Wanna Have What She’s Having?
If you long to fire up your sexual energy and deepen the intimacy between you and your partner, this is a must-read.
I recently had the distinct pleasure of interviewing author and intimacy coach Xanet Pailet regarding her most recent book, Living an Orgasmic Life, published August 15, 2018 by Mango Publishing Group.
I invite you to relish the raw honesty with which Xanet addresses issues our society has often labeled taboo.
Question:
Xanet, I agree with your premise that accepting your own shame is one of the prerequisites for living an orgasmic life. I’m very interested in your discussion of shame (vs. embarrassment) and its role in sexual dysfunction. We know and can access feelings of embarrassment when we say or do something stupid, but shame is more hidden and is often so deeply repressed we can’t access it. We don’t talk about. We don’t even want to acknowledge its existence.
Your Unity church helped you confront your shame. What are some other ways that we can learn to open that dreaded door and look at our shameful self, and then begin to talk about it?
Xanet:
There’s a great definition of shame that I have to credit Brene Brown with. “Embarrassment makes us feel like we did something bad. Shame makes us feel like we are bad”. That’s a huge difference because believing that we are bad cuts right through to our core, impacting our sense of worth and self-esteem. It’s a lot more challenging to come back from the belief that we are not good enough, which is something that we learned in childhood, most likely from a parent.
Other ways to look at our own shame is to read about other’s shame. That’s one of the key reasons that I included some of my own very vulnerable shame stories in the book because hearing that someone else has experienced shame makes us start to feel normal about our own shame. So many people tell me that my courage in sharing my shame story is allowing them to examine and look at their own shame. Normalizing your shame is the key to understanding it and eventually banishing it.
Question:
In your book, you speak quite often about intimacy as it relates to sex.
Couples who lose their physical relationship also often lose any intimacy between them.
Less sex leads to less intimacy.
When intimacy is lacking, a woman does not feel connected or safe, making it extremely difficult for her to surrender fully into her sexuality.
Less intimacy leads to less sex.
When one learns to respect another’s boundaries, one can enjoy casual sex without it having to translate into intimacy.
Intimacy is unrelated to sex.
Can you further clarify the complex relationships between intimacy and sex?
Xanet:
This is a great question also. Intimacy and sex are integrally related for both men and women, but in different ways. Most women need an emotional connection with a partner as a pre-condition for them wanting to have sex. This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with one night stands and just having a great date that leads to hot sex. But for most women to really open up sexually on an ongoing basis, they do need an emotional connection with a partner.
Men seem to be wired differently. Since most men are not culturally conditioned to express their emotions, they use sex to find intimacy with their partner. But usually the sex has to come first; then they can feel safe enough to express their emotions.
This dynamic can easily lead to a no-win situation when a hetero-normative couple loses connection. She doesn’t want to have sex because she’s not feeling connected to him and he won’t open up to her unless they are having sex.
With respect to your last example, some people who have serious attachment issues, confuse sex with intimacy, and “fall in love” with anyone that they have sex with. In those cases, learning how to separate sex from intimacy is an important part of the healing process.
Question:
You state that the United States is a “sex-negative and sex-starved nation.” Has this worsened over time or are we becoming healthier as a society? What do you predict for the future and why?
Xanet:
We are definitely much worse off than we have been in terms of the sex starvation that is going on in the country. One in four couples are in a sexless relationship and that number had quadrupled in the last twenty years. Millennials are having less sex than any previous generation.
I do see a shift in millennials comfort level with talking about and experimenting sexually. They seem to have less hang-ups than previous generations and less shame having grown up with more sex positivity in the pop culture that they consume. There is also much more acceptance towards the queer community and interest and willingness in exploring with both men and women. Gender neutrality and bi-flexibility is definitely more the norm for this generation.
What keeps me up at night in terms of the future is the impact that pornography is having on the sex lives of the younger generations, as well as the likelihood that “robot sexual lovers” will become more prevalent. There is already a lot of data showing that our devices are preventing true human connection and I fear that it will be harder and harder to create intimacy.
Question:
You state that our bodies are a memory bank for every significant experience in our lives, and the field of somatic psychology views the mind and body as an integrated whole. I could not agree more.
It would seem to me that if a body has been traumatized, like my own daughter’s was as well by excruciating medical procedures, mental processes of greater self-awareness, consciousness and self-love may heal those physical wounds. I believe you say as much.
What about hypnosis? Would it not be a potentially powerful means of wiping away the scars and associated shame?
Xanet:
Yes, hypnosis can be a very powerful tool to work through shame and re-wire the brain around a series of memories. While I am not a hypnotherapist, I do use guided visualization with my clients which can be very effective in helping to change old memories and create new patterning.
Question:
When you said you measured the size of your client “Jim’s” erect penis, I wondered, “Wow. What are the ethics of that?”
Of course, you addressed this later in the book. As a sex and intimacy coach, you have your own personal “litmus test,” but what about the field as a whole? As I understand it, therapists are obligated by medical ethics not to have sex with their patients, but “surrogate partners” do — and it’s all happening in your office?
I’m interested in learning more about the ethical issues surrounding sex and intimacy counseling.
Xanet:
Therapists and most social workers have their own set of ethical guidelines that generally preclude any type of touch, other than a handshake or maybe a hand on a shoulder. This is one of the main reasons that I decided against getting a formal degree because I believe that touch can be extremely healing for clients.
In my coaching practice, I abide by the Somatica ethical guidelines, which does allow for touch, sensual touch, and erotic connection with a client under a set of boundaries. First, clothes never come off and in fact female coaches must wear leggings or pants and a bra. Second, there are boundaries including no focused genital touch (a hand brushing by for a moment would be fine), and no mouth to mouth kissing. Beyond that every Somatica practitioner creates their own boundaries based on their comfort level and how they want to engage with a client.
When I do hands on work, I am wearing the hat of a sexological body worker, as in the example with my client Jim above. As a sexological body worker, you are permitted under California law, to engage in one-way genital touch with a client, meaning you can touch them with gloves on, but they are not allowed to touch you.
A sex surrogate is a different type of practitioner who works in conjunction with a referring therapist. Surrogates do engage in sexual acts with their clients for therapeutic reasons (e.g. client is an older virgin, client has a disability etc).
Question:
I was intrigued by your use of the Maslow hierarchy of needs, with which I’m quite familiar. You state that sexuality can propel us toward reaching the apex of Maslow’s pyramid, where we satisfy the highest need, self-actualization and self-transcendence.
Without passing through the intervening levels?!
You also describe a survey of over 16,000 women on Facebook about the connection between sexuality, self-confidence, self-love, and creativity. The results of the survey show that women with peak sexual experiences and transcendent orgasms have increased energy, creativity, self-expression, and self-confidence.
Similarly, research published in 2005 in the “Proceedings of the Royal Society” shows that creative people such as artists and poets are more sexual and have more sexual partners than the average adult.
All of these findings do, indeed, suggest that energy, creativity, self-confidence and the like are associated with high levels of sexuality. But the causal linkages are unclear.
Do greater energy and creativity lead to increased sexual activity, or is it the reverse? The answer to this question might have some interesting practical implications.
Xanet:
I don’t think we can definitively answer this question with the research that currently exists. However, we do know that when individuals tap into their sexual energy first, transformation does occur. I believe that a woman’s pelvic bowl is the center of her creativity and her power, and by activating that center whether through solo sex or partner sex, her creativity will begin to flow. Life force energy is extraordinarily potent. This is why ancient cultures worshipped sexuality rather than shamed it. Also, the physiological responses that occur in our body, the release of dopamine and other pleasure enhancing endorphins, elevate mood and increase energy.
There is some new research that shows inducing a “flow state” enhances creativity and that during a flow state the same types of hormones are released as during orgasm. However, there is no simple method to induce a flow state, so at the moment sexual energy is still the fastest way to enhance creativity and boost energy.
Question:
Toward the end of the book, you address the question of “How will I know when transformation happens?” It’s a great question, and as you say, it doesn’t have a clear-cut answer.
You suggest that transformation often starts with a feeling that something is shifting inside, something new is opening.
In my experience, before the opening of the new, transformation typically begins with the deep pain of letting go of the old, when a piece of who we are is being stripped away and we are almost desperate to get it back. The shame may not have served us well, for example, but it defined how we fundamentally knew ourselves.
Can you describe some of the less-than-glamorous painful aspects of deep transformational processes?
Xanet:
Yes this is absolutely true. There’s a great saying that when we’re in the most pain and our life seems like it’s crashing down in front of us, we’re just steps away from transformation. Deep transformation can definitely cause emotional and physical issues. It requires us to dig deeply into our soul and touch those very tender places and memories that we may have repressed to protect ourselves. These memories coming to light can be very shocking and painful and can even trigger a trauma reaction. Also, it’s not uncommon in deep transformational processes for the body to react as it is also cleansing itself. This can show up in a variety of ways including debilitating pain, anxiety and hives, colds and flu, and even life threatening diseases.
If you enjoyed this interview and would like to know more, please visit http://www.powerofpleasure.com/
Interview by Marlena Fiol — 8.31.18
