Self-love is the greatest middle finger of all time. This week, Zuri sits down with Dr. Adia Gooden, a licensed clinical psychologist, for a fantastic conversation on how we can cultivate a sense of unconditional self-worth outside of our career ambitions and our romantic and platonic relationships. They explore how we can show up for ourselves by reinforcing our boundaries, speaking up for ourselves (including in the bedroom), and the ultimate key to creating a healthy romantic relationship.
Dr. Adia also shares her personal story of contracting an STD while in college, how that experience rocked her sense of self-worth, how self-forgiveness freed her from shame, and how it can free you.
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- ICYMI: Listen to Episode 17: ...Are You in a Toxic Relationship?
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- ICYMI: Listen to Episode 9: ...How to Be Single & (Not Just Pretend to) Love It
- ICYMI: Listen to Episode 3: Self Love is Sexy AF
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
M hm, Hot Happy Mess, Celebrate your magic in the
middle of life's messes Happy Mess. I'm zeri all and
this is Hot Happy Mess Shoot. Hello, Hello, and welcome
(00:26):
to the nest episode of Hot Happy Mess. I am
your host, Zuri Hall. Happy Wednesday. If you're listening to
this on the day that it drops, because new episodes
are almost a Ruin's day. It's been a minute, but
it's because we needed to take a two week break
before diving into summer. We are here. It is upon us.
It's like eighty thousand ba jillion degrees in l A
(00:49):
and I'm loving it. Except I'm also realizing water is
a necessity for life, and I don't drink nearly enough
and wine is not a reasonable substitute, so I'm working
on that. UM. Quick life update, I just got back
from an amazing birthday celebration in New York. I had
such a great time with some of my closest friends,
my loved ones in in y C and had an
(01:12):
amazing birthday party. UM shout out to Charletta Maagne for
throwing an awesome epic bst Shindig extravagance for me. UM
on the Upper East Side. It was just the time
of my life, and there were so many surprises, and
he surprised me with scarlett and gray balloons and my
pictures around the wall, and it made me cry, and
(01:33):
it was just really special. And yeah, it was great
to catch up with him and his beautiful wife and
all of our friends and um, some acquaintances even that
I hadn't caught up with in a while. And we
even had a little Black effect, not even reunion, like
a black effect coming together obviously. UM. Charlie's the charge
for the Black Effect, which is the podcast networking partnership
(01:56):
with My Heart UM that has partnered with me to
bring you this lovely podcast. And what is so cool is,
you know, a lot of these podcasts launched in the
pandemic around the tail end, so I hadn't had the
opportunity to meet some of the people who work on
my team in person ever before UM, so I finally
(02:17):
got to meet my sound engineers, Dwayne and Jack's were
in the building, and up until that point, they've just
been tiny little virtual boxes that I've been talking to
for like a year and a half. So it's kind
of crazy, Um, when you think about the weird, bizarre
world we live in now where you're like, oh, yeah,
I know so and so. Oh yeah, I know so
(02:38):
and so, and then you're like, oh my god, I've
never seen so and so in real life. So it
was really special to be able to do that. And
now I'm turning up again this weekend with all of
my homies and phaves out in Los Angeles. Birthday month, baby,
what's up? Okay, So moving on to this week, we
are turning inwards and diving into how to first create
(02:58):
a healthy relation ship with yourself and then others. Okay,
I personally believe that we can't ask or expect people
to show up for or love us in ways that
we're not even willing to love ourselves. Mental health is
so important. I've taken um, my advocacy and my activism
in this space UM more and more Seriously, the older
(03:20):
I've gotten, the more mature I've become, and the more
I've realized just how important it is because of my
own personal journey, because of the journeys of my loved
ones and the ups and the downs, and just how
clear it's become to me that you know, we have
to come from a place of inner wellness and mental
wellness first, if we want to successfully and happily, joyfully
(03:45):
make any sort of outward changes or plant any seeds
in the outside world and expect them to grow um
or bear fruit. And it's a journey. It's a never
ending journey. I have highs, I have loads um. And
it's not just chapters. You know, it can it can
fluctuate from one day to the next or one hour
to the next. But the most important thing is to
(04:07):
stay on the journey and to self correct when you
realize and when you can. And I hope that by
listening to you know, hot happy mess and the conversations
that we're having, the stories that I'm sharing and my
guests are sharing UM, that you feel a little less
alone and a little more seen as you continue on
(04:32):
that journey for yourself. So today's expert is sharing how
we can cultivate self worth, develop more self compassion as
we navigate relationships with others. She's also sharing how to
break the cycle of feeling unlovable, how to become more
assertive when it comes to things like sex, and why
we need to demand the things we want right. Closed
(04:55):
mouths don't get fed. You gotta ask for what you want. Finally,
our expert is sharing her personal story on how self
forgiveness freed her from shame and how we can free
you to. Here is Dr da. Dr Adiagoden is a
licensed clinical psychologist whose work focuses on unconditional self worth,
impostor syndrome, and Black women and mental health. Dr Dia
(05:16):
gave a ted X talk on Cultivating Unconditional self worth,
which has over nine hundred and fifty thousand views. We're
pushing the million view mark y'all. Dr Idia as a podcast,
online courses and programs designed to help people build healthy
relationships with themselves and embrace their unconditional self worth. We're
all about it here on how Happy mess Dr Adia, Hi,
(05:38):
how are you? I'm doing well, Thanks so much for
having me. Of course excited to dive into this topic
with you. We're all about self love, self care, and
I'm particularly interested in, um what that means at the
intersection of relationship with other people, romantic relationships, friendships. How
does showing up for ourselves help us show up better
(06:00):
in these relationships and help us help the people we
love show up better for us to Before we dive
into all of that, I love to just learn a
little bit more about you. Um, from what I understand,
Producer Star gave me some notes. We're currently prego. We're
a girl mom. Okay, so I'm about so I'm about
(06:21):
two and a half weeks from my do date, so
I'm very pregnant. Oh my gosh, congratulation, thank you, thank you.
It's been a joy and you know, a fun journey,
lots of learning, lots of transformation, but really grateful for it.
It's so funny with these like virtual calls and interviews.
You know, it's necked up, so I wouldn't never nobody
(06:44):
can tell. Really we've got a whole baby bacon in there. Um. Well, congratulations,
I'm so excited for you. UM, and I've all been
more fascinated to hear about your journey to where you
are now, particularly based on where you started. You've been
really transparent about that. UM. Talk to me a little
bit about your background. What exactly does your day to
(07:06):
day work look like and why was it something that
you wanted to do. Yeah, So, as you mentioned, I'm
a licensed clinical psychologist, so I had been doing therapy,
individual group, couples therapy for ten plus years. UM, so
really kind of sitting with a lot of people around
(07:26):
their day to day struggles, right, struggles with feeling worthy,
struggles with depression, with anxiety, relationship challenges and issues, and
I started to see a pattern and also connected that
to my own life and experience. And what I saw
was that despite people's achievements and accomplishments and sort of
(07:47):
doing all of these really amazing, impressive things in their lives,
so many people were still struggling with anxiety and depression
and these other issues because they didn't feel worthy. And
that really felt like a root cause for a lot
of these challenges. And I connected that to my own
life and my own experience of you know, achieving really
(08:07):
highly but never feeling worthy, and seeing how you know,
my own struggles with self worth played out in relationships.
That was a really big area where my self worth
struggles played out. It played out in me having a
lot of anxiety, and a lot of my anxiety was
tied to relationships and the decisions that I was making
(08:28):
and the lack of boundaries and all of those things.
And so that really sort of seeing it in myself
and then also seeing it in my clients helped me
to think about it more broadly and think about how
do we help people to really believe that they're worthy
and sort of get to that place because I don't
think it's something that's talked about super commonly. Right. We
(08:49):
talk about self esteem, we talk about you know, achieving highly,
but there's not enough conversation about what does it really
mean to believe that you're worthy at the core, no
matter what is going on in your life. Um, this
is such an important topic, particularly for you know, our
(09:11):
audience because this podcast, my vision for it was always
to focus on conversations around how to do best life
minus the burnout. Right. I think for so many years
we were just taught to go, go go achieve, achieve, achieved,
girl boss it up all of these things. And I
felt just personally that no one at the time this is,
you know, especially maybe ten ish years ago, um and
(09:31):
like peak Boss Babe Energy, right when that that new
cultural shift was happening, Um, no one was talking about
how miserable we all were behind the scenes and the
mental health aspect. I was one of those people, right,
I was high achieving, I was always checking the boxes.
I couldn't wait to announce my next thing or whatever
it was. But the truth is I was also low
key losing my mind at certain points. I was so
(09:54):
burnt out, and I also struggled. In hindsight, I realized
I didn't know it at the time, with feeling really
insecure around some of the opportunities that I found myself
in dealing with imposter syndrome, even though it was my
um accomplishments or resume or achievements that had gotten me
into those spaces. And also, yeah, I even hesitate to
(10:17):
say it, but maybe a lack of self worth also,
But that's something that I think we might be embarrassed
to admit because who wants to admit how I struggle
with finding myself worthy or I've I've struggled with loving myself. Um,
but I think we all have been there. What would
be the biggest difference to you between self esteem and
(10:37):
self worth because sometimes we use it interchangeably, I'm honestly
and not even sure I could define the exact difference. Yeah,
that's a great question. So I think of self esteem
as being based on our abilities, are accomplishments and things
we believe we can achieve, so sort of the external right,
and it's very common for high achieving folks to have
(10:59):
high self esteem but still struggle with self worth because
you feel you feel like, yeah, I know I can
do that job. I know I can, you know, really
go in there and do a great job and like
get that whatever and you know whatever in whatever realm
it is like I can say a great speech, I
can give a convincing presentation, I can help someone really effectively.
(11:21):
We might have high self esteem in the realm of
what can we do in the world, and so often
we're very oriented towards doing what do we produce? What
do we do, which certain certainly can lead to burnout
because we always feel like we have to be doing
and really struggle with resting and being because it almost
(11:43):
feels like a threat to not be producing something. We're
sort of like, who am I if I'm not productive?
I don't hear it because that is exactly Oh my goodness,
it's and just hearing you speak about this, like the
light bulbs are going off in my mind of oh
(12:04):
my gosh. There have been so many moments in my
younger life especially, and I think a lot of us
were now here and you say the difference, It almost
feels like I had tons of self esteem and I
overcompensated with the external stuff, probably as a reflection of
what I lacked when it came to self worth and
that internal feeling. There was no reason to feel worthy
(12:26):
or accomplished, um if I wasn't producing externally, which means
that I was constantly in a state of production, because
otherwise I just had to sit with myself and not know,
not know what right right, I like to say, you know,
I had to teach myself to rest and relax because
it was so uncomfortable at first, because I was so
(12:49):
used to doing, doing, doing doing, and that giving me
a sense of self esteem, right, a sense of worthiness
because I was producing, and so as I shifted to
connect acting to the part of me that is worthy
just because I'm human, right, worthy of love, care and respect,
just because I'm a human being, it was an adjustment
(13:09):
to be like, Okay, I can rest. I can watch
TV without my laptop on my lap doing something productive. Right,
I can just rest and and you know, enjoy that rest.
I had to learn how to do that because I
was shifting out of another mode that I think is
so common for us, right right, absolutely, Um. Going back
(13:30):
to this idea of relationship with self. Um, what does
that even look like? You know, what does it mean
to have a healthy relationship with yourself? How can we
begin that journey? If it's something we've never even thought
about before. Yeah, it's such a good question. I think
our relationships with ourselves are the most important and the
(13:51):
most overlooked relationship we will ever have in our life.
If you think about it, it's the one that you
can never get out of. Right, Like, as long as
you are alive, you were going to have some sort
of relationship with yourself. But most of us are focused
on relationships with other people, which makes sense. We live
in a world. We like relationships, we like community, But
when we are thinking about our relationships with ourselves, it's
(14:12):
really about how do you see yourself? How do you
treat yourself? How do you show up for yourself when
things are hard and difficult? Right? And I think so
often we can see ourselves in a negative light, whether
that's you know, little things like oh my body should
be different, or I should talk different, or I should
dress different. So these little sort of I should be
(14:34):
different kind of things, whether it's self criticism. A lot
of people have a lot of self criticism running Oh,
my gosh, you're such an idiot. You shouldn't have done that.
I can't believe you did that. You're gonna mess that up?
You really think you can do that, right? Like this
sort of constant inner narrative that's negative that we really
wouldn't allow someone else to talk to us all the
time like that, but we talk to ourselves in that way.
(14:57):
And then it's how do you show up for yourself?
So when you're struggling, when you're experiencing a painful moment
or life event, how are you responding? Are you responding
with care and kindness? Or are you kicking yourself when
you're down? Are you abandoning yourself? Are you saying I'm
done with you? Right? Like I can't even tolerate you know,
(15:19):
the fact that you made that mistake or experience that failure. Right,
those are the foundations of how we relate to ourselves. Yeah,
I am. I recently went on a solo retreat over
New Year's Eve to this really awesome place called Golden Door,
and it was all about self care, self love, women
coming alone to spend the holiday alone together. And I
(15:43):
went to a self love workshop on one of these days,
and this woman had this really fascinating point. Um. She's
a licensed therapist. She she does a lot of self
love coaching workshops, and she brought up the idea of
self abandonment, which was a new thing for me to
wrap my mind around. I. You know, I've gotten on
the self love train quite a while ago. I started
(16:03):
to cultivate like a healthier relationship with myself and how
I felt about myself and um, the positive self care practices.
But I only realized then, um, that self abuse and
self abandonment are also things. Like let's focus on that
now too. Things as tiny as you know. I said
this in a recent episode, filling up my gas tank
versus not filling it up, riding around on e with
(16:25):
anxiety skyrocketing, knowing I'm twenty minutes late to a meeting
that I should have been at twenty minutes ago. Um,
all of these little things, um, that create chaos or
disorder or um stress in my life that could be
easily avoidable if I just prioritize myself a little bit
more and said, Nope, I'm gonna fill that tank. Nope,
(16:45):
I'm gonna stop and actually eat this meal instead of
going until eight pm. Things that you would not want
for your partner or your mother or you know of
child who your caregiving for, and yet with ourselves as like, uh,
i'll survive, I don't need to eat. Who needs gas?
And that was a form of self abandonment and I
(17:05):
didn't realize that. And once I flipped the script on
how I looked at it, it made it easier to
show up for myself because I started looking at it
as um abuse. It feels like too strong of a word,
but maybe it. Maybe the word just is abandonment. And
I wouldn't do it to someone I loved if they
needed me um, So why would Why would I do
(17:26):
it to myself? In all of these little ways. Yeah,
there's so many ways that we sort of get into
survival mode, like I can deal with it, I can
handle it, right. There's sort of you can almost be
a badge of honor of like oh, yeah, I haven't
slept in weeks, or I haven't really eaten or you know,
all of these things, but they wear ass and they're exhausting,
(17:47):
and that, you know, it is really the opposite of
pouring into your cup, and eventually you're not able to
show up for other people and you're not able to
show up for yourself. And so I think it's such
a good point to think about what are the small
ways in which we can abandon ourselves or show up
to ourselves? And I also like to think about, you know,
what are the larger ways. So, if you lose your
(18:08):
job or if you get an STD, which was an
experience I had, how do you respond to yourself? Because
back when I was twenty four, the way I responded
to myself was abandoning. It was sort of like, well,
that's it, your life is over, Like, that's it, nobody's
gonna love you. I don't love you anymore. I don't
know if I fully did at that point, but like
(18:29):
I'm done with you. I'm done with you, right. It's
that sort of content and that just makes the experience
even more painful. Yeah, you were really open about what
you went through at twenty four. I'd love if you
could share that story with us, particularly because you're your
self worth really Uh sort of came and sprung from
(18:53):
that very triggering moment in what came in the aftermath. So,
so what happened to you at twenty four? How did
that change your life? Yeah? So I was It was
a summer. I don't know what year was, it was
this summer and I started dat. I just the nerd
of me was like sixty nine. I can't help it.
(19:16):
It was in the air exactly. So I started dating
this guy and really sort of fell in love sort of,
you know, at that time, I felt like it was
love head over heels, and we were in a long
distance relationship. So, uh, he had come to Chicago and
(19:37):
we met, and then he lived in d C. And
I was already had planned like a two week trip
to d C that summer because my family lived there.
My grandmother lived there, and friends lived there. So then
we spent like two weeks together. Then I went back.
So we sort of developed this relationship and things were fine.
And then I went back to visit him, and I
(19:58):
remember it was I think it was Labor Day weekend,
and you know, looking back, I can see that I
could already feel that things were sort of off right.
So this is part of you know, like now I
can see that if I had trusted my intuition, I
might have been able to avoid a really painful situation.
(20:19):
But I just wasn't there yet. So I go back,
things feel sort of off. So you know, we were
having sex. I had you know, we had had a
conversation in the summer about a STD testing. You know,
I was twenty four. I wasn't super well versed in
that conversation, so I wasn't asking for I wasn't saying, Okay,
(20:40):
we need to get tested again. I was you know,
there's a lot of things that I wasn't doing. But
we had talked about it. He had said he was fine.
I said I was fine, and we sort of kind
of kept moving. So, um, we had sex that weekend
and I felt sick, like I I started to feel sick,
(21:02):
but I didn't. I had no idea like what that
was or what that meant that you were with him.
M hmm. Yeah, I felt sick and I didn't. I
had no idea that like your body could have such
a quick reaction. And this is good for people to know,
because if you feel sick it you can go to
(21:23):
the doctor and there are shots that you can get
immediately that can interrupt like an STD taking hold. So
there's there's reason to be really in tune with your body.
If you like, if you sleep with someone and then
you feel sick, that you should go visit the doctor,
because sometimes if you're within a couple of days, you
(21:45):
could address it. So I felt sick, I didn't know
what it was, went back home, and I don't know
how much later it was, but so then I like
didn't hear from him, which was another sort of emotional
thing for me, feeling abandoned and really upset. And it
was probably a couple of weeks later or a few
(22:07):
weeks later when I went to my doctor and I
learned that I had contracted herpies, and you know, it
was just devastating, Like at twenty four, I was sort
of like, as I mentioned, like Okay, that's it, right,
Like all your hopes and dreams of having partnership, of
having kids, like of having a happy life, like that's
(22:30):
just that's not gonna happen. Basically for those who may
not know, this is a lifelong thing. Like once you've
contracted herpes, you got herpes. There's no cure, right, Like, yeah,
there's no cure for herpes. And I think herpies is
sort of unique because there are other there so there's
some STDs that there are cures. Herpies is a unique
(22:53):
STD because people make fun of it, I think more
than probably any other STD. Right, So if you've got HIV,
that's obviously life threatening, and so I think people are like,
that's life threatening. Nobody's gonna people who are not going
to make fun of you for getting HIV, right, But
if you get hertpies, it's like you're dirty, right, Like
(23:14):
there's this connotation publicly that says you should feel ashamed,
you're dirty. You're like look at you, look at how
you are, right, And so I just felt so much shame.
So we broke up because I hadn't talked to him
and I was like, Okay, I'm not gonna do this
with you. So then I ended the relationships. Don't have
(23:36):
the breakup, like tell him like I yeah. Later I
told him and he was like, oh, that wasn't me,
and I'm like, yes it was, so he denied it. Yeah,
so he denied it. It was really funny, like a
couple like a year. A couple of years later, he
like called me randomly and was like hey, blah blah blah,
and I just was like laughing because at that point
(23:57):
I was like, you're ridiculous, Like why would you ever
call that? You know, the shackle, the emotional chains have
been broken when somebody you used to be pressed over
because that Lord knows that. I'm like, oh, like, are
you serious right now? I can't believe I used to
positive And he was like, I was hoping we could
(24:18):
be friends I had. I just started laughing and he
was like, all right, well, I'm gonna go. And I
never heard him because I was like, You're like, I
don't even understand why you're on my phone right now,
like this ridiculously though I love I love that you
need to give you that moment to just laugh at
this cloud. Yeah, stage left. I love that exactly exactly,
(24:40):
so you know I was in it was It was
incredibly painful, and you know, it took me years to
even share it because and I you know, because there
is so much stigma, there is so much shame. But
I think the reason that that was important on my
self worth journey is because if I could eventually connect
(25:02):
to a sense that I was still worthy, right like,
even though I had this STD, even though you know,
I had this thing that so many people would make
fun of and that I felt so ashamed of, if
I could believe that I'm still worthy unconditionally, that I'm
still worthy of love, care, and respect. Like that is
incredibly powerful because if you if you do everything perfect
(25:25):
and you feel worthy, then there's still a sense of like, well,
I'm worthy because I don't make any mistakes, or I
haven't done anything perfect, or everybody would approve of all
of my choices and decisions. But if you have something
that you say, you know what, some people might not
think I'm worthy because of this. Some people might cast
me out because of this. But I'm not going to
do that to myself. I Am going to love myself
(25:48):
and care for myself and show up for myself right that.
That is a really powerful statement that you can make
on behalf of yourself. And I'm so grateful that I
was able to do that work because now, you know,
as we sort of started, I'm pregnant, I'm in a
happy marriage, like all of the things that I thought,
(26:10):
you know, I'm just not going to be able to
do those things in my life when I was twenty four. Uh,
you know, they've happened because in part I was able
to forgive myself and move forward and still love and
embrace myself. The next question to you is going to
be why, why should we, you know, focus on building
(26:33):
up ourselves worth. And I'm thinking from the perspective of
someone who if you're drowning in the lack of it
right now, and you hear people say, oh, love on yourself,
treat yourself well, you deserve it, But like I meaning whoever,
I don't believe that in that moment because I'm drowning
in these feelings of self hatred or abandonment or abuse.
Um so it all just kind of sounds like rainbows
(26:56):
and unicorns and fairies too, Like, Okay, then I'm gonna
go back to my depressive episode. Now, y'all have a
nice day. So for someone who might be in the
thick of it, what would you say to that person
listening right now about why they should even try to
get to a place where self worth is something that
they're they're looking to build up. What is waiting for
(27:18):
them potentially on the other side if they just try
this mm hmmm, Yeah, I think it's a really good question. So,
I mean, I really think that it's the foundation of
living the life you want, and it's part of the
reason what you're saying it is part of the reason
why the practices that I focus on teaching people to
(27:39):
help get them to a place where they're embracing their
unconditional self worth. Are very sort of grounded and they're
not super fluffy. I do think like you know, the
like self love practices are like treat yourself and all
those things. I think those things are wonderful, but I
really like to start with foundational things like can you
be compassionate with yourself? Like can you talk to yourself
(28:02):
with kindness? And that's a healing practice because instead of
beating yourself up and saying I'm the worst, I'm horrible,
I'm dirty, right, Like, those are things I was saying
to myself. You said, oh baby, oh my gosh, oh
that was so painful, and this is scary because you
(28:22):
don't know how it's gonna go. And I'm here, I'm
not leaving you. Because that's really what we want other
people to do for us. And it's wonderful when other
people show up for us in that way. And we
can also show up for ourselves, right. We can also
say to ourselves, I'm not leaving you, I'm here. Right.
(28:44):
We can practice self forgiveness so that we get to
release it instead of me. You know, imagine if every time,
And I probably did this for a while. Every time
I like, I am starting dating a new partner, I'm
taking you idiot, you blah blah blah blah blah, and
you ad sext with that person and now you have right,
and I'm beating myself up? Then how am I going
to go into a healthy relationship with someone new if
(29:08):
I'm beating myself up? Now if I say, okay, so
you have this thing that you need to now talk
to this new person about and that takes courage and
it's uncomfortable, right, and that's okay, right, And and I'm
here with you, and we don't know how they're going
to respond, So we're gonna like be you know, thoughtful
about boundaries and developing trust. But if I'm there for myself,
(29:31):
then I am better able to engage in that new
relationship in a healthy way versus hiding or never engaging
in another relationship, or you know, on the first state
being like, hey, this is my history, you know, like
doing all of those things right. So when we have
the foundation of these practices and our self worth, that's
(29:53):
when we're able to build the life we want and
have healthy relationships. You mentioned, um you know, showing up
for yourself, the self love, and then that translating to
our relationships um or transitioning into our relationships rather, I
always say, you know, I can't expect anyone or ask
anyone to show up for me or love me in
(30:14):
a way that I'm not even willing to love myself.
And that was a breakthrough I only had in my
late twenties after a breakup a long term relationship that
I decided to end, and I dedicated a song to
myself for the first time ever, the same way you know,
you and your new boom might have our song. When
I hear these lyrics, I think of us Stevie wonder
(30:36):
as is my song to myself. And I promised myself
on the other end of that breakup, I was never
going to betray myself, let myself down, hurt myself in
the ways that I did in that relationship and the
ways that I allowed my partner to at different times um.
And that was all the security I needed. I stopped
(30:56):
finally looking for that guarantee from a partner and just
decided to do it for myself because I was watching
me show up as this great partner or the best
I could be to these people, I'm like, well, why
don't I just go ahead and re reum allocate this energy,
these funds towards myself. And it was night and day
the sorts of relationships and um dating opportunities and the
(31:19):
minute I attracted in my life because I was just
on a different vibrational frequency, and the people who couldn't
match me, they just fell away, even if I wanted
to keep the toxicity in my life, Like, the truth was,
I wasn't walking that walk anymore. So it was only
so long before they just kind of disappeared or the
universe would kind of clear him out of the way,
and I would be directed towards people who were on
(31:40):
my wavelength and who um matched my energy. When it
came to the type of love, the type of life
that we were living, one of self love, mutual respect, boundaries. UM,
what does that look like in your opinion? Uh, going
from self love and self worth into relationship? How does
that inform a real relationships? What does self worth look
(32:02):
like in the context of partnership? UM? I would imagine
boundaries is a big, a big thing. But what would
you say? Yeah, I mean I love that you're sharing
your own experience, because I think mine is somewhat similar. Right.
I went from being attracted to an attracting men who
(32:22):
were unavailable in some way, shape or form, right because
I sort of didn't feel worthy of love. I didn't
feel lovable, and so then there was always this attraction
to people who then reinforced that belief about myself. And
once I released that, once I decided, okay, like I
(32:44):
actually do know that I'm lovable. And for me, that
really came very clearly after I had a relationship with
a man of two years and he didn't fall in
love with me, and at some point it was like
clear he wasn't gonna fall in love with me, and
so towards the end of that relationship, I was like,
you know what, it's not me, it's him. He's a
(33:06):
very nice man's very nice person, but like it's his
emotional capacity and his limitations that are keeping him from
loving me, not me. I am lovable, I am worthy
of love. And that really then shifted because then I
was attracting and attracted to, which I think is a
really important point because when we struggle with some of
(33:29):
these things, we tend to be attracted to the people
who reinforce our negative or unhelpful beliefs about ourselves. But
when we fill ourselves up, when we feel worthy and
lovable and we're not desperate for attention for affection because
we're offering it to ourselves, we have other fulfilling relationships,
(33:49):
then we tend to be attracted to people who are
going to show up for us, are going to be
in relationship with us, are not you know, avoiding us
and distant and all of these things. And so it
just makes for better, healthier relationships when you're feeling like
a complete, fulfilled person going into a relationship versus looking
(34:12):
for someone to fix you or complete you or any
of those things. Right, what is the key to you
for um developing and looking for healthy romantic relationships. So
let's say we've been working on our self worth. We're
getting to a place where we feel good and healthy
and well. But the truth is a lot of us
still have you know, the scars from the past, old trauma's,
(34:34):
old triggers, and um satan, the universe, whatever you wanna
call it, whatever you believe in, whatever, We'll just show
up and just give you a little tests every now
and a little pop quiz see, if you really are
about that new life? Uh, and you you cain past
or heal, you realize that moment. Okay, there's more work
to be done. So if we're trying to step out
(34:55):
into these streets with a new level of self worth
when it comes to dating, what should we be keeping
in mind as we engage with other people? What are
the questions we can ask on the first, second, third date?
What are the red flags to know? Okay, whatever energy
they're giving might not be an alignment with this new
version of myself that I want to continue to grow.
(35:16):
Mm hmm. Wow, that's such a good question. Um. So,
I think one thing is really paying attention to how
you feel with someone and when you're communicating right with them,
when you're communicating with them, when you're out on dates,
et cetera. I know that for me, when I was
(35:37):
in a space of lower self worth or feeling unlovable,
I was so focused on getting the person to like
me that I was not very focused on how do
I actually feel with them? Right? And so does this
person make you feel anxious? Right? Are you sort of
like when are they gonna call? When are they gonna text?
(35:58):
I don't know, I don't hear from them. They call
in and out and they're inconsistent. And they said they
want to go on a day on Friday, but I
don't know if they're gonna go. And right, like, are
they making you feel anxious? Because if there and some
of it can be internalized, right, but if they're communicating
in a way that's inconsistent, right if they're like, yeah,
i'll hit you up later and you never hear from them.
(36:18):
If they're like, yeah, we should go out this weekend
and you never hear from them, right, Like, notice that
because your own sense of like this doesn't feel good
or I'm now anxious and feel like I have to
remind them of who I am and get their attention.
That's not a good sign, right. And you may be
comfortable with that if you're used to chasing someone or
(36:43):
getting someone to engage with you, but it's it doesn't
ultimately lead to a healthy relationship. So that's one thing.
So tune into your intuition and notice how do I
feel with this person? Notice how they respond to your boundaries? Right? So,
I remember back when I was dating this guy, you know,
(37:03):
we matched on you know, a dating app or something
and he seemed really great on paper. And he was like, oh,
you know, you should come over to my apartment for
a drink. And I was like, no, I'm not gonna
do that. That was the first day proposal, yes exactly.
I was like, no, I'm not going to do that
on a first date. And he was like, oh, well
just come to my building. You know, we have like
(37:25):
a party room and then we can and I was
like no, I'm not going to do that. And he
literally kept asking and I was like flag right, like
you are not listening to my no. I keep telling
you know, I keep saying I am not comfortable with this,
and you keep saying, but what about this? And what
about that? Right? So, when you set a boundary, and
(37:46):
it can be small like I'm not comfortable I want
to meet in a public place, or you know after
this talking after this time doesn't work for me, or
whatever it is. Does the person listen to your boundary
or are they trying to push past it and and
convince you that you shouldn't have your boundary? Right, that's
a communication of respect saying oh great, cool, you're not
(38:07):
comfortable coming over, Great, I'll find a place for us
to grab drinks right, like, you know what I mean?
And so how are they responding? And then I think
sort of exploring, do you have shared values? Do you
have shared goals? Right? If you know you're looking for
a serious relationship and someone is like, yeah, I don't
want a serious relationship right now, then listen to them,
(38:29):
hear them. Take note to invince yourself. This sounds like
a job. For for me to think, this sounds like
a project to take on exactly. We don't want projects
of the projects of my life. When I think back
on all I just knew I was about to fix somebody,
save somebody, turn somebody around. L O L never never never,
(38:56):
at best. At best, you give him a brush up,
a shy and up, an improvement makeover, and then they're
off to the next person exactly, a little best off
before they hit the road again, or you sit the
packing honestly once he finally get sick of it. You know,
we've talked about self worth in the context of just
(39:18):
our relationship with our selves, romantic relationships, and love. You
also talk about self worth um in the context of
sexual relationships, to which I think is so important. You know,
we are grown women, We've lived from the situationships to
the one night stance to the committed relationships. Um, the
f boys of the world, f girls of the world. Um,
(39:40):
when it comes to sex. Uh, in our society it
despol's still for some reason taboo to talk about, particularly
from the angle of women's pleasure, us owning our body,
sovereign beings and speaking up for what we want. You know, Um,
we're talked to think of guys as as the person
to please and kind of mistaking our own pleasure or
(40:00):
expectations in that process making an orgasm. To this day,
I'm like, I can't do it, never would, can't relate
another promise I make to myself. I was like, I
will never. So what what does that mean to you?
Why do you think it's so difficult sometimes for us
as women to ask for what we want? Yeah, I
(40:22):
mean I think you know, you touch on so many things.
They're one is it is? I think hard. I don't
think women are socialized to embrace pleasure and and feel
deserving and worthy of pleasure right and and often as
girls and young women were told keep your legs closed
(40:44):
and like, you know, be gate keepers of sex, and
you shouldn't you shouldn't want sex, right, It's sort of
the message, right. I think young men, right, are often
socialized to want sex, and that's normal and boys will
be boys, but young women and girls, it's like you're
not supposed to want sex. It's like you're not a
sexual being. And so then there's all this sort of
(41:07):
challenging situation where sex is often framed as a service
to the other person or something that you acquiesce to
for the other person. And obviously this is shifting, but
I think part of it is believing you're worthy of pleasure, right,
And you could think about pleasure on you know, a
(41:29):
continuum from you know, treating yourself to your favorite dessert
and just enjoying it without being like it's a teat
day and oh, I'm gonna work out so much tomorrow,
because you know, it's like you could just have it
and enjoy it and like you know what I mean,
and like or pleasure as rest or doing just something
you enjoy just because, not because you achieve, but just
(41:52):
because or sexual pleasure, having orgasm, right, So there's there's that.
I think the other piece back to the being and
do wing right, if you think about orgasm like really
you need to release, let go, be fully present if
you are thinking about performing, if you are thinking about
what are they thinking of my body? What are they
(42:13):
thinking of how I look? What are they thinking about
the sounds I'm making? It is very hard to be
in a mental space where you can allow an orgasm
to come, because you're sort of in performance and control mode, right,
and so often women are socialized to be in service,
performance and control mode. So I think a lot of
this is involving sort of you know, how do you
(42:36):
get there yourself, which is where sort of like masturbation
and self pleasuring can be really useful because we sort
of take out all the other people, right, and you
just focus on yourself, and then when you transition to
or when you're having sex with a partner, you know,
owning the fact that you should be experiencing pleasure, and
then it's okay and good and healthy to ask for
(43:00):
what you want. That that's not about saying the other
person is performing poorly. But often partners are kind of like,
I don't know what to do, And if you're in
a healthy partnership, they want you to experience pleasure in sex,
and so you communicating either during sex or outside of sex,
like hey, I really like it when you do this,
or I think i'd like that. You know, that can
(43:22):
be such a helpful and healthy conversation even though it's uncomfortable.
So part of it is being willing to feel uncomfortable
in the service of experiencing pleasure. We had a recent
group chat episode where some of my girlfriends came on.
We talked to about sexual health and UM, sort of
with a mandatory conversation before we engage with a potential partner.
(43:43):
But like you mentioned, having those conversations can be uncomfortable.
It can be tough. You know. I've heard of women who,
you know, they asked their sexual partners to get tested
and they were gas lit or ghosted or felt this
really intense pressure to compromise or move the boundaries of
what they felt good or comfortable with, and then they
regret being you know, open, transparent, speaking up for themselves.
(44:05):
What do you say to someone who might feel that
that hesitation, UM, I would imagine it very much represents
low self worth in the context of sexual relationship versus
high self worth. UM. What what do you say to
to those who might be hesitant because of you know,
maybe unsupportive partners. Yeah, I mean I would say it's understandable, right,
(44:28):
It's understandable that it feels uncomfortable and it feels maybe
scary to have this conversation because the fear, I think
ultimately is this person is going to reject me. And
I really like this person, I really want to be
connected to this person. But that's again where having a
grounding in your self worth and in your relationship with
(44:49):
yourself and saying, you know what, it's uncomfortable, but I
have to set this boundary for me, right when I'm
telling me, I told my own story at twenty four,
it was like I had the conversation, but I didn't
necessarily set the boundaries and like have it as seriously
as I needed to. I wasn't. I wasn't in a
place where I was able to do that yet. But now, well,
(45:09):
you know, I mean a monogorous, magnamous marriage, so we've
established that. But you know, it's like, how do you
sort of courageously have the conversation and know that you
were going to be there for yourself even if this
person is not going to stay with you, because you
and your health and your boundaries are more important than
(45:29):
you know, acquiescing to what somebody wants to do or
not do. And this is a this is sort of
a signal, a sign of a relations sort of a
relationship test. If you say, you know, I'm not gonna
feel comfortable having sex or having intercourse until we both
get tested, um, and they and they gas like you
(45:50):
or they're mean or they deny it, well, that's a
sign that they don't respect your boundaries. Because even if
they don't think it's necessary, they should say, you know what,
I want you to feel safe if we're going to
have sex, and I want us to be open and
transparent about what's going on. I want to I want
to protect me and I want to protect you. So yes,
(46:11):
I'm willing to do that, right, And so that's a
sign of emotional maturity. So it's uncomfortable, but it also
shows you how this person is willing to engage with you.
And if you're saying, at baseline, I need us to
get tested to keep me safe and keep you safe,
and the person is pushing back against that, then what
(46:31):
is it going to be like If you're like, hey,
this is what I need to feel pleasure. Right, safety
is the baseline pleasure is you know what I mean
is what we go for afterwards. But how are they
really going to show up in that space wanting to
pleasure you if they're not even prioritized in keeping you safe? Right,
that's a sign, even though it might be hard, that
maybe this is a relationship isn't gonna work, um, because
(46:54):
they're not willing to show up for you in that way,
right Right, And then having the courage that strength to
walk away when you see the red flags, when you
you recognize the warning signs um, instead of staying, which
again goes right back to the your ideas about what
you are worthy of. Right. If you truly believe fundamentally
that you're worth something and something else is beneath or
(47:16):
below you, even when it's uncomfortable or it's painful or
it sucks a little bit, you walk away anyway because
you just know you deserve better and you know you
can get it. Um. What are some of the signs
or red flags that you might be using your your
sexual relationships to prove you're worthy, That you might be
suffering from low self worth and it's manifesting in those
(47:39):
sorts of relationships. What what red flags might you see
m hmm, that's a good question. I mean I think, um,
you know, feeling like you have to perform sex and
feeling like sex is about you pleasuring you know, your partner,
um more than about sort of a mutual positive experience,
(48:00):
UM that you all are creating together. Feeling sort of
like you know, if they're if you feel like they're
pulling away, then you offer sex to pull them back in, right,
sort of using sex as a tool more than something
that's mutual and you know, mutually pleasurable, mutually created all
(48:20):
of those things. UM, I think can be a sign
um feeling like you have to be in performance mode
when you're having sex, right, feeling like I have to
do it right so they stay right, it's got to
be so good they don't go anywhere else. Like these
sort of narratives right that again are about me showing
(48:41):
you that you shouldn't leave me because the sex is good,
versus us creating a sexual experience together that feels good
for both of us. Yeah, that idea of performance, it
really translates to other areas, to write, performing on the date,
when you're interacting and just romantic context, performing in friendships,
(49:03):
performing in the office, anytime that you feel like being
who you are whatever feels truest to you at that
moment isn't enough, kind of plays right into that idea
of who you are, not being worth whatever it is
you're experiencing, or whoever it is you're experiencing. Yeah, exactly.
I think so. One of the things that my husband
said in his vows when we got married is that
(49:26):
he appreciated how honest I was. Even on our first
date and he, you know, was asking me some questions.
I didn't really notice. I'm just answering that. You know,
he in the past had asked other women and he
felt like they were giving him answers that he wanted
to hear, and I was just answering because I was like,
this is the truth for me, you know. And it
(49:46):
was one of the bags he asked. You know, I
don't even think it wasn't even that it wasn't even
super deep, but like one I think one question was
so we live in Chicago, I'm from southern California, And
I think he was like, you know, would you ever
move act to southern California? And I was like, you
know what, you maybe like I probably would like I
don't know if I will, but I probably would. And
(50:08):
for him that was like, you know, like, oh, like
you might leave, so that might be something that I
you know, like if I was tuned into like maybe
he wouldn't like this. Maybe it's like, oh no, like
I'm always going to be in Chicago. Just went to
especially in February, so you know, and I don't even
(50:29):
remember all the questions, but it's just like he appreciated
that I was being myself, not trying to just cater
to him so that he would ask me on another date.
Like that wasn't my goal. It was like, well, this
is who I am, right, And I think that's what
we need in relationships because if a long term relationship
is gonna work, we need them to like us. We
(50:50):
don't need somebody to fall for, you know, this image
that we create or representative, because that is just not sustainable.
So when we're grounded in our worthiness and we like us,
then it's so much easier to show up as ourselves
when we're dating. And then if somebody doesn't like us,
it might be disappointing, but it's like okay, well better
(51:11):
off because I'm not going to date someone who doesn't
like me. That just doesn't make sense right right? Um?
Resources tools for people who want to begin the journey
or maybe refresh or just keep building on it. Where
can we go to learn how to love on ourselves
more and cultivate that feeling of unconditional self worth? Yeah?
(51:34):
So I have a free e book UM which is
on four practices to help you connect to your unconditional
self worth UM. And I think that's a really great
place to start. People can sign up for it on
my website, So dr Adiagoden dot com forward slash free
e dash book UM. And it's free and you can
(51:55):
sign up and get started that way. I love it,
love it, And I'm curious to know if you have
any favorite affirmation, just something, just give us one for
today for our hot happy mess listeners. UM, something that
we can repeat to ourselves throughout the day, throughout the
week to begin or build on our our foundation of
self worth. What affirmation might you have for us? Mm hmm,
(52:21):
let's see that's a good That's a good one, like
getting my neurons fire quick enough. Um, I am worthy
and wonderful even as I grow and evolve, I am
worthy and wonderful. Even as I grow and evolve. I
love this space that that allows for the mess ups,
(52:44):
the hiccups, the tripping up right, and to remember that
we're still worthy in the midst of the journey, the evolution,
the stumbles, because I think that's where we tend to
stop giving ourselves grace as soon as we need it
most exactly. And I think the other thing is that
people sometimes fear that if they embrace their unconditional self
(53:04):
worth that means they won't grow anymore. But they're those
things are not mutually exclusive, right, And it can be
so helpful too, as you're saying, if we're messing up,
remind ourselves that we're still worthy and to know that
if we embrace our self worth, that actually is a
great foundation for personal growth. Beautiful Dr Adia, this conversation
(53:25):
was exactly what I needed. I I certainly could use
a refresher, so I appreciate your time. I know our
listeners will love it too. If people want to just
follow you keep up with you. You're active on social
media also, right, Yeah, So I'm at Dr da good
in Love for people to follow and can visit my
website Dr dia Gooden dot com as well. Awesome. Dr Dia,
(53:47):
thank you so much, Thank you so much for having me.
I so appreciate it. This is fun happy. Thank you
again so much, Dr Dia for joining me on the podcast,
for being so vulnerable and honest about your life experiences.
I know I came away with so many gems, so
many takeaways, and I encourage you to take a moment
(54:09):
to do that amazing affirmation if you haven't already. Also,
make sure you check out her services and remember that
you are worthy all right period. Before I head out,
I do want to do a call out for real
women's stories. I'd love to spotlight you on the podcast,
So email me hello at how happy mess dot com
with your story. You can be sure to tell a
(54:30):
friend about this episode if you really want to be
a real one and share us. If you like this
episode posted on your Insto story, tweet it dmag to somebody,
if you tag me, I'll repost it, I'll share it
blast us everywhere and we'll repost. And We're so grateful
for your love and your support, and I hope you'll
stay tuned for more episodes every Wednesday. In the meantime,
(54:51):
you can follow me at Zuri hall z r I
h a l L. Get at hot happy mess on
Instagram and I will talk to you next Wednesday, bing
bing ban
M hm, Hot Happy Mess, Celebrate your magic in the
middle of life's messes Happy Mess. I'm zeri all and
this is Hot Happy Mess Shoot. Hello, Hello, and welcome
(00:26):
to the nest episode of Hot Happy Mess. I am
your host, Zuri Hall. Happy Wednesday. If you're listening to
this on the day that it drops, because new episodes
are almost a Ruin's day. It's been a minute, but
it's because we needed to take a two week break
before diving into summer. We are here. It is upon us.
It's like eighty thousand ba jillion degrees in l A
(00:49):
and I'm loving it. Except I'm also realizing water is
a necessity for life, and I don't drink nearly enough
and wine is not a reasonable substitute, so I'm working
on that. UM. Quick life update, I just got back
from an amazing birthday celebration in New York. I had
such a great time with some of my closest friends,
my loved ones in in y C and had an
(01:12):
amazing birthday party. UM shout out to Charletta Maagne for
throwing an awesome epic bst Shindig extravagance for me. UM
on the Upper East Side. It was just the time
of my life, and there were so many surprises, and
he surprised me with scarlett and gray balloons and my
pictures around the wall, and it made me cry, and
(01:33):
it was just really special. And yeah, it was great
to catch up with him and his beautiful wife and
all of our friends and um, some acquaintances even that
I hadn't caught up with in a while. And we
even had a little Black effect, not even reunion, like
a black effect coming together obviously. UM. Charlie's the charge
for the Black Effect, which is the podcast networking partnership
(01:56):
with My Heart UM that has partnered with me to
bring you this lovely podcast. And what is so cool is,
you know, a lot of these podcasts launched in the
pandemic around the tail end, so I hadn't had the
opportunity to meet some of the people who work on
my team in person ever before UM, so I finally
(02:17):
got to meet my sound engineers, Dwayne and Jack's were
in the building, and up until that point, they've just
been tiny little virtual boxes that I've been talking to
for like a year and a half. So it's kind
of crazy, Um, when you think about the weird, bizarre
world we live in now where you're like, oh, yeah,
I know so and so. Oh yeah, I know so
(02:38):
and so, and then you're like, oh my god, I've
never seen so and so in real life. So it
was really special to be able to do that. And
now I'm turning up again this weekend with all of
my homies and phaves out in Los Angeles. Birthday month, baby,
what's up? Okay, So moving on to this week, we
are turning inwards and diving into how to first create
(02:58):
a healthy relation ship with yourself and then others. Okay,
I personally believe that we can't ask or expect people
to show up for or love us in ways that
we're not even willing to love ourselves. Mental health is
so important. I've taken um, my advocacy and my activism
in this space UM more and more Seriously, the older
(03:20):
I've gotten, the more mature I've become, and the more
I've realized just how important it is because of my
own personal journey, because of the journeys of my loved
ones and the ups and the downs, and just how
clear it's become to me that you know, we have
to come from a place of inner wellness and mental
wellness first, if we want to successfully and happily, joyfully
(03:45):
make any sort of outward changes or plant any seeds
in the outside world and expect them to grow um
or bear fruit. And it's a journey. It's a never
ending journey. I have highs, I have loads um. And
it's not just chapters. You know, it can it can
fluctuate from one day to the next or one hour
to the next. But the most important thing is to
(04:07):
stay on the journey and to self correct when you
realize and when you can. And I hope that by
listening to you know, hot happy mess and the conversations
that we're having, the stories that I'm sharing and my
guests are sharing UM, that you feel a little less
alone and a little more seen as you continue on
(04:32):
that journey for yourself. So today's expert is sharing how
we can cultivate self worth, develop more self compassion as
we navigate relationships with others. She's also sharing how to
break the cycle of feeling unlovable, how to become more
assertive when it comes to things like sex, and why
we need to demand the things we want right. Closed
(04:55):
mouths don't get fed. You gotta ask for what you want. Finally,
our expert is sharing her personal story on how self
forgiveness freed her from shame and how we can free
you to. Here is Dr da. Dr Adiagoden is a
licensed clinical psychologist whose work focuses on unconditional self worth,
impostor syndrome, and Black women and mental health. Dr Dia
(05:16):
gave a ted X talk on Cultivating Unconditional self worth,
which has over nine hundred and fifty thousand views. We're
pushing the million view mark y'all. Dr Idia as a podcast,
online courses and programs designed to help people build healthy
relationships with themselves and embrace their unconditional self worth. We're
all about it here on how Happy mess Dr Adia, Hi,
(05:38):
how are you? I'm doing well, Thanks so much for
having me. Of course excited to dive into this topic
with you. We're all about self love, self care, and
I'm particularly interested in, um what that means at the
intersection of relationship with other people, romantic relationships, friendships. How
does showing up for ourselves help us show up better
(06:00):
in these relationships and help us help the people we
love show up better for us to Before we dive
into all of that, I love to just learn a
little bit more about you. Um, from what I understand,
Producer Star gave me some notes. We're currently prego. We're
a girl mom. Okay, so I'm about so I'm about
(06:21):
two and a half weeks from my do date, so
I'm very pregnant. Oh my gosh, congratulation, thank you, thank you.
It's been a joy and you know, a fun journey,
lots of learning, lots of transformation, but really grateful for it.
It's so funny with these like virtual calls and interviews.
You know, it's necked up, so I wouldn't never nobody
(06:44):
can tell. Really we've got a whole baby bacon in there. Um. Well, congratulations,
I'm so excited for you. UM, and I've all been
more fascinated to hear about your journey to where you
are now, particularly based on where you started. You've been
really transparent about that. UM. Talk to me a little
bit about your background. What exactly does your day to
(07:06):
day work look like and why was it something that
you wanted to do. Yeah, So, as you mentioned, I'm
a licensed clinical psychologist, so I had been doing therapy,
individual group, couples therapy for ten plus years. UM, so
really kind of sitting with a lot of people around
(07:26):
their day to day struggles, right, struggles with feeling worthy,
struggles with depression, with anxiety, relationship challenges and issues, and
I started to see a pattern and also connected that
to my own life and experience. And what I saw
was that despite people's achievements and accomplishments and sort of
(07:47):
doing all of these really amazing, impressive things in their lives,
so many people were still struggling with anxiety and depression
and these other issues because they didn't feel worthy. And
that really felt like a root cause for a lot
of these challenges. And I connected that to my own
life and my own experience of you know, achieving really
(08:07):
highly but never feeling worthy, and seeing how you know,
my own struggles with self worth played out in relationships.
That was a really big area where my self worth
struggles played out. It played out in me having a
lot of anxiety, and a lot of my anxiety was
tied to relationships and the decisions that I was making
(08:28):
and the lack of boundaries and all of those things.
And so that really sort of seeing it in myself
and then also seeing it in my clients helped me
to think about it more broadly and think about how
do we help people to really believe that they're worthy
and sort of get to that place because I don't
think it's something that's talked about super commonly. Right. We
(08:49):
talk about self esteem, we talk about you know, achieving highly,
but there's not enough conversation about what does it really
mean to believe that you're worthy at the core, no
matter what is going on in your life. Um, this
is such an important topic, particularly for you know, our
(09:11):
audience because this podcast, my vision for it was always
to focus on conversations around how to do best life
minus the burnout. Right. I think for so many years
we were just taught to go, go go achieve, achieve, achieved,
girl boss it up all of these things. And I
felt just personally that no one at the time this is,
you know, especially maybe ten ish years ago, um and
(09:31):
like peak Boss Babe Energy, right when that that new
cultural shift was happening, Um, no one was talking about
how miserable we all were behind the scenes and the
mental health aspect. I was one of those people, right,
I was high achieving, I was always checking the boxes.
I couldn't wait to announce my next thing or whatever
it was. But the truth is I was also low
key losing my mind at certain points. I was so
(09:54):
burnt out, and I also struggled. In hindsight, I realized
I didn't know it at the time, with feeling really
insecure around some of the opportunities that I found myself
in dealing with imposter syndrome, even though it was my
um accomplishments or resume or achievements that had gotten me
into those spaces. And also, yeah, I even hesitate to
(10:17):
say it, but maybe a lack of self worth also,
But that's something that I think we might be embarrassed
to admit because who wants to admit how I struggle
with finding myself worthy or I've I've struggled with loving myself. Um,
but I think we all have been there. What would
be the biggest difference to you between self esteem and
(10:37):
self worth because sometimes we use it interchangeably, I'm honestly
and not even sure I could define the exact difference. Yeah,
that's a great question. So I think of self esteem
as being based on our abilities, are accomplishments and things
we believe we can achieve, so sort of the external right,
and it's very common for high achieving folks to have
(10:59):
high self esteem but still struggle with self worth because
you feel you feel like, yeah, I know I can
do that job. I know I can, you know, really
go in there and do a great job and like
get that whatever and you know whatever in whatever realm
it is like I can say a great speech, I
can give a convincing presentation, I can help someone really effectively.
(11:21):
We might have high self esteem in the realm of
what can we do in the world, and so often
we're very oriented towards doing what do we produce? What
do we do, which certain certainly can lead to burnout
because we always feel like we have to be doing
and really struggle with resting and being because it almost
(11:43):
feels like a threat to not be producing something. We're
sort of like, who am I if I'm not productive?
I don't hear it because that is exactly Oh my goodness,
it's and just hearing you speak about this, like the
light bulbs are going off in my mind of oh
(12:04):
my gosh. There have been so many moments in my
younger life especially, and I think a lot of us
were now here and you say the difference, It almost
feels like I had tons of self esteem and I
overcompensated with the external stuff, probably as a reflection of
what I lacked when it came to self worth and
that internal feeling. There was no reason to feel worthy
(12:26):
or accomplished, um if I wasn't producing externally, which means
that I was constantly in a state of production, because
otherwise I just had to sit with myself and not know,
not know what right right, I like to say, you know,
I had to teach myself to rest and relax because
it was so uncomfortable at first, because I was so
(12:49):
used to doing, doing, doing doing, and that giving me
a sense of self esteem, right, a sense of worthiness
because I was producing, and so as I shifted to
connect acting to the part of me that is worthy
just because I'm human, right, worthy of love, care and respect,
just because I'm a human being, it was an adjustment
(13:09):
to be like, Okay, I can rest. I can watch
TV without my laptop on my lap doing something productive. Right,
I can just rest and and you know, enjoy that rest.
I had to learn how to do that because I
was shifting out of another mode that I think is
so common for us, right right, absolutely, Um. Going back
(13:30):
to this idea of relationship with self. Um, what does
that even look like? You know, what does it mean
to have a healthy relationship with yourself? How can we
begin that journey? If it's something we've never even thought
about before. Yeah, it's such a good question. I think
our relationships with ourselves are the most important and the
(13:51):
most overlooked relationship we will ever have in our life.
If you think about it, it's the one that you
can never get out of. Right, Like, as long as
you are alive, you were going to have some sort
of relationship with yourself. But most of us are focused
on relationships with other people, which makes sense. We live
in a world. We like relationships, we like community, But
when we are thinking about our relationships with ourselves, it's
(14:12):
really about how do you see yourself? How do you
treat yourself? How do you show up for yourself when
things are hard and difficult? Right? And I think so
often we can see ourselves in a negative light, whether
that's you know, little things like oh my body should
be different, or I should talk different, or I should
dress different. So these little sort of I should be
(14:34):
different kind of things, whether it's self criticism. A lot
of people have a lot of self criticism running Oh,
my gosh, you're such an idiot. You shouldn't have done that.
I can't believe you did that. You're gonna mess that up?
You really think you can do that, right? Like this
sort of constant inner narrative that's negative that we really
wouldn't allow someone else to talk to us all the
time like that, but we talk to ourselves in that way.
(14:57):
And then it's how do you show up for yourself?
So when you're struggling, when you're experiencing a painful moment
or life event, how are you responding? Are you responding
with care and kindness? Or are you kicking yourself when
you're down? Are you abandoning yourself? Are you saying I'm
done with you? Right? Like I can't even tolerate you know,
(15:19):
the fact that you made that mistake or experience that failure. Right,
those are the foundations of how we relate to ourselves. Yeah,
I am. I recently went on a solo retreat over
New Year's Eve to this really awesome place called Golden Door,
and it was all about self care, self love, women
coming alone to spend the holiday alone together. And I
(15:43):
went to a self love workshop on one of these days,
and this woman had this really fascinating point. Um. She's
a licensed therapist. She she does a lot of self
love coaching workshops, and she brought up the idea of
self abandonment, which was a new thing for me to
wrap my mind around. I. You know, I've gotten on
the self love train quite a while ago. I started
(16:03):
to cultivate like a healthier relationship with myself and how
I felt about myself and um, the positive self care practices.
But I only realized then, um, that self abuse and
self abandonment are also things. Like let's focus on that
now too. Things as tiny as you know. I said
this in a recent episode, filling up my gas tank
versus not filling it up, riding around on e with
(16:25):
anxiety skyrocketing, knowing I'm twenty minutes late to a meeting
that I should have been at twenty minutes ago. Um,
all of these little things, um, that create chaos or
disorder or um stress in my life that could be
easily avoidable if I just prioritize myself a little bit
more and said, Nope, I'm gonna fill that tank. Nope,
(16:45):
I'm gonna stop and actually eat this meal instead of
going until eight pm. Things that you would not want
for your partner or your mother or you know of
child who your caregiving for, and yet with ourselves as like, uh,
i'll survive, I don't need to eat. Who needs gas?
And that was a form of self abandonment and I
(17:05):
didn't realize that. And once I flipped the script on
how I looked at it, it made it easier to
show up for myself because I started looking at it
as um abuse. It feels like too strong of a word,
but maybe it. Maybe the word just is abandonment. And
I wouldn't do it to someone I loved if they
needed me um, So why would Why would I do
(17:26):
it to myself? In all of these little ways. Yeah,
there's so many ways that we sort of get into
survival mode, like I can deal with it, I can
handle it, right. There's sort of you can almost be
a badge of honor of like oh, yeah, I haven't
slept in weeks, or I haven't really eaten or you know,
all of these things, but they wear ass and they're exhausting,
(17:47):
and that, you know, it is really the opposite of
pouring into your cup, and eventually you're not able to
show up for other people and you're not able to
show up for yourself. And so I think it's such
a good point to think about what are the small
ways in which we can abandon ourselves or show up
to ourselves? And I also like to think about, you know,
what are the larger ways. So, if you lose your
(18:08):
job or if you get an STD, which was an
experience I had, how do you respond to yourself? Because
back when I was twenty four, the way I responded
to myself was abandoning. It was sort of like, well,
that's it, your life is over, Like, that's it, nobody's
gonna love you. I don't love you anymore. I don't
know if I fully did at that point, but like
(18:29):
I'm done with you. I'm done with you, right. It's
that sort of content and that just makes the experience
even more painful. Yeah, you were really open about what
you went through at twenty four. I'd love if you
could share that story with us, particularly because you're your
self worth really Uh sort of came and sprung from
(18:53):
that very triggering moment in what came in the aftermath. So,
so what happened to you at twenty four? How did
that change your life? Yeah? So I was It was
a summer. I don't know what year was, it was
this summer and I started dat. I just the nerd
of me was like sixty nine. I can't help it.
(19:16):
It was in the air exactly. So I started dating
this guy and really sort of fell in love sort of,
you know, at that time, I felt like it was
love head over heels, and we were in a long
distance relationship. So, uh, he had come to Chicago and
(19:37):
we met, and then he lived in d C. And
I was already had planned like a two week trip
to d C that summer because my family lived there.
My grandmother lived there, and friends lived there. So then
we spent like two weeks together. Then I went back.
So we sort of developed this relationship and things were fine.
And then I went back to visit him, and I
(19:58):
remember it was I think it was Labor Day weekend,
and you know, looking back, I can see that I
could already feel that things were sort of off right.
So this is part of you know, like now I
can see that if I had trusted my intuition, I
might have been able to avoid a really painful situation.
(20:19):
But I just wasn't there yet. So I go back,
things feel sort of off. So you know, we were
having sex. I had you know, we had had a
conversation in the summer about a STD testing. You know,
I was twenty four. I wasn't super well versed in
that conversation, so I wasn't asking for I wasn't saying, Okay,
(20:40):
we need to get tested again. I was you know,
there's a lot of things that I wasn't doing. But
we had talked about it. He had said he was fine.
I said I was fine, and we sort of kind
of kept moving. So, um, we had sex that weekend
and I felt sick, like I I started to feel sick,
(21:02):
but I didn't. I had no idea like what that
was or what that meant that you were with him.
M hmm. Yeah, I felt sick and I didn't. I
had no idea that like your body could have such
a quick reaction. And this is good for people to know,
because if you feel sick it you can go to
(21:23):
the doctor and there are shots that you can get
immediately that can interrupt like an STD taking hold. So
there's there's reason to be really in tune with your body.
If you like, if you sleep with someone and then
you feel sick, that you should go visit the doctor,
because sometimes if you're within a couple of days, you
(21:45):
could address it. So I felt sick, I didn't know
what it was, went back home, and I don't know
how much later it was, but so then I like
didn't hear from him, which was another sort of emotional
thing for me, feeling abandoned and really upset. And it
was probably a couple of weeks later or a few
(22:07):
weeks later when I went to my doctor and I
learned that I had contracted herpies, and you know, it
was just devastating, Like at twenty four, I was sort
of like, as I mentioned, like Okay, that's it, right,
Like all your hopes and dreams of having partnership, of
having kids, like of having a happy life, like that's
(22:30):
just that's not gonna happen. Basically for those who may
not know, this is a lifelong thing. Like once you've
contracted herpes, you got herpes. There's no cure, right, Like, yeah,
there's no cure for herpes. And I think herpies is
sort of unique because there are other there so there's
some STDs that there are cures. Herpies is a unique
(22:53):
STD because people make fun of it, I think more
than probably any other STD. Right, So if you've got HIV,
that's obviously life threatening, and so I think people are like,
that's life threatening. Nobody's gonna people who are not going
to make fun of you for getting HIV, right, But
if you get hertpies, it's like you're dirty, right, Like
(23:14):
there's this connotation publicly that says you should feel ashamed,
you're dirty. You're like look at you, look at how
you are, right, And so I just felt so much shame.
So we broke up because I hadn't talked to him
and I was like, Okay, I'm not gonna do this
with you. So then I ended the relationships. Don't have
(23:36):
the breakup, like tell him like I yeah. Later I
told him and he was like, oh, that wasn't me,
and I'm like, yes it was, so he denied it. Yeah,
so he denied it. It was really funny, like a
couple like a year. A couple of years later, he
like called me randomly and was like hey, blah blah blah,
and I just was like laughing because at that point
(23:57):
I was like, you're ridiculous, Like why would you ever
call that? You know, the shackle, the emotional chains have
been broken when somebody you used to be pressed over
because that Lord knows that. I'm like, oh, like, are
you serious right now? I can't believe I used to
positive And he was like, I was hoping we could
(24:18):
be friends I had. I just started laughing and he
was like, all right, well, I'm gonna go. And I
never heard him because I was like, You're like, I
don't even understand why you're on my phone right now,
like this ridiculously though I love I love that you
need to give you that moment to just laugh at
this cloud. Yeah, stage left. I love that exactly exactly,
(24:40):
so you know I was in it was It was
incredibly painful, and you know, it took me years to
even share it because and I you know, because there
is so much stigma, there is so much shame. But
I think the reason that that was important on my
self worth journey is because if I could eventually connect
(25:02):
to a sense that I was still worthy, right like,
even though I had this STD, even though you know,
I had this thing that so many people would make
fun of and that I felt so ashamed of, if
I could believe that I'm still worthy unconditionally, that I'm
still worthy of love, care, and respect. Like that is
incredibly powerful because if you if you do everything perfect
(25:25):
and you feel worthy, then there's still a sense of like, well,
I'm worthy because I don't make any mistakes, or I
haven't done anything perfect, or everybody would approve of all
of my choices and decisions. But if you have something
that you say, you know what, some people might not
think I'm worthy because of this. Some people might cast
me out because of this. But I'm not going to
do that to myself. I Am going to love myself
(25:48):
and care for myself and show up for myself right that.
That is a really powerful statement that you can make
on behalf of yourself. And I'm so grateful that I
was able to do that work because now, you know,
as we sort of started, I'm pregnant, I'm in a
happy marriage, like all of the things that I thought,
(26:10):
you know, I'm just not going to be able to
do those things in my life when I was twenty four. Uh,
you know, they've happened because in part I was able
to forgive myself and move forward and still love and
embrace myself. The next question to you is going to
be why, why should we, you know, focus on building
(26:33):
up ourselves worth. And I'm thinking from the perspective of
someone who if you're drowning in the lack of it
right now, and you hear people say, oh, love on yourself,
treat yourself well, you deserve it, But like I meaning whoever,
I don't believe that in that moment because I'm drowning
in these feelings of self hatred or abandonment or abuse.
Um so it all just kind of sounds like rainbows
(26:56):
and unicorns and fairies too, Like, Okay, then I'm gonna
go back to my depressive episode. Now, y'all have a
nice day. So for someone who might be in the
thick of it, what would you say to that person
listening right now about why they should even try to
get to a place where self worth is something that
they're they're looking to build up. What is waiting for
(27:18):
them potentially on the other side if they just try
this mm hmmm, Yeah, I think it's a really good question. So,
I mean, I really think that it's the foundation of
living the life you want, and it's part of the
reason what you're saying it is part of the reason
why the practices that I focus on teaching people to
(27:39):
help get them to a place where they're embracing their
unconditional self worth. Are very sort of grounded and they're
not super fluffy. I do think like you know, the
like self love practices are like treat yourself and all
those things. I think those things are wonderful, but I
really like to start with foundational things like can you
be compassionate with yourself? Like can you talk to yourself
(28:02):
with kindness? And that's a healing practice because instead of
beating yourself up and saying I'm the worst, I'm horrible,
I'm dirty, right, Like, those are things I was saying
to myself. You said, oh baby, oh my gosh, oh
that was so painful, and this is scary because you
(28:22):
don't know how it's gonna go. And I'm here, I'm
not leaving you. Because that's really what we want other
people to do for us. And it's wonderful when other
people show up for us in that way. And we
can also show up for ourselves, right. We can also
say to ourselves, I'm not leaving you, I'm here. Right.
(28:44):
We can practice self forgiveness so that we get to
release it instead of me. You know, imagine if every time,
And I probably did this for a while. Every time
I like, I am starting dating a new partner, I'm
taking you idiot, you blah blah blah blah blah, and
you ad sext with that person and now you have right,
and I'm beating myself up? Then how am I going
to go into a healthy relationship with someone new if
(29:08):
I'm beating myself up? Now if I say, okay, so
you have this thing that you need to now talk
to this new person about and that takes courage and
it's uncomfortable, right, and that's okay, right, And and I'm
here with you, and we don't know how they're going
to respond, So we're gonna like be you know, thoughtful
about boundaries and developing trust. But if I'm there for myself,
(29:31):
then I am better able to engage in that new
relationship in a healthy way versus hiding or never engaging
in another relationship, or you know, on the first state
being like, hey, this is my history, you know, like
doing all of those things right. So when we have
the foundation of these practices and our self worth, that's
(29:53):
when we're able to build the life we want and
have healthy relationships. You mentioned, um you know, showing up
for yourself, the self love, and then that translating to
our relationships um or transitioning into our relationships rather, I
always say, you know, I can't expect anyone or ask
anyone to show up for me or love me in
(30:14):
a way that I'm not even willing to love myself.
And that was a breakthrough I only had in my
late twenties after a breakup a long term relationship that
I decided to end, and I dedicated a song to
myself for the first time ever, the same way you know,
you and your new boom might have our song. When
I hear these lyrics, I think of us Stevie wonder
(30:36):
as is my song to myself. And I promised myself
on the other end of that breakup, I was never
going to betray myself, let myself down, hurt myself in
the ways that I did in that relationship and the
ways that I allowed my partner to at different times um.
And that was all the security I needed. I stopped
(30:56):
finally looking for that guarantee from a partner and just
decided to do it for myself because I was watching
me show up as this great partner or the best
I could be to these people, I'm like, well, why
don't I just go ahead and re reum allocate this energy,
these funds towards myself. And it was night and day
the sorts of relationships and um dating opportunities and the
(31:19):
minute I attracted in my life because I was just
on a different vibrational frequency, and the people who couldn't
match me, they just fell away, even if I wanted
to keep the toxicity in my life, Like, the truth was,
I wasn't walking that walk anymore. So it was only
so long before they just kind of disappeared or the
universe would kind of clear him out of the way,
and I would be directed towards people who were on
(31:40):
my wavelength and who um matched my energy. When it
came to the type of love, the type of life
that we were living, one of self love, mutual respect, boundaries. UM,
what does that look like in your opinion? Uh, going
from self love and self worth into relationship? How does
that inform a real relationships? What does self worth look
(32:02):
like in the context of partnership? UM? I would imagine
boundaries is a big, a big thing. But what would
you say? Yeah, I mean I love that you're sharing
your own experience, because I think mine is somewhat similar. Right.
I went from being attracted to an attracting men who
(32:22):
were unavailable in some way, shape or form, right because
I sort of didn't feel worthy of love. I didn't
feel lovable, and so then there was always this attraction
to people who then reinforced that belief about myself. And
once I released that, once I decided, okay, like I
(32:44):
actually do know that I'm lovable. And for me, that
really came very clearly after I had a relationship with
a man of two years and he didn't fall in
love with me, and at some point it was like
clear he wasn't gonna fall in love with me, and
so towards the end of that relationship, I was like,
you know what, it's not me, it's him. He's a
(33:06):
very nice man's very nice person, but like it's his
emotional capacity and his limitations that are keeping him from
loving me, not me. I am lovable, I am worthy
of love. And that really then shifted because then I
was attracting and attracted to, which I think is a
really important point because when we struggle with some of
(33:29):
these things, we tend to be attracted to the people
who reinforce our negative or unhelpful beliefs about ourselves. But
when we fill ourselves up, when we feel worthy and
lovable and we're not desperate for attention for affection because
we're offering it to ourselves, we have other fulfilling relationships,
(33:49):
then we tend to be attracted to people who are
going to show up for us, are going to be
in relationship with us, are not you know, avoiding us
and distant and all of these things. And so it
just makes for better, healthier relationships when you're feeling like
a complete, fulfilled person going into a relationship versus looking
(34:12):
for someone to fix you or complete you or any
of those things. Right, what is the key to you
for um developing and looking for healthy romantic relationships. So
let's say we've been working on our self worth. We're
getting to a place where we feel good and healthy
and well. But the truth is a lot of us
still have you know, the scars from the past, old trauma's,
(34:34):
old triggers, and um satan, the universe, whatever you wanna
call it, whatever you believe in, whatever, We'll just show
up and just give you a little tests every now
and a little pop quiz see, if you really are
about that new life? Uh, and you you cain past
or heal, you realize that moment. Okay, there's more work
to be done. So if we're trying to step out
(34:55):
into these streets with a new level of self worth
when it comes to dating, what should we be keeping
in mind as we engage with other people? What are
the questions we can ask on the first, second, third date?
What are the red flags to know? Okay, whatever energy
they're giving might not be an alignment with this new
version of myself that I want to continue to grow.
(35:16):
Mm hmm. Wow, that's such a good question. Um. So,
I think one thing is really paying attention to how
you feel with someone and when you're communicating right with them,
when you're communicating with them, when you're out on dates,
et cetera. I know that for me, when I was
(35:37):
in a space of lower self worth or feeling unlovable,
I was so focused on getting the person to like
me that I was not very focused on how do
I actually feel with them? Right? And so does this
person make you feel anxious? Right? Are you sort of
like when are they gonna call? When are they gonna text?
(35:58):
I don't know, I don't hear from them. They call
in and out and they're inconsistent. And they said they
want to go on a day on Friday, but I
don't know if they're gonna go. And right, like, are
they making you feel anxious? Because if there and some
of it can be internalized, right, but if they're communicating
in a way that's inconsistent, right if they're like, yeah,
i'll hit you up later and you never hear from them.
(36:18):
If they're like, yeah, we should go out this weekend
and you never hear from them, right, Like, notice that
because your own sense of like this doesn't feel good
or I'm now anxious and feel like I have to
remind them of who I am and get their attention.
That's not a good sign, right. And you may be
comfortable with that if you're used to chasing someone or
(36:43):
getting someone to engage with you, but it's it doesn't
ultimately lead to a healthy relationship. So that's one thing.
So tune into your intuition and notice how do I
feel with this person? Notice how they respond to your boundaries? Right? So,
I remember back when I was dating this guy, you know,
(37:03):
we matched on you know, a dating app or something
and he seemed really great on paper. And he was like, oh,
you know, you should come over to my apartment for
a drink. And I was like, no, I'm not gonna
do that. That was the first day proposal, yes exactly.
I was like, no, I'm not going to do that
on a first date. And he was like, oh, well
just come to my building. You know, we have like
(37:25):
a party room and then we can and I was
like no, I'm not going to do that. And he
literally kept asking and I was like flag right, like
you are not listening to my no. I keep telling
you know, I keep saying I am not comfortable with this,
and you keep saying, but what about this? And what
about that? Right? So, when you set a boundary, and
(37:46):
it can be small like I'm not comfortable I want
to meet in a public place, or you know after
this talking after this time doesn't work for me, or
whatever it is. Does the person listen to your boundary
or are they trying to push past it and and
convince you that you shouldn't have your boundary? Right, that's
a communication of respect saying oh great, cool, you're not
(38:07):
comfortable coming over, Great, I'll find a place for us
to grab drinks right, like, you know what I mean?
And so how are they responding? And then I think
sort of exploring, do you have shared values? Do you
have shared goals? Right? If you know you're looking for
a serious relationship and someone is like, yeah, I don't
want a serious relationship right now, then listen to them,
(38:29):
hear them. Take note to invince yourself. This sounds like
a job. For for me to think, this sounds like
a project to take on exactly. We don't want projects
of the projects of my life. When I think back
on all I just knew I was about to fix somebody,
save somebody, turn somebody around. L O L never never never,
(38:56):
at best. At best, you give him a brush up,
a shy and up, an improvement makeover, and then they're
off to the next person exactly, a little best off
before they hit the road again, or you sit the
packing honestly once he finally get sick of it. You know,
we've talked about self worth in the context of just
(39:18):
our relationship with our selves, romantic relationships, and love. You
also talk about self worth um in the context of
sexual relationships, to which I think is so important. You know,
we are grown women, We've lived from the situationships to
the one night stance to the committed relationships. Um, the
f boys of the world, f girls of the world. Um,
(39:40):
when it comes to sex. Uh, in our society it
despol's still for some reason taboo to talk about, particularly
from the angle of women's pleasure, us owning our body,
sovereign beings and speaking up for what we want. You know, Um,
we're talked to think of guys as as the person
to please and kind of mistaking our own pleasure or
(40:00):
expectations in that process making an orgasm. To this day,
I'm like, I can't do it, never would, can't relate
another promise I make to myself. I was like, I
will never. So what what does that mean to you?
Why do you think it's so difficult sometimes for us
as women to ask for what we want? Yeah, I
(40:22):
mean I think you know, you touch on so many things.
They're one is it is? I think hard. I don't
think women are socialized to embrace pleasure and and feel
deserving and worthy of pleasure right and and often as
girls and young women were told keep your legs closed
(40:44):
and like, you know, be gate keepers of sex, and
you shouldn't you shouldn't want sex, right, It's sort of
the message, right. I think young men, right, are often
socialized to want sex, and that's normal and boys will
be boys, but young women and girls, it's like you're
not supposed to want sex. It's like you're not a
sexual being. And so then there's all this sort of
(41:07):
challenging situation where sex is often framed as a service
to the other person or something that you acquiesce to
for the other person. And obviously this is shifting, but
I think part of it is believing you're worthy of pleasure, right,
And you could think about pleasure on you know, a
(41:29):
continuum from you know, treating yourself to your favorite dessert
and just enjoying it without being like it's a teat
day and oh, I'm gonna work out so much tomorrow,
because you know, it's like you could just have it
and enjoy it and like you know what I mean,
and like or pleasure as rest or doing just something
you enjoy just because, not because you achieve, but just
(41:52):
because or sexual pleasure, having orgasm, right, So there's there's that.
I think the other piece back to the being and
do wing right, if you think about orgasm like really
you need to release, let go, be fully present if
you are thinking about performing, if you are thinking about
what are they thinking of my body? What are they
(42:13):
thinking of how I look? What are they thinking about
the sounds I'm making? It is very hard to be
in a mental space where you can allow an orgasm
to come, because you're sort of in performance and control mode, right,
and so often women are socialized to be in service,
performance and control mode. So I think a lot of
this is involving sort of you know, how do you
(42:36):
get there yourself, which is where sort of like masturbation
and self pleasuring can be really useful because we sort
of take out all the other people, right, and you
just focus on yourself, and then when you transition to
or when you're having sex with a partner, you know,
owning the fact that you should be experiencing pleasure, and
then it's okay and good and healthy to ask for
(43:00):
what you want. That that's not about saying the other
person is performing poorly. But often partners are kind of like,
I don't know what to do, And if you're in
a healthy partnership, they want you to experience pleasure in sex,
and so you communicating either during sex or outside of sex,
like hey, I really like it when you do this,
or I think i'd like that. You know, that can
(43:22):
be such a helpful and healthy conversation even though it's uncomfortable.
So part of it is being willing to feel uncomfortable
in the service of experiencing pleasure. We had a recent
group chat episode where some of my girlfriends came on.
We talked to about sexual health and UM, sort of
with a mandatory conversation before we engage with a potential partner.
(43:43):
But like you mentioned, having those conversations can be uncomfortable.
It can be tough. You know. I've heard of women who,
you know, they asked their sexual partners to get tested
and they were gas lit or ghosted or felt this
really intense pressure to compromise or move the boundaries of
what they felt good or comfortable with, and then they
regret being you know, open, transparent, speaking up for themselves.
(44:05):
What do you say to someone who might feel that
that hesitation, UM, I would imagine it very much represents
low self worth in the context of sexual relationship versus
high self worth. UM. What what do you say to
to those who might be hesitant because of you know,
maybe unsupportive partners. Yeah, I mean I would say it's understandable, right,
(44:28):
It's understandable that it feels uncomfortable and it feels maybe
scary to have this conversation because the fear, I think
ultimately is this person is going to reject me. And
I really like this person, I really want to be
connected to this person. But that's again where having a
grounding in your self worth and in your relationship with
(44:49):
yourself and saying, you know what, it's uncomfortable, but I
have to set this boundary for me, right when I'm
telling me, I told my own story at twenty four,
it was like I had the conversation, but I didn't
necessarily set the boundaries and like have it as seriously
as I needed to. I wasn't. I wasn't in a
place where I was able to do that yet. But now, well,
(45:09):
you know, I mean a monogorous, magnamous marriage, so we've
established that. But you know, it's like, how do you
sort of courageously have the conversation and know that you
were going to be there for yourself even if this
person is not going to stay with you, because you
and your health and your boundaries are more important than
(45:29):
you know, acquiescing to what somebody wants to do or
not do. And this is a this is sort of
a signal, a sign of a relations sort of a
relationship test. If you say, you know, I'm not gonna
feel comfortable having sex or having intercourse until we both
get tested, um, and they and they gas like you
(45:50):
or they're mean or they deny it, well, that's a
sign that they don't respect your boundaries. Because even if
they don't think it's necessary, they should say, you know what,
I want you to feel safe if we're going to
have sex, and I want us to be open and
transparent about what's going on. I want to I want
to protect me and I want to protect you. So yes,
(46:11):
I'm willing to do that, right, And so that's a
sign of emotional maturity. So it's uncomfortable, but it also
shows you how this person is willing to engage with you.
And if you're saying, at baseline, I need us to
get tested to keep me safe and keep you safe,
and the person is pushing back against that, then what
(46:31):
is it going to be like If you're like, hey,
this is what I need to feel pleasure. Right, safety
is the baseline pleasure is you know what I mean
is what we go for afterwards. But how are they
really going to show up in that space wanting to
pleasure you if they're not even prioritized in keeping you safe? Right,
that's a sign, even though it might be hard, that
maybe this is a relationship isn't gonna work, um, because
(46:54):
they're not willing to show up for you in that way,
right Right, And then having the courage that strength to
walk away when you see the red flags, when you
you recognize the warning signs um, instead of staying, which
again goes right back to the your ideas about what
you are worthy of. Right. If you truly believe fundamentally
that you're worth something and something else is beneath or
(47:16):
below you, even when it's uncomfortable or it's painful or
it sucks a little bit, you walk away anyway because
you just know you deserve better and you know you
can get it. Um. What are some of the signs
or red flags that you might be using your your
sexual relationships to prove you're worthy, That you might be
suffering from low self worth and it's manifesting in those
(47:39):
sorts of relationships. What what red flags might you see
m hmm, that's a good question. I mean I think, um,
you know, feeling like you have to perform sex and
feeling like sex is about you pleasuring you know, your partner,
um more than about sort of a mutual positive experience,
(48:00):
UM that you all are creating together. Feeling sort of
like you know, if they're if you feel like they're
pulling away, then you offer sex to pull them back in, right,
sort of using sex as a tool more than something
that's mutual and you know, mutually pleasurable, mutually created all
(48:20):
of those things. UM, I think can be a sign
um feeling like you have to be in performance mode
when you're having sex, right, feeling like I have to
do it right so they stay right, it's got to
be so good they don't go anywhere else. Like these
sort of narratives right that again are about me showing
(48:41):
you that you shouldn't leave me because the sex is good,
versus us creating a sexual experience together that feels good
for both of us. Yeah, that idea of performance, it
really translates to other areas, to write, performing on the date,
when you're interacting and just romantic context, performing in friendships,
(49:03):
performing in the office, anytime that you feel like being
who you are whatever feels truest to you at that
moment isn't enough, kind of plays right into that idea
of who you are, not being worth whatever it is
you're experiencing, or whoever it is you're experiencing. Yeah, exactly.
I think so. One of the things that my husband
said in his vows when we got married is that
(49:26):
he appreciated how honest I was. Even on our first
date and he, you know, was asking me some questions.
I didn't really notice. I'm just answering that. You know,
he in the past had asked other women and he
felt like they were giving him answers that he wanted
to hear, and I was just answering because I was like,
this is the truth for me, you know. And it
(49:46):
was one of the bags he asked. You know, I
don't even think it wasn't even that it wasn't even
super deep, but like one I think one question was
so we live in Chicago, I'm from southern California, And
I think he was like, you know, would you ever
move act to southern California? And I was like, you
know what, you maybe like I probably would like I
don't know if I will, but I probably would. And
(50:08):
for him that was like, you know, like, oh, like
you might leave, so that might be something that I
you know, like if I was tuned into like maybe
he wouldn't like this. Maybe it's like, oh no, like
I'm always going to be in Chicago. Just went to
especially in February, so you know, and I don't even
(50:29):
remember all the questions, but it's just like he appreciated
that I was being myself, not trying to just cater
to him so that he would ask me on another date.
Like that wasn't my goal. It was like, well, this
is who I am, right, And I think that's what
we need in relationships because if a long term relationship
is gonna work, we need them to like us. We
(50:50):
don't need somebody to fall for, you know, this image
that we create or representative, because that is just not sustainable.
So when we're grounded in our worthiness and we like us,
then it's so much easier to show up as ourselves
when we're dating. And then if somebody doesn't like us,
it might be disappointing, but it's like okay, well better
(51:11):
off because I'm not going to date someone who doesn't
like me. That just doesn't make sense right right? Um?
Resources tools for people who want to begin the journey
or maybe refresh or just keep building on it. Where
can we go to learn how to love on ourselves
more and cultivate that feeling of unconditional self worth? Yeah?
(51:34):
So I have a free e book UM which is
on four practices to help you connect to your unconditional
self worth UM. And I think that's a really great
place to start. People can sign up for it on
my website, So dr Adiagoden dot com forward slash free
e dash book UM. And it's free and you can
(51:55):
sign up and get started that way. I love it,
love it, And I'm curious to know if you have
any favorite affirmation, just something, just give us one for
today for our hot happy mess listeners. UM, something that
we can repeat to ourselves throughout the day, throughout the
week to begin or build on our our foundation of
self worth. What affirmation might you have for us? Mm hmm,
(52:21):
let's see that's a good That's a good one, like
getting my neurons fire quick enough. Um, I am worthy
and wonderful even as I grow and evolve, I am
worthy and wonderful. Even as I grow and evolve. I
love this space that that allows for the mess ups,
(52:44):
the hiccups, the tripping up right, and to remember that
we're still worthy in the midst of the journey, the evolution,
the stumbles, because I think that's where we tend to
stop giving ourselves grace as soon as we need it
most exactly. And I think the other thing is that
people sometimes fear that if they embrace their unconditional self
(53:04):
worth that means they won't grow anymore. But they're those
things are not mutually exclusive, right, And it can be
so helpful too, as you're saying, if we're messing up,
remind ourselves that we're still worthy and to know that
if we embrace our self worth, that actually is a
great foundation for personal growth. Beautiful Dr Adia, this conversation
(53:25):
was exactly what I needed. I I certainly could use
a refresher, so I appreciate your time. I know our
listeners will love it too. If people want to just
follow you keep up with you. You're active on social
media also, right, Yeah, So I'm at Dr da good
in Love for people to follow and can visit my
website Dr dia Gooden dot com as well. Awesome. Dr Dia,
(53:47):
thank you so much, Thank you so much for having me.
I so appreciate it. This is fun happy. Thank you
again so much, Dr Dia for joining me on the podcast,
for being so vulnerable and honest about your life experiences.
I know I came away with so many gems, so
many takeaways, and I encourage you to take a moment
(54:09):
to do that amazing affirmation if you haven't already. Also,
make sure you check out her services and remember that
you are worthy all right period. Before I head out,
I do want to do a call out for real
women's stories. I'd love to spotlight you on the podcast,
So email me hello at how happy mess dot com
with your story. You can be sure to tell a
(54:30):
friend about this episode if you really want to be
a real one and share us. If you like this
episode posted on your Insto story, tweet it dmag to somebody,
if you tag me, I'll repost it, I'll share it
blast us everywhere and we'll repost. And We're so grateful
for your love and your support, and I hope you'll
stay tuned for more episodes every Wednesday. In the meantime,
(54:51):
you can follow me at Zuri hall z r I
h a l L. Get at hot happy mess on
Instagram and I will talk to you next Wednesday, bing
bing ban
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