If I Speak - 126: What if you don’t have to feel anxious 24/7?

Episode Date: August 18, 2026

Ash has had life-changing experience for only £38. Has she found the key to escaping her fight-or-flight response? And what’s the best way to process anxiety? Plus: how to respond when your partner’s porn habit makes you feel weird. Get tickets for Ash at the Southbank Centre on 26 September. Get tickets for Heated: Carnival Afters at Vespers on 30 August. Send us your dilemmas: [e-mail] Music by Matt Huxley.

Hello, welcome to, if I speak. We are not in the Canadian forest. Sadly not, because I think it would be a bit cooler up there. It would be, it would be cooler. We're in the urban East Islands of London at the moment. And it would be shady. Yeah, I have all the curtains closed all the time in summer, which is mental. My housemate thinks he's got seasonal effective disorder in the summer because it's, well, he is Scottish.

so he wants to... I thought it's Ozzy. Both. So he's Scottish who then grew up in Australia. But he thinks that endless summer is annoying. And I think he doesn't like how indoors he has to be to avoid his fair skin being sizzled. Did he not experience that in Australia?

I'm sure he did. But the thing that he did experience in Australia was they had to go to school wearing a bike helmet because otherwise he'd get swooped by the... the magpies. For what? What do they want from him? They would just,

they would just scalp children. I've never, there's so many things you hear about Australian critters, but I've never heard magpies. They've got really aggressive magpies. Look it up. Look it up after this recording, because I guarantee it's true.

Maybe I will, maybe I won't. I can't. I will make no promises on that, but what I will make a promise is that I'm about to ask you three questions, because this is our, regular intro segment,

you'll a little warm-up, 73 questions minus 70, which eases you in to the soup of, if I speak, the podcast you're listening to at the moment. Ash, are you actually eased? All right, warm me up. Right.

Choose one. No periods ever again or no spots ever again. Hmm. No periods ever again because I don't get many spots and they tend to be dealable. when I have them.

And if I was on my, my natural, unimpeded cycle, it's really bad. Like, like my periods naturally are really bad. So there's like two days of the month, sometimes three,

where like I physically can't leave the house because I'm just like bleeding so heavily. And it just feels undignified. And I feel constrained and upset. And I was also really anemic. What about you? No, it's hard. I think no periods, because I hate them so much.

I cannot believe that for a week more, every month, people who are born female have to just suffer. And everyone's like, yeah, that's normal. Yeah, it's normal. Like, you might be locked in bed, you're bleeding through any white garments, every time you go to the toilet Oh, it's like the final scene of carry Final scene of carry

And what people also don't tell you is Whether you can choose sattery towels You can have tampons But what they don't tell you is that if you laugh Or sneeze or do a poo Or stand up to tea quickly The tampon dislodge the tampon dislodge the bit And you have to go up there

And push it back And then your hands are bloody And you have to wash it And you think this, you look like a surgeon Post surgery Yeah, washing in the sink Do you know what it's like to always be like, am I bleeding through my trousers? And moon cups for me manage to both hurt, right, and feel too big and also not catch all the thing.

Yeah, yeah. Everything about it is messy and more administration on top of a busy life and you feel like shit and you're swollen and you just want to yell at everyone and cry and eat a lot of food. Two words. Breast tenderness. It just sucks Also you can't fuck You can't fuck I mean you can fuck

And some people love to fuck But I don't want to do more laundry I don't want to do more laundry And it also just feels weird When you know that It's not all lubrication It's blood It's also

It smells metallic too It's also like a high laundry time For me anyway It's just so much admin I think spots Like I hate them But It's not the admin that comes

with it is different. The mental load and the physical load is lessened. So no periods. No periods. Okay. Next question.

Have you ever prayed for something and then it happened? Ooh, you've got a good face there. Sorry. Kind of actually look like a startled meerk out, I would say. I don't pray for things

to happen. I pray for things to continue. you. So, this is going to sound so lame. A lot of the time I wake up in the morning, I'll look over at my still sleeping husband and I'll go, you make me so happy, so, so happy and this is an incredible feeling of love.

And I just pray that we get to enjoy this for as long as possible. I think that's a very nice thing. And also, at the moment, that's hold it up. So clearly, Knock on wood. Clearly it's working. Clearly you've got... Touchwood, inshalla.

You touchwood, inshalla. The evil eye. Yeah. Last question. What is your current pub fact, aka the fact that you tell everyone at the pub, the pub can be metaphorical? It is the nugget of information

you are passing on to people. That's tricky because I don't, I tend not to have a pub fact, right? Like, I don't have a fact, which I'm always coming out with. It's contextual. So it has to depend entirely on who,

is there and what the conversation is. But what I would say is that I'm quite good at deploying the right fact at the right time. But I cannot think about facts sort of in the abstract apropos of nothing. The other thing that I'm really good at is naming actors. Like character actors. So I'll be like, oh, it's that guy.

And I'm like, that guy, you mean Lance Reddick? Not. I don't know who that is, which is why you're good at it. He was an actor who was in Roots and The Wire, and he was the main police officer in the 03 Bonnie and Clyde video. Oh. Oh, I knew. I really, I really, because that's the two-pack song.

Right? It's a two-pack song, being my girlfriend. Which is about his gun. Right. Actually about his gun. And I feel that they sanitised the song. Well, she also samples in that song just various songs. Oh, it's your girlfriend. That's Prince. Oh, yeah. There's a lot of girlfriend songs being sampled in that. Too many.

What's your pub song? Pub song. Pub fact. My pub fact. again I think it is contextual right now it would probably be like did you know rod little edited the today program because I didn't actually know that and that is mad to think of how people change how people change you know what I'm not going to speak ill of the dead and I'm also not going to lie

if we don't have anything nice to say let's move on to our middle segment say it in the group chat Yeah. Let's go to your intrusive thoughts. So this week I have an intrusive thought and it is about how do you escape fight or flight? Because for the first time, I realize such a thing as possible. You don't just have to accept fight or flight as a permanent condition of your life. You do not have to have those horrible symptoms of anxiety 24-7. So last week, I took the week off, but I didn't go on holiday.

I stayed in London. And it was so nice. I went for walks. I went swimming in the Thames. What? Where? I went to... Have you got a third arm now?

I went to a place which is upstream, so sort of towards Reading. And it's called Pangborn. Oh my God, I was about to say, did you go to Pangborn? I did. So we actually went to Goring and Streetly first and then we did like a long walk down the Thames Park. And we stopped off on the way for a couple of swims here and there. And then we finished at Pangbourne Meadows and did lots of swimming. And then we went to the pub by the weir. And it was so funny you did that because I was literally like I should go to Pangborn. I would say definitely do the walk down from Goring and Streetly because it's also quite shady because it was really hot that day. It was like 33, 34 that day. and so it's like it's quite shady and there are also quieter places to swim

the cool thing about Pangporn is that there's this bridge and obviously they're not allowed to do it but everyone does is that the kids are just jumping off the bridge into the water that reminds of Mae Finchie's 5' so somewhere will the kids do that

and then eventually one of the characters does and dies of broken neck age 50 I think Great author I just think that you can't oh this can sound terrible you can't make it so kids can't take risk

with their lives. They have to take risks. They've got to take risks and sometimes those risks won't work. So yeah, when swimming, it was great. I inhaled novels at quite a pace. And it turns out that some of the like

really bait novels where it's like, everyone says this is good. It's one of the nations and most beloved books. It's actually just quite good. Which one did you read? Pillars of the Earth.

Never read it, but maybe I will know. It's basically about the anarchy. It's about the period of time between the sinking of the white ship and the murder of Thomas Beckett. It's not that. It's just, I'm such a modern girl when it comes to fiction. If you give me something that's set between like late Victorian to 1960s, poof, I go nuts.

Wow, wow, wow. It's actually a really fatal flaw of mine that I'm fucking love modern. What you want is for someone to hold the telephone like this? Yes, I'm a real interwar. Yeah. Period, gal, unfortunately. post-war, pre-war, like, just about there. So when someone's like medieval, I'm like,

early modern, I did Hillary Mantel because everyone else did, and it was amazing. But I'm really in my sweet spot when I'm just in sort of like the 20th century, very late 1900s. I'm moving us along because we have digressed. Yes, let's go to your store, sorry. So I had this week off.

I remembered that home is a place that I really enjoy and it's not just a place where I spend the hours which aren't work. There is a love for home. and there is a fulfillment from home that I need to tap into. And also, at the risk of sounding very woo, I tried something for the first time. I got acupuncture.

And it was literally the most relaxed I have felt in years. I came out of it feeling like I'd taken heroin. Who knows? I wasn't looking at what was going on with the needles. She could have just been like, let's dose her up. but basically for the first time in I don't know how long I got to experience my own body when it isn't flooded with adrenaline so I fell asleep actually with all these like needles in my ears

and like needles in my feet and needles in my wrist I just like fell asleep which I didn't think I was going to do because I thought isn't it not quite stressful the needles in you but turns out no and then when I came out for days my breathing was slow and it was deep and my pulse wasn't racing and I wasn't jumping from thought to thought to thought without being able to complete any of those thoughts or close any of those loops because my attention is so fragmented. And so I don't think it's original to say that modern life triggers our fight or flight response or like fight flight freeze responses in a very particular way. It's constant non-physical stresses. So work pressures, traffic noise.

constant surveillance and social panoptica and money worries being in crowds. And I think for a lot of people, that experience of constant stress, it actually decreases your resilience rather than builds it up through exposure because non-physical stresses can't be overcome by fight or flight. So it's not like you're trying to outrun a saber-tooth tiger or fight something which is causing you a physical threat. it's just being triggered all the time, but you can't overcome what the threat is. So for lots of people, the result is like long-term anxiety. It can be a sort of fragility, right? Like a drastically lowered

resilience to things. It can be being avoidant or sort of paralyzed by things that feel threatening, or it could be a reliance on psychoactive substances, the most common of which is alcohol. And I think a lot of people listening probably experience the same physical symptoms as I do. So my ones are shallow breathing, an elevated heart rate, an inability to focus on one task. And I'm sure that people have symptoms in addition to that. So people do be struggling with the pooping. People do be struggling. You know?

Bad gut times. headaches, jaw clenching, short temper, like crying. And even recovery from this sort of constant stress has itself been subordinated to productivity and or profit extraction. So hobbies, which are supposed to be a sort of respite from work, then get turned into side hustles, which mean the same pressures that feel threatening in terms of deadlines and money, da-da-da-da. That then becomes part of your so-called recovery.

It might be that you've become dependent on your phone because you can't deal with a single moment of being alone with your own brain. Could be going to the gym for the right body. Acts of consumption in the name of wellness. So we just end up further enmeshed in these systems and structures which demand from us, take from us. We must do for that system, even when they purport.

to give us something. So I realised that there isn't really much of like a question about this. It was just, it was really striking to me that I thought that constant fight or flight was just a part of who I am now. And it's a part of my personality. And to have an experience where I could feel what it's like to not have it even temporarily was kind of astonishing. I was just like, I didn't expect that. And so I suppose maybe a place to start would be, have you ever mistaken a prolonged state of stress for being part of your personality? Yeah, obviously, what are you talking about? Why even ask that question? I know it's like when you're asked to be on camera and the person is asking you a question and they just say, repeat the question back to me.

And you know it's all a formality and you both understand exactly what it's going. That's what just happened here. That's what just happened. Moia, have you ever been in a prolonged state of stress? What do you mean? My whole life is a prolonged state of fight or flight. And you know this, bro. I know.

I know. Yes, obviously. Like everything you're ticking off there, I'm like, yeah, tick, tick, tick. That's me, brother. Tick, tick, tick. Yeah, I have obviously lived in a constant state of fire flight. And I would say that I'm unduly attached to that constant state of fire flight. of flight. I think it feels both dreadful and safe. For a long time it was, because it is the

coping mechanism that you develop from a young age and it is the state you existed from a young age. So as you get older, changing that and it feels worse, as you get older, changing that also will take a huge effort. It's a lot of work. And the more you have experiences outside of that constant state of fight or flight and can see what it's like the more you can you know try and change the things in your life the structure you've built but often it takes a massive infrastructure overhaul in your life because your life is built around that state or fight and flight your career hopefully not your relationships but sometimes um your social life the way you set yourself up in your group of friends even i had a conversation with my therapist didn't she should really get

like a pound every time i mention her where she gets enough money from you Yeah, true. We had a conversation and it was one of the therapy sessions where I cry and she loves it where I cry. It was really recent. I wonder if there's the sort of professional pride where I've got you where I won't you? Oh, definitely, definitely, 100%. Because I very rarely do it in therapy but like she's like, finally you're letting it out.

And the reason I was crying was not even sadness per se. It was sort of happiness because I was talking about being with my boyfriend and the conversation started with talking about my tiredness, about my excitement when I'm talking about my move versus how exhausted I feel. And a lot of our conversations revolved recently revolved around like change, making change in my life and positive change. And I was trying to think about some of my friendships

and the sort of narratives I have around friendship and what roles I perform. And I was telling her, and I thought this was disconnected at first and it became very obvious. It was connected. Well, it's been connected all this time. It was once connected.

I was telling her about a recent thing where I was with my boyfriend and we may have ingested some sort of substance that would make one very relaxed and giggly, which I never do and watch the movie. And which I never do. I haven't done that for years. And usually I prang out. Yeah.

Not this. It was a, it was a, what do you say? Edible. It was edible rather than... No, I know the word of someone used it. It was edible rather than fucking like, you know. I don't like those. Don't like tobacco.

Anyway, had an edible. And usually I'd prang out, but I didn't. I had the best time. It was exactly what you're meant to do. You know, I wouldn't do this every week because I think it's bad for you in your brain. But it was just like, I felt so comfortable with this man. I felt so at peace. I wasn't worried about anything.

I was relaxed. And I feel relaxed a lot with him. And my therapist and I worked out that I feel really safe with him and like he doesn't need anything from me. And I can just be. And I started crying when I was talking about that. And then she was prodding me a bit more. And I said, and everyone else needs something from me.

And I, because, and the point I'm getting at here is when you're in a constant state of fight and flight and trying to avoid yourself, you will make, put yourself in positions where something is always either needed from you or you was performing something just to avoid sitting with yourself and being relaxed. So it's not just like you can go do acupuncture. I've had moments where I've like meditated and I felt this great peace. I've gone away and I've felt this great peace. And I tell myself, I'm constantly trying to chase making that my life.

But for a lot of my life, I haven't actually chased it. I've walked away from it because it scares me about what will happen when I go into the light, as it were. So I think that there's, so I don't, I don't believe in the sort of scientific, by which I mean Chinese medicine scientific undergirding logic for

acupuncture. So the stuff about like meridian lines and that you know the reason why she's stabbing me here is because it relates to my ankles or whatever. Like I don't believe that.

I do believe that there is something about, you know, your paris sympathetic nervous system and when it touches the muscle it forces it to relax and then the changing of your physical state in that way.

then has an impact on your mental state. And what was really interesting to me, because I am married to a very faddy person, right? He loves a fad, so, so, so much. But it's also not just him, right? It's interesting the way your sort of like microgeneration or your sort of like micro, micro-subculture of friends. Like everyone moves as a pack, but you don't actually know that you've done it, right? Everyone's getting acupuncture in the minute. And so he got acupuncture.

and one of the sort of after effects that he had of it was that he had these very intense rage-filled violent dreams and one of the things which is really interesting about him is that he doesn't seem to get angry he doesn't express the feeling of rage and he you know he can get grumpy right Lord have I seen the grump He's a man from Yorkshire

Right the grump comes Comes naturally You know If the Iliad had been Written by a Yorkshireman It would be Sing now mules of the grump of Achilles Like it really

It really would have been But I think for all sorts of reasons Right It's not that he thinks that anger is bad He's just don't really feel it Things don't bother me that much And I think maybe what he's realized Is that there's actually a really sophisticated

system of like suppression that he's not even aware of at all and that actually there is anger that lives inside him because after the acupuncture came to him in his dreams and so I found that really interesting because I was like well you've just had this quite powerful experience and I want to see what it does for me and I don't think it changed my dreams or anything like that and maybe that's because he was going into it going I've been feeling really stressed and I want a different way to do with my stress whereas I did it in my week off so I came in and she was like, so what's been bothering you? And I'm like, nothing. I'm having a fabulous time.

And so I don't think it necessarily went in in that same way. But I think realizing how good it can feel has made me go, I need to make more room for this in my life. And I think this maybe comes to a question about, you know, a difficult but purposeful life, which contains fulfillment and you can feel proud of yourself and you can feel proud of yourself and you can feel proud of your achievements and feel proud of things you're part of

from just sort of like martyrdom, right? And like unnecessary brutality is to go, well, I really want both these things. I want to push myself. I don't want to flee when I come across things which are stressful. But I want to have that feeling of like deep breathing and relaxation. And that is a feeling which like I think like you, I feel very safe around my partner.

and it's something that I can feel. But I never feel it by myself until I let a lady stab me in the ear. Do you ever zoom out and examine the way you've set up your life? Yeah. And how it... Because I would say from doing this podcast, like I talk about, you know, my burnout a lot and my...

and stress and all of this. And I think if you looked at us both, you would actually find we have very much the same levels of sort of burnout and stress and we have a similar approach to things. But you talk about a lot less and complain a lot less. And I wonder how you conceive of fight or flight in your own life and the way you might have structured your life around even maintaining that state. Well, so I'd suppose for me, like I'm saying fight or flight, but actually freeze is the really big one for me. And there are also a lot. sorts of reasons for that. I think there's a way in which violence is part of my everyday

experience of life and the things that I read and then also like things which have happened to me in the past and having to be both hypervigilant but also I can't let everything in. Like I can't react to all of the things. So I think I have a highly overactive freeze response. And then why have I structured my life in such a way that I'm coming? into contact with things that make me have that response all the time is because there is this ego which goes, I have to be tough. I want to be not just tough, you know, in the words of Ed Miliband, tough enough. I don't just want to be like tough enough. I want to be the toughest. I want, I want to be the most resilient and I you know the standard that I set for myself is superwoman and

that's really why is that I think that you know that there's a way in which you can say well a lot comes from insecurity which is obviously because your dad left you but I think that there is that but it's also a really big part of like the family story in terms of how we choose to tell it from my grandma to my mom is this thing of like superwomen right like it's very much like that's the model that you're aspiring towards. And my mum has an overactive freeze response just like me. That I grew up to think of as resilience. And it is resilient, but it's also a freeze response.

Do you think that you have an overactive freeze response, or do you just think that you are operating always at this level? and so it tips more often into I have to shut down completely because what I tend to see of you is actually that you are always operating at max capacity and I think in that sort of set up it's less that you have an overactive freeze response it's more that you would often edge into a freeze response

because that's just what happens when you're being overwhelmed constantly like you carry you carry so much stuff all the time you were so stretched and these are things that are not like they're not light stuff like you have a job that you have a great amount of like purpose in and meaning you're constantly having to take like a real intellectual load because it's it's not just like I can sit here and do this you have to engage with so much news give your own analysis all the time so many books you're also constantly socializing as part of that job it's front facing and then you have like internal colleague dynamics you have to be on all the time when you're in public.

I would say that in those circumstances, that's not even getting on to the other duties of your life to like the responsibilities you feel to your family or friends and how that's set up. I would say that freezing quite regularly is probably a logical response to all that pressure. But what I mean is that obviously people who are at maximum capacity for other reasons, right?

So do you remember when I said like Volcano or Bank vault, right? My family is so like you're a volcano or a bank vault. And the people who are volcanoes, it tends to actually be a lot more about what they've experienced, how they make sense of traumas and crises in their lives. That tends to express itself. It's these like big eruptions, right? It is fight.

Like, it is, I will fight you. And it's not that they're unkind people or they're cruel people. It's they are at maximum capacity in terms of their emotional life for whatever reason. And they flip into a form of attack, right, when they've hit that point. And the bank vaults, right, the people who, like, you know, are frozen, like, one, I think, tend to have a different kind of relationship to their work and sense of purpose. My mom is a very purposeful person, right? And she went from being very, very purposeful in her work and had a real sense of mission with it.

Now she's taken over her local Green Party. And I was like, God, it was like bringing, you know, it was like bringing a Messerschmitt to a fist fight, getting my mum to like, you know, she was like, I think I'm going to organise these people. And I was like, I think you are too. You can take the girl out the local authority, but you cannot take the local authority out of the girl.

is that she will organize sort of professional and like professional adjacent, right, like public, political, that kind of thing. She'll organize it in such a way where it's like, well, I have to be the person who just gets on with it. It have to be the person who just copes. And she very much creates that for herself. And so I think that coming back to your point, which is that is itself a coping mechanism for other things. And I don't think that's necessarily. bad because I think that some approaches and ways of thinking about healing

locks you into like deriving your sense of self from the trauma that you experience in a way which means that you never actually build up resilient or capacity or an ability to act in the world and I think if your coping mechanism involves a sort of like elevated sense of public purpose that's okay you just have to be aware that if you don't make space for dropping down out of that fight-flight freeze

you're going to pay for it like you are going to pay for it and it can be paying for it from like oh not having a good relationship with alcohol could be paying for it as like oh I've had a aneurism by the time I'm 40 it can be and like this is what happened to my mum

last year is that due to cumulative, unexamined stress, she had an amnesia. She had amnesia for 12 hours. Her short-term memory was obliterated and she couldn't retain information for more than 30 seconds at a time. And luckily I was with her

because it was very scary. So I think that's part of it, which is like there are these coping mechanisms. I don't, and I think somewhat coping mechanisms are worse than others and I think some are all right. But if you never drop out of that, that stress, you're going to have to pay the piper, one way or another.

How do you drop out of that stress, though, because lots of people think they don't have choices and options, even if there is always a choice and an option. Some of them are, you know, some of those choices are equally unsavory. How do you drop out? My acupuncture costs 38 pounds, right? And there are lots of people who are in like long-term therapy where all they're fucking doing is like excavating the same fucking shit again and again. And I think that there's a limitation to it.

I think there is a limitation to certain kinds of talking therapy. So I'm just like, let a lady stab you instead. Or it could be a form of movement, right? A sort of like somatic bodily activity that gets you into that state. I definitely feel in terms of like my relationship, particular forms of touch, particular of forms of touch and being touched get get me to drop down into that state and i also think so i'm trying not to be too specific about this because i don't want to add someone but there's someone i know who who's very like you know they're so into the inner child stuff that they did like a

a mock vaginal rebirth thing you know where like they pretend to give birth to you right okay um Cool. Fine. Fine, fine, fine. I think that's taking the wrong, the wrong approach. Do they still behave like a child? Well, if I speak, I'm in big trouble.

I think that you have to think about your childhood, and you have to think about how your experiences as a child and your experiences of being parented have shaped you and disciplined you and maybe given you some unhealthy coping strategies. But the way in which you sort of deal with that isn't to like keep talking about your childhood over and over and over or get yourself into a place where you go, well, I have to have all the things that I didn't get as a child.

You will never be a child again. Sorry, it's one way traffic. There's no going back. But there is something you can do, which is embrace play. The way you play as a child, the way you laugh as a child, like I remember, I guess we're like in year three and this girl from school called Sophie

she discovered the middle finger she was the pioneer she discovered it and she brought it to us like Francis Drake bringing back tobacco and the potato do you know what I mean like look what I've discovered and I remember in the playground we were all just going like this and then like laughing like this like insane screaming peel laugh because like we're just so delighted by it

and and you have to find a way to do that as an adult you have to find a way to play like that and to laugh like that um i feel like physically because i think a lot of our playfulness gets situated online through things like memes and videos i think a lot of that becomes an isolated individualistic disembodied disembodied experience like when you're talking about the middle finger i was thinking about a clip i recently sent someone where it was the crystal have you seen it the crystal palace kid the fan he takes the the penalty kick oh yeah yeah yeah The Brighton fans all being in.

And he goes. And he goes, he's like 10. And I really laughed at that. And I was like, when you were thinking of it, I was like, that's the last thing that I really laughed at. I'm like, why am I not laughing? I need to do play. I used to be running.

I saw some people playing with a bat and a ball in Greenwich Park yesterday. And I was like, God, I'd love to go and play with bat and a ball. Yeah. Fab. I want to do some bat and ball. Get a bat and ball. Like, there are physical forms of play. There's like, you know,

really stupid ones like for example taking um a so cracker for some instance that makes you giggle but not that one different one i had a great time and uh watching the royal rumble for instance right it's just it was mega dumb but it was just about being like i'm not my adult self right i'm not being cerebral in doing this there's no ironic detachment we talked about purpose in the last episode but i think there's another bit that you need to add which is pointlessness. And we talk about pointlessness is how corrosive it is when it's like the entirety of a life. But sometimes you need to have pointless play, I think. A purposeful life needs pointless play.

Because otherwise you're constantly an optimising mode, which is stress, adrenaline. I saw this thing ages ago which said, you know, when you eat food, why are we eating as if we're being chased? Why am I behaving at work like I'm in A&E? There is, you know, it's always like, this is a life or death situation I'm in. Where is the space that I'm creating where there's a pointless, relaxed play? And I think that was another thing

about the feeling safe. It was a pointless, relaxed state of play where we were just fucking laughing because we were watching that video where Jason Segal, Jason Segal and Paul Ruder on the I Love You Man, Prestor, and they're clearly high as fuck.

And they have this long, extended bit about some imaginary friend called Gideon and you're watching them go through the stages of being really high. It's so funny. Completely pointless shit. Completely pointless. Like, I need more of that.

I need more ball games. My partner brings out a ball with us sometimes because he knows I love playing catch, like a dog. I would also say like, and there is a problem with this. And I think to come back to you, I don't think that we are in this sense of like fight, flight freeze all the time

because we're just like bad at organizing our lives. I think society makes it this way. And yoga is something which I love to do, but it's obviously been sucked into this optimization. Either in terms of body and what your body is supposed to look like or what your body is supposed to do. Or like feeling well itself becomes this task you have to achieve. And then it's then further and further out of reach because you go,

why aren't I relaxed? Why can't I stop feeling so stressed? And I think one of the things that you have to remember And again, I don't want this to be offensive. Like the same way I'm like, I don't buy the science of Chinese medicine, but I do think there are things which are really beneficial about it. When it comes to yoga, I don't buy the spirituality of it. But I do think that there is a value to it and a value to this movement

and there is, you know, you feel benefits of it. One of the things that you have to fucking remember is that like, standing on your head is completely pointless. There is zero practical application of being able to stand on your head. But it's fun to try and do. And it does feel good. Like it does actually like calm you down. If you can do 10 breaths standing on your head like against a wall or something.

It is good. But it doesn't, it's not as if I'm like, okay, well, I can get this promotion because look what I can do, right? It has no transactional value in society. So there is this play element of it. which is really hard to access, I think, with the way much yoga classes are structured and the way it's become a marketable commodity.

But it is a good thing. It is a good thing. And on that note, we have to move forward. We must fly. I think there is a lot more we can unpack with this topic about especially about conditions when you know it's time to change condition of your life. But I think we will come back to it.

And it's also something we kind of subconsciously talk about all the time because it deeply affects our personal lives. and professionalise. Try a bit of recreational stabbing. Don't do that, guys. Acupuncture. It's called acupuncture. It's called acupuncture.

Anyway, right. Dun dun dun dun dun dun. That's the segue. Now we're in. I'm in big trouble, which is our dilemma segment. And if you are in big trouble, you can send an email to if I speak at navaramedia.com. That is if I speak at Navariamedia.com. I think I'm reading this out.

Yeah. Okay. Dear Ashton Moyer, thank you for the excellent advice you give every week. I genuinely feel that I'm learning so much and I love storing away the little nuggets of insight you give on the pod. My girlfriend and I, both early 30s, have been together just over a year. I generally feel like she is the love of my life and we have such a varied, a kind, exciting and passionate relationship both in the bedroom and out. We're both women, and our sexual dynamic is one where she takes a more top role, and I lean into being softer, more submissive. We're both super into this.

However, something has come up recently that I'm struggling to get my head around, as much as I know it's not a huge deal. I know she watched porn when she was younger, and not in queer relationships, that she had favourite female Paul stars, and she even showed me some of her favourite videos early on in our relationship. I found it hot at the time and hadn't really thought about it since. The other day she casually made a joke about her laptop crashing because she'd been watching porn on it and it felt like something was imploding inside me. I later spoke to her about it and explained she explained it had been a joke, but she'd been far too busy at work to even think about watching porn,

but it made me realise at some point she probably will and doesn't see us outside the bounds of behaviour in a monogamous relationship. I don't know what I want to do because I want her to be free. I know rationing that watching porn, even having favourite performers, is not the same as cheating. I know that desire is fluid, and desire created by fantasy can fuel your existing relationships in a meaningful way. I have experienced fantasies and desires that don't revolve around her, and I know this is a good thing. And yet, the thought of her fantasising about other people, specifically women, with a dynamic similar to our own, makes me feel physically sick. Despite knowing she used to watch porn before we met, I think I had subconsciously hoped she no longer did.

I know rationing she's done nothing wrong, and yet, despite all my reasoning, some small part of my brain is calling out that it's cheating, that she shouldn't need to watch other girls online, and if she does, it means I'm not enough for her. It makes me want to push her away. It doesn't help that watching porn doesn't do much for me, and I'm less visually driven than she is. I also have pre-existing stuff around non-monogamous relationships where situations that were entered into a base of trust and understanding

ended up burning me badly. The anxiety about non-monogany predates our relationship, and she's never made me feel anything but adored and desired. What do I do? Do I have to just get over this? Any help? Much appreciate. Love a special one. So like my initial thought is that there isn't actually this thing that everyone understands and it's called monogamy because when you drill down into it,

we actually have all these unspoken expectations about what monogamy constitutes. And though you and your partner might be using the same word, you might not actually mean the same thing. So to one person, monogamy might mean you don't flirt with other people. For another person, monogamy might mean you are really clear about being in a relationship at all points where, like, you close down any potential ambiguity. And for some people, monogamy might mean no porn. And I actually think the best way through that isn't through endless levels of discussion

because I think that can move you to quite an anxious and almost legalistic place. And what you'll find is actually there will always be something that you failed to consider. Then it will come up and then you will have an explosion on your hands. I think you have to make your piece with the fact that there are many different kind of monogamies. and actually you cannot completely close down your partner's ability to transgress because transgression is part of their erotic life. That's what it means to be erotically alive. It's just which transgressions.

Do you know what I mean? And how much do you know about it? I don't need to know if my husband has cranked one out thinking about Moira Stewart. Do you know what I mean? I don't need to know that. Sometimes the thought of him and another woman might be really hot. Other times it might be really upsetting. Yeah.

But I don't need to know that. I need to accept that his head is his own. And I think special one that you're sort of almost there. And you keep sort of raising this distinction between rationally what you know and what it is your feeling. And I think that you need to really dig down into why does this make you feel insecure? And it's not really the porn. And I think that the clue is in like your pre-existing stuff around non-monogamous relationship is why is it that the fundamental otherness of your partner,

that there will be this part of them that's inaccessible to you and you don't control and doesn't have you in it? Why does that feel so triggering to you? Like you've got to work out that. piece of the puzzle. I actually think special and this is quite easily solved. It just takes some time. I agree totally with what Ash said. I also have a couple more things to add. Trust testosterone and going off someone's actions. So I'm going to get a little bit not essentialist because it isn't well like that, but some people have high levels testosterone and me and my friends

been talking about especially the ones who've transitioned from one sex to another, right? And one of the reasons I very much do believe that there are differences biologically in sexes, but also that you very much can change sex is because of the testimony that they give about the massive changes. Testimony, a nice little... No, it wasn't, it was a complete accent. Testimony they give about the massive changes they experience between being one sex and another sex.

I do think it is very possible to change your sex. I also think that there's, you know, gender is a totally fluid thing and they're connected, but they're slightly different. But you're, you know, when you have different hormone levels, you see different outcomes. People with higher testosterone tend to be more visually driven. That is something that me and my friends have noted. We've talked about. Some of them have experienced it.

We discuss it in terms of, you know, people we know, particularly who have, who are male, the male sex, like tend to be a lot more visually driven, high levels of testosterone. It does make a massive difference. And something me and my friends have been talking about is the lack of undone. of just like the gulf of difference between those levels, especially when you have like high testosterone. And lots of people who are female have higher testosterone as well. I have a suspicion. Your partner might just have higher testosterone. And that might actually be a soothing thing to think about. This is not about cheating. It's not about, you know, whether you can trust them or not, which I think is the other issue.

This is simply about a libidia thing. And actually kind of has nothing to do with you in some ways. like whether your partner watches porn or has nothing to do with you unless it is directly impacting the way that she relates to you. I just think that like if you want a monogamy which is 360 degrees, you're monogamous in the imagination, you're monogamous in masturbation as well as like sex and in relationships with other people. I think that's sort of impossible and it required that would require having the secret policeman in your head all the time.

And that's actually kind of a recipe for resentment and probably diminished attraction. Yeah, I think, but I think what's actually here is what we touched upon at the end of when you were, you were giving your sort of response, which is your anxieties around trust and whether you can trust this person

are attaching to anything they can. And because there's not much actually for them to attach to, because she's never made you feel anything but adored and desired, they're landing on this whisper of a thing. Because you don't even know if she's watching Paul, It's just the idea of it. And I think it's just your anxiety is looking for somewhere to land. It has found this.

And it's kind of a good thing because it shows there's so little for it to attach to in this loving, safe relationship that it's gone there. And I just think with time, you have to CBT it. Every time it comes up, you're like, no, how does she actually make me feel? She makes you feel adored. Sometimes you might be able to even flip on its head when this comes up. Like, is she watching porn? Send her a fucking nude. And then you've taken agency back in that.

She's watching you now. She's watching you. Don't do it up for a place of that complete prang, but sometimes it can be really powerful to take their agency back. And I've had partners who are like, yeah, I stopped watching the poor and I started watching you. You know?

God damn. God damn. But when someone, you have to, as Ash said, allow room for your partner to imagine and fantasize, and that's none of your business. But you can also create a culture where whether they are thinking about you and you're thinking about them,

you're talking about it, which I'm sure you do. It sounds that you have a very healthy, loving sex life. I just think this is a case of, anxiety from past betrayal looking for somewhere to land and it's landed here. And I think that's the thing, right, which is past betrayal can then make you, the reason why love is love, right? The reason why it exists and it's meaningful is because they've got the capacity to hurt you.

And I think experiences of betrayal can make us irrational in the sense we go, we can just close down the space in which they can act autonomously and then it will be fine. Nay, nay. No, no. But I think you're already getting that special one. And I also wouldn't underplay the testosterone thing. That helped me think about, you know, my partner a lot, who I know has higher levels of testosterone than me.

And obviously I can't make your partner take some sort of hormonal tests, but I've just noted the link. And it's once you work that out, you'll be like, got a high-te partner, high-te-mail. It's a high-t-trial. It's a high-temail. Like, you know, dominant, likes visual cues. I'd just say there's a bit more tea in there.

And that's fine. That's great. Bidoh. Lots of things think about. But yeah, I'm also very happy for you that you have what sounds like the beginning of a really loving and special relationship, special one. That's sweet. Let's wrap it up.

Let's wrap it up. All right. Thank you everyone for listening. Tell us if you like the show. Bye. Bye.