215. Cumming into Presence and Integrating Jealousy in Non-Monogamy with Dr. Dave Rabin

[00:00:00] Nicole: Welcome to Modern Anarchy, the podcast, exploring sex, relationships, and liberation. I'm your host, Nicole.

 On today's episode, we have Dr. Dave join us for a conversation all about the ever expansive journey of knowing thyself. Together we talk about feeling our own damn feelings, the power of presence. And cultivating safety within the body. 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, oh, I thought this title was so funny, but I thought of this coming into Pleasure. Yes. This is the right episode title for this show, right? The Energy of this Show, non Monogamy Coming Presence, mindfulness in this title. Hmm. Chef's Kiss. Right. Hello, dear listener. So happy to have you here.

And yeah, a lot of what Dr. Dave and I talk about today is the power of mindfulness, right? The power of presence. And this is something that is crucial for all areas of life, right? If you wanna feel pleasure, you gotta be right here, right now, feeling it in your body. And we talk about this specifically with psychedelics and the narratives.

What makes a good trip? What makes a bad trip, right? And also with non-monogamy, dear listener, you know. That I wrote my dissertation on non-monogamy and was training in psychedelic assisted psychotherapy. If you listen to year four, you know all of this at the same time, which means my concepts of non-monogamy and psychedelic assisted psychotherapy are deep parallels with one another.

They both are non-specific amplifiers. Right. Psychedelics being a non-specific amplifier of your emotional and embodied state and non-monogamy, I would say is a non-specific amplifier of attachment. You wanna learn your attachment style. Yeah. Yeah, take that drug. Hello. Hello. Oof. And mindfulness being a key to riding the waves of non-monogamy, the waves of psychedelics, and really any challenging experience in life.

Right? You know, I'm a rock climber. That is also something that I've had to use a lot of mindfulness because it's a real risky sport with serious injuries that can happen, right? And so learning to work with the mind to be present is so key in today's episode. And I really hope you can learn and take away something new around mindfulness and implementing it within your sex life and relationships.

And it also ties into so many of the things I talked about in my book, the Psychedelic Jealousy Guide, which lives on Modern Anarchy podcast.com. It is a living, breathing document because it's 2025 and hey, let's save some paper and have a. Free book online. Hello. And so it is something that I add as I continue to go through my career and my clinical research and work.

And so if you're curious about mindfulness and how to deal with jealousy and really expanding on today's episode, I highly recommend going over to my website and reading that book for free and really sinking even deeper into these topics that we just touched the tip of the iceberg with today. So. Ah, dear listener, I'm having lots of fun in this space with you and I hope that you are too.

Alright, if you are ready to liberate your pleasure, you can explore my offerings and resources like the Psychedelic Jealousy Guide on my website@ modernanarchypodcast.com. And I also wanna 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 to all people.

So thank you. If you wanna join the Patreon community, get exclusive access into my research and personal exploration, and you can head on over to patreon.com/modern Anarchy podcast, also linked in the show notes below. And with that, dear listener, please know that I'm sending you all my love and. Let's tune in to today's episode.

So then the first question that I ask every guest is, how would you like to introduce yourself to the listeners?

[00:05:09] Dr. Dave: Uh, well, I'm Dr. Dave. I am a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, and I, uh, spent my life studying chronic stress and just fascinated by consciousness and the way we make meaning and, uh, understand the world.

And I study mostly how to use, uh, new and old tools from different traditions, uh, and to apply them through technology to make mental health and wellbeing more accessible to the world.

[00:05:37] Nicole: Mm-hmm. Very excited to have you here today.

[00:05:40] Dr. Dave: It's a pleasure to be here.

[00:05:41] Nicole: Mm-hmm. I'm thinking, first, I'm curious how you see psychedelics playing a role in the future of sex and relationship therapy.

[00:05:50] Dr. Dave: That's a great question. So I think, I think there's a huge role for it. You know, any, anyone who's read the history of MDMA therapy, which is now, you know, within a year of FDA clearance for PTSD, uh, knows that MDMA therapy was originally used quite often in couples therapy. And this was used a lot in the seven, late seventies and early eighties in particular, uh, with great success.

And, you know, MDMA is, is a fully psychedelic experience of. For what people haven't aren't familiar with it. It's, um, three four methylene dioxide methamphetamine, which is a methamphetamine analog that increases activity in the brain like Adderall does, or any amphetamine does. But it does so in a way that's focused on the emotional cortex of the nervous system, which is very interesting.

Uh, and on particular serotonin receptors that help us to feel overall activating this part of the brain and the emotional system helps us to feel safe and in control and present, um, and just radically like accepting of ourselves and others around us. And so when we have those kinds of experiences, which you can also have with other psychedelics in the right context, um, in addition to MDMA, um, but MDMA is just one of the best examples that it just helps you, it, it just radically amplifies your sense of empathy.

Which is your, your ability to feel someone else's feelings, um, and to put yourself in somebody else's shoes, um, fully, openly. And that of course allows you to see the world from somebody else's perspective. And when you have that clarity, all of a sudden all of the other bullshit just seems to kind of fade away.

[00:07:33] Nicole: Right, right. In the right set and setting. Yeah. I feel like that's the biggest piece of all of it, right?

[00:07:41] Dr. Dave: That's all of it. Yeah. Yeah. All of it's context. And when you actually talk to people who have been through the MDMA trials with maps mm-hmm. Um, when you talk to a lot of those patients, many of them will say that.

They didn't believe that the MDMA they were given from maps was the same. Was was MDMA. Like they didn't believe it was the same drug that they were TA that they had taken before. 'cause many of them had taken MDMA recreationally before and they had taken it in uncontrolled un non-therapeutic settings or in parties or whatever, some of which can be great, but Right.

But not controlled, you know, people aren't getting the same kind of benefit. Right. And the, the set and setting and the container, um, it's a huge, it makes a huge difference in the outcome.

[00:08:25] Nicole: Totally. Absolutely. Yeah. 'cause immediately as you were saying that, I was thinking about everyone's story of, of being at a rave and being way too o overstimulated feeling, you know, like, I need out of here.

This is too stressful. This is too intense. Right? So it makes so much sense that when you're in that sentence setting of, you know, the clinical trials, there's that safe container, that calm container, not, you know, a rave of people in a crowd bumping up next to you. And so you'd have such a different experience on that drug and the places that it could take you, um, compared to, yeah, people exploring, I've heard of stories of, and even in my own life of like exploring like novel sort of relational dynamics and non-monogamy and how that, you know, the non-specific amplifier, it is a stimulant.

Right. And so if the set and the setting gets complex, it can take you to really difficult places and to sit with that sort of amplified stimulant, um, experience in the body if you're processing things can also be really difficult. So yeah, the set and setting, creating such radical different, um, experiences for people who are on the drug.

[00:09:33] Dr. Dave: Yeah, absolutely. And this is actually one of my favorite things to talk about because I am a trained MDMA assisted therapist and ketamine therapist, and, uh, we do a lot of work with folks in this, in very difficult situations, um, with different, you know, trauma and depression disorders. And what's really interesting is when you work with enough people, you start to learn, you know, what is a bad trip, right?

Yeah. What, like, what actually happens that results in that happening? Because it's not just a thing that randomly happens, like most people talk about, right? It's not, it doesn't just. Happened to be that you, you know, had, you know, 50 great psychedelic or 10 great psychedelic experiences and then your 11th is just randomly a bad trip.

Right. It's actually goes back to what you said about when stuff starts to come up for you, because psychedelic psychedelics are mind revealing substances. So that that term was coined by Aldi Huxley and Humphrey Osmond in the 1950s to describe a psychedelic drug that induces like a dream-like state almost, where you can witness what's beneath your awareness or your conscious, normal conscious awareness.

What Freud and Carl Young called the subconscious 'cause all the stuff that is going on underneath the surface that we're not normally aware of in our day to day, but we have to focus on survival and work related responsibilities because it would be distracting. And so we have the ability to. To tap into that space.

And psychedelic medicines allow us to be able to start to pull from that space. But that space has everything in it. Our subconscious has all the negative, unpleasant stuff we never want to think about, and it also has the opposite spectrum of all the best joy, most joyful moments of our lives and all the greatest feelings and everything between.

And so if a psychedelic is a non-specific amplifier of awareness, which is really what it means, then you can get exposed to anything from down there. And if you're in an environment that's not safe for that stuff to come up. Then we repress it and we say, no, no, I don't wanna, I don't want to think about that right now, or I don't wanna totally wanna deal with that right now.

But that thing is coming up because you are in a psychedelic, mind revealing state of expanded awareness. So it wants to be addressed and there's a reason why it's coming up. And in the therapeutic container with two therapists in a quiet room and some music, we can guide you through allowing those complex and often painful emotions to come up to be processed so that they can be passed on.

Right? Sure. They can literally be like lifted off of you like a like wait, you've been carrying for years and in the unsafe setting. That's uncontrolled. Or any setting, like even being around your family in the wrong environment where you don't realize, like, you don't wanna talk about like your childhood trauma.

You, you can suppress that and have a bad trip. And, and that's effectively, uh, that I think it's really that difference, that fundamental difference of being safe enough to allow these emotions and whatever it is that you find in your experience, your journey to come up versus repressing it or suppressing it, is the difference between, you know, having the greatest transformative truth of your life and or the worst.

[00:12:52] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. That makes me think of like, uh, we talk about the inner healing wisdom of the ways that Yeah. Particularly I think about, again, the set and setting, right? Um, when you're in the setting of a therapeutic container, the, the point is to. That's an, uh, maybe there sometimes the point is to experience pleasure if you've been, you know, in a depressed state.

So I don't wanna say the point is to work on stuff, um, but if that's your intention of, of bringing up some of those things like yeah, the body, the brain, when you're in that safe container is going to the soul even maybe is going to bring that up out of the unconscious. And then this is where I do think about the feelings of vulnerability, that when you're on a psychedelic, like it produces that sort of state of vulnerability because you are in that altered state of consciousness.

If you've had traumas that are kind of connected to that state of vulnerability, that lack of control, it can really bring that up. And then part of the set and setting conversation, though, I, I, when I think about set though, I, I, I think about when you are at that rave. It doesn't necessarily, it can for some people, right?

It depends on where you're at. But I think about mindfulness, I think about the ability to actually track your thoughts. Notice when there is a deep thought of something complex and watch it go on by like clouds, and then go back to the music. Like, I do think that we have that sort of ability in the psychedelic, depending on your experience with that.

Let me be clear. Like some people don't have any sort of like muscle built with meditation and mindfulness to kind of notice that, let it go and come back to the present moment of the, the music's going right here, right now, you know? Um, so, so I, I do think that psychedelics like it really, again, it, there is more control I feel like, than sometimes we talk about in the way of like bringing up the unconscious, um, complex.

[00:14:47] Dr. Dave: Yeah. There's a ton of control that we have over our experiences that we, I. We're not taught that we have.

[00:14:53] Nicole: Right.

[00:14:53] Dr. Dave: Um, I think in a lot of eastern and tribal traditions, young children are taught breath work and mindfulness training, which is effectively the way that we, that we restore control over our bodies and restore in intentional intentionality and awareness and our power effectively to the present moment.

Yeah. Uh, and there's only so many things that we can control. There's way more things around us that we can't control.

[00:15:21] Nicole: Right.

[00:15:22] Dr. Dave: And the problem is that when we start to think about all the things that we can't control that are going on around us, we start to forget that we are actually in control. And so the ways that we remind ourselves traditionally, you know, from ancient wisdom, um, of ways that we remind ourselves that we're in control are like what I would call the four principles of control, which are number one, intentional breathing.

So just not worrying about how you breathe, just choosing to direct your attention to your breath and just taking a deep breath in through your nose and out through your mouth and just trying to fill your lungs as much as you can with each breath, right? And empty your lungs as much as you can with each breath.

You don't need to do anything complicated or counter anything. And just feeling the breath and that shows you in that moment that you're in control of your breath. In any moment, you can be in control of your breath. The only times that our bodies prevent us from doing that is when we're actually running from a lion.

So you, if you show yourself that you're in control of your breath, then you're overriding the system and you're reminding yourself, Hey, I'm not actually being pursued by a lion right now. Like, I can actually, I do have time to take a breath. Right? So that's number one most important principle. Second one is intentional movement.

You'll start to see a theme here with intentional movement. You can just move yourself around anytime, right? Of where you're sitting. You can stretch, you can, you know, do little things, stand up, sit down, whatever. Um, but that's showing yourself that you're in control of your body. Right? Third one is intentional listening.

[00:16:55] Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:55] Dr. Dave: Right? We can always listen. We can always shut up and just. Listen to starting with our breath and then expanding out to the feeling of our bodies or anything that's, we're hearing, seeing, listening is a full body experience. Right? It's, it's hearing, it's seeing, it's listening with our eyes closed, it's smelling, it's tasting, it's just experiencing everything around us.

[00:17:20] Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:20] Dr. Dave: We are sensory organs as humans. So by practicing listening, we learn to train our ability to sense different things that are going on around us. Then the other one that's kind of, I, I clump with listening is singing. Because singing is like listening and breathing together. 'cause you have to do, you have to breathe properly and you have to listen to be able to sit.

[00:17:40] Nicole: Sure. Yeah.

[00:17:41] Dr. Dave: Um, and that is also a way of controlling your voice, right? Mm-hmm. So that's another element of control. And then the fourth one is intentional touch. Mm-hmm. Touching yourself, consensually, touching another human. Having another human consensually touch you. Holding a pet. All of these things are radically activating of our safety response system, dating back over a hundred million years to ancient mammals who were first nursed by their mothers and their newborns.

Right? Right. Like that is our most fastest pathway to safety in the brain. And body is sewing touch, right?

[00:18:16] Nicole: Absolutely. So you take the psychedelic, it's hitting you. You start to feel it, you go, oh no. Oh no. My chest, my breathing. Right. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. And then the person panics, right? Compared to that, oh, this is happening.

I'm gonna take the deep breath. I'm gonna ride this wave, I'm gonna catch this wave. It's gonna ride me to shore. I know this will be over at some point. And I have the ability to ground, maybe it feels nice to ask for touch from someone next to me. Maybe I don't need that at all actually right now. Right.

Like being able to like really ground yourself. Self. Yeah. Self. Oh yeah. Totally, totally. I, when I get, um, stressed or activated, I really like to like, bring my hand onto my chest and like compress mm-hmm. Compress hard or even like rub my sternum there, like, Ooh. Ground. Yeah. 'cause as a rock climber, I, I, I feel it all the time as someone, um, that practices non-monogamy, I feel it all the time.

Right. So there's all these different ways where, you know, I'm, I'm stretching and growing and expanding, and anytime I do public speaking, I feel it. Right. And I think it's important to remember that like, yeah, that first initial thought of, oh, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fail, or whatever. That is often outside of our control, but the response to that thought of, I'm not gonna engage.

I'm gonna let it pass by. And then I feel like that is so crucial, whether we're talking about psychedelics or sex, right? Like these states of, of flow when we're trying to get out of our default mode network, I really see so many parallels between riding the waves of the psychedelic experience and really being in the flow and the pleasure of sexual and erotic connection, um, as important spaces where we need to get out of that, like deep, um, inner dialogue and, and monkey brain in terms of Buddhism thought, right?

[00:20:04] Dr. Dave: Yeah. It's about being present, right? These are, these are all activities, like activities that get us into a flow state or, um, psychedelic experiences done properly. And, you know, sexual state, sexual interactions and intimacy. These are all. Extraordinarily present experiences that are a bit unusual from our normal day-to-day where we are trying, you know, trying to, we're doing one thing and then we have like 10 things in the background trying to juggle at the same time.

Um, so we're not present at all, um, most of the time. And that's what the yogis and the monks and the expert meditators of the world have been training for thousands of years to access all the time, which is like a waking, walking meditative state. Um, and so there's these different techniques around meditation and breathing, um, and of course around touch and other soothing sensations that help to remind us that we're in control and that trains our filter in our brains to filter out all the useless and untrue thoughts to us that.

Our, which is actually the principle of cognitive behavioral therapy. The core principle is thought questioning, which is just to ask yourself when you have a thought, because not all thoughts are created equal. There's a whole bunch of garbage in there. They're trying to attention that is really like vam vampire thoughts.

Like they can't come in unless you invite them in by paying attention to them. But once they get invited in, they literally just drain you of all of your energy until you get rid of them. Right. It's like the classic definition of a vampire. And they are thoughts about like how we're not worthy of love.

How we're, you know, people don't like us. It's hard to have, it's hard for me to have relationships. Why are things so hard for me? What's wrong with me? Yeah. Why can't I sleep when everyone else can sleep? Well, guess what? Nobody can sleep. Mm-hmm. Right? But everybody was born to sleep and we were all, you know, and we were born to fuck, and we were born to.

Have ecstatic experiences and all of these things are core, part and parcel with being human. So if we res, you know, again, going back to the theme of like the Buddhist theme of, you know, going with the flow or, or resisting, right, which Bruce Lee talked about a lot too, is this idea of like, you know, if we just accept how things are with ourselves, so everything's okay, we're all good the way we are, we could cultivate and nourish this root of safety in our bodies.

That helps us to have these, um, more deeper intimate experiences with ourselves, with others by being vulnerable. And vulnerability is the source of healing.

[00:22:38] Nicole: Totally.

[00:22:39] Dr. Dave: So psychedelic states and intimacy are particularly interesting because they have a similar degree of access to vulnerability that promotes healing and it's based on a foundation of trust.

In yourself, in the people you're with in that are accompanying you in the experience. Um, but it's an extremely, they're both extremely, like one emotionally and often physically intimate states and they overlap also. Well in terms of when you're with the right person, people have, you know, tremendously, you know, even I would hesitate to say like spiritual, yes.

Experiences in sexuality and orgasm, climax, you know? Yeah. Life changing experiences. Sure. In the relationships. It's really interesting.

[00:23:28] Nicole: Totally. Even like my own experiences of breath orgasms and psychedelics like that I've still yet to experience in my ordinary state of consciousness, but that heightened sensation, I think there's so much power to what these, you know, there's so much of work of the cognitive, how we process the cognitive of psychedelics, but really the somatics, oh man.

I'm so thankful that, uh, I was practicing yoga before I went to the field of psychology and started teaching yoga. And so I had that sort of like grounding in, in the body and mindfulness. And then I know you did psychiatry, so I did clinical psychology and there was no discussion of the body whatsoever and any of my five years of training.

Right. I've gotten some of it at the places I've trained at for psychedelics 'cause it's clearly such an important piece. But the actual a PA training has nothing about the body, which is horrendous in my opinion, that any sort of mental health practitioner would come out without that level of understanding, but that's another talk for another day.

Um, and so when I, when I think about the power of psychedelics to reconnect people with their bodies, oof. To truly turn off the, the cognitive brain and reconnect. But I understand how, how complex that is, right. To be present in it. We have to understand that the, the past, you know, presence, presence, presence, but the present moment is informed by your past experiences relationally, right?

And, and as it's happening in your present moment, you're creating a narrative of who you are in the world and your existential meaning making. So it's really complex of, I help clients be able to be in the present moment, unpack the past and come back to the present moment. 'cause we can't just do one or the other, you know?

It really is sitting with both.

[00:25:14] Dr. Dave: With both. Yeah, absolutely. Um, and I think to, to break that down even further, sure. Right. There's, uh, there's a process that you just described, right? The process is helping somebody access more of the present moment experience. Then there's a thought pattern, there's a feeling thing that happens in the present.

And then there's a thought, thoughts that happen about the feelings. Right? And the thoughts are informed by the past,

[00:25:40] Nicole: right.

[00:25:40] Dr. Dave: And our fears of the future. Right. And then we process and work on that, either alone or with somebody else helping out us unpack it, and then we try to come bring them back to the present, right?

Yep. Which is basically the meditative practice of, of noticing. Noticing where your thoughts come in, they come in, they distract you, and you bring yourself back to the present. Right? Right. So that, that process is what's happening basically all the time for everybody. It's just people don't necessarily realize that it's happening or that they've been, they're supposed to be practicing the bringing back to the present part.

And that's like the whole exercise of, uh, and lifelong practice of meditation and brain training. But it's, it's cool 'cause it's super easy and free. But I think the point is that, you know, if you realize that. That you can do that, then you can do that in all different parts of your life and it becomes, you know, this, this just incredible tool.

Mm-hmm. Um, and that you can choose what you think about. And I think when we talk about therapy or, or therapy or healing or, um, these convers, you know, the conversation that you were starting to get into about how you help transition people between present and past and then back is that a lot of people haven't really learned to just.

Be in that present feeling state.

[00:27:02] Nicole: Oof. There's too much there.

[00:27:04] Dr. Dave: Right. They go straight from feeling to judgment of those feelings and ana analysis of those feelings and like, what does that mean? What does that mean about me? Right. We like literally skip the whole first part of the process. As soon as we start to feel X feeling, start to be like, oh, I immediate judgment.

I like that. I don't like that. Right, right. It's the first thing that happens.

[00:27:28] Nicole: Yeah.

[00:27:28] Dr. Dave: And then the second thing that happens is what does that mean? And then what does that mean about me? And it's just rapid, rapid, almost immediate automated pattern of thought that we were all basically taught growing up in the Western world.

Yeah. And if you look at what happier people do when they have experiences, they actually just spend 60 to 120 seconds feeling the feeling right before judging it as good or bad. Because feelings are not inherently good or bad. They're literally signals, the emotional signals about stuff that's going on inside or outside of us, or both.

They're no valence, they're not positive or negative. They, we've been taught that certain ones are rewarded by the world or that are good or bad or whatever to think about them. But they're just signals and they don't really have any positive or negative. And we can learn and experience joy from all of them.

Mm-hmm. So if, you know, but it, but we have to feel them first. Oh. And so that's a lot of what we teach people with everything from, you know, our, our psychotherapy to psychedelic assisted therapy to using tools like Apollo is like how do you teach yourself? 'cause every single human on the face of the earth has disability.

How do you teach yourself or remind yourself to get back to that state of like innocent childhood presentness that your body remembers? But you might have like forgotten up here. Yeah. Just get back to that state in your body. Yeah. Feeling your body and just being present in the moment enough to feel your own damn feelings.

[00:29:00] Nicole: Right.

[00:29:00] Dr. Dave: Right. And same for all of us. Like I had to teach myself how to do this. I didn't learn how to do this growing up. So even. What we have to learn along the way. And then I find myself teaching my patients to do it. Right. Totally. And you realize it's like, oh, this is actually really important and we don't teach anybody how to do it.

[00:29:18] Nicole: For sure. Absolutely. Yeah. I was giggling when you were first talking about it. 'cause it's like, ugh. As a psychotherapist, that's immediately where my brain goes. What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it mean? You know, it's like, ah, Nicole, just feel it for a moment, you know? Damn.

Um, but it's so hard, especially particularly like grief, sadness, right? Especially under capitalism. Those aren't productive feelings and you gotta get to work. So stop, you know?

[00:29:41] Dr. Dave: Um, and so I Well, on that, on that note,

[00:29:46] Nicole: yeah. You wanna go there?

[00:29:46] Dr. Dave: Well, no, just for a second. Because grief

[00:29:49] Nicole: Yeah.

[00:29:49] Dr. Dave: Is actually, this is commonly misunderstood.

Um, I know you, I know you get this, but, um, grief is the process of. Overcoming and adapting to loss and the sad feelings that come from loss. So grieving is not, and grief are not necessarily bad. Also, they're actually part of the healing process that we go through to overcome and let loss and are feelings that surround loss of anything.

Loss of anything. Loss of like your, uh, favorite restaurant closing just before you got there to the loss of like, uh, a loved one, God forbid. Right? Yeah. All of those things result in a grieving process. Mm-hmm. And for some reason it's easier to grieve over the sandwich than it is over other things, right?

Yeah. But we still engage in the same process. So by teaching folks these kinds of skill sets around grief, like I. You know, it actually helps people to self-heal from the emotional wounds. And we just haven't really done a good job of, of teaching people that, like we just, we just mix up these words all the time, but they actually make a huge difference in terms of how we think about ourselves.

[00:30:57] Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah. This world has a lot to grieve that we haven't had time for. And I appreciated the naming of the different things we can grieve, right? Yeah. That restaurant closing and the pain of that, even someone canceling plans, I have to grieve the day that I thought I was going to have today. You know, and, and of course to the, you know, I don't wanna say deeper or more complex, but, you know, heavier forms of grief that we can experience as humans.

Um, and I, and I always think about when I'm working with clients who are wanting to, um, have more pleasure, not to put the emphasis on the orgasm, but wanting to experience orgasm. And I can always ask that question, when was the last time you cried? Yeah. Where are you in your body? Do you feel comfortable releasing?

Right? Not just pleasure, but also the pain because you don't get to choose one. You know? You really don't. And I think you, I know you can have orgasms if you haven't cried for years, but I think there's more to that. I think there's more embodiment if you could start to learn how to release all of the emotions.

[00:32:06] Dr. Dave: For sure. Yeah, absolutely. And there are certain times and places where that is. Really great to do. Right? It's not necessarily the best thing to do when you're in public, but it might be great to practice at home alone when you're, you know, in, you know, in a comfortable space by yourself to explore your own body and the feelings that come up if you, if you know you haven't cried in a while, like having a good cry every now and then can actually be really helpful.

[00:32:34] Nicole: Yeah. Yeah. I definitely cry in public. I don't, I don't even wanna say controlled, I guess I, I do cry in public. I guess it depends on the context. Um,

[00:32:42] Dr. Dave: yeah, it depends on the context. Totally. I cry when bad movies.

[00:32:44] Nicole: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In public, I've, I've definitely cried over like relationship conversations at a cafe and been like, damn, like, I'm not gonna hold this back.

You know? Of course I'm not like screaming or anything, but there's definitely tears coming down, right? Yeah. It's complex, the spaces where it feels like we can or can't do these certain things. Right.

[00:33:03] Dr. Dave: Well, yeah. It's not that you can or can't, but where do you feel safe letting, right? Like if, like, if we think about crying as.

A physical expression of part of the grieving process. So that's where we're like talking about the mind body connection, common misconception. Also the mind, the body are connected. There's no separation. So the taking grief and sadness and getting it out of our bodies, one of the major ways we do that is by crying, right?

And so that's part of the process. And if we don't allow ourselves to grieve the loss and to cry, you know, even just for like a minute, sometimes we can't let it go. And it's really, really hard and it gets stuck in our bodies and it just wants to get out.

[00:33:47] Nicole: Totally. Yeah. Which it requires numbing right at that point, right?

Like, let me numb from this emotion and hence that experience outward. And yeah, when I think about psychedelics, whoa, what power to really like squeeze the sponge out in terms of emotions and crying to really like, ugh, like I'm ringing out that towel to just feel that there. And. I, I know there's a lot of work with, uh, trauma.

Right, of course. And that's like where we're gonna be at with MDMA for a while. Um, but I also think about the spaces of pleasure, right? When you think about, you know, my work really started with sexual assault survivors and like, what does it mean to go from trauma all the way to pleasure? And I, I really think about what it's gonna mean for people to do this sort of work at home, because I just highly doubt people are so uncomfortable to even have a conversation about the complexities of sexual and erotic experiences and.

People are not gonna feel comfortable in a therapy office connecting with their full erotic pleasure in their body on MDMA. I mean, if people feel that safe and open, like may, you know, more power to you, I'd think I'm trying to be realistic of what this looks like, right? And so I am thinking about a world of in the future, you know, when it's illegal recreationally, for people to be able to be at their home in a safe environment and to truly meditate on what it means to reconnect with pleasure in their body through breath alone.

Like even just starting there, I want you to feel that breath in your belly and like feel that into your genitals. And so many people could just have a transformative experience of that alone. And then taking that out as a template into our, you know, ordinary states of consciousness and play. That would be a huge societal shift.

[00:35:44] Dr. Dave: Absolutely. And I think we're starting to get there, uh, because there's just more people who are out there talking about it. And a lot of it comes back to our earlier part of our conversation, which is, you know, how do you, I I work with also similar populations of, of traumatized women as you did and or do.

And you know, I think one of the things that, that it really just keeps coming back to is feeling safe in your own body. Right? Right, right. And if you can feel safe in your own body, then all of your resources that are available, of which there are only a limited supply of blood in your body to feed all of your organs at the same time, all of those resources can be diverted to digestion, immunity, rest, recovery, empathy, all of the good stuff that we want when we're at, you know, just chilling and hanging with our friends, family, partner, et cetera.

Um, and so that. Can be trained through breath, it can be trained through, you know, meditation practices, yoga, you know, hormetic stressors, exercise, you know, sonic cold plunge, Apollo, you know, tool we invented helps to train the body through soothing touch. Mm-hmm. And helps to boost vagal tone and it's improving, it's used by sex therapists, um, and relationship therapists to help women with pelvic trauma.

Mm-hmm. Um, to actually become sexually active and engage and actually find pleasure again through safety in their bodies. Mm-hmm. And I think that's what all of these techniques are all about. Whether you use technology to do it or whether you do it naturally is all about just helping people remember and relearn how to find that safety in their own bodies.

And it's there, the good news is it's there for all of us. Yeah. The hard part it is that we have to learn how to find it right and nourish it.

[00:37:36] Nicole: Yeah, absolutely. And this is where I think about, uh, self-love practices, masturbation really being step one. I understand there are definitely cultural context where, uh, masturbation is sinful.

Something that's forbidden within that cultural paradigm of ideology. But if that's not where someone's at to be able to start there, it's a removing of the variable, of the complexity of another human, which is, you know, again, if you've had past experiences of trauma, you know, even if you have a safe, even like a surrogate partner, right?

Someone who's coming in safe to like, um, or even a pelvic floor therapist, right? Someone that's coming in, we, you know, based on past experiences, we're keeping ourselves safe. So your brain may look at that person, say they are unsafe. I've had past experiences where this type of person has harmed me. So I look at them and they're.

Not safe. And so if we could remove that variable to first start with your body so that you can first feel safe there. The, it's, so it's a simpler equation to start there and then branch out to unpacking the relational patterns and the dynamics that happen in relationship for, uh, sexuality and eroticism.

[00:38:46] Dr. Dave: Yeah. And it helps you learn how to interpret things more accurately as safe or threatening. Right. Because sometimes the threatening signals are real. Yes. And we wanna, we want to, we wanna actually take those seriously when they are, but if we have not taught ourselves how to understand. What is real, what's not real, or we're under the influence of a substance in an unsafe environment that has made us vulnerable and we're suggestible to, you know, misinterpreting and not real.

Then we can set ourselves up for unpleasant interactions, um, that have more long-term issues, um, like emotional entanglement, et cetera, um, with people you don't wanna be entangled with. But I think the, you know, emotions are our energy and our feelings, right? These are all like our energy and we have control over a lot of it by feeling it and understanding it and connecting with ourselves through these practices and, um, psychedelics are one way to do it.

And of course there are all these natural ways to do it too. And I think that over time, you know, it's probably gonna be a little while before MBMA is like legal for everyone

[00:39:52] Nicole: I know,

[00:39:53] Dr. Dave: but it's gonna be legal for medical use hopefully by the end of the year. And, you know, it's a huge step in the right direction.

And ultimately I think, you know, whenever. If these medicines are legally and do become legally accessible, I think that, you know, people will be using them, but they, there's also so many other things that we can teach people who are not good candidates for drugs. Right. And there's just so much, there's so much we can do that's natural that you can start right now, like listening to this at your home.

Like half the, more than half the stuff we're talking about, you can do that with right now,

[00:40:26] Nicole: right?

[00:40:26] Dr. Dave: Yeah. Um,

[00:40:28] Nicole: yes. When you're eating dinner tonight, taste it, you know, taste it. Stop watching the TV show. Stop texting, stop scrolling, and just taste the food that you're eating.

[00:40:42] Dr. Dave: And smell it.

[00:40:44] Nicole: Yeah, totally. The olfactory system, the whole thing right there.

Right. There's so many practices where we could really slow down and, uh, it's just the parallels of that to pleasure are so loud for me because again, it's bringing you into your presence. And so if people are wanting to have better sex and relationships, let's slow down for a moment here in terms of relationships.

When you're getting in a conflict, the first thing I want you to do is to feel into your body. Oh, wow. I am noticing my breath is getting really shallow. Hold on. Dear partner and partners, I need to take a deep breath. Can, can, can you hold me for a moment? I'm, I'm actually realizing a lot is coming up, and if you don't have that level of presence, you are getting into the amygdala.

Fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and you are not in your highest self to have that argument. Right. Uh,

[00:41:39] Dr. Dave: yeah. And I, and I think, you know, going back to the point you made earlier about masturbation mm-hmm. Like getting to know yourself physically, mentally, emotionally is critical to the being human process. And this, you know, being human is about self-discovery in ways and there's been a lot of modern stigma around suppression of sexuality and of masturbation.

And I think it's safe to say at this point that there isn't any evidence that masturbation, scientifically speaking, that masturbation is bad for you. We, we do know, is that practice makes perfect and that if you spend time exploring your body and learning how to be safe and familiar with your own body, then you're probably gonna feel more comfortable out in the world and around other people, especially in intimacy and sexual situations.

So, you know, it goes without saying that we should, I. Be teaching each other that this is okay, and that, you know, healthy sexual exploration with ourselves is actually something that's probably really important for our growth and maturity as human beings.

[00:42:45] Nicole: Totally. Yeah. It's one of the most profound ways to process stress in the body.

Just hands down. Yeah.

[00:42:56] Dr. Dave: Yeah. I mean, it's incredibly powerful for lots of short-term and long-term reasons. Um, but just our overall, like, again, like I think going back to one of the main things is just like feeling comfortable in your own body with what you were given by, you know, whoever. Right? Like what, sure.

Whoever gave birth to you, right? Totally. Like that's like, this is what we were given. Let's, let's learn about it before we, you know, shut it all down.

[00:43:22] Nicole: Totally. And this is where I sink my teeth into the ending of rape culture, because if that's forbidden and you have to. Get it from somebody else. Right.

And you're struggling. That's when people are latching at like attack, you know? Right. Even in partnerships in marriages and monogamous context where people feel like they can't access that level of, um, embodiment 'cause it'd be painful to the other person or, or hurtful because you're experiencing pleasure on your own, that creates a dynamic where you are forced to only get your sexual needs met through that one person.

And then there is force. I am not okay with that. I am so, and again, I hold the cultural context where people, you know, have very different views on what masturbation is. But when I'm moving through the world, I want people to be able to feel like they have bodily autonomy to access pleasure. So that way they're not putting that level of force onto other people out in the world.

And I do think that that is a radical way to end rape culture. And so, yes, this is such an important piece. And I also think that this is radical because people don't have language for their body, particularly women, particularly people who are fems. Like they're, you know, we talk about the orgasm gap between men and women, this very gender dynamic.

Holy fuck. When I see the, the videos of people being unable to identify a clitoris on a map, if people don't know what their man's pubis is, how the hell are you gonna tell your partner? I want you to touch here when you literally don't have the language and or don't touch here when you don't have the language.

[00:45:00] Dr. Dave: Right? Yeah, absolutely. The language is critical. Giving people the words to describe feelings, parts of our bodies, all of it. It's absolutely like, needs to be at the very beginning of the journey.

[00:45:14] Nicole: Yeah, I know. Got a long career ahead of me, which I'm really excited about. There's so much to do.

[00:45:21] Dr. Dave: There's, there's a lot to do.

[00:45:22] Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:23] Dr. Dave: Um, but I think, but there's a lot more tools now than we've had Oh, yeah. Than we've ever had. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity to help people learn and learn in a safe environment and, you know, start to get to know themselves better. And I think, you know, to get, to take it even one step deeper than sexuality, it's really about dispelling this, this concept that I think probably came from Judeo-Christian, you know, religious backgrounds, which is this idea on that pleasure is self-indulgent.

Yep. And that self-indulgence is wrong. You know, obviously gluttony is wrong, greed is not good. Being overconfident and having hubris is not good. But we still need to know ourselves and connect with ourselves. And what's really interesting is if you go back to ancient, uh, Greek culture, and you look at the temple of Apollo and Delphi, the three top inscriptions out of all of the, out of all of the, like the credo is number one.

Like basically the, the things that you should know to have a, to have a good, successful, happy life, basically, number one is know thyself. Number two is nothing to access. Don't be greedy. Number three is. Don't have hubris always present with modesty, humility in the fa, in the face of the unknown. And that is really interesting, right?

And know thyself is number one. Number one. I don't think that's limited to it's physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. It's. It's all encompassing, right? It's like, no, like the whole point of life is to discover who you are in all capacities and what we're capable of in this life, and then, you know, to figure out how to, what we love and to do what we love, right?

And so we can't, you know, if we deny that, then we're not gonna be very happy in our lives.

[00:47:27] Nicole: Yeah, yeah, totally. Well, and that's where I get, you know, a little bit up and uproar about the complexities of. I will first preface with the reality that there are many fantasies that we have in this lifetime that we don't actually want to live out, right?

Like I've used the example before of my fantasy of like being someone who knows how to play the electric guitar and can rock a show. Do I actually wanna invest all the time and energy into learning the guitar? No, and that's okay. That's a fantasy I have, and I'm cool with that. So when I see the research on the top fantasy being threesomes, okay, people, that's your top fantasy.

Okay, let's create a world. I understand not everyone's gonna want to explore non-monogamy, but I don't think we are liberated until the option is potentially viable, right? Currently, for so many people, that option is, uh, wrong. Immoral, gross, impossible. I could never do jealousy. Oh my God. Like it's crazy.

People get so up and uproar about it, and until you can actually look at both and say, like, my fantasy of the guitar, right? I actually don't wanna play. I don't wanna go into the world building of having multiple relationships, and that's okay. But so many people, were not really in the dichotomy where we even get to think about that as a viable option.

And so when we're talking about knowing yourself, and that is the top fantasy that people have. Oh my goodness. What a career, right? In terms of dismantling shame of like, y'all, these are, this is our most common fantasy here. Whoa.

[00:49:06] Dr. Dave: Yeah, absolutely. And it's, it's really dispelling shame, guilt, fear around our bodies, that our bodies are not okay, that are something wrong with us, right?

All of that stuff gets dispelled with non-judgmental self-discovery and self-inquiry. And we have entire sections of our brain that were evolved over millions of years to do just this very thing, right? So we should use those parts like they're there, they're there for a reason. They don't just exist because they exist.

Because we're supposed to have these experiences. Uh, and so, you know, that's, I think there's a lot of opportunity for growth and healing in these domains when people understand that there is a framework for non-monogamy and human culture as there has been in every primate culture, including Bonobos, that are the most similar, uh, to us, and that there's nothing wrong with it.

If we, if we, you know, demonize it and judge it, then we don't even give ourselves the opportunity to properly evaluate it. Um, in a framework where we realized that actually non-monogamy makes a, makes a ton of sense in a lot of ways, right? Like when we have multiple couples that are all living together, it builds connection within the community.

Especially when, you know, again, this is on the framework that everything is completely consensual and that everybody is, has a understanding and you know mm-hmm. Gets more complicated primary partners, et cetera. But, you know, I think in general, if everybody is open and honest and on the same page about what they're doing, then it makes life a ton easier.

Because you have a community, you have a family of people Yeah. That raises their children together. So no single couple's response, a hundred percent responsible for all of the children, and it just creates this. More tribal culture that we are actually probably supposed to be living. Do you know what I mean?

Like we, I know, right? Like we're tribal beings. Yeah, creatures. We're tribal animals and we crave that level of community and connection. And now so many, why is the epidemic loneliness? 'cause we don't have that and we haven't had it for years and we've lost connection to our elders and we've lost connection to ourselves.

And it's like, okay, well now everybody's real lonely so we gotta fix that. But you know, it's an easier to fix problem than we think, um, by just bringing each other together. And I think when people actually understand and non as a possibility in a safe way, it unlocks a lot of opportunity for people. To have much better lives, however, and easier lives.

However, there's one caveat there that I would love to dive into if you want, which is the concept of jealousy, right? Jealousy is the, is the non-monogamy killer and it is the relationship killer in general, right? And, and so, you know, what is jealousy? I think a lot of people don't really, don't really understand that concept very well.

[00:51:57] Nicole: Yeah. I could talk to you for hours, Dave, I could talk to you for hours. I think the first thing I think about is the body again, right? That reaction you have in the body. And then from there, I think about classical conditioning. I think about every single romance that has taught me, if you love somebody else, you're going to leave me.

It means you've never loved me. It means you're cheating on me. And so I think about all of the years that society and culture has reinforced that into my psyche. So deep into my subconscious, like internalized homophobia. It's internalized mono normativity. And so that's deep and that comes up and we go back to that mindfulness conversation.

And then I think about cultural scripts, and I think about the cultures that have practiced non-monogamy and don't have this experience. And I think, wow, if I grew up in a different culture. None of this would be here right now. So when I record with non-monogamous families and they're raising children and they say their kids are in middle school, having two partners and thriving, I say, damn, you are gonna climb so much higher than I ever did when you're my age.

'cause you will not be processing jealousy in the ways. And I think about the set and setting, it's like the psychedelic, if you are doing this with a partner that puts a bad set and setting and isn't honest, isn't forthright, oh my God. It's a horrible, psychedelic experience compared to media.

[00:53:33] Dr. Dave: Yeah. Or somebody who outwardly expresses jealousy to you in any way during the experience.

Right. It's terrible.

[00:53:40] Nicole: I mean, yeah, let's ground together. We can talk about it. You can tell me you're feeling jealous. I'm here for it. 'cause that makes sense. And then I think about like, you know, the ability to co-regulate in that. I think about the ability of, as a rock climber, as someone who's been doing this in my relationships for years, the things that.

I was unable to climb when I first started to now radical. Radical, I think about the experiences of climbers who have climbed walls and cliffs where people had said, you can't, you cannot. It's impossible. And then someone does. And after that you have a whole wave of people that set new prs and go up and even faster, because now it's possible.

So I do think that like as I, at least as I'm moving through this world of particularly, I practice relationship anarchy and try to do it in a non-hierarchical way that understands the realities of, of limited time and space and how I have different orbits of who sees me more frequently than others.

Complex. But, uh, there's so many times where you're like, is this possible? Is this possible? And future generations are not gonna have that question and they're gonna run. And so I do think that the jealousy is such a deep level of cultural conditioning and there's a hundred percent ways to work with it.

If you wanna get up that rock climbing wall, it's possible. It's possible.

[00:54:59] Dr. Dave: Yeah, absolutely. And I love the way you describe your personal experience with it, because I think that's really helpful. Yeah. For people to understand like what comes up when we feel jealous. And going back to what we were talking about earlier, it's really important for people to understand where jealousy falls in the feeling, thinking, experience process.

Right. There's the feeling that is, I'm feeling something in my body that makes me uncomfortable right now. And then the interpretation of that feeling that comes after is through a judgment process. Mm-hmm. That results in us feeling like our abandonment complex has been triggered. Right. That there's a part of me that is losing out or losing something or could lose something because.

Of the way this person I care about so much is acting.

[00:55:53] Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:53] Dr. Dave: Or doing, or whatever. Talking whatever. Right. Their affection that they're showing somebody else is taking away from me. But in reality like that is in, in most cases a misinterpretation that actually results in that happening.

[00:56:07] Nicole: Yeah,

[00:56:07] Dr. Dave: totally.

'cause we manifest our own reality. So if we believe that. Jealous narrative that we were taught, which is learned behavior. It's just learned behavior. It's not personal. It feels super personal. Jealousy is really, is really challenging for people 'cause it feels so personal. It feels like what's wrong with me, this person is not, is showing affection to somebody else and not me right now.

Right. Simple. Even with little kids in school. Right? Yeah. What's wrong with me that this kid I just met who I thought we were best friends is now

[00:56:35] Nicole: Right.

[00:56:35] Dr. Dave: Paying attention, more attention to somebody else.

[00:56:37] Nicole: Right. Right. Yeah. We have that model with kids when you have, you know, parents who have a second child.

That reaction of the first child. What, what, what? Oh no, you are gonna leave me. Right. And all that sort of model. And it is true. If you have 10, 12 kids, your parents might not have space for you. So these are real logistics, right. To sit with, uh, of there is a real fear. Yeah, go ahead. You're having something right.

[00:56:58] Dr. Dave: I was gonna say, but to your point, it doesn't mean anything about you. Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. It doesn't mean anything about you. It doesn't mean you're any less worthy of love. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. It doesn't mean that anything about you.

[00:57:14] Nicole: Yeah.

[00:57:15] Dr. Dave: That, that's, that that's happening.

And that is the misinterpret fundamental misinterpretation that we are taught to make often by just watching other people do it or by not being coached through it when we're really young and first starting to have these complex emotions where we accidentally assume that there's something about us that's a problem or something that about us that is.

Vul extremely vulnerable. That's resulting in this undesirable outcome,

[00:57:40] Nicole: right?

[00:57:41] Dr. Dave: And so if you actually take the time to sit with that feeling, like we were talking about earlier, that comes up when we start to feel the uncomfortability that might trigger feelings of jealousy, like you said, you do, right?

Yeah. You have all this stuff that comes up and then you're like, oh, wait, let's actually think about, let's be mindful about it, right? Mm-hmm. Let's think about these feelings. Let's sit with the feelings without judging them, and then reflect, all of a sudden you have questioned your assumptions Totally.

That may not actually be correct, because what if. What if we had another word? Right. And what if like, most people don't know the word compersion.

[00:58:17] Nicole: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Right. Most of my listeners do. You're in the right community.

[00:58:21] Dr. Dave: Most. Okay, so So what if we had another word that we gave people that helped to explain the pleasure that we can feel?

Oh yeah. When somebody else that we love is experiencing pleasure.

[00:58:29] Nicole: Yeah. Right.

[00:58:30] Dr. Dave: And that all of that is okay and it's actually like super fucking great. Right, right. It's great for everyone.

[00:58:36] Nicole: Totally. The power of words to create more space for your language. But yeah, the amount of times on my journey at the very beginning, like I'd, uh, see some level of, you know, experience with partners with other people, or even not even my own partners, just watching other people have multiple partners.

And then I would put my head space into there of like, what would I feel like if that was my partner touching the side. And then I would have this deep gut like, oh my God, I couldn't. And then the processing of the thought was then. This means this isn't for me. I can't do that. Could you imagine if I looked at any other experience like that?

Oh, I'm nervous to public speak. Oh, this means it's not for me. Oh, I'm nervous to rocking. This means it's not for me. You know, like it's such a like, ingrained thing. And so like, yeah, to get more comfortable with that and sit with that and not fight the experience. That's where I talk a lot with my clients who are exploring this about what it means to get know your, your activation points of, of like, okay, my chest is feeling weird, my belly is feeling strange.

Like this is actually my point, my window of tolerance right here. And to not try to run through that. Do not do the five grams, the psychedelic for your first time. Okay. Like, you know, we wanna build the relationship so you feel safe enough to be able to explore that. And so that's where I start to see the parallels of the psychedelic.

'cause, you know, it's paradigm shifting. We're actively having to dismantle whole paradigm that taught us love like this, and. Uh, this metaphor fails in complexities, but it's just so wild because yes, so much of our sense of security is through the exclusivity of no one else can touch them, no one else's this versus grounding in our individuality, right?

I am a complex bowl of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Dave, you are a brownie. And like we could just, you know, expand that metaphor out with all of the special snowflakes that we are right, of like, there is no other person that they're gonna connect with that is gonna be me. And that grounding in that is radical rather than saying, oh, I'm the only person they do this act with.

I'm the only person they say this word. I'm the only person that uses this label to come back and be like, oh, I'm the only person that is me. Like, oh, what a, what a reframe.

[01:00:51] Dr. Dave: Yeah. I love that. That's spot on.

[01:00:54] Nicole: Yeah.

[01:00:55] Dr. Dave: Because there's only one you and there's only one relationship that, that your partner is going to have with you because there's only one you

[01:01:02] Nicole: Totally.

[01:01:02] Dr. Dave: And if you be fully you, that's what that your partner is there to experience. Right. That's why ideally you're together. If they're not, probably have the, maybe made the wrong choice. Right. But the, you want your partner to be somebody who, and this, I think this is a big issue with people Right.

Is partner selection. 'cause you're never supposed to negotiate from a standpoint of weakness. Always from strength. And many of us are coming into relationships from a standpoint of like trying to fill a hole in our lives. Or insecurity or, you know. Yeah. Not, not from a position of strength.

[01:01:36] Nicole: Mm-hmm.

[01:01:36] Dr. Dave: And so we can have these expanded opportunities with our partners that are, you know, much more.

Fruitful and, and grow over the long term. That also like accentuate each other's strengths rather than calling out each other's weaknesses.

[01:01:52] Nicole: Right.

[01:01:52] Dr. Dave: Yeah. And then helping support each other's blind spots where we do have weaknesses. Right.

[01:01:56] Nicole: Totally. Please hold my hand as I'm jealous. Please hold me as I cry and I know that I'm gonna cry when you take me up that multi-pitch.

Climb up that cliff. Please, please hold me when we regulate together. Yeah. I hope people could get more comfortable with understanding that dismantling internalized homophobia is gonna feel uncomfortable. Dismantling, internalized mono normativity is gonna feel uncomfortable. Dismantling my monkey brains thought that I'm not supposed to be on this cliff side is uncomfortable.

Right. And, and we don't have to run over that. We can be like our, our conversation has said, right. We can be with those feelings. And so yeah. I'm, I'm really appreciative of all of the space that we really covered today, Dave.

[01:02:38] Dr. Dave: And yeah, me. Me too. It's been fun and mm-hmm. And just on the last topic of dismantling homophobia, similar to the other stuff that we're talking about.

Yeah. Every single primate species that came before us, for the most part, are non-monogamous and also are, you know, freely experienced homosexual and heterosexual interactions. And a lot of tribal cultures actually in ancient human times have also, like thousands of years ago, and there are still some today that engage in homosexual interactions freely.

And, you know, I think it's the, and it's not to say that it's for everyone, just like psychedelics aren't for everyone. But the point is that if we have feelings about being fond of, even just fond of somebody of the same sex, like we really just like somebody, it doesn't mean we necessarily want to have sex with them or be intimate with them.

We just like them. Maybe we like getting hugs and giving hugs to them, right? Mm-hmm. And they're the same sex, but we've been taught. Those feelings are wronged.

[01:03:39] Nicole: Right? Right.

[01:03:39] Dr. Dave: Then we have already literally engaging in the process of demonizing part of ourselves, right? And demonizing certain feelings we're having that are supposed to be pleasurable in the spreading of love and joy to people we like.

Right? And that's, that's what we're really talking about, is repressing these feelings of joy and, and the goodness, the good stuff. So if we don't repress that stuff and those feelings when they come up and know that there's no actions required that we're not comfortable with, as part of exploring those feelings, everything's consensual, uh, then we can actually have feelings of fondness, uh, with other people of the same sex and not judge them immediately.

And then all of a sudden we start to become more connected with each other in our community. And there's nothing wrong with that. It's just inherently part of being human is that many of us will have thoughts of fondness and emotional, like strong feelings of like, or love for. People of the same sex.

It's just part of being human. So the sooner that we, just like death is part of being life, right? It's gonna happen. Stress is just part of life. So the sooner that we accept these kinds of things, this, that are just there, the sooner that we let go of the resistance to what's going on, to what's happening, and we just kind of go with the flow and we stop suffering, you know, like accidentally, accidentally on purpose.

Yes. Like we can, we can participate in the process with these feelings by not demonizing them or judging them. Mm-hmm. Just by feeling them. And that kicks off the healing process in and of itself.

[01:05:12] Nicole: Right. Absolutely. Which prostate orgasms exist too, right. Whether you're doing that with some of the same sex or not, like that is a biological thing that exists.

Yet the narratives and what it means. And particularly for men under pat. Oh my god. You know, so long career to dismantle these ones here today. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's been such a pleasure to have you on the show. I wanna take a deep breath with you

and I always check in and see if there's anything else you wanna say to the listeners. Otherwise, I'll have our closing question and then I'll provide space for you to plug all of your resources.

[01:05:57] Dr. Dave: Sure. Like I'm all good. Okay. It was really nice to be with you.

[01:05:59] Nicole: Yeah. Great. All right. Well then the one question that I ask everyone on the podcast is, what is one thing that you wish other people knew was more normal?

[01:06:11] Dr. Dave: Oh, we talked about it. So many. I know. Um, you know, we were talking about about. Touch at soothing touch in particular and being a safety experience that we're all supposed to have and have frequently with each other is a really important thing that I have been studying for a long time. That I feel like a lot of the worlds, especially the western world, still doesn't understand, especially the medical world.

And, um, this is a huge and free opportunity for us to translate something really important We've learned about neuroscience, which is that touch is actually healing, soothing touch is actually beneficial to the body in tremendous ways. And we can all deliver that to ourselves for free or to each other for free consensually anytime.

Yeah. So I think if people just knew that that, and knew how healing that was, I think we'd change the world.

[01:07:06] Nicole: Mm-hmm. Well, Dave, I'll be excited to watch your research in the coming years.

[01:07:12] Dr. Dave: I'm happy to keep you updated.

[01:07:14] Nicole: Yeah. Well, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show. I wanna hold some space for you to also plug all of your content.

That way people who have been resonating with you can find your work and stay connected to you.

[01:07:26] Dr. Dave: Sure. Um, you can find me on socials at, uh, Dr. David Raven and, uh, on Instagram and Twitter. Um, and you can find me on my personal website, Dr dave.io, my clinic website, Apollo Clinic. If you wanna find, uh, any more info about the Apollo technology, you can check out.

I. Apollo neuro.com. That's A-P-O-L-L-O-N-E-U-R o.com. Or you can go to wearable hugs.com, which is what the kids call it. Cute. And if you wanna learn more about my work in psychedelics and consciousness and sexuality, uh, 'cause it's a big theme for us right now on the Psychedelic Report. You can check out that show on Spotify and Apple Podcast.

And we also have a show on consciousness and neuroscience called Your Brain Explained on Spotify and Apple.

[01:08:11] Nicole: Thank you, Dave. It was such a pleasure to have you today. My pleasure. Thanks. So a Saturday. If you enjoy today's episode, then leave us a five star review wherever you listen to your podcast. And head on over to Modern Anarchy podcast.com to get resources and learn more about all the things we talked about on today's episode.

I wanna thank you for tuning in and I will see you all next week.