81 ~ The Distraction Trap: How Story Keeps Us Spinning

Have you ever struggled with allowing yourself to feel your feelings? Are you someone who gets very involved in the "story"? Where the facts get blurred because the story is so loud. Are you willing to feel the fullness of your emotions?  And perhaps let others see you in your tears and snot?

Emotions are the core of our human experience, yet many of us struggle with openly feeling and expressing them. This unique episode dives into vulnerability, raw feelings, and authentic connections. Desiring deeper interactions means embracing our true emotions.

We dive deep into intimacy, vulnerability, and the transformative power of simply feeling your emotions—while looking closely at the narrative and societal expectations around it. 

Join hosts Brenda and Catherine as they explore the power of crying together, sharing personal experiences that illustrate how embracing raw emotions can elevate our connections.

Our conversation revolves around the concept that simply letting our feelings wash over us, rather than becoming entangled in the stories we often tell ourselves, can facilitate profound transformations in both our emotional wellbeing and our relationships. 

Episode Highlights:
• Exploration of societal conditioning around emotions 
• Powerful discussion on the process of crying together 
• Stories of vulnerability leading to deeper connections 
• The tension between narrative and raw feeling 
• Insight into navigating emotions without storytelling 
• Closing reflections emphasizing authenticity in relationships 

Thank you for joining us on this journey today. We want to hear how our conversations resonate with you! Share your insights with us on Instagram at Desire as Medicine Podcast.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Desire and Connection
• 8:29 Catherine and Brenda's Journey of Desire
• 41:57 The Role of Vulnerability in Connection
• 43:19 Closing Thoughts and Invitations from Hosts
• 1:14:03 The Process of Allowing Emotions to Surface
• 2:00:00 Navigating Stories versus Raw Feelings

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome to Desire is Medicine. We are two very different women living a life led by desire.

Speaker 2: 0:14

Inviting you into our world. I'm Brenda. I'm a devoted practitioner to being my fully expressed true self in my daily life, motherhood relationships and my business Desire has taken me on quite a ride and every day I practice listening to and following the voice within. I'm a middle school teacher turned coach and guide of the feminine.

Speaker 1: 0:36

And I'm Catherine, devoted to living my life as the truest and hopefully the highest version of me. I don't have children, I've never been married. I've spent equal parts of my life in corporate as in some down and low shady spaces. I was the epitome of tired and wired and my path led me to explore desire. I'm a coach, guide, energy worker and a forever student.

Speaker 2: 0:58

Even after decades of inner work, we are humble beginners on the mat, still exploring, always curious. We believe that listening to and following the nudge of desire is a deep spiritual practice that helps us grow.

Speaker 1: 1:12

On the Desires Medicine podcast. We talk to each other, we interview people we know and love about the practice of desire, bringing in a very important piece that is often overlooked being responsible for our desire. So right now, for context, I'm just crying We've hit some tumescence around recording and I muted to blow my nose. The intro today is more of me wanting to show what this looks like in real time. I think I'm going to talk today as a practitioner, even though Brenda and I always talk about like we're always beginners on the mat, and the truth of the matter is that, yes, we are beginners and also we know a lot. We've been practicing for a long time. Today I was talking to a client and around this same thread, that the more practice you have in monitoring your own mind, in coaching yourself, it's less climactic, it's less story in the mind, but we only have access to 5% of our brain, like, really, or maybe a little more, but I know it's not more than 10% by any means. Some days I feel really dumb. I don't know about Brenda, but we've been having this to mess around recording since last week and, like the last time we met and today I don't need to get into the nitty gritty of the logistics as to why that has happened. But last week she had a moment where she just said, you know, maybe it wasn't meant for us to record, and she cried and right now, as we had paused, and I said, okay, we're not going to record right now, maybe we'll just handle logistics.

Speaker 1: 3:26

I was handling logistics and then I had this overwhelming sense of just release and cry. I'm preparing to travel and I've been wanting to get so much done and I've had, actually, brenda and I have both had some health issues come up. Brenda is free and clear. I still have some more testing to do and, in addition to working a lot and I think my life has just felt really compressed and I just needed a release.

Speaker 1: 3:55

But I thought it was so important because, as I cried and I saw Brenda just well, I experienced that I'm seeing her because, well, we record on Riverside so I get to see her gorgeous face, so she just watches me and witnesses me. But she's holding space for me right now and I thought, oh, she can just be there because we're at a level of practice where it passes so quickly but we can forget that it took some work to get here. So I'm going to be in my feels and I'm going to pass it over to Brenda and I'm going to ask you, brenda, like do you remember how hard it would be prior to to get to this spot where you could just cry in front of someone else and like just trust that it was going to pass and not have to go into the whole story behind something, just to be able to feel?

Speaker 2: 4:49

It's such a beautiful, advanced pose to be able to just cry in front of somebody else and not have a whole story about it, and I think you just demonstrated that really well. Just for context, folks, we were talking and Catherine said, actually just hit record, and so I did, and then she burst into tears and I'm like all right, this is what we're doing. We're going to actually show this part, which is really cool. I think it takes a lot of practice to know and to get used to like, oh, I could just cry in front of somebody and not really go into a whole story. I think it's uncomfortable for most of us to cry in front of other people and we have a lot of conditioning in our culture like don't cry, here's a tissue culture, like don't cry, here's a tissue. Even in places I've been in where we're saying it's okay to cry, I've still seen people say it's okay to cry, but here's a tissue, which is really quite a mixed message.

Speaker 1: 5:56

I always need a tissue. I hate feeling stuff I love in those spaces. When they had me a tissue, I don't look at it like not permission to cry. For me it's like permission to breathe, to be able to cry and breathe because, like I'll cry below my nose, cry below my nose, that sort of thing. I you're an advanced practitioner, catherine, I think in a lot of spaces.

Speaker 2: 6:26

When somebody hands someone a tissue, there is an unsaid message of don't cry, or sometimes people receive it as stop crying it. That's not what the message always has to be, so I like to just not do tissues. If I'm in a space with women and somebody's crying, I want to hide the tissues. I just want to be like cry and snot and let it all out Like full permission, full out permission to just let it all out.

Speaker 1: 7:02

I love that I would not be able to do it. My physical body, I would probably go into a like a nervous system response if I couldn't breathe for whatever reason, whether it's like I don't know, traumatic asthmatic experience as a child or something like that. I think there's just some form of body response like I want to be able, like I want to be able to breathe, I want to be able to, like I'd be afraid of passing out, dying. You know the Capricorn.

Speaker 2: 7:31

Wait, you want to breathe, she wants to breathe. Folks, I love a woman who knows what she wants, and this woman wants to breathe. You know there's so many points in this. First of all, you just demonstrated that we really are all different. Giving someone a tissue does not always mean stop crying. Somebody can certainly take it that way, but I think when we're starting with new clients way, but I think with when we're when we're starting with new clients, it is nice to say the permission oh, don't worry, you don't need a tissue. It's kind of like you can just cry and snot. Anyway, are we really talking about snot and tissues?

Speaker 1: 8:17

We are, and I I think that it's true, brenda, that there is a societal attachment to the tissue right, or conditioning attachment to the tissue here. You don't, you know, it's not that bad, you're going to be okay. This too shall pass, this sort of like diminishing the importance of the cry and the feel, and I think that that conditioning, unspokenly and said transfers into emotions are scary and shouldn't be felt, and I think that's what you're pointing to like no, feel everything. Right, there's so much permission and to feel everything, I'm not going to say, feeling shitty feels good because it doesn't. I'm not going to say feeling shitty feels good because it doesn't, you feel shitty, it feels shitty, feels bad. And then it feels good on the other side because it's like a life lived, a life experienced. We're not clamping and controlling anywhere. And what I'm hoping to talk about right now in this segment or today in the cry share, is like even though this is an advanced pose, there are certain steps that get us here right.

Speaker 1: 9:36

So for me, if I'm crying in the early days and you handed me a tissue, it was equivalent to giving me a teddy bear or a soft blanket. It was like what do you need? Like, what support do you need in order for you to be fully expressed here? And I think that's the thing like how can I best support you? Right? And for Brenda, I think the best support is like hey, it's not whatever like be completely human bodily fluids, whatever like be completely human bodily fluids, whatever like no shame, no guilt, just be and just be seen and felt here. And for me it's like what do you need, you know, and I would say you know, other than a tissue?

Speaker 1: 10:18

Usually when I'm falling apart like that, like I want a hug, and the hug usually like just has me, me, oh my God, just even thinking about it just has me melt, you know, and it's almost the sensation, my physical body, if I were to paint it, it's as if somebody is holding up my spine, and in that moment I don't have to hold myself up, I get to just melt in someone else's nervous system and feel cared for and feel held and loved, right, and we don't always get to have that Like I don't have that in this moment. Brenda isn't physically here, she's actually all the way across the US right now she's in California, and yet she was still able, with her presence, to hold me. And so, thank you.

Speaker 2: 11:13

It's really my pleasure. These are my favorite kind of moments in life. I was going to say podcast episodes, but when you said hit record, I was like, all right, here we go and I was thinking about how much I love just doing things on the fly and being unconventional in that way, and this is something that really works for us. Catherine will be like just hit record and she'll start talking and then I'll pick up from there. We work really well that way and it's taken a long time to build that up. We could not have done that in the beginning. But I want to say a few things here in the beginning. But I want to say a few things here. One is when we started this recording, catherine was in tears. She hit mute to blow her nose. I may edit that out so that space might not be in there, but I want to say that about seven or eight minutes into this recording she was already laughing.

Speaker 2: 12:12

Because, folks, when you give yourself permission to be with what is true in the moment and you let yourself have it, you let yourself be seen, you let yourself be held, you let yourself be loved, it shifts, it just shifts, and we talk about that a lot on this podcast and it's funny that we're talking about this right now, because I've been thinking about that. One of the things we talk about a lot on this podcast is story we talk about. You don't have to go into story, you could just feel, and I don't know that we've done an adequate job of really explaining what that means. And at the beginning of this episode, catherine, you demonstrated that in real time. So I want to bring everyone's attention back to that, which was when she was talking about, at the beginning, coaching herself and her brain wants to go on this whole story.

Speaker 2: 13:18

She said we were doing some stuff in the background and that she just felt this wave of emotion come background, and that she just felt this wave of emotion come and she said to you, I'm not going to go into all the logistics of what I'm feeling or what's happening in my brain, I'm just going to feel it right here and let you see it. That is exactly what we mean by not going into story. By not going into story, it's a great example in real time of just letting the emotion come out and come through your body and come out as tears, as snot, as farts, as burps, as shaking whatever it comes out as and not have to tell a whole story about it. Anything you want to add to that?

Speaker 1: 14:08

Catherine, there's two things that come up for me. I'm just going to put it in the back burner. I want to go a little bit. I want us to go into like letting yourself have it. I want to go in there a little bit and I want to go there. I want to go into that a little more in a bit. I want to go there. I want to go into that a little more in a bit. But as far as not going to the story, yes, for me story is like an avalanche.

Speaker 1: 14:32

Not that long ago I don't know if I've told everyone this yet our public forum here I came across a journal that said how can I have more peace right now? And it was talking about anxiety. And I was like, oh crap, I used to have, I used to be anxious. This must be a journal, I don't know. 2003, 2006, 2009, something in that arena, and now we're in 2025. And this version of me does not even remember that.

Speaker 1: 15:07

But if I think back, I remember I was living with a boyfriend, you know, eons ago. I've looked at people before, but I was waking up around nine, maybe seven, in the morning and I remember my eyes would open nine, maybe seven in the morning and I remember my eyes would open and my brain would go and I and go, go, go, go, go, go go. And I was like holy shit, it's intense in this head Like there's a lot going on. For the most part, I just wanted to control so many factors. I wanted so many things to go particular way, control so many factors. I wanted so many things to go a particular way. And when I think back to that time in hindsight I'm like, oh, it was like an avalanche. It's like being somewhere and there's this tiny thought, right, like a little bit of snow, and then there's more snow, more snow, more snow. The next thing, you know, there's like a whole town being wiped out because of an avalanche. And that would be happening in my mind. It would be like one thought, another thought, another thought, another thought.

Speaker 1: 16:15

If I were to go slower, it's sort of like the thoughts are going, going, going, like windshield washers, windshield wipers, and the attempt is or the underlying underneath that level, on the top level is oh, I feel uncomfortable. Then my mind goes in windshield wipers. Just one thought. Next thought, next thought. In actuality, it's like I have a discomfort. I have a thought that's creating a feeling and that feeling is discomfort. And now I don't want to feel that discomfort because I'm so damn afraid of that discomfort, because I don't want to be in that discomfort, because that discomfort is somehow close to death. It feels like I'm dying and I want to control all the little pieces and people in my life.

Speaker 1: 17:06

So, and fast forward I mean we can talk about the middle of this, but fast forward to 2025, recording this podcast. I think we're at the end of the 70s, like in 80s, and I'm able to be in the middle of logistics. Things are going wrong. We're having two messes, we're having some issues while we record and I can feel the wave of tears coming up. And I can feel the wave of tears coming up.

Speaker 1: 17:36

The story is like in the back of my mind, because I recognize that it's sort of like compression, like I needed a release of some kind. I could somewhat feel it on Saturday Brenda had checked in with me, like how are you doing? I was like, oh, I'm in the vortex, which basically means I can, like I'm a true generator, like a workhorse. If I'm doing something, I'm just going going, going, going. I'm not going to really feel until I pause. A previous version of me 20 years ago I don't know if you listeners can relate just kept going to not pause, to not feel that discomfort. Present day, I felt that discomfort and I was like, oh okay, I get to have it, I get to have this release. It's going to feel really shitty in the moment as I'm feeling it, hence tears and climax, but on the other side of that, it's okay, but predominantly because I'm not feeding the avalanche, right?

Speaker 1: 18:38

I specifically said I don't want to go into story, and that's on purpose, because I know that then I'm just sort of like tugging on the pain, or maybe that you could look at it like on the pain, or maybe you could look at it like touching the scab wherever the wound is and going into the story. I could make up a story right now. The story would sort of sound like I have no time or, oh, my goodness, why is this happening to me? Or something like that. Why is this happening to me? Or something like that. Versus, oh, I have a lot on my plate, all by choice, because a life well lived is full, and so it makes sense that sometimes we're going to put a little bit more on our plates and it's a balancing act and it's a seesaw, and we adjust and we learn. But the only way to adjust, learn and go through the feedback loop is to be in it right.

Speaker 2: 19:40

Beautifully explained. This is a great metaphor about an avalanche. The avalanche coming down is like a story and not feeding it. When you were giving the examples of your story, I could feel that part of me, that love story, that just wants to get in there and be like oh, tell me more about the story, or let me tell you about my story, and sometimes. Well, two things I want to say about that. One sometimes we just do that and that's okay. It is nice to notice it and move past it in your life, because then you could just actually be with the feeling. And the other thing is sometimes there are things that do need to be said, Like you can feel your raw emotion and you can feel the actual sensation. Because when we have feelings, we do have sensations in our body and it's good to pay attention to those because your body is speaking to you this morning.

Speaker 2: 20:40

I had a bad dream last night and it really affected my nervous system and I could feel like this tightening in my chest this morning and it told me that I was a little bit unnerved from that and I needed to pay attention to that and give that part of me some love. Now do I want to go into the whole story of it and telling everyone the bad dream. No, I don't, Because I get to choose where I put my attention. And while it is fun to go down the drama path and we get a lot of attention there, I think that's how most women are still relating in the drama and in the story and I'm going to try and say this without a lot of judgment, but it's a low level way to relate in drama. It's a low level way to relate and have friends and have relationships is just talking about the story all the time.

Speaker 1: 21:47

I think that I love how you prefaced it and said you want to go into non-judgment. And I think this is the perfect example, because there was a little bit of judge right Of like the low level relate, and then Brenda's like probably had more thoughts and she's like fuck, you know, or I mean, that's not I'm speaking for her, but I, you can see it. And one of the reasons and here and one of the reasons why this is like low level relate in real time, it's because it's really hard to form connection or to really go deeper. Right, it's like you have story and then it's sort of like fast food empty calories, there's not much left. So we can relate in the story and then we can poke at each other's wounds and then we can feel shitty and then that's it. There's nowhere else to go from there. And Brenda just showed it like beautifully in real time. And then so there we are. We're like, yeah, it's low-level relating. And then we're like, now what? I don't really know where to go from there. But if I'm going to see if I can form a picture because you did such a great job at talking about it, ronda in my head I'm like, okay, we have the story, we have the non-story and what we're talking about is how to be with things without story, right, and then you said permission for full story, which I loved. So we're looking at permission for full story. It sort of looks like we have a story, we're processing it in real time.

Speaker 1: 23:21

I do that a lot because I'm an audibly, I like to alchemize audibly. So tell the story, I'm processing, I'm going through my learnings and then there's some alchemy that happens. The thing we haven't touched on yet is that if I am in my feelings and telling the story, well, now I'm activated because my nervous system is activated and it's very difficult for me to process, learn or alchemize because I'm in fight, flight, freeze or fawn right, I'm activated. I can't see clearly versus. If I'm a non-story and I feel the activation, I feel the feeling come through, I just feel my feelings, then I'm actually tending to my nervous system eruption versus going into the story. So I tend to my nervous system, which allows it's almost like cold water on that activation, on that heat, it's sort of okay, fires out, no emergency, all the sirens and alarms have gone off and they're quiet and now I can go into potentially a story if I still want to, then I could tell my story process it, think about whatever learnings have come up, alchemize, and so I think I don't know if there's a phrase for us, brenda, maybe we can come up with something, but it's sort of like the low level way to relate.

Speaker 1: 24:58

When we have friends and we just talk about story while activated, is that the only thing not much more than the avalanche is really available. Available, like we're only really revving each other up Either my life is shittier than yours, my life is shittier than yours, and we kind of go back and forth and compete, or, yes, there's not. It's very hard to go deep there, which means it's hard to get nourishment, and sisterhood is so nourishing. And so when you say low level relating, we're talking about kind of like fast food, relating where there's another way. Right, we could have like gourmet relation where, okay, so we're advanced practitioners.

Speaker 1: 25:47

So, yes, I could just cry, but let's say it was years ago when that wasn't available. I didn't even have words. The first place I started was like can you just hold me? And I was so bad at receiving support that one of my best friends at the time used to actually hug me from behind because I couldn't have her in front of me, because it would make me like I would cry to the point that I couldn't really handle it, like I would cry to the point that I couldn't really handle it, and so it was softer and gentler for me. It's for her to have. I'm just remember I don't know if it was like a piano, at a bench I can picture her right now hugging me from, like she's standing. I'm sitting. Oh, my goodness, there's so many ways to try to meet yourself where you are, to get in the ring, to attempt to have and to create more sisterhood.

Speaker 2: 26:39

Wow, this is really quite a deep topic, because being seen in your true feelings, in your real emotions, without story, is quite intimate. And I think we really block the intimacy that we say we want hashtag and we block it. I think we block it with story. It's one way to block it with all the details and the story and the hooking of the this and the that and all these crazy details, even if they're not crazy details, I think it's a distraction. It's a distraction from just standing there in presence, in your feelings. It's like being naked in a way, and just feeling and just being. It's intimate, it's intimate, it's powerful, it's really powerful.

Speaker 2: 27:41

And I want to add another option. Like we talked about the avalanche as being a low level way to relate and I spent a lot of time there the new level of sisterhood and we have to do a whole episode on sisterhood. That's going to be another episode, but is backing each other's desires, backing each other in who we truly are as women, and taking each other higher and deeper than the fast food that's just being offered out in the world. We've talked a lot about how do you have that and how do you surround yourself with that? Well, it starts with being it yourself. Being it yourself. So maybe this inspires you in some way, listening to this. The invitation is can you let yourself feel, can you let yourself be seen in the truth of your emotion? And a beautiful thing is possible in there. So many beautiful things are possible there.

Speaker 2: 28:44

But if story is a distraction with other people, it's also a distraction with yourself.

Speaker 2: 28:57

It's also a distraction with yourself because when something comes in and it takes you down to this emotional place where you're having some kind of release, there's usually some truth that wants to be seen.

Speaker 2: 29:07

Maybe it's something simple like you need something or you need to say something, or maybe you're noticing a pattern oh, I always do this thing. You can't see it and you can't be available for those things. If you're just going so fast in story and, catherine, you said it before pausing, all of this becomes possible. When we pause, when we slow the F down, these things become possible and we're actually becoming more available for what we say we want in our lives. This is one way that you can actually have more of what you want in your life the relationships, the sex, the friendships, the money, the things by just being present with what is here right now and letting yourself be seen and maybe letting yourself be seen starts just with you in a mirror, or you and yourself scene starts just with you in a mirror, or you and yourself Don't pick up your phone when you're having feelings. That's a kind of intimacy as well, just being with yourself.

Speaker 1: 30:22

Totally so good. Brenda, you just touched on so many beautiful things. I love how you pointed back to the story that avalanche. It really does take us away from ourselves because it distracts us. It keeps us in our mind, which means that we're not in our bodies because we're afraid to feel whatever emotion is there to feel, because it usually is not like a yummy emotion, even though emotions usually last 90 seconds, a few minutes. It's really not that long, but it might as well be a lifetime or a death sentence. In that moment it's like the last thing, the last place we want to go to.

Speaker 1: 31:03

When we're going that fast, it is a distraction and it's designed on purpose. The mind is trying to keep us safe from that uncomfortable feeling. The mind is trying to keep us safe from that uncomfortable feeling. The limit, the primal brain, it's keeping us on the distraction train. We're going so fast.

Speaker 1: 31:23

It's like our own special orient express and without slowing down it's very difficult for us to see our possibilities, like we can't. And without slowing down we can't feel our feelings. Us to see our possibilities? We can't. And without slowing down we can't feel our feelings. We don't feel our feelings. We're activated and we can't see.

Speaker 1: 31:41

While activated. It's just not the way the brain is designed. We're just looking for the tiger right. We're activated and everywhere we look there's a tiger. Everywhere we look, it's horrendous. Everywhere we look, there's no way out. Everywhere we look, there's a stop sign. Everywhere we look, things aren't working because we're activated. That's what being activated means.

Speaker 1: 32:07

No matter what I do, where I look, where I wanna go, it's crappy Versus. If I could just hunker down, tell myself I can do hard things and either way is hard. Being in the avalanche is hard because living in that spin is so crazy. Making it's like you're in the spin cycle of a washing machine and feeling your feelings is horrendous. It's like you're in the spin cycle of a washing machine and feeling your feelings is horrendous. It's like you're at death's door, just at the bottom heart bleeding out. You could write poems down there. I mean so many people do write poems, songs, et cetera from down there. It's that heart wrenching. Neither is a good choice but our spin cycle, washing machine, avalanche brain. There's no real relief on the other side of that. We just get tighter and more controlling, creating more fear for ourselves versus finding the courage to feel the feelings, feel the actual release that comes from that and, god willing, be neutral enough to see some form of light and possibility.

Speaker 2: 33:25

Yeah, I want to tell you what's worse than feeling all those feelings, all those feelings, suffering and resistance to me is worse than feeling all of those feelings. And feeling those feelings can be a lot, it really it really can be. But I've done both. I've spent a lot of time in resistance and it's I've suffered there, versus allowing yourself to go into the feeling, and into it feels like suffering, to end all suffering, like you're going to move through it, where suffering, to suffer in resistance feels very disempowered and stuck. And so to me, at this point in my life, as much as I sometimes don't want to feel all of the things, I'm like, oh, if I just open the door and go in, I will have relief on the other side. And to me, going back, that's the game that I'm playing in this life is my desire to be who I truly am in this world, and that, to me, is being fully expressed. That's been my journey and, yeah, just to say I do have resistance to it sometimes.

Speaker 1: 34:54

Still, I was just going to piggyback that you still have some hindsight, right, like you do have some 20-20. You're able to say, oh, this feels crappy, I don't want to feel my feelings. Not feeling my feelings feels crappy. Okay, decision time. Right. You're saying, oh, what's worse than not feeling my feelings, being in the resistance of it? And, yes, we want to be your masters and tell you that's the way to go. But no, without the experience right, it's going to be really hard. Like one of our goals here is for you to have also that 2020 vision right, for you to also be able to know oh, feeling my feelings is a better route, because I can compare it to when I wasn't feeling my feelings. Right, I can see the freedom that comes from feeling my feelings. Oh, my goodness, taking deep breaths while not being in the avalanche, while not being activated. Being able to have that be one of the lighthouses is a beautiful thing?

Speaker 2: 36:02

Yeah, it really is, and we're here giving you permission.

Speaker 2: 36:06

So if you're listening to this podcast episode and you're someone who's like this thing keeps happening, or I can't seem to have this thing that I want in my life, or why isn't my life the way I want it to be, in some form of that we're giving you, we're handing you a little treat here saying here's one way that you can try and work with yourself to have more of what you want in your life. And in this episode we're suggesting to you the treat is drop story and just be present and feel your feelings with yourself or with another person, and just see what happens with another person and just see what happens. Just see what happens. And given that, I want to bring it back into closing to Catherine, as we're into this episode, I just want to check back in with you full circle Anything that you want to say about your process in the last 38 minutes and what it felt like to start out, not only feeling your feelings but sharing them here and and what that was like for you and where you are now.

Speaker 1: 37:20

Thank you for the question. It definitely stretches me to try to remember all the parts. So I started out by crying because I needed a release. I felt a lot of pressure and compression and then I shared okay, I'm not going into logistics of all the things that are not going right, I'm just going to feel, and then it feels like a climax and then I have the cry, and then there's sort of this neutrality that comes in where it's almost like the problem's not even not really a problem anymore because it's. It's as if the bond went, goes off, and then the dust is sort of settling. I'm not really thinking about that anymore. I'm sort of at that point in my body just feeling the sensations while also being witnessed by you. So currently my experience of this recording isn't oh, my goodness, everybody's listening. It's more oh, brenda's witnessing me and we're sharing the witness with the world, or whoever listens to the podcast. You witnessed me. You held me so beautifully, and by held I just mean she was there on her side of the screen, grounded, while I cry, sometimes eyes closed and tears running down my face, and when I open my eyes I can just see her, and that's very co-regulating. So if we were in person, probably that would be happening too.

Speaker 1: 39:18

And then we sort of just started to talk about the process, of what became more important was less about the logistics and less about what's going wrong. And the climax it was like, oh wait, I'm having this experience. I'm really experiencing tons of relief. I can feel the relief coming and I know it wasn't this fast in the beginning. I know it took time to get here. Actually it took decades. Hopefully for other people it's faster, but just my experience of it it wasn't that fast. Actually, when I started my journey I didn't really have access to emotions, so it was pretty difficult to tap into something that wasn't on the surface by any means. And now that we sort of talked about the cry, the being witnessed, the being willing to feel the distractions that come about, which is the mind the avalanche, feel the distractions that come about, which is the mind the avalanche.

Speaker 1: 40:16

We talked about low-level relating and how sometimes with women we will either gossip or talk bad about each other or talk bad about ourselves to each other. Then it sort of pointed to this bigger arc of what's actually available when, of what's actually available when. That's not the form of relating, where we're just seeing each other raw by raw I mean unfiltered, not trying to make myself look different than what's happening and how much connection is available there and intimacy, and it definitely doesn't feel like processed food or fast food. It feels really intimate and it feels really connecting and it feels really nourishing. And I would say this I know that you you mentioned earlier, brenda, that you'd like to do a recording on sisterhood mentioned earlier, brenda, that you'd like to do a recording on sisterhood I'm like, oh yes, all of these pieces and parts sort of contribute to that crescendo of sisterhood. It's part of what makes a higher level relating. It's what makes connecting at this level possible and beautiful.

Speaker 1: 41:32

And I'm now going to circle back to something that Brenda said. She said we just have to let ourselves have it, and I know that sometimes that phrase isn't clear. It's not like we're not letting ourselves have it. So if I were to use that sentence in the experience today, letting myself have it meant I let myself cry and be seen without story. Let myself be held and witnessed without story, let myself feel without letting my mind go on the Orient Express and create an avalanche of story, where I'm now distracted and not feeling. That's what letting yourself have it means. Not letting myself have it would look like I want to cry and I say to Brenda I'm going to be right back, and then that would be full stop.

Speaker 2: 42:33

Thank you for that Full stop. There's so much juice in the other one. There's so much juice in letting yourself have it, and if you're listening and you want more on that, episode 79 we just dropped is all about receiving, but episode 79, we just dropped is all about receiving. Like. In order for Catherine to have had this experience, she had to be open to receive, and me as well. I was open to receive Catherine and receive the moment. We were both open to receive and created this beautiful episode that we did not plan. This was 100% organic in the moment and that's one of my favorite things to do. So we would love to hear how this episode landed for you. What jewels and gems did you get? Did you receive our treat? Please let us know what your takeaways and insights are. You can tag us on Instagram at Desire is Medicine Podcast. We would absolutely love to hear from you. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on the Desire is Medicine podcast.

Speaker 1: 43:52

Desire invites us to be honest, loving and deeply intimate with ourselves and others. You can find our handles in the show notes. We'd love to hear from you.