#21 | Part 2 Annalie Howling - Exploring Sexual Shame and Emotional Healing!

0:00:00 - Speaker 1

Why me? Why now? Like I'm skipping around, you know, I grew up in a very violent childhood when my father was incredibly violent with me, and that's where you learn to people, please, and be perfect, because then.

0:00:17 - Speaker 2

What I wanted to come back to, what we said earlier, is you can't choose the response. And that took me back to episode one we did with you where you mentioned how some really tumultuous relationships and abusive ones can have really good sex lives.

0:00:28 - Speaker 1

Yes.

0:00:28 - Speaker 2

And the shame as a result of that. I want to take you back to that, so you can't choose ever the response to what happens in a certain situation.

0:00:35 - Speaker 1

So that one's like slightly more linked to attachment. So when you've got you know, we said like, why is it best? Sex with the worst people usually, you know. So if we had a chat and you're like, and it's always someone that you probably don't necessarily either wasn't yours or in a sense like, oh, I knew them at work or there's like something going on, you know, and that is because that's because of that, like, the erotic thrives in the unknown, okay, it's the imagination. Whereas you know, margot Robbie, unbelievable, right, you know. So, like you two imagining like, oh, we're great to date her, she might be quite annoying, who knows.

0:01:07 - Speaker 2

I doubt it. I doubt it. She's not, she's not, no, I mean, I doubt it.

0:01:12 - Speaker 1

I would think she's incredible, but you know, day to day, if we asked her husband, he might be like oh to be honest like she can like.

But the relationships ask us for intimacy. Okay, relationships drive us for commitment. We want to know everything about the other person. That is the opposite of the erotic, which thrives in the unknown. Okay, so you know honeymoon period and there's obviously chemicals around the honeymoon period as well, all those sorts of things. However. So this is like kind of linked to attachment, and we're meant to be attached because when we lived back back in back in the day and we're surviving, we're safer in numbers, okay. So now we live in modern world where I live on my own with my kid and perfectly fine, but my physiology has not been upgraded to 2024 to kind of live with that. So when you're going through a breakup, in particular is the best time to sort of you know you can be breaking up for all the right reasons. Relationship doesn't work. All your mates are like 100%. This is the right thing. You're like it's the right thing. Oh, is it the right thing? You know how your brain plays.

It's like weird film of like all the best moments you ever had, even though it's really three years earlier you're like oh, do you remember that one time that we did watch Netflix and you weren't a bitch like you go through all this and it's it's because it's your attachment system, like we're meant to stay attached, that's you know. Obviously you might be missing the individual as well, but it's the physiology of it, when you understand that? So when we look at relationships that are not great, okay, why do we keep going back? If we were having an affair, why would we stay with a partner that was abusive of any in any way? To us, the, our system, everything works in balance. Everything in our body's in balance the heartbeat, the pulse, life, autonomic, nervous, everything's in balance. So to stay attached if our relationship is unsafe in any way, an affair partner it's not mine. Um, you know there's abuse in this situation, violence, danger. In some way we have to turn up another dial, we have to make this balance.

So if you have extraordinary sex with someone that in any way, not even necessarily violent, but is coercive, controlling in any sense at all, you think and I'm going to own this for women as well, especially as a woman, because we're showing Disney films, and unless you get butterflies and you know, and you know, that's how it should be. And if, if I went on a date and I was like, yeah, he was really really nice and said all the right things, I said this to my mates and I did you have a kiss? Like, yeah, how was it? Like, you know, you have to have the butterflies, it has to be this thing, it has to be the chemicals, not necessarily like need a base attraction, but the the rest can build over time. So this, this sense, this shame, confusion, how could I have experienced pain, fear, upset of any kind with this partner and then had unbelievable pleasure with this partner? How can that be? And this is this, it's called non-cordance, this is this dial that can get turned up to keep us attached. So, like I said, the physiology needs like a 2024 upgrade because, or just for people to understand it, like, why would I have?

I mean, we, we talked to a, spoke for about baby reindeer like there's, there's a scene in that where there's sexual assault and he goes back and he says in it why did I go back? There's also a scene where a lady goes to touch him and he doesn't stop her and doesn't know what to do and he's like I don't know, I didn't stop her freeze. He was freezing and then why did he go back? He was so confused. There's a lot of like drugs and everything else involved. He had flashbacks, but that was also fawning, because this person was very powerful and had a good impact on his career and really could have helped him. Why do you go back?

so it's so interesting oh it's amazing, but when people understand this, this is like, honestly, my life's mo now. It's absolutely my mission. You are free because you realize it's not you and it's not something you did, and if you realize that, you don't need to have any shame that's so interesting.

0:05:02 - Speaker 3

Is there any link?

0:05:03 - Speaker 2

to what you just said about either Helsinki or Stockholm syndrome, where you fall in love with your captor. Is there any link to that whatsoever?

0:05:09 - Speaker 1

I mean, I don't know enough about that, but I would think so, I would think so. I would think that everything becomes relative to what we consume. Right, like anything that we consume, we kind of that becomes our baseline. So you know, if we moved to, you know a new country and we never liked that food or we didn't like this music, but that's all we ever consumed by, you will start to be able to pick out, you know, different elements of that. So I mean I think, yeah, I mean, the fawning must play a part of that as well. I don't know, I don't want to comment as an expert on that.

0:05:43 - Speaker 2

I don't know about it.

0:05:44 - Speaker 1

It would be very confusing. It would be very, especially when people have had children. It would be incredibly confusing because I imagine at some point that person is kind to you, at some point that person probably is meeting some of your needs and saying certain things. And yeah, it would be the confusion, would be the shameful part to unwind.

0:06:04 - Speaker 3

That's so interesting Talking on Baby, on baby reindeer, before we put a poll out to the community. Thank you for responding so much, because sometimes we get like one or two. We've had about 10 questions which people want to ask you. Joe and I have put two in of ourselves as well, but one of them, from our point of view, was the baby reindeer one which we talked about. What aspects of the series should people look out for?

0:06:26 - Speaker 1

how do they kind of resonate with your work as well, as I know that's something you wanted to speak about as a series I mean whether I again, I don't know whether there's been a lot of talk about whether they you know they've done the wrong thing by the lady that's involved or not. So I don't not commenting on that, I don't know enough about it. What I think it's done brilliantlyiantly is the shame piece because he talks about that. So he has. He is a victim of sexual assault, fawning and he doesn't know why he went back and because there was a lot of drugs involved. And now we've talked about it. You know your prefrontal cortex is offline, so you've got a some substances that are affecting your brain but, like I said to you, he won't remember things and he even they do the flashbacks really well where he's not quite sure of what happened. It's not quite in order. Then as a result of that, he devalues himself. Now this is where people get really ashamed as well that something's happened to him.

So he has like casual sex with everybody who knows if it's safe or not in in unsafe places yeah you know kind of shows it in like toilets everywhere and you know could be putting himself at risk in in all these ways, right. So I mean addictive behavior is looking at if you're taking risks, like too many risks to put yourself, you know, at risk as well in harm's way. I think the way that he depicts that is amazing. And the other thing he touches on well is he uses quite hardcore porn after the attack and he feels so ashamed about it, right, and he says and I think this is a very good point he had to do that because only in the realm of fantasy I'm ad-libbing here was there information, kind of, about what happened to him, because it was so extreme, it was so and he obviously can't remember it all, right.

So he's in trauma and there's all the other stuff going on which means you haven't got all your faculties, you can't make sense of it. So he's God love him, which we all do trying to make sense of something. And so he's trying to make sense of his sexuality by devaluing himself in these, not consciously, but he's trying to make sense of his sexuality in these ways, but taking risks. He's sexuality in these ways, but taking risks, he's putting himself at harm's way, and then the other thing he's doing is trying to almost find a benchmark for who he is now, what he means, and there isn't like, oh yeah, well, let's chat about it at the pub, boys, because you know, like no one's got this information, so he has to go to extremes, whereas the extremes found in fantasy realm hardcore fantasy realm and I think that was beautifully done, because I think for anybody that has experienced something like that at all, you feel so ashamed and there is not the information out there, like where's the library book that you can go and get that says and that it's factual? You know, this will really help you.

This is actually true, it's been approved by the FDA or whoever. You know this, is read this and it's 100% the truth. It's not available. So, with any kind of thing that's happened to us, any kind of rupture, any kind of trauma, this is where addiction stem from, and I include in that, like people that are using control behaviours you know, ocd, maybe self harm, disordered eating, anything like that you're trying to regain control and that is what he was doing and you're trying to understand what's happened to you. So I think he did that really well, because it'd be a lot of people that have looked at similar things and be like, oh my God, you know why am I now aroused by this or checking that out? That's why because you don't have information. You were offline and you haven't got any kind of facility to sort of check this against.

0:09:48 - Speaker 3

That's really interesting. That will lead into the second question we have, and it's about sexual shame. So sexual shame can deeply affect personal and professional lives. How can we recognise and address sexual shame to improve overall wellbeing? I'll keep them all anonymous as well, yeah.

0:10:05 - Speaker 1

So I mean sexual. The two, generally speaking, greatest sources of shame are financial and sexual. So and I think that's very societal I think there's a lot of you know survival of the fittest and ways that we should be. There's a really amazing book it's quite old now and it's called Everybody Lies and it's a guy called Seth Stevens Davidovitz and he did a brilliant TED Talk as well Maybe we'll find it and he used to be an analyst at Google and Facebook and all these places, and so he got all the search terms and wrote this book. And he got all the terms from Pornhub, from everywhere that people type in and in, and he's like people now use Google as a confessional booth.

0:10:44 - Speaker 3

Interesting.

0:10:45 - Speaker 1

And you would tell Google shit. You wouldn't tell your best mates, right?

0:10:47 - Speaker 3

Yeah.

0:10:48 - Speaker 1

Like what do you type in? And you read the book, you're like you never type anything into Google ever again, ever again. You never Google anything else to read in that book. But what he sort of talks about is men will be searching for what you probably expect size. How do I measure up? You know these sorts of things. And girls are like do I smell? Okay, how do I get rid of the smell? Like really shameful about themselves. Women are really so, I think, have this sense that that, yeah, you know how do I almost like disguise myself and it's it's a really interesting read. So sexual shame and how to work around it.

I mean I could be one of those people like don't watch porn and all these sorts of things. I think we know that. Like don't compare yourself, I think would be the the main thing. And if there's not a physiological reason, so there was a element of dysfunction if that's what we're talking about here, or difficulty, there's something wrong. If your body's showing up with anything right, there's something wrong somewhere else in the system. So I would always be encouraging people to look there and again, there are forums like speak it out loud, because people struggle for all manner of different reasons and it's usually somewhere. It's a little bit like whack-a-mole if we, if we get the one, we'll find out where it is whether it's mental, emotional, spiritual stress.

0:12:03 - Speaker 3

Huge underlying cause of sexual shame, probably number one do you think watching porn as a whole um just completely screws your perception on what it should be in real life?

0:12:13 - Speaker 1

this is an argument I see quite a lot online I'm curious I would put that in the category of processed foods and alcohol and everything else use, use it, but like, no, it's. I'm not going to call it a toxic substance, but no, understand that you're what you're using it for and understand that it's not something you should be doing all of the time. Okay, and? And if you do, here's the thing if you can, if you want to utilize it and you think you've got a healthy relationship with it and um relationships in your life or whatever else, fine. But if you're finding that that is impacting in how you're connecting with others or yourself, or your sense of self-worth or shame, like let's be curious about that and not go there.

So, yeah, I mean, you know, as a woman, do I think it's. There's, there's now loads of female-led pornography. There's audio only. There's um all manner of different sort of erotic art that you can dig, you can use. That has better representation of different bodies, but I would put it in the same category, honestly, probably using social media, which let's, let's be frank, we're not far off in some, some like you know, accounts and uh groups.

We're not that far off anything that doesn't make you feel good about yourself. Be curious about it and just use it wisely. Like I say, think about it in the same way as alcohol on the social media piece.

0:13:30 - Speaker 2

Someone's asked again is is your view on the whole instagram guru thing? Go on then.

0:13:41 - Speaker 3

Come on, go on.

0:13:45 - Speaker 1

That's a great question. My work gets ripped off a lot, of course, but my work got ripped off last night by a guru. And it's not the first time, oh no. And it's not the first time it's happened and it's with this person, and it's not the first time it's happened with people out there. And actually I'm quite good friends with V X King, who's amazing author, lovely man, him and his wife, incredible people, and he put a post out this week as well because his was ripped off by a guru like an online guru.

0:14:13 - Speaker 2

How does that make you feel.

0:14:14 - Speaker 1

When that happens, it must be quite a bit irritating because you're like I put time and effort into this Someone else works with me.

they put time and effort into that creating, designing and then to not even give someone credit. You're doing two things here. You're not giving credit to the people that have actually done the work. I can live with that. I know I did it. The thing that you're doing that's so much worse is you are lying to people that are following you and evidently this person I don't think this person did it. Okay, they are huge. I'm sure it was a member of their team.

0:14:51 - Speaker 3

Yeah.

0:14:52 - Speaker 1

But irrespective, that tells us it wasn't them and they know it. They did not write those words. They did not. It means literally my post lifted Like they did not do that. They did not. They haven't even tried to hide it. But I get other people that have, like word for worded, some of my stuff on their website and it's members of their team. Okay, but you did not write it and it's in your name. So, for me that is misleading to people If they're then selling courses, for example the guru right.

The classic Right Come and I'll teach you how to not have anxiety or whatever it is, or six-figure side hustle or any of these things. You clearly did not do this, so let's just take a bit of responsibility here. But I feel and vex this week said on a post too, because he had it happen more than once and uh, it's the tide's turning and apparently instagram is changing the algo, which is quite reassuring that they can they're picking up the origin of posts because obviously they can check everything, and actually this week I had another impersonator account that didn't.

0:15:56 - Speaker 3

This is incredible well, like a fake account of you or I mean no, no, no, this was, this was next level so every one of my posts in the same fonts.

0:16:05 - Speaker 1

Everything exactly the same, the same grid. Everything in Portuguese, it's a the same grid. Everything in Portuguese, it's a Brazilian account. Every single one in order.

0:16:13 - Speaker 2

Same words everything, the length they've gone to for that.

0:16:16 - Speaker 1

So I reported it to Instagram, thinking well, they'll never do anything. They removed it like that. Oh really it's impersonation. We take it seriously. It's off.

0:16:26 - Speaker 3

So yeah, warning to all of you, I'm on to you, don't mess about, well, yeah.

0:16:29 - Speaker 1

I mean my agent sent an email into this person today saying oh, we're really pleased you're fans of her work. But, but maybe you'd like to go out with her clearly.

So pleased you're a fan of her work. But you know and actually I'm going to say something else here my experience has been I'm not being all boohoo, poor me the patriarchy. But it's been male big accounts that have done that to me, and it's I, you know. There's again. It feels like some voices are being squeezed a bit and I think it'd be nice that we, we all, can share.

0:17:00 - Speaker 3

Completely agree. The next question we have here is based on confidence, and it says well this my point of view, confidence is kind of crucial for success or doing whatever. How can individuals build and maintain confidence, especially after experiencing traumatic?

0:17:16 - Speaker 1

parts. It's a lovely question. Let me give something practical to do. So something practical is we've all got a phone like smartphone is to go down and write down 10 things that you've done either in the last week or that day. And I think people, we think about confidence and courage and you think, oh, I haven't run an iron man or I haven't done a big TED talk on stage, I'm gonna do like public speaking for the first time. You think you have to do like a huge thing. To me, the most courageous things I've done were tell a friend for the first time something I felt ashamed about. Like to me, the biggest, most courageous things I've done were have a difficult conversation with somebody and I was in relationship with or something like that. So I would really encourage people to make a list of 10 things that you have done and make them recent to remind yourself, you know, because sometimes it's harder to connect to.

Oh well, when I was I don't know whatever I got that award, you know, and it might feel nice in the moment. But, yeah, what did you do? Acts of kindness, where were you? Where was? Did someone surprise you with? Something like, did you connect with a friend that you love this week? You know, put 10 things on there to remind you kind of who you are and like that is a really beautiful thing to do and keep refreshing it. That's the point, because one the act of getting to that, add to it, is a really nice thing to do.

0:18:30 - Speaker 2

It's like yeah that happened today.

0:18:31 - Speaker 1

That happened today, and you'll start seeing like that it holds less value the older they get, even if it was massive like I got. Yeah, we spoke of it like got a big client coming in and you know, like a lit, you know like big, big, big client and like, oh, it's really cool next week. Not that it off, though, yes. So I want to just say that it can be really lovely small. I got my work done today. I had a lovely drink. I came in and did this. I did a great class. I really enjoyed it. I showed up for myself today. I said no to something that I didn't want to do. Keep it on a list and keep it going.

0:19:04 - Speaker 2

That's so interesting, love, that I want to come back to something you said a second ago about dealing with, say, an A-list celebrity or a sports person dealing with setbacks. We had a question on setbacks in particular, whether it be a sports person tennis player, cricketer and they've had a setback and they have to let go of that setback, go straight away and go into the next set, for example, in tennis. How would you translate that to someone like me? For example, where you have a setback in life is, in the short term, the best advice to give someone who's gone through a setback, whether it be a breakup or bad exam results, for example. What would you say to those people who are going through those really, really recent setbacks?

and they have to go straight into something or just potentially, or just to sort of the, the short term, to basically move on from as quickly as possible and then go on to the next day of school or the next set of tennis, for example so we're going to loop.

0:19:48 - Speaker 1

So where possible, we're going to loop back to kind of where we started here yeah deal with it straight away because, like me, right now, 10 years on, with something that's, like you know, unraveling that I thought I buried. Get it out, like, if you can, uh, if it's not practical to deal with it in that moment, almost there's a coaching term, which is the parking lot. You know, you can put it, just put it in the parking lot for now, but, but, have a time, have a limit on it. Okay, look, I haven't got any bandwidth until sunday, but I'm gonna protect some time. I'm gonna, you know, whatever, do whatever I need to do to make sure that I can, I can be in this and the only way out is through. Really, otherwise, you, we stuff it in and we're not dealing with it and we're adding on and we're adding on. So, try and find some time where you can safely be with it and if that means being with a friend, going on a walk, whatever it might be, to kind of process it before it starts taking roots, because these things have a. Where it gets tricky is when it starts to take roots and shame, trauma, events. They are sneaky, it's like a weed. It will literally start taking roots underneath anything if you're not careful. So, yeah, try and find as quickly as you can, some time that you know you're going to deal with it.

You can also put a timer on it. You can say right, I'm just going to feel the feels for 15 minutes, I'm going to be pissed off. I'm going to be pissed off, I'm going to be upset, I'm going to be a fucking victim. You know, I'm just going to wallow in it. The alarm's going off and then I'm going to. You know, maybe be curious.

Use the lens of curiosity is a great one. It's non-judgmental. So your inner critic's going off. You're feeling shitty. You've had your 15 minutes of wallowing. You know, come through that and be curious. Okay, like what came up for me. We're afraid of feeling stuff. We're afraid of I think. We're afraid that we're going to feel stuff and it's going to floor us. But more often than not it's not the reality. And if you feel you might get flawed again in part of your designing in this space, have a friend around, have someone that will be nearby or something you know you're going on to afterwards, or something like that. But yeah, advice from someone that has been around the sun a few times, like, try not to shove it in too far interesting.

0:21:54 - Speaker 3

Hey guys, tom here. We hope you enjoyed part two. If you do enjoy these videos, please like and subscribe to the channel. It helps us massively. Here's a bit of what you can expect to see in part three your imposter syndrome in a critic, call it.

0:22:07 - Speaker 1

What you want is like policing your shame. It's like a guard. If you're about to make a big change and say, like change your job, leave a relationship, and your imposter and your inner critic's really going off, it's because you're about to leave the comfort zone.