A Powerful Breathgasm and Psychedelic Healing

“A Powerful Breathgasm and Psychedelic Healing”

a Girl Boner podcast transcript

Dr. Nicole: I had laid down on the floor and I closed all the blinds, you know, safely. It’s just me, just me and my body, and I’m tripping. And I get naked and I start to just breathe. And as I do that, the saying that keeps coming to my mind at the time is, why do I still feel unsafe? What is this that I’m holding in my body?

August/narration:

Dr. Nicole is a sex and relationship therapist who provides  psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. If you’d told her younger Evangelical Christian self that that was where she was headed in life, inspired by powerful personal experiences, she would’ve thought:

Dr. Nicole: I need to pray for my future self.

August/narration:

Today, even as she supports folks in creating expansive sex lives and intimate relationships, she wears her purity ring. We’ll get to that.

First, let’s go back.

Dr. Nicole:

Growing up I was in a fundamentalist Christian environment. Any sort of pleasure, sexuality outside of a heteronormative, monogamous marriage to one person for a life truly was forbidden. Wrong. Any sort of self-pleasure, masturbation, wrong. Any sort of thought about sex before marriage? Wrong, bad.

In my high school we had “sex education.” I don’t even think it deserves that title. I think sex propaganda would be a bit more of an accurate label for that. We all went to chapel. ’cause that’s what you do. You know, you’re a Christian little school. We all go into chapel. And someone came up on stage and they said, “This is what happens when you have sex.”

There was a blue piece of paper and a pink piece of paper because again, so heteronormative. Queerness, no. And so they put glue on the paper and then they stuck them together and they said, “And this is what happens when you have sex.” You know, and rubbed the papers together. And I kid you not, they ripped those pieces of paper apart and they said, ” Who’s gonna want this broken piece of paper? That’s what happens if you leave that person.”

I, in the crowd, was a virgin at the time. So me being the God bless my younger, I’m gonna say the annoying consciousness that I was, I was like. Yep, this is why I’m a virgin. This is why I am waiting. Absolutely.

August/narration:

She didn’t have a formal purity ceremony that were popular for girls in the nineties and early 2000s, where they received a ring, usually from their dad, and committed to saving sex for marriage.

Dr. Nicole: I do remember going to like a purity pledging party. The school had this like purity pledge and you got a pin and it said, “I’m waiting until marriage.” And it had, you know, a sign of a little, ring.

August/narration:

The kind of ring she wanted, and asked her parents for. Once she had the ring, she loved showing it off.

Dr. Nicole: And I remember being really annoying about it, going around to my friends, being like, “Look at me, look at what I got.” I’m like this holy person who’s gonna totally wait. There is just this really cocky energy around what purity meant to all of my friends and feeling like I was so cool that I hadn’t done this thing.

August/narration:

Meaning sex. And avoiding it wasn’t exactly breezy.

August: So did you have crushes and were you having inklings of desire? Did you recognize those?

Dr. Nicole: Yeah, I definitely had crushes. I definitely had desire, so it was a struggle in that sense. I was very much so taught that I’m going to marry a man and have his babies because that’s what a woman does. But yeah, I absolutely had desires for people of all genders, and I think that I didn’t really realize the, more expansive queerness. That I was experiencing quite literally in my body, but I did not have a cognitive framework for it. So I would say it was a lot of cognitive dissonance.

I remember all the way back, I think I was in fifth grade? I watched Jennifer’s Body, that movie with Megan Fox and Amanda. There’s a moment where they kiss and it’s so much tension. And we were watching it at a girl’s sleepover and I just remember being like so wet, but having no frameworks for that.

And so I really pushed that into a box: That’s bad, that’s bad, that’s bad. I’m working on that. I’m praying about that, actually. I’m not gonna do that.

August/narration:

She did start to date and explore during high school.

Dr. Nicole: Even then, it was so many rules, right? Where it was like, okay, I can kiss, I can do oral. That doesn’t count as penetration.

And I would masturbate to queer porn and then feel so much shame and pray. So like the idea of me being queer was never something that could have came online. It was like, oh God, I did it again. Okay. Okay. Pray, pray, pray, pray, pray, pray, pray.

But my straight desire, that was something I was exploring and constantly trying to temper with all these strange, weird rules until I crossed the line, you know? [laughs]

August/narration:

Of course, all of that affected her once she did “cross the line” and started having sex.

Dr. Nicole: I mean, the first time I have sex, it was in a loving partnership and I was really grateful for that, but I sobbed. I remember my boyfriend leaving for the night, and then I just went into my bathroom and I just broke down crying, some of the most deep, painful cries that I had yet experienced at my young age, Truly sobbing in my bathroom saying no one is ever going to want me. I fucked up in this one essential piece and now I’m so broken.

God, I already messed up and I had sex before marriage. Now I really should marry this guy. And so I was totally on that trajectory. We had a promise ring, we had all that sort of stuff because I was like, God, I must marry this person.

August/narration:

But then, though, her feminism started to guide her.

Dr. Nicole: That didn’t work out because he told me if we had kids, I’d have to stay home. And I was like, “I’m gonna become a doctor. Whoever makes the least amount of money should stay home.” And he was like, “Nope. This is what a man does. This is what the Bible is really clear about a man’s role.” And that was about the end of our relationship.

And thank God for my feminist pressure that was bubbling up inside of me.‘Cause I’m still Christian at that time and I’m going, that’s not in the Bible. I’m absolutely not gonna do this. Why would I be in school? So it was the beginning, right?

August/narration:

But there was still a lot of unlearning to do and she wasn’t able to go about it yet. And then something traumatic happened.

Dr. Nicole: After that, I have pretty much no framework of experience for sexuality. No language to communicate my nos, no language to communicate my desires.

I had a sexual assault experience after that. It was devastating. Now I’m thinking, ’cause the first boyfriend, we have sex with me like five times over three years. And each time is guilt. Oh God, we shouldn’t have done that. Oh my God. We’re gonna pray. I’m a born again virgin. I’m a born again virgin.

And so when I get into this next experience, which was non-consensual, and involved substances. After that I was thinking, damn, now I have two people on my list and I am pretty broken. I really better make it work with this guy who did that to me while I was drunk. ’cause if I can make this relationship work, then I could save myself from further damaging myself with multiple people.

August/narration:

Something that’s sadly really common in people recovering form purity culture, she noted.

Dr. Nicole: People stay in problematic, abusive, unhealthy dynamics out of fear of further damaging yourself.

So, yeah, I was in a tough place psychologically at that point in my life.

I’d just come from such a space of so much trust. I think in the purity culture space, you just really don’t get skills in that. And that’s not to victim blame me, of course. I wanna be clear on that. And also the research shows that there’s a level of grooming there that occurs when you truly don’t have the foundations of how to communicate in that way. That was very much so my experience.

August/narration:

Then, Shonda Rhimes stepped in — sort of.

Dr. Nicole: Thank God, I was watching a TV show, Grey’s Anatomy, and there are people getting therapy in that. And coming from a Christian paradigm that is very like, No, no. Do not do the secular therapy thing. That’s sinful. You should be going to church. You should be talking to your pastor, and that’s who’s gonna help you.

But I had seen on Grey’s Anatomy, Meredith Grey go to therapy and I was like, well, maybe I should go. And then that’s the beginning of me getting into therapy and sort of unpacking all of these things that were going on in my life and starting to build more frameworks to deal with the trauma that had occurred on multiple different levels.

I still don’t know that I’m queer. I’m just getting really, really drunk and making out with my friends. and then waking up the next day and be like, what happened? Oh, that’s so weird.

August: Yeah. What a funny dream.

Dr. Nicole: Exactly. That happened again?

August: So when you went into therapy, Was there a reason you went in with, like, were you saying I just feel like I could be happier. Were you talking about the assault? Like what was the, the precursor or the reason

Dr. Nicole: It was the assault. And then at the time, we had lost our family business. My parents were getting a divorce and we were losing our childhood home.

Mind you, though, I’m getting straight As. I have a job. I’m in a sorority. I am functioning. If you looked at me from the outside, you’d be like, damn, she’s on this organization. She’s leading that.

But internally, I was just compartmentalizing so much of it to the side and not processing any of it until I’d come into the therapy room and then be like sobbing and dissociating, finally feeling some of the things and metabolizing it.

August/narration:

Around then, she started to question the messaging she’d received around sexuality — and her related shame.

August: Is that where you started to question purity culture? Was this therapist talking to you about sex? Was this somebody who was sex-positive?

Dr. Nicole: So this therapist was an intern, and the school that I was at was religious. So no, there was no outside of purity culture frameworks. I think what started to push it for me was that I was dealing with my trauma through drinking. Just drinking excessively, blacking out, very traditional things that happen in college culture, too. And so I kept getting drunk on Saturday and couldn’t make it to church, and so that slowly brought me out of it.

August/narration:

At least, that was the start.

Dr. Nicole: There’s no flip of a switch out of the levels of deep internal conditioning to that. It takes so much time and years.

August/narration:

Certain happenings sort of bolstered her clarity along the way.

Dr. Nicole: One of the defining moments for me was when I had an abortion. And it was really this big moment of God, I’ve been brought up in all of this pathway of purity and all of this stuff, and now I’m pregnant. Could be with the guy who assaulted me because I continued to try and sleep with him. And now I’m thinking I’m 21. Do I have a baby right now? And I was thinking to myself like, absolutely not Like you wanna be a doctor. Like, no, no, no. But it was a moment where just it completely, the friction between that and my purity culture religious self.

‘Cause I remember my mom very clearly stating to me, if you ever got pregnant and aborted my grandchild, I would never speak to you again.

August: So did you tell her?

Dr. Nicole: I didn’t tell her until I ran Modern Anarchy Podcast and I had an episode on abortion, and then I sent it to her and said, Hey, you should listen to this. It was a pretty backdoor, indirect way of telling her, so I don’t know if I recommend that for the listeners, but.No, at the time I did not tell her.

I had some friends that I told and I was a mess, I was a mess of so many things. But I did get the abortion. Fundamentally that was one of the best decisions I I made of my life. And where I’m at now, I, I am planning to have children and the next couple of years, not even now, next couple of years, you know, so it’s like 21 is just so young and yeah was not the time. But it really felt like the final straw I think, of being in that paradigm. ‘Cause now I’m a big sinner after that. You know? Big sinner.

August: Like you’ve done it all.

Dr. Nicole: Yep. I’m making out with people drunk. I’m getting drunk. I had the abortion, I’m having sex. Like I can’t go back after that.

August/narration:

Then she started to see how important supportive community can be for healthy transformation. That shifted her personal life and her career.

Dr. Nicole: And so I start to make new connections, new friendships. I start volunteering as a sexual assault counselor and getting a lot of training in more expansive ways to look at sexuality and healing.

And that’s the huge catalyst to going into my doctoral program and clinical psych. And I knew from the very beginning and I was like, I wanna train to help. Sexual assault survivors and I wanna help them to feel again and really realizing how much of a gap there was in the field of clinical psychology talking about pleasure. It’s all about like trauma. How do we deal with a trauma? And it’s like, great, once I get my client out of the trauma response, what’s next?

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August/narration:

On her website, Dr. Nicole writes, “Looking back now, I hold that younger version of myself with so much tenderness.” She said she hadn’t yet discovered the power of her queerness, her feminist rage, or her embodied intuition.

August: When did you start to feel like that power in your queerness and really connect with that?

Dr. Nicole: Mm-hmm.

August/narration:

She took me back to that very time.

Dr. Nicole: I’m out of school right now. I am again dating another man because I’m a serial monogamous just hopping from one relationship to the next to the next. We date for a while and I start to experience what I now know is a very research backed phenomena of habitation in relationships.

We’re hitting three plus years and I’m starting to realize that my desire is really fading. So I’m thinking, I’m broken, I’m broken. I remember having sex with my partner at the time, really struggling to orgasm.

But if I thought about my best friend from college who I would make out with drunk, I could come. I could come. So I never told my partner that at the time that I’m like struggling to be turned on. You know, we continue the relationship and we break up for a slew of other different complex reasons,.

Prior to that, I’d been telling my friends, I was like, “You guys, I think I might be gay.” Like never said this to my partner. I was like, I think I might be gay, but like, I don’t know. I’m in this monogamous relationship now. I can’t find out. I can’t find, ah, you know? And so when we break up my friends get me this cake straight up. There’s a picture of the cake and it says, now you can be gay and it has candles on it.

August: Oh, I love that.

Dr. Nicole: Yeah, it was amazing. I mean, I got dumped. I wanna be very clear. I did not break up with that man. He dumped me so I would be like very sad and mess. But, uh, my friends bringing me over a queer cake really did make the experience better in that way, and I’m so grateful for them to have met me in that moment of complete devastation and despair.

Yeah, that’s when I start going on apps. I start exploring things. I go down on a woman for the first time and I definitely don’t tell her it was my first time.

You know what I mean? Like going in confident. Hell yeah. You know?

August: Oh, did you Google how to do it?

Dr. Nicole: Right? I still feel that sometimes I’m like, ah, I still got more to learn. You know what I mean? I know a lot now, but I’m still always humble ’cause each body is so unique, you know, each vulva is its magical own thing. But yeah, I was definitely looking up resources and I particularly remember just being like, so incredibly horny and wet.

One of my first, we would just like roll around making out and it was like the wettest I had ever been. And I’m like shattering paradigms in my head about what’s okay and not okay and really working through that.

Even coming out to my mom eventually, a couple years into that. it didn’t go well. She didn’t talk to me for a good chunk of time and was super concerned about me.

August/narration:

Now, as a queer sex and relationship psychotherapist, Dr. Nicole thinks about the ways those relationships are internalized and create a reality. That was totally happening for her back then.

Dr. Nicole: And so, yeah, I’m holding my mom’s consciousness and all of that. My friends from my college years are all Christian. Most of them are married to pastors.

And so like, yeah, I can’t really go to them with this, but I’m starting to make new friends in Chicago who are giving me queer cakes, right? And so I’m starting to really shift who I talk to, who can I trust and who is in my community? And that was the most profound shift of all in that way.

August/narration:

Slowly and surely, she shifted from “good, pure [Evangelical] girl” to someone who embraces her queerness.

August: So at that time, did you consider yourself Christian?

Dr. Nicole: Nope. Not anymore. I think after the abortion, I was kind of out out of that.

I slowly start unlearning it slowly, slowly. And for a good chunk of time, I’m like fuck spirituality, fuck religion, fuck any of this. You know, if someone would talk about spirituality, it was a big trauma response. I was like, absolutely not. And sex is not necessarily sacred. It’s just bodies, you know? So I’m very resistant to anything of that kind.

And it’s taken years to get to a space where it could be like, sex is spiritual, sex is sacred. And to see sacredness and spirituality outside of the western white. He, him God narratives that were shoved down my throat. And so that took so much time to expand and grow out of.

And even getting into non-monogamous connections, that was a whole other piece to, uh, you know, I have the queerness pieces, I have the non monogamous pieces, I have the kinky pieces. There’s just so much work to really, like, I wanna say, like scrub my mind. From all of the shit that was in there from Christianity and the systems that we live in, just so that I could play and feel pleasure again.

August/narration:

Several years ago, Dr. Nicole had a profound sexual experience that would change her career trajectory. It was also super hot and impactful for her personally. It panned out like this.

Dr. Nicole: So I’m exploring queer connections. I’m exploring non-monogamy. I’m having a great time in non-monogamy. I’m having no frameworks for NRE…

August/narration:

Meaning new relationship energy.

Dr. Nicole: …which will bite me in the ass many years later. ’cause I don’teven know anything about the levels of intensity that you’re experiencing in novel connections or any of that stuff.

And I think one of the things I do miss from my purity culture frameworks is how turned on I was. God, just the word sex would make me wet because I was so repressed.

August: Isn’t that interesting that anything could turn you on? I mean, a brush of a hand.

Dr. Nicole: Yeah. I was like, oh my God, I’m so wet. Where it’s like now that I work in it all the time and I study it so much, so it doesn’t have that same charge. But I would never in a million years trade that for the level of communication skills and embodiment that I have now. Like I would never. However, the one thing I do miss was that I was like so wet so easily.

But yeah, I start exploring psychedelics too, which is a big no-no. Right? Like coming from Christianity, I was like, maybe when I’m 80 I’ll try MDMA, ’cause I’m already dying,

And then, so I do, I try it. I explore. I have a lot of fun on it. I have great sex with partners on it. Different types of psychedelics, many different types.

But then I start studying in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy for my clinical work in psychology. And so I’m working in that space and learning so many new paradigms around sexuality and embodiment and trauma healing.

August/narration:

The breathgasm experience you’re about to hear about happened during a soli psychedelic session.

Dr. Nicole: There’s a lot to say about doing psychedelics by yourself. My therapist side is like, ” Test your drugs. Make sure you have somebody who’s safe that you could call and sober to rely on,” you know, ’cause there’s just more risks the more that you do these things by yourself. So I wanna name that.

And also there are levels of healing and play and exploration that can only happen when you are by yourself. And that’s just a real reality. Partnered sex is different than masturbation and solo pleasure, so we gotta hold that.

August/narration:

One day Dr. Nicole set aside time to explore on acid and really “be with that” in her body.

Dr. Nicole: That’s a long trip. And part of what I had did was like cleared off my schedule.  Right, because it’s, really ideal when you can like set that time for your mindset. And I remember clearing it all off and being with my body and deciding that I wanted to start to feel pleasure.

So I laid down a towel and I was on the floor, like truly in this office of all places.

August: Where you’re sitting right now?

Dr. Nicole: Yeah, the office I’m sitting in right now. yeah, yeah.

August: I love it.

Dr. Nicole: Yeah. I had laid down on the floor and I closed all the blinds, you know, safely. I live in a small studio apartment in the city, so there’s no one here, right? It’s just me, just me and my body, and I’m tripping. And I get naked and I start to just breathe, some nice deep breaths into my body. And as I do that, the saying that keeps coming to my mind at the time is, why do I still feel unsafe? I’m like, there’s no one here. There’s no one around me. No one’s coming to get me. What is this that I’m holding in my body? Oh my God. Like what am I holding?

And so my intention was to just keep releasing. Feel the pleasure and release. Feel the pleasure and release. And as I kept doing that, I felt more and more orgasmic breath, and this was my first breath orgasm. Truly in that way of just like feeling that ecstasy over my body and really focusing on my genital response.

You know, as a psychologist, I’m always thinking about the neuroscience. And the more we build those neuronal pathways into sensation, the more you can actually literally feel.

And so I was just focusing like, okay, what do I feel in my vulva? What do I feel in my clit? What am I feeling in my vaginal canal? And just that focus with the amplification of a psychedelic really enhanced so much of my pleasure to reach states I could have never otherwise reached with everything I was holding in my body at the time.

August: Wow. I can imagine that being a quite an emotional experience. How did you feel coming out of it?

Dr. Nicole: Yeah. Lots of tears. the summary of my story is I cried all the way, all the way, and I cry when I come now. So, you know, like it’s been a huge part of that. A huge part of that is just these big releases of tears that have come because it’s not easy.

There’s so many scripts. And to reach that point in my body where I was finally letting go of some things, and there’s always more to let go of, I’m still letting go of the shame, right? There’s still more, but that was such a big moment to realize that I was just holding so much in my body, you know? And like masturbating under the sheets in my own apartment. Like what is that? Who’s watching me? God? Oh, right, right.

So I always had this like deep feeling that God, Sky Daddy, who’s always watching is gonna come hit me with a ruler.

My friends, when I first moved to Chicago were also people who had experienced Christianity. And so we all used to laugh about how guilty, we felt about like Sky Daddy, who was gonna hit us with the ruler and be like, bad, bad, bad. Don’t masturbate bad, you know?

So it’s like one orgasm at a time. I’m releasing this, you know?

August: I remember my first solo orgasm at 30.

Dr. Nicole: And I just remember it’s almost like, you know, there’s like some positive parts of puberty. That’s like curiosity and like when you’re not being like repressed about everything, there’s parts of you that are like, Ooh! I just felt so like high for a while. Did you experience that? How was it just like going to the grocery store and talking to people and being a person? I mean, glorious, I’m a goddess. Look at what I can do with my body. This a magical thing I never thought I could do. Look at what I can do. Wow. And look at how powerful psychedelics are. Whoa, whoa, whoa. You know? Yeah. I’m skipping. You know, all the, things that you would hope for after an experience like that to really know that there is more than you even think.

If you told my younger self like, Hey, one day you’ll be like queer in your own apartment coming on the floor by yourself on drugs. I’d be like, so what? I need to pray for my future self, you know? So it’s like, yeah. I was feeling joy and it was just expansion and like, just like, wow, there’s so much more.

And I still hold that in my heart that like there’s so much more that’s possible than we think. You know? We live in such boxes around pleasure and there’s just so much more to play with.

August/narration:

Around then, her career path changed.

Dr. Nicole: It’s a huge reason of why I decided to train for two years in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. My school at the time is like, “Do not do that Nicole. You should not specialize in that. That’s too niche. You need to expand yourself.” And I’m saying in that voice, ’cause it feels. Fricking controlling mind you that I’m going into all of this debt, I’m going into all this debt, and I get it.

They’re trying to help me. They’re trying to guide me. But they’re like, no, do not go to a psychedelic internship for two years out of your, four years of training in this. You’re gonna regret that. You’re not gonna match for internship. Lo and behold, I do stay and I do match for internship, and now I have my own business that’s thriving. So like, fuck off.

I knew what was aligned for me, which was to stay in this space and to be like, oh my gosh, how many people do we have talking about psychedelic healing and sexuality? We have a good chunk, but not enough. How many people do we have talking about queerness, non-monogamy, more expansive ways, kink? Not enough, right? And I truly wanna devote my life to this subject. That’s something that I, at least internally, decided for myself.

So I made a lifelong commitment to myself that this is the space that I’m gonna keep working in until I die and make the biggest dent that I can in dismantling, rape culture. That’s my biggest hope.

August/narration:

She also has hopes for you, now that you’ve heard her story. She wanted you to know this:

Dr. Nicole: Pleasure is possible. Now in my work, I’ve seen people of so many different spaces with that, some people that are expanding into new narratives and types of play, and some people that feel like pleasure is another world that they can’t even glimpse into or see. And so I wanna speak with very direct clarity.

But I wanna speak with very direct clarity to the neuroscience that we know about psychology and our brains, and particularly psychedelic experiences. The brain has neuroplasticity,. We’re absolutely capable of change. It can be slow. It can be titrated. And it often has to be if you come from spaces of trauma.

And that there are people who are willing to help you in that. There are healers, whether it’s a coach, a therapist, a community. There are people who are eager to help you step into that and that that is absolutely possible.

August/narration:

If you’re deep in that work already and expanding, she said:

Dr. Nicole: Keep pushing the boundaries. We need more people who are expanding the narratives of types of play because we deeply internalize the narratives of our culture and our society and what sort of sex is quote unquote normal and acceptable.

And I want you to keep pushing. Pushing the boundaries of what consensual play and eroticism can feel like and be like. And to understand that your play and your pleasure is a sacred revolutionary form of activism.

August/narration:

Also? Community is so important.

Dr. Nicole: In my training, the biggest thing I learned is that community is essential. We internalize our relationships, both the systemic ones as well as the real people and beings that you’re in relationship with, and those form your reality. And so if you want to change that, you need to change your relationships in your community.

So listening to a podcast like this. Listening to a podcast like mine, Modern Anarchy, finding community spaces. This is why I’m so passionate about running groups. I run my Pleasure Liberation Sexuality Group with folks, and it’s like a 16-week group program that we do where we form connections and we cry, and we laugh about all of these things.

And so whether it’s my communities that you come into or other communities that you create. Please know that that is revolutionary and that is super, super powerful because we can’t just change it all. The self-help space is very much so like “just change your own narrative.” And like, I wanna honor that it’s a yes and. It’s the self, the internal work, but it’s also the external and you will not go very far if you.

Keep trying to, doing it all on your own. All on your own. You need to form community spaces where you can grow, expand and learn language. So ask the people in your community, what are the fantasies you’re exploring? Not just the shitty things that are going on in your sex life, but what are the fantasies? What are you enjoying?

As a psychotherapist, I also worked in community mental health. I saw the disparities that occur in access to these things and access to resources, access to spaces.

August/narration:

Dr. Nicole also creates free resources, such as the Pleasure Wheel.

Dr. Nicole: Now, this pleasure wheel is very similar to an emotion wheel, where you look at a wheel and notice something, you know, like an emotion, like sadness, and then it goes into smaller words like grief or other sorts of things that really speak to what you are feeling so that you can have more language to communicate.

August/narration:

Another resource she made focuses on pleasure and eroticism.

Dr. Nicole: It has some journaling prompts about your fantasies, your sexual experiences, and using different parts of the wheel to get really clear on what you wanna call in to your sex life.

And that’s gonna help you give the language so that, yeah, when you’re at a party and you’re doing pickup play, or if you’re in a long-term relationship, you can say, Hey, I want this kind of touch. This kind of speed and that kind of pressure, and I think that’s gonna feel good on this part of my body.

Whatever it is, the more that we can develop that language, ’cause truly your erotic self and the capacity to name that is a language. And many of us, if you come from where I came from, purity culture, it’s a language that you did not learn.

And so if someone asked me today, can you speak French? I would just go silent like I did in my erotic life.

I remember the first time a kinky person asked me, how do you like to be touched? I literally froze. I was like, God, I’ve never, wow. Okay. And so we have to have compassion for ourselves and the people that we connect with and we play with to understand that many of us do not have the language. And so there are tools, there are resources.

There are communities and change, pleasure, it is all possible.

August/narration:

Find these and more free downloads from Dr. Nicole at modernanarchypodcast.com. 

Oh, and the reason she wears her purity ring? That involves a cool story, too.

August: So can I see it?

Dr. Nicole: Yeah.

August: Wow.

August/narration:

It’s super pretty.

August: So do tell you’re still wearing it.

Dr. Nicole: I wore it for a long time and then once I started having sex and got to a space of being beyond Christianity in that way, I did stop wearing it. I put it in a box and I was like, I can’t, I just really can’t.

I really hope my mom doesn’t notice when I come home for Christmas that I don’t have that on anymore. You know, just oof. And then I’m deeper down into my journey. You know, I’m exploring queerness, I’m exploring non monogamy, and then I have my first group play experience. And it was magical hot. Oh my God.

I go to bed, and then I wake up the next day and I’m like. Oh shit, I’m a slut. And not in the like, Wow, I’m a slut. This is so cool. It’s like, Oh God, like I’m a slut. Oh no. Everything from the Scarlet Letter A, you know, and that book and just shame and judgment was flooding in. Like, I walked to a coffee shop and I was like, everyone knows I had group play right now.

I swear to God, everyone knows. . . So I’m panicking. And in the psychedelic space, you know, when we do therapy, we call this a rebound.

Oh God, let me, let me pull back. Let me pull back. And so I was experiencing that as I had this expansive, beautiful experience and then contracting back to the systems once I really started to integrate it. And so I came back and I was like. I need a head to floor length dress. I’m a good, pure woman.

I’m putting back on my purity ring as a joke. Like, I’m okay. I’m okay. And so it started off as some laughter with my partners at the time of like, we’re good. Look at me in my long dress and my purity ring. And then I kept it on as like a reminder because the beautiful thing is that you grow and we expand.

Here’s this very physical thing like this, very tangible thing to remind me of how far I have come, how far I have come.

And so it started as a joke, but it is now this very tangible reminder that change is possible, that pleasure is possible. And so I remind myself when I look at that, of how much internal work I’ve done, how powerful it is to help the people that come to me to do this work and how much more work we can do in community. Because there’s still more. There’s still more pleasures, and the fantasies expand and keep expanding, and so it’s, it’s a powerful reminder to that capacity for change.

August: I love it. You totally reclaimed it.

Dr. Nicole: Yeah.

August: It’s like you went from purity ring to pure pleasure.

Dr. Nicole: Yeah, exactly.

August/narration:

Find Dr. Nicole’s offerings here and that sweet Beducated quiz here.

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