In Your Pants with Dr. Susie G - Emotional and Erotic Intelligence of Sex

Episode Date: January 10, 2022

"Am I enough?" is a social and sexual anxiety we ruminate about. Yet, how did we get to this place of having abandoned our unconditional self-acceptance? Deepak put it beautifully when he said that: "we are at war with our own bodies and it's desires." Eroticism is part of breaking free from our binary thinking: of true/false ideas. Erotic intelligence, similar to emotional intelligence, is the awareness of and accepting of your emotions, what brings you physical pleasure, what brings others physical pleasure, and the connection you experience with yourself and with others. Deepak shares how you can be present as a nonjudgemental observer: starting by reflecting and noticing what you're drawn to in the world and what repels you. Listen, and you'll hear that you are more than enough. . Connect with Deepak at https://lotusmindfulnesscentre.com/ and [e-mail] .  Questions you want to ask, options you want to sort through, or deciding on what you should do? Schedule time to chat with me: https://drsusieg.com/pelvic-pain-specialist-15-minute-call Pelvic Pain Relief Program: learn about your body and concerns in the comfort and privacy of your own home. With video demonstrations of hands-on treatment techniques, lessons on the science behind why you hurt, and exercises that will help you navigate out of pelvic pain: https://drsusieg.com/pelvic-pain-in-men-online-programThis information is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of a healthcare professional with any questions you may have regarding treatment, medications/supplements, or any medical diagnoses. This information is intended for educational purposes only and is in no way to substitute the advice of a licensed healthcare professional.

You're listening to In Your Pants with Dr. Suzy G, the physiotherapist for your private, helping you get in the know down below. Hey friends, it's Dr. Suzy G here and welcome to another In Your Pants podcast. Thank you so much for being here today. All right, y'all, we have a really spicy topic for today. we are going to be diving into eroticism and viewing eroticism beyond just sex. We're going to be talking about the difference between erotic intelligence and erotic orientation. We're going to frame erotic intelligence around the desire to grow and to connect with ourselves

and our relationships and how we can connect with our erotic self to do just that. We are also going to talk about reconciling our curiosities with erotic intelligence around internalized messages that we hold with pleasure, around pleasure, around our desire, especially when they're viewed from a cultural, religious, and spiritual lens. So without further ado, let me formally introduce my very special guest for today. On today's show, we have Deepak Kashyap. He is a counseling therapist and life skills trainer with an extensive experience in corporate wellness and diversity and inclusion initiatives. He provides emotional and mental health services in person and online for over a decade. He holds a master's degree in psychology of education from

the University of Bristol in the UK. He has been formerly trained in advanced programs in REBT and CBT from the Albert Ellis Institute in New York and attended the MBCT summer school program at Oxford Mindfulness Center at the University of Oxford in England. He has conducted workshops in India, Dubai, the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Canada on various emotional well-being projects. His expertise lies in developing and delivering programs for organizational mental health initiatives, anti-racism, and anti-oppression frameworks, diversity inclusion training and LGBTQ2S plus leadership and rights activism. Deepak has developed and delivered programs like employee emotional first aid, productivity and mental health during the

pandemic, working from home, the new normal, unconscious bias, safe and respectful work environment, psychological safety and work effective versus performative allyship, making workplaces more welcoming of the queer employees beyond just the pride month, emotional skills for feminism, distinctions between social justice, warriors and workers, squaring up meteorocracy and privilege myths, and many such seminal pieces for workplace safety and equity. Deepak was India's first openly gay television co-host. He is a published columnist in national newspapers and magazines, and writes about issues related to sex, mental health, relationships, and emotional disturbances. He has appeared on various national and international

news channels, talk shows and debates, radio and newspapers discussing emotional health and sexuality issues. Deepak is a member of the Ontario Association of Mental Health Practitioners and the Canadian Counseling and Psychotherapy Association. What an impressive bio to share with all of you and i truly hope you enjoyed today's show i had a blast um speaking with deepak on such a very important topic that definitely deserves the spotlight hope you enjoy the show deepak thank you so much for being in the show today well thank you for having me i am very very excited we'll be talking about something that i really really uh like talking about. I think it's not talked about as much. So I'm very excited and very grateful to be here.

Yes. So let's dive right in on the topic of eroticism. Could you please define for us what eroticism is and how we can view it just beyond sex? Every sexual activity has some kind of eroticism to it. It's the different angle of looking at human sexuality. Eroticism cannot be divorced from sexual activity, but not every sexual activity is erotic, but every erotic activity has sexual elements to it. So eroticism has been, people have tried to define it as a quality that causes sexual feelings and even philosophical contemplation about the human body, aesthetics, art and beauty. But for our conversation today, I'd like to stick for the psychological understanding of eroticism which is around erotic desire for the self or the

other so it is the sexual slash romantic slash emotional uh desire for the other and it doesn't have to be confused with arousal all the time physical arousal right so sexuality in terms of experience of it in your body has three different three to four different elements to it right first is desire do you desire something or not the second is arousal when you desire what kind of arousal does it cause in your body does it cause your genitals to go hard or does it cause your genitals to go wet does it cause your genitals to do something in which is compelling you towards that things it's a two words action it's not a running away from it it's two words it's one of those like I like it I want to go near it kind of thing right and then the third

is willingness you could be you could be desirous of something you could be aroused by something but you may not be willing to do it or you might be willing to do it you have a desire but you may not be aroused you might be aroused but you don't have the desire to do it for example a lot of the time uh sexual assault victims would report being aroused but not necessarily have desire to do it you know that that's why like a lot of people say oh but yeah i mean a lot of sexual assault victims themselves would think that if i enjoyed it it was okay no it wasn't okay because you didn't desire it you didn't give consent to it you did not show willingness to do it so willingness is part consent is part of willingness for example uh we could be committed to one individual

and say i i'm desirous of sleeping with another person i'm even aroused but i'm not willing to do it because my commitment absolutely eroticism is is a very expansive and a very umbrella term that sort of covers all three you could be aroused by it you could desire it you could be willing to move towards it uh but the the essential thing of a definition is around uh the sexual nature of that attraction the sexual gratification from that attraction the sexual desire from that attraction that emerges it's not it's not just looking at a beautiful painting and feeling elated and that could be philosophical elation but we do not necessarily characterize that as as erotic orient like eroticism at least as far as I'm concerned I wouldn't include that in the

definition of eroticism. So Deepak what is the difference then between erotic intelligence eroticism and erotic orientation can we kind of dive into those yeah erotic intelligence is knowing the other two erotic intelligence is uh knowing what your erotic orientation is what is eroticism in general and how do you respond to your own body so the the idea of your own erotic self and the relationship of your of your higher self to it you know your judgmental self to it so we all look at things and we evaluate ourself is always evaluating are we in danger are we not are we good are we bad are we we and we've been trained to think in this binary right so how do we respond to our body and its desires how do we respond to the larger idea of

eroticism and other people's bodies and their desires so that sort of is is very close to the idea of intel emotional intelligence so emotional intelligence is about is around how well are you able to understand your emotions the emotions of others respond to your emotions and respond to the emotions of the other around how well are you able to understand the emotional context that you're within without shaming yourself without thinking badly about yourself in the same way erotic intelligence is around what is the level of understanding of your own body and its desire what is the level of acceptance what is the level of love and care and concern and respect that you have what what is the level of dignity that you provide to your own desires or do you

use them as weapons to sort of uh you know self as weapons of self-flagellation like you know oh i am bad and i am bad and look oh how could i even like something this how could i even have thoughts about such and such person that that person i shouldn't even have thoughts about so I think one important part of erotic intelligence is to deny something that has been taught to us for a very long time, which is thought. So Deepak, what is the difference between erotic intelligence and erotic orientation? What is the difference between erotic intelligence and erotic orientation? I think understanding your erotic orientation is part of erotic intelligence erotic intelligence just like emotional intelligence is is part of

being able to uh being aware being accepting and allowing yourself to feel your emotions that's what is erotic uh emotional intelligence in the same way being aware of what you like being non-judgmentally accepting of that and allowing yourself to experience that in a safe way in a safe and brave way even that is part of erotic and that is erotic intelligence according to me because I think if you're able to understand and it doesn't just stop at you because more often than not unless we just we are just involved in self-pleasure and masturbation we are desirous of having sex with the other so it is a lot about the other as well how much do you understand respect and is able to reflect back the dignity that erotic eroticism of the other requires

is part of erotic intelligence as well and I think we need to not look at it as just something that an individual does for himself right absolutely no it does and it's really about what I'm hearing is the erotic intelligence helps to grow desire and connection not only to ourselves but also to our relationships outside of a sexual encounter even that's brilliant I had actually forgotten that important word connection if it is able to erotic intelligence is a force is an attitude is is a state of being which will allow you to establish a connection with yourself and with others which is erotic sexual desirous in nature mm-hmm and how can we oh yes i mean definitely that's segwaying beautifully to my next question

for you is how can we cultivate an erotic self in a healthy way well you you sort of observe you ask questions you become a non-judgmental observer of your body you go out and you can't just observe your body in a room and its desires in a closed room you go out when you go out into nature that's when you realize oh I like this cauliflower more than the other one and I like this tree oh I like the smell of this particular one than the other one oh I need to stay away from this one and this is good for me this is far more nutritious than the other so it's also going out into the world that will help you and that's why there are a lot of people who would say we were late bloomers we never even knew we were gay until we were like

37 38 right they had never even gone out into the world um and expressed and explored who they were leave alone expressing it they explored who they were so a lot of the times where so first is be present be present as a non-judgmental observer be uh consensually um and safely adventurous and I know safe and adventure doesn't necessarily go hand in hand but when it comes to your body and eroticism especially because the other is concerned because of the prevalence of so many STIs and so many you know other complications legal and social complications that come with it I would say being adventurous safely contextually adventurous being aware of the context that you're in, the country that you're in, the culture that you're in. None of

that, the country culture context does not, is not what your acceptance is predicated on. It's the expression that's predicated on that as well. For example, you could express your, for example, you could have eroticism around being an exhibitionist, a naturist, a nudist. You could express that on a nudist beach on a clothing optional beach but if you want to express that in front of the school that's not a safe way for anyone involved right right so eroticism is not something that can accept exist in a vacuum it exists within you but it is experienced in contexts of the other as well yeah interdependence interdependence yeah yeah like um i for example i did not know that i liked

being consensually dominant in bed until i met somebody who were who liked being consensually submissive and said hey would you do this role play with me and i was like i had one rule i said to myself as long as it's hygiene and this is my rule you don't have to have these rooms anyone is listening you donate to have these rooms my rules were if it is hygienic if it is consensual and if it does not hurt my body physically or the other person's body physically I'm mostly game for trying new things I could try and say hey I didn't like it wasn't for me and also like if it doesn't involve hard drugs and such so these were some of my personal rules um so this person came in and he was like hey i like being submissive i like being uh verbally you know

abused in bed and i have these fantasies of somebody dominating me and i was like oh but how do you do you want to give me consent and this is this was when i had not figured this out now when someone tells me this i'm like oh yeah so when it's like you go from that uh i'm not sure to oh yeah and how do you explore that within a consent within the context of con within the context of consent within the context of uh safe words for example what are like you know so we call this best which is or i call it best this is the thing that i'm calling it in my new book that writing best is before sex talk bsd you need to have that because a no is a full statement a yes is a conversation love that i love that it's the courage to communicate

courage to communicate and that would come from acceptance of yourself right right and respect for other and navigating this this space right where you where all parties involved are expressing themselves mutually individually in a safe space to experience that eroticism that pleasure that and absorb one another in that experience trusting trusting erotic erotic orientation in erotic uh intelligence eroticism in general for example is not something that you can demand the other to accept you you can't demand you could say hey i do not need to be physically attacked for this i need to have my dignity and you cannot take opportunities away from me in terms of you know social legal things right as long as these three are guaranteed i cannot ask

Susie for example to accept all the all the erotic things that I'm interested in as part of her life so this is something that you could uh you could experience yourself and accept yourself but you cannot demand acceptance when the other person's body and their desires are concerned does that make sense absolutely and so how what advice could you give us as far as to navigate that space should that be the context of which someone finds themselves in how do how do folks reconcile or navigate or negotiate that contract if i could say it that way yeah so i think best helps a lot which is before sex talk before so you shouldn't just assume that oh just because that person said yes to having sex on tinder or on grinder or wherever you've met them

or in the club that means they're up for anything and everything they've said yes to you that means they've shown interest they could halfway through the act withdraw that interest they could withdraw that consent half because consent's not like something that you give and now it's a blanket consent for the time until you both have orgasm no it's not that consent is continuous enthusiastic and and informed was i aware of what you were doing like i could be you could be having an intercourse with me in in a doggy style and you've taken off your condom and i do not realize that that's not consent that that is tantamount to rape right so are you and you could be like hey but you know what my erotic orientation is that I like stealth stealth is you know you you you feel

more in charge you feel like oh you are just you get a kick out of it and I do not I do not I'm not going to look at that person and say because you get a kick out of something like stealth you're a bad person but you did not communicate that to them it could have been a role play I've even explored in my you know in my therapy sessions with my clients I've even explored their rape fantasies some people have domination fantasies but they actually want to be raped some people have fantasies of dominating others but that doesn't mean doing it without the consent without an actual informed consent makes it okay so erotic orientation is something to do with pleasure and not necessarily purpose and that's why it's not been explored a lot and it's been

dominated this field has been dominated by religious morality and not just christian morality it's been dominated by all sorts of religious morality i mean religions actually stand not only in your kitchen telling you what you can and cannot eat they stand in your bedrooms to tell you which hole you can and cannot go into and how you do enter that the said hole how it's the religious understanding of sexuality is it is something that you have to rise above not something that you have to integrate in your life and then move on because also the understanding that once you rise above it you get closer to god you're away from this original sin that led adam and eve way where they ended up and and all the rest of it right so religious trauma

when it comes to sexuality does will not let you understand leave alone explore who you are with dignity it will not let you have the eye of dignity towards the eye which is important having the eye of dignity for the eye that is very powerful and and really kind of segueing into that reconciliation of one's curiosity with erotic eroticism erotic intelligence kind of doing that exploration when there are such internalized messages around pleasure desire sexuality as you're speaking to from the cultural religious and spiritual lens so what advice would you give us for that as far as i mean that's a process i i can only imagine of of and i've i'm in that process as well of you know where it's a it's a fluidity of this process and there's no destination

for that but what suggestions would you have if someone is currently navigating that and and it could definitely shake up um their foundation right when you're kind of exploring that because there's part of us that we're letting go in a way if i can say that to transform so part of that has to shed to then become other and so yeah how how can we hold compassion for ourselves and for others during that process and while we're navigating that um yeah i would say i would say explore this concept of interpretation hierarchy now what is interpretation hierarchy when it comes to culture when it comes to religion we are depending on a book we're depending on a particular individual saying this about the book so we're necessarily talking about god to other human beings

and what do they think about god and what do they think god wants us to do and what do they some people are literalists some people use bible as a metaphorical guide to life some people use it as a spiritual uh spiritual you know sort of milestones that would guide you as to where you are in your spiritual journey and such so yes literalists have their own challenges and so do the metaphorical people people who use metaphors to understand uh like symbolism and signs and whatnot and there is like theology is a deep deep study of religion i do not undermine that subject but what is important is to remember that you have a functioning brain too so your interpretation of what you understand your god to be does not have to be put in the

hierarchy with those who are godmen who are priests who are this that yeah they listen to them learn from them i'm sure there are many well-intentioned priests who would tell you to accept and love yourself for who you are god made you this way and but when it comes to um reconciling religion and culture with your sexuality with your eroticism you have to develop an understanding of a personal god a personal god that that does not have other 10 human beings standing in the way before he talks to you he he needs to have a direct relationship here right and remember the basic tenets of like if you do believe in god that is that he created you this way you did not

once well you did not like wake up in the morning and he said oh today i'm going to start liking feet as in sexually arousing thing for me it's your body that comes around and tells you hey you like this hey this feels good right so it's not so do not go down the road of thought crime that just because i've thought it i've committed a sin i've committed a crime this was an interpretation of another saint another pope another this it's another that but your functioning brain that God's given you is important as well how do you go around living a life in which everyone else's opinion about you is far more important than your opinion about you yes such a good point right so I think reconciliation is important for example I

had a client amazingly a VP of a bank of course I can't give you any more identifiers but amazingly successful uh doing so well in life but his wife left him because he liked he was his erotic orientation was one of submission he liked being submissive to women he liked being slapped in the face he liked being tied up he liked being choked a little and things like that he liked being told that i'm gonna slap you that in and of itself would turn him on he liked the whole dominatrix act from the work and it was an arranged marriage friends made you meet friends as friends and you know you got to but I haven't discussed my erotic orientation with this individual until until the night of our until the night after our

wedding so in a way you also let this person down apart without full disclosure right so that person then reacted to this person's particular this man's erotic orientation and said like listen I can't do this I need a divorce and that led this man to believe that I'm inherently bad I'm inherently unlovable and I'm inherent yes I I did egg in therapy because I in my therapeutic alliances with my client I I really value authentic living yeah right so I did I did come around to him accepting the parts that he shouldn't repeat in his next relationship which is non-disclosure right right so and and it's not like he was hiding it because he wanted to make her suffer it's just he thought it wasn't important right he was awkward he thought that

she would judge him he didn't know how important it was for him until he actually had an option only to have sex with this one particular person who was quote unquote very very vanilla right so his kinks did not sit well with her vanilla attitude towards sex so that incompatibility arose because he didn't talk about it she could have probably made that choice and the way he looked at himself is that he approached it with an apologies like oh by the way i'm so sorry but i needed to tell you this as opposed to hey uh you're my sexual partner and i was hoping that we'd be able to explore this together right so the tone changes absolutely that's a completely different context when you say it that way because you're owning you're taking ownership of

yeah exactly because we have to remember three psychological truths that no no branch of psychology can deny they're almost idiomatic truths like to even disprove them you'll have to imagine them to be true for example first we are all animals at some level of our brain we've in we it's not like human consciousness has arose out of thin air in a vacuum with our species right lower level animal have lower level consciousness lower level animals have lower level emotions there has been enough research to say that you know some chimpanzees who get attached to other chimpanzees when that chimpanzee died the other one can die of grief alone there's there's a lot to say that they feel emotions they may not sit

around having complicated feelings like we do of remembering something from a year ago and still thinking what is the meaning of my life if that person said so so our feelings are definitely far more complicated far more language driven and such so it's very interesting to acknowledge this truth before you have any conversations that we're all animals at some level but we are not just animals that is equally important the second um i think self-evident truth is that we are all babies at one point and the third important self-evident truth is that we are affected by our environment and our response to the environment both not just we're not just the product of the environment we're all the product of the environment and the response that we gave to it

right so when we were babies when we were babies we understood the tone before we understood language the content of the language might not have been clear but i knew my parents were fighting and my brain my brain said danger danger danger when there's too many loud noises for too long in my house so it's when i talk to and it's the same works with puppies as well when you are aggressive when you use aggressive tone with puppies you you see that a lower level animal is able to understand aggressive tone it's able to understand that you want to play with it it might play bite you but it won't try to tear your limb off and things like that right absolutely yep and non-verbal language too right right so this is an important part of erotic intelligence

is the tone that you use in yourself because the tone that you're using yourself is either soothing the shamed child or it is taking care of the shamed child we were all shamed to different degrees when we were children about our bodies yep and this shows the most uh the it shows up most with trans people with non-binary people but people were not gender conforming because they at all women don't do that men don't do that so when they kept hearing what the cultural expectation was and they kept hearing that they would not be respected for their emotion for their human dignity their essential human dignity but for their ability to perform gender roles for their ability to conform to gender expression rules so to speak

that trauma is so much more pronounced within the lgbt community than it is in the larger community but this trauma exists everywhere religious shame as trauma exists even in families that are atheists atheistic families as well because it's a cultural thing it has seeped in our culture to look at our bodies and feel disgust I mean we use the same genitals to to extricate that we use to fuck right you pee from the same organ that you put in your mouth so there's an inherent there's an inherent disgust and that's what Alan de Botton one of my favorite living philosophers said about sex is that it's interesting to notice that nothing that you do in sex is also not disgusting if done with the wrong person which is attractive when done with

the white person yes oh and again perspective the point of view right what is the point of view what are the perspective what is the contextual cues surrounding that experience which is which is arising from yourself and and that environment how that's shaping the ability to absorb in that experience from that self-identification in that moment it's beautiful I think when we're talking about sex education erotic intelligence and just largely the field of human sexuality we get stuck between two extremes one extreme is let's not talk about it this is only going to have corrupting influences on us let's just like why do we even need to we know what to we know how to fuck we know how to propagate our species and such there's absolutely no need to do this the other one the

other extreme is everything goes there's nothing there's no problematic behaviors everything is absolutely like it's free for all free to the air do it whenever you want wherever you want sex is sex is is an important and dangerous act inherently dangerous act when it comes when it comes to power play when it comes to diseases when it comes to sex should be approached with trepidation it shouldn't be approached with morality though it should be approached with your eyes are open not with your hearts closed right well said well said absolutely because every decision we make will shape the trajectory of our life and there are consequences yep right whether positive or negative or neutral there are going to be consequences of those actions that are

interdependent on others as well and we influence others by our actions and that is so important to know that what is the intention yeah you have nailed it on the head so easy just facial feature when I'm telling you about what I like could tell me what you're thinking of me absolutely just a little frown uh-huh just a little frown just a little like oh would make you know and this is exactly what we do to ourselves when I'm dealing with a client with clients of mine who have masturbatory guilt it's literally the difference the difference between people who don't have it and the ones who have it are two as soon as they've orgasmed with masturbation they go instead of going oh shit done again and the other ones are oh that was a good orgasm literally i know

this is not that this is not rocket science where where and like there was this there's a christian saint who said something no not christian so i think it was nietzsche even though nietzsche was and please please forgive me if i'm wrong but it was one of these like really in one of the intellectual leaders who was against masturbation said it's after orgasm when you hear the devil smile I've not heard that before it's it's that window period that when you are when you're having the orgasm when you've climaxed and that's when you hear the devil laugh devil smile and it's imagine the imagery of it right the imagery of it is that that's something so inherently natural and normal right has been demonized absolutely yeah but on the other hand hence

we do not have any masturbation literacy we do not have any sex literacy we do not have any porn literacy because we're not talking about it right guilt and shame like like anger has an action attached to it which is attack approach guilt and shame has an action urge attached to which is hide yeah not talk about it yeah when I'm guilty I look away I don't look you in the eye right when I'm ashamed I do not attend social functions yeah so shame and guilt is are the biggest culprits when it comes to not being able to learn communicate and connect with each other. And I just wanted to mention that one of my patients actually asked me, and I thought this was so an interesting thought that he had was, I just, he said,

I don't understand. You know, we're taught how to eat. We're taught how to dress ourselves. We're taught how to walk and eventually drive, right? We have to go to school to learn that. And we have someone coaching us and we're talking why not about sex where where did that just drop off you know we learn how to poop we're trained right around the etiquette around toileting etc because not a lot of us even know how to teach and what to teach right how many sex educators are there that are as respected as other professionals right and there's a lack of standardization because in the united states it doesn't even have to be medically accurate yep yep which is so i mean punishing right i mean you have standardization of sex education

in europe you've got it in the uk to some degree and definitely to quite great extents in in the nordic countries and such most western europe finds it as a social imperative to teach your citizens how to develop a healthy relationship with their body and their desires how to develop erotic orientation and a lot of the sex education that i see in the united states is around the machinery of the human body the machinery of sex it's not necessarily around how to drive Dan Savage actually pointed this out and it's not necessarily around how to drive it's not necessarily around how to behave with the other drivers around how to read signs and signals how to not meet with an accident and once you've met with an accident what to do then how not to panic

and things like that and you won't believe globally speaking they're amongst the four major causes why people sort of kill themselves and attempt suicide one of them was around sexuality and relationships yeah but they're not able to take that rejection that trauma because it's I've I already feel so deeply bad about myself that when someone comes and rejects me it only confirms my unlovability only confirms how deeply problematic as an individual I am so disheartening it really breaks my heart yeah yeah we are at war with our own body and its desires we've been put at war with our body and its desires because there's been this split of body and soul and the dualism around it and there's it's not very helpful is all i'm going

to say no it's interesting celibate men mostly come around to tell you what's good sex so be aware of that oh is it that ironic is it yeah it's generally people who say we don't have sex as much are suddenly the experts and people it's like a person who doesn't perform any surgeries comes and tells you that he knows more about surgery than people who do it right I was like if you want to learn about sex go talk to someone who's doing it right who's made a living out of denying themselves pleasure yeah yeah it's like studying medicine but not actually applying it you can't just learn medicine from a textbook and say that you're you know a clinical expert around telling people oh that was that was nice what you said talk to me more you interesting

person no we don't do that what we do is oh my god i think i've stopped enough i think you don't have boundaries you don't have this you don't have that oh my god and it triggers all these moralist trauma in us right and what and and it's not like we're bad this is just moral trauma within us which triggers us to run to safety when someone's talking about sex in an intelligent interesting appealing way and having that space at least someone to hold a safe space for us to navigate that territory exactly and permission permission to say hey it's okay to be yourself to express yourself you know that i can draw my boundaries right i do not have to feel threatened by just this talk alone yeah absolutely absolutely if i do feel threatened i can tell

yes exactly exactly oh this is it's been such a beautiful and enlightening conversation deepak i really really appreciate just us having this conversation so candidly and openly for others to really participate in because i think this is the it's it's experiences and collaborations like these that allow others to be more curious and to perhaps plant some seeds as far as you know just support um around that makes the internet worth it right yes if anything you're are right you are right I have a love-hate relationship with that but yeah we do have to recognize I think the existence of porn has brought in interesting changes in our erotic lives as well and as to what we experience and what we don't what we expect our partners to do

what we don't I think eroticism the talk in eroticism sort of feels not complete if you do not mention pornography if you do not mention watching others having sex and learning from it and what is the how you're learning from it and such what do you think we can talk about that for five minutes no I it deserves it deserves some time some air time for sure no I think you're right because when I just in my clinical experience when I ask like folks how do you learn about where did you learn about sex and what education did you get around it and it is typically from you know either school friends or social media or movies or magazines and pornography right sexual imagery and and I think it is worth kind of bringing up about around how that shapes or

influences our relationship with ourselves our expectations and how we define you know what our definition of eroticism is and and i think it's also helpful to talk about consent and disclosure around topics of pornography as well so had somebody very interestingly once mentioned the difference between erotica and pornography is lighting well that's an enlightening tell me more about that what do they what has been focused on oh what's being focused on where where how how dim the lights are because when the lights are dim you're focusing more on the sounds the experience of the person and not just their prowess not just at their endowment and not so it's it eroticism shifts the focus erotica for example shifts the focus from

your abilities your powers your endowment to your experience to validation to you could actually come out of an orgy still feeling absolutely bad or you could come out having just talked to someone on sex having sextants with someone come out feeling more fulfilled and more visible more respected yeah right so it is it is very interesting that lighting what does lighting mean that we're shifting focus away from oh i have to plow this person for 45 minutes right and if they don't scream and shout then there's something wrong with me and if my penis doesn't look the way it does it is this it's a human failing on my part most men most men have penile anxieties

because of pornography that does not i am not an advocate of banning pornography never unless it's to do with rape pornography and child pornography and animal pornography everything else i'm just like you know what let if adults are doing it out of consent because in the other three there's an act there's there is an absence of consent and there's impossibility of obtaining consent right so that's the only reason and i'm not like oh if you've ever done like you know you are you should deserve to die if that's not what i'm advocating but what i'm saying is what is your relationship with porn porn is done to our sexual life what hollywood has done to our romantic lives yeah we expect different things out of very nice if it isn't the fireworks and if it isn't that

that feeling in the pit of my stomach that i'm going to run to an airport um after somebody or die next to them on bed then my love life wasn't fulfilling yeah wasn't good in the same that's what we think about our sex life whether it was six minutes or six hours I don't care I care about how you're feeling so when when a lot of gentlemen when a lot of penis havers come to me around you know penile anxieties of am I good enough am I bad enough am I big enough am I strong enough am I lasting long enough it what I hear is enough am I enough yeah the commonality is am I enough and when i give them like you know some kind of ideas of what is an average what is what is the average of this they're like oh at least i'm above that average oh oh but i'm not even i said

average means that it's a spectrum a lot of people are on this end and a lot of people are on this what the we we forget that the porn star was chosen not because they were on the lower end the spectrum in terms of the endowed metric they were chosen because they're on the higher end in the same way in Bollywood you see these chiseled bodies beautiful faces a face that has never seen sunlight a face that oh the face that has be has been tanned to perfection right you see these but these are not if that's what we start expecting our partners to look like and not just expecting demanding our partners to look like what are our chances of having a happy life half of us have romantic anxieties we do not want to adjust

because we want a notebook relationship right right it has to feel right from the beginning I shouldn't have to put so much effort the commitment should come easily compatibility should not be a consequence of commitment but a prerequisite for commitment and like romance has been why do you think we're so desperately we desperately fail in romance in the western world and in the eastern world it's like people are just forced to be with each other the majority of the time when it comes to uh when if you exclude the urban population of India for example I can only speak for India when you exclude the urban population of India a lot of people are still being a lot of people are still having range marriages right so but

and that doesn't mean that they're not happy they're not unhappy in those marriages because the idea of romance has been altered by capitalism by industry by people trying to sell stuff that if your partner is not interested in Valentine's Day does he really love you very superficial yeah and the poor and born is asking the same question yeah is if your if your sex life doesn't last if your sexual encounter and specifically sexual intercourse doesn't last 45 minutes did you even do it so i i wanted to come to this one particular client of mine full-on sexual anxieties full-on penile anxieties around being enough and he belonged to the african-american community but he's like i everyone who wants to have sex with me has a stereotype of

me being well endowed and i'm not so i i somehow feel that i don't belong to my culture i somehow feel i'm not that lovable i'm not enough and and when we talked about his penis size he was about he was still above average but the penis anxiety was coming from not being the african-american porn star that he's seen over these periods of time so when we actually talked about his penis size it wasn't like he was below average or anything but he's like i'm not what i see in african-american porn stars and what is expected of me so there are two things what am i expecting of myself and what is expected of me and that becomes a cycle a vicious cycle and we do not know what is causing what is my expectation causing me to be more upset than the social

expectation or the social expectations are driving my personal expectations of my penis so i we sort of worked for a couple of months uh with each other but it was largely centered around the idea is your penis doing what it needs to do is your penis functional is it sensitive is it getting your the orgasms that you need is the ejaculation so when it is doing when it's performing its functions and there's no there doesn't seem to be any biological abnormalities with your penis why does it have to be a certain way before you love and accept it and loving your genitals like you know and and i think we borrow that from the feminists because women were taught to hate their vagina and look at that with disgust because of all the blood

and all of this and all of that and and just the way men talked about it just the way people who did not have vaginas talked about it right so it women like feminists and especially like Eve Ensler and such who were writing the vagina monologue where they actually look at their vagina they put a mirror there and they they give it a name they talk to it what was that that wasn't just an act of left-wing activism it was an act of self-love yeah it was it was it was a powerful act of looking at your own self and saying I do not dislike you I do not feel disgust when I look at you so a lot of men feel if not disgust feel disappointment when they look at their bodies when they look at their genitals is because it's not what they wanted

to be not because it's not doing what they wanted to do always because it's not what they wanted to so good distinction it's an act of self self-abandonment and when you abandon yourself of course yourself is scared because yourself cannot actually go anywhere it's always present with you but you've abandoned you've looked at a part of yourself and you've said no sorry don't want it don't need it not going to love you so there are aspects of ourselves that we've abandoned and those aspects come back to haunt us in a lovely way called anxiety and then we operate from that space and everything that we do it's not just you know our genital function our sexual relations or encounters I think that bleeds into all aspects of your being

and your interactions in the world oh yeah oh yeah absolutely like there is some truth to the stereotype that men who uh do not find themselves sexually um powerful so to speak if that's the word we can use tend to overcompensate that with other things right so with men it has to be muscle money or mojo the three m's the three m's the muscle money or mojo I've heard it somewhere it's not mine it's not my original thing but I've heard it and it's it's very interesting to see that at what point will I allow myself to love me yeah what do I what conditions do I need to fulfilled before i give myself love how do i get to that unconditional self-acceptance usa unconditional self-acceptance how do i get to that

yeah and it's difficult uh work because it does require holding up a mirror to oneself and looking into that mirror and accepting that reflection you know it's just to your genitals even hold up exactly a hundred percent i'm always advocating my my patients to be like hey let's just get to know embody this part like love your body but re-embody it especially after there's been pain um you know illness surgery or something like that that that definitely alters you know biological functioning of that part or healthy functioning of that part it's especially challenging when you have to navigate that on top of everything else that we've been talking about you know this this definitely has been an uptick in men getting

cosmetic and the reason i use cosmetic is because it's not medically required it's not medically required to function cosmetic penile surgeries there's definitely an uptick in that and that's not always to say that oh if you're getting a surgery somewhere you have a sign of mental illness or it's not that it's definitely a sign of hmm I don't like it but that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone who gets surgery hates themselves right we do all sorts of things to improve ourselves but when we do not know where to stop when the risks of the surgeries outweigh the benefits of the surgery when the doctor's like hey you could lose your erections for the rest of your life

if we go through the surgery of penile enlargement or penile thickening or whatever surgery it is and you're getting it done from places that are cheap you can't afford it financially but you're taking a loan to do it so you're financially hurting yourself you might be physically hurting yourself you might be psychologically hurting yourself and men take steroids to to look a certain way as well so this all comes down to not not always but most of the time comes down to that equation of i'm not enough if i'm not this look at most of the filters on snapchat and instagram they're more geared to making you look white making you have lighter eyes lighter skin blonder hair so the trauma that people of color might go through especially as immigrants when

they are interacting with societies that are physically different from them in appearance of course not in you know morality or or competencies but physically looking different from them i mean i i still remember as india being the british colony and and before that we had the arabs who were fairer than us and blah blah blah uh the mughals and the persians and so you have a history of 800 years of being ruled by people who look markedly fairer than you I remember when growing up as a child all I wanted was the fair skin and blue eyes that's all I wanted to be and that cultural trauma to undo that cultural trauma was as you very rightly said was a critical emotional labor but deliberate critical emotional labor this emotional labor

won't happen all on its own it has to be deliberately chosen and you would still sometimes go back to that go back you slip back into like oh i wish i wish it was just two inches thicker and two inches longer and just just just a couple more minutes longer if i could lasts just a couple more minutes longer oh beautifully said I have no words for that I really don't I'm still processing you know I'm a slow processor I admit you know when I before I speak it takes me a while but uh yeah I mean definitely points to reflect on and contemplate over and over and over again as far as who are we self-identifying with and as and how is that bringing me peace and happiness and satisfaction in my life

you know and i think so to sort of close the loop on uh erotic intelligence i think if erotic intelligence if i could just sort of come up with three elements of erotic intelligence that would be self-awareness self-confidence and self-regulation in the context of your sexual erotic desires um arousal and um willingness to grant dignity to yourself self-love yeah yeah I think that that would be erotic and totally absolutely it's hot yeah that's that's the consequence that's the consequential benefit of it it doesn't even have to be hot but it has to be explorative and dignity filled

absolutely absolutely well oh my goodness Deepak tell us about your book can you share a little bit if you can share what you're working on i can i can i can't tell you the title yet because we haven't uh the publishers haven't decided and i haven't even finished it so it's jumping so you know what uh it's it's about mental health in india it's a lot about democratizing mental health and how to sort of move away from this uh one-on-one therapy session models that works in richer countries with smaller populations and may not may never work uh to the same extent with with countries that have collectivist cultures that have uh larger populations and just do not have the resources or awareness or the the sense of urgency around mental health so that's this is

something that i'm working on with stories lovely the stories that i've collected over 11 years of being a therapist yeah which I'm sure are profound and very insightful and I'm so looking forward to to your book do you know about when it's going to be published uh um hopefully within the year okay hopefully within the year hopefully within the year I'll finish it and then you know I'll come back to you like hey Susie could you give me a shout out absolutely then we could do that Anytime. Anytime you reach out and you, yes, absolutely. A hundred percent, a hundred percent. And where can listeners connect with you and find you and follow you? Find me on Instagram. I've got two, I've got two accounts. One is called Mr. Psychologist,

which is my personal account. And my company account is Lotus Mindfulness Center. That's the company i run uh in canada uh and uh yeah my if you want to write write me up uh invite me for speaking engagements and such you can write me an email or get on for a personal session then email works as well um it's deepup.j.kushup at gmail.com and i think you could put that in the description so that people can get the spellings right and yeah you could just visit my website lotusmindfulnesscenter.com and book an appointment there perfect and we will link all of that in the podcast show and it's the british spelling of center which is r-e not e-r it's not the american spelling of center yeah thank you for clarifying there's a difference yes we'll link all of that

in the show notes for folks to to click and explore and and connect with you so thank you again so much for being on the show today, Deepak. Again, it was a very, very wonderful conversation. I really appreciate your time, your wisdom and your expertise. Oh, you're so kind. And to all of our listeners and viewers out there, thank you so much for joining us. Until next time, this is Dr. Susie G in loving wellness for your pelvis. See you later. Thanks for listening to today's episode. Be sure to head on over to drsusieg.com where you can get more information, show notes, and related articles on today's topic. Also, if you like what you're hearing, head on over to iTunes, subscribe to the podcast,

and leave us a rating and review. We'd love to hear your feedback. Thanks again.