Speaker 1: I remember as a dad having moments like that, like
Speaker 1: with my son or all of them have experienced my
Speaker 1: adverse reaction in those moments.
Speaker 2: Has the car left the garage for.
Speaker 1: Me in terms of reparenting children or being there later
Speaker 1: in their life.
Speaker 3: Hello, and welcome to separate bathrooms.
Speaker 4: We would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the
Speaker 4: or nation of which we're recording this podcast on, and
Speaker 4: the traditional custodians of this land, and pay our respects
Speaker 4: to the elders, both past and present.
Speaker 2: I'm Ali Daddo.
Speaker 1: I'm Cameron Daddo. Just sorting through my notes here.
Speaker 3: We've got lots of notes today. We've got a great
Speaker 3: person we're about to talk.
Speaker 2: We do.
Speaker 1: Doctor Tina Sherma Sellers is with us today. She's a
Speaker 1: licensed marriage and Family therapist to certified sex Therapists and
Speaker 1: certified Sex Therapy Supervisor.
Speaker 4: Doctor Tina has taught as a professor for at least
Speaker 4: thirty years in marriage and family therapy and sexuality. Now
Speaker 4: today you can find her at the Northwest Institute on Intimacy.
Speaker 4: Who knew that there was an Institute on Intimacy which
Speaker 4: she actually founded and it's dedicated to empowering therapists to
Speaker 4: provide excellent levels of care to their clients around topics
Speaker 4: of sexuality and intimacy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doctor Tina has a new best seller out. It's
Speaker 1: called Shameless Parenting. Everything you need to raise shame free,
Speaker 1: confident kids and heal your shame too. I get the
Speaker 1: feeling that we're going to be talking a lot about
Speaker 1: sex and shame today.
Speaker 4: Let's dive in. Please welcome doctor Tina Shermat Sellers to
Speaker 4: the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Hi, doctor Tana, welcome, Welcome to Australia.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. I'm so glad to be here
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 2: Guys. Where are you coming from?
Speaker 3: My voice and body are currently in Sandy, Oregon, in
Speaker 3: the United States, in the Pacific Northwest, where we get
Speaker 3: lots of rain and we have lots of green and
Speaker 3: healthy vegetation flora and fauna to speak for our rain
Speaker 3: and soil. So it's a rich place of a lot
Speaker 3: of love. But you got to be a hearty soul
Speaker 3: to live here.
Speaker 2: Oh you do?
Speaker 3: Why is that? Well, just because the weather is. You know,
Speaker 3: if you're somebody that's gonna melt under rain, you'll melt here.
Speaker 2: You don't want to be the green Witch and the
Speaker 2: Wizard of Oz.
Speaker 3: No, you want to be the wicked Witch of the
Speaker 3: West for sure. So so some people, you know, find
Speaker 3: ways to just you know, buckle down during the winter,
Speaker 3: get things done, and then as soon as this sun
Speaker 3: comes out, they're like, okay, I'm working twenty five percent, yeah,
Speaker 3: and I am going to be outside getting dirty and
Speaker 3: having fun. You know. That's the way lots of people
Speaker 3: are around here.
Speaker 4: We've spent some time recently in Scotland and Ireland, and
Speaker 4: I personally love colder weather and rain, so I know
Speaker 4: I would love Oregon. But they say over there, they
Speaker 4: say there's no such thing as bad weather.
Speaker 3: It's just not having the right clothes.
Speaker 2: So I think we can.
Speaker 3: Apply that to Oregon.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: I was teaching my granddaughters the concept of liquid sunshine,
Speaker 3: and we worked out of a play about a month ago,
Speaker 3: and I said, see this, this is we call this liquid.
Speaker 3: I love that. I love that. That's awesome.
Speaker 2: We're here to talk about what you do.
Speaker 1: We read in our intro that you're a licensed marriage
Speaker 1: and family therapist a certified sex therapist, so we want.
Speaker 2: To talk about that sort of stuff today.
Speaker 3: Great.
Speaker 2: Firstly, though, how did you come to be in this profession.
Speaker 3: Well, that the profession kind of chose me and life
Speaker 3: kept pointing me in particular directions. So I started out
Speaker 3: a junior high and high school teacher, and adolescens just
Speaker 3: warm my heart. And they don't everybody's heart, but I
Speaker 3: just find them very wise and right in this sweet
Speaker 3: spot of still having some of that innocence and diversity
Speaker 3: of thinking, while at the same time beginning to ask questions,
Speaker 3: and I think often they're important questions for us to
Speaker 3: be asking, and so I really like to hang out
Speaker 3: with them. It was in hanging out with and teaching
Speaker 3: adolescents for a couple of years out of college, I
Speaker 3: noticed that whatever was going on at home that was
Speaker 3: concerning to them would affect their learning. It was like
Speaker 3: a white noise machine was getting turned on and it
Speaker 3: got in the way. What I decided at that point,
Speaker 3: I was in my late twenties at the time, like
Speaker 3: I was going to go back to graduate school and
Speaker 3: study family therapy so that I had the opportunity to
Speaker 3: intervene at that life level of what what's going on
Speaker 3: here that's making it stressful and difficult, and because your
Speaker 3: kiddo's absorbing it, basically so did that got involved in
Speaker 3: being I became my licensed marriage and family therapist. I
Speaker 3: got hired to teach in the graduate program that I
Speaker 3: had just finished graduating from. But the thing I was
Speaker 3: doing also was I was asked to teach the graduate
Speaker 3: level human sexuality course for therapist in our program because
Speaker 3: it was a required course for licensure. I didn't realize
Speaker 3: at this moment in my history that I was excited
Speaker 3: to do these things because I had grown up in
Speaker 3: a very odd family. I thought my family was perfectly normal. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I had grown up in a Swedish immigrant home
Speaker 3: and per all of our you know, bones in the closet,
Speaker 3: if you will, the one thing that had really going
Speaker 3: for it was Jenner like epigenetics of sex and body positivity.
Speaker 3: And so I talked to my grandparents, my great aunts
Speaker 3: and uncles, my parents about whatever, and they talked freely
Speaker 3: about things in front of me, and if I didn't
Speaker 3: understand or they wanted to explain it, they put it
Speaker 3: in my language so I would understand. And I thought
Speaker 3: every family was like this, And so when I thought
Speaker 3: about teaching, I'm like, oh, sure, that just sounds really fun.
Speaker 3: We had a secret question box anybody could ask any
Speaker 3: question and we would sit and figure it out, and
Speaker 3: if we didn't know, we would go look for the
Speaker 3: answer for them, or you know whatever. So I jemped
Speaker 3: at this to start teaching this class in the graduate
Speaker 3: Marriage of Family Therapy program. And this was in the
Speaker 3: early nineties, and one of the assignments I had my
Speaker 3: students do was write their sexual autobiography. Now, most people
Speaker 3: when they think about committing that to paper freak out right.
Speaker 3: But I would say to them, you're only ever as
Speaker 3: good a therapist as you know what your stories are,
Speaker 3: where you begin and end and your clients begin and end.
Speaker 3: Otherwise you're going to get them confused. So I started
Speaker 3: teaching this in ninety two. Around the year two thousand,
Speaker 3: the tone of these papers began to really shift. They
Speaker 3: started describing themselves as perverted, feeling disgusted about themselves, feeling
Speaker 3: really embarrassed about what they were writing down. And yet
Speaker 3: the stories in essence were falling in that same sort
Speaker 3: of range of common So I couldn't figure out why
Speaker 3: the tone was changing so much, And so literally I
Speaker 3: would read these and be crying because I would be
Speaker 3: so sad for these, you know, late twenty year olds
Speaker 3: early thirty year olds about how much they hated themselves
Speaker 3: or how badly they felt, or what they didn't do.
Speaker 3: And I was just like, this is a beautiful part
Speaker 3: of you. I don't understand. And so I just started
Speaker 3: doing some digging, and I realized I was hitting the
Speaker 3: first wave of students that had been raised in abstinence
Speaker 3: only education, which started sweeping the United States in the eighties.
Speaker 3: It peaked around the early nineties, So these kiddos would
Speaker 3: have been fifteen around that time, right, they're now twenty
Speaker 3: five or so, twenty five to thirty somewhere in there.
Speaker 3: And there were two things that began happening. We withdrew
Speaker 3: money for all research that was going on around sexuality
Speaker 3: in the United States. We started selling this idea that
Speaker 3: sex was dangerous and was going to kill you. Now,
Speaker 3: mind you, nineteen eighty aids hit the East coast, eighty
Speaker 3: five it hit the West coast. We also had an
Speaker 3: economic downturn around that time, and we had a reaction
Speaker 3: to second wave feminism. So you have a scared public,
Speaker 3: and that is the perfect bait for people in power
Speaker 3: who are trying to push their agenda to create an
Speaker 3: agenda on the surface that supports their underground agenda that's
Speaker 3: all about we're going to take care of you. So
Speaker 3: that was the beginning of family values in the United States, right,
Speaker 3: And so it took me a bit to discover all
Speaker 3: of this. And as I did, and I was looking
Speaker 3: at you know, I was hearing stories for the kids
Speaker 3: that were not just in public schools but maybe also
Speaker 3: were involved in youth groups telling me stories about, you know,
Speaker 3: sitting around while a pastor was talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: the dangers of sex and how you'll ruin your future,
Speaker 3: and they were asking them to glue contrasting pieces to
Speaker 3: paper together and at the end of the hour asking
Speaker 3: them to take them apart, or passing around a flower
Speaker 3: and asking them to take the pedals off, or passing
Speaker 3: around a piece of foil and asking them to crumble
Speaker 3: it up and then open it up, and basically saying,
Speaker 3: this is what will be a value of you if
Speaker 3: you give away yourself emotionally, physically, spiritually, whatever that means, right,
Speaker 3: And so what I was seeing was sexual dysfunction issues
Speaker 3: I had not ever seen before in kids in their
Speaker 3: twenties at all. And this just hyper fear around the
Speaker 3: dangers of their bodies and sexuality, and there's some really
Speaker 3: interesting messages that were getting supported different for those that
Speaker 3: were sis hat male right than those that were sis
Speaker 3: hat female. They were getting, you know, the sort of
Speaker 3: dominant messages were really different, like men were not to
Speaker 3: be trusted, they could not control themselves. If they did
Speaker 3: something they shouldn't, it was gonna be her fault, you know,
Speaker 3: like And so then I just started speaking about it,
Speaker 3: writing about it, keeping actual research notes and realized as
Speaker 3: I wrote, I think two thousand and six, I was
Speaker 3: asked to write my first article that was covering a
Speaker 3: more broad market, and I said, all I'm going to
Speaker 3: do is I'm going to write what I have been seeing.
Speaker 3: I'm not coming from any expert place, but this is
Speaker 3: what i'm seeing, and I'm seeing it a lot. The
Speaker 3: article was called Christian's Caught between the Sheets, how an
Speaker 3: abstinence only ideology hurts us? And I started hearing from
Speaker 3: people literally around the globe, and I realized, Okay, I'm
Speaker 3: tapping into something that is prevalent and we're just not
Speaker 3: talking about it yet. And that was the beginning, and
Speaker 3: so then I started. It took me eleven years to
Speaker 3: write the first book trying to just shape what was
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 1: You've done an extraordinary job in the last five minutes
Speaker 1: of just detailing.
Speaker 2: Wah, I mean incredible, the whole.
Speaker 1: The economic side of things, the political side of things,
Speaker 1: the where the church fits in, the education, and how
Speaker 1: when you prey on fear. And you said something really interesting.
Speaker 1: In our time in the state, we always joked about
Speaker 1: when we watched the evening news, how it was all
Speaker 1: about how they were going.
Speaker 2: To save us.
Speaker 1: So even if it was a sprinkle on the four
Speaker 1: h five freeway, a sprinkle of rain, it was we'll
Speaker 1: show you how to survive the torrential dump care, you know, And.
Speaker 2: It was this whole thing. It was like, are you kidding,
Speaker 2: It's just sprinkling on the freeway. What's going on?
Speaker 1: Wow, I've never heard it actually put that's liked that
Speaker 1: to have to listen to it because clearly your ob
Speaker 1: ten years putting it all together, you've done a really
Speaker 1: wonderful job.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So thank you.
Speaker 3: Thanks well. And we're seeing it continue, right, because it's
Speaker 3: like people they're praying on the amygdala, right. It's interesting.
Speaker 3: I was at the grocery store today and I picked
Speaker 3: up a new National geographic you know, that had just
Speaker 3: come out and it's all on the brain and one
Speaker 3: of the articles is hurt brains, hurt people.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sums up so much of what's happening in
Speaker 3: our culture. We have just so much trauma. Yeah, some
Speaker 3: of those people are privileged, privileged white men, privileged white
Speaker 3: women in particular, and we can see the pain that
Speaker 3: they cause because they have power, right and they are
Speaker 3: they were traumatized, children, traumatized, not given enough right and
Speaker 3: they're still trying to make up for Tell me I'm important,
Speaker 3: you know. So ethics out the door, morals out the door,
Speaker 3: you know. And I thought, okay, I'm getting that because
Speaker 3: I want to read how they decided to talk about this,
Speaker 3: because it is true. You can take somebody. And then
Speaker 3: we've got all these people that listen to fear based
Speaker 3: stuff and they believe that it's true. And like, you know,
Speaker 3: you have to understand that this is about how many
Speaker 3: viewers can they get so they make more money for
Speaker 3: their stockholders. Doesn't have to do with giving you the
Speaker 3: news anymore.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're facing an epidemic at the moment, or what
Speaker 4: they're calling an epidemic of women dying at the hands.
Speaker 3: Of their intimate partner.
Speaker 4: But the domestic violence has gone through the roof, particularly
Speaker 4: since they say, since COVID, you know, we have a
Speaker 4: big footy game on and the rates of domestic violence
Speaker 4: goes up like some crazy amount. And Australia is really
Speaker 4: looking at the changes to be made. And as you've said,
Speaker 4: you know, women just crying out there hasn't been enough
Speaker 4: done already and what changes are you really going to
Speaker 4: make because it's so systematic, and it really, I think
Speaker 4: to your point, it goes back way beyond what the
Speaker 4: problem is today. It goes You've got to take it
Speaker 4: way back to how were these men raised, what were
Speaker 4: they taking in, what was their visual stimulation? And you know,
Speaker 4: and I think that's to me, that's where we need
Speaker 4: to be teaching our young boys.
Speaker 3: What is happening and what's going on for you? Oh?
Speaker 3: Absolutely yeah. There's a two documentaries actually done by the
Speaker 3: Representation Project and one was done called Misrepresentation on Women
Speaker 3: the Effective Media on Women, and you know, I would
Speaker 3: say American media except for that America has this wide
Speaker 3: influence on so many other countries, right, And then about
Speaker 3: five years later they came out with one called the
Speaker 3: Mask You Live in on media's effect on boys, sort
Speaker 3: of the boy club that will get started right as
Speaker 3: boys get into their teens and they're trying to belong
Speaker 3: they're belonging in a way in which they're joining around
Speaker 3: violence against women. Women are objects for our pleasure, however
Speaker 3: we wish to get it, and we aren't responsible. We
Speaker 3: can't help ourselves, right, And this is supportive. That thinking
Speaker 3: is supported by quote unquote evangelical Christianity in the United
Speaker 3: States as well and many of our political leaders, because
Speaker 3: the church and the state crawled into bed together with
Speaker 3: Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty And that may be like
Speaker 3: a lot of people go, oh my gosh, how can
Speaker 3: you say that? Do you know that no president prior
Speaker 3: to Ronald Reagan had ever used God language in the
Speaker 3: United States, never said not bless America. Never And this
Speaker 3: has been studied with that, We have books on this
Speaker 3: where political speeches by presidents have been studied, and not
Speaker 3: any until then. That was a ploy. It was the
Speaker 3: beginning of how he was a puppet for the religious
Speaker 3: rite and the moral majority at that time to pursue
Speaker 3: and punctuate the capitalistic agenda in the United States.
Speaker 1: Hey, we are a relationship podcast and we're talking a lot.
Speaker 2: We're big broad subjects, so well, yeah.
Speaker 1: One thing that we do want to speak about today
Speaker 1: is you mentioned the word or the phrase sexual shame
Speaker 1: that's underpinning a lot of what you've been talking about
Speaker 1: over the last few minutes. Can you talk to us
Speaker 1: about sexual shame? What is it? And I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a big question. How are we taught to be
Speaker 1: ashamed of sex? That's how most of us got here.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I love both those questions, and there are a
Speaker 3: few things that I love talking about more than both
Speaker 3: of those questions. It's so widespread, and the people who
Speaker 3: have been working hard to heal their heart and mind
Speaker 3: and body and life from sexual shame really don't want
Speaker 3: to pass that on and don't know how to do
Speaker 3: it different. So what I'd love to do is share
Speaker 3: with you the researched operational definition of sexual shame. We
Speaker 3: didn't have one until twenty seventeen. Oh my gosh, Spring
Speaker 3: of twenty seventeen, and someone who had been following my
Speaker 3: work and wanted to study religious sexual shame realized when
Speaker 3: she got into the literature that there was no operational
Speaker 3: definition of sexual shame yet, And I said, you're going
Speaker 3: to have to start there and people will build upon it.
Speaker 3: So it's a real definition that came out of her
Speaker 3: interviews was so stunning to me. I can remember I
Speaker 3: was returning home from a speaking engagement. I was on
Speaker 3: a plane and I'm sitting and reading her dissertation and
Speaker 3: I've just like had to hold myself together because it
Speaker 3: was like, there in black and white was everything I
Speaker 3: had been seeing that I had never put in such
Speaker 3: a sect way. Sexual shame is a visceral feeling, so
Speaker 3: in your body, visceral feeling of humiliation and disgust toward
Speaker 3: one's own body and identity as a sexual being, and
Speaker 3: a belief that you are abnormal, inferior, and unworthy. And
Speaker 3: that's what I was seeing. This feeling can be internalized,
Speaker 3: so it often is internalized, but also manifests in interpersonal relationships,
Speaker 3: having a negative impact on trust, communication, and physical and
Speaker 3: emotional intimacy. So I often say, I don't know how
Speaker 3: you hurt someone more than hurting them there, because now
Speaker 3: you've affected their ability to give and receive love. I
Speaker 3: worked in oncology for a decade, and I can tell
Speaker 3: you what people care about when they think they're going
Speaker 3: to die. They care about the quality of their relationships,
Speaker 3: nothing else, right. Sexual shame develops across the lifespan in
Speaker 3: interactions with interpersonal relationships. That's where it starts. Okay, a
Speaker 3: child finds their vulva or their penis and they're eleven
Speaker 3: months old, pre verbal, right, But they now can control
Speaker 3: their hand and they're with somebody where that freaks them out. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and that person that loved one gets angry, slaps their
Speaker 3: hand away, raises their voice, gets a scowl on their face,
Speaker 3: something that scares this little one. But their brain development
Speaker 3: isn't such that the child stops. They will do it
Speaker 3: over and over and over and over again until they're
Speaker 3: about five and they get in trouble for playing doctor,
Speaker 3: which is developmentally on task. Right. Then they'll remember that story.
Speaker 3: They'll often say that was their first story, and I'm
Speaker 3: always like, that wasn't your first? That was your one
Speaker 3: thousand and ones? Probably time, you just don't remember the
Speaker 3: ones before. So we have to remember this is preverbal.
Speaker 3: It goes like this, right, So, life span and interactions
Speaker 3: with interpersonal relationships, then one's culture and society. In America,
Speaker 3: we drive our economy on helping you feel badly about yourself, right,
Speaker 3: because that's how you'll spend money. Yes, right, do you
Speaker 3: feel bad enough about it?
Speaker 2: Asia?
Speaker 3: You need whatever?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Right.
Speaker 3: We drive our and that's not changing, drive our economy
Speaker 3: that way, right. Once culture and society layers on top
Speaker 3: of that, and then it creates a subsequent critical self appraisal.
Speaker 3: In other words, the inner critic gets going. By the
Speaker 3: time you're adult, that's who's on you all the time.
Speaker 3: So then it goes on to say there is also
Speaker 3: a fear and uncertainty related to one's power or right
Speaker 3: to make decisions, including safety decisions related to sexual encounters,
Speaker 3: along with an internalized judgment toward one's own sexual desire.
Speaker 3: So Peggy Ornstein, who's a New York Times reporter and
Speaker 3: writer and brilliant, wrote a book called Girls and Sex.
Speaker 3: About five years later, she wrote a book called Boys
Speaker 3: and Sex. And similar to those documentaries, they really talked.
Speaker 3: She interviewed a ton of kids, like eighty girls fifteen
Speaker 3: to twenty two, I think one hundred and five boys
Speaker 3: fifteen to twenty two. But basically you saw the same
Speaker 3: stuff that was showing up in those documentaries showing up
Speaker 3: in her writing. And one of the things that came
Speaker 3: out when she was in the Girl's Book was she
Speaker 3: said she was talking to these girls who seemed confident
Speaker 3: and confident in every area of their life until they
Speaker 3: got ready to go out, and then they were putting
Speaker 3: down three, four and five shots of hard liquor because
Speaker 3: they didn't know if they had the right to keep
Speaker 3: themselves safe or if they could keep themselves safe. So
Speaker 3: this is doctor Noel Clark's work. So as in her work,
Speaker 3: as in Peggy Ornstein's work, the bulk of the people
Speaker 3: they interviewed were not did not describe self describe themselves
Speaker 3: as coming from religious background. So this is the effect
Speaker 3: of a country that has had abstinence education, which we
Speaker 3: now know is religious and eighty percent medically inaccurate. Right,
Speaker 3: it was religious education that went out or cost everyone
Speaker 3: while we were increasing violence against women and holding men
Speaker 3: less accountable. So these things were happening if those people
Speaker 3: who were involved with the church just got a whole
Speaker 3: nother layer on top of it, if that makes sense.
Speaker 3: So sexual shame affects you at where you do bonding,
Speaker 3: an attachment, the place where our happiness comes from. So
Speaker 3: this is why I get so passionate because I'm like,
Speaker 3: we are affecting people's ability to live, truly live. They're
Speaker 3: one miraculous, beautiful, incredible life and they're going to figure
Speaker 3: it out the last ten years of their life, and
Speaker 3: the regret will be so great because they could have
Speaker 3: loved so much more, but they didn't know how to
Speaker 3: read the signs in the culture of what the culture
Speaker 3: was doing to manipulate them for their for its own benefit.
Speaker 4: And I would imagine that it's not even a lot
Speaker 4: of people aren't even aware that they're in sexual shame anyway,
Speaker 4: because it's it's where so she feels like the same
Speaker 4: as me, where you know, he feels like the same
Speaker 4: as him. So we're old just in it together in
Speaker 4: so many ways without actually realizing we've disconnected from a
Speaker 4: huge part of ourselves.
Speaker 3: Right exactly. I mean, it really involves a lot of
Speaker 3: deep conversation, Yeah, where do I feel okay to just
Speaker 3: be me? Like, how do I feel about my body? Right?
Speaker 3: I talk about in the book Sex God in the
Speaker 3: Conservative Church, erasing shame from sexual intimacy. I talk about
Speaker 3: there are ways that you can heal sexual shame. It
Speaker 3: doesn't happen overnight. It took a long time to develop, right,
Speaker 3: but I developed a model called Healing the Mess, the
Speaker 3: Model for Erasing Sexual shame mass. And it's four things.
Speaker 3: It's frame, name, claim, and aim. And frame is start
Speaker 3: by getting yourself a scaffolding or a framework of sex
Speaker 3: education so that you can start to say, oh, that
Speaker 3: was BS that I learned. Oh wow, I didn't know that.
Speaker 3: I thought this, I learned this from porn or whatever,
Speaker 3: and I thought that I didn't know that. You know, like,
Speaker 3: get yourself that education right that we've failed to give you.
Speaker 3: And then second name, tell your story to someone who
Speaker 3: can be loving and compassionate and empathic. If that's a therapist,
Speaker 3: if that's a good friend, whatever, tell your story, because
Speaker 3: you're going to find out you're not alone. I ask
Speaker 3: people all the time, and when I'm speaking or whatever,
Speaker 3: like how many people here grew up in homes that
Speaker 3: they felt free to talk about anything that they were
Speaker 3: given the education? Hands rarely go up. So I'm like,
Speaker 3: ninety ninety to ninety five percent of people in the
Speaker 3: US grew up in homes that are silent or silent
Speaker 3: and shaming. Right then I'm like, okay, So after that
Speaker 3: claim is claim your body is good, you know, no
Speaker 3: matter how it is. If it's a good body, if
Speaker 3: you get up in the morning and you are not
Speaker 3: in horrible pain, if it's a good body, then you
Speaker 3: get to often say your body is the pen that
Speaker 3: you write the poetry of your life. Without our bodies,
Speaker 3: we can't hug, we can't talk, we can't do this
Speaker 3: that we're doing right now, Like we can't share ourselves
Speaker 3: with the world and take in the world. You know,
Speaker 3: so our bodies no matter what, and you know, we
Speaker 3: drive our economy on something that you can't most people
Speaker 3: can't be anyway. And I was like, no matter how
Speaker 3: you are, your heredity is determining how your body is
Speaker 3: right now more than anything else. I'm a Swede. I
Speaker 3: look like my relatives. I go to Sweden, I look
Speaker 3: like everybody that's around. And I'm like, okay, you know,
Speaker 3: this is really the way it is. Learn to see
Speaker 3: this as good, you know, learn to see it as good.
Speaker 3: And then when you're doing those things over and over again,
Speaker 3: because it is something that you're working, really it's a
Speaker 3: practice that you're working. What you'll do is you'll begin
Speaker 3: to aim for a whole new sexual health legacy for yourself,
Speaker 3: and then anybody that you get close to and you're
Speaker 3: talking to, you're like, wait, I'm starting to question this.
Speaker 3: Oh how was this? You know, you just start to
Speaker 3: rewrite it, and that's really you know. The second book
Speaker 3: I wrote, Shameless Parenting, came about because I had people
Speaker 3: saying to me, I don't want to do to my
Speaker 3: kids what was done to me. Help me know what
Speaker 3: to do? And I was like, I got to you.
Speaker 3: I've been teaching this to doctors and stuff forever. I
Speaker 3: will write you a book. It'll be birth to two,
Speaker 3: two to four, four, six, up to eighteen. It's gonna say,
Speaker 3: here are the natural behavioral curiosities that kids have, emotional
Speaker 3: things that are going on on the inside that's developing.
Speaker 3: We're gonna then shape as to helping you understand what
Speaker 3: is typical for that age. All you have to do
Speaker 3: is be two years ahead of your kid. You don't
Speaker 3: have to have it all figured out. Know that anytime
Speaker 3: you have a reaction on your inside that's like I
Speaker 3: don't know, just know that that was because someone shamed
Speaker 3: you when you were that age. That's just your normal
Speaker 3: body response. So put your I always say, put your
Speaker 3: hand on your heart and tell yourself you're good. You
Speaker 3: are good, and you are fine. And whoever this little
Speaker 3: person is in front of you, take a deep breath,
Speaker 3: and even if it doesn't match your insides, put on
Speaker 3: a happy face. Just be curious, Just be like, huh, oh,
Speaker 3: can you tell me more? Oh? You know, I mean,
Speaker 3: just anything to just pass the first sixty seconds, one
Speaker 3: hundred and twenty seconds. Let your heart calm down. You're good,
Speaker 3: They're good, Yeah, they just they need something different than
Speaker 3: somebody jumping down their throat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: We've got three grown kids. Our oldest is twenty eight,
Speaker 1: our youngest is eighteen. As you're talking about moments like that,
Speaker 1: I remember as a dad having moments like that, like
Speaker 1: with my son or you know, all of them have
Speaker 1: experienced my adverse reaction in those moments where I haven't
Speaker 1: known to put my hand in my heart and say
Speaker 1: you're okay. Also reflect that Jesus that happened to me
Speaker 1: when I was eight years old. Yeah, and so it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful ways. Has the car left the garage for
Speaker 1: me in terms of parenting children or being their lighter
Speaker 1: you know, in their life.
Speaker 3: That's a sweet question. You I'm sure have both already
Speaker 3: noticed that your relationship with adult children are becoming adult
Speaker 3: children is not the same as when they're little. Yeah, correct, right,
Speaker 3: You navigate it different. You listen more and you ask
Speaker 3: more questions because you're inviting them to wrestle rather than
Speaker 3: telling them what to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And so what I'll often say to people is be transparent,
Speaker 3: Like go to the library and get some of the
Speaker 3: kid books you know or like, and be like, I
Speaker 3: wish I had this when you were little. I wish
Speaker 3: so much I had this when you were little, because
Speaker 3: this is what I'm learning now, and it feels more
Speaker 3: affirming of who you are as a person and your
Speaker 3: own development. And I just didn't know it then, and
Speaker 3: I was going off my reactions of how I was
Speaker 3: parented and I didn't know. But if I had to
Speaker 3: do it over, this is what I did. We'd read
Speaker 3: this book together, or we would you know, do this thing?
Speaker 3: And I say, do it? You know, like, just what
Speaker 3: do you think? How do you think it would have
Speaker 3: been different for you if we could have read this
Speaker 3: when you were four or six or eight or ten?
Speaker 3: You know, how do you think things would have been different?
Speaker 3: And just be brave enough to hear what they're going
Speaker 3: to say, because these conversations will help them have different
Speaker 3: conversations in the future. That's right with any child that
Speaker 3: might be in their life, and that's valuable.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have bookend daughters. So at twenty eight and
Speaker 4: an eighteen year old, and by no means am I
Speaker 4: an expert or in any way, shape or form, healed
Speaker 4: all of my sexual shame. But I've read just enough.
Speaker 4: I've read Emily Nagosky's book Who I Just Love, Come
Speaker 4: as you Are, and sort of heard more and read
Speaker 4: understood a little bit more about my own sexuality and
Speaker 4: what I did and didn't understand. And the difference between
Speaker 4: how we parented the eldest to the youngest is I
Speaker 4: always for me, it's really interesting. Our youngest is so
Speaker 4: it has so much less of the shame and the
Speaker 4: freedom the ability to love her body and because she
Speaker 4: is that way, and we just love that she's been
Speaker 4: encouraged more and more because we've just looked at her and.
Speaker 3: Gone, this is amazing.
Speaker 4: Wow, you know, and it breaks my heart that we
Speaker 4: didn't have that knowledge for our other two. But as
Speaker 4: you say, you know what you're talking about, it's not
Speaker 4: too late. There's conversations still to be had, which I
Speaker 4: love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and there's beauty and redemption. There's so much good
Speaker 3: in having the conversations later. It's like, I think I
Speaker 3: was always trying to do the best I could with
Speaker 3: what I have, and now as I learned these different things,
Speaker 3: I wish that I had them. You're just open about it,
Speaker 3: and what you're modeling for them is that you are
Speaker 3: an evolving human. They are going to be an evolving
Speaker 3: human and you can have transparent conversations with the people
Speaker 3: you love. Yeah, and that that can continue. And I
Speaker 3: think that's brilliant modeling for them. You know, it says
Speaker 3: you're I'm not expecting me to have it all together
Speaker 3: at any particular point, and I'm not expecting you to
Speaker 3: either whatever that means. Or people will use the word like, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not perfect, and I'm like, yeah, you wouldn't be
Speaker 3: able to be human if you were perfect, because humans
Speaker 3: can't be perfect.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: You know, we are in we're in evolution.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: We were having a discussion the other day Cam and
Speaker 4: I about monogamy, and this one person in the relationship
Speaker 4: was saying that they don't believe that humans are monogamous
Speaker 4: that you know, swans are, penguins are, but humans are
Speaker 4: not monogamous.
Speaker 3: And the other.
Speaker 4: Person in the relationship completely believes in monogamy. How would
Speaker 4: you what's your feeling about that is, Eric, do you
Speaker 4: feel like it's a relationship that's bound to explode or
Speaker 4: how do those two people get on the same page.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question. I don't think anybody can
Speaker 3: say humans are xyz. You know, there's too much variability
Speaker 3: and diversity in the human creature. And I think that's
Speaker 3: how we're supposed to be, that's how the world is.
Speaker 3: But there are people who believe that they are polyamorous,
Speaker 3: that they have the heart to love many people and
Speaker 3: really want that experience of loving many people. Whether that's
Speaker 3: some of those relationships are sexual or some of them
Speaker 3: are not, it doesn't really matter, but that they that's
Speaker 3: how they want to live their life. There are other people,
Speaker 3: and I'm going to make this really bifurcated, although I
Speaker 3: think people can change over you know, the course of
Speaker 3: a life. Who are like you know, it takes a
Speaker 3: lot to do polyamorous relationships. Well, a lot of communication,
Speaker 3: a lot of being upfront, a lot of staying on
Speaker 3: top of things. I really don't have the desire or
Speaker 3: energy to do more than one person. It just feels
Speaker 3: too hard to me. I think I like, for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: I like doing just one person at a time or whatever.
Speaker 3: That's what they like do. Okay, that's fine. But when
Speaker 3: you've got two people that agreed on monogamy, now they're
Speaker 3: in a monogamous relationship, and one is saying, you know,
Speaker 3: I think I'm learning I'm not monogamous, the other person
Speaker 3: has to decide, am I okay with being I want
Speaker 3: to just be with that one person, but I'm okay
Speaker 3: with them being with other people? And if they can't
Speaker 3: be okay in a real true sense, then they might
Speaker 3: be better off to find somebody who can match them
Speaker 3: a little bit more.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: It's kind of just looking at what are the gains
Speaker 3: and loss is going to be? Do you imagine for
Speaker 3: you over the next year? What about five years? Hard
Speaker 3: to know ten years, But what do you think can
Speaker 3: you stretch to match that and be truly okay with that?
Speaker 3: Or does that feel like that would be breaking you know,
Speaker 3: your or internal compass somehow to do that? I mean,
Speaker 3: we have and for both, you know, for both of
Speaker 3: them are saying, I have an internal compass that's pulling
Speaker 3: me here.
Speaker 2: It really does stype true to that. Be true to yourself,
Speaker 2: isn't it?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Follow, you got be true to yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And I'm often just encouraging people. What is growth.
Speaker 3: Let's let's assume that you want to keep growing your
Speaker 3: whole life, like you want to keep evolving. What does
Speaker 3: growth right now look to you? What does that look
Speaker 3: like to you? And does that include being able to
Speaker 3: stretch in this way or does it feel like that
Speaker 3: can't be part of it or you know it would
Speaker 3: be somehow an affront to your soul. Let's try to
Speaker 3: just look at individually, look at yourselves, because ultimately you're
Speaker 3: going to be responsible for crafting the life that works
Speaker 3: for you, is right for you. And I'm often I'm
Speaker 3: often saying to people, and I want to invite you
Speaker 3: into the idea that your most attached relationships, whether they're
Speaker 3: love relationships, family of origin relationships, children, your most attached
Speaker 3: relationships are going to push you to grow. They're meant
Speaker 3: to hold a mirror up to you and say, girlfriend,
Speaker 3: you are stubborn. You are a stubborn sweet you know
Speaker 3: no I'm not. Actually I am, and I need to
Speaker 3: look at that right like, that's what we do. That's
Speaker 3: what happens in love, in love relationships, whether again, no
Speaker 3: matter how that attachment is, they in time are going
Speaker 3: to invite you to grow. So I'm when I say
Speaker 3: those things crafting the life that's right for you. I'm
Speaker 3: not thinking it's an easy life. I'm believing that it's
Speaker 3: a life worth living. It's crafting your evolution and development
Speaker 3: so that when you go to your grave, you've been
Speaker 3: doing good work in the world and in you and
Speaker 3: in your relationships as well.
Speaker 1: Beautiful, a lot of our listeners are our age and
Speaker 1: have been in long term relationships. We get a lot
Speaker 1: of emails about this. Ali and I have been married
Speaker 1: for over thirty years. Can you give us your thoughts
Speaker 1: on how to foster intimacy and keep this growth going?
Speaker 1: As you say, how do you foster intimacy and sexual
Speaker 1: health over through the long term?
Speaker 3: Well, first off, I think that you have to be
Speaker 3: doing your own work and you've got to be willing
Speaker 3: to keep looking at how are you fostering safety, intimacy,
Speaker 3: love in your relationship. So if you find yourself in
Speaker 3: places where you just want to be defensive. It's a
Speaker 3: matter of getting underneath it and trying to get at
Speaker 3: what is creating safety here look like for you and
Speaker 3: for me and for us, so that you are free
Speaker 3: to speak and be truthfully yourself and I am too.
Speaker 3: In the book, I think the seventh chapter of the
Speaker 3: Sex God and Conservative Church Book, I talk about the
Speaker 3: anatomy of intimacy and that anatomy has grown on seven
Speaker 3: different domains. And when we want to grow intimacy over time,
Speaker 3: we have to look at those different domains and ask,
Speaker 3: how are we cultivating it in ourselves and with our
Speaker 3: partnership so that I'm free to move when we are sexual,
Speaker 3: my soul and my body feel open. Can't I feel
Speaker 3: safe enough and trusting enough. We've been cultivating sort of
Speaker 3: goodness and sensuality and stuff enough like desire, and so
Speaker 3: that I can now see and be reminded of the
Speaker 3: beauty in you, the beauty that I get to see
Speaker 3: because I know you, I know these crevices, I know you,
Speaker 3: And so there's a beauty that's deeper, an esthetic beauty
Speaker 3: that's deeper than the beauty that we sell, right, and
Speaker 3: that that opens up space for ecstatic experiences to occur
Speaker 3: where I just feel like the ineffable just happened, Like
Speaker 3: I don't have words for this. This just felt bigger,
Speaker 3: and I'm just grateful that it's you, that you're my person,
Speaker 3: right and so we move along those continuums, but it
Speaker 3: is predicated on us doing our own work, our emotional work.
Speaker 4: You are Jim in Australia. How do we get more?
Speaker 4: I mean we can get your book is there? You've
Speaker 4: got a website? How do we get more of you?
Speaker 4: Down on that?
Speaker 3: So sex God and the Conservative Church are raising shame
Speaker 3: from sexual intimacy. Will help you understand what's happened and how,
Speaker 3: if at all, you've been affected by it, and how
Speaker 3: to heal. And then Shameless Parenting everything you need to
Speaker 3: raise shame free confident kids and heal your shame too.
Speaker 3: Is just a great fun book that literally you'll feel
Speaker 3: like holding your hand. If you ever want to reach out,
Speaker 3: you can DM me. I'm at doctor Tina Shameless on
Speaker 3: Insta and then I have a website that is my name,
Speaker 3: Tina shechrimersellers dot com a lot of free stuff that
Speaker 3: you can download. You could download a thing called the
Speaker 3: Sexual Reclamation Project. Where I give a lot of those
Speaker 3: questions that I used to ask my students. So if
Speaker 3: you want to take a look at what does your
Speaker 3: arc of your story look like? Yeah, you can follow that,
Speaker 3: download it for free, and yeah, just stuff, I've got
Speaker 3: stuff there. I that's so generous. Thank you.
Speaker 2: That's the thing. I didn't want to wind you up.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to wind this up because I think
Speaker 1: we could talk for a long time.
Speaker 2: Is there anything that you say.
Speaker 1: To your clients at the end of the like a
Speaker 1: first session that you do with them as they walk
Speaker 1: in out the door. Is there something that you we
Speaker 1: could say to our listener right now as there as
Speaker 1: they're closing the bathroom door.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think goodness and abundance is available for people.
Speaker 3: It's there and just it takes some cultivation. So find
Speaker 3: people that you can put in your inner circle if
Speaker 3: they're not there already, that can support you on your
Speaker 3: own journey for abundance and joy and just goodness in
Speaker 3: your life. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Perfect, Well you are all those things. So thank you
Speaker 4: so much. Thank you so much for your time coming
Speaker 4: from beautiful Oregon, and you're a light in this world
Speaker 4: and it's it's been so lovely talking with you and
Speaker 4: with all your wisdom and graciousness.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much. Oh, you're so welcome. It's been
Speaker 3: a joy to be with you both, and I just
Speaker 3: wish you all the best, and anytime you want to
Speaker 3: chat again, you just let me know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: We'll thank you up on that and we look forward
Speaker 1: to reading the books too. Ma, I didn't enjoy winding
Speaker 1: that interview.
Speaker 3: I did not want that interview to end.
Speaker 4: I really didn't.
Speaker 2: I I was.
Speaker 3: Hanging on every word.
Speaker 4: Wow, that was so enlightening for me. She has such
Speaker 4: a great way of framing things as well. And yeah,
Speaker 4: it was like she just kind of laid out this
Speaker 4: history that made so much sense right.
Speaker 1: The first fifteen minutes was incredible. Yeah, especially that she
Speaker 1: went back to Ronald Reagan. So when I went to
Speaker 1: live in America first, Ronald Reagan had just come in
Speaker 1: and so and I remember him saying God bless America
Speaker 1: and how impactful that was and people were latched on.
Speaker 1: And so to hear her put that in perspective with
Speaker 1: everything else, the fear mongering, all that other stuff and
Speaker 1: the economy of the two thousand and eight, or just
Speaker 1: make that connection to all that was really incredible, incredible
Speaker 1: work she's done.
Speaker 4: I do feel like I want to do over of
Speaker 4: our kid's childhood so I could raise them in a
Speaker 4: sex positive way, you know, without you know, not that
Speaker 4: we knew any better as parents do. You're doing the
Speaker 4: absolute best and just teaching them what you know though,
Speaker 4: you know, listening to that and understanding more as I've
Speaker 4: grown older, and it's just like, ah, hard to look
Speaker 4: at sometimes for me.
Speaker 1: It is it is that's your journey. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's their journey too.
Speaker 4: And the fact that you know, there's still things to
Speaker 4: be said and discussed, which that actually excites me. That
Speaker 4: there's more to share with our kids and more to
Speaker 4: learn and learn together in a way, and I think
Speaker 4: that that's really beautiful. Her suggestions about this is what
Speaker 4: I would have liked to have shown you with you
Speaker 4: are four years old. That's how I imagine if our
Speaker 4: parents came to us and said that that would be
Speaker 4: so beautiful.
Speaker 1: And I do it. I would absolutely do it. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: folks said I want to, let's do this. Every time
Speaker 1: they make a suggestion anyway, pretty.
Speaker 2: Much do it?
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's.
Speaker 1: Also that idea of staying curious and wanting to expand
Speaker 1: instead of get smaller in.
Speaker 2: Our world and go, I actually want to know more.
Speaker 2: I want to do better.
Speaker 1: I love that that no, and that she said also,
Speaker 1: your body is the pen. You write your natural life
Speaker 1: with you, and here we are. If your body's working
Speaker 1: and it's okay, then you get to write your life
Speaker 1: still and use what you've got.
Speaker 2: There's so much goodness in that chat.
Speaker 1: I actually have to go back and listen again, because
Speaker 1: it's the great thing about a podcast.
Speaker 2: You can go back.
Speaker 1: It's not just a conversation you've had on the street
Speaker 1: with somebody.
Speaker 2: What.
Speaker 4: I'm going to download those questions from her website as
Speaker 4: well and ask myself those questions.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I just love that.
Speaker 1: And that was we should do it together. I'll go
Speaker 1: into my cave and do my answers to your share notes. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think it's great. And that's the thing too, is mindfulness.
Speaker 1: I was thinking as she was saying, you've got to
Speaker 1: do your own work, and I could feel myself going, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't be bothered. I don't really want to be
Speaker 1: bothered doing that. Really, yeah, I did, And I wonder
Speaker 1: if I don't think I'm the only person who's thinking.
Speaker 2: That way, going, oh God, do I have to do that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I do have to do that. We don't have to know.
Speaker 2: I want to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's want my life to expand. I needed to
Speaker 1: go out on that edge and I need to do that.
Speaker 2: I want to do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, though it doesn't it's not just going to land
Speaker 1: in my lap. Yeah, you know, it's an effort. And
Speaker 1: I always find that when I do make an effort,
Speaker 1: that's something and I come out the other.
Speaker 2: Side, I feel way better and excited. It's a whole
Speaker 2: lot more.
Speaker 4: And at our age when you get to learn more
Speaker 4: and make changes, knowing that we've got another you know,
Speaker 4: forty years hopefully, that's.
Speaker 3: Like why not.
Speaker 4: We're not too old to change, We're not too old
Speaker 4: to keep learning. And this particular subject for me, how
Speaker 4: it holds a lot of healing I know, for my future.
Speaker 4: So that's something I'm very curious about, wanting to know more. So, Look,
Speaker 4: we really hope that you've enjoyed that quality. We loved it.
Speaker 4: But yeah, as we've said, all of all of the
Speaker 4: notes and all of the links and everything in the
Speaker 4: show notes about doctor Tina and let us know what
Speaker 4: you think about that discussion. You know, you can find
Speaker 4: me on Instagram at Ali.
Speaker 2: Dado and I'm at Cameron Datto.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: Yeah still see bye