• 1:22:13
  Wow.
• 1:22:14
  Because of shit drastically bad education and it just infuriates me.
• 1:22:23
  You know?
• 1:22:23
  I mean, this process is bad enough if you actually need it.
• 1:22:27
  I can't even imagine do it for that long and then finding
• 1:22:32
  out why it wasn't working.
• 1:22:34
  I like,
• 1:22:35
  Emily: I'm trying to imagine what it would be like for each individual in
• 1:22:39
  that couple to receive this information and understand how, how, what basic
• 1:22:45
  information they were missing.
• 1:22:47
  Like I hope they were really enraged at a world that had denied them this very basic
• 1:22:53
  information about what human sexuality is.
• 1:22:57
  Oh my gosh.
• 1:22:58
  Yeah.
• 1:22:58
  That a baby.
• 1:22:59
  I mean, we live in Iowa.
• 1:23:01
  One really specific thing.
• 1:23:02
  Caite: Yeah.
• 1:23:03
  Yeah.
• 1:23:03
  I mean, I can only imagine what the rest of their education about
• 1:23:06
  sexuality had been like if that's, you know, and even if you are really
• 1:23:11
  conservative, I feel like we owe our kids more information than that.
• 1:23:18
  You know?
• 1:23:19
  I mean it, yeah,
• 1:23:22
  Emily: yeah.
• 1:23:23
  Yeah.
• 1:23:23
  I wonder though, how really conservative parents would feel like if their own
• 1:23:28
  children finally got married and wanted to have kids, and they found out that their
• 1:23:32
  kids did not know about putting a penis inside a vagina and ejaculating there.
• 1:23:37
  Yeah.
• 1:23:38
  Like how, like where would they think, oh, here is the place where
• 1:23:43
  they should have learned about it.
• 1:23:44
  Like, should they have said those words out loud to their
• 1:23:48
  kids before they got married?
• 1:23:50
  Should their religious leader have said it?
• 1:23:53
  Should it have happened in a high school?
• 1:23:54
  Like where were they supposed to get that information?
• 1:23:57
  Yeah.
• 1:23:59
  Ugh.
• 1:24:03
  Caite: Anyway, feelings from your rage now.
• 1:24:06
  Emily: All right.
• 1:24:07
  Yeah.
• 1:24:07
  Yeah.
• 1:24:07
  Yeah.
• 1:24:09
  So I feel like a little could every day.
• 1:24:12
  Yeah, that's right.
• 1:24:14
  I feel
• 1:24:14
  Caite: like we could probably talk for like another hour,
• 1:24:16
  but I wanna be sensitive to the time that you have for us.
• 1:24:19
  So you've already given us us a little hint.
• 1:24:20
  I your husband, that we wouldn't talk for a full two hours.
• 1:24:24
  Sorry.
• 1:24:26
  Um, so can you give us any other hints about what the book
• 1:24:30
  is about that you're working
• 1:24:31
  Emily: on now?
• 1:24:31
  Uh, actually it is a book about, uh, sustaining a sexual connection
• 1:24:35
  in a long-term relationship.
• 1:24:38
  Wow.
• 1:24:38
  That which is why I spent so much time talking about rage.
• 1:24:43
  Caite: Do we have rage in our long-term
• 1:24:44
  Emily: relationships?
• 1:24:45
  I wonder?
• 1:24:45
  Yeah, there's a phenomenon known as normal marital hatred.
• 1:24:50
  I think the phrase is coined by Terrence Real.
• 1:24:53
  Wow.
• 1:24:53
  Which has become really important because like when you look at the internet, what
• 1:24:57
  you see is men and women complaining about their husbands and wives.
• 1:25:01
  And the book is inclusive of people, of every gender identity in every
• 1:25:05
  combination of genders in a relationship.
• 1:25:07
  And I don't just mean monogamous relationships, but straight
• 1:25:10
  married, monogamous people.
• 1:25:12
  Uh, the way they talk about their spouses on the internet is with,
• 1:25:17
  uh, infuriated rage and hatred.
• 1:25:20
  So I'm trying to like, help people in that position understand what
• 1:25:28
  their rage is actually about.
• 1:25:29
  It's about the patriarchy.
• 1:25:30
  Um, and hint, hint, how to disentangle it from their erotic connection so
• 1:25:36
  that they can stay connected with each other even when difficult
• 1:25:40
  things have to be moved through.
• 1:25:44
  Caite: Mm-hmm.
• 1:25:45
  So, so they may actually want to, you know, go to a party sometimes,
• 1:25:48
  Emily: right.
• 1:25:49
  Yeah.
• 1:25:49
  And if you don't like going to the parties, no wonder you don't wanna go.
• 1:25:54
  Yeah.
• 1:25:54
  Caite: Yeah.
• 1:25:55
  Some of the parties suck.
• 1:25:56
  Yes.
• 1:25:58
  Emily?
• 1:25:58
  I will say true story.
• 1:26:00
  My husband came home the other day to find me reading a book that is
• 1:26:04
  No shit, titled How Not To Hate Your Husband After Having Kids.
• 1:26:09
  Yeah.
• 1:26:09
  And I guess maybe my explanation that I don't hate him nearly as much as I'd
• 1:26:15
  hate anybody else in this circumstance.
• 1:26:18
  Um, was that somewhat helpful?
• 1:26:20
  You know, no, I don't think he, I think we've been together long enough
• 1:26:25
  that he understood what I meant, but I don't think it was quite as, um,
• 1:26:28
  comforting as he would've hoped for.
• 1:26:32
  But I mean, the circumstances that we live in, I'd hate anybody.
• 1:26:36
  Way more than I hate my husband.
• 1:26:39
  Yeah.
• 1:26:39
  You know, I love you dear.
• 1:26:42
  He listens to the show.
• 1:26:44
  Emily: So I have to, as woman on the spectrum, I can say that my
• 1:26:46
  experience of normal marital hatred is not the same as other people's.
• 1:26:51
  Like, I didn't understand it at first, and then I thought about the times that
• 1:26:54
  my husband used to, uh, leave trash, like used food wrappers in the sink.
• 1:27:01
  Oh my God.
• 1:27:01
  Um, he is also neurodivergent, he's adhd and he, he would put the food wrappers
• 1:27:05
  there with the plan of rinsing them off before he put them in the trash.
• 1:27:09
  Cause he didn't want the trash to smell fair enough.
• 1:27:11
  But he would, you know, get distracted because a d d and he
• 1:27:14
  would leave them in the sink.
• 1:27:15
  Um, and I, I used this in the book as an example of my experience of normal aal
• 1:27:20
  hatred of the kind of rising rage I would feel at finding dirty trash in the sink.
• 1:27:25
  Uh, and I told him I was gonna put that story in the book and he stopped doing it.
• 1:27:29
  So I took it outta the book.
• 1:27:32
  Caite: So you're saying what we have to do is start writing
• 1:27:35
  books about the, about shit
• 1:27:37
  Emily: that people do.
• 1:27:37
  Tell your partner.
• 1:27:38
  You're gonna tell, you know, hundreds of thousands of
• 1:27:41
  people about this thing you do.
• 1:27:43
  That is mildly annoying.
• 1:27:47
  Caite: Huh.
• 1:27:47
  And isn't that what the cussing and disgusting segment is for Katie?
• 1:27:51
  Yes.
• 1:27:54
  Emily: Yeah, we have a podcast for that.
• 1:27:56
  There you go.
• 1:27:57
  Yeah.
• 1:27:57
  So anyway, so it's a, it's, it's how to stay erotically connected,
• 1:28:02
  which necessarily means how to stay admiring and trusting of your partner.
• 1:28:10
  Caite: I mean, there's definitely some times that like some.
• 1:28:13
  Good, angry, hate sex can be a good thing, but I don't really
• 1:28:16
  wanna spend like the next 40 years.
• 1:28:19
  Emily: Yeah.
• 1:28:19
  There, yeah.
• 1:28:20
  Kind of most of the reason why I have a big section on anger is to be like, look,
• 1:28:24
  anger is one space, less is another one.
• 1:28:27
  There's almost no overlap between hating someone and wanting to have sex with
• 1:28:33
  them because hating them is wanting to destroy them because they're in your way.
• 1:28:37
  And like, I don't need to, like, we all get that.
• 1:28:40
  You should not use sex as a weapon to destroy another person.
• 1:28:43
  Right?
• 1:28:43
  Like, we all get that.
• 1:28:45
  We all know that.
• 1:28:47
  Like it can be fun to play a game with it, but like literally we all know, right?
• 1:28:55
  Caite: Yeah.
• 1:28:55
  Yeah.
• 1:28:55
  On the regular, no, no, not, not a good idea.
• 1:28:59
  I think Emily, it just occurred to me that angry, like angry after fight sex
• 1:29:06
  is like intentional pain during sex that like if it's with someone you like,
• 1:29:12
  And it's something you kind of enjoy.
• 1:29:14
  Go for it.
• 1:29:15
  But yeah, you don't generally have sex with people you actively
• 1:29:20
  Emily: hate.
• 1:29:21
  Yeah.
• 1:29:21
  And make up sex to repair.
• 1:29:23
  Damage to a connection is a really different experience from like I
• 1:29:28
  actively right now Wanna destroy you.
• 1:29:31
  Yeah.
• 1:29:33
  Caite: Okay.
• 1:29:34
  Yeah.
• 1:29:34
  Well,
• 1:29:34
  Emily: sorry, I could talk about it forever cuz I'm so deep in it now.
• 1:29:39
  Caite: Yeah.
• 1:29:39
  No, we'll we'll buy the book.
• 1:29:41
  We're Yeah, we're on it.
• 1:29:42
  Yeah.
• 1:29:44
  So
• 1:29:45
  Emily: Emily, you're Mike has to move my microphone around.
• 1:29:46
  I hope it has not affected the sound too much.
• 1:29:48
  She's just like right here.
• 1:29:49
  She's still Robin.
• 1:29:52
  Wanting all the attention.
• 1:29:53
  Yeah.
• 1:29:53
  Yeah.
• 1:29:53
  Oh my gosh.
• 1:29:54
  Oh, hi.
• 1:29:54
  So I
• 1:29:55
  Caite: added one super serious question here at the end.
• 1:29:59
  Okay.
• 1:29:59
  Your hair is currently blue.
• 1:30:02
  The last picture I saw of your sister, I think her hair was purple.
• 1:30:06
  Purple.
• 1:30:06
  Yep.
• 1:30:06
  How often do you guys accidentally dye your hair the same color?
• 1:30:09
  Are you like pretty consistent with blue and purple?
• 1:30:12
  Emily: So we do it ourselves.
• 1:30:15
  So there have been times when you know, you, like in order to get blue hair you
• 1:30:19
  actually have to put some purple in there to tone down the yellow that my cat, that
• 1:30:25
  uh, the yellow that still is in your hair.
• 1:30:28
  When I, even if I bleach my hair twice, there's still a lot of yellow left.
• 1:30:32
  Um, I have to add purple to the color in order to like tone down that yellow.
• 1:30:37
  Otherwise it looks green and I have missed the balance.
• 1:30:41
  And sometimes my hair has showed up as like way too purple.
• 1:30:44
  And then we go to events and people really believe I'm Amelia
• 1:30:47
  because my hair looks so purple.
• 1:30:49
  That has happened.
• 1:30:51
  Caite: That's just a whole level of twinning.
• 1:30:53
  I hadn't considered that you could color theory blue and still
• 1:30:57
  be mistaken for the other one.
• 1:30:59
  Emily: Yeah.
• 1:31:00
  Well, uh, there's a video of me, Ofelia and me in the UK in 2019.
• 1:31:06
  That is an example of how I went too hard on the purple in
• 1:31:09
  order to balance out the yellow.
• 1:31:11
  And my hair ended up looking just totally purple.
• 1:31:13
  I kept talking about how Amelia's one with the purple hair and I have the blue hair,
• 1:31:16
  and people were looking at me like, Hmm,
• 1:31:19
  Caite: okay, maybe she's colorblind.
• 1:31:21
  We shouldn't say anything about it.
• 1:31:23
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:31:23
  It'll be awkward.
• 1:31:26
  Um, so we ask all of our guests, if you were going to dominate a
• 1:31:29
  category at the county fair and you can make one up, or, you know, pick
• 1:31:33
  from a standard, what would it be?
• 1:31:37
  And I love that your cat's just like, I am going to lift my tail
• 1:31:41
  and show you my butt any second.
• 1:31:42
  Yeah, she's, she's, she's very sweet.
• 1:31:45
  Oh,
• 1:31:46
  Emily: oh, please don't tear this.
• 1:31:47
  Oh, please.
• 1:31:49
  Oh, the claws.
• 1:31:50
  I'm sorry.
• 1:31:51
  I wanna answer the question.
• 1:31:53
  Maybe my category is Cat Wrangler.
• 1:31:55
  Uh, so.
• 1:31:58
  Can this be a skill?
• 1:31:59
  I don't actually have, but I could wish I had.
• 1:32:01
  Absolutely.
• 1:32:02
  For sure.
• 1:32:03
  I wish I could do education.
• 1:32:04
  That sounded like leading an auction.
• 1:32:07
  Oh, if there were competition for best sex educator.
• 1:32:10
  That sounds like an auctioneer.
• 1:32:14
  Caite: I like that.
• 1:32:14
  I would pay good money for that.
• 1:32:17
  I'm sure we could just, there's a way.
• 1:32:19
  I'm sure there's a way in, in audio editing to make that happen.
• 1:32:22
  You know, just really like speed up what you've talked about and,
• 1:32:25
  uh, kind of overlap it a little.
• 1:32:28
  I don't know anything about editing.
• 1:32:29
  That's Katie's job, but I feel like that's possible.
• 1:32:32
  We'll do a, do a separate track.
• 1:32:34
  Katie, I think easier to hire an auctioneer to.
• 1:32:36
  There you
• 1:32:36
  Emily: go.
• 1:32:37
  And just get them to say a lot of general words.
• 1:32:38
  Give, give them a script.
• 1:32:39
  Caite: Yes.
• 1:32:39
  Yeah.
• 1:32:40
  Here are the things I want you to talk about.
• 1:32:42
  That is a very, uh, I, I know a couple of auctioneers.
• 1:32:46
  I'm not sure if any of them would take me up on that offer, but I'll, I'll, uh, I'll
• 1:32:49
  Emily: ask.
• 1:32:51
  Caite: You gimme a script and I'll see if I can get one of them to do it for me.
• 1:32:54
  Emily: It's wonder wondering, it's just how that would go.
• 1:32:56
  Gonna dwell in my head.
• 1:32:57
  That's fine.
• 1:32:57
  It doesn't have to happen.
• 1:32:58
  In reality it doesn't.
• 1:32:59
  Okay.
• 1:33:00
  Caite: It's really great.
• 1:33:01
  It's just trying to make things happen for you.
• 1:33:02
  Yeah.
• 1:33:03
  So we'll go ahead and move into our cussing and discussing category.
• 1:33:06
  We have registered for an online platform where listeners can leave
• 1:33:09
  their cussing and discussing entries for us and we'll play them on the show.
• 1:33:12
  So go to the show notes for either the speak pipe or the email if
• 1:33:16
  you just want to email it to us and we'll read it out for you.
• 1:33:19
  Katie, what are you cussing and discussing this week?
• 1:33:23
  I went through a couple different ones, but I'm gonna stick with the
• 1:33:26
  one I started with, which is stores rearranging, just fucking stop.
• 1:33:32
  Our Walmart has completely changed their floor plan twice
• 1:33:36
  in the last four years, and I.
• 1:33:39
  No, at this point that their goal is entirely to get customers to never
• 1:33:43
  actually set foot in the store again.
• 1:33:46
  They want everything done for curbside pickup, which is fine for people
• 1:33:50
  or get so lost that they buy more stuff while they're looking around.
• 1:33:54
  Oh my God.
• 1:33:56
  I just don't do it.
• 1:33:59
  I come to Walmart to just buy my dish detergent and not talk to anyone, or
• 1:34:04
  look at anything or think about anything.
• 1:34:06
  I don't come here to be personally challenged, you know?
• 1:34:10
  I just leave it alone.
• 1:34:14
  Leave it alone.
• 1:34:14
  That's it.
• 1:34:16
  That's basically like my life motto at this point for everyone and
• 1:34:19
  everything is just leave it alone.
• 1:34:21
  Just, yeah, don't touch it.
• 1:34:23
  Stop.
• 1:34:25
  Anyway.
• 1:34:26
  Emily, what would you like to discuss and discuss this week?
• 1:34:34
  Emily: Uh, I think it's probably too dark for me to talk
• 1:34:37
  Caite: about.
• 1:34:38
  No, I kind of wanna hear it now.
• 1:34:40
  I mean, we've talked about putting clothes on.
• 1:34:42
  We have no boundaries at this point, so, okay,
• 1:34:45
  Emily: so we've gone for the past several years, the number of, uh,
• 1:34:49
  proposed legislation being presented in state legislatures, uh, that is
• 1:34:54
  anti-trans, has risen every year.
• 1:34:57
  The number that is passed has risen every year.
• 1:35:00
  And here's the thing, it is not even that these people are seriously
• 1:35:05
  anti-trans or want to quote, eradicate transgenderism, which ps what is that?
• 1:35:10
  How do you eradicate transgenderism without eradicating all the trans
• 1:35:12
  people and all the people who love them?
• 1:35:14
  You don't.
• 1:35:15
  You have to eradicate the people and the people who love them and.
• 1:35:19
  It's such a small population, it's only like 1% of the population that's trans.
• 1:35:24
  Most people who buy into these anti-trans bills will never know a trans person.
• 1:35:30
  And it's really easy to hate and perpetrate violence or legislate
• 1:35:34
  against people you will never know.
• 1:35:36
  And it's not, even though the people who are proposing legislation
• 1:35:38
  actually care that much about trans people, they're using it as a wedge
• 1:35:41
  issue in order to increase autocracy and fascism in the United States.
• 1:35:47
  Cause you need a, them and trans people are a really good them because they
• 1:35:50
  violate gender norms that a lot of people think are like super duper important.
• 1:35:55
  And there's a very small number of them.
• 1:35:57
  So you'll never actually meet them and never have to encounter the people to
• 1:36:01
  whom you're perpetrating so much harm in trying to legislate out of existence.
• 1:36:05
  Was that too dark?
• 1:36:07
  Caite: Not at all.
• 1:36:08
  Uh, no.
• 1:36:08
  That that's perfect.
• 1:36:10
  That's what I'm enraged
• 1:36:11
  Emily: about.
• 1:36:12
  Yeah, we have enough.
• 1:36:13
  And you're not even actually angry about trans people.
• 1:36:16
  You're just trying to have more power and using violence and exclusion of
• 1:36:20
  trans people as a way to get there.
• 1:36:22
  Congrat, fucking Ians, you are like the definition of fascist in the 21st century.
• 1:36:29
  Caite: Oh,
• 1:36:31
  Emily: you can
• 1:36:31
  Caite: cut any of that that you want to.
• 1:36:33
  No, no whole episode.
• 1:36:34
  I know.
• 1:36:34
  It's all episode.
• 1:36:35
  It's all staying in.
• 1:36:36
  Yeah.
• 1:36:37
  Yeah.
• 1:36:37
  We have a whole episode coming up where we interviewed my personal,
• 1:36:41
  not my personal, our family physician, and got her started on the
• 1:36:48
  anti-abortion bills, which, oh my God.
• 1:36:52
  I think the anti-trans bill is just a slightly easier way to
• 1:36:57
  hate people than the abortion bill because they're ideologically
• 1:37:01
  Emily: like they're both misogyny.
• 1:37:03
  Caite: Yeah.
• 1:37:03
  But nice white ladies occasionally get abortions, which is a little harder
• 1:37:07
  to argue against than the trans.
• 1:37:10
  Emily: So, Right?
• 1:37:12
  Yeah.
• 1:37:12
  You might actually meet somebody who needed an abortion, you know, because
• 1:37:16
  they were 19 months into a pregnancy and it turned out it wasn't viable.
• 1:37:20
  Yeah.
• 1:37:22
  Apart from all the times of like, I cannot afford to have a child, or,
• 1:37:27
  oh, I was, don't get me started.
• 1:37:28
  Oh my gosh.
• 1:37:29
  Maybe if we had comprehensive sex ed, it's a bad time.
• 1:37:32
  This would not happen.
• 1:37:32
  Like I felt like we were really making progress there for a minute, and now we
• 1:37:38
  are like, I mean, this is the way it goes.
• 1:37:41
  You move forward, you go back a little, you move forward, you go back a little.
• 1:37:44
  This is a very dark time for women's equality in the world, and I just
• 1:37:50
  hope people are sort of aware that that's happening and not minimizing
• 1:37:54
  what this moment actually is.
• 1:37:56
  Because the future of, I'm not exaggerating, democracy on Earth is being
• 1:38:03
  challenged right now, and you can see it in the way women and non-binary and
• 1:38:07
  trans people are treated onto the law.
• 1:38:11
  Caite: Oh, I thought you were just gonna go for the bikini industrial complex.
• 1:38:16
  But no,
• 1:38:17
  Emily: just, I mean, the thing is like, that's a big deal too.
• 1:38:21
  Don't get me started on fucking Ozempic.
• 1:38:24
  Don't get me started because I could, I could go on just as
• 1:38:29
  much about the bikini industrial complex, but that's not like new.
• 1:38:34
  That's just forever.
• 1:38:36
  Yeah.
• 1:38:36
  This is this, there's like a whole new batch of hate being doled out
• 1:38:41
  in legislatures across the nation.
• 1:38:43
  Uh, and I, I just need people who are like moderate to recognize.
• 1:38:49
  I mean, there's the whole Holocaust thing.
• 1:38:51
  First they came for this group and I did not say anything, and
• 1:38:54
  then they came for these people.
• 1:38:55
  Like they're coming.
• 1:38:56
  They're coming for us.
• 1:38:58
  They have already come.
• 1:39:00
  For most of the people I care most about y'all, y'all.
• 1:39:07
  Y'all please,
• 1:39:08
  Caite: please vote.
• 1:39:09
  Yeah, I'm gonna stop now.
• 1:39:13
  So Arlene, what do you have to discuss and discuss to to book in?
• 1:39:16
  So I had something else that, I had something else, but I'm
• 1:39:20
  gonna add on to what Emily said.
• 1:39:22
  And I may not sound as enraged, but it's on the inside with
• 1:39:26
  stacked up with all my other rage.
• 1:39:28
  Can we also talk about how politicians and adults seem to want to regulate
• 1:39:36
  what happens to trans children?
• 1:39:39
  Yes.
• 1:39:39
  And not let those decisions be left to their parents and to their medical
• 1:39:43
  providers, and to those children themselves and the people who love them.
• 1:39:46
  Like you said, the people who love them should be able to make the right
• 1:39:50
  decisions and the decisions that are timely and the decisions that make sense
• 1:39:54
  for them in the stage that they're at.
• 1:39:56
  And trying to make decisions for people who are underage is complicated
• 1:40:02
  and it shouldn't be legislated.
• 1:40:04
  So stop
• 1:40:05
  Emily: Kids.
• 1:40:06
  Yes.
• 1:40:08
  I love that the party of small government really wants to be
• 1:40:11
  in the doctor's office with us.
• 1:40:13
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:40:14
  For lots of different reasons.
• 1:40:15
  So many reasons.
• 1:40:18
  Caite: Yeah.
• 1:40:18
  Yeah.
• 1:40:19
  Emily: Oh, thanks.
• 1:40:20
  I feel better.
• 1:40:21
  Yeah.
• 1:40:22
  Fair.
• 1:40:23
  We let,
• 1:40:23
  Caite: I think we completed some stress response cycles.
• 1:40:26
  We had some connection.
• 1:40:28
  So thank you so much, Emily, for joining us today and sharing with us
• 1:40:32
  and being Katie's therapist and talking to you about so many important topics.
• 1:40:37
  So if people want to follow you online, buy your books, any of
• 1:40:40
  those types of things, where
• 1:40:41
  Emily: should they find you?
• 1:40:42
  Uh, Emily Do gosky.com has everything, including the eight episode podcast that
• 1:40:47
  I made with Pushkin and Madison Wells.
• 1:40:49
  Uh, the books are available wherever books are sold.
• 1:40:51
  There's also the Burnout Workbook, which was just published in January,
• 1:40:55
  and if you're like, I don't need the science, I don't need to understand
• 1:40:58
  why, just tell me what to do.
• 1:41:01
  The Burnout workbook.
• 1:41:02
  Workbook is a, that's the one for you.
• 1:41:05
  There you go.
• 1:41:06
  I didn't even know
• 1:41:06
  Caite: that was just skip the peer of you.
• 1:41:07
  Just, just, just tell me how to fix it.
• 1:41:10
  Yeah, just follow these instructions.
• 1:41:13
  Thank you so much.
• 1:41:14
  We really appreciate it.
• 1:41:15
  Emily: My pleasure.
• 1:41:15
  Thank you so much for having me.
• 1:41:17
  Thank you.
• 1:41:17
  Caite: Thank you for joining us on Barnyard Language.
• 1:41:19
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• 1:41:24
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• 1:41:33
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