Nicole: Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast exploring sex, relationships, and liberation. I'm your host, Nicole.
On today's
episode, we have psychologist, Dr. Ido Cohen. Join us for a conversation about integrating new archetypes of sexual empowerment. Together we talk about reconnecting with your wild arrows, getting clear on your desires, Hello, dear listener, and welcome back to Modern Anarchy. I am so delighted to have all of you pleasure activists from around the world tuning in for another episode each Wednesday.
My name is Nicole. I am a sex and relationship psychotherapist with training in psychedelic integration therapy. And I am also the founder of The Pleasure Practice, supporting individuals in crafting expansive sex lives and intimate relationships. Dear listener, you know, it really is such a joy to produce this podcast for you.
Dear listener, every week to sit down with my computer and create this very special space for you, Dr. Ito, Cohen and I talk about the power of culture, how it shapes who we are, what we desire. the concept of self that we have. And, dear listener, I just can't even and I just can't even tell you what a paradigm shift it has been when I reflect back on the last 10 years of my life.
To go from a space where my friends used to say, Hey, it's a Saturday night, our church is getting together for a Bible reading where we can sit and talk about the Lord, to a world where I'm getting texts from my friends about queer sex play parties. Hey, do you want to come with me? It sounds like it's gonna be a great night.
We could watch and get to see the whole world out there and, uh, It's just such a paradigm shift. Let me tell you, as someone who has put their existence into both of those boxes, the conversations are different. And the sense of self, even the breadth of the orgasm from that religious space to the play space, has been quite intense.
a transformation. Dr. Ido Cohen and I talk about death and rebirths and let me tell you there have been so many deaths and rebirths that have been messy and painful and confusing to be very clear and that is why I'm so passionate about this work of getting to support people in this because our culture doesn't talk about pleasure our Our culture doesn't talk about liberation.
Our culture definitely doesn't talk about sexual play. And I can promise you, dear listener, I will continue to be in this space to talk about it and to explore with you and to continue to integrate these supposedly two sides, right? The slutty and the divine, the Madonna and the whore. Because truly, I don't know what is more divine than to be in your body and to feel the power of your sanctity and that ecstatic expression of pleasure.
I hope you can continue to step deeper and deeper into your purity, into your play, into your reclamation. Whew. All right, dear listener, if you are ready to liberate your pleasure, you can explore my offerings and resources at modernanarchypodcast. com, linked in the show notes below. And I want to say the biggest thank you to all of my Patreon supporters.
You are supporting the long term sustainability of the podcast, keeping this content free and accessible for all people. So thank you. If you want to join the Patreon community, get exclusive access into my research and personal exploration, then you can head on over to patreon. com slash modern anarchy.
Also linked in the show notes below. And with that, dear listener, please know that I am sending you all my love and let's tune into today's episode.
So then the first question I like to ask each guest is how would you introduce yourself to the listeners?
Dr. Ido Cohen: First, thank you for having me, Nicole. My name is Ido Klohen. I am a human.
Nicole: Yeah. I love that.
Dr. Ido Cohen: So, you know, to start there, I am an immigrant. I'm passionate about psychospiritual human development and integration and the intersection of that with human relationships and intimacy.
And how does that, how is that being done in community? So not just on the level of the individual or the dyad. I'm a clinical psychologist. I work out of the Bay Area, mostly with early childhood emotional trauma, as well as psychedelic education, psychedelic psychotherapy education and facilitation. So, but focused on the integration part.
So how do we take any big life experience and make it into long term sustainable in body change?
Nicole: Hmm. Yeah. The narrative of that journey.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Yeah. The path and narrative. Yeah.
Nicole: Yeah. I'm excited to have you in this space. Yeah. Yeah. And I know before we started, you had mentioned that in preparing for the podcast, you were talking to some people about pieces that are inhibiting women's sexuality.
Yes. I'd love to hear more about that three hour conversation you had last night.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Sure. So, this was in preparation for our conversation. So, you know, we're talking about some of them that I'm going to be on your podcast. And, and for some reason, the question that came for me is to kind of go into the, I think the heart of the matter, which is what are the things that impact women's embodiment of sexuality and sexuality, obviously not just being sex, but also sexual expression, how you right, carry yourself in the world.
Right. The three main points were And I trust the other to hold my fantasies, but also my vulnerability and the impact of sexual trauma, feeling on expressing sexuality and how that comes. And I think the third thing was, uh, and shame, right? The fear, the shame and rejection that really lethal pair. Yeah.
If I tell you who I am, what I want. My inhibitions, my, what prevents me from being fully embodied, fully expressed, um, will you reject me? Will you shame me? Will you reject me? Will you tell me something is wrong with me? So those will be the B, the big three, and which obviously I think we can have a full podcast on each one of them.
Nicole: Absolutely.
Dr. Ido Cohen: But one of the things I think is the intensity of this idea of risk versus safety is the need to be safe in a relationship. Shame is always going to be there, right? Yeah. Fame is always going to be there in some extent. And how do we even know that we feel safe? How would I know that I feel safe?
How would I tell you what I need for safety? When is it time to take a risk? Is it okay for you to ask me to take a risk? You know, one of the things we were talking about is how. For myself, in order to trust you, I need to feel you're taking a risk with me. So I need the vulnerability to feel trust. Right, right.
For someone else at the table was like, he said, well, I'm the opposite. I need to trust you before I can take risk.
Nicole: Sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. That dance between the two.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Exactly. Right. So how do we do these dances consciously when we come into a relationship? And then we're always relating. I always say this, right?
We're always in relationships. Right. You're either relating to yourself or you're relating to an object or you're relating to a person or you're relating to a social structure or any, you're always in relationship.
Nicole: Yeah, absolutely.
Dr. Ido Cohen: So it's, we always get the opportunity to examine our relationship.
Nicole: Yeah, it was interesting as you were talking about shame, I was like, I don't feel it anymore.
Hmm. There are like, I just don't, I don't know. Yeah. But then I was thinking about how did you get there? Uhhuh, you know, Jesus, you know, um, this podcast space, many orgasms and lovers and conversations with my parents, you know, having this space here and being like, this is what I do and this is, you know, you know.
You know, I, I continue to release shame about bodily sounds or other things, but God, like these days, I really don't feel as much of that. I feel so raw, you know, like I'm in my body. I, this is what divine, this is holy. And if you're in relationship with me, then you have this gift of being present with me and you're lucky to be present with me.
There is no shame in that. Right. But, but as I was saying that, I was like, it's still definitely there, right? I get afraid of, um, mostly going into other spaces where that level of acceptance isn't okay. Where I have to like, double think of like, can I even name this pleasurable experience I had? Or is that going to make someone uncomfortable or push them too far?
What are they going to think? So the shame is definitely still there. It's not, I think, And it's inescapable in some ways, but I think that it's been such a journey to particularly, I would say, if we're thinking about psychology and our mental health, it's the community, right? Going from being in a world for me where my best friends were getting married to pastors.
Not to say that you can't have sexual liberation of freedom and shameless sex in that space, but I think it's very different There is a lot of shaming in that space to a space where you know I'm sitting around at a table with my friends. They're like, oh, what's your sexual fantasies? And I'm like, huh?
Okay, you know and you start talking about it, you know and And how much that normalizes your experience in some ways, which I hope is some of the power of the podcast, right? We have all these different conversations talking about it, talking about these things that are so quote unquote taboo to hopefully lift some of that.
But, uh, As you were talking, I was also thinking, you know, you do a lot of work with archetypes, right? The narratives, the narratives around women's sexuality, right? And what is possible. And if we look to the media and these stories, uh, it's just so restricted. I was even watching the golden bachelor. You know, getting into that.
And I, for research, of course, you know, but it is because
Dr. Ido Cohen: it is, it's always for research.
Nicole: Um, but it, you know, just even having these images of women in their sixties and seventies presenting as erotic beings, you know, embarking upon this journey. Where in what rom com have I been able to look to to see that as an example?
Where do I see that in porn? And I'm just so sick of the male gaze in porn, right? So it's just like we culturally need a whole new narrative to look to. Otherwise, we're just trying to fit into these boxes that have left us with the orgasm gap and other stuff like that.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Oh, you said so many good things.
You know, I think maybe a good place to start is the, you said erotic, right? So just starting with the idea of what's Eros, if we're talking archetypes. Right, and Eros has been relegated to either Fifty Shades of Grey or sex or something. When Eros is, right, in the old mythological roots of it, Eros is like chi.
It's like Prana. It's like Baraka. Every one of those big traditions have their idea of life force. For, right, the Greek mythology was Eros. It was that life energy. So, right, part of our job is to, I think what you named is, how do we work throughout in blogs to let Eros really take over and be expressed through us?
And that can be through art. And it can be through an orgasm and it can be through a very deep intimate conversation with friends over dinner. It can be so many ways. Right. Right. But we are, like you said, we're, we have all these social, we have to start with the fact, right, that we're all basically sandwiched by these really intense collective energies, right, that tell us how we should be.
You start with patriarchy, gender roles, identity roles, religion, what's being moral, what does it mean to be moral, right? So we already start with that. And we're all always kind of sandwiched in that unconsciously, right?
Nicole: Yes.
Dr. Ido Cohen: From the moment you choose your clothes in the morning, right? How many of us stand there and be like, What would be my most Eros expressive outfit of the day?
Nicole: Like, I try,
Dr. Ido Cohen: I bow there, right? But you're probably very unique, right? Most of us think of like, okay, what's acceptable. I'm going to a meeting. What would they like?
Nicole: Totally. I'd have to do that.
Dr. Ido Cohen: What's presentable. Yes. So we're already in that level. And then on top of it, you have your personal. The stuff you carry from high school around sexuality, the, you know, if you had digits or attachment.
So we have the collective and then we have the personal and that's what we hang out with all the time unconsciously, right? So when we get to those moments, like your I love your friends are like, hey, what's your sexual fantasy, right? So when we get to that moment someone offers it, I think it's for a lot of us It can feel like you're walking into a minefield.
It's like, oh my god What is the thing I'm gonna say that's gonna trigger some kind of landmine and then shame, fear, rejection. Right. And it's, we're saying it like it's something small, but it's actually petrifying.
Nicole: Yeah.
Dr. Ido Cohen: It's terrifying.
Nicole: Uhhuh. It reminds me of the, uh, you know, in therapy we have the emotion wheel.
Mm-Hmm. eroticism pleasure. And particularly sex is a whole area that people have no language for. We have all these different. Feeling sorts of things going up in our head, but to be able to express what's your fantasy. How do you like to be touched? Where do you wanna go in our play today, that is like asking someone to name an emotion that they have no idea about.
And so I think part of the problem is that we just don't even have language to these things because it's such a, you don't talk about that. That's private. That's private. So then we don't have the language formation.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Well, it's private and it's, and again, it's so precious and it's risky. Mm-Hmm. , I remember, uh, the stories coming to my
I remember. About like seven years ago, I was doing laundry and I was seeing someone in, in my building that I don't usually know and I was like, Hey, can I help you? I thought she was lost. And he's like, Oh no, I'm actually renting an art studio. Doesn't matter. From here, we started talking and she's like, Oh, I'm moving to Israel.
Now I'm Israeli. And I was like, why would you do that? Like, what's your interest in moving to Israel? And she said, well, you know, I've been to Midburn, which is the Israeli version of Burning Man and, um, the artistic community. And then she told me this really interesting story. She said, you know, when I went to the Midburn, I had so many people ask me, what do I want?
And she's like, even the men there, you know, I would hang out with them. And then eventually you'll be like, so, hey, you're being really flirtatious. And like, what do you want? And she said it with, actually, she started getting teary. She's like, you know, I've never been asked that question. So much in my life, and it was such a, you know, it was such a potent moment because I was like, yeah, I've, I've heard these stories from clients of mine in indirect ways.
Nobody really asks you about these big questions, topics like sexuality, for example, what do you want? You know, one of the people in the dinner yesterday said. I don't know anything about my parents sex. How was it for my mom to birth me? Right, so we are born into, most of us are born into families that already carry that mark of shame and secrecy.
So when someone like you comes and offers us the door, it's like, hey, do you want to like come out of that? chamber of, you know, that chamber of shame and secrecy. It's like, it's terrifying. Yeah. Like, wait, it's okay for me to tell you what I want? It's okay for me. Let's make it more extreme. It's okay for me to be middle angel course.
And then all of a sudden, actually something really painful is coming up for me. Is it okay for me to share that? We're supposed to be having sex, right? Sex is supposed to be about pleasure.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm even just saying that I'm remembering like the first time that I was having sex with someone and asked them to stop because it was painful.
And like how much of a journey that was just to get that out of my mouth. and say, Hey, I think I want to stop. And that was what years into having sex. And I think I blame a lot of that in my purity culture situation, right. And all of that sort of complexity. And so, yeah, just getting that out there, which it breaks my heart to think about that, right.
Because it should be about pleasure and enjoyment and the connection and such a world where, again, if we're particularly talking about women, right, this world of people pleasing. In all areas of life, let alone sexuality, let alone what I was taught was that I was supposed to submit to the authority of my husband and that I'm supposed to give my body to him.
So it's already negating my ownership over my body and my pleasure so that when we have sex and it starts to hurt, Well, this is for him, and I'm giving him this. Oh my God, you know? Ugh. And I think
Dr. Ido Cohen: Right, so, which is, I guess I have a question, because you are touching on a big archetype for women's sexuality, which is to be the pure, right?
The virgin, the sacred virgin. How much of that is embedded in women just by being bored? It's everywhere. Yes. Say more.
Nicole: Oh my god, are you kidding me? It's everywhere. Who wants to buy the cow if you can already get the milk, right? That dumb bullshit, you know, sort of mentality that like, you know, if you're giving out sex, no one's actually gonna want you.
I, Again, coming from purity culture, right? The first time I had sex, I sobbed cause it was before marriage. This is how I ended up in the Midwest. You, you follow the person you do that with. Um, and so, God, I remember the first time I had sex, I sobbed uncontrollably in my bathroom floor because I felt like I had ruined the one thing and that no one would ever want me right.
And so having sex with a second person in my lifetime, I was like, God, I'm such a whore, you know, like I'm so dirty. And then having sex with two people at the same time in polyamory and having sex with two people in the same room, I was like, Oh my God, I'm such a slut, you know, like, so there's just so many ways that I think there are two people.
Cultural scripts, right? Cause some people didn't have that experience that I had in my bathroom floor crying because they weren't taught this world of only one person for life. And so I think a lot of this, we just can't ever really like anything else in life of the psychology. We can't take this out of the cultural container and the cultural scripts that provide narratives of what the stimulus means, like the meaning making from this act and how deeply laid in that is for us.
For all of us in, in not just religion, but the culture, every single movie, all the, it gets very subtly said in these little side comments. Um, I was watching the Netflix series, uh, principles of pleasure, which is really good on this and hit some sort of points where you can see all of this unfolding and it particularly takes a lens to women's pleasure as a discussion here and just the ways that, yeah.
Even outside of the scripts of religion, women have been taught to give, women have been taught, you know, we're either the Madonna or the whore, right? Right. And you fuck one and marry the other, and you can't have both.
Dr. Ido Cohen: That's painful. Right? That's painful, cause that is, that's consciousness that's asking women to split.
Repress and oppress your inner Lilith, your whore, your wild woman, and glorify and idealize the virgin mother archetype in you, right? And that's what you are. And we all know how that ends up, right? Midlife crisis. Right. Or an affair. Right. Or years of depression. Or all, all the good stuff that comes with splitting your personality.
That's so powerful. So powerful. I think this is where it gets juicy for me because I'm like, Oh, but that's, you know, I'm, I'm Jungian in the sense of Jung's idea of love. It's the dynamism that brings the unconscious to light. So what if sex is not about pleasure? What if intimacy is not about pleasure?
What if intimacy and sex are about opening space for arrows to do its thing? And today it's going to be pleasure. And tomorrow we're gonna fight. And then the next day we're gonna process the shit out of your childhood trauma. And then the other day we're just gonna play. We're gonna feed each other fruit.
Or, I don't know what it is, right? Every time it changes. And what if we really You know, when I work with couples, I see how much First of all, it's interesting and I'd be curious to hear. Uh, your thought. Sex is maybe the last thing that comes in and it's fascinating to me because when we do start talking about sex, I see the metaphor for the entire relationship.
Nicole: Oh yeah.
Dr. Ido Cohen: All the power dynamics, what's being acted out, it all funnels into that place, right? Into sex. What if there is an idea that conscious sexuality, and again, it's not just a sexual act, is about letting go of all our ideas of what that means. And actually coming into an open space of allowing things to happen.
Now, it doesn't mean we can't have an intention. It doesn't mean we can't want to be like, okay, today we're like, let's play. I really want to play with you and as we're playing, you're going to tell me what you like. I'll tell you what I like. We're going to, or whatever, right? We're going to explore kink or whatever that is.
It's okay if something else enters. So nothing gets shamed, nothing gets split off. Is that okay? You know, uh, you're naming women's wounds and I want to advocate also for men, you know, a lot, right? Men come into the. into sexuality with a whole other set of baggage, right? Patriarchy did a number on us too. Yeah.
You're supposed to always perform. Yeah. You don't. There's something really messed up with your masculinity. In a way, you're supposed to be selfish, but you're also supposed to be the lover. And it's about your pleasure, not her pleasure. You're supposed to make her feel pleasure because then you'll feel good about yourself.
And then there's the whole idea of. God forbid you show anything other than hypermasculinity in the bedroom or sexuality. God forbid, you know, and it's interesting I have a colleague named Mikey and he really talks about how many men have Early sexual trauma that never gets spoken about. Yeah, and he walks with them In their sexuality throughout all their life.
And men don't talk about that. And I know for a fact it's as dangerous to talk about it with a partner, a female partner, than it is with a guy friend. And so we're constantly, you're right, we're living in this culture that it's constantly asking us to split off that part of yourself, split off that pain, split off your power.
Right? Don't be the sacred whore, like don't bring your goddess, sexual goddess self into the bedroom or into sexuality, that might be too much for him, or it's too much for you, right? Because you can't be a mother and a whore. Right. I read this article piece about how there was, I think it was a group of women wrote of how their first experience about the moment they became mothers.
They could feel that society has made them asexual. Yeah. And they're like, what are you talking about? I'm maybe even hornier than what I was before. Like, why is the elderly living in a place that the moment I birthed a baby, right? And again, it's that archetype. It's the way that archetype lives inside of all of us.
Nicole: Which makes sense. Makes me ask like such deeper questions about free will, you know, cause I'm just like, so, so, you know, like so many of these questions are of like, Oh, this is my personality. This is who I am. This is my personality. This is my identity. And it's like, so tricky when all of those pieces are shaped by our relationships, right?
To family, to friends and the larger culture, right? So to have that moment where you become the mom and then have that immediate shut off, right? Right. I don't know if that's as much of an internal experience as much as, like you said, an external pressure on us that we're all feeling. And, and so I just, it's interesting in this like hyper identity culture, we're asking these questions of who am I, how do I respond?
And I think we're kind of forgetting the like maybe larger quantum mechanics nature of the always in flux with our environment. And it's like, It's never just the silo atom that's functioning on its own. And so it is heartbreaking because yes, the patriarchy has really done a number on all people. Right.
And, and just God damn, like just thinking about all these different thoughts that are going up here, all these different thoughts when there's a world of patriarchy. Pleasure, intimacy, sensation, and connection on the other side. And it, my heart aches knowing what a large part of the psyche. This is that so many people are suffering from.
I remember reading, uh, Irving Yalom's book on group therapy, and he was just talking about how, like, I forget what the first two, uh, things were, but the top three things that people come in with pain points around one of them being. Sex and I remember just reading that in my class being like, yep This is why i'm about to do what i'm about to do because this is crazy right just so much suffering in the world because of all of this that God damn if we could just take like a deep breath into our Humanness into our pleasure.
What a different world politically It would be
Dr. Ido Cohen: one of the people in the dinner we were at she brought up dr. Ruth
Nicole: Yeah,
Dr. Ido Cohen: right because apparently one of dr. Ruth's like hidden agendas was to Promote world peace through sexuality. She said if people can liberate their sexuality and it's very if you think about it It's very Freudian right because Freud said that war aggression death and sexuality all belong in the same Center So in a way, if you liberate one, potentially you're liberating all of them, right?
So she was doing this like sneaky, pun not intended, backdoor thing where she's like, oh, okay, I'll be this like cute grandma who's like talking about sex all the time and in a non threatening way. You can't be threatened by her. She just looked like such, you know, But she just spoke about it in a way that both triggered your shame, but also made you like, want to, like you said, liberate it, normalize it.
And how much of that is really helping us liberate, and I think, I love what you said, Nicole, because I think people don't really, you know, I live in California, where it's, the movement of liberation is very prominent, let's say it like that. And I don't feel that people really acknowledge the impact of culture.
I think even living, if you live in the, in San Francisco, which is like the bubble within the bubble, within the bubble, well, you're very much shaped. Even pushing culture away is still a reaction to culture. It's not a choice. You're not really deconstructing and disintegrating the way in which culture lives inside of you to come up for that free will.
Like you said, you're just being reactive, which in a way, not in a way, you're still controlled by culture. You just think you're right. I think this is where it gets interesting as far as. Having conscious relationships, having intimacy practice, uh, what I call emotionally poly relationships, right? Friends of yours that you process with and stuff like psychedelics and therapy, right?
Because that's where we have these agents that can get in there and really help us make that. Do what you were saying. Like, how do I start extracting culture from within me? How do I start that disintegration? I get space from my pain and my shame. So I can be in a reflective space actually to be like, okay, how did my childhood trauma, sexual trauma is still impacting me?
How can I name it? Is it okay? I worked with pretty big group of women who. And again, I'm sure men, but men just don't say it, who had sexual trauma, and most of them just want to get rid of that. Like, I don't want to be, I don't want that girl anymore, because she's carrying all that pain. And enter psychedelics and I've worked with hundreds of people with psychedelic experiences and that girl comes back and all of a sudden this insight of like, Oh, actually I have to really connect with her.
You know, I interviewed someone who was interesting. She had cancer in her abdomen and she was doing both chemo, but at the same time doing like pretty intensive plant medicine process. And she had this experience where she saw how. Being a girl who was vibrant and wild, again, here's that word, but also very creative, was continuously criticized and shut down in her family.
In her process, and you could feel it when she was talking about it, she was talking about reclaiming her, again, sexuality, not just sex, the act, but sexuality as an expression of eros. So she became to like take on all these creative forces. Which was movement and dancing, and she started, you know, growling playfully at people, and I can invite them into that energy, and she said, you know, it's fascinating, because all of a sudden my partner is scared, he likes the more tame version of me.
But this perversion, he's not really into. And what does that mean? And I have to be this person. This is who I am, right? So for her, having that kind of very deep, reflective process, but using psychedelics for it really allowed that to kind of say like, Hey, here's years of, you know, shame and guilt. Early childhood pain that you're carrying and if you have to do something,
Nicole: yeah, how painful, right?
For that person to hit that moment of connecting with her wild, you know, arrows and to have that threat of disconnection with the partner, right? You know, Oh, what a pain point. And, you know, that's the relational paradox right there. Do you stay and cut off the parts of yourself or do you, you know, leave and Oh, how painful.
And then the reverse is obviously that. You know, women will see a man cry and then be unattracted to him because he's weak, right? So it's not like women are off the table on this thing. Again, we've all been impacted by those structures. And so it is in our psyche. It's like other forms of repression.
Oppression that we have to take that active, you know, like shovel in and like scoop out and and and work to acknowledge like wow I'm having this reaction where I'm unattracted you because you're crying and that's not okay I'm having the reaction and we're gonna work with that. We're not gonna run away from that.
We need to actually Scoop that out. But yeah the Power of psychedelics to get into that space of vulnerability to slow down that default mode network to slow down the manager parts. If we want to do IFS, you know, just to come back. And I think. Part of what I'm also interested in learning more about with psychedelics as we continue in this movement is the somatic pieces of it.
Like forget the psyche, forget the thoughts. Let's quiet that damn monkey brain and, you know, come back into feeling and perception. And, you know, in my own experiences with psychedelics and having, you know, my own trips by myself, being able to, you know, Be in my body and have this space where I was completely alone laying there naked.
And I realized I was still holding tension, just that realization in that altered state of consciousness where the connection to my somatic experience was turned up. I could feel how I was still tense in the body and just being able to actually. Relax and let that go and have a breath orgasm and go into the state of ecstasy Was really transformative to me and I think when we're talking about integration, right?
How do we take that outside in the world? It is that question of oh i'm going through the world Are my shoulders up by my ears? Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Let's let's drop that. Let's drop that. Let's drop that But so much of you know the world and this is where i'm like, dr Ruth is cool. I stand on the shoulders of giants amazing.
But when she would talk about sex You know, she's like I don't want to get political and clearly she had an agenda but would also not be political but it's like We can't like go through this world and be looking at people and their sexuality and this inability to notice when the shoulders are up and be like, Oh, that's your fault.
No, it's fucking capitalism's fault. We are going to a world where we are running ragged through this effing system. And so I just want to make sure we're pointing the area. Arrow correctly up at the systems. And that's why we can't be in our bodies. You know, I don't want to blame the people for this.
Dr. Ido Cohen: No, no, no, no, no, no.
We can't. I think our responsibility is, you know, we are responsible for our awareness. You're absolutely right. We, you know, there's a James Hillman quote that I love to say, because I think it's just potent and scary. Yeah. Because he said something like, we are governed by invisible forces more than we care to believe.
Yes.
Nicole: Yes.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Which is terrifying.
Nicole: Yeah,
Dr. Ido Cohen: right, because we all want to think like we're in control most of the time or if I, you know, uh, what's uh, Take control of your life or you're you know, you're driving the car and like yeah You're driving the car and then your house burns down or your partner leaves you or you get fired or
Nicole: yeah
Dr. Ido Cohen: So right so the idea that we are not in our responsibilities in our awareness I like, I want to go back to what you said, because I think it relates, right?
So, that person I was referencing, she can either leave, or she can actually do what I think, you know, psychedelics and conscious relationships do, is like, invite her partner into a process, which feels incredibly erotic. It's like, hey, I'm going through this change, and I'm noticing my change is impacting you this way.
Do you want to join me in doing that work together? And that's, right, what I mean when I say Eros is inviting everybody in the room for the process. It's like, oh, you can transform with me.
Nicole: Yeah.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Do you want to do that?
Nicole: Sure. Now I've got a question, though. Ha ha ha. Go for it. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha.
Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. Because, you know, it's getting personal over here. Multiple things. Okay. So you're, you know, a psychologist, I'm a psychologist in training. At what point do we say, wow, this emotional labor, your journey is actually so much that it's, I have to leave because this is an unbalanced dynamic.
And they think this becomes particularly interesting when you have multiple partnerships where I'm noticing this world where I don't have to break up with people. Cause personally, I'm not in this framework of monogamy one and, uh, You know, so I'm fitting in, I'm in a world of relationship anarchy where I have multiple different partners and being able to actually sense in where I'm like, wow, okay, so the emotional labor that you need to do to get to a level of where I'm going, when do I actually close that down and say, wow, I can't go on this journey with you because it's unbalanced.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Oh, oh, okay. I want to answer that question, but I'm going to do the therapist thing.
Nicole: Okay.
Dr. Ido Cohen: I'm going to ask you, when do you do it? And then I'll give you my version.
Nicole: Well, doctor, you know, I would say that, um, I did just actively do this very recently. And, um, I think that the answer is there's no, it doesn't ever feel right.
I try to let that go of like that moment where it's like so abundantly clear because I feel like in most of our life, it's never that clear. You kind of have to take a little bit of that step in that leap. And then I think about relational cultural theory and it talks about how you watch the relationships that bring energy into your life, right?
And so I think you have to kind of navigate that with new relationship energy and the dopamine cocaine phase of a new relationship because that's complicated and I'm drugged up, you know? Yeah. But even in the space with you right now, right? Like this conversation is bringing me energy. I'm feeling, you know, like, wow, I could talk to you for hours.
Let's go back and forth. And so I think I have to kind of watch that in my world of, okay, have I been spending a lot of time with this person in a way where I come away feeling more drained, more lower, okay. And you know, you can invite them in and you have a lot of those conversations, but I'm noticing this pattern and.
Oh God. Okay. Now I need to make this shift in this, this leap of faith a little to kind of create more space for me to forge other relationships that are bringing me more energy into my life. And then to even do that where it's not like a breakup. It's not a full breakup. It's just a shifting of how much, how much we're seeing one another, or the, you know, appetite I have for this connection is just, whoa.
Talk about women knowing what they want. This has been the most interesting process for me to go through that exactly, and not people please, and to form your world of your own relationships where it's much more complicated. So doctor, that's what I would say I do. I,
Dr. Ido Cohen: I, I appreciate that doctor. I appreciate that.
Um, You see, that's beautiful because right here we already get into like the nuances of our individual selves because when you ask me that question, my answer is the moment where I feel that I have to perpetually abandon myself is the moment I leave. And what do I mean by that? I've been in relationships where the relationship, either unconsciously or, um, non verbally, the person or the relationship was like, Oh, you know, you can't be this version of yourself.
You can't be that. And when I was trying to bring it in and be like, Hey, let's do a shared process. It's either met with defensiveness or met with refusal or met with like, I want to, but maybe we are on different trajectories.
Nicole: Right.
Dr. Ido Cohen: And so for me, if the demand is I have to perpetually abandon who I am in order to be in relationship with you, then we're entering into my red line zone.
Yeah. Because basically the only thing that's, from my experience, either both with work and myself, whatever is going to keep this relationship going is codependency. And that's not a real relationship. I'm going to make myself small, so then you don't get upset, or I don't feel the fact that we're not a good match in order to keep the relationship.
We're not in a real relationship. So for me, it's really about self abandonment. For two full beings to really relate, that's a lot. That's a lot. For us to both come in our fullness and our bigness, It takes a lot of practice, a lot of work, a lot of effort, and then there's seasons, right? Some seasons you're gonna be more, you're gonna take more space, and I'm gonna be more this, and, but that's different than, Oh, I can't be who I am.
This relationship is asking me to not be wild, to not be sexual, to, I want to start doing this in bed, and there's no willingness. There's no willingness to at least look at their response to see if they want to join me. That's for me, it's like, okay, we need to start asking questions.
Are we going in the same direction?
You know, and sadly, one of my mentors, He used to tell me, uh, I love Lonnie. She said, in her ideal world, couples go to couples therapy when they start dating. Right, right. And the reason she would say that, or at least the reason she shared with me is she said, we need to normalize the idea that couples working on themselves is a sign of issues.
Of problems, as opposed to intimacy space is the space to explore and do the most profound or a version of the most profound self growth you can do. You're always going to be there, right? You know this, you're there. Because we walk with all our dynamics, all our woundings, all our attachments to every place we go.
The one thing that I was like, what a gift it is to find someone who wants to do that with you. In whatever capacity that looks, maybe it's your secondary. Right? Not your primary partner. Maybe it's a really good intimate friend. Maybe it's your lover. Maybe it's your partner. Whatever capacity. What a blessing it is to have someone who is willing to traverse those really beautiful, intense, complex nuance waters.
Nicole: Mm hmm.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Such a beautiful gift.
Nicole: Yeah. It's a real psychedelic, you know, you hold
Dr. Ido Cohen: It is. Absolutely.
Nicole: Yeah.
Dr. Ido Cohen: I say this to a lot of people who come to me like, hey, I want to do psychedelics with my partner. And I'm like, how psychedelic are you on a day to day level? Like, when is the last time you had a real conversation with each other?
Yeah. And you see, you see the, you see the faces going, oh, uh huh.
Nicole: Mm hmm.
Dr. Ido Cohen: You know, we did a study. This year that I'm writing now about couples who use psychedelics for their relationship.
Nicole: Cool. Love that.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Yeah. And it was beautiful. You know, like we had, uh, most of the 70 percent of the couples talked about how in the experience there was a lot more freedom to be what we call the vulnerable self disclosure.
We call it the vulnerable self disclosure exploratory. It's not just me telling you something and it can be from emotional processing of trauma to something that I'm caring to, Touch, you couples doing these really intense eye gazing experiences with each other and having these really intense personal experiences, 70 percent of them do like sensory practices, which are not about sex.
Sure. So they feed each other. Yeah. And they described in vivid detail how, my God, I've never, it was so beautiful to see her like get pleasure, to see him get pleasure from me feeding him, to feel texture. To take humming, sexual right, out of the field. Right. And all of a sudden, there's no pressure. Right.
She talks about something that I'm curious, maybe we can talk a little bit about, this idea of performance. So here's societal structures coming in again. But what was interesting is that less than 30 percent of them took the experience forward. Mmm, sad. But it's, it's a metaphor, right? It's a, it's not, maybe not a, it's a microcosm of what happens in relationships.
experiences. So I think we're advocating for like conscious relationships because you can create psychedelic experiences, very sober. And then your adrenaline starts to spike. When you talk about that unconscionable thing, you start releasing all those endorphins, all those. And lo and behold, we're both altered.
And can we allow ourselves to kind of enter that space? I read this beautiful and accurate for me, the description of intimacy is I read it said the ability to let someone into you and while they create impact. Yeah. Yeah. And the highlight was creating impact. So it's not about just like being open. It's like, can you let someone in?
Which we can already hear, right, the, like, the subtle sexual hints. Can you let someone in both ways and can you be impacted? And when I think about that, it terrifies me and excites me profoundly. Sure. Like, yes. What's your definition of intensity? Oof.
Nicole: The ineffable. Maybe I don't even want to go there.
Maybe I don't even want to hit it like that, right? I do like what you just shared, right? Because I think that that. Is accurate and maybe more expansive than we even think. And I think could maybe help people to start see the impact of relationships in general. Right? I just, it's hard for me where I get back into this world where I don't care whether you're monogamous.
Relationship. I don't care. Like you have multiple relationships and those relationships impact you. And so when people are like, I have one relationship, I'm like, okay, we got to start with ABCs here of just like you have multiple. And so intimacy, right? And that act of letting someone in. Whether it's a family member, a friend, a mentor, you are letting them in and they are impacting you.
And so we have intimacy across the board with multiple people. And I think that if we got into that world of understanding that, we would maybe take more intentionality to those relationships. We'd also feel more fulfilled because we wouldn't be in this world of, I'm single until I get this one relationship and think that intimacy and romance is so locked up there compared to, wow, like, you know, my mentor, my supervisors exist in my psyche.
And when they're proud of me, I feel good about me. And so I'm, I'm letting them in and they're impacting me. And that is intimacy in and of itself. And I think hopefully we can get to a world where more of that is. And part of that then is letting go of these ideas of performance, right? Because if you're doing the mask and the script and this is what it is, you're not letting anybody in.
But God damn, is that vulnerable? God damn, is that scary to be like, Hey, I'm, uh, I'm gonna tell you about this tender part of myself and I hope you don't judge me. Right. And then they might. And then you have to make that decision of, okay, do I let this in? Do I move away? What do I do about that? Because I just opened up about this very tender part of myself.
And for me, play has been that like play has been a tender part for me, because I think particularly with sexuality and just life in general, my God, I was so analytical. I was like, you know, I know the answers. You know, I took physics in college. I know the answers, the answers. God forbid I write creatively.
That is, what is the answer there, right? So let's pull that into the bedroom. Okay, I've seen porn, I've seen this. I know the answers of how to do this, how to show up. And so what does it mean to get into a world of play? Oof, tricky. And so, When you were talking about partners and psychedelics, I was just remembering my last experience with one of my partners where it wasn't sexual at all, but we were just wrapped up in one another and making funny sounds like kids, just like wiggling the body and going and like bouncing back off of each other and going back and forth.
And I felt like I was five years old, just like with this person and creating this, this playful dynamic where. You know, they talk about play not having a goal, right? And so you have to be in that state of letting go of the psyche to just, to just be in the moment and let it flow, which was what was happening.
I was just letting these sounds come out of my mouth and my body again, not sexual, but just letting it come out without thinking about it. And in that, I think I. Reached a level of play that when we came back into our ordinary states of consciousness directly translated into the ways that we were being intimate with one another.
It just created more space to roar in a way that I haven't had access to in a lot of capacities.
Dr. Ido Cohen: That's beautiful. It's so vulnerable, right? It's so funny to think about play being that level of play being so vulnerable. Right? But that you're saying something really, I think, profound, which is What are the conditions I need to get out of my head to be to write for me?
The word that I'm listening to is to allow the way I thought the thing about okay So this is another beautiful expression of arrows. Like that's what we felt. That's what I always wanted It's like we're gonna sit here and giggle
Nicole: right?
Dr. Ido Cohen: It's real like, you know intertwined and cuddled into each other We're just gonna giggle and then oh, oh and behold, I'm five and that's great Maybe this kind of brings it a little bit like full circle, but can I feel safe enough inside of myself to show up?
I'm not dependent on you for safety. I always tell this to people at work the issue with fear I don't believe in being fearless I don't think it's possible But the issue with possession of fear is that you don't give yourself the opportunity to see that there is maybe something That you haven't thought about on the other side of here Maybe you are gonna make those sounds and your partner is gonna love it Because that's gonna be, excuse me, a mindfuck, right?
Because fear is saying like, no, protection, reject, we can't be rejected. And all of a sudden I get a positive experience, like, how do I digest this? Why just, just all of a sudden partnering with someone who's like, oh, tell me all about your sexual fantasies. I want to know them as we're like laying naked in bed.
That's gonna be a whole thing for my system. Sometimes we need that carrot to be like, okay, how do I walk with my fears? You know, especially I think when it comes to psychedelics and these more or any sexual conscious relationship practices, I think there is a way in which messages are like, don't be fearless.
Don't be fearful, be shameless. And I'm like, that's so much work. Don't do that. Don't worry about that. Take your fear, walk with it, take your shame and bring it into bed. You know, that's the beauty of sensuality. I feel ashamed. With you, but I use that as a stop sign and I'm like, wait, I feel a lot of shame right now.
And you're like, okay, great. Let's, I'm going to hang out here with you.
Nicole: Yeah,
Dr. Ido Cohen: which is already de shaming. Right. Shame is saying, well, who wants to hang out with you? Look how horrible you are. All of a sudden Nicole is like, no, no, I'm right here.
Nicole: Yeah.
Dr. Ido Cohen: And then we giggle like five years old. Right,
Nicole: right, right, right.
But that just makes me think about, again, the intricacies of this not being an individual process. We can do all we want, all we want to be. Okay. I'm internal. I'm not going to judge myself. I'm not going to judge myself. And then you come to someone and you bring it and they go, what the fuck are you talking about?
And then you're like, Oh no. You know? And it's, that's how the therapeutic relationship works, right? The safety and container that becomes a model for other relationships, right? It's just so hard. If you've been stuck in a container, in a relationship where you are judged, where you are these things and how like, You need other relationships where that is okay, where that is celebrated, where that is held for you to get out of that space.
And if you just keep thinking, I'm going to let this go on my own, it doesn't work like that.
Dr. Ido Cohen: It doesn't work that way. And, you know, I would just add that you need those relationships and if forever it's going to listen, I also want to encourage like practice saying it anyway. Yeah. Right. Practice. And what I mean by that is practice being the creator.
If you want that in a relationship, right, so we're back into the safety risk, take the risk. Right, right. Take the risk. You know, on some level, I say this only to my couples when I work with them for a while, I'm like, the thing they fear the most is not rejection, it's the truth. We fear that if I come and I start telling you, you know what Nicole, I guess I have like a really kinky part of myself that I've never explored.
My fear is not that you're going to reject it. The fear underneath is that you're going to be like, I don't want to be with you. That's the truth. And if you don't want to be with me and we're married for 20 years and we have kids to raise, that's going to be a really earth shattering change for both of us.
So most of us are pushing away against that truth. And then what we're doing is what we said, we're oppressing and repressing ourselves throughout on a weekly basis. But if I can become the creator and start introducing those things into our relationship, like, Hey, this is what I want. Or, Hey, I'm noticing that I told you what I want.
And all of a sudden you're like, you're withdrawn, right? I'm introducing the level of consciousness. I want the level of intimacy that on its own can be liberating. And it's such a nuanced dance of how do I stay differentiated enough to be a full person and close enough for us to have like found intimacy.
Nicole: Yeah, the dance, right? And I think that's found in multiple relationships. Again, not talking about this in a monogamy or polyamorous bifurcation. I'm talking about friendships. I'm talking about all of it. I'm talking about you find that in multiple relationships, right? There's a, I have a quote on one of my post it notes from In a Different Voice, which is a book from Feminist Psychology, and it says, We know ourselves as separate only insofar as we live in connection with others, and that we experience relationship only insofar as we differentiate other from the self.
And just that, that like, literally that dance of it's that yes and to it, and when I think about differentiating in terms of the individual, I think it's so important for people to have a relationship to their sexuality that is independent of others. Right. And I think about that culturally too, and particularly like my family and the Mormonism culture and like the, the, you know, rules in that culture against masturbation and self sex acts and stuff.
So I'm holding that as I say this now and the importance of the self eroticism. But I do think that even in these worlds, you still look out in the world and you see what turns you on, maybe a person, maybe this or that. So I think we all should have that. And in a world where you're not culture, I think there's so much beauty into looking in a mirror.
And do I find myself attractive? And if not, maybe we can start there before we even think about the partner before we even think about the other people. Why is it that when I look into the mirror, I'm not interested in myself?
Dr. Ido Cohen: Oof. Ooh. You're sending people right, right into the, like the , the heart of, of the matter.
Nicole: I love it. Take the psychedelic look in the mirror and come talk to us.
Dr. Ido Cohen: I was . I was just about to say, they say never look in the mirror in the beginning, you know? And you're standing right. The right in the mirror.. Um, woo. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, I remember watching, I remember what's. It was a Netflix show about this sexologist who, when you first come meet her, you sit naked as a woman in front of a mirror.
I think most of us, when we look at our body, we don't see our body. We see societal view of our body because I'm already comparing myself to some kind of standard of attraction and masculinity and da da da da da. And what you're talking for me is next level of, can I come to a place? Or I can work to get to a, right, to an objective view of myself.
And I look at myself and see, just see myself for who I am. Before I label it as pretty, not pretty, attractive, not attractive. Which is a very, a very tall order of consciousness and a very necessary. Can you reclaim your body?
Nicole: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah, and I think, again, going back into this dance that we're talking about, right, of the ways of the individual and the society and the people, I'm just thinking about how, uh, For the holidays, I got my friend's, uh, passes to go into this spa that we all went to.
And it has this community space. It was gendered, but it had this community space where all of the women could go into the bath and it was all naked. And wow, what an experience to be able to look around and see women of so many different body types, so many different ages, so many different nipple colors and shapes and cellulite and everything, and just to have this moment of like, oh, yeah, I am beautiful.
Beautiful and I fit in the spectrum of this diversity of all these different bodies. And I think this then brings me back to the ideas with the archetypes, right? What do you see in the media? What do you see in porn? And how we are constantly because we're social creatures looking to that. But then specifically lacking the, uh.
cultural spaces where we can go to be naked and have this experience to look around and be like, Oh, okay. I'm actually really normal. This diversity is very, very normal. So then we're thinking about the puritanical roots again, right? We're within our culture of America. That's such a rarity to find that sort of space.
space where I can actually go and be naked in a non sexual manner and have that freedom space. So it's like, yeah, look into the mirror, take the psychedelic and do it. And also the difficulty that you experience is not just your fault, right? This is again, the arrow up towards the systems where we don't have spaces where I can do that.
I don't have representation. And so it's just, it's that nuanced dance of the yes. And I think to all of this,
Dr. Ido Cohen: Yeah. And you're making me think about, um, there is a hot spring center around three hours north of where I'm at or where it's, um, Oh yeah, yeah. The California is really good.
Nicole: California is. Yeah.
Dr. Ido Cohen: You should come over.
Nicole: I should.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Um, but you know, I, I, I remember going there and what for me was most ageism. There is something so beautiful about what you're saying. It can help us not just accept the multiplicity of what beauty is, but also the really, maybe, transpersonal idea that we're all going to become everything.
You're going to be beautiful one day, and you're going to be more full bodied. And one day, you will be old. Right, and this, I think for me, it was really fascinating because it made me really see how my idea of sexuality was, in a way, frozen. Thank you. As opposed to the idea that sexuality is this vibrant organism that morphs all the time.
I am not the same sexual being I was five years ago, thank God. Or twenty years ago. It's, which is, I think it, I always love the studies that show that the age that enjoys sex most are like the golden years. People who are 65 and above report the most amount of pleasure from sex. And I think probably if we read it, a lot of it is about, because they have a fuck that mentality about, we're all saggy and like, then wrinkled and like, all of that societal stuff we're talking about, those suits are kind of, and we reach into the future.
And bring that here.
Nicole: Yeah, that was, I think, one of the biggest stretches expansions for me when I stepped into the dungeon and I saw people that were flogging it well into the 60s, 70s. And I was like, Oh yeah, people do. Oh yeah. You know, and I'd never been in a sexual space where I could see that other than the dungeon.
And it was such a. It was such an experience just to be there in that moment and watch that and think, yeah, that. Will be me one day. That will be me in that vitality. Uh, and again, cultural scripts, the golden bachelor, right? Like all this sort of, I'm so happy that that exists with all the problematic nature of whatever we want to say about it all.
It's creating a huge experience for the psyche to imagine a whole new world because it's a new script. And I'm so excited for that. We have to celebrate these things for the beauty that they are. Right. And so I am hoping that As we continue to step into a world that embraces more pleasure. Let's go the shame.
Part of this will be the discussion. What is sex after 60 look like? Right? What does sex and connection to myself look like? What is this edge of intimacy and vulnerability? And God, that is so hot. How fucking hot is it when you're in that vulnerable edge and you're on the same page and you see one another?
Like. God, it's so beautiful. And I think people forget that, you know, it's like this idea of sex of like the dungeon and the whips and the aggression. And it's like, my God, when we have a deep conversation and we're on the same page and I see you looking into me, MMM. MMM. MMM. You know? Like, wow!
Dr. Ido Cohen: Chocolate dessert.
Absolutely. Exactly. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I don't have anything to add. I'm just relishing in the deliciousness of what you just said.
Nicole: Good. We can stay there.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Great.
Nicole: Yeah.
Dr. Ido Cohen: When I came to the United States 13 years ago. In the context of what we're talking, the two main things I noticed was one, why do Americans, every opportunity, every Halloween, every festival, the first thing they do is get naked.
Nicole: Yeah.
Dr. Ido Cohen: What's that about?
Given, given, my embodied experience was how. Puritanical and repressive, you know, like, Oh, this is a very interesting clash that I'm noticing. And the second thing was there's an annual fair in San Francisco called the Fulton street fair, which is basically a celebration of all queer BDSM, every sexual.
And so people are. Basically having sex in the streets and eversion and I remember having a similar experience to you like oh wow look at the wide array right of ages bodies Diverse connections, this shape with this shape with that object, and this twosome with that third thing on that contraption, and just seeing, seeing my structures kind of like collapse and expand at the same time.
Nicole: Yeah,
Dr. Ido Cohen: I think what you're saying and what we're saying is a really good place to start practice, like expose yourself to things that are going to help you both disintegrate and expand, and don't worry, I always tell people, if you want to integrate, if you want to grow, you have to disintegrate first. It doesn't work any other way, right?
You can't keep shoving things inside without deconstructing the thing that's trying to keep you the same way.
Nicole: As painful as that is,
Dr. Ido Cohen: you know, it's just liberating. You know, as someone who, uh, my house burned down last year, 95 percent of my belongings. I know. So that's an interesting response because my experience of it was, it was, don't get me wrong.
It was a logistical nightmare and a huge financial loss. But on a deep level, I could see why it was extremely necessary and the disintegration was less painful than I thought it would be. It brought the right, the space I needed to actually bring the truth and structures I actually wanted.
Nicole: Right. Yeah.
That freedom. That space.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Yeah. The space.
Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. And if I can be a beautiful butterfly in this space, right, in terms of just thinking What you're talking about of disintegrating and letting go and having that expansion, you know, the tears that I had on that floor about having sex before marriage and all of the ways that I've cried along this journey to get to where I'm at now where at the beginning I was like, Oh, I don't have shame, right?
That took so many stretching moments of disintegration where I was so confused and I, not to say that orgasms are the center of existence, of course, but I will say, to get to a space of multi orgasmic pleasure for all of that, I'm really happy that I disintegrated all of those things and all of that journey.
So I hope that, That, uh, I'm excited to see at 70, what's going on up in this body over here. It's going to be good.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Hopefully we will do a, uh, another podcast when you're 70, which
Nicole: yeah, cause even when you're talking about like, like a Mardi Gras power flip, right. We get naked then I'm like, okay, we'll see.
This is fascinating. Right. Cause then that creates the psyche where it's fun to play with these things. How much of our. interests sexually are so shaped by the culture and these power dynamics that we don't even notice that are constant. And then I'm like, okay, that's, that's our three of the pot, you know, like, I got to cut myself off at some point from our exploration.
Cause I could just keep going.
Dr. Ido Cohen: You just triggered a whole other thing for me about how I see those spaces is like, you know, I always find Halloween fascinating because I think it's like the permission for your actual inner archetype to come out. Sure. It's like, okay, what's, what, this is what's actually.
Nicole: So Topsy turvy the dungeon. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Here we go. Well, I will hold some space first before I close. I always like to check in just to make sure there wasn't anything on your heart that we didn't hit that you want to share with the listeners. Otherwise I can guide us towards a closing question.
Dr. Ido Cohen: No, there's a lot more to say, but I feel. I know. Okay, good, good, good.
Nicole: All right. Well, the closing question that I ask every guest is What is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal?
Dr. Ido Cohen: The most attractive part of you is probably the thing you think is the most weird.
Nicole: Mmm. Oof. Simmer on that one.
So learning to have the spaces where you can express that and have that be seen and, you know, just pinning back to everything we've been talking about, the expansion, the pleasure that comes from opening up about those more sensitive, vulnerable parts of ourselves.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Absolutely. And the person who's going to really like your weirdness.
It's probably the person you want to hang out.
Nicole: Yeah. Isn't that a fun projective question? I just love, you know, as a psychologist, I'm sure you, yeah, you understand, I'm like, who, where are they going to, where are you going to take this one? You know, like, it's really open door, uh, well, it has been such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.
Thank you for, uh, thank you for having me. Yes. Yeah. Where do you want to plug for people who are connecting with you and want to learn more about your work? Yeah.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Sure. So the best place to reach me is either on my email, which is ito, Cohen, C O H E N. therapy, uh, at gmail. com, Instagram, same thing, Dr. Ito Cohen or the integration circle on Instagram too.
Nicole: Thank you for joining us today.
Dr. Ido Cohen: Thank you for having me.
Nicole: Yeah. That was so fun. So thank you. I'll cut it there. Yeah. If you enjoyed today's episode, then leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast. And head on over to modernanarchypodcast. com to get resources and learn more about all the things we talked about on today's episode.
I want to thank you for tuning in and I will see you all next week.
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