Woman on Fire (14 page)

Examples: Decide when, how, what position to have sex. Complain about how your partner got something wrong that they did for you out of love.

COMPLAINING:
Complain about things instead of addressing them in a constructive way—you probably like the attention that complaining gets you (see Controlling Behavior) and yet it always takes you away from the present experience and from being able to receive

Examples: Complain about your body, about your pleasure, about sex, about the attention you get or do not get, about how your partner does it, about their inadequacies, and then wonder why they are avoiding being sexual with you.

DISSOCIATION:
Check out mentally during an experience, or parts of the experience become inaccessible emotionally, usually due to past trauma (this is a common reaction to sexual assault/abuse)

Example: During consensual sex your partner touches you in a
particular way (or during a pelvic exam something happens) and triggers a painful memory, so you “leave your body” mentally and are only present in a physical sense.

UNDOING:
Attempt to make amends by doing something to try to undo the harm you caused so as to smooth it over and not to actually grow or change the situation in the future

Example: You scream and act out in an emotionally aggressive way with your lover, and then you offer sex, a massage, or to make them dinner to help them feel better, yet the next time you get upset you react the same way.

SUBLIMATION:
Channel unacceptable impulses, thoughts, and emotions into more acceptable ones; use suppressed (erotic) energy somewhere else

Example: You aren't having as much sex as you really want, so you busy yourself with a creative or work project or physical workouts and funnel the energy there.

HUMOR:
Make inappropriate jokes as a response to a tense or difficult situation (humor can be a useful stress reducer when appropriate); humor can be a form of sublimation

Example: You feel uncomfortable with or even angry about a friend's choice to have an abortion and you make jokes about how much easier it will be to not have that stinky crybaby to take care of.

FANTASY:
Use imagination to escape problems without addressing them; channel unacceptable feelings or unattainable desires into imagination

Examples: You are dissatisfied with your sexual life and are constantly preoccupied with your fantasy life instead, maybe to the point where you begin to have unrealistic expectations of your partner based on your perfect fantasy. You watch porn compulsively while avoiding addressing sexual issues in your relationship.

IDENTIFICATION:
Take on someone else's characteristics in order to avoid something difficult

Example: Your partner is controlling, maybe even violent, so you
eat what they like, have the sex they like, or mimic their behaviors to keep the peace.

INTELLECTUALIZATION:
Overuse of thinking, reasoning, and critical analysis to distance yourself emotionally from an unpleasant experience

Example: Overanalyze the mechanics of your sex life rather than being intimate or having sex, and push through whatever is blocking you. It's easier to think about/talk about sex than to do it or feel something about it.

COMPENSATION:
You feel insecure or anxious about some part of yourself, so you build up another part in order to avoid feeling that insecurity

Example: You don't feel sexually desirable, so you work hard at being smart and competent in the hope that you will still be attractive.

We tend to feel like “I'm the only one. No one else does this.” But it's not true. Everyone learns to defend, overcompensate, or behave in ways that can be manipulative, controlling, withdrawing, or passive-aggressive because most of us simply do not grow up in families where people are direct, speak up for themselves in ways that make them powerful, and communicate respectfully. We don't learn healthy ways to ask for what we want. That leaves us mimicking poor behaviors to get our wants and needs met. And because sexuality tends to stay largely in the closet, we can be doubly unskilled with how we show up here because of our anxiety and inexperience.

All this said, our defensive behaviors are not always unproductive. Sometimes they are necessary. Because we might be dealing with emotionally unskilled people or people who we cannot trust with our vulnerabilities, we sometimes need our defenses to be up
for our own protection. The key is to learn when they are needed and to make conscious choices not to allow ourselves to be run by unconscious defensiveness.

OVERCOMING EMOTIONAL DEFENSES

1. Choose one or two emotionally defensive patterns you want to change. Start by tracking your pattern for at least two to four weeks. For each instance, note for yourself when it shows up, what happens, what you were feeling inside, and what you could have done differently.
   
2. Then look at your data and look for patterns in your overall experiences. Are there certain people who trigger you most? Certain types of situations? What are they?
   
3. Once you identify some of your patterns, ask yourself, “How can I react differently in these situations? What can I do to experience this differently?” Make a list of alternate ways of dealing with these situations when they come up.
   
4. Begin to practice the new ways of being. The more you choose something new, the easier it will be to not react but rather to choose your response.
   

There is a downloadable worksheet for tracking your defensive behaviors in the
Woman on Fire
online portal.

Part of why our patterns and defenses became vulnerabilities or limitations is because of the neural patterning that accompanies these
developments. Much research has been done on the way we develop neural pathways in our brains based on our habitual behaviors. The more we engage a particular reaction or thought pattern, the more that neural pathway becomes defined in our brain. You have a particular emotional reaction and the neural pathway forms. Each time you have that reaction, the neural pathway is strengthened. Each time a similar situation occurs, you are already programmed to react in that particular way by the neural pathway. Eventually the reaction becomes automatic. This is part of why it's so hard to learn to react differently and where the term “knee-jerk” reaction comes from. Knock on a knee and it always kicks.

It requires effort to consciously choose a new response or action. But the good news is that as you choose something new, a new neural pathway is created for that new behavior or way of thinking. It doesn't feel natural because it's new, and the pathway is not nearly as strong, so it will require real effort to choose the new way. But each time you do, you strengthen that new pathway and the possibility of this new response becomes much greater. And even more encouraging: as you develop the new neural pathway, the old one weakens. So it becomes easier and easier to choose the new way and release the old knee-jerk response until it's no longer a habit.

I don't want to be at the mercy of my emotions. I want to use them, to enjoy them, and to dominate them.

—O
SCAR
W
ILDE

Emotions and how we react to them are not uncontrollable, but you would think so in the ways many people are often controlled by
them. Think about the times when your emotions have felt the biggest and most all-encompassing. How did they become that way? It's likely you were in a situation that was so counter to what you needed that you became overwhelmed by your emotional misalignment. Becoming a powerful emotional woman involves learning to use your emotions as a guide for where you are and to identify your needs and wants so you can move through difficult emotions more gracefully and rapidly.

When you are sad, depressed, jealous, angry, in a rage, or resentful, your emotions are telling you to reconnect to your source or center and get clear. You can move your emotional state gradually to a better place by consciously choosing it. You can also stay right where you are, attached to feeling bad by feeding the negative thought patterns, and therefore the emotions that keep you feeling bad.

Thoughts impact and sometimes create feelings that we then experience in the body as emotions. So a big part of the work in shifting out of harmful emotional places that lack personal power and agency is to work on what you are thinking and the perspective you are coming from with your experiences. Emotional patterns can look like this:

As you work on shifting your perceptions and ways of thinking about your sexuality, pleasure, and your body, it can be gratifying because it frees you from your habitual reactions that keep you replaying the same story over and over, that keep you in the same unhealthy relationships, the same conversations, and dating the same type of person. Sometimes you must remind yourself that your lover is not your father or mother and that they do not have the same
motivations. You can choose not to create the same old dynamic by playing a different role.

Within our patterns are our life lessons. Once you understand the lesson and you cease to think the old story, feel the old feelings, and behave in your old habitual ways, you release the pattern. You got it. Move on to the next piece of growth. There is always more to learn.

Many people experience very strong emotions related to sex, for a variety of reasons. Emotion is experienced in the body, and because sex involves the body in often intense ways, there can be a strong feedback loop between sex, the body, and our emotions. Sex is powerful—it makes us feel extremely vulnerable. It's a place where we open up to another human being on a physical, emotional, and spiritual level, and we often allow ourselves to be raw. If you are letting go of control and really allowing yourself to experience true full-body pleasure, it is extremely vulnerable. The bliss and release that can happen is rarely experienced in any other way. Allowing someone else to see you in a sexually vulnerable place feels risky for a lot of people.