Heather Shannon (00:01.524)
Welcome, welcome to another week of Ask a Sex Therapist. So thank you guys all for being here. We’re gonna talk about my new model today. So this is called Pathway to Passion, and it’s exactly what it sounds like. So basically, it’s breaking down what are the steps you take, what are the things you have to master or get good at or challenges you have to overcome to get to the relationship you want where

You are emotionally close and you are physically close and you understand each other in terms of sexual needs on a deep level. So hopefully you guys are excited to hear about it. I did give a little sneak preview to my email list and I do have a really cool graphic that goes along with this. So if you guys want that, I will make it available for free in the show notes. So you are welcome to.

Also comment on Instagram posts. We’ll set it up so you can just comment graphic or something basic and we’ll get this sent to you. So the pathway to passion has a few different components. It’s like I’m gonna talk about the illustration, the graphic. So it’s like a Venn diagram, but with three circles instead of two. So the three circles are the main areas where the efforts are gonna be focused.

So the first one is emotions and clarity. And so it may or may not be what you’re thinking with sex. I think a lot of people come to me and they’re expecting to just like talk all about the ins and outs of sex literally and figuratively from day one. And that’s just not really how it works. We do really holistic assessment of the relationship. so emotions and clarity to me are very foundational.

When I see where couples are kind of misfiring or becoming like ships in the night or where sex has become a chore or just like one more thing that you’re supposed to do, these are some of the areas where people really need some improvement, right? And then the second circle is foundations of sex. And so,

Heather Shannon (02:19.824)
We’re not going to get into a ton of detail on this one today. I’m going to focus on the first circle and then we’ll have our next, my next solo episode will be circle two and then the one after that will be circle three. So circle two is the foundations of sex. That’s going to be about consent, understanding what is consent, how are we giving consent and this varies couple to couple.

Right? Like have some couples where they’re like, I want this to be verbal. I want this to be asked. And other couples where it’s like, don’t ask me. Just put your hand in my leg. So everyone’s different. How desire works. So just understanding libido, what nurtures a healthy libido, and what kind of squashes your libido. And do you have more of a spontaneous interest in sex, or is it more responsive to something? And then body confidence. Like this is a huge one, regardless of gender.

Everyone’s got, I don’t know if I would say hangups, some people don’t really have that many hangups, which is delightful. I think those people almost feel embarrassed to like speak it out loud because everyone has so many hangups these days. But getting to the point where you feel comfortable in your body, comfortable being naked, comfortable just being you, exactly how you are now without having to change or perfect anything. And then the third circle of the Venn diagram is your personal sexual roadmap. So we’ve got…

the emotional foundation laid. We’ve sort of got the word, every word is sounding like a sexual innuendo. And so if you’re noticing that as well, just enjoy it. The foundations of sex, we’ve got those taken care of. And then the personal sex roadmap, honestly, is where it gets just like really fun. It’s like, okay, cool. Like we’ve done all this hard work and now let’s just talk about what turns us on and you know, how can we lean into what mentally.

gets us into the headspace of sex or of kink play or of sensuality, whatever it is we’re aiming for. Let’s have that discussion of what are we aiming for? Are we aiming for feeling affectionate and loving? Are we aiming for exploring something like wild and crazy? So getting on the same page with that.

Heather Shannon (04:28.416)
getting on the same page with your physical turn on, and then really talking about your fantasies and learning to identify those. Because a lot of people, and myself included at times, I have a lot of this in writing in various places that I can refer to. But if someone puts you on the spot and says, what’s your biggest kink or your hottest sexual fantasy? It’s like,

And a lot of times it’s like if it’s not feeling relevant in that moment, if you’re not actively turned on, it can feel like a challenging conversation to have. But we start noticing and we start tracking, honestly, ooh, what was hot about this encounter? you guys had great sex this weekend? What was it about it that worked for you on a mental level, on a foreplay level, on a fantasy level, right?

Do we want these fantasies to just stay fantasies but incorporate them through dirty talk or just imagination? Or do we wanna actually make some of these fantasies come true, right? So that is what the three -way Venn diagram looks like. But at the center of the three -way Venn diagram is amazing sex and true intimacy.

Right, because if you’ve been listening at all, you probably know by now, the work that I do isn’t just about sex, right? It’s about the whole package of relationships and connection and communication and all of that, right? And then the visual that I have for you guys, if you do want to grab a copy of that, it also goes over what happens when you have two of the circles overlapping, but not the third circle. What are the good things that are happening and what’s still missing?

So all of that will be explained and it might kind of help you diagnose like, okay, what piece are we missing and what piece do we maybe need the most work on? So today we’re gonna focus on that first circle. And I do suggest that people go through these circles in order, right? So the emotions and clarity is number one, the foundations of sex is number two, and the personal sex roadmap is number three. All right, so we’re starting with circle one, emotions and clarity.

Heather Shannon (06:36.15)
So the first area that I suggest focusing on, if this area is already not perfected, is intentional priorities. I think intention is crazy, crazy powerful. And I think getting clarity on those intentions is actually, you might be like, what Heather? I think it’s more than half the battle. I think when you get really clear on this is what I want.

This is how I want to feel in my relationship. This is the kind of person I want to be in my intimate relationship. This is how I want to feel with my partner. That vision and that clarity becomes your pathway. That’s why it’s step one on the pathway to passion. It kind of lays out the pathway for you. And then I also want to say, when I’m talking about intentional priorities, it’s not

just about in the relationship, it’s actually about all areas of your life. So one of the first questions I ask people when I do my four layer assessment is how is your life alignment going? Do you like your life? Do you feel vibrant? Do you feel connected to the work you do? Do you feel like you have social connections that are fulfilling to you, right?

And what I notice is a lot of times these answers, not all the time, but a lot of times these answers with life alignment correlate with libido. So if you’re not feeling that excited and turned on by life, you’re also not feeling that excited and turned on with your intimate partner. That tends to be the pattern I’m seeing. Okay, so with the intentional priorities, this means how do you juggle life?

kind of a tall ass, right? You’ve got work, you’ve got maybe parenting or helping your parents with their health issues. You’ve got friendships, maybe you’ve got hobbies, maybe you’re passionate about traveling or learning and taking courses and having experiential adventures.

Heather Shannon (08:51.02)
Maybe you’ve got some health stuff to manage or maybe you have some kind of disability and you’re, don’t know if you’re familiar with spoon theory, but I talk with one of my clients a lot about spoons, the idea that some days you have a lot of spoons and each spoon is sort of like a unit of energy, a unit of physical energy or a unit of psychological bandwidth that you have for something. And so it might be like, today I only have one spoon.

And that spoon is going to go towards making sure I eat my meals. Or today I have two spoons, but four people I’m supposed to text back, so I’m picking my top two. And they’re getting a text, and the other ones aren’t happening today. And so we all have to manage that. We all might have a different number of spoons, but we all have to manage however many spoons we have. And so it’s really consciously, intentionally thinking about how do I want to manage that?

Right? What do I want to do with my spoons? And is what I say I want to do what’s actually happening. And that I think is the really important area, right? So we have to manage all these competing priorities, but we might say, my relationship comes first. Okay. So does that mean you’re willing to sacrifice your health for your relationship and that feels like a good choice to you?

Does that mean you’re willing to sacrifice your work and financial success? And does that feel OK when those trade -offs are necessary, right? Or does that mean, hey, I’m willing to dedicate more time to the relationship? Whatever that looks like, right? We could prioritize a relationship through time. We can prioritize it through planning, through quality time together.

There’s a lot of different ways we can prioritize it and so that’s all part of the intentions. So an example I want to give, had somebody I met with, they did not become a client, but they said, yeah, think finances are an issue. But they were at a point where they were like, I don’t know if my marriage is okay. I’m having some major concerns. I don’t know if my spouse is going to be on board with us working with a sex therapist or intimacy coach.

Heather Shannon (11:15.04)
But I think we really need it. I think this is super important. And I did a follow up with this person because she had seemed pretty interested and was just going to chat with her husband. And she said, yeah, financially it’s not going to work. The kids have all of their summer camp stuff this summer that we have to pay for. And then we’re taking a family vacation. And it was this moment where I was like, what is going on with the priorities here?

Right? But I also think it was so relatable because how many of us just feel like, well, every summer we take a family vacation, you know, and it’s almost become like a mindless thing or it’s become a thing of like, well, the kids need that or that’s good for family bonding. But if your marriage is falling apart, if you’re miserable, if your kids can pick up on that, which they can, I promise, because you’re in the same house,

Right? Like could that vacation money maybe be reallocated to hiring an intimacy coach and getting the support you need so that it can be more harmonious and so that there can be more closeness. Right? And maybe you skip, I’m not saying not to work out, but maybe you’re like, hey, we’re going to skip a workout a week so that we can prioritize this for the next few months. Or we do our workouts together and make that a date. You know, like there’s ways to get creative with it too.

But to really think about like, huh, are we making choices or saying we can’t afford to work on our relationship? And again, there’s lots of ways to work on a relationship. Usually, you’re either gonna be throwing time or money at it or both. And so that’s part of these intentions too, is like, where do I wanna put my time? Where do I wanna put my money? Where do I wanna put my focus? And then to kind of do an audit of your life and see where things need to shift around.

And it doesn’t have to be super in -depth. It could just be something where you sit down for an hour and write some stuff out and do a little bit of journaling with yourself of, what would I say my priorities are and what needs to change so that I’m actually lined up with that? Okay, so part two of the emotions and clarity is the emotional mastery. So when I say emotional mastery, there’s a few components. There’s a lot here with the emotional mastery level. So step one, I think, is regulating your own emotions.

Heather Shannon (13:41.598)
So that might look like, you know, if you’ve had a rough day, if someone hurt your feelings, I just started running Facebook ads and I got some shitty comments immediately and I was like, whoa, I wasn’t prepared for that. So, you know, if you get some shitty comments on social media, if you are rundown, you know, like how do you take care of yourself? Right? Can you take some time and meditate? Can you take some time and go on a walk? Can you put on a playlist that helps you feel better?

Can you like lean into it and just really allow yourself to feel it for 10 minutes and allow that emotion and the physical sensations that go with it to just move through you, right?

So whatever way you use, there’s not a right or wrong here. It doesn’t matter what way you use to manage your emotions. It’s more like, is it working for you? And do you have some ways to manage your emotions? And I’m gonna tell you why that’s important. It might seem obvious, it probably does to a lot of you if you’re listening to this and into personal growth.

Heather Shannon (14:47.82)
Okay, so I’m gonna do a little clap here.

Heather Shannon (14:54.262)
So a lot of what I see, like a lot with couples, is struggles self -regulating when it comes to emotions. And that could just mean maybe there’s some insecurity brewing there, and it feels like whenever you communicate, you take things really personally, and you feel really sensitive, and you maybe feel like…

you know, hey, like how, I don’t know, like how I’m gonna be okay. I’m not feeling okay right now. But can you rally? Can you be resilient? And then what that does is allows you to have a healthy communication with your partner and it allows you to hold space for them. And those are the skills that are needed, right? Because a lot of times there needs to be a deeper level of understanding in order to solve what’s going on. And there needs to be more compassion and empathy for each other.

and more vulnerability with that too and creating a safe space for that vulnerability to happen, none of that can really happen if you’re not emotionally regulated, right? And so you might think like, my moodiness doesn’t affect my partner or, know, everyone does have emotions, but everyone has emotions, it just is what it is. Yes, and there are more effective and less effective ways to relate to your own emotions.

In general, the default that we’re taught, at least in the United States, but I think in lots of places, is let’s just shove the emotions away. Let’s just try and be positive. Let’s just kind of not talk about it and move forward. And I think there’s positive intentions behind that approach. It just doesn’t work. And you might be thinking, yeah, it does, Heather. I’ve been doing it for a decade. And I would be like, OK, how’s your health? Are you depressed? Have you been coming out an alcoholic?

it will seep out in other ways if we don’t address it in the healthy way. And a lot of times I think about emotions as like a crying baby. So the emotions are kind of like, well, well, trying to get your attention. Hey, over here. Hey, I need attention. And we’re just kind of like, shut up, baby. You know, which is not a very nice way to treat a baby. It’s not something we would say generally to a real baby. And so we need to stop saying it to ourself, right? We need to realize

Heather Shannon (17:20.298)
I need to be as kind to myself and to the parts of me that feel emotional as I would with a small child. Right?

And sometimes actually we do this with children too, like, stop your crying, it’s fine, and we just try to push it away. And so what I would invite instead is like, can we be curious? Can we be gently, kindly curious with our own emotions? They don’t have to be logical, we don’t have to like buy into them 100%, but it’s the same thing with a toddler, right? It’s like, okay, maybe the toddler is like crying over like someone grabbed their toy, and it’s kind of like, all right, kid, you’re not gonna die.

But you can still be compassionate and you can still realize to this kid that feels like a really big deal. That’s a hard thing to manage. And so a lot of our inner parts are very much like those kids. They might be stuck at that age, in fact. And so can we bring that curiosity and kindness and find out, hey buddy, what’s going on? Or your feelings hurt, how does that feel in your body?

It might be like, well, there’s a pit in my stomach or there’s a lump in my throat or I feel like all this tension in my muscles and I just wanna hit things. And so it’s like, be with that energy. Don’t act on it, but like allow it. And when we allow it, we’re allowing it to pass through us instead of to stay stuck in us. So that’s a big piece of emotional mastery. There’s obviously way more to it than I can even get to today. But like when we have that ability to regulate ourselves,

the sky becomes the limit in our relationships. And this is why this circle of the three -way Venn diagram is number one is because it does create the foundation for everything else. All right. And so let’s move on to the next one. So this is the last category of that first circle on emotions and clarity. And this is communication skills. And this is one I think people to me seem more willing to work on

Heather Shannon (19:27.478)
But it really goes hand in hand with the emotional mastery. I think the emotional stuff is just like, it’s painful, we don’t wanna do it, it hurts, and we don’t always see the benefit. Hopefully now you see more of the benefit. And I will promise you, and this might take years, so don’t expect tomorrow, the more you work on it, the better you’ll get at it, and the easier it’ll be to face an emotion head on the next time. And so if you stick with it long enough,

And if you face the emotions and feel them and process them enough, you will get to a point where you’re like, I got this. And you become a much more emotionally stable and secure person. And then it changes your decisions in life. It’s wild how powerful it is. It’s like when I can regulate myself, I can take risks with business because I know I’m going to be OK even if it doesn’t go my way because I can manage my emotions. I can try new hobbies because if I’m not good at it,

I’m still gonna be okay, because I can manage my emotions. So it’s often the emotion that we’re afraid of when we’re trying something new, or in this case, when we’re being vulnerable with someone that we care about and that we wanna connect with deeply. onto the communication skills. So the communication skills, these are pretty concrete specific things that just no one ever taught us. So if you haven’t read a Gottman book or

gone to a couples counselor who does EFT or learned about attachment through a podcast, then you might not know these things. It’s like we have to seek this information out so that we have the skillset. It’s just like anything you learn in school. It’s like you learned how to read, you maybe learned how to pick out an outfit for the day or what goes with each other. It’s just a matter of learning and observing and that kind of thing.

we just haven’t really had the opportunity. And so we can give ourselves the opportunity of learning, how do I start conversations? What’s a way to start conversations that is gonna be gentle on my partner, but authentic to myself, that’s gonna move us towards more closeness and a likely resolution of any conflict that’s going on, that’s gonna help us avoid escalating and avoid further conflict.

Heather Shannon (21:52.726)
Like that’s a powerful tool, right? The other piece is, especially now that we’ve gained our emotional mastery, is figuring out how do I share my emotions? Like what’s the best way to talk about them? When do I need to share emotions and when is that something that I can keep to myself? And for that one, I’ll give you the cheat code. So whenever clients are like, I don’t know, I’m not sure if I wanna bring it up.

My response is like, if it’s important enough to bring up in your coaching or therapy session, then you should be saying it to your partner. It’s bothering you enough to bring to me, then you need to bring it to your partner. Now, if you want to workshop how to say it, fine. If you need to do some processing of your own emotions first, which I would recommend, great, but don’t avoid the conversation. Or don’t avoid it for long. Work on the things that are blocking you from having the conversation.

Okay, the other piece, very underrated, talked about a lot, implemented not as much, is listening and understanding. So my philosophy, having been a therapist and done couples counseling work since 2011, is when we understand each other on a very deep level, that mostly solves the problem.

Right, and I’m sure you’ve heard about, know, I don’t want advice, I’m not looking for you to solve it for me, just listen. And I think what happens when we really crave that like listening aspect is…

We just want to feel seen, heard, and understood. That’s what Evan Mark Katz talks about. He was a guest on one of our previous episodes where we talked about gender roles, but that’s what he says. I help women feel seen, heard, and understood. And I think all humans want that. We want someone to hold that space for us. And guess what? This goes back to emotional mastery. You can’t hold space for someone to really share.

Heather Shannon (24:02.92)
if you’re too busy projecting your emotions in your story about what’s going on within the conflict, right? Or even if they’re just sharing about their work day and there’s no conflict and you’re just like, hey, I have my own stuff going on that I haven’t processed so I’m not being fully present with you, that’s the importance of taking that time for yourself. It allows you to be a better partner and a happier person. It’s a win -win.

Yeah, so taking that time to really understand deeply and then when you think like, this is why my partner is hurt by that, or this is how they’re feeling at work. And now I realize why they’ve been asking me to take out the trash. Or now I realize why they’ve been asking me to give them a shoulder rub at night.

or now I realize why they’ve been a little snippy lately, you know, because they’ve been managing so much and they didn’t want to burden me because of X, Y, and Z. But now that I know, you know, we can actually address it. And so that deep level of understanding starts to make the solution and the pathway forward very, very clear. So I hope you guys enjoyed this. Again, I will link to the pathway to passion.

in the show notes and then stay tuned for the next couple solo episodes. So if you’re not already following the show, make sure to hit follow in whatever podcast app you’re in and that way you won’t miss episodes two and three on the Pathway to Passion. I also wanna give a shout out to St. Lucia. Yes, the entire island.

We were number one in the sexuality category for Apple Podcast charts this week, actually just yesterday. In sexuality, and a couple days ago, we were actually also number one in the entire health and fitness category, which has six different subcategories in it. So this was super fun. I think it was the first time the show has ever been number one on the sex charts, let alone the health and fitness. So that was super awesome. So shout out to all my people.

Heather Shannon (26:14.45)
in St. Lucia. We appreciate you. And I love how international the show is and seeing where people are tuning in from. So thank you guys so much for listening. Also, we are going to still have our listener Q &A episodes coming up. So make sure to submit your questions for that. We need some juicy questions to answer on the show. I know that’s often your guys’ favorite type of episodes that we do.

So make sure to get the questions in. Thanks everybody and I hope you have an amazing, positive, pleasure -filled week.