Sex Talks With Emma-Louise Boynton - Accepting rejection and embracing discomfort with Anna Mather, psychotherapist and bestselling author

Episode Date: November 21, 2024

On this week’s episode of the podcast, I’m joined by the wonderful Anna Mather.  She’s a psychotherapist, bestselling author and someone intent upon taking therapy out of the therapy room and into the real world, offering therapeutic insights via her instagram, online courses and in-person events and also through her podcast The Therapy Edit. She joins me today to discuss her brand new book: The Uncomfortable Truth, which tackles head on the ten unavoidable truths that sit at the heart of so many of our most common fears.  From learning to face rejection and getting more comfortable with vulnerability, to overcoming perfectionism and learning self-acceptance, Anna articulates how we can apply her approach to overcoming fears to the context of dating and relationships. You can purchase Anna’s book here. Enjoy!

Hello and welcome to the live version of the Sex Talks podcast with me, your host, Emma Louise Boynton. Sex Talks exists to engender more open, honest and vulnerable discussions around typically taboo topics, like sex and relationships, gender inequality, and the role technology is playing in changing the way we date, love and fuck. Our relationship to sex tells us so much about who we are and who we are. how we show up in the world, which is why I think it's a topic we ought to be talking about with a little more nuance and a lot more curiosity. So each week, I'm joined by new guest whose expertise on the topic I'd really like to mine, and do well just that. From writers, authors and therapists to actors, musicians and founders, we'll hear from a glorious array of

humans about the stuff that gets the heart of what it means to be human. If you want to attend a live recording of the podcast, click on the Eventbrite link in the show note. On this week's episode of the podcast, I'm joined by the wonderful Anna Marfa. She's a psychotherapist and bestselling author and someone who is intent upon taking therapy out of the therapy room and into the real world, something that I love. She offers fantastic therapeutic insights via her Instagram, online courses and in-person events, and also through her podcast, The Therapy Edit, which I have been devourable. of late and is so goddamn good. She is so eloquent and honestly never uses the word um. It's

quite extraordinary. She joined me to discuss her brand new book, The Uncomfortable Truth. Now, at the heart of sex talks, as you all know well, is an attempt to tackle taboo topics and also may better understand the human condition in order that we can all live more pleasure-filled lives. The sort of issues that Anna tackles in this book are ones that come up all the time in different ways at sex talks. So I'm really excited for you to listen to this conversation. Now, there are a couple things that were swirling around my head after this discussion that I just wanted to highlight before we get started. The first of those is the way in which Anna highlights how important it is to move through discomfort in our lives, whether that's through heartbreak or rejection or trying

and not succeeding at something new. As Anna addresses in the book, we live. in an age of constant distraction, in which we have an array of numbing technologies quite literally right at our fingertips. I'm looking at my phone as we speak. And we just never need to sit in an uncomfortable feeling, least of all boredom for very long. We can constantly distract ourselves by scrolling, swiping, clicking all the things that we do on our phones. But getting uncomfortable is important and reminds us. It is critical to growth, not least creativity. Throughout this conversation, Anna reminded me of all the ways in which discomfort is actually a really positive thing and something that we need to lean into rather than shy away

from. And that leads me to the second thing I was ruminating over after this conversation. And that is around rejection. Now, I know I am not alone in absolutely loathing rejection, particularly when it comes to dating. I have found myself really quickly withdrawing from people at just the slightest hint of rejection. And that can literally be someone saying, they're not free on a night that I've suggested we hang out. I know. I'm working on it. It just triggers something deep inside me and I feel the walls go up prematurely. Anna's advice was consoling because she reminded me that we have to lower the stakes a bit when it comes to dating. The problem with rejection, or at least fearing rejection, she said,

is that we so often turn it into an entire statement about who we are, and hence we end up concluding from someone's rejection that we are not good enough as a person. I know I do this all the time. That makes the stakes when dating really bloody high. If you're delegating responsibility to every random person you meet on a dating app or in the gym or wherever to confirm your sense of self-worth, you're putting a lot of responsibility on a stranger, essentially, in telling you that you're good enough. As Anna said on the podcast, when someone rejects us, all it means is they are not right for us and we are not right for them. It's nothing deeper than that. And actually reminded me of something Roxanne Fusi said on the podcast a little while ago, which basically

can be summed up as, it ain't that deep. So don't make it deeper and more pain than it needs to be. Okay, I'm going to leave it there, but I hope you enjoy this podcast episode as much as I did. I'm so excited for this conversation today. Just to get us started and to give a bit of kind of context to everyone sitting here about the book, this is your fifth book and one that you wrote in just two weeks. Yeah. Which is quite shocking. Shocking. Yes. Would it recommend. Well, I was going to say, what the hell? Can you tell us a little bit, and it's a bit of a departure from your previous work, more focused on motherhood and kind of issues surrounding that. Can you tell us a little bit about, well, the why this book and why now and how the hell two weeks? I wouldn't recommend

writing a book in two weeks. I've since had authors get in touch and say, how did you do it? I'm like, don't, don't do that. So I'll explain kind of how it came about. So as a therapist, I have worked with so many people over the years around anxiety and worry about and so. and what people think, which is a lot of anxiety, really, if we're honest about it. And we give tools and we kind of unpick things a little bit and we uncover kind of narratives and kind of history and background. We talk about childhood and we do all of that. And it's really, really helpful.

Like, it's really helpful. But one day I decided that I wanted to take a different tact. I want to try a different tact. I remember sitting at my desk, you know, those moments that you just kind of have this photographic memory of. And I remember thinking, okay, I still lie awake, worrying about something happening to one of my kids. I still lie there in bed and think my husband's not home because he's the tubes being blown up, not because his phones run out of battery and he just probably missed it.

You know, I'm still grappling with all of these things. You know, I might get a message on social media and I might think, and suddenly have this overwhelming urge to completely explain myself to this person that I've never met before so that they might not misunderstand me because it feels so painful. So I thought, I've got all these tools. I know where all of these things have come from in my childhood. I've done that. But they still niggles so much.

And I just had this kind of light bulb moment that I was going to try. I was going to find a new mantra. You know, there's kind of affirmation. Love a mantra. Yes. Like this is a little bit different. So I started going around saying sometimes out loud, mostly in my head, I'm going to die

Fabulous mantra Yeah Yeah Really positive It's not ended up On any Pinterest squares Or it's not Conviral around Instagram

I'm going to die Some people don't like me I'm going to fail Yeah So I just went around Saying those things Those things that Have robbed me

Those fears that have robbed me Of so much headspace So much joy In some wonderful moments In my life When I could really have just been absorbing the beauty of it all. I've been like, it's going to end. Something bad's going to happen. I might never see my mum again because she might die on the way home.

You know, and it's like I'm not able to really just enjoy because I'm braced. So I started going around saying, I'm going to die. Some people don't like me. I'm going to fail. Bad things all happen. And the most amazing thing happened was that it started to fatigue the fear. It started to become a little bit boring. You know, I'm going to die. Yeah, okay, I said there so many times now. I am going to die, right? It's going to happen. You know, some people won't like me. It started off feeling like, oh, this is a really horrible thing to say and think about. And now it's just kind of integrated in a different way. I think some people don't like me. And it doesn't do that same physical thing anymore. It doesn't spark the same feelings of like, oh gosh, what can I do to

change that? It's like, okay, some people don't like me. And I just thought, well, here's a slightly different way of going about it, of actually just staring these truths in the face. And yes, the tools are great and the insight's amazing. But at the end of the day, these are truths about life. And the human condition that we just can't avoid. And so there was just something in, just by virtue of looking those uncomfortable truths, you put it head on, it began to dismantle the fear and the anxiety.

they precipitated in you. And let's just zoom in momentarily on that note of anxiety. I think in today's kind of social media-oriented culture, we fling around the word anxiety in quite kind of clical casual manner. And I think sometimes we actually maybe don't fully understand what we're really talking about when we think about anxiety. It's become a kind of generalising word for any sort of feeling of discomfort. What are we talking about when we're talking about anxiety? Okay. In and of itself, we need anxiety. It's not a bad thing. We need it in order to survive. It's a way of awakening our bodies and being aware of the risk and the responsibility and the power and the potential and just to keep us safe, right? So it's like a car

alarm. That car alarm, if it's working well, it only goes off when the safety of the car is threatened, right? But what often happens is that that car alarm's going off because there's like a breeze used going past the car or like someone walks past and their scarf brushes the door and it's like and it's just constantly going off so much so that it becomes background noise and we just accept it as this is just how it feels to be alive when actually you know I encourage people to drop so many standards in life you know perfectionism um so many of the things that we just want to be amazing at that exhausts us and everyone liking us but actually what I always want to increase people's bar and raise the bar of is how we feel, how safe we feel in ourselves.

You know, anxiety is basically not feeling safe. And you've struggled with anxiety for a lot of your life. And it's a point where you didn't drive for 10 years. Is that right? I didn't drive 10 years with a full driving licence and it would have been very, very useful because I had intrusive thoughts around, so motorway particularly, I'd be on the motorway and I'd be like, I could just go. like this and like cause a pilot what if i do that oh my gosh why am i thinking this what does

this mean about me what if someone else does that what if that person's going to do that and it just became so all-consuming that i felt it's just safer if i just never drive then i don't have to approach those fears and feelings anymore and i think often what we do with anxiety is we just try and keep away from the thing you know if it's if it's an anxiety around a certain pattern repeating in a relationship we might think okay well I'm just going to pull away subconsciously sometimes before things feel too deep to keep myself safe you know what we can do is just start pulling back and I think it's about these uncomfortable truths some people don't like me what we do by pulling back from that truth is just trying to appease everyone but the cost

becomes too high there comes this point where you know for me it was pushing a double buggy upper hill in the rain having walked sleep deprived for like two miles to go and see a friend for coffee and I was like I have a car at home what am I doing and what happened was that the cost of avoiding that anxiety provoking situation had actually started really limiting my life and having a cost in the day to day so yeah I think sometimes we get to that point of like I just want more for myself. And as I said, anxiety, millennials, I think, are a kind of homogenizing term, but millennials are more likely than ever before to be anxious. I was shot to read a statistic that just under 40% of women report quite high levels of anxiety and it's quite 30% of men, which

is like almost half of women say that they have a high level of anxiety. It feels like it's almost kind of baked into our contemporary culture. I mean, particularly in hectic cities like London, I think anxiety is kind of path the course of living here. If we have anxiety, if we're struggling with intrusive thoughts, with any kind of form of manifestation of anxiety, will we be like that forever? We don't have to be. We don't. I drive. You drive now?

Every day now. I drive places I've never been. And I've fatigued the fear. So I'm in the car and I'm bored. And I'm like, this is amazing. When we're bored, we're not scared. But it was through being uncomfortable. but it was through being like, right, today I'm going to drive to the supermarket.

I don't want to. I could walk. No, but I'm going to drive. And it's doing these things when they feel uncomfortable. It's being authentic in a moment where you know actually you could disappoint that other person, where you know that in saying this you might get misunderstood. So it's finding ways to honour yourself, your needs, your hopes, who you are, even in the face of someone maybe not liking you, or even in the face of actually.

I'm going to go into this relationship and I'm going to be vulnerable even at the risk of being hurt, even at the, you know, and it's in doing this. I just can't. Little by little. We'll go into that momentarily. But God, the vulnerability in relationships as my best friend will know, I'm like, no, fuck it, I don't care. I don't care.

In fact, I've dumped him. And I'm like, so I can't better hurt. But we will go into that momentarily. I just thought, actually, for everyone sitting here, if you haven't really, read the book yet, I'm going to just read out the ten truths just so we have them all front of mind. A really positive, going to feel very uplifting. Yes, you're going to be uplifted. This is, this is perfect for a kind of moody grey day. It's why I wanted the book to be yellow, by the way. It's a very happy looking book. It needed to be. It's a joyful book, though. It is a joyful

book. Because I think once, as you, to your point, once you actually confront these inconvenient, uncomfortable truths, you can then move on, as you say. Okay, so just going to zoom through them. Number one, some people don't like me. I really struggle with that. two i'm going to fail three i will hurt people i love four i can't be fully present all the time five life isn't fair six i'm not good enough seven people misunderstand me eight bad things will happen nine i will lose people i love ten i'm going to die you you ended it on a is a feeling great is you feeling pumped up um so let's dive into the book a theme that kind of ran throughout all those ten uncomfortable truths is really one of perfectionism because whether we are

worried about people not liking us. We're worried about not being enough. We're, you know, feeling, you know, averse to vulnerability because we're scared of being hurt. So much of that stems from a pressure to be perfect. Where does this perfectionism stem from? And is it something that more often affects women than men, as I think is kind of, it seems so culturally. It does seem so. I mean, if you think about, yeah, the history of kind of the page hierarchy and how women, you know, it's kind of look a certain way and behave a certain way. And it's like we know, we're kind of groaning and fighting against those stereotypes, but they're so ingrained that often generationally that there's still so much work to do, just kind of free ourselves

from that. And society isn't really helping, is it? Social media isn't really helping. So it can feel like we're going up, I was thinking about gladiators, you know, the Traveilator, watch the last series. And when they're going up the escalator backwards, like, that's what it can feel like. I think to be born a woman is to be. born being told implicitly, not overtly, that you're not enough as you are, that you can always be a little bit better, a little bit thinner, a little bit more beautiful, you can

wear a little bit more expensive things. And that's sort of kind of the crux of capitalism and patriarchy. Buy more things and you can be perfect, but you're never going to buy enough to actually reach there. So we live in this perennial state of limbo of trying to be perfect, but there's no such thing as perfect. There is no such thing and we can

die, try, literally people die trying, because it can become so suffocating. presenting a version of yourself to the world that you feel is acceptable that doesn't align with who you are. And I think there are so many reasons we do that. But one, it's completely affirmed by society, right? I used to work in advertising and I did really well. I absolutely, I hated it, but I did really well. So I kept getting good feedback and then I might get promoted and all the while I'm thinking, I really don't like this. But I wanted to please people

and I was pleasing people. You know, nice people, people that are people pleases, often are more pleasing to more people, but at what cost? You know, we can be so fearful of disappointing and being abandoned by, and I think often it does come down to this fear of abandonment because we're pack animals in Aitly. We think about back to caveman times. If they cast you out of a caveman pack, you're screwed.

because no one's working together, stoking the fire, running out to get the food. We need each other. So we have this very innate fear of being abandoned. But I think what has happened is, number one, when we just try and live our lives to please other people, overriding our needs, our feelings, our opinions, our emotions, we are chronically abandoning ourselves. You know, we're chronically silencing ourselves. We're disconnected from ourselves. We don't know who we are really.

You know, I work with a lot of frazzled burnt out mums and I'll sometimes say there'll be this moment in a session. I'll say, what do you need? And they'll start crying because they don't actually know. Because they've spent so much of their resource and meeting the needs of people around them that they don't actually even know what theirs are anymore. So, yeah, this kind of self-abandonment that happens

when we just are constantly striving. To people please and to, portray being like i was speaking to paul brunson actually the day who has come on the sex talk podcast a few times and he said something to me because we were talking about this desire to be liked and he was like do you have that not judgmentally i was like yes i am so desperate so i really put a lot of store in people liking me i really want to be liked and as soon as i feel a kind of glitch of someone being a bit like kind of offish i find myself jumping through hoops of almost trying to perform the person I think they want me to be for them to like me.

And this is as true in day-to-day scenarios as it is with dating because I really need that person. I need everyone to like me, I guess deep down in order to like myself. Yeah. And we started talking about this and he said, I think he quoted as a politician. I can't remember who it was. He said a while ago that to be successful in politics, so say, for example, to become the leader of a political party, you have to have about half of the party who don't like you and half the party who do

because if everyone likes you stand for nothing and that hit me in my heart and I was like oh Paul you like me right are we just just to be right here are we okay just so I know just to get so but it really struck me do you think that's true can we not really be because I think often we strive to be liked and to be accepted because we think that will make us acceptable

that will make us successful that will help us like ourselves but actually can you not really be successful if you don't, I guess, risk standing for something and hence being bit... Yeah, I think that's true. I think that's true. You know, to make, I write this in the book, you know, to make a really good cup of tea. You have to kind of steep the tea back. You know, you have to, you know, get it out there, give it a good squish. And you have to, we have to disturb in order to be, to do something of value and of worth, I think. Otherwise, we end up being this kind of slightly insipid, I'll be who you want me to be. I don't really have any

strong opinions, but I do, but I just internalize them because I don't want to disappoint you. I just think, do you like everyone out there? I mean, look at politically what's happening in America. You know, there are a lot of very strong opinions, but where those positive opinions towards him are, that's where he's got himself. And, you know, we can do amazing things, but we have to be okay with being misunderstood and with opposition. And it's, yeah, it's really hard but do you know what one of the most powerful ways i ever heard people pleasing expressed which really hit me in the gut was people pleading uh-huh say that again people pleading i heard people peeing no people peeing people people peeing i was like that would probably be quite divisive

people pleading oh no okay elaborate on that okay so i used to think my people pleasing traits were the best thing about me i used to think it was like altruistic right it's because i care about people. Like hell, I even made it my actual job in life to care for people and, you know, be in that caring position because that's, you know, people like to be cared for. So maybe I'm more likely to be liked if I'm here for everyone else. But we need something back. If we're really honest, in people pleasing, there is fear. You know, we're scared. We're scared of abandonment. We're scared of not being liked. We're scared of being misunderstood. So we will go out on a limb. we will jump through hoops.

But we don't do that out of love. We don't do that because we want deeper connection. We do that because we're scared, right? And when we're scared, when we're fearful, when another person's involved, what are we wanting from them? Reassurance. Tell me I'm good.

Tell me you like me. Tell me I've made you happy. You know, there was a girl at university. And I knew she didn't like me. And I just did not know why. I just sensed it. We would be out. I'd feel she did not like me. And it was, again, I think I'd buy her coffee on the way to lectures. I would literally probably be quite annoying, actually. Just like desperate. Couldn't work out. I probably lost sleep over like, why? Anyway, one night after it was the early 2000, we would drink Smirn off Ice and VK Cherry. Absolutely. She said, I just realized why I don't like you. And I was like, I was like, I.

I knew you didn't. And she said it's because you remind me of my cousin. I didn't like my cousin. And I was like there was nothing in the world I could have done to know, to know that information. Or combat the fact that you remind her of your cousin. And I am not. And she knows I am not her cousin, but that isn't enough for her to like me. And it was just so pertinent because I think so often, you know,

the reason people might not like us has actually got nothing to do. with us at all. It might be just an incompatibility. It might be a difference in opinion or sense of humour or dressed on and some people need to dislike you. Some people have to. Yeah. So I guess to apply this, the context of dating, which obviously is a sex talk, so I'm keen to apply some of your fantastic wisdom to how we can approach romance, relationship, sex dating. Rejection is a brutal reality of dating. Who here is currently dating? I love people always like, it's like, this is a safe space to admit that you are dating, whether that be casually, fully, whatever. Rejection is just part and parcel of the dating process and it's so hard

because what we're really talking about here is in this people pleasing, in this people pleading, which is a confronting way of describing it. And this, what is really what describing that is delegating a lot of responsibility to absolute strangers to give us self-validation, which in itself is actually kind of ludicrous because some random-ass person that you meet, whatever, you can't, you know, delegating to them to be the thing that kind of props you up and confirms your identity is giving far too much responsibility to people, to someone you don't even know. But when it comes to dating, I guess the stakes feel a bit higher because there's a degree of vulnerability in opening up in a romantic context to someone. You kind of had to bear a little bit

of your soul because vulnerability I guess is a prerequisite to connection, particularly romantic connection. How do we get better at stomaking rejection and acknowledging that it's a natural normal part of dating and not letting it knock us for six so that we have our confidence depleted and then kind of opt out of the dating process altogether? I think if we are kind, as a whole, considerate and respectful and if we're communicative and if someone rejects us then I think what we often do is we take this rejection and we turn it into an entire statement about who we are

and we come out with a conclusion that I'm not good enough you know these big statements I am not good enough now actually you know what I'm not right for them which actually means they're not right for me. But if we're kind, we're considerate and we're communicative, and within that being authentic, like we're communicating maybe when those things are triggered in us that we know are kind of historic narratives and we're trying not to play them out again, then they're just not the right person. It's not a rejection of the entirety of who we are. If we are constantly and

chronically rejecting ourselves, which we are when we're masking who we are, when we're filtering who we are all the time when we're living to please other people, that's self-rejection. And if we're internally rejecting ourselves and then someone else that we've tried so hard to be who they want us to be is rejecting us, then that's going to hit so much. It's just going to, it's just going to pour petrol on what is already a fire. You know, whereas if we can find acceptance for ourselves in time in our messy, growing state, If someone rejects us, it's that sense of, you know what, I know I'm kind, considerate, I've done my best in communicating. I know in and of myself, I am okay as a person.

So therefore, their rejection of me, I'm not rejecting myself as well. Are there any practices, getting to like a real practical level, are there any practices that we can inculcate in our day-to-day life that can help us really reaffirm that? Because I think how you described it there as self-rejection, when we hide parts of ourselves, when we hold back because we're scared of that rejection. I've never thought about like that. But I think it's a really powerful way of seeing it. It's almost like if I reject myself before you can reject me, then it'll hurt less. But these kind of like, it doesn't know. These kind of gymnastics moves we make in order to kind of protect ourselves from pain.

How can we, yeah, what are the kind of things that are the mantras that we can inculcate to help bring us back? to ourselves and remind us that we are okay in and of ourselves. We're going to face rejection all the time. Even in, I've been married 15 years and together for 20. And oh my gosh, I have felt rejected by my boyfriend, fiancé, husband, so many times over the years in big and small ways. So he will feel rejected by me in the little ways of like, oh, I'm touched out. I'm going to sit down this end of the sofa.

I don't want to be near you, not because you're you, but because you're another person and I've had little people all over me. That will have felt rejecting. You know, maybe when I answered this question of how was your day with, you know, the honesty of my day, but actually you didn't have the capacity to really hear it because he was frazzled. I feel rejected, right? Even if you are in a loving, stable relationship, you will still face big and small rejections and misunderstandings and all of those things. So, I think the more you're able to accept, acknowledge, value, validate yourself, the more you're able to recognise when that little bit, that little child in you normally that is going up going, wait a minute, I'm scared, wait a minute, this feels too much, wait a minute, they don't like me, wait, the more we're able to acknowledge that going on, the less it's going to come out sideways, you know, the more we're able to explain to ourselves and that other person. So for me, with my husband, after I'd had kids, realizing at the end of the day, I don't want to, I want to feel like I'm entirely alone in my

bed, right? And I'm a really tactile person. So historically, I'd be like, rubbing his hand or like whatever, rubbing his shoulder, whatever, cuddled up. And then suddenly I don't want to do that anymore. And I didn't understand why. And he didn't understand why. So we were both there probably lying in bed being like, you know, I'd be like, do I not, am I not attract to him anymore? And he'd be like does she not love me anymore? But as soon as I started to realize that actually I was just touched out and that was a season of live with young kids and actually that's very normal. We all have cups that get full and my touching cup was full. His wasn't. And when I was able to say to him, I've realized this is what's happening here. He experienced it in a different way. He wasn't there

thinking she doesn't care about me. She doesn't fancy me. She didn't love me. And I wasn't there thinking what's wrong with me, we knew and understood, right? So we won't both feeling rejected anymore. So I think the more we observe and inquire about those things within ourselves, the more we can communicate them. Because often it's what isn't said. That's where the feeling of rejection often sits. And I think that's such an important point, Anna,

because it's what isn't said, because it's also the way in which we come up with these, or we have these narratives, that we have these belief systems about ourselves, about who we are, how we show up in the world. And so often we're looking for evidence around us to prove those theories to be true and hence fill in the gaps often in how other people treat us. So if someone's maybe just having a bad day and they send us a kind of not well thought out text or whatever

that just feels a bit short, it's so easy then, I'm saying this from deep personal constant experience to then fill in the gaps and be like, I mean my mind goes to, they hate me. They hate me. uninterested in me, the relationship, whatever it is, is over, and that's it. And I can, and I can feel my wall immediately go up. And I've really tried recently to try and get better. And instead of projecting, and then getting my kind of group of friends to analyze, so we all then analyze, I text this friend, this one that I have a call. What do we think he's thinking? Is it, did you think, yeah, he's, yeah, he's not interested. He hates me. Yeah, make a fair family lives in Germany. Yes. And the theory is get more and more ludicrous.

And then suddenly you realize you've spoken to everyone, your committee of best friends and family members and begrudging father. And you've got all these theories about someone else's behavior. And the one person you haven't spoken to is that person. And so I really tried to train myself recently to get better in the moment or kind of letting it up, but, you know, as close to the moment's possible to try and address those feelings and just flag things and say, hey, I felt a little bit like, you know, perhaps I'd overseed my welcome that day. could you like was that the feeling like you know is there a reason for that but communication which is something we discuss all the time at sex talks and it's really i think the undercurrent of so much of this book when it comes to kind of addressing the more like relational um uncomfortable truths is communication but it is hard it is tricky how can we get better at being more effective communicators yeah so in that example with the one message i think you know if we were to go to court with that one message. You know, they... We do.

You go to court with that one message. They'd be like, okay, what about other messages? How about yesterday? You know, what's going to happen tomorrow? Like, it's kind of data gathering and not just, you know, I think so often what we do is we zoom into one thing that was said, one thing that was done, and we're like, you know, that's where the focus and all the analysis is going and it's just taking a pause because probably you'll just want to, you know, we like to be right.

You know, we like to be right about what we think about ourselves and other people and what we think about what's going to happen. So when we see little tiny breadcrumb of proof of that, it's going to set this alert, especially if it's kind of like a safety. You know, I'm looking for a reason to put my wall up here and I think I've just found it. You know, it's actually recognising that internally there's a little scared you going, I can't do this. This is too scary, like being vulnerable and letting someone know me just feels. And it's like, how can I talk to that? a child in me that is freaking out right now. You know, it might be like, Emma Lewis, that was one message. There may well be a context. Let's just wait and see. Let's just wait and see.

I know you're scared. I know this feels new. I know this feels risky. But let's wait and see. Because otherwise, you know, and there may well be a message that actually is like you read that and you're like, whoa, no, thank you. This is over. But often it's, it's the me. meaning the way, just suddenly heaping on very quickly that we're responding to. So how can we kind of zoom out that camera lens that we've got focused in and just think, okay, let's just zoom out, let's take a pause, let's see what the next message looks like. And just conjure up in your mind. Like some of my emails, when I'm in a rush, probably look quite rude.

And sometimes when I'm writing them, I have to go back and write, hi there. I hope you've had a lovely weekend. Because, you know, the more time I have, the more, the warmer my emails are. And it's not that I'm being rude. It's just that I'm in a rush. So we can think about these in our own, yeah, in our own lives. My best friend said to me last night. She said, yeah, let's deal with facts, not emotions.

What are the fact here? Because I was like, I said, I was creating our little mini court of one message, one situation. Anyway, I was all wrong. Something you quoted David Smales. Correct. Yeah. So in the book, from his book, Illusion, when discussing this, kind of in the context of perfectionism and kind of how we kind of scared of showing our full selves to people. And this quote hit me, Anna, because I feel like it really speaks to so much of what we're talking about here. Let me just read it out.

It says much of our waking life is spent in a desperate struggle to persuade others that we are not what we fear ourselves to be or what they may do. discover us to be if they see through our pretenses. Most people, most of the time, have a profound and unhappy awareness of the contrast between what they are and what they ought to be. That hit me so hard because I think what we often are doing is we have an idea, a perfected ideal of who we expect ourselves to be and we had this, and we know, we hold ourselves into like a very high standard. And then we expect people around us to be holding us to that same, probably impossibly high standard. And so anytime we fall short of our own perfect ideal, we think we're being judged by everyone else for that and falling short, when often we're actually our own

harshest critic. Yeah. What in your life do you feel is, are you scared of other people realizing about you? I mean, it used to be, it used to be that I was a mess, like internally. estate and now i'm so open about that that it's really disarmed that fear you know i used to be so wrapped up that as a therapist i had to have therapy when i was training i still have therapy bless her she's been my therapist for like 12 years or something um and i used to sit there at 7 a m in this chair and i wouldn't even drink the water that she offered it was there even no matter how Thursday I was. I didn't want to take anything else. I was always bang on time. Never, I'm often like a few minutes late now. And I remember her saying to me, Anna, you don't leave any room for me.

You know, I used to say, this is what I'm struggling with. And this is why, this is what I'm going to do about it. So it's fine. You know, you just sit there and enjoy it. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry. Don't worry. And she was just saying, like, you don't even, even in your mess, it's all wrapped up and categorized. and tied up in like as a little present here we go you know don't worry about it's actually quite nice now isn't you proud of me and yeah I did anything and everything in my life to to with to stop people finding out that actually I was not this person at all I was actually very scared very lonely very very very very tired very under resource because I spent myself like wedges of cake just like giving them all out and then you're just left with crumbs and we deserve to be more than crumbs.

And I just hit there were a few different points in my life where I just couldn't hold the mask up anymore and I was absolutely terrified. And I remember sitting with a friend and they knew that I had an eating disorder, but I just thought no one knew. But I just literally was so ashamed. And I remember I felt like I had to tell her, I hadn't told anyone the reality of things. And I just remember sitting there thinking, they're going to just think. You know, everything they know about me is just, it's going to be turned on its head. They're going to be like, who is this girl? Like, she's so messed up.

We thought she was. And my parents were literally sweating. And I told her, and she, I honestly had this idea that she was going to get up and, like, run away. And because actually someone in my life had done that because they were kind of, like, horrified. And she didn't. And it just, I think I feared that vulnerability, my vulnerability, would push everyone away when actually when I was vulnerable with the right people it drew them towards me and it deepened our relationship and it completely challenged what I just thought

I was too much people I thought I had to present myself in this way to be accepted and my identity was to be helpful and kind and neat and nice and it's been so freeing like so wildly liberating actually, just like not having to be those things anymore. Thank you so much for sharing that with us. And I think what you highlight so articulately there, true to form, is when we try and take up less space, when we try and be less inconvenient to others, when we hold ourselves back in order to present this very neat,

perfected, palatable version of ourselves, what we do is we deny people around us the opportunity to help us and to be a good friend, to be a good mother, to be a good sister. And actually, I know from past experience, I feel so grateful when people give me the opportunity to step up and to be of service to them in certain ways. They say, I'm struggling and I really need your help. When they say it quite overtly, I feel so privileged.

I think, yes, I can act. I really love and care for you as a friend. And that vulnerability allows me to step into a role I really want to take on. And in turn, creates a context in which, going forward, I know I can in turn be vulnerable. So I think it's really important to highlight, as your story just did, that when we hold back because we're trying not to be too much in other people's lives, we're also taking something away from them.

We're denying them the opportunity to be their full selves with us, which I think is a really disservice, a huge disservice to everyone. Yeah. And sometimes people will say the wrong things, do the wrong things, they will misunderstand us. And that is when the temptation is to go, right, wall up never talking about this again you know when i did speak about my eating disorder with a boyfriend who'd kind of noticed signs and i remember kind of saying it he got up and walked out and i took that

as like he can't handle this too much i shouldn't have said anything like he just is thinking who am i dating here i can't so then i assumed for a very long time that everyone else would do the same and i think it's really important to remember that if someone misunderstands you it does doesn't mean that everyone will. If someone feels like actually what you're going through in the context of who they are, what they've been through, what they have capacity for, what they have emotional insight for, they can't give you what you need. That doesn't mean that no one will. And I think this is where that difficult thing happens is when he got up and walked out. I could have had so many amazing supportive conversations in the years following that,

but I didn't. And what that conversation with the sweaty palms taught me was that not everyone will get you wrong. Some people will be able to provide you with that support and those beautiful words of encouragement, but not everyone will. But that doesn't say that what you're going through is invalid or what you're going through can't be.

And it is, do you know what I mean? It's, yeah. Something that you address in the book that feels relevant to what we're discussing here, It's really about being kind of vulnerable with others and, you know, yeah, allowing ourselves to be vulnerable and sometimes forcing ourselves to be a bit more vulnerable where our instinct is to kind of hold back. but you talk about how hurt people hurt people, which again was something that really stuck in my mind because I guess as I thought about it a lot, it made me think of how easy it is to carry our previous hurts and our pains, our previous rejections, our insecurities that we've

formed in previous relationships. So for example, you just described there relaying something very sensitive to a partner who then can't handle it. That creates a kind of shard of pain in your heart, a shred of hurt, and also a connection to that story and that vulnerability that perhaps you then take forward to a future relationship and you hold that back for fear of the rejection again. How do we both, how do we kind of allow ourselves to feel our feelings and feel that hurt, feel that rejection, feel that pain, but then not take it into new relationships and project those things onto new partners. So don't end up allowing our hurt to hurt other people and hurt a potential relationship.

I mean, what you just said there is how do we allow ourselves to feel that pain, experience that emotion and then not go and kind of, yeah, hurt someone else off the back of it, maybe because we're being really self-protective and we shut down and that's painful, but we're doing it out of hurt and fear. And it is just that, is allowing yourself to feel those feelings. It's recognizing them as they rise up. And instead of just shoving them down, sitting with that discomfort, recognizing that, maybe grieving something, because feeling is really productive.

We're processing as we're feeling. And I think what our culture often encourages us to do is we have a difficult feeling, you know, scroll, distract yourself, have a drink, like go and do like a really full on workout. You know, I'm, you know, I've done all of these things in the past. And what that does, it takes us away from going through that really valuable process of feeling and allowing that motion, that very physical energy to move through you. You know, and that means we're far less lightly as we've felt it to kind of keep holding ourselves and bracing ourselves against that pain because we're feeling the pain. So we're less likely then. It's when things come out sideways. When we suppress things and often we have rules, right?

I shouldn't feel like this. I shouldn't still be feeling like this. I should have got over that by now. You know, we push it down and then it starts coming out sideways, you know. And sometimes we don't even realize, and it might be in the fact that your partner starts to talk about something and you shut them down because you don't want to hear about it. Or you quickly sidestep the conversation or, you know, and we risk hurting other people because we haven't allowed ourselves to be hurt.

To hurt. To hurt is, you know, it's a do. thing. And you and I spoke before about it's the importance of discomfort in a society that does have, to your point there, so many, so, there's so many numbing behaviours that are so easy for us to tap into. At the moment we feel a sense of confrontation, a sense of discomfort, we can just scroll on our phones, drink alcohol. There's so many ways in which we can escape from that feeling and then that we never have to move through it. But as you say, eventually it catches up with us. It does. It's like when I'm working with people who are grieving,

It's emotions are very patient. They will wait, grief especially. It will sit and wait because we need time to grieve. You know, we always say, oh, it takes time to get over someone. It takes time to grieve. And it does, it takes actual time out of your day to feel. And if we're numbing, we're just shoving it under the rug. We're just like sweeping it under. The rock gets very lumpy. We're going to trip over it. It's going to get harder and harder to walk across. cross the floor when you've got resentment, hurt, anger, you know, all of these things, this happens to me, is sweep that under, I'm going to scroll that way, sweep it under the rug. It's not gone anywhere. It's still there. It's in the feeling that we're like, I'm not going to put this under the rug. I'm going to look at it. All that hurts. Oh, that's really sad. And like waves, feelings peak. And they feel, they can feel excruciating. If you've ever been through loss, you'll feel a wave of grief. It's like a labour contraction. That's what I liken it to, like a physical wave and it gets to the top and you think I can't I can't do it I can't do it

and then five minutes later you realize you're still doing it you're still here you felt it it peaked it felt intolerable but then it started subsiding and you will never have to feel that one wave again and it's just like labor you know it's every wave is getting you closer and closer to a conclusion of that feeling and as we feel things we process them and it paves way for acceptance but when we're shoving it under the rug it's going to come outside it's going to squish it's going to look different how it was we're not going to know what it was and yeah we can hurt people

this is confronting i've got a lumpy rug Anna I have a really lumpy rug at the moment I've got some things I've got to do some sweeping I've got to do some confronting I know it's going to this conversation will galvanise me just pick the thing out I'll pick a corner of the rug I know which corner I'll go to it first just journal a mouth it feel it's talk about it just think oh my gosh that feels so hard

oh I really want to go and grab a glass of wine I really want to go no not going to do it it feels really hard okay and then you will literally feel if anyone's ever pressed a not on your back like it's really really painful and you had one of those massages you're like but then you can sometimes you can literally just feel that with the pressure comes this release

and often it's a foreboding of what will happen if you address the thing that's actually worse than the addressing there's one more point that I want to address before we wrap up and have a moment for questions. And that is truth number nine, which I think was the one that hit me the hardest or I found the most moving.

And that is the truth that we will all lose people that we love. It's quite an unbearable truth, I think, to grapple with. And one that can feel almost impossible to really take on board. I know that you write in the book that you lost your sister. I believe you were just 10 years old. And I'm so sorry for that, that, that, that, loss. And I just wondered how that loss, having to confront the reality of that deeply uncomfortable truth at such a young age, how that affected your capacity for vulnerability

in relationships thereafter. Yeah, for a long time, very much so affected my relationships very much so. And I would say there is nothing more confronting to, and love is a risk, right? To love someone is actually the most bravest thing I think we will ever do because the more we love, the more we have to lose, right? It's the flip side of the coin. If we want a life full of love and connection and relationship, if you turn that coin over, you've got vulnerability and risk. And we want one, but we don't want the other, but we fight the fact because we know they come together and there's nothing we can do to take the heads from the tails of the other side of the coin. we just can't. And I think for me, my response to going through the loss of my sister, she died of cancer when I was a child, was just to try and play through all those worst

case scenarios so that should the worst happen, I'm just going to completely be protected. You know, it's very confronting then having children. And when you literally think, wow, I love these kids, but goodness me, I'm very, very vulnerable because I've seen firsthand loss. So that could happen to me. So I would be overwhelmed with anxiety, health anxiety. That's how it manifested for me. It was one of my kids would have, say, their leg ached. My mum used to always be, did your parents ever do it, it's growing pains.

It's just growing pains, eh? Like, they're all growing. And it probably was that. But I'm like, they've got leukemia. It's happening all over again. I'd be in bed being like, planning a, like, how am I going to plan a funeral? Like, what am I going to do? What am I going to tell the siblings?

And, you know, they wake up and they're absolutely fine. but that's what would happen to me and I realise that that fear and that anxiety I'm like living in this brace position for it to happen again and it's almost if we play through and this is often what happens with anxiety

we play through and we walk through that worst case scenario in our minds then if it happens then we'll be like okay I know I'm going to do know how this is going to feel will be somehow buffered from the pain but the truth is not that

and we know that in our lives You know, no matter how much we might have worried about something and preempted it, if and when it actually comes to fruition, we're still at the mercy of the pain that comes with that. So really, all that happens is that our heart's just broken twice, once completely unnecessarily. Because our body does not know, this is so helpful to know this, our body, our nervous system, our stress response, does not know what is real and what is a magic. So as I am going through that scenario in my head and I can feel my heart hurting. You know, we can, we're feeling the heartbreak.

We're feeling the anxiety. My body is moving through it as if what I'm thinking about is happening because it's a life-saving mechanism. My body's not going to go, she's at it again, stand down. It's just one of her. She's just going off on one in her head. And my body thinks it's real. So we really do get robbed.

No, we really do get. robbed of sleep of connection, of enjoyment of relationship. So that's, yeah, that's how it kind of impacted me. And can I just ask, you mentioned in the book something your mum has said to you, because you asked your mum how she had really coped with that loss. And she said something that was so deeply profound to you. What was it? So in grappling with all of this and realizing how robbed of some of the beautiful moments I was in because of this fear. You know, I'd literally be looking on. I explained two types of hugs that I give.

One, it's like, oh my gosh, I'm so glad you're in my life. You know, it might be to my husband, it might be to my mum. So glad you were in my life. Oh, this is amazing. Second type of hug kind of looks the same. But if you look closely, my knuckles are like white. And it's like, I'm so scared to lose you. Ah, it's just so scary.

What, something happens to you are. And I think, you know, in recognising that in myself that so often I was robbed of leaning into those moments because I was just so scared of them ending and I was lurching ahead. I couldn't be present. I said to my mum, I said, because my sister was the youngest of three, I said, do you ever just kind of wish that you'd stopped at two kids? Because then you would have never had to go through that loss and that heartache. She said, Anna, I would never have given up a day of, loving her. She said it was worth it all. And I think sometimes, when we look at that coin, you know, that on one side has love and connection and relationship and adventure and experience, you know, and on the other side it has loss and risk and the potential far-harto and pain. You know, we think maybe I just don't want that coin at all. But what she was saying, she was saying it was worth it all. It was worth it all for the flip side.

I would do it all again. And that was such a profound encouragement for me that, you know, yeah, vulnerability is risky and love is the bravest thing we'll ever do. And it's worth it because that's what makes life. Great. I had goosebumps, as you said that. That's such a powerful and point.

reflection on what is just such an unimaginable greed. So thank you so much for sharing that and your personal experience. And I think your mum's words are so encouraging and reassuring because I think when you go to that depth of pain, to be able to still reflect and at all having been worth it, is just so indicative of, I mean, just everything you're saying, that the greatest risks yield the greatest reward. And there is no greater risk than love. But when we can throw ourselves into it for however long a time we get the reward, which is that unenduring love, it's worth it. And I sometimes think it's the time thing that's actually what irks us is that when we have something so wonderful, when we have a love that is so enduring and so

great, we just want it forever and ever and ever. Because a thought of losing it, once we know how good it feels, is so unbearable, but nothing lasts forever. And sometimes that joy and that absolute all-encompassing love is finite but that doesn't make it less worthwhile than if it lasts forever so I think that's such a beautiful and powerful note to end on Anna it's been such a privilege going to speak to you you are so wonderfully eloquent as I've said about three times during this interview but you really really are and I feel that you combine being able to just give such beautiful reflections on things that we all struggle with so frequently and then really practical get up and go tips which I value so much so thank you so much for your work

thank you for having me I'd love to happen to you I love your lens on life I really do I feel so grateful that I get to go into love with this new Anna Martha lens thank you so much Anna a huge round of course Anna thank you thank you so much for listening to today's sex talks podcast with me your host I'm Louise Boynton If you'd like to attend a live recording of the podcast, check out the Eventbrite link in the show notes, as we have lots of exciting live events coming up. In the meantime, don't forget to submit

whatever out-down question you'd like us to tackle on a future podcast episode. You're the Sextalks website. That's sextalks.co.uk. And finally, if you enjoyed the show, I hope you did. Please don't forget to rate, review and subscribe on whatever platform you're listening to this on, as apparently it helps others to find us.

Have a wonderful day. Thank you.