Welcome to Playing With Fire, the podcast for people who are ready to custom build their love. We're talking about non-monogamy, however you design it, as an individuation opportunity. Want to leave the default and make your life spectacularly you? You're in the right place. We're ready to go. Did we start? We started. We started. Sorry, I struggled a little bit to get the recording going. Well, I don't think it was so much the struggle to start the recording going.
the tumble of massive problems leading up to this. It just took like 24 minutes to figure out how to get on Zoom. Which is a perfect example of what we're talking about today. shadow work sure shadow work monster monster work so i came into this thinking about feeling about All right, we're going to talk about, well, I want to talk about embracing, well, my monster. I'm going to tell you about my experience of embracing my monsters. There isn't just the one.
I like the idea that you just had the one. Yeah, that's... I'm not that simple. I used to think I was, but that was another monster. Your simplicity monster? My simplicity monster. Yeah, kind of an oaf. Totally enough. So, yeah, and it came out in the lead up to this recording. Of course it did. Sure. Okay, so shadow work and monsters. Yes.
Why do we care about that on this show? Well, I know why I care about it. I care about it because when I didn't pay any attention to my monsters, well, they like attention as much as I do. Ooh, that's a lot. Which is a lot. And so they would make themselves known in other ways to anyone who cared to look, which wasn't me, by the way. And so they got to run the show. Okay.
Yeah, I don't think that's really, that's not an ideal setup. That was not in line with my goals. Okay. So whenever I talk about shadow work, whenever I talk about... The shadow. I have to come back to when I was first introduced to the idea of shadow, which was a long time ago. And I think the thing that stands out to me most is how challenging it is to recognize the simplicity of this idea. The utter simplicity of the idea of shadow. Totally.
It gets talked about so frequently, like right once you enter into the psychological, the realm of psychological work. Shadow work gets talked about all the time or people will say something about the shadow and it can start to feel big. And I remember...
I had heard about it, heard about it, heard about it, and then I was like, what is this thing, shadow work? And I thought it was going to be this complicated thing, but in fact, it is so simple, so straightforward to begin doing our shadow work. and that's its beauty it's so simple but in looking for it to be complicated i i really missed a lot of my early opportunities to fully just lean into this beautiful metaphor
It's really just a metaphor. It's a way of thinking about being a person. I agree. It's beautiful. I find it so helpful and accessible. So the shadow, the reason... we talk about it as the shadow is because we're talking about and and Carl Jung used this particular metaphor and talked about the shadow you know the thing that's behind us that we can't see so if we're if we're looking into the light the shadow is what is
by our beingness and it is behind us we can't see it and yet depending on which way you turn in the light right to extend this metaphor yeah you might be able to catch a glimpse of your shadow
And that's where the shadow work lies. It's in catching the glimpse of your shadow, becoming aware of it, and in becoming aware of it, then... allowing yourself to recognize that you are not just what faces the light you are so much more complicated than that and in embracing that fact about yourself you can also then embrace that fact about others
Oh, yes, which then lets you relate to them as full people. Messy, complicated, making mistakes, not meeting your needs, showing up in a way that feels... just wrong for your relationship. And that doesn't mean that we have to accept everything. We don't have to, um, Say, well, just because someone is like this, I have to accept them as they are and not negotiate for myself. I don't advocate for...
My father was fond of telling me that he only had one face. That's what I thought you were going to say. You're right. That you're just this one simple thing. This one thing. I only have one face. I can't change it. Of course we can. Of course we can be complex and we can negotiate with our partners and we can work together to shift how our dynamics, how our both conscious and unconscious parts, our shadows, how they play together.
If we can't accept our own shadow material, then it is going to be a bear to live with another human. Yeah. Because they got one too. Yeah, right. So... I loved that you brought this topic up and I felt myself sort of pushing away from it because I actually swim in this all day long. I'm constantly doing shadow work, whether I'm explicitly calling it that or whether it's just sort of running the back. background of my awareness in my coaching work, I'm working with shadow material all the time.
Even so, even doing that, sometimes I forget how this core simplicity of it is what I struggle to accept about myself. the shadow the simplest way i've ever heard it described is actually like it's it's straight out of jung's work the shadow is that which we wish not to be We have no wish to be. The shadow is that which we have no wish to be. So I have a list of my monsters that live in the shadows. And I like that you're saying monsters because you're allowing them to be...
dark and other and not, right? I find that so valuable. They are both me and autonomous. Yeah. And monstrous. And monstrous. They can be huge. Okay. I think the best way to work with this from here is like... Let's talk about them. Let's do it. I find personification to be one of the best tools for shadow work. Personification just means like... imagining into this figure within me, this monstrous side, this part, this aspect, and allowing myself to personify it, to make it...
more real by giving it qualities by noticing its qualities do you want to share first i mean i can i do i want to share first and before i share i want to say something about the image that i have in my head that i read in a book amazing book terry pratchett you're a big project absolutely amazing writer and there was a witch and she was at a crossroads she was at a cusp and she was given a choice between the dark and the light she was standing at the the
the border between them. It brings tears to my eyes to think about. And this bodiless voice was like, okay, choose. Choose. She turned her back to the light. and backed into it. It makes me cry because acknowledging and embracing the existence of the dark and the monsters is freaking amazing. And then moving toward all the things that they oppose. So here I am crying, so... This is me. On our podcast, being myself.
Yeah, and that's it. You are a major weeper. I'm a major weeper. If you're familiar with the movie The Holiday, that is a classic line. So I stand here and I look and like, who's there? Who in me? looking to oppose the goals that I have set for myself and So the features of light, the thing you're moving toward, this thing that you want. And light and dark, they're meaningless concepts. They're whatever you find valuable or anathema.
The things you want and the things you don't want. Whatever you feel that way about. So it's not objectively about night and death. No, I don't think so. You're talking about the subjective appeal. This subjective feeling of this is what I want. This is what I wish were all. This is what I want to be. This is what I want the world to be. This is what I want the world to be. What I want to have in existence and what I wish I were.
Yes. And then everything I wish I weren't. For example. In myself. Yeah. Yeah. In my life. In my day-to-day life. I have been racist. Yeah. Sexist. Just an absolute disaster of a relational human being who has...
Felt that I was the most important person anywhere. On the road, in a room. Just bad. Like, all the things that I, you know... you know hallmark after school specials tell you not to be i've been there i have those pieces and um one of the reasons that i cry when this comes up is from relief of the difference between when I didn't know that this was me and when I do. Because when I didn't, oh, those monsters ran the show.
They were the ones who made the decisions that took the actions that influenced my life. And now I get to look back and say, what? That? No, I never wanted that. Well, part of me did. Part of me did. What are you going to do about that? That's the work in The Shadow Work. That's the work. It's me. Right. I wanted that. Wasn't all I wanted?
And not all of me wanted it. And it may not be aligned with your conscious values. Not my conscious values. And yet some part of you wanted it. And as long as we are rejecting and repelling it and pushing it out of our consciousness. it will continue to pop up like that beach fall under the proverbial water. And it'll burst forth out of the unconscious into the world that you inhabit at times you do not want it to.
and every time it comes up it has all the energy it had when it went away because you haven't because i hadn't done anything to um to relate to the monsters to learn what they wanted and find ways to get them what they wanted without causing the damage and trouble to the people around me. Right, because this stuff comes out sideways. I mean, there's a reason we have that phrase, right? Like, oh, that really went sideways, right? Like, as you attempt to move toward a desired outcome.
If you are not aware of your own antithetical wishes, wants, unconscious motivations, yep. Yep, that's where I want to go, and now I'm going that way. It's like me roller skating. No, you're doing great. It's getting better. You're doing great. But no, there's this real energy. And the other big way that we see Shadow... Or we can become aware of shadow. So this is shadow work, but sometimes we become aware of it only when we're debriefing about a way an interaction went.
Because we can see some of our shadow material when we have projected it. If I can't accept it in myself, if I can't accept this quality, let's say sexism. Here we are. You were socialized as a boy and a man. You are now exploring your non-binary nature, and I know that closer and closer to that reality every day, but... And yet still...
There's all the life that I have had in this socialized boy person. And as a person who accepted that. You also wore it. Totally, yeah, just wore it. You wore it. So sexism is a thing that you named there. Yeah. And... When you and I were friends long before we were romantic partners, I remember you really disavowing your sexist nature.
I remember a really clear time when you were... I remember exactly where we were. Well, then you share the story because it's such a beautiful... Well, so we were sitting in our living room. basically snuggling and talking about the experience of women in the world and the problems with the culture and I remember saying and you know if you heard different words than what I remember
then please tell me what they were. But what I remember was, I was like, well, I mean, there's so many things to do and I don't think feminism is where I'm going to spend my energy. Yeah. Now, in that moment, no, it doesn't matter. I was going to say some things that were probably going to come out like excuses because the monsters are in there like, well, don't show anybody. Don't let anybody know the monsters are in here.
Well, no, no, there they are. And so one of them was like, now don't be a feminist. You know what? You got power. You've got simplicity. You don't have to worry about relating to other people and dealing with the power imbalances and the cultural unfairness. And you can just forget about it by saying, yeah, I'm not going to work on feminism. Yeah.
Oh, okay, Monster. What is it you do want? Because that's just keeping things the way they are. And there's enough of me who doesn't want that to say, let's have a conversation. So to be in conversation with yourself, yes, but first, the acknowledgement. No, first. And the... From an existential kink perspective, right? So that's a particular take on shadow work, existential kink. You might say that until you can really not just...
Not just accept that that monster exists, but also allow yourself to feel the heat of it. Feel how that's got some... Oh, that's got some zing for you. Whether that's erotic zing or whether it's just like that warm, fuzzy feeling, there is some alignment. There's some yes. There is some yes, yeah. I didn't say that because it wasn't true. Yeah, so I think this is this was for me the big
the big moment where I went from thinking that shadow work had to be really complicated to realizing, oh, it's really simple. It's just awful. Yeah. No, it's simple. You just have to say, hey. Parts of me kind of suck a lot. Yeah. By my own evaluation. By my own values. Wait, by a conscious evaluation. Conscious evaluation. And I like them. I get off. I'm getting off on them. This perverse, like this is.
this is inverted right like so thomas moore talks about the the the perverse the inverted image this is the opposite of what my conscious self wants and just as i might get off on having, being flogged in the bedroom, even though I would never want to be hit in my day-to-day life. I, oh, there is some zing there. There's some, there's some real. I am in a yes here. I do want this. I am reveling in my sexism. I am reveling in my power, my greed, my hunger for control.
These are really hard things to admit. They are. And all the more so if we think we're supposed to present only good to each other. All the more so. Yeah. Especially in these close relationships, right? Where I'm attempting to let you in and to not just... not just be someone you want to spend time with but to allow you to see someone who you might not want to. That's it. So there you are relating to me and choosing to be vulnerable.
To open up your vulnerability to the totality of who I am. And the totality of who I am includes monsters who want to hurt you. Right. So you, and you know that, I mean, you have been studying for this forever. Well, for my whole life. For your whole life, exactly. Because this is such a, it's just... The psychological language to describe what it was to grow up in a house with a six-foot-three, 300-pound father looming over me who my father did not intend.
to harm me. I really believe that. But he loomed as this enormous figure and I felt like all I saw was his shadow. But that was in part because we really couldn't talk about power and greed and sexism. We couldn't talk about it in our house, which meant that shadow loomed larger and larger. And so then coming into relationship with other adult men in my life in particular.
That pattern played out over and over again. And so you sitting in our now living room, you know, having a cozy conversation. Yeah, in just the first few months. So it was in our first few months or so of being in this in between. We're not friends anymore. We're something else. What are we? And you said that. And I remember thinking. Oh, shit. I've done it again. Yeah. You had this delicious exterior of gentleness.
and calm and peacefulness, which is actually a quality that my first husband had. My father definitely carried these qualities of peaceful calmness, this stoic... um still waters run deep sort of energy yeah and also this power hungry sexist controlling unconscious, unreflected sense of, are you kidding me? I can't be for feminism. I'm not even, I don't even feel safe in myself.
My grown-up self is like, oh, these are little boys I was relating to. Totally. I was relating to your little boy parts who felt just as scared and overwhelmed by the...
the patriarchy by the systems that were in, by the systems he didn't understand. Yeah, so some of the most important parts of whatever amount of growing up I've actually done were acknowledging and understanding that so the early years of our relationship were hallmarked by me hurting him in multiple emotional ways and some wonderful growth it's not all there was it's not all there was and but when I look back at it I think about the the pain that I caused and the hurt
And it was when I recognized that the hurt, it didn't matter whether I had intended to hurt you. Right. That changed. And that's where the monsters come in. I started to learn to know my monsters, acknowledge them, accept that they existed. Like, I didn't have to accept what they stood for. I didn't have to endorse them.
Oh, there's the word. That's it, right? I didn't have to endorse them, but I had to accept that they were there and this was their standpoint. And let's take it another layer and embrace the fact... That you've been enjoying it. That is key. Because enjoying does not mean we endorse. So I'm going to take this to another layer. You're right. Rape fantasies. I have had rape fantasies. I have rape fantasies. I do not endorse rape. I do not want rape to happen. But there they are.
But there they are. But there's the imaginal world. And I don't mean I have these fantasies like they spring to me unbidden and I'm terrified and I run in the other direction. No, I lean in. They're fucking hot. So big content warning on this show, I guess, on the outside. But it's about monsters, so yes, of course. This particular episode can't not go there. And when we... And I lean into those fantasies.
as well and playing at that edge it is complicated and scary and not doing it leaves the monsters energized and isolated So they get to do whatever they want. So you've personified them really beautifully here. And it's been very important to me, and you've helped me with this, personifying them without making them other than me. They're me. They're mine. Everything they do is my responsibility. Oh, the times that
that you would tell me this happened and I'd be like, but I didn't mean for that to happen. And you're like, it doesn't matter. And of course it doesn't matter. It only takes like a half a second. of putting myself in your shoes and remembering that There's a barrier, not a barrier, there is a boundary between you and me. We are not the same. You don't know what's happening in here. You can't. You can only know what you experience of me.
And if I hope and rely on the fact that you will know that I'm not a monster, and so you will interpret the things that I'm doing in positive ways, even though they are just universally negative for you. That's asking for you to live in a fantasy world. To not live in the real world with me. Because that's the other thing. It is self-harm. Because if I require you to do that, then I'm requiring you to live with someone who isn't me.
And that means I'm not living with you. And now the thing that I wanted, which was to live a life with you, doesn't happen. You said there's a boundary. It's like we're on separate islands and we start moving further and further apart. Now there is a barrier. Now there's a gap. An actual barrier and a gap. There's a gap. And living in that fantasy world, because we did. We spent the first four years together in a fantasy time. Trying to make things that were imagined.
true i i def i desperately wanted to believe that you were who you were telling me and spoiler alert i wasn't And there was a song that really helped. There was a lyric in a song. Is it an Abbott Brothers song? The Love Me for the Man that I Am. I heard this particular song. I'll just link it in the show notes. It might be relevant for some people to hear. When I heard it, we were really, we were starting to really dig into this work.
And I remember thinking, oh, I'm beginning to relate to you boldly enough and honestly enough to say, What you have done has hurt me. And if you'll join me out here in this place where we acknowledge that it hurt. I am not going to keep holding it over you. That was so important to my... I mean, I am not a bold person. You just described it very well. Yeah, bold. Do this.
Actually be present with all of the parts of you, known and unknown, accepted and unaccepted. Bring them in. Let's be together. It was such a bold... position you took. But I had to deal with one of my monsters then. One I'm still dealing with right now. Even right now in this episode which is that I have a monster who wants to say well I'm above that. I didn't do that.
So I must be better than you. My self-righteous. It's a victim state and self-righteous at the same time. It's like grandiose self-righteousness and a victim. all tangled up because I could sit here and pretend like I didn't co-create that situation with you and I could pretend like I wasn't getting off on that victimized kinky ass submissive spot that I was holding when I didn't identify with any part of my submissive self. I'm a switch, but I didn't identify with that at all at that.
So it was all coming out unconsciously and it was leaving us in a place where we were playing out real time in our bank accounts, in our household, in our relating. We were playing out our power dynamics that are much... Much better homed in a dungeon. Very much so. Much better homed in a negotiated consensual kink dynamic. or relegated to the page or the stage or allow something else to hold it some creative outlet to hold it another song coming up
The Suzanne Vega song. Yeah, that's what I was thinking too. If your monsters can't be born, can't be held in the relationship that you currently are in, I mean... There are people out there doing shadow work. Awesome. Go find a coach. Go find a therapist who's doing this work. Go find someone who can hold this. Go join a men's group where shadow work is part of the work. Or... Get creative with it. Creative expression is another tool. So shadow work isn't all work. A bunch of it's play.
A whole bunch of its play. And when you and I shifted from having this be, okay, we're going to haul our asses into the seats and we're going to do this shadow work. We're going to deal with our unconscious.
crap we're gonna really pull it out and we started playing with it and I started owning the fact that wherever you had moved into a position of power if I could simultaneously call that out and say i'm gonna name this i see you grabbing for power i see that monster and at the same time i'm gonna say part of me wants to grovel and wants to be like oh poor me and wants to wants to crawl
And part of me wants to point a finger at you and say, look at you. Look at this horrible thing you're doing to me. And both of those parts of me are now wrestling and... desperately trying to gain control of my conscious self. Right.
I keep finding my face smiling. Like, I'm not sure I should be smiling at these things that we're saying. But one of the reasons that I'm smiling is, well, first of all, monsters. Like, well, that sounds good. That sounds awful and good. But also the... the multi-dimensional multiplicity necessary to bring all of this stuff together and to be you and me. in the same place, it's stunning. It's stunning and it took me years to learn enough to be able to do even the basics of it.
Which, you know, is partially because I lived a very simple life before. On purpose? On purpose. And so I wasn't pursuing multiplicity and complexity. Even though, I mean, all of my training was, you know, I would look into the physical world for the complexity and the physics and the various different engineerings and things. I'm looking for complexity. This is awesome. This is great. And then I would look at people and be like,
be simple together. We complex people learn some very complex things about the universe and by the way we're part of it. Right. You're not separate from it. They're not separate. You want to study physics. You want to leave humans out of it. That's pretty awkward since you're using a human brain to do that. Can't do it. That's an awkward move, scientist man. Okay. I...
When I think about doing this work with you, one of the things that gets me excited, and it's something that I have rarely found anyone else who really wanted to dive into this. I mean, I found lots of clients who dive into this and it's amazing. and it's exciting, but...
Not every partnership is for this. No, no, no, no. You know, I have dated widely. Nor should it be. Your partnership is whatever you want it to be. Right. You don't have to. This doesn't have to be something that you bring out in every relationship. And this is not required. there are lots of containers to do this in but you know we talk about kink and we have talked about kink on this show as a as a sexual act
But for me, kink isn't a psychological practice. And I don't just mean it's psychological play, and I don't mean just, hey, since it's kinky, hey, there's probably some psychology there. I mean, no, no, no. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. The way that we have learned to engage with each other's monstrous parts is the same energy. that I have learned to enjoy erotically with you. And yet I've dated widely and I have found only a couple of people.
who even want to entertain coming close to this stuff. Even though I found plenty of people who are willing to play with the regalia and the the physical acts of kink. So let's just sort that out a little bit. That's good. I like that. You and I sometimes engage in elaborate kink play. And the last time.
That I engaged with you in this kink play. Right, like the acts of it. As regalia, but not in the psychological. It was a complete failure. It was a complete flop. It was awful. It was floppy flop. And that was what was missing. It was the regalia. It was just the act. Right. Without the backing of a point of view.
a psychological relationship right so that's why for me um kink can can really it can be two entirely different things and they they may overlap but when they don't um it's only ever half of the joy for me so the regalia and the acts and the behaviors and the actions and the like impact and store even story and all of that unless it is with someone who is willing to acknowledge and deeply intertwine with my psyche, it's only a fragment of what the potential is.
As we've explored this, it's also a place where I couldn't do the same work with any of my therapists. I've had a number of wonderful therapists who embrace my shadow. And yet the work I have done with you inside the container of our relationship in negotiated... power exchanges, in kink behaviors, in the stories, and then in the debriefing and the coming to terms and sharing about what this is bringing up and in the fights.
And in the confusion. And in the tears. I couldn't do that with my therapists either. And so for me, this is a massive benefit. And it takes investment. Showing up to therapy week after week takes investment. I show up, I pay the bill, I do the work, I need to do any in-between homework or stretches I'm given, I need to be present, I need to maybe track my dreams, whatever I need to do. And when I show up to our dynamic, thinking about it as part of my psychological growth as an
actual container where I'm implicitly and explicitly doing this. We're getting into our psychological growth. If my relationship is my individuation container, I have to be willing to invest in it. which means taking some risks, but also showing up and really being present to the fact that it is not all going to go well. Some of it's going to be messy and difficult, and that's part of the investment. But that's part of the experiments.
Yeah. Sometimes it doesn't go the way you want to. So I came to you with a kink plan. And I did a bunch of things to you. And you were like, okay, yep, nope, that didn't work. And it was far more complicated than just that. Like this particular instance. This particular instance. This is one day, one night. And I realize now, so I came into this episode thinking, embracing the monster. The problem with that was that I didn't let you see the monster.
Oh, totally. That was the problem. I mean, there were others too, but if I had been like, here's where I'm coming from, here's the energy, here's the psychological state of mind I'm in that brings me to this spot. If I had done all that, the whole rest of it would have worked. But instead, I just let him act and didn't let you see him. And I didn't recognize what was happening soon enough.
to say, hey, hey, hey, I actually need your point of view. I need to do this. And that's one of the downsides to knowing somebody really well. Yeah. Oh, it is, right? You're like, oh, no, I know what's happening here. I know what's happening here. I don't know what's happening here. It also goes for my relationship with myself. So I imagined in that evening that I knew you well enough that we could just go ahead and that I knew myself well enough. And then I got triggered.
Because and I got that full no and I did I I used my no But I used it about five minutes past when I should have run in those five minutes I was abandoning myself And that was a, it was just a reminder that imagining that we are, that we're done with any piece of work is such a trap. So when I think about doing shadow work, I sometimes people ask me like, well, will this just go on forever? And I think, yes, and that's good news. Yes, this.
effort will go on forever for your life, but ideally it won't be the same. Ideally, you're not just going to go around in a cycle. You're not just going to cycle around playing out the same thing. Instead, I want it to be a spiral. I don't want a concentric circle. I want to spiral out. You come back to the same spot, it's a little different.
Yeah. And then a little different. And I keep working through. So if I think about it in the term, the term I've heard, samskara, from Buddhist texts, that idea that... We can just be in a loop and we just keep playing out the same story over and over. I keep playing out my same suffering over and over. If I begin to surrender the idea that I already know. how this goes, and I already know the stories behind it, then I can allow myself to participate fully in this.
dynamic shadowy mess. And I can't do that with every single individual I interact with. It's okay to not interact this way with everyone. If you're in a situation right now, if you're in a relationship where you haven't created psychological safety for this, that's okay. I just want to name that that's...
That is just a way things can be. And you could decide to intentionally create the psychological safety for that. You could co-create that with someone. But I've had some really lovely relationships that do not include this.
yeah that's just fine and now when people ask me if I'm kinky I'm like yes and yet that has nothing to do with you like we can we can talk about that but I'm I'm going to I'm going to let you know when we've begun to create a psychological container that could potentially hold that. Because I'm not willing to just participate in acts for the act's sake. Because for me, it's not accomplishing. Like, that's not what I'm in relating for.
personally that's how things went on the other hand that time right on the other hand i can absolutely prepare myself for a solo experience go to a club experience things without any psychological connection to anyone else be in connection to myself, right? And have myself as my partner in that moment. And that can be just as delicious. And the other person might be totally not sharing their story. So there are so many ways that...
We could work with shadow and one of them is to work with your shadow yourself. It has nothing to do with relationship. We've been focused on this relating aspect. But I just want to remind people that not everybody's partner is on board for that. That does not mean you can't do it. This is a way that we have been working with it. But if you begin to relate to your own monsters, like you've been talking about. Exactly.
That's all. That is it. And that is actually, I think, the primary work is to continue to do your noticing, naming, personifying, getting to know your monsters. Yeah. And allowing them to become really legible to you without allowing them, as you said, to run the show. And... It's really delicious work. And so you don't need someone else for that. Though you might want a guide. You might want someone to be alongside you.
This feels like a really good time to tell people that there's such a thing as the Sexual Shadow Masterclass. Oh, yes, it certainly does. That's not actually why we made this episode. That's not where we were headed, but here it is. So I recorded a class. I gave a class live last December. we recorded it and
The Sexual Shadow Masterclass was designed to give the method, some of the ways that I ask people, that I help clients engage. So I'm not a touch professional. That's not what I do. Yay, sex workers. That's not, you know, my work falls under the umbrella of sex. work because I talk about sex, but I don't do touch work. You don't need to do touch work to engage with the sexual shadow. And the shadow is not all sexual. As we've discussed, the shadow runs across every realm. It's everything.
But if you're listening and thinking about all the kinky, yummy sexual areas of this, great. The Sexual Shadow Masterclass, you can find it at SexualShadowMasterclass.com or you can go to my website. and find it. It's $67, I think. I think it's $67. And I explain more about the shadow, go into why it matters, why we would want to work with it, and then break down seven methods.
And I give you seven case examples of how I've watched people work with these aspects of themselves. Seven methods to dig into like, well, how? How do I even identify my shadow areas? Because... The shadow is hard to see. Yeah. So it takes some tools. So the shadow work tools are what are the methods? How do I do this? How do I uncover this?
Yeah, I mean, I love to work with people individually. In my individuation coaching, my year-long or year-plus-long programs where people work with me privately, we do this work. It's an important part of the work. But you can get started yourself. And I would encourage everyone to explore this concept. And also, if you've ever had a lover or a valued other come to you and share some of their kinks.
The Sexual Shadow Masterclass might be a good place to start understanding their perspective a little bit. They may not even have that language, but if you've struggled to accept what they're bringing you, you might dig into that because... Shame and repression can get in our way of understanding how sex and shadow intermingle. So let's start putting words to it.
This is such a delicious episode. Thank you for making this episode with me and for being your whole full self. Thank you. And for sharing your shadows and your monsters. I know that's really vulnerable work and I'm... I'm really honored not just that you would share that with me, but that you will share it in this container that we've created called Playing With Fire, right? This space.
We talk to you all the time. It is absolutely imperative to me that we get to hear from you as well. Yes, please. So we'd love to invite you to join us. Join Ken and I. We're holding monthly. Ask me anythings. You can show up. Bring your questions from podcast episodes, from your relationships. Bring questions about non-monogamy, about individuation, about relationship skills. We would love to share space with you. We're hosting these AMAs.
free of charge for our podcast listeners. You are the Playing With Fire community and it matters a ton to us that we connect with you directly. Oh, I would so love to hear your questions and oh, it'd be so awesome. Yeah. Go to JolieHamilton.com forward slash AMA and you'll find a way to sign up real quickie quick and get an invitation to join us in a small group where we're going to get together and talk about all things non-monogamy, individuation, and relationships. you