31. Finding Safety Within: Meeting the 5 Layers

Hi, everyone And welcome to another episode. If you're new here, welcome. And if you're already part of the sexyfied family, welcome back. And thank you all for sharing your valuable time with me, I always appreciate it. Today I wanted to talk about safety. You've already heard me say a few things here and there. About how self-evolution and wellness, and that includes sexual wellness as well, are in the end, almost always a matter of three basic pillars: safety, love, and belonging. Although we could argue safety is a needed base for love and belonging too. So let's talk about this big root: safety, and its many layers. 


In my totally biased opinion, there is no wellness and sexual wellness without safety. When you reclaim your safety in sex and pleasure, suddenly you feel safer in your life overall. Because you digest your traumas. Because you reconnect your self-consent. Because you acknowledge you are allowed to experience pleasure and feel good about it, literally connecting to your life-creating energy. So it feels very important. Just saying. 


As a quick introduction, there are five layers of safety. Physical emotional, mental, energetical, and spiritual. Don't worry if you didn't note that, we'll come back to it. Some of them may resonate. Others may not. As usual, take what you need, and leave what you don't. Let's dive in. 





02:28 physical safety 


Let's start with physical safety first. If you are in actual danger with a vital threat to your life, like when we were walking in the savannah chased by lions, or when we are running from a life-threatening situation in our modern world, all of your energy is going to things that will help you survive. Your blood will go to your legs so that you can run, your pupils will dilate so that you can see, and your heart rate will increase to bring more clean blood to all of the parts needing it. That's the activation of your sympathetic nervous system. Needless to say, when you are in that state, well... optional activities like digestion or having sex are not really on the menu.` 


Physical safety needs your basic needs met: shelter, food, brad, sleep, clothing. It's really difficult to have pleasure with someone or yourself when you don't know how you will put food on the table for example. And sadly, even if our brains know we're safe, like we're not in the Savannah anymore, with the risk of being eaten by a lion being really low, our nervous system still feels like our life is threatened. When we lack, sleep from work that makes us feel bad or from screen time, when our breath is restricted from the stress we are experiencing daily, when our clothing creates so much reactions around us that it seizes to be a clothing and becomes a source of unsolicited attention, comments, or risk of being assaulted... how do you want to feel safe, with this threat on your basic needs? 


That's when the distinction between stressors and stress comes in. You can find more about that in the amazing book Burnout from Emily and Amelia Nagoski. It's an amazing book, read it, you're gonna love it. 


Sometimes you can get rid of this dressers, like you can quit your job with this asshole boss, you can move to a more quiet place if you feel the city is overwhelming your senses. And sometimes you can't, like sorry you can't give the kids back they're here. 


If we take our shoulders, for example... when something surprises you, you inhale quickly and block your breath and raise your shoulders like 'hah!" and in our modern world, there are still many reasons to be afraid or to be surprised. There's the risk of being hit by a car of getting mean comments from people and a lot of other things... also our posture is degraded from our daily habits like screens and rounding shoulders from our heartbreaks, your shoulders can tighten with all of that. You can't suppress the possibility of being hit by a car, but you can get a massage from yourself, a loved one, or a professional to release the tension in your shoulders. And suddenly, the stressors are all still there, but the stress is gone. 


When your body is filled with incomplete stress cycles, like your shoulder tension, for example, its mobility is restricted. Your breath is restricted. Your body doesn't have access to its full capacity of resources, since a big part of your energy is stuck in your incomplete stress cycles. Our bodies are designed to be mobile, breathing, healthy, and vibrant. And when our energy resources and mobility are decreased because of the stored stress and incomplete stress cycles, our bodies feel physically threatened, because they have to function in a degraded mode. Just like when your computers start slowing down because its memory is almost full, that's the same.

If your body is filled with tensions and feels physically threatened, there's very little chance you will be comfortable enough to want any type of sexual interaction with yourself or with someone else? 


There are a few things you can do to complete your incomplete stress cycles. You can move or do any type of physical activity: dancing swimming, running any type of movement or you like. You can breathe, we all know we feel good after taking a few deep breaths and know we should do that more often. And you can also have positive social interaction, spending time with friends with loved ones. You can laugh. You can have a good old cry, receive some tenderness, or choose a creative expression time. All of those tips are here to create more inner and physical safety because you have cleared the inner space that was taken by your incomplete stress cycle now that you have completed them. 


Let me give you that list again: move or do any type of physical activity, take deep breaths, have positive social interaction, laugh, a good cry, tender moments or creative expression. Again, You can dive deeper in the Burnout book. It's amazing, like a life-changing book that will benefit every woman who reads us and thus will help change society, just saying... 


If you want a more concrete example regarding our sexuality: when you release the fear that has been stuck in your pelvic floor for decades, maybe you've been abused or maybe you just have forced yourself to insert a tampon in your vagina every month for decades... well first, no wonder sexist, painful. And second, when you release that suddenly your pelvic floor relaxes. And you'll feel better. And sex will be more enjoyable. The incomplete stress cycles has been completed. Your body comes back to its natural state. And you're more likely to want to have sex if you don't feel anything painful. 


So the question I love to ask my coachees when we start this work together is "Do you feel safe in your body when you're having sex?" Very informative, sometimes. So many of us are not. And the next question, feel free to play with it as well: "is what would it feel like? In your body to feel full, sexually safe?" That helps your nervous system connect with this sensation of physical safety, and get used to it to build it back. 


If you like this episode, can you help me spread the your sexyfied life magic to the world and rate the podcast on your favorite podcast platform? Even better, write a comment if you can. And if you've already done that. Thank you very much. You have my eternal gratitude. 





10:23 Emotional Safety

Let's talk about emotional safety. This one itself has many roots: challenges from your unmet physical needs and also what comes from society, and all the mess in between. 


The first part is pretty self-explanatory again. When you are in constant worry because your bank account is in the red and you have no idea how you will pay your rent this month and you can't afford three meals a day, there's a good chance this fear takes most of your inner space leaving very little space for pleasureful interactions with yourself or with others. If your clothing creates unsolicited attention, mean comments, and disrespectful behaviors, this will create so many emotions: like shame, disgust, low self-esteem. We could talk about why this is so problematic per se, and what to do about it, but today we'll focus on safety. 


All of these emotions are not really creating emotional safety to have sex and enjoy pleasure with yourself or others. If you feel your body is disgusting, your genitalia is ugly, how will you feel about sexual pleasure? 


So what is emotional safety? It's a combination of being appreciated, loved, supported, heard, and listened to. If you're in a partnership, there's a good chance these would be something that you would be yearning for, or have already in your partnership. But what if you're not? 


Here comes the tricky part: emotional safety doesn't need anybody. Even better, emotional safety starts within yourself. You already have heard everybody saying "You can't love anybody if you don't love yourself first." One of the cliches that sucks the most and that seems to be the simplest and yet so hard to apply. That's the same for emotional safety. 


If you feel deep down you're flawed and that there is something wrong with you. There might be a chance, not saying that this will be your case of course not, your subconscious wants to create a relationship with someone so that you can feel there's nothing wrong with you. 


Don't get me wrong, it's amazing to be in a relationship where you feel there's nothing wrong with you. We just need to be aware: "Is it truly the case?" And not a mind game of, "I feel normal and there's nothing wrong with me because I'm in a relationship". Or "I need this person to reassure me. And hearing this person say again and again and again, that there is nothing wrong with me. Helps me a little, because I can't feel it myself." 


The thing is... The safety created in that situation has pretty wacky foundations. Let's also acknowledge that they're a hundred percent generalizing and making things black and white, which there are not, but it's easier to understand. 


Two things can happen here. First, if the situation changes, if the relationship ends, your safety goes away with it too. That sucks because you end up being. Where you were before the relationship. Second... You can't trick your nervous system. If you truly don't feel safe, there's a little music in the background of your brain playing "I'm not safe. I'm not safe. I'm not safe. I'm not safe". So you can add all of the outside, emotional safety in the world, all of the validation and the "you're normal" of the world, that will never cover your background music, just like a pot having a little hole and water getting out all the time. How can you create space for pleasureful sexual interaction if you have this little music inside of you that says "I'm not safe, I'm not safe. I'm not safe"? This will never work. Or if it does, only for some time, and then boom, desire disappears and you end up being numb, et cetera. So not a really ideal situation either. 


That's the perfect transition to circle back to societal threats to our emotional safety. I'd like to point out before starting how things are changing, which is a good thing. And also how we still have such a long way to go. 


There are the obvious ones... how do you want to have a vibrant and alive winning sex life is society tells you all the time that sex is a source of shame, that it should look like a certain way, that it's acceptable in these circumstances? Usually heterosexual norm and monogamous norm... how do you want to have a healthy sex life if you're constantly on a diet or worrying in changing your behavior to not get fat? How do you want to have a healthy sex life if outrageous pleasure is shamed? How dare you will more than what is considered normal to have, you slut? I could go on and on and on. But all of this is definitely something that impacts our emotional safety. 





The lack of emotional safety may be one of the biggest leaks of our own power. Because if we follow what we're taught. We'll never be enough. There is no way we can do it right: if you're thin get some muscles, if you're curvy lose some weight, enjoy your sex life but not too much, don't be a slut but don't be a prude, et cetera... so before choosing a model, which is a conglomeration of alpha male gaze, societal approval, bad porn movies, romcoms and Disney cartoons, let's just ask ourselves if it is worth it. And if not, let it go. That pun wasn't intended, but I'm going to keep it. 


So, what do we do to be emotionally safer? We meet our emotions with pleasure, so that we can expend our nervous system capacity to experience the emotions without being thrown out of balance. That's the definition of safety, by the way, expanding my zone of tolerance in my body and in my nervous system so that I can experience whatever is coming at me, let it process through my body, complete this stress cycle, and let it go. I can feel the pain of the rejection. But I know it doesn't mean anything about how lovable I am, this just means that the person in front of me is not the right person for me at the moment. And that's all... 


Meeting our emotions with pleasure helps expand this zone of tolerance. Because pleasure creates safety too. And when you meet these emotions with pleasure, you alchemize them. You can get angergasms, disgustgasms, sadgasms.... All of the emotions can be met with pleasure and alchemized, isn't that great news? 


So again, the question while I like to ask my coachees, "do you feel safe emotionally when you're having sex?" If not what is happening?" What would it feel like in your emotions to feel fully sexually safe in the moment?" 





18:54 mental 
safety

Let's take some time to focus on my personal favorite: mental safety. Or at least, my favorite to talk about. Because, in my totally biased opinion, mental safety is so overlooked when we talk about safety. And yet it's so present with us all the time. Mental safety has to do about the constant mind shatter of our thoughts. 


There are some thoughts that directly come from our emotions. If you are afraid of pleasure, there's a good chance this fear is associated with a lot of chatter: justifications, ideas, fears, experiences... and also many great reasons to not do anything because deep down pleasure scares you. And that's understandable. If you're there, I see you, I feel you, it sucks. And it's understandable. 


If you have a clitoris you have an organ that the only purpose is bringing you pleasure. And yet... self-hate is normalized in our society, and anatomy books only start to bring back the diversity of vulvas... And the only idea we have about pleasure is a woman yelling, "yes, yes, yes" like in a bad porn movie. And if a woman enjoys sex, she's a slut. So, yeah, no wonder, we are afraid of pleasure. That's the first part. 


And then, there is what I call the SM dungeon of my mind. Unlike a real SM dungeon, personally, I didn't give consent to experience anything that comes from my mind, especially not being treated like shit by my brain. And I also have no safe word to get out of it. I don't know about you, but personally, the yelling "stoooop" at my brain has never really worked. 


Usually, there are many people in a brain. Just to name a few, maybe there is a cop who is constantly yelling "You can't do that, don't you dare doing that, you'll get punished". That was not yelling, but you see the idea Maybe a domina saying "You're a useless piece of crap, you don't deserve any consideration, you little breadcrumb of a human being". Maybe a teacher who's constantly impatient, wondering why you didn't get the results you have yesterday, you could have tried harder. Maybe there is a therapist nodding her head and being like "you're a lost cause you're doomed". Maybe there is a TV playing romcoms on the back, who knows? And if any of this sounds familiar, welcome to my head, happy to meet you. 


And the thing is... this SM dungeon has also many architects who are not really our friends. Past experiences, either from our history, from our family; also fierce protectors who don't want us to get hurt so they hurt us already hoping when hurt comes, it will hurt a little less, usually it doesn't; and there is also the terror of the void. That's why there is a constant mind chatter leaving no space nor room for space and presence. 


If you're like me there's a good chance many of those unsolicited voices get louder in your sexuality too. How dare you want to experience something like that? How dare you want to dress sexy you slut. You think you're sexy, but you're just so fat, lose some weight already. Et cetera. Very helpful to feel mentally safe during any type of sexual meeting with yourself or with others. 


This mind chatter challenges, our three pillars of safety, love and belonging. But most of all it challenges our belonging. Because usually the unsaid part of what these voices are saying is "Behave yourself, do this like everyone else, don't do that so that you don't get noticed, why do you want that? Can't you just be like everyone else and want same thing as everyone else?". So don't get surprised if you have done tons of work on your safety already and yet mental safety still feels like a big challenge. That's just because they don't have the same major role in the college curriculum of impacting your life. 


All of these people, their opinions, their judgements take so much energy. When your attention is focused on what's going on in your mind, it's really hard to A) stay present in the pleasureful moment, and B) experience pleasure at all all of the energy used in this chatter could be used somewhere else and it's not available.. No wonder we don't want sexual interaction with others or with ourselves when we don't feel safe in our own brains. 


That's again the question I always ask my coachees, if you want to play with them you can too, like "Do you feel mentally safe when you have sex?" If not "what is going on? What are the thoughts included?" And then, "What would it look like to feel fully, mentally safe during sex." 


If, you know someone who would benefit from this episode, feel free to send it to them. Or share it with your friends, you can tag me on Instagram at @withdoctorfanny. Thank you very much. 


25:07 energetical 
safety

Whether you believe in energy or not, I'm sure you already felt something with someone. Maybe a feeling of "Ooh, I want to know this person better" or "please stay away from me, like I don't want to to have anything to do with you". So at some point, there is some kind of energy feeling between two people, like an overall feeling something bigger than just your body, your emotion or your thoughts. Something that includes all of that. 


That's exactly what energetic safety comes from. Or at least how it's related to the three previous layers of safety. How can you feel energetically safe if you don't feel safe in your body? Or if your emotions overwhelm you? Or if you're in a constant mind chatter preventing you from experiencing mental safety? Usually energetical safety starts to be accessible when you had a look, at least a little one, at the three previous ones. 


We could even get a little bit meta in here. If you remember, we discussed digesting and completing incomplete stress cycles and process tensions, conditionings, emotions. And when you digest, that you get back the energy that was stored into it, or more accurately the energy that we used to maintain this part of you in an imbalanced state. 


Let me say that again, because it's very important: when you maintain something out of balance, when you maintain a tension, an emotion, a story... It consumes energy that is not available anywhere else. And when you complete this stress cycle, you get that energy back. Because you're coming closer to how you're supposed to function: letting things go through you and get back to your window of tolerance. So when you do that, you reclaim your energy. And with this, you reclaim your power. You are more grounded, more into yourself, at home within yourself you're more connected to your truth, because there's less power leakage in stories, emotions, and conditionings. You're showing up from a place of wholeness. So you feel energetically safe. 


The idea of wholeness can be seen in your sexuality too. If you are resisting something because, for example "good girls don't do that", like anal sex for example... yet, you truly want it. Some energy is lost in pretending you're not interested. Whereas, if you honor that you want it, you get the energy back. That doesn't mean you need to experience it. You can enjoy anal sex in your fantasies only, there's no obligation to get in action. But at least, you do that from a place of wholeness. 


Side note... there is a big difference between "I'm not interested" and "I'm telling myself I'm not interested because I'm ashamed, scared, afraid. And I'm pretending this desire doesn't exist". It's totally okay to have zero interest in something. Maybe it will come later, or maybe not. And there's nothing wrong with that. Just check in with yourself first, if it's truly about "I'm not interested" or if it's a question of trying to trick yourself, And if you notice you're tricking yourself, congratulations, you have made a major discovery and you can start changing things. 


So again... the questions are always asked my coachees, and we dive deeper with other questions to help excavate with love and kindness all the vulnerable parts hiding under that. "Do you feel energetically safe when you're having sex?" "What would it feel like to feel fully, sexually safe energetically?". 





29:25 spiritual 
safety

Some people would say that you can have a truly satisfying sex life without any physical, emotional, mental, or energetical safety. In my gynecology and coaching practice, it's rarely the case. And things change for the better when we address those directly. 


Regarding spiritual safety. I think this is the one that really depends on what you believe and what feels true to you, and also maybe where you are in your life journey. If spirituality isn't your jam and you want to enjoy and take the most out of the pleasure that is available in the amazing sexual experiences you can have, congratulations, enjoy, and go do that. 


And for some of us, that's not enough. The idea of using pleasure and sex as a way of connecting to something bigger than us feels good, feels like we've deepened our connection to the universe, to the mystery of life, to the infinite source of deep love, basically using sex as a form of active meditation. 


Sometimes it helps to feel supported by your divine force, connected to the universe, supported by your team of magical beings or just knowing you're not alone. That helps relax and surrender. Because let's face it, doing it on our own, muscling through things can feel pretty hard to do by yourself, and also lonely. And loneliness isn't the best way to create a sexual interaction that feels good either with others, or with yourself. 


31:19 Recap 


So quick ... : safety has five layers. The first is physical safety: you feel safe when your basic needs like food, shelter, clothing are met. And when they are not, or when you are in a threatening situation, your body and your mind are less available for optional activities. Then comes emotional safety: when you live in a world that constantly shames sexuality, shames your desires or let you feel you will never be enough whatever you do, it has an impact on you. And yet, one of the pitfalls to avoid is to want to gain your emotional safety from others. Because it never truly works. Third mental safety: either your thoughts associated with emotions or just the people in your head dedicated to make you feel like shit, like the SM dungeon of our minds, and its mean architects. Fourth, energetical safety: this one starts when you have done some work with the three others. It helps you feel whole, which is great for your life and your sexuality. And five :spiritual safety. Feels like a lot? Maybe, but what's truly magic is that when you start addressing one or two, their impact goes to all the others. 


If you found this episode interesting and want to dive deeper, you can find my free ebook to start the journey, it's called essence awaken your body to reclaim the pleasure of being alive. You can find it in the show notes and at www.fannyleboulanger.com/essence. I can't wait to hear what do you think about it. Thank you so much for tuning in today and sharing your time with me. And I'll see you next time.