Episode 40

full
Published on:

20th Jul 2023

Sex, Rage, and Puppets w/ Author and Sex Educator Emily Nagoski

This week we're talking to NY Times bestselling author, TED Talks presenter, podcaster, and professional sex educator Emily Nagoski. Emily is the author of 'Come As You Are' and the forthcoming 'Come Together' and co-authored the book 'Burnout' with her twin sister Amelia. Emily has her PhD in Health Behavior and was the Director of Wellness Education at Smith College before focusing on speaking and writing full time.

This episode contains frank discussion of sexual and anatomical topics, as well as self-care, dealing with rage, how to not hate your long-term partner, what consent really means, and a lot more. As usual, headphones might be a wise choice!

You can find all of Emily's work at EmilyNagoski.com and you can follow her on Instagram . Her new book is currently available for pre-order at your local indie book shop, and they can get you her current books as well.

Thank you for joining us today on Barnyard Language. If you enjoy the show, we encourage you to support us by becoming a patron. Go to Patreon to make a small monthly donation to help cover the cost of making a show. Please rate and review the podcast and follow the show so you never miss an episode.

 You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok as BarnyardLanguage, and on Twitter we are BarnyardPod. If you'd like to connect with other farming families, you can join our private Barnyard Language Facebook group. We're always in search of future guests for the podcast. If you or someone you know would like to chat with us, get in touch.

 We are a proud member of the Positively Farming Media Podcast Network.




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Transcript
Caite:

Welcome to Barnyard Language.

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We are Katie and Arlene and Iowa sheep farmer, and an Ontario dairy

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farmer with six kids, two husbands, and a whole lot of chaos between us.

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So kick off your boots, reheat your coffee, and join us for some

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barnyard language, honest talk about running farms and raising

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families.

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In case your kids haven't already learned all the swears from being in the barn,

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it might be a good idea to put on some headphones or turned down the volume.

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While many of our guests are professionals, they

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aren't your professionals.

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If you need personalized advice, consult your people.

Arlene:

Hi, and welcome to another episode of Barnyard Language.

Arlene:

After lots of back and forth, Katie and I have finally figured out how to

Arlene:

actually be able to record, surprisingly, when it's summer holiday for your kids.

Arlene:

And they're all home all the time.

Arlene:

It's a lot harder to find a few quiet moments to record.

Arlene:

So, Katie, what's going on in your house these

Caite:

days?

Caite:

Uh, mine are thankfully not home at the moment.

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Um, yes.

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But yes, they're gonna be home all day tomorrow.

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Um, we're at that weird point of the summer where it's like we're past

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the halfway point, so now we're into that downhill slide of, um, doctor's

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appointments and dentist visits and all that before school starts.

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You know, they have to have all their well-child checkups sort of things.

Caite:

And talking about, you know, back to school shopping.

Caite:

Um, when

Arlene:

do your kids actually go back?

Caite:

They start back middle of August, August 23rd.

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But the girl child has Okay, two weeks of summer school before that,

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um, I think because she had a, a fairly substantial speech delay.

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She is, A little bit behind on some of her sound recognition for learning to read.

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Mm-hmm.

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Um, and so for many reasons, our school is very proactive about things like

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summer school and after school tutoring.

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And she loves it because she loves school.

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Um, so she's very excited to go to summer school and, you know, get

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more school than the other kids get.

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She's, she's very excited about

Arlene:

that.

Arlene:

Take that other kids Yeah.

Caite:

To heck with you guys.

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She's getting more school.

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She could be even smarter than most of you.

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Yeah.

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Um, but that's starting out pretty soon and I signed them both up for

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gymnastics, so I'm sure there's gonna be some, you know, doctor's notes for

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that and just getting all that hoo-ha.

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Ready.

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And we're getting to that point where the combine got pulled

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out of the shed last week.

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Um, obviously not ready to run it yet, but we're moving in

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that, in that general direction.

Arlene:

So, yes.

Arlene:

Yeah.

Arlene:

Making sure things are kind of ready.

Arlene:

Yep.

Caite:

Yep.

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And Oats will be ready to, to run through probably pretty quick.

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They're looking pretty brown, so they'll be ready to go pretty soon.

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Um, in the big excitement, apparently a uh, jack lantern and it got left

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on the back step too long last year has sprouted a pumpkin patch in my

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flower bed next to the front door.

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So the boy child is now lobbying perfect for the purchase of a pumpkin harvester.

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If anyone knows where we could purchase one that might be suitable for one plant,

Arlene:

um, yeah.

Arlene:

How many pumpkins does he think are gonna come outta this plant?

Caite:

Well, so far only one, which I'm really praying, right.

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There's a second one on there.

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Because if we get one pumpkin for two kids, it's gonna be ugly.

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Um, yeah.

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I don't know how many pumpkins he's anticipating.

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I suggested that we could do it by hand, but he was not having it.

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Um, yeah.

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The only

Arlene:

other just pick it up.

Arlene:

That's

Caite:

too much.

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The only other update he found a, a patch of bare dirt in the yard the other day.

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And so he brought all his tractors out and I shelled some corn for him, you

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know, and off an ear from the grain bin.

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And he planted it and he watered it and he put in a little

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sign for it and everything.

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And, and then he left with daddy to go get some supper.

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And about the 30 seconds after the car pulled out of the driveway,

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looked out the window and my chickens were out there packing all the corn

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out of the ground and eating it.

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So hopefully he won't notice if nothing grows.

Caite:

Yeah.

Arlene:

But he didn't actually see it happen.

Arlene:

So he doesn't have a uh, no, have a grudge against the chickens right now.

Caite:

No, not yet.

Caite:

But I'm sure any day now it'll happen.

Caite:

So how are things in your world, Arlene?

Arlene:

Thanks for going well.

Arlene:

Um, we've got a few, like I said last time, cow shows are on the calendar.

Arlene:

My husband and daughter have a few judging events that they're

Arlene:

going to over the next few weeks.

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And my oldest, my daughter actually ended up getting a job working for someone else,

Arlene:

um, kind of in preparation for, and at one of the big summer shows here in Ontario.

Arlene:

So she's gonna be gone for about two weeks, I guess.

Arlene:

Um, they, they left this afternoon to go to a judging competition, and then

Arlene:

they'll, they'll drop her off at that other place on their, on their way back.

Arlene:

So, It means a few more chores for the rest of us, but we bet, we'll,

Arlene:

we're gonna have to get used to it cuz she's going away in September and

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so we need to be ready for, uh, to take on all the jobs that she has.

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Uh, so expertly taken on over the last few years.

Arlene:

So that's gonna be adjustment for, for everybody.

Arlene:

And we got, uh, a request in from our next door neighbor for some chicken checking.

Arlene:

Well, they go on vacation.

Arlene:

So my 15 year old being very, um, uh, industrious maybe, I'm not

Arlene:

sure if that's the right word.

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Anyway, I told him how much she was willing to pay per visit

Arlene:

and that she didn't need him to check on them every single day.

Arlene:

And he's like, but if I go every day then she'll pay me for every day.

Arlene:

Right?

Arlene:

And I was like, well,

Emily:

maybe not.

Arlene:

I think, think she'll pay you what she's willing to pay you.

Arlene:

So if you go every day, that's fine.

Arlene:

But if she says they don't need to be checked that often, then maybe not.

Arlene:

So we have to go over there this weekend and, uh, check on what

Arlene:

her expectations are for, for chicken chores over at their place.

Arlene:

We don't have any birds left at our place.

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So.

Arlene:

We get to keep the eggs too.

Arlene:

So that's an added bonus.

Arlene:

I don't know if he considers that part of the payment, but as the mom who's

Arlene:

making sure that those chores get done, I will, I'll happily accept them.

Arlene:

And what else has been up lately?

Arlene:

We went to my parents' cottage on the weekend, so that was fun.

Arlene:

My parents bought a cottage last summer, and so this is our first full summer

Arlene:

with them having access to the water.

Arlene:

And they don't have a, there's no motorized, uh, boats yet, but lots

Arlene:

of kayaks and some canoes, and lots of swimming is going on there.

Arlene:

So that's been pretty fun.

Arlene:

No, uh,

Caite:

no creepy guys with axes in the woods this time.

Arlene:

Uh, not that I've

Caite:

seen, no.

Caite:

Like at my, uh, my visit with your brother-in-law, uh, for our listeners, we

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spent an evening at Arlene's, folks cabin.

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It is lovely, but I looked out the window and there was a man

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that I did not know with an ax.

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Or perhaps a hatchet directly outside the window staring in at us.

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Um, thankfully the rest of them knew who he was because I was not

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quite prepared for this, this sort of a greeting from the locals.

Caite:

Yes.

Caite:

Um, but indeed it was our last brother-in-law who is a lovely gentleman.

Caite:

Yeah.

Arlene:

But yeah, not, not so scary when he is not holding a hatchet for sure.

Arlene:

No.

Arlene:

No.

Arlene:

And I don't know if we've actually talked about it here or not, maybe it's

Arlene:

come up in passing, but we have talked about the fact that I grew up on a

Arlene:

farm, and when we're talking about the cottage, uh, I will say that my, the

Arlene:

farm that I grew up on has been sold, my parents sold it a few years ago.

Arlene:

And having a cottage is kind of, I'm not saying that it would be one or the

Arlene:

other, but it's not something that I could have pictured them doing if the

Arlene:

farm was still something that was in the family, I guess you should say.

Arlene:

So I know that you and I, Katie, talk a lot about, you know, Hoping that

Arlene:

farms stay in the family and that maybe our kids will take over or maybe not.

Arlene:

Who knows what, what's gonna happen in the future?

Arlene:

Right.

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But I also wanna say for people who are maybe in that place where the

Arlene:

family farm is not going to continue, that there is life after the farm and

Arlene:

that it's not, well, it's important.

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And you know, a lot of us value that, that it's not the be all and end all.

Arlene:

And that if, if farms don't stay in the family, the family is still the

Arlene:

more important part of that equation.

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So I'm not gonna go into any details, obviously on why things happened

Arlene:

the way they did, but yeah, it's enough to say that the family part

Arlene:

is more important than the land

Caite:

sometimes.

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Jim and I did some, um, we went to a, a farm couples weekend before we

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had the kids, and one of the big.

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Things was about to set, you know, your really top priorities for your

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family rather than just for the farm.

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And realizing how much our family was a higher priority than the farm.

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I mean, ideally they would both be successful, but to really

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literally put it in writing that doing, and I mean, obviously

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families split up and shit happens.

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I mean, that's, that's just what it is.

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But whatever we can do to, to not let the farm come between family

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members, let's put it that way.

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Um, that that's our higher priority.

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Because we know a lot of families who are estranged because of farms, and that's

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a family farm doesn't mean much if the farm is what rips the family apart, so.

Caite:

Mm-hmm.

Caite:

You know,

Arlene:

um, Yeah.

Arlene:

And people's health be that mental health or physical health is more important too.

Arlene:

Right.

Arlene:

You can't, you can't sacrifice yourself for something that, I think we've

Arlene:

talked about this before too, to, to honor your ancestors doesn't mean to,

Arlene:

to put yourself in the ground early.

Arlene:

Right.

Arlene:

It doesn't, doesn't do, doesn't, you don't, you're not honoring

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yourself or your ancestors if, if you can't, if you can't live the life

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that you are meant to live because you're trying to maintain something

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that, that is beyond your capacity.

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And I'm not saying that it's easy to know when, when that line has been

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met, but that's the one of the hard truths that some of us will have to

Arlene:

deal with at some point, I suppose.

Caite:

I know, um, whether it's the farmer, an off-farm job or whatever too.

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It can be, and I'm certainly guilty of this real easy to say, well,

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I'm doing this for my kids, but if.

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If it ruins your relationship with your kids or your kids don't know

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who you are, or they're learning priorities that are not the priorities

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you would be teaching them, if you were being more clear-minded about

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it, um, it's not really for your kids.

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And I am, I'm absolutely guilty of my kids saying, oh, mommy has to work now.

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And it being a very negative thing because especially working from home, and this is

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obviously absolutely true when you live on the farm, it's way too easy to let

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that work time just seep into everything.

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You know, it's, it's not a nine to five and mm-hmm.

Caite:

It can be real hard to back away from that.

Caite:

But yeah, for it's very important.

Caite:

Well, this has been a deeper intro than we normally go

Arlene:

for.

Arlene:

Yeah.

Arlene:

No kidding.

Arlene:

Wow.

Arlene:

So this episode that we have coming up for you is one that Katie and I are

Arlene:

really excited to share with you guys, and I am gonna give all the credit to

Arlene:

Katie for being the person who, when she finds someone out in the world

Arlene:

that she wants to talk to, she just goes ahead and asks the question and

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asks if they wanna be on the podcast.

Arlene:

And this person said yes, and we were both nervous and super excited to talk to them.

Arlene:

So we can't wait for you to, to hear this interview.

Arlene:

So enjoy.

Caite:

Yay.

Arlene:

Yeah, just,

Emily:

just put some lube on it.

Emily:

I'm like, I'm here for Lou, but sometimes that is not enough.

Arlene:

Yeah, that's right.

Arlene:

We're gonna leave that in because that's a good way to get started.

Arlene:

So today, that's an awesome way to get started.

Arlene:

I feel like

Caite:

that's a good, um, I don't wanna say warning, but a good, uh, yeah.

Emily:

Intro.

Emily:

It sets the tone.

Emily:

Yes.

Arlene:

Yeah, for sure.

Arlene:

So today we are very excited to be talking to Emily Naski, who's the author of the

Arlene:

bestselling book, come As You Are, and it's Associated Workbook, and also is the

Arlene:

co-author with her twin sister of Burnout, the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle.

Arlene:

She's also the author of romance novels under the pen name Emily Foster.

Arlene:

And she has her PhD in health behavior with a focus on human

Arlene:

sexuality and can be found on multiple podcasts, TED Talks, and Netflix,

Arlene:

including ours, which is so exciting.

Arlene:

So Emily, we start each of our interviews with the same questions,

Arlene:

so it works really well for farming people, but also for non-farming guests.

Arlene:

So we always ask, what are you growing?

Arlene:

So this can cover families, careers, businesses, and also crops and

Arlene:

livestock if you happen to have a farm.

Arlene:

So Emily, what are you growing?

Emily:

Uh, I am currently growing my book, which is about

Emily:

six weeks past its deadline.

Emily:

That's a good time.

Emily:

I'm sure your publisher's fine with that.

Emily:

I, you know what?

Emily:

Actually my publisher has been amazingly supportive.

Emily:

My editor is so here for me and the feedback I'm getting is really helpful.

Emily:

And the book is just taking the time it needs to become the book

Emily:

that it always needed to be.

Emily:

Exactly.

Emily:

You can't rush those.

Emily:

But that doesn't mean I'm not like terrified and

Arlene:

exhausted.

Caite:

Yes.

Caite:

I'm sure.

Caite:

We really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us in the midst of this.

Emily:

Oh God.

Emily:

I will take any procrastination that seems like productive

Emily:

that I can get my hands on.

Emily:

I am

Arlene:

delighted to talk to you.

Caite:

It's, uh, marketing, you know, little tiny bookcase.

Emily:

Okay,

Caite:

sure.

Caite:

So before we go any further, is that a giant set of lady parts behind your

Caite:

head or am I just like right here?

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Yes.

Emily:

So that is one of my three vulva puppets.

Emily:

Um, so these are made.

Emily:

By, uh, I think her name is Dory Lane.

Emily:

Uh, howso Chicks is the original website.

Emily:

The vulva puppets, uh, are originally sex education and sex therapy tools.

Emily:

So if you hand someone a puppet that represents their genitals,

Emily:

it's this very like, approachable, gentle way to strengthen your

Emily:

relationship with your own body parts.

Emily:

And the vulva puppet is part of that.

Emily:

This particular vulva is, uh, black lace and silver satin

Emily:

with purple satin inner labia.

Emily:

Her name is Cassandra and she is my most recent vulva puppet acquisition.

Emily:

I have a slight problem with collecting vulva puppets.

Emily:

I have at least four or five.

Emily:

Ultimately,

Caite:

it seems a little more approachable than, uh, what movie was that?

Caite:

Fry Green Tomatoes, where the women all go and get handed a mirror in

Caite:

a big circle and are expected to, you know, inspect their lady parts.

Caite:

Seems a little.

Emily:

Yeah, that can be, that can be a lot for people.

Emily:

So when I was 18 years old and getting my original training, my earliest

Emily:

training as a sex educator looking at my own genitals in the mirror

Emily:

was a homework assignment for me.

Emily:

Annie Lomax, my trainer, the group said to the group, your homework is go home, get a

Emily:

mirror, and go look at your own genitals.

Emily:

And um, I received only very regular sex education.

Emily:

I was not explicitly taught to feel ashamed of my own genitals.

Emily:

Uh, and yet when I went to look at my own genitals in a mirror, I felt

Emily:

like I was going to confront an enemy.

Emily:

Where did that message come from?

Emily:

I don't know.

Emily:

No explicit messages just seeped into me from the broader culture.

Emily:

And then when I actually did look, I instantly burst into tears.

Emily:

I.

Emily:

Because it turned out all this times my genitals were just this regular, ordinary,

Emily:

integrated part of my body, like the soles of my feet or the backs of my elbows.

Emily:

And I had spent all these years with this fear feeling, with the sense that it was

Emily:

the enemy and I felt this sudden grief for the negative messages I had been

Emily:

sending it and all the sort of discord I had built between me and this part of my

Emily:

body that was just a normal part of me.

Emily:

And that moment actually is sort of the foundation of my work as a sex

Emily:

educator, knowing that anytime I have a question, the answer will ultimately

Emily:

come from me turning toward my own internal experience, turning toward my

Emily:

own body with kindness and compassion.

Caite:

And folks, that's why Emily, uh, has a book deal and you know,

Caite:

I'm sure it's taken bajillions of dollars telling us about vulvas.

Caite:

I'm sure it's just a disgusting amount of money.

Emily:

So that actually we had to replace our roof and it helped with that.

Emily:

Yeah,

Caite:

we've been, we've uh, done a roof project recently too.

Caite:

It's, um, it's a lot.

Caite:

It's a thing.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Um, so that actually leads perfectly into my first question, which is how

Caite:

did you get into this line of work?

Caite:

Because I'm, you know, like I'm writing these questions and I'm picturing you

Caite:

like, trotting to your sixth grade career, day fair or whatever at school

Caite:

being like, I'm gonna be a sex educator.

Caite:

You know, like how, and what, what was your parents' reaction when

Caite:

you, I mean, presumably by now they do know what you do, right?

Emily:

Oh yeah.

Emily:

They, they have known what I did cuz I've been doing this.

Emily:

Uh, so I started when I was 18, my very first semester in college.

Emily:

I, I did not, like if you asked me in the sixth grade when I was gonna be, uh,

Emily:

I would've said, uh, an English teacher.

Emily:

The answer would've stayed English teacher until my 12th grade

Emily:

advanced placement English class.

Emily:

Uh, when my English teacher was so bad, I decided, oh shit, I

Emily:

don't wanna be an English teacher.

Emily:

Uh, but, uh, I knew I was a nerd.

Emily:

So when I got to college, uh, I knew that I needed some sort of like

Emily:

volunteer work on my resume to look like a good candidate for grad school.

Emily:

Knew I was going to grad school, no idea for what.

Emily:

But this guy on my floor was pre-med and he said, Hey, come be

Emily:

a peer health educator with me.

Emily:

And I was like, I like health, why not?

Emily:

So I applied and I got accepted and I got trained to go into residence

Emily:

halls to talk about all sorts of health topics like stress and relationships and

Emily:

communication and nutrition, physical activity, and also sex, condoms,

Emily:

contraception and consent essentially.

Emily:

And while I was getting my, my degrees in psychology with minors and

Emily:

cognitive science and philosophy and.

Emily:

I actually use it all the time.

Emily:

I love the brain stuff, but the work I was doing academically couldn't

Emily:

make me like who I am as a person.

Emily:

The way my work as a fledgling little sex educator made me like who I am.

Emily:

I could see in the moment how this really basics education was changing

Emily:

people's lives right in front of me.

Emily:

Um, so that's the path I chose.

Emily:

Oh, and my parents, uh, so my, um, mostly my parents don't

Emily:

ask me about my work itself.

Emily:

Uh, there was one time when my mother said, Emily, please don't

Emily:

talk about work at the dinner table.

Emily:

We get pulled back.

Emily:

They're otherwise supportive.

Emily:

Yeah.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

It's usually about cow sex.

Caite:

I think.

Caite:

If not, Humans

Emily:

best, but same general.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

We've talked before about there are times for me when it's about other animals.

Emily:

Yeah.

Arlene:

We've talked before about how semen is a, is a semi-regular

Arlene:

dinner table conversation in some farm families, but in a, in a different sense.

Arlene:

Yeah.

Arlene:

So this is why we

Caite:

don't go out for supper.

Emily:

Yeah, that's right.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

I'm gonna ask a few questions about

Arlene:

the stress side because as much as they Oh yeah.

Arlene:

You know, like they aren't linked, they're so, they are so much linked.

Arlene:

Both, both of these, these topics obviously.

Arlene:

I mean, one without the other or you know, preferably you could

Arlene:

have more of one without the other.

Arlene:

So in your book you talk about completing the stress response

Arlene:

cycle in the book burnout.

Arlene:

And the one thing that, I mean, it's so early in the book and yet it was

Arlene:

mind blowing to me and shouldn't be, but it talk, you talk about how.

Arlene:

You have to complete the stress response cycle.

Arlene:

And that doesn't mean removing the stressors from your life because, I

Arlene:

mean, obviously they're right, most of them aren't going away, right?

Arlene:

I mean, for farmers, like the weather is gonna do what it's gonna do.

Arlene:

World markets livestock as parents, our kids are not leaving anytime soon.

Arlene:

And even if they leave the house, we're still thinking about them.

Arlene:

So can you talk about what it means to complete the stress response

Arlene:

cycle even when our stressors are still right there in front of us?

Emily:

Yes, it's, it's both a good news and a bad news situation.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

So, Uh, so the stress response cycle is the complete beginning metal end of

Emily:

what we're used to thinking about as the fight or flight response, right?

Emily:

Like we all know that, uh, when a threat is present, your body will flood with

Emily:

adrenaline and a lot of other chemicals.

Emily:

It will activate like an increase in your heart rate and increase in your

Emily:

blood pressure, and it'll slow down your digestion and slow down your

Emily:

reproductive system and slow down every other organ system your, uh,

Emily:

even your central nervous system like your cognition changes because your

Emily:

attention gets focused on solving that one problem until that problem goes away.

Emily:

And in the environment where we evolved most of our stressors that activated this

Emily:

physiological process, you know, had sharp teeth and could run 30 miles an hour,

Emily:

and there's only really just one thing that you do when you're being chased by

Emily:

something like that, and that is you run.

Emily:

And it's easy to imagine that escaping the predator.

Emily:

Is what completes the stress response cycle.

Emily:

That is the beginning and middle and an end.

Emily:

There's the activation, there's all the chemistry that motivates you to engage in

Emily:

some behavior or other, and then there's the relaxation response, which happens

Emily:

when you complete the stress response cycle, but it is not escaping the predator

Emily:

that completes the stress response cycle.

Emily:

It is, in this case of the running itself that does it.

Emily:

So nowadays we're, it's pretty rare that we get chased by something

Emily:

with sharp teeth that can run 30 miles an hour, like not usually.

Emily:

Our stress, our stressors now are our kids and all the things you were saying

Emily:

and the weather and the markets and the global political climate and our family

Emily:

and employers and commutes and traffic and like money and like all that stuff.

Emily:

Even though those are really different kinds of stressors, our physiological

Emily:

stress response is very similar.

Emily:

So when you're being stressed out, not by being chased by a lion, but instead

Emily:

by, um, a drought, what do you do?

Emily:

You got pretty much the same chemistry.

Emily:

So you can't actually just make it rain, but you can deal with the

Emily:

stress that's happening in your body.

Emily:

And physical activity is the, you know, when people say

Emily:

exercise is good for you, it is.

Emily:

Exercise is good for you.

Emily:

If it's available to you, I highly recommend it.

Emily:

And this is why.

Emily:

It's because it communicates to your body that you have escaped

Emily:

the stressor, whether or not you actually have escaped the stressor.

Emily:

So the, but the good news here is that you can do something and I'll

Emily:

talk about many other strategies for completing the stress response cycle.

Emily:

The physical activity is not for you.

Emily:

I am a natural exerciser.

Emily:

I have always had the experience where I know if I just put on my

Emily:

shoes at the other end of run or the cycling or the rock climbing,

Emily:

I'm gonna feel so much better.

Emily:

If I could just put on my shoes and go do it, I'm gonna feel great.

Emily:

Uh, I have an identical twin sister, the co-author of Burnout, who has

Emily:

literally never had that experience and thought I was lying when I described it.

Emily:

She is not a natural exerciser.

Emily:

So if you're not a person for whom exercises something that's your

Emily:

preferred thing or even available to you, Amelia is now, um, disabled by Covid.

Emily:

She has, uh, chronic fatigue syndrome and a variety of other energy,

Emily:

sort of metabolic issues where like exercise will only make her sicker.

Emily:

Um, so.

Emily:

The good news is that you can complete the stress response cycle,

Emily:

even if the problem still exists.

Emily:

It also means that your stress might continue even after

Emily:

you have solved the problem.

Emily:

So like you're a grownup and you have a very adult rational conversation with,

Emily:

you know, your romantic partner about the dishes and when they're gonna be

Emily:

done and like you're like being very reasonable and calm and a grownup, or

Emily:

you're talking to your kids and you're like, you need to put your shoes on.

Emily:

Were they waiting five minutes?

Emily:

I need to put your shoes on.

Emily:

Two minutes to go.

Emily:

It's time to put your shoes on.

Emily:

I need you to put your shoes on, and the next three minutes,

Emily:

I'm gonna count to three.

Emily:

And you're gonna put your shoes on.

Emily:

Like you're being so calm and rational and inside your chemistry is doing

Emily:

the thing it does when you are being threatened for your life and

Emily:

your body kind of wants to go, ugh.

Emily:

Right?

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Does that, does that make sense?

Emily:

Yeah, that sounds familiar.

Emily:

So, Even though you have dealt with the stress, like your child puts on their

Emily:

shoes, your partner does the dishes.

Emily:

Woo.

Emily:

Your body is still in that escalated state.

Emily:

And look what happens to your body when you stay in that escalated state.

Emily:

Your heart rate stays increased, your blood pressure stays increased.

Emily:

Your digest system stays slow down.

Emily:

Your reproductive system stays slowed down.

Emily:

So just take one organ system.

Emily:

Um, your cardiovascular system, your blood pressure increases, which creates the

Emily:

blood vessels, are designed to mostly deal with like a steady trickling stream of

Emily:

blood flow, um, with the stress response.

Emily:

It's like a, a fire hoses and it's only gonna last like 15 minutes in

Emily:

the way that it's evolved to work.

Emily:

And then your relaxation response kicks in, your blood flow returns to normal

Emily:

and your blood vessels have a chance to repair themselves from the damage that

Emily:

got done by that high blood pressure.

Emily:

But if your blood pressure stays elevated for a long time, not only.

Emily:

Does it keep getting damaged, but also your immune system, yet another

Emily:

organ system doesn't kick on fully because it too is suppressed during

Emily:

the fight or flight response.

Emily:

Um, so you're increasing the damage done to your blood vessels, you're reducing

Emily:

your immune system responsibility, its ability to heal that damage.

Emily:

And so over time just the stress itself causes heart disease.

Emily:

It's just stress, but it's a cause of disease, which is how just stress

Emily:

is more likely to cause US disease and even death than many of the

Emily:

things that cause the stress itself.

Emily:

Does that make sense?

Emily:

Yeah, that does make a lot of

Arlene:

sense.

Arlene:

So you talked about, you know, physical activity is obviously one of the

Arlene:

ideal options, but I'm thinking of, you know, like people who are working

Arlene:

in physical jobs all day, you know, some of our farming listeners who.

Arlene:

It feels like all day is physical work, and that actually is the stress.

Arlene:

So can you talk about some of those other options, like you said, for people with

Emily:

physical disabilities?

Emily:

There's so, there's so many.

Emily:

Yep.

Emily:

Yes.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

So if, if for any reason you're like, I'm not gonna exercise my stress away, cool.

Emily:

I get it.

Emily:

I actually have, uh, a balance disorder that's degenerative.

Emily:

The older I get, the worse it gets and the less physical

Emily:

activity becomes available to me.

Emily:

So I really rely on these other ones now.

Emily:

Um, one is sleep, and that's, I've just started with a really complicated one.

Emily:

Yeah, sounds, sounds so easy.

Emily:

Lazy,

Arlene:

right?

Arlene:

Just sleep.

Arlene:

Yeah.

Arlene:

Yeah.

Emily:

You guys didn't already know that sleep is really important, did you?

Emily:

No.

Emily:

Never heard that.

Emily:

Oh, no.

Emily:

No.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Everybody knows that sleep is important and yet so many of us are sleep deprived.

Emily:

And the reason for that, well, partly it has to do with physical limitations.

Emily:

So, for example, I'm in perimenopause now, and one thing that, uh, Many doctors do

Emily:

not share with you is that once you get to perimenopause and into menopause, your

Emily:

sleep is gonna be, uh, messed up for a while there just because of the hormones,

Emily:

because of the changes that are happening.

Emily:

Um, but it's not just physical reasons, it's also because I kept, in

Emily:

sociology they call it the third shift.

Emily:

So there's a first shift where you work a job, job, your second

Emily:

shift, which is where you take care of the family and the household.

Emily:

And the third shift, which is the time of night when people

Emily:

are supposed to be sleeping.

Emily:

But some people have more permission to sleep than other people do, right?

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

And we know that there's gonna be social rules about who's more

Emily:

entitled to rest than other people.

Emily:

Amelia and I have, that's my sister Amelia and I have lost count of

Emily:

the number of women who've told us that they feel guilty for sleeping.

Emily:

And our culture does not reward us for like showing up to a social event.

Emily:

Somebody asked how you are and you're like, you know what?

Emily:

I've been getting seven to nine hours of sleep every night for

Emily:

the last month, and I feel great.

Emily:

Their response is not like high five go you.

Emily:

It's Oh, that's so nice for you.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

I have been staying up like baking the cupcakes for Becky's birthday party,

Emily:

but no, self-care is really important.

Emily:

Good for you.

Emily:

Yeah, like all these messages about self-care and then you

Emily:

take care of yourself and they're like, mm, musts be nice.

Emily:

Yeah, it fucking is.

Emily:

So sleep we know is complicated, but also, and and like we

Emily:

can talk about sleep forever.

Emily:

I literally have an hour long talk just about sleep.

Emily:

So whatever questions you have, I will be more than happy to answer.

Emily:

But So a third strategy, a big old cry.

Emily:

You know how like sometimes you're like just barely holding it together

Emily:

and then you like lock yourself into a space where you can just cry and you

Emily:

let yourself cry for, I don't know, just five, 10 minutes and you're, it's

Emily:

like you've drained away all the stress and you're like, and you feel better.

Emily:

That's your body completing the stress response cycle.

Emily:

People say crying doesn't solve anything, and those are people who don't know the

Emily:

difference between completing the stress response cycle and dealing with the thing

Emily:

that caused the stress in the first place.

Emily:

No cry only under really specific life circumstances.

Emily:

Does crying deal with a stressor or, but what it does is complete the stress

Emily:

response cycle so that your body can recalibrate down to the relaxation

Emily:

response so that you are well enough to deal with whatever it was that activated

Emily:

the stress response in the first place.

Emily:

So that's three four, a big old laugh, the not the like, socially

Emily:

posed, polite kind of laughter.

Emily:

It's the helpless belly aching laughter.

Emily:

Uh, that's like if you look embarrassing, it's usually with other people that

Emily:

sort of like helpless laughter has a lot of the same characteristics as a

Emily:

big old cry where you get to the end of it and you feel physically like,

Emily:

oh, like something really big happened in your body, moved all the way

Emily:

through something and got to the end.

Emily:

All of these things are a practice in, like a stressor happened.

Emily:

I wa I felt unsafe in my body and then physiologically I transitioned into

Emily:

a place where I felt safe in my body.

Emily:

Even if you are not actually safe, because a lot of us live in a world

Emily:

we are where we are never fully safe when we go out into the world.

Emily:

People of color, transgender and non-binary people, people with

Emily:

disabilities, when they go out into the world, they're never fully

Emily:

safe, but they can return to a place of feeling safe in their body.

Emily:

Given the opportunity to complete the stress response, and especially

Emily:

to do it within the safety of other people who care for them as much as

Emily:

they care for the people around them.

Emily:

We have, so we're up to four.

Emily:

We've got physical activity, we've got sleep, we've got a big old

Emily:

cry, we've got a big old laugh.

Emily:

Uh, imagination is five and it's one of my favorite.

Emily:

It's actually the one that really made the difference for Amelia.

Emily:

We wrote the book together because when I wrote Come As You Are, I like traveled all

Emily:

over talking to people, anyone who would listen about the science of sexuality.

Emily:

Um, but people kept coming up to me after these talks I would do and saying, yeah,

Emily:

all that sex science is great, Emily.

Emily:

But that one chapter, chapter four about stress and feelings, that was

Emily:

the one that really changed everything.

Emily:

And I told Amelia and she was like, yeah, no kidding.

Emily:

Remember when you taught me that stuff and it, you know, saved my life?

Emily:

She said twice.

Emily:

She said, and I was like, oh, we should write a book about that.

Emily:

So Amelia's situation is right.

Emily:

That, that seems important.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

It's, and I was like, then this is, this is an important message.

Emily:

She, uh, has a dma, a doctor of musical arts in choral conducting

Emily:

from a program where she remains the only woman ever to finish that

Emily:

program, because that's just how misogynist classical music training is.

Emily:

Uh, and in the process of finishing that degree, she was hospitalized

Emily:

twice with quote unquote just stress.

Emily:

She had an elevated white blood cell count, but they

Emily:

couldn't find any cause for it.

Emily:

So they told her to go home and just relax.

Emily:

And she was like, why is my body trying to kill me?

Emily:

And I've got a PhD in public health?

Emily:

Like, I felt very bad that she did not already know.

Emily:

Like, so I, I showed up in the way our family knows how to express love by giving

Emily:

her peer reviewed science about the impact of stress on her physical wellbeing.

Emily:

And, uh, she.

Emily:

Learned somehow, she did not yet know that stress is, is not just an idea.

Emily:

It's not just, um, like a, it's not a personal failing.

Emily:

It's a physiological event that happens in your body and has real

Emily:

physiological consequences in your body.

Emily:

And if you accumulate too many incomplete stress response cycles

Emily:

at a high enough intensity, it will.

Emily:

Uh, activate disease processes and that's ultimately what it did for her.

Emily:

And she ended up in so much pain.

Emily:

She thought she was gonna die lying on the bathroom floor in the hospital.

Emily:

And she began physical activity I mentioned like does not,

Emily:

is not a thing for her.

Emily:

She doesn't get it.

Emily:

But she was still like, you know, on the elliptical machine five

Emily:

days a week cuz she's a good girl who does what she is told.

Emily:

So she started integrating imagination into her workout.

Emily:

So instead of like watching TV or reading a magazine, she got on the elliptical

Emily:

machine and visualized herself as Godzilla tromping on the ER's office.

Emily:

And the.

Arlene:

Parking lot and her advisor's

Emily:

office.

Emily:

So she imagined herself into her own stress response and she conquered

Emily:

her enemy and her imagination and human minds are so powerful.

Emily:

Well, we already know that the imagination can activate a stress response cycle.

Emily:

Anytime you've experienced a physiological stress response activated in your body

Emily:

just because you were worrying about something, there's nothing bad happening

Emily:

right now, but you can be plenty worried about a bad thing that might happen.

Emily:

We know that the imagination can activate a stress response.

Emily:

The good news is it can also complete a stress response.

Emily:

You just really visualize yourself viscerally so that you can

Emily:

feel it happening in your body, conquering some enemy or other.

Emily:

And this is all.

Emily:

Really well established in the performance research in both music,

Emily:

other arts, and in athletics.

Emily:

The visualization is a powerful way to help your brain to imagine its

Emily:

way through an emotional response.

Emily:

To get all feelings or tunnels, you have to get all the way to the

Emily:

end to get to the light, right?

Emily:

So she could imagine her way through a stress response assisted by light

Emily:

physical activity on the elliptical machine, and that got her to the end.

Emily:

So number five is imagination.

Emily:

Number six goes right with that.

Emily:

That is creative self-expression.

Emily:

If a therapist has ever told you to journal, um, You may, I I have

Emily:

had therapists tell me to journal.

Emily:

Do they mean that the construction of sentences is inherently like

Emily:

good for your emotional health?

Emily:

No, they're providing an opportunity to take all those activated emotions

Emily:

that are inside you, move all the way through them, put them on the paper

Emily:

so that they're not inside your body, they're in a place where they can't

Emily:

do any harm to you or to anyone else.

Emily:

Creative self-expression is about taking all that stuff and putting it into

Emily:

something that is meaningful for you.

Emily:

It's writing for me.

Emily:

Uh, for Amelia, it was music for a long time.

Emily:

Then she became a professional musician and it had to become something else.

Emily:

Um, so she turned it into like cooking and writing and other

Emily:

forms of creative self-expression.

Emily:

For some people it's gonna be sculpture.

Emily:

For some people it's gonna be, uh, performance arts.

Emily:

So, So whatever your thing is that you're like, I know, like I can

Emily:

sit down, I can knit my booties of rage and I will have made something

Emily:

and gotten the rage out of my body.

Emily:

Creative self-expression.

Emily:

Does that make sense?

Arlene:

That does.

Arlene:

I think, and for that one, I like how you mentioned that once music became

Arlene:

her job, that couldn't be her creative self-expression anymore, right?

Arlene:

We have to stop that idea of, oh, I can make this thing and it helps me

Arlene:

de-stress, so now I'll start selling it.

Arlene:

Or creating a side hustle or turning it

Emily:

into something else, right?

Emily:

It can just be key tip is that like to prevent yourself from taking

Emily:

something you really love doing and turning it into a side hustle, choose

Emily:

a form of creative self-expression that you were not very good at.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Or just make one huge scarf.

Emily:

It just, it never ends.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

You, you'll never be good enough at it to be able to make any kind of money.

Emily:

So you just, Amelia uh, also does horseback riding.

Emily:

Mm-hmm.

Emily:

She will never be any good at it.

Emily:

Like she will never be able to compete.

Emily:

She will never be able to participate in a group of people doing it.

Emily:

But it's physical activity.

Emily:

It's, it's also connection, which is like maybe the biggest strategy for

Emily:

completing this stress response cycle.

Emily:

Cuz remember, all of these are about shifting your body into a state where

Emily:

it feels that you have returned to a place of safety inside your own body

Emily:

and connection with a loving presence.

Emily:

Isano like these hu humans are spectacularly social as a species.

Emily:

For some people, connection really does mean connection with other people.

Emily:

People who listen to the podcast so that they can have that sense

Emily:

of connection with other people who are similar to them, who understand

Emily:

the things they're going through.

Emily:

That connection is helping them to return to a place of safety inside their body.

Emily:

Uh, the research suggests something like a 32nd hug.

Emily:

It's, it's not about the 30 seconds, but it is about hugging for a duration

Emily:

that would be, Potentially very awkward if you don't really like and

Emily:

trust the person that you are hugging.

Emily:

Right, and that's the point, Suzanne, I ascend.

Emily:

The sex therapist calls it hugging until relaxed, where you just

Emily:

press your body against the other person and breathe with them until

Emily:

you feel the shift in your body.

Emily:

That's one way that connection can help to ground your body in

Emily:

an experience of feeling safety.

Emily:

When I'm with this person, I am so safe that I have come home, but there's

Emily:

also connection with animals, so.

Emily:

Much as I adore my husband, I'm very lucky.

Emily:

He's a wonderful, wonderful human being.

Emily:

There are times when like the purity of my dog's joy at seeing me when

Emily:

I come home just cannot be matched by anything A human can express.

Emily:

Their faces all soft and glowing and their tails wagging.

Emily:

That sense of joy just like connects with me and makes me feel like

Emily:

I have come home in a way that connecting with any human can't match.

Emily:

For Amelia horseback riding is like that when you go see the same horse

Emily:

every week and you groom it and you ride the horse and it just feels like

Emily:

you're connecting and she's physically connecting, trying to tune her body

Emily:

into the same rhythm as the horse.

Emily:

That experience is really similar to her, her musical specialty.

Emily:

She's a choral conductor and which she conducts.

Emily:

She tries to tune her body to the same rhythm as her choir and

Emily:

that experience of connection.

Emily:

Not only is it good for her in terms of feeling like she's grounded in a

Emily:

sense of safety in her own body, it also brings her a sense of meaning

Emily:

and purpose, which music doesn't have for me, but it does for her.

Emily:

Meaning and purpose is like a whole other chapter in burnout.

Emily:

Um, but so connection with humans, connection with mammals,

Emily:

connection with landscapes.

Emily:

For me it's the beach.

Emily:

For some people it's the mountains or the desert, or a lake or the forest.

Emily:

People have landscapes where when they go to that place, their body

Emily:

resonates with it and it just feels whole and connected and like, oh, I

Emily:

have come to a place of safety because I am in this kind of earth scape.

Emily:

Um, and finally there's connection with the divine.

Emily:

Many people's experience of their spirituality is being

Emily:

held in a loving family and that connection when it's happening.

Emily:

In your brain when you experience it, it is real, it is happening.

Emily:

Um, and can bring up in the same way that animals can have a sort

Emily:

of more pure and uncomplicated sense of safety and connection.

Emily:

Our connection with a divine can have that more pure, uncomplicated, simple sense of

Emily:

safety of being held in a divine family.

Emily:

So connection.

Emily:

Yeah.

Arlene:

I had a question about connection and the, the, uh, and

Arlene:

co co-regulation at the same time.

Arlene:

Mm-hmm.

Arlene:

Because you talk in your book about co-regulating and I live with my four

Arlene:

kids and my husband, and one of the things that is one of my stressors

Arlene:

is taking on the emotions of other people and how they're feeling.

Arlene:

And then, you know, inevitably how that makes me feel if

Arlene:

they're not feeling great.

Arlene:

And so that.

Arlene:

Kind of ends up making me feel like I want to connect less almost.

Arlene:

Yeah.

Arlene:

Like it makes me feel like I wanna pull away from them.

Arlene:

So how do, how do I satisfy my internal need for connection?

Arlene:

So, When what I actually end up feeling like is I want to turn away from

Emily:

those feelings because it makes me feel worse.

Emily:

Yes.

Emily:

This, uh, brings up one of my favorite messages in the book, which is that

Emily:

wellness is not a state of being.

Emily:

It is not the state of being connected or not connected.

Emily:

It is not a state of mind.

Emily:

It is a state of action.

Emily:

Wellness is the freedom to oscillate through the cycles inherent

Emily:

and living in a mammalian body.

Emily:

We are not designed to like rest all the time or to work all the time.

Emily:

We're built to oscillate from.

Emily:

Rest into activity, back to rest and back to activity.

Emily:

Were not built to stay in a state of like always being full.

Emily:

We're designed to eat and then digest, and then eat and then digest, and we're

Emily:

designed to oscillate into connection and back out to autonomy, back into

Emily:

connection, and back out to autonomy.

Emily:

And just as each of us has different appetites for all those other

Emily:

things, different sleep needs, different meta, metabolic food needs,

Emily:

different kinds of bodies, we all have a different need for connection

Emily:

and a different need for autonomy.

Emily:

Introverts are the people whose natural appetite for connection is smaller.

Emily:

It uses up energy for them to be in connection with people

Emily:

and they gain energy being.

Emily:

Autonomous being alone, and extroverts are the people who gain energy being with

Emily:

people and then drain energy being alone.

Emily:

But everybody needs both Amelia and I are not just extrovert,

Emily:

are not just introverts.

Emily:

We are both strong introverts.

Emily:

We're also on the spectrum.

Emily:

So our connection needs are really out of balance from how most people

Emily:

relate to the idea of connection.

Emily:

And yet even we writing this book could not help coming to the conclusion

Emily:

that connection is actually, it's, it's the most important thing is the

Emily:

cure for burnout is not self-care.

Emily:

It is all of us caring for each other.

Emily:

And one of the ways that we care for each other is by taking up

Emily:

slack when someone we care about really needs some time on their own.

Caite:

So, Emily, I'm gonna jump in here.

Caite:

I don't know if you actually, um, got a chance to read the outline

Caite:

of questions or if you're a psychic or if we're just like, Separate.

Caite:

I did read it Earth somehow.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Um, as someone who is also a neurodivergent introvert, how do we ma

Caite:

I don't wanna say make myself, but how do I prime myself to want to connect

Caite:

with others because it is so much work.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

And I, it's, it is very much like the responsive desire

Caite:

that you talk about that.

Caite:

Mm-hmm.

Caite:

Once I am connecting with people, I enjoy it and I feel very fulfilled by it.

Caite:

Gen generally depending.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Generally I've gotten rid of basically anyone I don't like in my life.

Emily:

That's a really healthy move.

Caite:

I work from home and I'm a neurodivergent introvert, so I just

Caite:

don't deal with people I don't like.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Easy.

Caite:

Um, but how do I get myself in the head space to want to connect with people

Caite:

because it is, It's so much work and it's so much planning and it's uh, and

Caite:

then a lot of times you have to leave the house, which is, you know, and it's,

Emily:

I have to say the way Amelia and I finally, uh, we

Emily:

were not diagnosed until 2021.

Emily:

Um, and the thing that motivated us to be like, you know what, actually

Emily:

there might be something going on here and we should probably go ahead

Emily:

and get evaluated, was the fact that the pandemic was hitting us really

Emily:

differently than how it was hitting.

Emily:

Pretty much everyone else we knew, we were like, this is amazing.

Emily:

I just wanna stay home by

Caite:

myself.

Caite:

But that wasn't just me.

Caite:

Cuz same, it was like, I feel really horrible for all the people

Caite:

who are getting sick and all these horrible things are happening to

Caite:

them and it is really inconvenient.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

But this is pretty awesome.

Caite:

Like yeah, they want us to stay home and make sourdough done like,

Caite:

All right, sounds good to me.

Emily:

Yeah, you know, so the motivation, so I actually use this metaphor I learned

Emily:

from a sex therapist named Christine Hyde, um, when client couples will come

Emily:

to her where one partner is interested in sex, and the other one is like,

Emily:

ah, I'm really struggling with desire.

Emily:

Um, and she puts it this way, imagine that your best friend invites you to a party.

Emily:

You say yes because it's your best friend and it's a party.

Emily:

And then as the date approaches, you're like, Ugh, there's

Emily:

gonna be all this traffic.

Emily:

We're gonna have to find childcare.

Emily:

Am I gonna wanna put on party clothes at the end of a long week?

Emily:

Am I gonna wanna leave the house?

Emily:

But you know what you said you would go, so you put on your party

Emily:

clothes and you show up to the party.

Emily:

And generally what happens is you have a pretty good time.

Emily:

You benefit the way you.

Emily:

Want to benefit from the experience of going and being with people

Emily:

you genuinely care about.

Emily:

Even for neurodivergent people generally, if it's somebody you care enough about

Emily:

to like follow through and show up.

Emily:

Uh, my sister has this happen when, when her kids were still

Emily:

in high school and junior high.

Emily:

Um, she's the mother of three stepchildren who are all now in their twenties.

Emily:

But when they were in junior high, she would show up.

Emily:

She's a professional musician, and she would go to their, like high school

Emily:

musical, like it's physically painful for her to sit through a high school

Emily:

musical, and she would like check off each number on the program as it

Emily:

finished counting down to the end.

Emily:

But she was always, even though it was difficult, she wanted

Emily:

to be there for the kids.

Emily:

She genuinely loved seeing them in the show, and she could

Emily:

always honestly say when the kids asked, so what did you think?

Emily:

How was it?

Emily:

She can say, I loved seeing you in it.

Emily:

I thought you were great.

Emily:

So if you understand like, what am I, what is it that I'm looking to get out

Emily:

of this experience, you know that it's not necessarily to have a good time.

Emily:

And I'm saying this to other neurodivergent people with social

Emily:

differences, not to the neurotypical.

Emily:

People are like, but I have a great time.

Emily:

I love seeing all the kids in STA on stage, and I love going to a party.

Emily:

Like there's a lot of us out there who are like, no, I get

Emily:

home and I just feel exhausted.

Emily:

But you stay focused on what's meaningful about that experience for you.

Emily:

We're back at chapter three, like what is the meaning of this?

Emily:

What does this contribute to your life and your purpose on earth?

Emily:

That's the way I do it.

Caite:

Well, and I, I think this is such an interesting conversation getting

Caite:

into the, the sex side of your work, because I feel like there's this,

Caite:

obviously consent is a tremendously, tremendously important thing.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

But I feel like there's this.

Caite:

Especially for those of us who I think weren't really raised with consent as

Caite:

being as big a thing as I think a lot of us are raising our kids to be now,

Caite:

that if we're not super enthusiastic about sex going into it, that it's the

Caite:

same as not consenting where, I mean, I might not be excited to go to that party,

Caite:

but I showed up willingly and it's, you know, it's not like I was kidnapped.

Caite:

Right.

Emily:

Um, and so here's my question.

Emily:

You show up to the par, and this is how Christine Hyde uses

Emily:

the analogy with her clients.

Emily:

Like, do you have a good time at the party?

Emily:

If you had a good time at the party, you were doing it right.

Emily:

And my thing is, if you're not having a good time at the party, there is

Emily:

no amount of being really excited about going to parties that would

Emily:

make that party worth going to.

Emily:

So the, the, the, uh, Thing for me is to forget entirely about

Emily:

desire and how enthusiastic you are about going to the party.

Emily:

Sometimes you're like, fine, I will.

Emily:

It's like how I feel about exercise.

Emily:

I'm gonna put on my shoes because I know if I just put on my shoes and I go out

Emily:

the door, I'm gonna be so glad that I did.

Emily:

If you put on your party clothes and you have show up, you put your

Emily:

BO in this in terms of sex, you put your body in the bed, you let your

Emily:

skin touch your partner's skin.

Emily:

If it feels good, if you enjoy yourself, you get to the end and

Emily:

you're like, that was a good idea.

Emily:

I'm really glad we did that.

Emily:

You were doing it right.

Emily:

The short way to say this is pleasure is the measure, pleasure is the

Emily:

measure of sexual wellbeing, not how often you do it or who with, or in

Emily:

what positions or how horny you are, or even how many orgasms you have.

Emily:

It's whether or not you like the sex that you are having.

Emily:

If you are having fun, you are doing it right.

Caite:

So, What about, I'm just gonna like lay my whole personal

Caite:

history just right out on the table.

Caite:

Great.

Caite:

I love that.

Caite:

Um, I, funny story when I told my husband that we were doing this show and I was

Caite:

like, you know, I would like to know where your boundaries are about how much

Caite:

of our sex life I talked about Yeah.

Caite:

In front of all these people.

Caite:

He somehow took that to mean that I thought that he should talk to

Caite:

Arlene's husband about what our sexual boundaries and come to

Caite:

our mutual understanding somehow.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Like, no.

Caite:

Are they sex partners?

Caite:

No.

Caite:

I, I don't need you to talk to Hugh about our sex life.

Caite:

Please

Emily:

don't.

Emily:

They've

Caite:

never even met in person, so.

Caite:

No, it's not as far as I know.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Boundary done.

Caite:

Um, so for my husband and I, we started trying for a baby, like

Caite:

on our wedding night, basically.

Caite:

Like we weren't.

Caite:

Really preventing for a month or so before that, but you know, mm-hmm.

Caite:

Now we're married and we're good Midwesterners and we're

Caite:

adults and we can do this.

Caite:

And, and then four years of fertility treatments, which is basically four years

Caite:

of people saying, give us all your money.

Caite:

And do really embarrassing, bizarre physically and emotionally painful things

Caite:

while we tell you to relax because it's your own fault that you're not getting

Caite:

pregnant because you're not relaxed.

Caite:

And then miraculously having two babies in a space of 16 months in a high risk,

Caite:

very physically difficult pregnancies.

Caite:

Where do I even start with ever wanting to have sex with ever again?

Caite:

Because I, you know, and I've had this conversation with my husband,

Caite:

but like, you know, it's not you.

Caite:

It's me.

Caite:

Is it crazy?

Caite:

No.

Caite:

You've been traumatized, but fuck.

Emily:

You know what I love is that you're asking the question the right way.

Emily:

Way.

Emily:

Where do I even ever start?

Emily:

Where do I start?

Emily:

Cuz?

Emily:

So, especially since the pandemic, I've been getting this question

Emily:

of like, how am I supposed to want to have sex with my partner when

Emily:

I'm so angry about so many things?

Emily:

How am I supposed to want sex when like basically the whole world is on fire?

Emily:

Yes.

Emily:

And the answer is you are not supposed to want sex under any circumstances.

Emily:

You explore where pleasure is and you follow it.

Emily:

So you begin with sex off the table.

Emily:

Like sex is not gonna happen anytime in the foreseeable future,

Emily:

but you can touch each other.

Emily:

You can hug and kiss and get to know each other's skin.

Emily:

You can independently reconnect with your own body.

Emily:

Don't start with your sexual or reproductive anatomy.

Emily:

Start with every other part of your body.

Emily:

Cuz if you have been the birth parent to children, it's not just, there have

Emily:

been physical changes, it's the whole meaning of your body has altered.

Emily:

So your relationship with every part of your body is brand new.

Emily:

Your relationship with your partner is brand new.

Emily:

You are starting entirely from scratch with a new body and a new relationship.

Emily:

So it makes sense that it would be difficult.

Emily:

It would be particularly difficult because you spent so long with the fertility.

Emily:

Treatments and trying are for people who are inter gamy producers, where one of

Emily:

you's got sperm and one of you's got eggs.

Emily:

And the expectation is you're gonna have sex by getting the

Emily:

sperm to the eggs via intercourse.

Emily:

Like it just can be so destructive to a sexual erotic connection.

Emily:

So part of it is rebuilding your relationship with your body, beginning

Emily:

from scratch, with your relationship with your partner, and releasing, remembering

Emily:

that there is actually other reasons to have sex besides having babies.

Emily:

And that is pleasure and connection.

Emily:

So, Um, there's an, so one of the things that I ask people

Emily:

is what is it that you want?

Emily:

When you want sex?

Emily:

What is it that you like when you like sex?

Emily:

These are important questions that I think people should spend a bunch of time with.

Emily:

Um, and there's sort of four big categories of answers.

Emily:

The first is connection.

Emily:

So finding a way to, there are lots of other ways to connect with

Emily:

people who really matter to you.

Emily:

Um, and, but sex is one of them.

Emily:

For some people, sex is a really important mode of connection.

Emily:

I don't know if it's important for you, but it is one, and it might

Emily:

be important for your partner.

Emily:

So that's one thing.

Emily:

A second thing is they want the pleasure of it.

Emily:

Um, and when sex has been as stressful, as exhausting, as sort of existentially

Emily:

threatening as it has been when you've been through so much of a fertility

Emily:

process, and people talk to me about this all the time, doctors are always like, how

Emily:

do I make sure my partner, my, my patients still have a, a decent sex connection

Emily:

after they get through this process?

Emily:

Um, so it's very common.

Emily:

Um, so.

Emily:

It might be difficult to access pleasure through your body that way.

Emily:

And it just takes practice, basically.

Emily:

Um, it's like a phobia.

Emily:

Tell me if this makes sense.

Emily:

Right?

Emily:

So you get in a car accident and now every time you approach a car, your body's

Emily:

stress response activates and you have to go through a process of graded exposure

Emily:

where you get, you think about cars and you practice relaxing and you stand next

Emily:

to a car and you practice relaxing and you sit in a car and you practice relaxing and

Emily:

you gradually get closer and closer to the experience of driving while training your

Emily:

body to be relaxed in that new context.

Emily:

You do the same thing with sex.

Emily:

You like, Lie in bed with your partner fully closed and allow your body to relax.

Emily:

You do breathing exercises, you practice meditation, whatever it

Emily:

takes for your body to be in a relaxed state while also physically present

Emily:

and in contact with another person.

Emily:

You practice relaxation while you are touching different parts of your own body.

Emily:

You practice being relaxed while you are skin to skin with another person.

Emily:

You practice being relaxed while you are alone and unclothed you

Emily:

practice in the shower or in the bath practice being with your own body and

Emily:

experiencing sensations while still being relaxed and not stressed out.

Emily:

And gradually from there, if you can be calm, relaxed, peaceful with your

Emily:

body and its sensations, then you begin exploring where the pleasure is and

Emily:

letting it come out from hiding because it's been hiding because, uh, it's been

Emily:

associated with stress for so long.

Emily:

Does any of that make sense?

Caite:

Well, I'm just over here trying not to cry because I feel like.

Caite:

I have become, it's become so ingrained that now when I even, I don't wanna

Caite:

say when I even see my husband, but when there's any amount of contact,

Caite:

my brain just goes straight to offer, fuck no, I'm not having sex with no.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

You know?

Caite:

And so I skip everything that should be in between there.

Caite:

And I feel like for me, the, honestly the biggest struggle of

Caite:

fertility treatments was the anger.

Caite:

Because as women, we are not allowed to be angry.

Caite:

And as mothers, like the one thing you cannot do is be angry.

Caite:

And especially if you know it's irrational and you're getting so

Caite:

angry with friends because they look at their husband and they got

Caite:

knocked up in the backseat of the car.

Caite:

You know?

Caite:

And like, I'm happy for them.

Caite:

It's not like they're having a baby meant that I couldn't.

Caite:

Yeah, but for fuck's sake, I've, yeah.

Caite:

Never felt rage like trying to have a baby gave me.

Caite:

Yeah.

Emily:

And I'm gonna send you the new book.

Emily:

It's not done yet, but I'm gonna send it to you.

Caite:

Thank

Emily:

you.

Emily:

Because there's this whole section on rage.

Emily:

Oh my God.

Emily:

Has to be.

Emily:

So there was, it's actually part of what I call the emotional floor plan.

Emily:

Rage is one of the primary process emotions.

Emily:

It's one of the fundamental emotional spaces in our brains.

Emily:

And the actual like biological motivation of rage is to move toward and destroy

Emily:

something that is in our way when we hate.

Emily:

It's because something is in our way.

Emily:

We're trying to get to something and we can't.

Emily:

And so we're in that state of like attacking the thing that is in our way.

Emily:

Does that make

Caite:

sense?

Caite:

Yep.

Caite:

And we were actually talking on our social media the other day about what

Caite:

the word would be for the anger that comes from being afraid and finally

Caite:

just went for hangry, you know, like hangry, because it's, yeah.

Caite:

I've, I'm on a medication.

Caite:

You're angry, your fear Yeah.

Caite:

For dysautonomia because my body just cannot fucking even anymore.

Caite:

Just cannot even, yeah.

Caite:

And so it blocks my adrenaline response.

Caite:

So I, I don't feel the fear the same way, but I sure get

Caite:

the anger that comes after it.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

And that's, it's really shocking when it happens because

Emily:

there's no, so let me add to that, the third major, uh, what I

Emily:

call them pleasure adverse spaces, but they're the difficult emotions

Emily:

that we are motivated to avoid.

Emily:

One of them is rage, one of them is fear.

Emily:

And the third one is panic grief, which is a technical approach

Emily:

to thinking about loneliness.

Emily:

This comes from when?

Emily:

So, so love is a biological drive.

Emily:

We require connection, uh, to stay alive.

Emily:

Even people like us who are on the spectrum, we require some

Emily:

connection in order to stay alive.

Emily:

And you know how infants, um, whale to, and they need to be picked up and held

Emily:

like babies will die just of loneliness.

Emily:

And as adults, it's no longer true that, uh, our survival

Emily:

depends on our adult caregivers.

Emily:

But our bodies don't know that.

Emily:

Our bodies are pretty sure that if we don't get connection with our

Emily:

attachment object, that we're gonna die.

Emily:

They call it heartbreak for a reason.

Emily:

So underneath all of that, um, fear and all of the anger and like, let me

Emily:

just add that there's an injustice.

Emily:

Where your rage is grounded like a real unfairness happened to you

Emily:

and so rage makes perfect sense.

Emily:

And also the process of trying to bring a child into the world it sounds

Emily:

like was this major cause of emotional separation between you and the person

Emily:

you picked to spend your life with.

Emily:

So I hear isolation in that, like buried underneath the rage at the fear is

Emily:

the despair of like an infant who has been crying and their adult caregiver

Emily:

hasn't come and hasn't come, and their attachment object isn't there.

Emily:

And so they switch from the panic of, I need some help, I need some

Emily:

help, I need some help to, no one is ever gonna come to help me.

Emily:

Are you

Caite:

gonna bill me for this therapy session?

Emily:

Because just an educator,

Caite:

I feel like I'm gonna get a bill in the mail for like $700 or something.

Caite:

Like shit.

Caite:

Should have, should have asked if this was covered by insurance.

Emily:

Someday I'm gonna finish writing this book and it'll only be like 20 bucks.

Caite:

Cool.

Caite:

Cool.

Caite:

And yes, that was me just totally deflecting.

Caite:

Um,

Emily:

no I get it.

Emily:

I make jokes too.

Emily:

My therapist has this like polite laugh that she does when I make

Emily:

a joke about something cuz she knows when I make the jokes.

Emily:

It's because uh, something has gotten really close to the hardest part.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

That's probably the thing that people ought to know about those of us who

Caite:

make jokes about things is right.

Caite:

The harder we're joking about it, the closer you are to

Caite:

whatever the actual problem is.

Caite:

Right.

Caite:

Um, yeah, I feel like this whole process of becoming apparent for me

Caite:

changed my fundamental understanding of my own personality so much and I

Caite:

just haven't had time to catch up.

Caite:

And it's, wow.

Caite:

It's a whole thing.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

It's a whole thing.

Caite:

We're just gonna leave it there.

Emily:

All of that.

Emily:

And it, it does like, it takes so much time.

Emily:

And the irony is that you are now much busier, caring for others than you

Emily:

ever have been before, at the same time that you need to be taking more time

Emily:

to reflect and understand yourself.

Caite:

I will say that my, my big driver for starting the podcast

Caite:

was a, a fear of my own mortality.

Caite:

And my big drive for having you on was to thank you for giving us

Caite:

concrete steps to deal with this shit.

Caite:

Because being put into this and then being told to, to go to therapy, which

Caite:

I finally quit with the blessing of my therapist because I logically, I've

Caite:

therapy my way through everything, but my, my body has not, yeah.

Caite:

Caught up.

Caite:

And then, You know, take a bubble bath and light some candles and meditate.

Caite:

And why are you still angry?

Caite:

You took a bubble bath.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Like,

Emily:

cool.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

You gotta, do you, do you have skills in place for what you do

Emily:

when to process the rage each day?

Caite:

No.

Caite:

Okay.

Caite:

No, but I'm working on it.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

And that's, that's what I can do.

Emily:

It's a huge step that you recognize that you have rage, you

Emily:

know what it feels like in your body.

Emily:

Like you can recognize, oh, here's how I know that rage is the thing

Emily:

that's happening right now, as opposed to fear or as opposed to loneliness.

Emily:

Uh, that's a great first step.

Emily:

The next thing is understanding what pushes you into that emotional space

Emily:

and how you pull yourself or how someone can help pull you out of that space.

Emily:

Those are, those are sort of the three pieces of it.

Emily:

What does it feel like when I'm there?

Emily:

How, what got me into here and how do I get out?

Emily:

That's how you, you know, your feelings are tunnels.

Caite:

You have

Emily:

to go all the way through the darkness to get to the light at the end.

Emily:

And can you hear my cat on the

Caite:

desk?

Caite:

Yes.

Caite:

Speaking of cats and looking at the cat, who started this whole problem last night?

Caite:

Oh, not the whole problem.

Emily:

Turning at my camera.

Emily:

You can see her?

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Oh

Caite:

yeah.

Caite:

Yellow cats, they're always a problem.

Caite:

Um, when you think you're on top of the tunnel, just kinda like having a stroll

Caite:

and then it collapses underneath you and you're just right back in the middle.

Caite:

Because what I find for myself is that I'll be going along, just everything is

Caite:

fine and, you know, everything is fine.

Caite:

And then last night, like the cat clawed me in the face.

Caite:

It's not his fault.

Caite:

He's a cat, he's dumb, you know, whatever.

Caite:

But I am uncontrollably sobbing.

Caite:

Like, you know, my entire family has just been run over by a garbage

Caite:

truck or something, you know, like I am just losing my mind.

Caite:

Over the cat scratching my face, which whatever.

Caite:

So how do we, how do we deal with that?

Emily:

Because that's, yeah,

Caite:

but the cry, the crying was completing

Emily:

the stress

Caite:

response cycle, right?

Caite:

Am I getting it right here?

Caite:

Yes.

Caite:

Was the crying, the crying

Emily:

was good for you?

Emily:

The crying, when you're crying to that intensity from something

Emily:

that in and of itself is not that serious, you know that you're not

Emily:

actually crying about the cat, right?

Emily:

You're crying just because you have all of this rage inside you and it wants to

Emily:

get out and it's like the cat created this tiny little channel for the rage to come

Emily:

out of, and it just like opened the little space for the rage to start coming out.

Emily:

It's not that it's actually rage about the cat, it's just the generic

Emily:

rage that you have inside you that so many of us have inside us.

Emily:

Especially like if, as raised as girls, were taught that anger is.

Emily:

Not allowed.

Emily:

You don't even have any anger and by the time you notice and acknowledge that you

Emily:

do have rage, you've got this back stock.

Emily:

Like your body is just like very politely.

Emily:

Hang on.

Emily:

She pushed a button.

Emily:

At least you didn't hit the mute button.

Emily:

Oh my god, cat, can I just get up and like give her some

Emily:

food because Yeah, absolutely.

Emily:

I'll be

Caite:

right back.

Caite:

I'm sorry.

Caite:

I know what cats are like.

Caite:

Sorry about that.

Caite:

Okay.

Caite:

No, absolutely.

Emily:

So the gift of our amazing human brains is they will just

Emily:

like hold on to our incomplete stress responses indefinitely.

Emily:

So a lot of us are walking around with just decades of incomplete stress

Emily:

response cycles that are no longer differentiated into like, oh, this is a

Emily:

fear response, this is an anger response.

Emily:

It's just stress.

Emily:

It's just this big glob of undifferentiated negative

Emily:

emotion in our bodies.

Emily:

Um, For a lot of people, those will set up camp in a particular organ system.

Emily:

For me, it's musculoskeletal and it shows up as lower back pain.

Emily:

Felia, it's generally her digestive system or her reproductive system.

Emily:

So it shows up in people's bodies in different ways, but let our bodies will

Emily:

just hold onto it for us for a really long time until we gradually learn the skill

Emily:

of completing stress response cycles, purging that stuff from our bodies so

Emily:

that our body can recalibrate itself.

Emily:

And it actually really does help to have a supportive other person

Emily:

there with us when we need it.

Emily:

So if, if I were the one giving advice and I'm not, I don't wanna

Emily:

really do advice, I'm not good at it.

Emily:

Um, cuz like I can't project myself into other people's lives very accurately.

Emily:

I don't have kids, I don't know.

Emily:

But, uh, a combination of the people you are already really close

Emily:

friends with who can stay calm with you while you are in distress.

Emily:

And maybe not a talk therapist, but um, a somatic sensory therapist, like somatic

Emily:

experiencing or somato sensory therapy where your body is actively involved.

Emily:

Doesn't even have to be therapy.

Emily:

It can just be yoga.

Emily:

Yoga, and basically moving your body or more evidence-based treatments

Emily:

for depression, for, uh, moderate depression than any medication.

Emily:

How you feeling?

Emily:

Be we lose here?

Emily:

Are we all just waiting for somebody else to something?

Emily:

I, I

Caite:

think, I think we're all just having a pause.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

We were just having a moment.

Caite:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Emily:

So you think it's gonna be about relationships?

Emily:

You think it's gonna be about like, you know, how to like,

Emily:

wear sexy underwear, whatever.

Emily:

No, it's about how to like, cope with the fact that our bodies

Emily:

are full of difficult feelings.

Emily:

Being a human is incredibly difficult.

Emily:

We both desperately need to be connected with each other and we

Emily:

both desperately need to be separated from each other and all of that.

Emily:

Like, that is not a contradiction.

Emily:

We ju we need to oscillate, we need the freedom to move

Emily:

through all of these cycles.

Emily:

Mm-hmm.

Emily:

Could you

Caite:

not just make the next book about buying sexy underwear and taking

Caite:

bubble baths so we can stop having all these feelings and dealing with all this

Caite:

shit just like I'm gonna the underwear?

Emily:

It's just about the underwear.

Emily:

It has nothing to do with how you feel about your body.

Caite:

Yeah, that's right.

Caite:

Oh my God.

Caite:

She wants us to do yoga and like therapy and embrace our feelings and get,

Emily:

I don't want you to, here's how I feel about yoga, fucking yoga.

Emily:

Like it's so goddamn good for you.

Emily:

Like it's, it's just, it's, it's just so good.

Emily:

It's that pesky

Caite:

science, right?

Caite:

It's the science challenge.

Caite:

Yeah.

Emily:

Stupid evidence-based interventions.

Emily:

Stupid science.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Yeah.

Caite:

Oh god.

Caite:

Going from

Emily:

walks outside.

Emily:

Yeah.

Caite:

So I wanna, I wanna talk about the science because the one thing you

Caite:

talk about a lot in cu as you are, is that a lot of things are normal.

Caite:

Like there's no, like genitals don't have to look a certain way.

Caite:

Sex is not the same for anyone, all that kind of stuff.

Caite:

Yes.

Caite:

And yet, the one thing you bring up a lot about not being normal

Caite:

is that sex should not be painful.

Caite:

Right.

Caite:

And yet, so often after people have children, especially, What medical

Caite:

providers sometimes tell us, or other people will tell us, or media will tell

Caite:

us, is that a certain amount of pain is normal and you just have to deal with it

Caite:

or get through it, or you're not relaxed enough or, you know, the blame comes

Caite:

back on the person who brought children.

Caite:

Exactly.

Caite:

Like we started off with a bit of lube and a glass of wine and it'll be fine.

Caite:

So talk to us about the fact that pain is not normal.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Because I don't think we should

Emily:

accept that.

Emily:

It's, it's one of the very, very, uh, I actually have a definition of

Emily:

normal that is the main one I use now.

Emily:

Are you ready?

Emily:

Normal sex is sex between peers or among peers where everyone

Emily:

involved is glad to be there.

Emily:

Free to leave with no unwanted consequences, no physical consequences,

Emily:

and also no emotional consequences.

Emily:

No emotional blackmail, no.

Emily:

Oh, come on, no guilt.

Emily:

Free to leave with no unwanted consequences.

Emily:

And there's no unwanted pain if it's wanted.

Emily:

Pain, if you are having closed pins attached to your nipples and

Emily:

you love it, if you're having your hair pulled and you love it, great.

Emily:

Do you?

Emily:

But if you're experiencing pain and you don't want it, that is

Emily:

outside my definition of normal sex.

Emily:

Uh, there are a wide variety of effective evidence-based interventions

Emily:

for the many different types of pain people can experience with sex.

Emily:

Uh, many of them are offered by pelvic floor physical therapists,

Emily:

uh, which is a great starting point.

Emily:

Assume if you're having genital pain in particular.

Emily:

Especially if it's after you've given birth or had some other, like major

Emily:

trauma to your genitals that, uh, physical therapy is your first line of

Emily:

intervention and then you go from there.

Emily:

Mm-hmm.

Emily:

But it's the idea that it's normal for sex to hurt, especially if you were

Emily:

raised with an, it's a girl kind of body.

Emily:

You were taught that it's your punishment to bear pain and suffering.

Emily:

We just assume that some degree of discomfort is normal.

Emily:

And when I was teaching, I had a student, uh, with a mobility disability.

Emily:

Uh, she had chronic inhibitory tone of her pelvic floor muscle, which is often,

Emily:

uh, described with the word vaginismus.

Emily:

Um, and.

Emily:

She was told by her doctors that there was no treatment for it.

Emily:

And I don't know if there's something about her condition

Emily:

that made her vaginismus.

Emily:

Not at all treatable, but I feel very confident that she, if, if she were a 19

Emily:

year old boy with genital pain who, uh, couldn't have sex because of the pain,

Emily:

uh, that she would not have been dismissed and told it was just untreatable.

Emily:

Yeah, prob pretty likely it's the patriarchy is the reason

Emily:

why we believe pain is normal.

Emily:

And I'm here to, I'm, I'm not here for the patriarchy.

Emily:

I'm here for us to live in a world where women are not taught that their bodies

Emily:

are the enemy and a source of suffering, but instead our bodies are a gift and

Emily:

are a potential source of great pleasure.

Emily:

All the pleasure that we choose to participate in

Emily:

that our body can experience.

Caite:

Yes.

Caite:

Thank you.

Caite:

And that's the message we need Circling.

Caite:

Yes.

Caite:

Circling back to the closed pins.

Caite:

Um, a lot of us, we've now, I'm curious in more conservative rural areas, so

Caite:

how, oh, that's where you're going.

Caite:

I thought you were gonna cross your husband's boundary.

Caite:

No, no.

Caite:

Um, how do we balance being sex positive and being advocates not only for our

Caite:

own children, but for, I don't wanna say for other people's children, cuz

Caite:

that sounds a lot like, I'm gonna throw condoms at your kid, no matter

Caite:

what your personal beliefs are.

Caite:

Um,

Emily:

do we, some person believes or not that you should condom at their kid, you

Emily:

should, uh, just hide the pockets away with the kids' consent in their backpack.

Emily:

Yeah.

Caite:

Sounds good.

Caite:

That's the solution.

Caite:

So how do we advocate for things like sex ed that's actually useful, um, without.

Caite:

Becoming knows people.

Caite:

Yeah.

Emily:

So I mean, here's my definition.

Emily:

H of sex positives have those people.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

So sex positivity for me just means that everybody gets to choose how and when

Emily:

they are touched and everybody gets to choose how they feel about their own body.

Emily:

Just it's, you know, Bo autonomy is what sex positivity is.

Emily:

It is not even a little bit radical.

Emily:

It is not saying that all sex is positive, that is demonstrably obviously untrue.

Emily:

It's saying that everybody should get to choose.

Emily:

Everybody deserves the information they need to make choices for themselves.

Emily:

And I think advocating for that is not complicated, except that a lot of people

Emily:

disagree that everybody should be free to choose how and when they're touched.

Caite:

Right.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

I'm wondering too, how, and let's talk about what it means to have

Emily:

sex education that is useful.

Emily:

Like, what is sex education for young people supposed to do?

Emily:

Uh, let's say prevent unintended or unwanted pregnancies,

Emily:

prevent the spread of STIs.

Emily:

Those are two pretty good goals, right?

Emily:

Um, if you wanted to, we could even add the goal.

Emily:

This is one of my favorite pieces of jargon.

Emily:

Delay sexual debut.

Emily:

For some people, that's an important outcome.

Emily:

Uh, increasing the age at which people have their first sexual experiences.

Emily:

If you wanna do any of those three things you wanna give people as

Emily:

comprehensive a sex education as you can get, talking about all the

Emily:

various forms of contraception, all the various sexual identities, and gender

Emily:

identities and sexual orientations.

Emily:

And you wanna talk about communication skills.

Emily:

You wanna do, uh, values exercises where people think

Emily:

about what's important to them.

Emily:

Communication exercises where we talk about who is allowed to say yes

Emily:

and no to what, what pleasure means.

Emily:

Teach people what pleasure feels like in their own body so they can recognize it.

Emily:

If someone ever says to them, does that feel good?

Emily:

That's what useful sex education does.

Emily:

And there are absolute, like, I, I think most people would be

Emily:

like, yes, let's prevent STIs.

Emily:

Let's prevent unwanted pregnancies.

Emily:

Uh, and, but.

Emily:

Let's not do it by giving people any information.

Emily:

Let's just rely on them making the choices that we would want them to make

Emily:

without giving them any of the tools they need to make those decisions.

Emily:

I have a lot of big opinions about this, obviously.

Emily:

Well, I'll say just, I mean, just cause it's like what I do for a living.

Emily:

But the thing is, we know exactly how to achieve these goals of reducing

Emily:

pregnancies when they're not wanted.

Emily:

We know how to prevent STIs.

Emily:

We have known for 50 years.

Emily:

We do not lack the knowledge.

Emily:

We lack the political will.

Emily:

So what we need is really for moderate people who are like, I

Emily:

would prefer that my child not get pregnant before they really want to.

Emily:

And I would prefer that my child not have a sexually transmitted infection

Emily:

to be like, actually it's completely fine with me if you talk about gay

Emily:

kids and, and like gay people in history and trans people in history.

Emily:

Because if that's what it takes to help my kid feel comfortable with

Emily:

themselves and able to say no to the things that they do not want, and yes

Emily:

to the things that are right for them because I'm raising my child to be

Emily:

aware of their own personal values to protect and defend their own values.

Emily:

And I trust that given the right information, they're gonna make a

Emily:

values aligned choice for themselves when it comes to sexuality,

Emily:

pleasure, and reproduction.

Caite:

I feel like too, one of the things we miss so much with sex ed

Caite:

is that we don't teach kids jack shit about how to get pregnant when it is an

Caite:

appropriate thing for them to be doing.

Caite:

You know, I mean, I'm of an age where our sex ed was literally, you know,

Caite:

don't touch boys, you'll get pregnant.

Caite:

Don't look at boys, you'll get pregnant.

Caite:

Here's some overhead slides of terrifying, terrifying things Yeah.

Caite:

That you will catch if you touch boys and then, you know, to go to

Caite:

the fertility clinic and to realize that even, you know, I was lucky

Caite:

enough to get more comprehensive sex ed in high school with, uh, sex ed.

Caite:

That actually meant something.

Caite:

How much I still didn't know about how babies are made.

Caite:

I mean, I know how babies are made.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

But it's a fucking miracle that anybody is ever actually created.

Caite:

Seriously.

Emily:

And like it's the, and the thing is like, like you were

Emily:

saying, some people get pregnant.

Emily:

Literally the first time they have p and l vaginal intercourse

Emily:

with ejaculation into a vagina.

Emily:

Like it just happens the way they scare you about, and for other

Emily:

people it takes years of struggle.

Caite:

Well, no, I know when I got to the clinic and we were talking about it, one

Caite:

of the clinicians was totally without, um, violating privacy, was telling me about

Caite:

a couple who came in who had such a poor understanding of how reproduction works,

Caite:

that the husband had been ejaculating on his wife's stomach, not understanding

Caite:

that that would not ever get her pregnant.

Caite:

And this had been going on long enough that they got referred

Caite:

to the fertility clinic, which generally takes at least a year.

Caite:

So this poor couple had just thought that they were unable to conceive a

Caite:

baby, had gone through all this testing, had gone through all this stress.

Caite:

Wow.

Caite:

Because of shit drastically bad education and it just infuriates me.

Caite:

You know?

Caite:

I mean, this process is bad enough if you actually need it.

Caite:

I can't even imagine do it for that long and then finding

Caite:

out why it wasn't working.

Caite:

I like,

Emily:

I'm trying to imagine what it would be like for each individual in

Emily:

that couple to receive this information and understand how, how, what basic

Emily:

information they were missing.

Emily:

Like I hope they were really enraged at a world that had denied them this very basic

Emily:

information about what human sexuality is.

Emily:

Oh my gosh.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

That a baby.

Emily:

I mean, we live in Iowa.

Emily:

One really specific thing.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

I mean, I can only imagine what the rest of their education about

Caite:

sexuality had been like if that's, you know, and even if you are really

Caite:

conservative, I feel like we owe our kids more information than that.

Caite:

You know?

Caite:

I mean it, yeah,

Emily:

yeah.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

I wonder though, how really conservative parents would feel like if their own

Emily:

children finally got married and wanted to have kids, and they found out that their

Emily:

kids did not know about putting a penis inside a vagina and ejaculating there.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Like how, like where would they think, oh, here is the place where

Emily:

they should have learned about it.

Emily:

Like, should they have said those words out loud to their

Emily:

kids before they got married?

Emily:

Should their religious leader have said it?

Emily:

Should it have happened in a high school?

Emily:

Like where were they supposed to get that information?

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Ugh.

Caite:

Anyway, feelings from your rage now.

Emily:

All right.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

So I feel like a little could every day.

Emily:

Yeah, that's right.

Emily:

I feel

Caite:

like we could probably talk for like another hour,

Caite:

but I wanna be sensitive to the time that you have for us.

Caite:

So you've already given us us a little hint.

Caite:

I your husband, that we wouldn't talk for a full two hours.

Caite:

Sorry.

Caite:

Um, so can you give us any other hints about what the book

Caite:

is about that you're working

Emily:

on now?

Emily:

Uh, actually it is a book about, uh, sustaining a sexual connection

Emily:

in a long-term relationship.

Emily:

Wow.

Emily:

That which is why I spent so much time talking about rage.

Caite:

Do we have rage in our long-term

Emily:

relationships?

Emily:

I wonder?

Emily:

Yeah, there's a phenomenon known as normal marital hatred.

Emily:

I think the phrase is coined by Terrence Real.

Emily:

Wow.

Emily:

Which has become really important because like when you look at the internet, what

Emily:

you see is men and women complaining about their husbands and wives.

Emily:

And the book is inclusive of people, of every gender identity in every

Emily:

combination of genders in a relationship.

Emily:

And I don't just mean monogamous relationships, but straight

Emily:

married, monogamous people.

Emily:

Uh, the way they talk about their spouses on the internet is with,

Emily:

uh, infuriated rage and hatred.

Emily:

So I'm trying to like, help people in that position understand what

Emily:

their rage is actually about.

Emily:

It's about the patriarchy.

Emily:

Um, and hint, hint, how to disentangle it from their erotic connection so

Emily:

that they can stay connected with each other even when difficult

Emily:

things have to be moved through.

Caite:

Mm-hmm.

Caite:

So, so they may actually want to, you know, go to a party sometimes,

Emily:

right.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

And if you don't like going to the parties, no wonder you don't wanna go.

Emily:

Yeah.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Some of the parties suck.

Caite:

Yes.

Caite:

Emily?

Caite:

I will say true story.

Caite:

My husband came home the other day to find me reading a book that is

Caite:

No shit, titled How Not To Hate Your Husband After Having Kids.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

And I guess maybe my explanation that I don't hate him nearly as much as I'd

Caite:

hate anybody else in this circumstance.

Caite:

Um, was that somewhat helpful?

Caite:

You know, no, I don't think he, I think we've been together long enough

Caite:

that he understood what I meant, but I don't think it was quite as, um,

Caite:

comforting as he would've hoped for.

Caite:

But I mean, the circumstances that we live in, I'd hate anybody.

Caite:

Way more than I hate my husband.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

You know, I love you dear.

Caite:

He listens to the show.

Emily:

So I have to, as woman on the spectrum, I can say that my

Emily:

experience of normal marital hatred is not the same as other people's.

Emily:

Like, I didn't understand it at first, and then I thought about the times that

Emily:

my husband used to, uh, leave trash, like used food wrappers in the sink.

Emily:

Oh my God.

Emily:

Um, he is also neurodivergent, he's adhd and he, he would put the food wrappers

Emily:

there with the plan of rinsing them off before he put them in the trash.

Emily:

Cause he didn't want the trash to smell fair enough.

Emily:

But he would, you know, get distracted because a d d and he

Emily:

would leave them in the sink.

Emily:

Um, and I, I used this in the book as an example of my experience of normal aal

Emily:

hatred of the kind of rising rage I would feel at finding dirty trash in the sink.

Emily:

Uh, and I told him I was gonna put that story in the book and he stopped doing it.

Emily:

So I took it outta the book.

Caite:

So you're saying what we have to do is start writing

Caite:

books about the, about shit

Emily:

that people do.

Emily:

Tell your partner.

Emily:

You're gonna tell, you know, hundreds of thousands of

Emily:

people about this thing you do.

Emily:

That is mildly annoying.

Caite:

Huh.

Caite:

And isn't that what the cussing and disgusting segment is for Katie?

Caite:

Yes.

Emily:

Yeah, we have a podcast for that.

Emily:

There you go.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

So anyway, so it's a, it's, it's how to stay erotically connected,

Emily:

which necessarily means how to stay admiring and trusting of your partner.

Caite:

I mean, there's definitely some times that like some.

Caite:

Good, angry, hate sex can be a good thing, but I don't really

Caite:

wanna spend like the next 40 years.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

There, yeah.

Emily:

Kind of most of the reason why I have a big section on anger is to be like, look,

Emily:

anger is one space, less is another one.

Emily:

There's almost no overlap between hating someone and wanting to have sex with

Emily:

them because hating them is wanting to destroy them because they're in your way.

Emily:

And like, I don't need to, like, we all get that.

Emily:

You should not use sex as a weapon to destroy another person.

Emily:

Right?

Emily:

Like, we all get that.

Emily:

We all know that.

Emily:

Like it can be fun to play a game with it, but like literally we all know, right?

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

On the regular, no, no, not, not a good idea.

Caite:

I think Emily, it just occurred to me that angry, like angry after fight sex

Caite:

is like intentional pain during sex that like if it's with someone you like,

Caite:

And it's something you kind of enjoy.

Caite:

Go for it.

Caite:

But yeah, you don't generally have sex with people you actively

Emily:

hate.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

And make up sex to repair.

Emily:

Damage to a connection is a really different experience from like I

Emily:

actively right now Wanna destroy you.

Emily:

Yeah.

Caite:

Okay.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Well,

Emily:

sorry, I could talk about it forever cuz I'm so deep in it now.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

No, we'll we'll buy the book.

Caite:

We're Yeah, we're on it.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

So

Emily:

Emily, you're Mike has to move my microphone around.

Emily:

I hope it has not affected the sound too much.

Emily:

She's just like right here.

Emily:

She's still Robin.

Emily:

Wanting all the attention.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Oh my gosh.

Emily:

Oh, hi.

Emily:

So I

Caite:

added one super serious question here at the end.

Caite:

Okay.

Caite:

Your hair is currently blue.

Caite:

The last picture I saw of your sister, I think her hair was purple.

Caite:

Purple.

Caite:

Yep.

Caite:

How often do you guys accidentally dye your hair the same color?

Caite:

Are you like pretty consistent with blue and purple?

Emily:

So we do it ourselves.

Emily:

So there have been times when you know, you, like in order to get blue hair you

Emily:

actually have to put some purple in there to tone down the yellow that my cat, that

Emily:

uh, the yellow that still is in your hair.

Emily:

When I, even if I bleach my hair twice, there's still a lot of yellow left.

Emily:

Um, I have to add purple to the color in order to like tone down that yellow.

Emily:

Otherwise it looks green and I have missed the balance.

Emily:

And sometimes my hair has showed up as like way too purple.

Emily:

And then we go to events and people really believe I'm Amelia

Emily:

because my hair looks so purple.

Emily:

That has happened.

Caite:

That's just a whole level of twinning.

Caite:

I hadn't considered that you could color theory blue and still

Caite:

be mistaken for the other one.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Well, uh, there's a video of me, Ofelia and me in the UK in 2019.

Emily:

That is an example of how I went too hard on the purple in

Emily:

order to balance out the yellow.

Emily:

And my hair ended up looking just totally purple.

Emily:

I kept talking about how Amelia's one with the purple hair and I have the blue hair,

Emily:

and people were looking at me like, Hmm,

Caite:

okay, maybe she's colorblind.

Caite:

We shouldn't say anything about it.

Caite:

Yeah, yeah.

Caite:

It'll be awkward.

Caite:

Um, so we ask all of our guests, if you were going to dominate a

Caite:

category at the county fair and you can make one up, or, you know, pick

Caite:

from a standard, what would it be?

Caite:

And I love that your cat's just like, I am going to lift my tail

Caite:

and show you my butt any second.

Caite:

Yeah, she's, she's, she's very sweet.

Caite:

Oh,

Emily:

oh, please don't tear this.

Emily:

Oh, please.

Emily:

Oh, the claws.

Emily:

I'm sorry.

Emily:

I wanna answer the question.

Emily:

Maybe my category is Cat Wrangler.

Emily:

Uh, so.

Emily:

Can this be a skill?

Emily:

I don't actually have, but I could wish I had.

Emily:

Absolutely.

Emily:

For sure.

Emily:

I wish I could do education.

Emily:

That sounded like leading an auction.

Emily:

Oh, if there were competition for best sex educator.

Emily:

That sounds like an auctioneer.

Caite:

I like that.

Caite:

I would pay good money for that.

Caite:

I'm sure we could just, there's a way.

Caite:

I'm sure there's a way in, in audio editing to make that happen.

Caite:

You know, just really like speed up what you've talked about and,

Caite:

uh, kind of overlap it a little.

Caite:

I don't know anything about editing.

Caite:

That's Katie's job, but I feel like that's possible.

Caite:

We'll do a, do a separate track.

Caite:

Katie, I think easier to hire an auctioneer to.

Caite:

There you

Emily:

go.

Emily:

And just get them to say a lot of general words.

Emily:

Give, give them a script.

Caite:

Yes.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Here are the things I want you to talk about.

Caite:

That is a very, uh, I, I know a couple of auctioneers.

Caite:

I'm not sure if any of them would take me up on that offer, but I'll, I'll, uh, I'll

Emily:

ask.

Caite:

You gimme a script and I'll see if I can get one of them to do it for me.

Emily:

It's wonder wondering, it's just how that would go.

Emily:

Gonna dwell in my head.

Emily:

That's fine.

Emily:

It doesn't have to happen.

Emily:

In reality it doesn't.

Emily:

Okay.

Caite:

It's really great.

Caite:

It's just trying to make things happen for you.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

So we'll go ahead and move into our cussing and discussing category.

Caite:

We have registered for an online platform where listeners can leave

Caite:

their cussing and discussing entries for us and we'll play them on the show.

Caite:

So go to the show notes for either the speak pipe or the email if

Caite:

you just want to email it to us and we'll read it out for you.

Caite:

Katie, what are you cussing and discussing this week?

Caite:

I went through a couple different ones, but I'm gonna stick with the

Caite:

one I started with, which is stores rearranging, just fucking stop.

Caite:

Our Walmart has completely changed their floor plan twice

Caite:

in the last four years, and I.

Caite:

No, at this point that their goal is entirely to get customers to never

Caite:

actually set foot in the store again.

Caite:

They want everything done for curbside pickup, which is fine for people

Caite:

or get so lost that they buy more stuff while they're looking around.

Caite:

Oh my God.

Caite:

I just don't do it.

Caite:

I come to Walmart to just buy my dish detergent and not talk to anyone, or

Caite:

look at anything or think about anything.

Caite:

I don't come here to be personally challenged, you know?

Caite:

I just leave it alone.

Caite:

Leave it alone.

Caite:

That's it.

Caite:

That's basically like my life motto at this point for everyone and

Caite:

everything is just leave it alone.

Caite:

Just, yeah, don't touch it.

Caite:

Stop.

Caite:

Anyway.

Caite:

Emily, what would you like to discuss and discuss this week?

Emily:

Uh, I think it's probably too dark for me to talk

Caite:

about.

Caite:

No, I kind of wanna hear it now.

Caite:

I mean, we've talked about putting clothes on.

Caite:

We have no boundaries at this point, so, okay,

Emily:

so we've gone for the past several years, the number of, uh,

Emily:

proposed legislation being presented in state legislatures, uh, that is

Emily:

anti-trans, has risen every year.

Emily:

The number that is passed has risen every year.

Emily:

And here's the thing, it is not even that these people are seriously

Emily:

anti-trans or want to quote, eradicate transgenderism, which ps what is that?

Emily:

How do you eradicate transgenderism without eradicating all the trans

Emily:

people and all the people who love them?

Emily:

You don't.

Emily:

You have to eradicate the people and the people who love them and.

Emily:

It's such a small population, it's only like 1% of the population that's trans.

Emily:

Most people who buy into these anti-trans bills will never know a trans person.

Emily:

And it's really easy to hate and perpetrate violence or legislate

Emily:

against people you will never know.

Emily:

And it's not, even though the people who are proposing legislation

Emily:

actually care that much about trans people, they're using it as a wedge

Emily:

issue in order to increase autocracy and fascism in the United States.

Emily:

Cause you need a, them and trans people are a really good them because they

Emily:

violate gender norms that a lot of people think are like super duper important.

Emily:

And there's a very small number of them.

Emily:

So you'll never actually meet them and never have to encounter the people to

Emily:

whom you're perpetrating so much harm in trying to legislate out of existence.

Emily:

Was that too dark?

Caite:

Not at all.

Caite:

Uh, no.

Caite:

That that's perfect.

Caite:

That's what I'm enraged

Emily:

about.

Emily:

Yeah, we have enough.

Emily:

And you're not even actually angry about trans people.

Emily:

You're just trying to have more power and using violence and exclusion of

Emily:

trans people as a way to get there.

Emily:

Congrat, fucking Ians, you are like the definition of fascist in the 21st century.

Caite:

Oh,

Emily:

you can

Caite:

cut any of that that you want to.

Caite:

No, no whole episode.

Caite:

I know.

Caite:

It's all episode.

Caite:

It's all staying in.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

We have a whole episode coming up where we interviewed my personal,

Caite:

not my personal, our family physician, and got her started on the

Caite:

anti-abortion bills, which, oh my God.

Caite:

I think the anti-trans bill is just a slightly easier way to

Caite:

hate people than the abortion bill because they're ideologically

Emily:

like they're both misogyny.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

But nice white ladies occasionally get abortions, which is a little harder

Caite:

to argue against than the trans.

Emily:

So, Right?

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

You might actually meet somebody who needed an abortion, you know, because

Emily:

they were 19 months into a pregnancy and it turned out it wasn't viable.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Apart from all the times of like, I cannot afford to have a child, or,

Emily:

oh, I was, don't get me started.

Emily:

Oh my gosh.

Emily:

Maybe if we had comprehensive sex ed, it's a bad time.

Emily:

This would not happen.

Emily:

Like I felt like we were really making progress there for a minute, and now we

Emily:

are like, I mean, this is the way it goes.

Emily:

You move forward, you go back a little, you move forward, you go back a little.

Emily:

This is a very dark time for women's equality in the world, and I just

Emily:

hope people are sort of aware that that's happening and not minimizing

Emily:

what this moment actually is.

Emily:

Because the future of, I'm not exaggerating, democracy on Earth is being

Emily:

challenged right now, and you can see it in the way women and non-binary and

Emily:

trans people are treated onto the law.

Caite:

Oh, I thought you were just gonna go for the bikini industrial complex.

Caite:

But no,

Emily:

just, I mean, the thing is like, that's a big deal too.

Emily:

Don't get me started on fucking Ozempic.

Emily:

Don't get me started because I could, I could go on just as

Emily:

much about the bikini industrial complex, but that's not like new.

Emily:

That's just forever.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

This is this, there's like a whole new batch of hate being doled out

Emily:

in legislatures across the nation.

Emily:

Uh, and I, I just need people who are like moderate to recognize.

Emily:

I mean, there's the whole Holocaust thing.

Emily:

First they came for this group and I did not say anything, and

Emily:

then they came for these people.

Emily:

Like they're coming.

Emily:

They're coming for us.

Emily:

They have already come.

Emily:

For most of the people I care most about y'all, y'all.

Emily:

Y'all please,

Caite:

please vote.

Caite:

Yeah, I'm gonna stop now.

Caite:

So Arlene, what do you have to discuss and discuss to to book in?

Caite:

So I had something else that, I had something else, but I'm

Caite:

gonna add on to what Emily said.

Caite:

And I may not sound as enraged, but it's on the inside with

Caite:

stacked up with all my other rage.

Caite:

Can we also talk about how politicians and adults seem to want to regulate

Caite:

what happens to trans children?

Caite:

Yes.

Caite:

And not let those decisions be left to their parents and to their medical

Caite:

providers, and to those children themselves and the people who love them.

Caite:

Like you said, the people who love them should be able to make the right

Caite:

decisions and the decisions that are timely and the decisions that make sense

Caite:

for them in the stage that they're at.

Caite:

And trying to make decisions for people who are underage is complicated

Caite:

and it shouldn't be legislated.

Caite:

So stop

Emily:

Kids.

Emily:

Yes.

Emily:

I love that the party of small government really wants to be

Emily:

in the doctor's office with us.

Emily:

Yeah, yeah.

Emily:

For lots of different reasons.

Emily:

So many reasons.

Caite:

Yeah.

Caite:

Yeah.

Emily:

Oh, thanks.

Emily:

I feel better.

Emily:

Yeah.

Emily:

Fair.

Emily:

We let,

Caite:

I think we completed some stress response cycles.

Caite:

We had some connection.

Caite:

So thank you so much, Emily, for joining us today and sharing with us

Caite:

and being Katie's therapist and talking to you about so many important topics.

Caite:

So if people want to follow you online, buy your books, any of

Caite:

those types of things, where

Emily:

should they find you?

Emily:

Uh, Emily Do gosky.com has everything, including the eight episode podcast that

Emily:

I made with Pushkin and Madison Wells.

Emily:

Uh, the books are available wherever books are sold.

Emily:

There's also the Burnout Workbook, which was just published in January,

Emily:

and if you're like, I don't need the science, I don't need to understand

Emily:

why, just tell me what to do.

Emily:

The Burnout workbook.

Emily:

Workbook is a, that's the one for you.

Emily:

There you go.

Emily:

I didn't even know

Caite:

that was just skip the peer of you.

Caite:

Just, just, just tell me how to fix it.

Caite:

Yeah, just follow these instructions.

Caite:

Thank you so much.

Caite:

We really appreciate it.

Emily:

My pleasure.

Emily:

Thank you so much for having me.

Emily:

Thank you.

Caite:

Thank you for joining us on Barnyard Language.

Caite:

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Caite:

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Caite:

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Caite:

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Caite:

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Caite:

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Caite:

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Caite:

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Caite:

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Caite:

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Caite:

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About the Podcast

Barnyard Language
Real talk about running farms and raising families.
Real talk about running farms and raising families. Whether your farm is a raised bed in your backyard or 10,000 acres and whether your family is in the planning stages or you've got 12 kids, we're glad you found us!

No sales, no religious conversion, no drama. Just honest talk from two mamas who know what it's like when everyone is telling you to just get all your meals delivered and do all your shopping online, but your internet is too slow and you've got cows to feed.

About your host

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Caithlin Palmer