262: The Pleasure Principle with Dr. Valerie Rein

Extraordinary is a choice. Take that in, soak it up because of the hustle grind, repeat mantra that society has been touting for decades and had it all wrong. I’m Tanya Dalton. I’m a seven figure entrepreneur best-selling author speaker, mom, and rule-breaker I’m here to help you live to your fullest potential. That’s what this podcast is all about. The Intentional Advantage is doing live on our own terms,

define the status quo and seeing ourselves outside of the tidy definition. Society’s name for us. It’s intentionally choosing to step back away from the chaotic rush of your every day and choosing, choosing to see that it’s your world. And it’s filled with opportunities. Let’s challenge the bedrock beliefs that so many have wholeheartedly trusted because we were told they were truths. Let’s have a healthy disregard for the impossible.

Let’s choose to be extraordinary. Hello. Hello everyone. And welcome to the Intentional Advantage podcast. I’m your host, Tanya Dalton. This is episode 262 last episode that we had two weeks ago. Since now we’ve moved to every other week. We had a great conversation about who we really fighting. And we talked about, well, we talked about the patriarchy,

what that really looks like, who we’re really fighting. When we think about the patriarchy, I got some really interesting emails from a lot of you about how that really sparked your thinking. And I wanted to continue that conversation, not just for this episode, but in the next couple of episodes, because truly if we’re having a season where we are talking about reclaiming your power to fully stepping into who you are authentically and fully,

we need to talk about the patriarchy and we need to talk about the other P word pleasure, pleasure. What comes to mind? When I say the word pleasure? Is it something that you’re like, oh, I don’t know. It feels a little bit like taboo. Maybe it’s not something I should be entitled to. This is what I’ve found in speaking with a lot of women,

we feel like pleasure is something that’s just out of reach for us, or it’s a dirty word. It’s, it’s not something that we talk a lot about. And yet pleasure is such an important thing to experience. It’s an important emotion because it means that we’re fully present. We’re fully in our bodies. We’re there in the moment, living our life to the fullest.

So I knew after last week’s conversation, I knew I needed to have Dr. Valerie rain come on the show today because I love honestly, that’s not that I love Dr. Valerie and her book. It’s that while I do love Dr. Valerie, and I do love her book. It’s that her thinking completely shifted my thinking in a way I cannot quite even convey.

I read her book, the patriarchy stress disorder a couple of months ago, right around the end of the year. And it just changed my world. It changed how I looked at pleasure. It changed how I experienced pleasure and it changed my relationship even with John. And I think when we get in touch with who we are, and that idea of pleasure,

anything becomes possible. So now, if you’re not familiar with Dr. Valerie rein, she’s a psychologist, and she’s the one who discovered patriarchy stress disorder. She has actually created a science backed system for helping women achieve their ultimate success, happiness and fulfillment by healing. This intergenerational trauma of oppression, her best-selling book, the patriarchy stress disorder, the invisible barrier to women’s happiness and fulfillment has been heralded by reviewers as the most important body of literary work of our modern times.

And perhaps the most important book of the century for women. Those are big bold statements, but I’m here to tell you this book changed me, and that’s why I knew I needed to have her on the show today. So we’re going to be diving into the concept of pleasure, but the truth is we can’t talk about pleasure without first understanding why we shy away from it.

Even that word pleasure, like I said, can feel dirty. So we’re going to spend part of today diving into why we shy away from it and what that means, that trauma that I just talked about, what is trauma, because, and we’ll talk about this during my interview with Dr. Valerie, it’s certainly a word that I have had a difficult relationship with.

So we’re going to talk about trauma. We’re going to talk about healing from trauma, and then we’re going to talk about pleasure and what that looks like, how we can achieve pleasure in our life, in all aspects, not just in our sexuality, but also in who we are in our daily interactions with other people, even with how we enjoy food and our clothing pleasure is such a strong driver of happiness and joy.

And that’s what I want for you. So let’s talk about the principles of pleasure with Dr. Valerie, Dr. Valerie, I am so excited to have you on the show today. I mean, you and I, we have some amazing conversations and I’m excited for us to really talk about this idea of patriarchy stress disorder. And, you know, in our last episode,

I talked a lot about what the patriarchy is. It’s not men versus women. I want to know, cause we can’t talk about patriarchy stress disorder without you telling us, how do you define patriarchy? What does patriarchy mean to you? Ooh, let’s start with a hot question. I’ll what is patriarchy? When you Google patriarchy, you’ll get a glimpse.

And I don’t mean the official definitions. I mean, what comes up on top and what comes up on top is some guys definition. That is the boogeyman that feminists created to blame all the problems on. And that in a nutshell is patriarchy. Patriarchy. Some guy has come up with the definition of patriarchy. I think we’re done here. That’s all.

It’s a system of oppression where a political and economic and moral power has been in the hands of man with the exclusion of women. And why it’s important to understand that even moral power has been in the hands of man, because men have owned the narrative, or I should say patriarchy has owned the narrative because it constructed the narrative for men, women, people across the gender spectrum.

And it’s very important to understand how it is shaping our daily experience, how it is disempowering us again, this is for people across the gender spectrum. I’m focusing my work on the women because we are just more motivated. And I believe that the women’s leadership is what’s lacking right now, but we can get into all these juicy topics down the road. But in a nutshell,

how I think of patriarchy. Yeah. And I think that fits really well with a lot of what we talked about in the last episode. And one of the things you talk about in your book is that for women, it’s this idea of being seen, but not heard, don’t be too sexy, too loud, too rich, too smart to anything,

but especially too powerful. Right? And you said this in the book, you said women were burned at the stake. Or as my mother used to warn me, no man will ever marry you. Right. I think that’s the thing. It’s that we start playing by these rules and we don’t even know where those rules come from. Yeah, exactly.

And we don’t even always consciously understand or realize that we are playing by these rules because they imprinted so deeply in our subconscious. And this is a big discovery that I actually uncovered while working on the book that is coming from the field of neuroscience study after study points to the fact that our actions are decided in our subconscious, our actions are decided in our subconscious,

which means when you are finding yourself, staring at that email high stakes email, maybe you have to set a boundary. Maybe you need to send a proposal. It’s high stakes, it’s emotional. And next thing you know, you have 50 tabs open because you were doing some social media research, or maybe you find yourself at the fridge with a Cardinal Hugin.

Doesn’t one hand and the big spoon and the other, and your mind then is making an explanation. I’ll get to it later. I just need a break. I just need to do some research. I need a snack, but the truth is your subconscious made that decision first and it made it on the basis of safe, unsafe. It didn’t feel safe for you to write that email in the moment,

there was some nervous system activation and the rest is a narrative that was created by the mind. So often most of the time we are making the decisions unconsciously, but then the story gets created about why we made that decision. But we buy the story. We, we think that the story is why we made this decision. So this is, this is a very important thing to understand,

because if there are unconscious influences and trauma is a big source of unconscious influences in our lives and social conditioning and other things, then we’re not fully sovereign. We’re not fully driving all lives. And we’re trying to fix surface level problems. Oh, why, why, why? I know what to do. I know what I need to do, but I’m not doing it.

What the F is wrong with me. And the answer is nothing. It’s not you, it’s something in your subconscious that we can absolutely learn to uncover and heal. I mean, this is no different than when we’ve talked about habits on the show in the past that 40 to 45% of your daily actions or habits, they’re things you do automatically without thinking.

And that includes the rules that have been enforced by the patriarchy, how you think you’re supposed to act what you should be doing should of course being in quotes there. And then we don’t just play by their rules. We start enforcing those rules on ourselves and on other women in our world and other men as well. But we start enforcing those rules and that’s really when it starts to become an even bigger problem.

Would you agree? Yeah, absolutely. What we’re talking about. Yes. There is a system of oppression. Patriarchy has not been canceled. Racism has not been canceled. Everything stands. All right. So, and a bigger issue. Well, yeah, I can say it’s a bigger issue is that those systems of oppressions have been internalized because had they not been internalized,

they would not stand. They would not stand, but just like, what would they say happens to, to a frog when put into cold water and then gradually gradually brought to a boil, right? Versus thrown into hot water though. Those things, those systems of oppression, right? That they’ve been building in our society for a while. And we’ve generation after generation,

we got into this pattern of dancing with systems of oppression where they, they just, they are normal. They are the water, they are the air we breathe. We don’t even realize how much power we actually have because we haven’t had that visceral experience. We haven’t had our mothers role model that to us, all grandmothers, our great grandmothers and, and that’s heartbreaking not knowing what we’re capable of because that oppression has become internalized.

Yeah, it absolutely has. It’s whenever we say that phrase, well, this is just the way the world works. That’s us giving into, well, these systems are there and there’s nothing I can do about it. Right. And that whole idea that we internalize the trauma that we internalize all of this, and we just think this is quote unquote,

normal. Well, this is just how it is. This is just the way the world works. Or however we want to phrase it. And I want to talk about that word trauma, because I’m not afraid to admit. I have a very difficult relationship with the word trauma. And it’s funny because before reading the patriarchy stress disorder, I thought to myself,

we got to the section on trauma and I’m like, no trauma. Like this is not, this, this section is not for me. I thought I had no trauma. And then I started to realize, oh yeah, I was raped. I was almost pulled into a van. I was stopped. And those three things happened just in my college years alone.

Not even like, including the rest of my lifetime, I had suppressed it. I had internalized it and just said, well, that’s just, you know, that’s just my past and I’m moving on. Right. But by denying my trauma, I wasn’t dealing with it. Right. I was just bearing it, shoving it under the bed. And you say something that I think is so important in the book,

you say social change goes hand in hand with personal growth. If that’s not the permission slip, we need to step into our personal growth because that’s, what’s going to affect the change. So let’s talk about trauma because there might be listeners today who think like I did, I have no trauma, but you dive into these different forms of trauma. And the first one I wanna talk about is ancestral trauma.

Can you explain what ancestral trauma is? Because for me it was like a light bulb moment. Yeah. And do you know Tanya, not, not just for you. I wrote this from, from the place of having been, trying to uncover what that was, what that was in me that was creating suffering. That was creating anxiety. That was creating episodes of depression that was creating this effect of holding back.

And I didn’t understand that I was studying to be a therapist and I was a therapist already. And I kept going through a different therapist for many years, multiple practitioners and looking and looking and looking, what is it? What is it? I thought that I had symptoms of trauma, but according to the conventional definition of trauma, being a life threatening experience that didn’t fit.

And I even thought maybe I suppressed that maybe something life-threatening did happen to me, but I didn’t remember that I was just going crazy. What’s wrong with me? I didn’t have an answer. But then thankfully the field started recognizing adverse childhood experiences as traumatic started really broadening that definition of trauma. And I broadened it even more in my book. I define trauma as any experience that made you feel unsafe physically or emotionally,

and led to creating trauma adaptations, to keep you safe going forward. And these trauma adaptations that we can unpack a little bit. These are the symptoms that we’re actually experiencing. These are the things that aren’t getting in the way of our most fulfilled pleasurable, abundant life is not interesting. Something that was created to keep us safe. Also imprisons us and broadening that definition of trauma.

Doesn’t take away from what the field now refers to as the capital T trauma, the big T trauma, which are life-threatening experiences. This is in no way to dilute that, but it’s not a competition. It’s a recognition of the human experience. If you human, you have trauma, unless your DNA is from another planet. And everyone right. Has in the generational trauma that we in inherited to,

which may may not even know about. We don’t have to know about it for our body to know about it and to carry that truth, that there is the study that really encapsulates what intergenerational trauma is in a very short format. And in this study, researchers introduced the smell of cherry blossoms to mice while simultaneously zapping the feet with mild electric shocks. These mice were then bred and their children and their grandchildren when exposed to the smell of cherry blossoms showed a strong fear and anxiety reaction.

All right. So that is to show. Yeah, they did not consciously know about it. They did not observe their parents and grandparents, oh, avoiding the smell of cherry blot blossoms. They actually never experienced the smell of cherry blossoms or electric shocks themselves. But that very first exposure created that inherited response elicited that inherited response. So think about the history of trauma that we all carry regardless of gender,

regardless of the lineage experiences. And of course there, there are a lot of specific teenage experiences that come to mind, wars, slavery, deprivation, famines, et cetera, but there are also low it case, low, lower case T traumas. Everything is transmitted, right? Everything is transmitted because we are programmed to evolve. And this is a part of our evolution,

adapting to hostile environments and conditions so that the next generation can be safe. But that safety is costing us because the conditions have changed and we are not automatically evolving to undo that conditioning. We only undo this conditioning when we consciously engage in healing. So we have opportunity where no longer being burned at the stake. And yet this opportunity signals to us, danger,

danger, danger, unsafe, unsafe, unsafe, it’s unsafe to be wealthy. It’s unsafe to feel pleasure. It’s unsafe to show up in your fullest, authentic expression to be visible, to be influential, to be impactful, unsafe, even deep intimacy feels very unsafe. And that is what is creating stress. That is what is creating, holding back in life or achieving,

but not enjoying. And none of it is our fault. None of it is our making and it didn’t start with us. Well, what I think is so interesting for me, I wrote down on the side of my notes, when I was reading the book, this we don’t question why animals start camouflaging themselves. Right? Evolution makes it so that they realize,

okay, I need to change the color green, or we need to have, you know, Arctic foxes turned are white because they can camouflage themselves. This is a form of camouflage for women. This is ancestral trauma. Isn’t just for women. It’s, it’s something that’s passed along all the, all the genes. It’s not just gender specific for women,

but we think that that’s well, how could I be affected by how women were treated hundreds of years ago? But as you said, we were ostracized. We were stoned. We were burned at the stake for stepping out of line. So when we step out of line, there is that genuine fear there. I think that’s really important to understand. So I think that’s,

that’s the first one, right? Ancestral trauma that you may not recognize or realize is there the other one that I think is really interesting is the collective trauma that you talk about as a group. Yes, yes, absolutely. In one pen, I want to put in what you just said about fear being there. We don’t necessarily consciously feel this fear,

or we wouldn’t identify with having fear, but that fear is it’s so subconscious. It just shows up in our nervous system being in a state of stress, in a state of overdrive. So what we do know is that we’re overworking that we are maybe reaching for food and drink for self-regulation for numbing or over shopping or over exercising over anything really, right?

These are all expressions of that fear and not feeling safe. I’m just making it like really, really let’s look at what is actually going on. Look at your schedule. Are you over-scheduled? Is there a breathing room? And if there is not enough pleasure, play and breathing space it’s because it doesn’t feel safe. It doesn’t feel safe based on that conditioning for a woman to be idle because we’re not earning our keep.

And that is dangerous, right? So we’re putting ourselves in the hamster wheel, doing more, being constantly busy and not resting. Even when we have time, even on vacation, right. It’s hard to let go. It takes a few days sometimes, right? So that’s the intergenerational piece. But also it ties in with the collective piece, because right now,

right now, no matter what channel of media, you, you tune into social or traditional, you will see, you will hear, and you will feel how the coverage of women is, is different. And how that toxicity in the courage of women is always there. They may be interviewing a woman who is super accomplished in her area. They was still asked some bizarre question about how her,

her body, like what size jeans she wears. I think Glennon Doyle was asked that women Olympic athletes, right? The questions they’re being asked, et cetera, et cetera, and how the coverage of women in, in politics, running for office, it’s so drastically different from the coverage of men. And I’m, I’m speaking in binary terms here. Patriarchy does not recognize anything,

but the binary male, female. So patriarchy lens, right? That’s the patriarchy lens. There are so many micro triggers micro-aggressions that we experience on a daily basis through unwanted attention glances. And we don’t need to be experiencing that. Personally. We see how women’s bodies are policed everywhere. When we see how women are related to, and we see elsewhere in the world where women are oppressed in much more tangible daily direct experiences.

And as, as this global sisterhood of women, we feel that it’s like collective occupant. Somebody feels that pain, right? We feel that in the collective body, even if you checked out, even if we’re consciously not thinking that that’s not on my mind, your subconscious registers, that it’s unsafe to be a woman in the world. It’s unsafe to be visible.

It’s unsafe to be in the public eye. It’s unsafe to be powerful, wealthy. And then it has cascading repercussions where you, you maybe are not playing as fully as you’re here to play, or maybe you are, but it’s costing you a lot. It is. It is. And I think we’d like to believe that this doesn’t happen anymore. Oh,

that’s not that can’t be right. That women are treated differently. That that’s not accurate. I will tell you guys that, you know, my book came out in October. We ran ads for the, for the book. So this is an October of 2021, right? We ran ads for the book. There’s a picture of me. I’m wearing just a regular shirt,

nothing ridiculously like sexy or anything like that. And in the comments, some man had zoomed in on my boobs and posted a screenshot of them and made comments about my breasts. And you think, what? Where are we living? Like, what day is this? It’s insanity that we still see that. And then we’re like, oh, are we out there that I had to deal with this?

I got to deal with harassment when you’re trying to sell a book, right? Like I’m obviously being professional and all these things, it still happens. You share what I thought was an amazing study in the book where you talked about five, six and seven year olds being read a story where the main character is not given any gender and is just described as being really,

really smart. I’m going to read this part of the book if you don’t mind, because I thought it was so good. The basically what the reader would say is this person figures out how to do things quickly and comes up with answers much faster and better than anyone else. And at age five, both boys and girls were likely to associate the gender of that main character with their own gender.

So boys would say, oh, it’s a boy. And girls would say, it’s a girl by age six or seven. These children were beginning to get socialized in school. The girls would overwhelmingly identified the gender of that character as male. What I mean, like what happens there, right? This is that collective where the society is, is sending us these messages.

And we don’t even recognize it. And this study was published in 2017. It’s not 1950s. It’s not, it’s not ancient history. So despite all the advances in opportunity and rights, this lives in us, this lives in us and it’s transmitted to the young generation. They haven’t expired. They haven’t had their own experiences yet with this. Yeah. Today’s six or seven.

They’re already shifting how they’re looking at different people. I found that to be just not shocking, unsettling, upsetting all this, all of those things, because it really shows how these messages get in. And it causes this mistrust in men. It causes mistrust in other women. It causes mistrust in ourselves. And I think this lends itself really well to what I want to talk about next,

which is why we have such a hard time experiencing pleasure. So let’s talk about that in just a second. I hope you’re enjoying today’s episode. I have to tell you that my thinking with having these conversations about pleasure, about gender roles and sexuality and all of these things were driven by you all by you. My listeners, in my last Intentional Advantage live event,

we took some time to really talk about what you felt. It meant to step into your power, how you would feel about having conversations about topics like this. And the response was overwhelming. That’s what I love about these brand new, Intentional Advantage lives events that I’ve been holding. It gives us an opportunity to connect even deeper, to have true real conversations,

because I show up with no agenda. I don’t, I’m not selling anything. I don’t have any certain talking points. Everything we discuss is driven by you. And the questions you asked me, and they’re in real time, we start to have conversations and we start to realize what you want to see more of on the podcast. What kind of conversations you want to have,

what resources you want to learn more about. So I hope you’ll join me in my next Intentional Advantage. Live it’s happening May 18th. I would love to see you there. I would love for us to have a conversation. So simply head to Tanya dalton.com/live. That’ll give you the link so you can join us. And it makes sure that I remind you the day of to show up because we’re going to have a great time.

We’re actually going to do something a little bit different in this next Intentional Advantage live. I’ll be sharing details about that in my next show. But so go ahead, pause the podcast right now, head over to Tanya dalton.com/live. That will save you a seat in the Intentional Advantage live. There’s no charge. There’s no cost for it and I’m not selling anything.

It’s just a way for me to make sure that you get the link and you get the reminder to show up because I want to answer your questions. And I want you to participate in the chat where you can connect and have conversations with other women who are listening to the Intentional Advantage as well. So Tanya dalton.com/live I’ll plan to see you there. All right,

now, I want to talk about this. We did such a great job unpacking trauma in that first part of the show. I just, I love how you made that. So clear to me personally, and let’s talk about how that trauma lends us to this idea of, I think you call it the prohibition of pleasure in your book. Why is it that we struggle with this word pleasure,

whether we’re talking about sexual pleasure or we’re talking about pleasure in our bodies, pleasure in our and our Lives pleasure in any way, shape or form. Pleasure is such a huge part of a woman’s power. It’s it’s just pleasure. Pleasure is power it’s unthinkable without it. And if we, it will look at the world before patriarchy came in as a,

as a ruling paradigm, it was, it was the world of the goddess. Ancient civilizations worshiped the goddess as an expression of fertility pleasure, sexual bliss, nurturance. That’s what was at the center of worship divinity. And so of course, this is the biggest threat to patriarchy that women will effing. Remember, remember who they are. That is the biggest threat,

truly that remembrance. It is so connected to pleasure. And so it is very threatening to the system. And so the system made sure to demonize a woman’s pleasure to make it sinful, to make it wrong, to make it not okay. The women who followed their desires were they were punished severely. You did what was terrible. Yes. And, and they were,

then they were cast as villains as women whose example you don’t want to follow. I mean, look at Eve in, in one of the foundational stories and in the Western society. So that reclamation is very deep. And, and for women, I hear so often women who discover this work, oh, who, who talked to us about what they experiencing,

how PC is affecting them, who come to work with us. Oftentimes they’ve very successful women. And this is one of the areas where they’re not feeling fulfilled and it’s not their fault. They leaving no stone unturned. Of course, as high achieving women were looking for solutions all the time. They’re looking at the medical side of things and looking at, okay,

what, what else is there in, in me, in me, me, they’re looking within themselves, but this is something that, again, that does not start with you, that prohibition on pleasure. And it just, it feels unsafe to the nervous system, to your subconscious, to really go into the pleasure and, and to feel pleasure. Here’s the missing link.

We can not feel pleasure if we don’t feel safe, we must feel safe to feel pleasure. This is the missing link to feel safe. That alone is a long journey. I did not feel safe in my body. And I did not know that I did not feel safe in my body. And I remember the very first, when I felt safe in my body,

it happened to be on a yoga mat during that final relaxation post of Austin. And that was not my first yoga class it’s been building and building in that I got, then I got that glimpse of, oh my gosh, what is that feeling? I’m just dropping in so much deep into my body. What’s going on with me? I don’t know what does this,

but one more of that. And then later on, so I was in my twenties at the time later on, I was around, I want to say around 30 a professor in my PhD program, that was very holistic was pointing out to me that I was very brilliant. I said a lot of smart things, but was not embodied. I was like,

what the F is? What does that mean? Embodied? I had no idea, Tanya. I was not in my body. I was never in my body Right next to you, honestly, too. And I felt like when I was reading the book to me, that was like, ah, I’ve been in my mind and not in my body.

And for me, when I was reading the book, when I was reading your book, this concept, and this idea of being in your body was so foreign to me, this idea that, that I was like, wait, what does that mean? And I, I literally sat for a few. I closed the book. I sat for a few minutes and I was like,

just be in your body, Tanya, just be in your body. And you feel yourself, your mind kind of just drops away. And you, you start to experience what my body is feeling. And when I made that conscious choice, it was like, oh, okay. And it can be, as you said, it took you several. I can’t remember how many yoga classes you said you had gone to before.

You could finally really experience like staying for the whole yoga class because a lot we’re so disconnected from our body. We’ve been disconnected as a safety feature. A lot of it is because our bodies for centuries, let’s be honest for millennia have not belonged to us when our bodies were even violated. It wasn’t a violation against us. It was a violation against the man’s property.

Our bodies did not belong to us. So we didn’t feel like we had that ownership. So to drop in and decide, I want to be in my body is a different concept for me. That was the key to unlocking what pleasure feels like being in my body and making that choice. When I was doing something that I thought was supposed to be pleasurable,

I’m in my head, get in your body, Tanya. And I would say that in my head, get in your body, be in your body. And then all of a sudden it’s like, oh, this is not this. This is, This is so good. And it does take that practice. And I just want to say so that our listeners don’t feel frustrated if they try doing that.

And nothing happens for me. It took a very long time and a lot of different tools to be able to be in my body for Amy sustained period of time. I would get glimpses here and there, because again, unlike you so well, summarized that trauma, that feeling unsafe in our bodies has been running for generations and generations. So to establish that safety takes time takes practices,

and it takes community because that’s a very big aspect. All our traumas were received in community. Maybe it was a community of just one other person. Maybe it was a larger community and healing must happen in community as well to be effective, especially when we’re talking about intergenerational and collective traumas. So we actually have these opportunities for people to come and play with us and our community,

the thriving experience as one of those opportunities and our programs as well. I just want you to know that there is a lot more available to you that is outside of your personal experience. It’s like going from working on a little laptop to plugging into this huge mainframe, like Google service that’s available when we work with collective nervous systems, when we’re all regulated as a herd,

because we are herd animals. Right? So getting from this conversation and from reading the book, if you do pick up the book, I want you to know that there’s a lot more that you get to plug into and experience. Yeah. Yeah. I want to clarify too, that when I talk about being in your body, cause I can, I can imagine some of you going,

I don’t even know what that means. Really just experiencing using all of your senses, touch, smell, sight, hearing all, all of it all together and being fully present. That’s how I would define being in your body where it’s, I’m not thinking about what I need to do at the grocery store later. I’m not thinking about the, the items I have to get out down on my priority list.

I’m not thinking about work. I’m here for this pleasurable moment in my life, and that pleasure can be sexual pleasure. It can be, it can be pleasure with eating and food, the measure of sitting outside and enjoying nature, enjoying it fully and completely. I think that’s really what we need just to, just to make sure that’s clear. Yeah.

Senses are a beautiful gateway. And one of the tools that I share that are, are in, in the supplemental materials for, for the book on my website, that you can download, even if you don’t have the book, it’s open access Book, get the book. It’s so good. It’s better. It’s a better together for sure. But they,

there’s a practice called re power tool in which I guide you through getting into your body through all these senses. Right? And then it goes deeper. The pleasure that as you’re talking about here at Tanya, I just recently discovered it just, there are so many levels. I recently discovered. I always thought I loved food. I love food, but I always thought,

oh, I will even say I never met the food. I didn’t like. And only recently it dawned on me many, many layers later that how deeply I was using food for numbing, to the extent that I would say I never met the food. I didn’t like, like, how is that possible? And shifting into more safety and giving myself more because safety enable that,

giving myself more of that experience of pleasure. I realized, oh shit, I don’t like this. And I don’t like this. I like this. And this has worked for me at all. So it starts wherever it starts for you. In my book, I have a chapter of how, you know, my whole life unraveled from the, the sock drawer where I,

I love looking for pleasure, right? I’m not going to tell a story. Now you got to get the book for that one. And it doesn’t matter where you start pulling on the thread. Your whole life will transform when you start pursuing reclamation of silver and 10 power through the pathway of pleasure, just don’t overlook safety. First safety first, embodied safety,

not safety in your mind where you go around saying I’m safe, I’m safe, I’m safe. I actually have worked with a lot of clients who have given themselves panic attacks through all overdoing, these safety operations, where their mind and their body were not aligned. Little toxic positivity with trying to push it in, right. It’s a different approach and it can open up something that maybe is beyond your wildest imagination now.

Well, here’s what I’d like to close the show with because you pose a question again and again and again to your followers, whenever you do an email, that question is how good can it get? Can you close us out in today’s show by talking about that question and what that means? How good can it get? It’s a radical shift from our default life in this culture.

That for a woman is encapsulated by how much can I bear as kind of the principle? How much can I bear? How hard can I work? How much can I sacrifice? And it’s not that we go around thinking that thing. But if you look at your life objectively at the data of your life, if you look at your bank account, does it adequately reflect your,

your grade gifts in the world? If you look at the clothes you’re wearing the socks, start with a sock drawer a few days, how much pleasure are you getting from that? If you look at your relationship, how, how much pleasure your parenting of your parent, your business. If you’re a business owner, how much ease, how much joy,

how much, how much you are feeling alive, right? Are you more in the paradigm of how good can it get or much can I bear? And there it’s now no judgment, just data, just evidence and shifting to how good can it get? You are getting on the path of insatiable unstoppable pursuit, but not of something like in the paradigm of how,

of how much can I bear? We’re never satisfied. We get a goal met. What’s the next thing. What’s the next goal, never pausing to fully celebrate, digest and luxuriating in the amazing abundance that we have right now. How good can it get is being satisfied with everything satisfied, nurtured, nourished, fulfilled with everything. And following that divine urge,

that excitement, that seduction of the next thing you desire. So you are both deeply satisfied and you are divinely, hungry and thirsty for that next delicious thing. That’s how good can it get for me? I mean that word luxury age. Can we just talk about that? Honestly, I felt like after I read the book, I did go through,

I did go through my own sock drawer and I threw out a bunch of socks and I was like, this is not pleasurable. I will do my closet. It’s not bringing me pleasure. It really is a shifting of the mindset. And it can start with your sock drawer, which is a place that you started that started unraveling into more. Yeah.

I just want to comment. It’s so much deeper than the mindset. It is truly in your body, in yourself, in your subconscious. And there are different pathways to getting there. And experience is the most direct pathway. So check out the tools, if that resonates with you, they will give you some experience. Join us for the thriving experience,

if it resonates with you, because you can read a thousand books and it is in the experience that you will find the truth. I recently started saying that just came as a download to feel is to know when you feel, you know, and that feeling has been hijacked from us by patriarchy, that self knowledge, that self-trust, that, that sovereignty and feeling is how we reclaim it to.

Absolutely, absolutely. Well, as, as you all know, if you get my email, I talked about that this book totally shifted everything in my world. It’s an amazing book, patriarchy stress disorder. Can you tell us where is the one best place to find you find the book? I really can’t tell you guys enough and we’ll talk about this more in the closing,

how I use the book and how that really started conversations between me and John. But we’ll get into that in just a little bit, but can you, can you tell them about It’s your shared with me? That’s an absolutely genius way of using the book. I hope you share it with your listeners, Dr. valerie.com. That’s D R V a L E R I e.com

forward slash book is where you can download the first chapter free as a PDF, as an audio. And if that is seductive for you enough, then that you can get the audio book right there on my website and the link to get the print copy is there too. And I do hope that you join us for the thriving experience. The thriving experience.com is where you can get all the info and we get to play together.

I love it. I love it. Thank you so much for coming on today. This was an amazing conversation. One that we’re going to be continuing to have and discussing throughout the rest of the season. I’m hopeful that today’s episode has gotten new thinking, because I know that’s what Dr. Valerie did for me. When I started reading her book, the patriarchy stress disorder,

I started to realize that there were a lot of things that I’d kept buried and kept hidden. And I hadn’t even discussed with anybody else, especially with my husband. So I did something really different. This was the first time I did this exercise for myself, and it’s been incredibly powerful. I read the book by myself and as I read the book and things would light up for me,

I would make notes in the margin. I would underline passages and I would make little references to things I had experienced with the sole intention of sharing the book with my husband. So after I finished the book, I gave him my copy with all of my notes inside so he could read the book. And I think that’s the amazing thing is he was able to read the book and to read my reactions to the different passages in the book,

the different experiences that maybe he didn’t even know about because I kept them buried, or I hadn’t shared them with him. And it sparked some incredible conversations for us. It really got us started diving into this idea of pleasure together of talking about things that I’ve experienced and what it’s like to live in my shoes. I always say we can’t walk a mile in anyone else’s shoes,

unless they give us those shoes. And I think it’s really hard to walk in anyone else’s shoes, but we certainly can’t if they don’t have the tools, if we don’t start that conversation. And that’s what this book did for me, it allowed me to have a vehicle for a conversation. And that conversation opened the door to so many other things with my relationship with John.

And to be honest with you, I think conversation communication is the key to a happy marriage. We have been married almost 22 years, which feels crazy, but it is when we have these deeper conversations, the hard part is getting the conversation going. That’s what the book did for me. I’ve also used different shows. There’s a couple shows on Netflix that have sparked some really interesting deep conversations for us and a couple other things.

In fact, you know what I think I’m going to do, I will share with you some of the most powerful shows that John and I have watched together because when we watch them together, then we can have conversations and it’s really opened the door to a lot more for us. So if you are on my inner circle, email list, fabulous, you’ll get that next week.

If you aren’t on that list, just go to Tanya dalton.com/email. I send out an email every week, even on the weeks, we don’t have the podcast, I send out activities or exercises or sometimes resources that I think you’re really going to enjoy. And you’re going to appreciate, so I make sure to never spam you. It’s always really good stuff behind the scenes.

Now that I’m not on social media. I pour a lot of energy into that email that I send out every week on Tuesdays. And speaking of pouring a lot of energy and love into things, I hope you’re planning to show up for the Intentional Advantage live that is happening on May 18th. If you’re not able to make it live, go ahead and sign up.

Tanya dalton.com/live because you’re going to get access to the replay as well. I honestly love our time that we spend together. When we get together for these Intentional Advantage lives, it does get the conversation going. It helps spark ideas and where we want to go with the podcast, but also it gives us an opportunity to work together, to talk about some of the things that maybe you’re struggling with.

And as I mentioned in the middle of the podcast, we’re going to do something extra special and different with this next Intentional Advantage live. I’ll be sharing details on that next week. In the meantime, make sure to sign up again for the inner circle email@Tanyadalton.com slash email or the Intentional Advantage live@Tanyadalton.com slash live. What I would love for you to do this week,

as you’re waiting for me to send over those resources is to get the book patriarchy stress disorder, or to just even start thinking about what patriarchy means to you. What are some of the things that you’ve experienced in your lifetime that maybe you have been tolerating? What are some of the things that you feel like? Well, this is just how the world works,

or this is just how things are. And I want you to start shifting your thinking into Dr. Valerie’s question. How good can it get? Anytime you’re in a situation, what can make this a little more pleasurable? What can make this a little bit better? What could push this a little bit over the top? Because when you start asking yourself that question,

how good can it get? That’s when you got the Intentional Advantage. Thanks so much for joining me today. Quick question though, before you go, do you like prizes? When you leave a rating and review of the Intentional Advantage podcast, you’ll be entered to win my life changing course, multiplying your time. Simply leave the review and then send me an email@helloatTanyadalton.com

with a screenshot. I choose one winner at the end of every month. So go ahead. Do it right now. Just a quick comment with what you loved about this episode or the show in general and a rating and send it our way. Not going to lie by stars is my favorite, but I’d love to hear what you think of the show.

And if that’s not enough of an incentive for you to win the multiplying your time course, I have to tell you the reviews are the number one thing that supports this podcast. And me, it’s the best way to spread the word and get business tips and strategies to all those other women out there who need it. So there you go to great reasons for you to go and leave a review right now.

So go ahead and do it, send that screenshot my way, because I want to give you a free course. And thanks again for listening today. I’ll be back next Tuesday and I’ll plan to see you then.

 

 

**This productivity podcast transcript was created using AI – there may be typos or misspellings.

Tanya is one of the best female motivational keynote speakers. Her talks on productivity, goal setting, finding balance, time management and more are inspirational and actionable. She is a woman with a unique perspective that your audience will love.