Permission for Pleasure
A podcast to educate and equip women with the information and confidence they need to express, experience and enjoy their sexuality. Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN, brings her 35+ years of experience as a healthcare professional to open the doors to healthy conversations about sex. This is a community where you can listen and learn to give yourself permission for pleasure. Visit www.cindyscharkey.com for educational blogs and newsletter.
Permission for Pleasure
Untangling Sexual Shame
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
My guest Matthias Roberts, psychotherapist, and author of Beyond Shame: Creating a Healthy Sex Life on Your Own Terms says, “Wherever there is sex, there seems to be shame.” Matthias writes and speaks nationwide about the intersections between gender, sexuality, mental health, and theology. He feels one of the first steps in fighting shame is to practice recognizing it. Together we discuss how to identify our shame, acknowledge our worthiness, and allow ourselves pleasure.
Find Matthias Roberts
ORDER my Book: Permission for Pleasure: Tending Your Sexual Garden
JOIN my Newsletter: Good Education for Good Sex
FOLLOW on Instagram @cindyscharkey
VISIT my website and blog
And then the question I really sit with is how familiar are you with Yorshane?
SPEAKER_00Welcome everyone to Permission for Pleasure. I'm Cindy Sharky, your host. Thank you for listening today. I'm delighted you're here. I'm sharing my conversation with psychotherapist, author, and theologian Matthias Roberts. I found him to be very thoughtful, caring, and a real honest soul. I'm still thinking about some of the things we talked about shame, sexual shame, safety, our worthiness, and pleasure. Friends, I know these topics can feel heavy, heavy to feel, and heavy to talk about. He and I even say, people don't want to talk about shame. It's too painful. So please do take care of yourself as you listen. If you feel the need to pause or stop or come back at a later time, please do. Or perhaps it might feel more comfortable for you to listen with a friend and be able to pause and talk through some of these themes with someone else in community. As Matthias says, one of the first steps in fighting shame is to practice recognizing it. That is my hope with this conversation. That it might be the first step. That it will lead to more steps. And those will lead to embracing your worthiness and letting go of shame. I feel a little tender sharing this episode. And also excited. Excited for the conversations it might prompt for you. Matthias, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's good to be here. I would love for you to introduce yourself to my community. Just tell us a little bit about you and your work in the world.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01So I'm primarily a therapist. I have a small private practice based in Seattle where I see folks who are working through trauma. I specialize in trauma and a lot of religious trauma, sexual trauma. Also do a lot of work around shame. Aside from that, I podcast, I write, and try to build practices of rest, which I'm not very good at in my life, but attempt to at least.
SPEAKER_00Well, building a practice of rest. And you've written two books, Matthias, Beyond Shame, Creating a Healthy Sex Life on Your Own Terms. And you have a new book, which will probably be out. It'll be out by the time this episode airs called Holy Runaways. Yes. I just was really curious to talk to you about shame because you write so extensively about it. And I found it to be one of the biggest hindrances to people giving themselves permission for pleasure.
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. I think shame, the experience of shame. And the way I think about shame, there's so many ways to think about it. But one of the ways that I think about it is a force of disconnection. Pleasure is connecting. And so there's almost an antithesis between the two. When we experience shame, it is really difficult to experience pleasure. And shame can hijack that experience pretty quickly. And it can be very insidious. So yes, absolutely. I think those things are so connected.
SPEAKER_00Yes, even in the foreword of your first book, I stopped when I read Dr. Tina Schirmer-Seller's words. It said, shame hurts, pleasure heals. So let's talk a little bit about that. And you and I both love Brene Brown's work. I can tell from reading your words. But how do you define sexual shame specifically?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, when I think about sexual shame, I think about it. So if we're defining shame, or if I'm defining shame as a force of disconnection, and you know, I think about it as, you know, the sense of shame versus guilt. Shame is I am something bad. Guilt is I have done something bad. I imagine most people are familiar with that. I think shame targets the very core of who we are as people, right? It's those core beliefs. I am bad. I think our sexuality also exists in some of those same very core places. It's part of who we are as people, how we experience sexuality or don't experience sexuality. And so when shame mixes with sexuality, it's targeting these deeply core parts of ourselves, the ways that we exist in the world. But it also targets the ways that sexuality connects us to the world. I define sexuality very broadly. I don't think it is just a sexual act, although it is, but it's far more than that. And it's the ways that we are in belonging and experience belonging and connection with other people. Sexual shame impacts that sense of belonging. It impacts that sense of I am not worthy of connection because I am bad.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01I am not worthy of pleasure. And I'm talking about connection both with ourselves, so intrapersonally, and interpersonally with other people. It impacts both of those. I'm not giving you like an academic definition of sexual shame, but but that is how I think about sexual shame.
SPEAKER_00Okay, there is a lot there we could talk about. So let's circle back to the word you used and the term of worthiness. This is a common thing. Esther Perel talks about this. I mean, Brene Brown talks about this, you talk about it in your work, and I think it's something often people don't think about this idea of our worthiness. So I'd love for you to speak to that because it's kind of open-ended, but you did talk about our lack of belief in our own worthiness in your book. And I just love to hear how you see that as a therapist affecting people's sense of love and belonging.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I talk a lot about worthiness in that new book in Holy Runaways. And Brene Brown, so this was something that when I first read her book, The Gifts of Imperfection, she talks about the thing that separates those who have a strong sense of belonging versus those who don't, is the belief in their own worthiness, is a person's belief in their own worthiness. I am worthy of connection and belonging. People who believe that have connection and belonging. People who don't believe that don't have connection and belonging. Which, you know, on the surface, it blew my mind when I heard it. But the difficulty is how do we actually start to believe in our own worthiness, right? Like it's one thing to be able to say. It's another thing to be like, okay, so if I don't believe I'm worthy, which I didn't when I first read it, then how in the world do I start to believe in my own worthiness? And in in my work and how I think about this as a therapist, and I don't think Brene Brown talks about this as much, but the reality is we believe in our own worthiness by being shown that we are worthy, right? There is a, it's almost a cyclical thing here. Often those of us who don't believe that we're worthy haven't been shown that we are worthy by our communities, by our primary caregivers, etc. And so, in order for us to believe in our own worthiness, we have to have had that worthiness reflected to us by the people around us. And I think sexuality, so if we go back to sexuality, is a tool for us to discover our own worthiness, having sexual experiences with people who believe that we're worthy of them, who are attracted to us, who want to help us experience pleasure, and vice versa, that is a tool I think we have in our toolboxes for learning our own worthiness. But it also can be, this is where sexual shame gets in, profoundly disconnecting as well. So we get into complex territory very quickly.
SPEAKER_00Yes, we do. Yes, we do. I mean, this is tricky. I think it's just really important for us to sit with these tricky and difficult things like worthiness and shame, because so often they are the root of the issues, problems, disgust we have around either ourselves or sex or pleasure. I'm gonna read just a little bit out of holy runaways if you'd allow me to.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00You said I'm quite aware of those worksheets and methodologies that promise if we just target the right self-limiting thoughts and the irrational beliefs we hold, confronting them with something more rational, something truer, we can be on our happy way into the future. Sometimes they work short term. But in my experience, this is you speaking, those exercises don't go deep enough. They don't get to the fundamental problem. I basically stood up and cheered when I read that, because everyone wants a quick fix, Matthias, and it doesn't work like that.
SPEAKER_01Right. Yes. And you'll hear echoes of my not disdain, although that might be the right word, but critique of more behavioral approaches to some of these things. Where yeah, we just believe like if we target the right thoughts or counter the thoughts of I feel unworthy, and we look in the mirror and say, you are worthy. Again, that might help with some symptom reduction. It might. And I don't think that's a bad thing. Again, I think these are tools in our in our wheelhouse, but there's a big distance between being able to say, I'm worthy in the mirror and maybe feeling it for a moment, versus having a sense of worthiness and belonging that is integrated into our very being that helps us move through the world as people who have a sense of worthiness. There's a vast distinction between those things.
SPEAKER_00And so I'm listening in thinking probably there's listeners who are, you know, following the conversation and think and thinking to themselves, well, where do I start? I mean, as a therapist, I'm curious where you guide people to start, Matthias. I mean, what is your maybe first or second tools for them to sit with these hard things, shame, unworthiness, and begin to unravel it or accept it or see it for what it is.
SPEAKER_01I think there are many ways that we can start this work. But for me, I think, and then the question I really sit with is how familiar are you with your shame? Because so many of us, when we experience shame, we push it away. And understandably, right? Like it's not a fun experience. We don't want to experience shame. But I think that shame can be a form of a compass to us as we get familiar with our own shame voices. It leads us to the particularities of our own lives and our own stories that help us see what is getting in the way of this connection and belonging. It's kind of like looking at the negative, like thinking like in photography. Like you can you can see negative, you can see what the photo is going to be, but it's not the photo. And our shame, I think, works a little bit like that. So, what I often have people do when I'm leading workshops around this material is I'll define shame. You know, we'll do some work around like what is sexual shame, etc. But then I'll have people sit down and write a letter to themselves from their shame. I ask them to embody the voice of shame in their lives and write a letter. So it would be like, Dear Matthias, this is your shame. And then inviting that voice to actually show up and write a letter to me. And what I found is most people have never actually really intentionally listened to what their shame tells them. Because again, why would we? It's not fun. But those letters help us get into here's what we're actually working with. Here's what I'm actually ashamed of. And when we have that sense, I think it then helps us know, okay, if I'm ashamed, say, of my body, the way I look, then we know, okay, this is where I need to actually do work. This is where I need to find healing. So I think that's the starting point. Becoming more familiar with our shame, so that then we can start to approach the senses with some particularity around our own stories.
SPEAKER_00Wow. You talk too about another piece to this is the voice of shame and whose voice it is. So I think it's so important this idea you're saying of recognizing your shame. What is this shame you experience and feel? And also the voice of it, but whose voice?
SPEAKER_01I think you know, sometimes I'll ask people like, whose voice does that sound like? And for some people, it will be like a light bulb. Be like, oh my gosh, it's my dad. It's my mom. It's this, you know, teacher who said this one thing to me that I've never been able to forget. Yes. Other people don't actually have that light bulb moment. Other people are like, be like, I don't know, it sounds like myself. Like where it's it's become so integrated that we can't even say, like, oh, this is something external, or it feels like actually part of me. I don't think one is better than the other. I don't think being able to say, like, oh, it's this person means anything different from being able to say, oh, it's myself. But I do think it is helpful to have a sense of, yeah, whose voice is this? Because it it again shifts the way we might then start to work with it. Um, if we can say, it's this person, then we can do work around the wounding that we experienced with that person. If we say, it's me, then we can work on that particular wounding around how did we become so critical of our own self? Um, where does that come from?
SPEAKER_00A few things that you wrote about have kind of stuck with me related to shamefulness and shamelessness. I'd love for you to speak to that a little bit. I just think shame it it can be very complicated. And so I the more framework we can give people to investigate and sit with and figure out their own shame, that's gonna help them then move into tools to sit with it, let it go, fight it, reframe it, give it a different voice. So even though these concepts can feel really weighty, I think, I think it's really good to talk about it out loud. So will you speak to that a little bit?
SPEAKER_01Oh, absolutely. Yeah, it is weighty. Like these are conversations we don't really have. Who wants us and talk about sexual shame?
SPEAKER_00That does not surprise me.
SPEAKER_01I notice even when I go and have like speaking engagements around sexual shame, if the word sexual shame show up in any of the material, attendance is like way lower than anyone expects. That's happened so many times. And I was like, oh, I think there's a link here. Like, people don't want to have these conversations, and these conversations are so vital when it comes to starting to heal. Because again, shame disconnects us from community. The the antidote then to shame is connection, and part of that is connecting with community, being able to have these conversations with other people. And so when I was doing work kind of around sexual shame and thinking about how does sexual shame show up in our lives? How do we try to cope with this? There were a few kind of coping mechanisms that really stuck out to me. Ways that I saw people kind of trying to manage their shame, but that isn't actually getting rid of the shame. So you mentioned two of them: shamefulness and shamelessness. Shamefulness is when we use our shame to control our sexuality. This often happens in environments where we have been taught our sexuality is bad. So I come from a very religious environment from the throes of what has been called purity culture. This belief that sexuality is inherently wrong, inherently bad, inherently dangerous. And so I, in my life, used shame. I am bad for being a sexual being, which I couldn't control, but used that sense to control my sexuality, right? Clamping down. Shamelessness is almost the opposite of that. So sometimes it's folks who have been in those extremely rigid environments where they've used so much shame to control their sexuality, and folks will often have a moment where they're kind of like, I am so tired of this, I'm so sick of this, like I'm not gonna feel shame anymore. And they flip over to what I call shamelessness, which is when we use our sexuality to control our shame. So in this world, we may be trying on new sexual values, we may be having new sexual experiences or experimenting with things. And I'm very clear here, I'm not critiquing that. What I am describing here is the underlying sense of using our sexuality to control the shame, or other, in other words, ignore the shame. We're not actually working with the shame that's underneath. So it may be proving ground to try new things on, to figure out new values, but it's doing the same thing of where we're avoiding the shame that's underneath instead of working with it to integrate it into our lives so that we can, you know, live out of values and this again, a sense of worthiness and belonging. The other one I call autopilot, and this one is a little bit harder for folks to grasp because it shows up in a lot of different ways. But it's a sense of we maybe have done some work with our sexual shame or don't have as much sexual shame to begin with, but there still is shame present, is it's just not debilitating in the way that maybe the first two or shame is in some ways ever present in those first two. With autopilot, shame isn't as present, but it does pop up. So we kind of go along our way, living our lives, not working with our shame. It comes up. Maybe we have a sexual experience, we feel a lot of shame, but it's not severe enough to take over our lives. And so we just kind of push it aside and keep on going. It's there, but we never work with it. I call it autopilot. It's that sense of we never actually get around to working with our shame because it's not debilitating enough, and yet it is still there and impacting our lives.
SPEAKER_00That's good stuff there. That gives a lot of language to how different people experience and deal with their shame or don't. Right. Yeah. I think it's interesting so often when I do consults with women one-on-one, you know, they'll use words like dirty or disgusting or I'm disgusted, related to shame and often related to their bodies. And this is for, you know, everybody experiences this. I just work, you know, specifically with women, Matthias, but those kind of words are always, you know, a red flag for me to indicate what you're talking about. What is underneath that describing yourself or sex as disgusting or dirty or whatever the term they use?
SPEAKER_01I'll answer that, but I'll I'll speak to something else that you kind of brought up in this question. And you said, like, yes, all genders can have this experience of feeling disgusted by our bodies or feeling that we're dirty. But I think it's really important here though to be particular about folks who have been socialized as women in this world, have been taught these things. There is a pervasive sense of to be a woman in the world, you and to be worthy, you have to look a certain way, be a certain way, and if you aren't that way, then you Are unworthy. I mean, that that is like the basis of a lot of advertising to women. So I think there's a particularity here that's so important that myself as a man, sure, I absolutely relate with those feelings, but there's a difference, there's a major difference in what I have been taught about my body. And I think being clear about that is really important. Because when we talk about how this sense of worthiness is communally determined, these words of dirty, disgusting, that's how many women are treated in society. There's this sense of both an allure with how women are treated, but also a sense of stay away, you are bad, you are dirty. And that is such a fucked up reality that we're working with. Because there's no way to win. It is primarily the objectification. We're talking about objectification here. So these voices of disgust, I am dirty, they come from this communal sense that we've internalized. And I think a lot of the question then is how do we start to reconnect these places that we have been taught are bad, dirty, disgusting? But the moment we talk start talking about reconnecting those things, I think many of us start to run into fear, right? It's terrifying to even ask the question what if this is not dirty? What if my pleasure is good? Yes. An exercise that is not my own. I didn't come up with this. A researcher named Linda K. Klein kind of originated this idea when she works with women who are trying to even find reconnection to their body and begin to even consider the idea of pleasure. She talks about lowering the bar or the barriers of pleasure. So instead of trying to jump into maybe a sexual experience and trying to like will your body into this is pleasurable, this is pleasurable. But she talks about can you maybe go outside on a warm day when it's raining and notice what the rain feels like on your skin? Can you get in touch with whatever feeling is coming up? So it doesn't have to be pleasure, but it might be. These slow steps towards familiarizing ourselves with what our bodies feel like in certain contexts to start to grow a capacity for what again can feel so scary, but we're doing these kind of really small steps into ultimately safety.
SPEAKER_00Growing a capacity towards safety because ooh, that is like ding ding ding. If you do not feel safe in your body, if you don't feel safe to experience pleasure, that's step one.
SPEAKER_01I don't think pleasure can be felt in the absence of safety. But I think things can get really tricky here because we're we're starting to walk into the territory, at least in my mind, of abuse, non-consensual sexual activity where our bodies can betray us because our bodies do respond sexually regardless of what the context is like.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, non-concordance.
SPEAKER_01Yes, right. And that complicates us a lot because our bodies can betray us, and that can be so confusing. But if we're talking about like what I would define as actual pleasure, so not just a physical sensation, but an emotional sensation, I don't think that can happen in the absence of safety. We have to feel safe to experience actual pleasure.
SPEAKER_00Yes, and let's circle back because we have not talked a lot about non-concordance on this show yet. And I'm just sitting here thinking, Matthias, that we need to flesh that out just a little bit for context, in case someone's listening and thinking, what are you talking about? Why don't you jump in and then I'll add in after you?
SPEAKER_01Okay. So the way I think about this is this reality that our bodies respond to touch, regardless of what that touch is. And so when we have experienced like a non-consensual touch, our bodies are still going to respond to that, that may mimic or be similar to what consensual touch instigates in our bodies. That in itself can be so confusing because we may be in an experience of non-consensual toucher or whatever, and feeling our bodies respond in ways that we're either familiar with or unfamiliar with that might be a sensation of pleasure or something pleasure-like, but we're having this really jarring experience of I haven't consented to this. Something is not good here. Like we have all the stress hormones coming in, cortisol, adrenaline, and all these things. Those things tie together and create profoundly confusing experiences when we have experienced abuse. I would love to hear what you have to add to that.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think I come around to the word of arousal too, because what we see with non-consensual sexual experiences, especially, is that you know, our brain has an excitement and an inhibition system. So when things happen, like you said, like touch that causes sexual arousal, it's not pleasurable, right? So we get in situations where women will say, Well, I was raped, but my body, you know, I produce lubrication. And so in their mind, I'm gonna get really specific here, like I talk like a nurse. So I felt like you know, my body was somehow said yes, and I was saying no. That is non-concordance, yes. Or penis is stimulated and becomes erect because of the stimulation and the blood flow, even though there was non-consensual touch happening, and so then the penis owner is saying, I got aroused, so maybe it's my fault, but I didn't consent. A hundred percent no. So what your body does in response in a normal physiological response is not consent, right?
SPEAKER_01And that is where I think shame can jump in so quickly, almost immediately, is when we have experienced those signs of arousal. The messaging then can be, well, then I must have wanted it. Or I must have enjoyed it, right? And even if there's dissonance there where we can say, I didn't, but because my body responded this way, I must have that betrayal can be so damaging, but also so shaming. There's something wrong with me because my body responded this way.
SPEAKER_00When I hear this, I you must also just breaks my heart because this is misinformation or lack of information. This is we don't teach our young people comprehensive sex ed. And so then no matter what age we are, but I especially think of our young people because they get in situations and they don't have framework to understand this, and then that, like you're talking about, that shame becomes deeply embedded.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's heartbreaking. I think then it further complicates then our ability to experience arousal and pleasure in the future. Like those things become dangerous. Because I think the question is, in some ways, is my body going to betray me again? So I think these slow practices of reacquainting ourselves or maybe acquainting ourselves for the very first time with what pleasure in the context of safety, actual pleasure, feels like. We're talking about slow work. I mean, we're talking about work that can take years, but I think it's vital work to treat ourselves with a level of care of I am relearning or learning something for the first time about what it means to be safe in my own body.
SPEAKER_00That's it, right there. And I love that you brought in Klein's work. I have read her book, one of her I she may have more than one, but I have read one, and I do think this idea that if we could keep encouraging people, especially survivors, that well, actually all of us, because almost everybody's been in different situations, but I always I have a heart for those who have really had to survive difficult situations that then make them really feel unsafe in their bodies. And it's a good idea to come back to a more simple practice that you're describing, whether it's go outside and feel the rain, or go outside and feel the sun on your face. Yes, yes, or put your feet in the grass, in the dirt, on the sand, wherever you are, and what does that feel like? Can you feel it in your body from your head to your toes and feel grounded in yourself? These things are so often not talked about, you know, and so we think we have to do something big, and it starts with something small, yes.
SPEAKER_01Yes, so small. Because it's in those moments of you know, say having we know running your feet through the sand, we can start to tune into these questions of does this actually feel good? And it might, and then what does that prompt? But also, I think just as important, does it not feel good? Maybe you don't like the feeling of sand in between your toes, and then can you make decisions based off of that to say, oh yeah, this doesn't feel good, I'm gonna stop doing it. That starts to build trust too, and I think even maybe even more so, learning that we can say no to things that don't feel good and start to lean into what does feel good in those ways of like you know, being outside, feeling the sun, being on a beach, like the stakes are low there, right? But we're building a sense of self-trust so that when the stakes are higher, maybe we're with another person and they're doing something that doesn't feel good. We have the internal resources to be actually be able to recognize this doesn't feel good, and then maybe eventually hopefully start to be able to vocalize that and say, hey, I actually don't like this. Can we try something else?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Wow. I want the listeners to know too. I have had a couple of really good conversations. Specifically, I'm thinking of Holly Richmond, whose book is on, you know, pleasure after trauma. And I'm gonna reference all those resources in the show notes because this is quite a breadth of conversation. I think, Matthias, we're talking about some, like we said, weighty things here, and it's good, good stuff. And I want people to have even more tools outside of this conversation, especially if they listen and think, well, help.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Yes. Because it can feel daunting and uh in many cases impossible.
SPEAKER_00And you talked about this in the beginning, and I remember Dr. Holly Richmond saying healing is in community. Yes. And so I encourage you if you're listening. I mean, community can look like your pet that's very dear to you and supportive of you. It doesn't have to be a certain thing or certain someone. Everybody doesn't have to hear your exact story. You know, you can choose or not choose to share your story, but there is such healing in community, in not being alone with it. I think it's difficult to have things in the dark with no light on them. Yeah, it's really hard for our brains and bodies and selves to process all alone.
SPEAKER_01Right. And in fact, when we've experienced trauma, we can't process them alone. Neurobiologically, there's fragmentation that has happened that cannot be integrated by our own selves. That's the definition of fragmentation. We have to have another person who can help us bring those pieces together, bring that fragmentation into integration for us to be able to even understand what happened to us because trauma is inherently fracturing. So it's not just a community is nice, it's uh it's vital for healing, especially when we've experienced trauma.
SPEAKER_00Well, with that, tell people how they can find you and your work because it is vital around this, these areas we're talking about, Matthias. So share that first so people have a resource.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So you can find me across the internet at Matthias Roberts, Matthias Roberts.com. And then my books are available wherever you buy books. So beyond shame and holy runaways. I'll tell people this because I want to be transparent about this. Like I do this work in the context of like religious trauma as well. And so a lot of my work does integrate with religious trauma. I use religious language. Um, it's for some people that can feel harmful and people don't want to interact with that. So I would encourage you to just be aware of that. If that's a triggering place or something that you don't want to interact with, my work may not be for you. I know there's lots of other work out there that may not press on those ones specifically. But yeah, do you want people to hear that?
SPEAKER_00That's really thoughtful of you. Let's tell people what holy runaways is about. Give me your two-sentence little read this because.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so holy runaways is for folks who grew up within rigid religious systems, uh, who have experienced trauma from those systems, and explores how do we find healing after that. And ultimately, how do we rediscover faith? So it is for folks who are interested in rediscovering faith and might be helpful for folks who don't want to rediscover faith. Like, there's a lot of stuff in there that I talk about, but also like I really wrote it for the folks who are like, yeah, this is still important to me. I'll be very clear. Like, I deeply believe like if you don't want to rediscover faith, great, you don't need to. And then I would point you maybe to some other resources that that can help with that specific journey.
SPEAKER_00Yes, well, thanks for sharing that. I do think these conversations are so important, and I appreciate your work and your writing about shame, your writing about trauma and religious trauma and you know, reframing things for people. I think you have a gentle way, also direct, Matthias, but gentle too, that can be so easily received. I really appreciate that about your work.
SPEAKER_01Thank you.
SPEAKER_00And so on this show, before we wrap up, we ask guests to share something that's delighting them day to day. Just a simple pleasure. Is there something that's delighting you?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Bachelor in Paradise. It just started. As we're recording, this has started last night, and I am thrilled it's back on. It's my favorite of the franchise, and I do find a lot of delight in that show. Just ridiculous fun, unconsequential delight. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Okay, wait just a minute. I usually don't interrupt people's delight, but isn't this last one about people my age?
SPEAKER_01Uh, that's the new Golden Bachelor. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, oh, oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01That started last night, too. It's so fun. It's so fun. Yeah, there's a lot of delight in that as well. Um, yeah.
SPEAKER_00That's amazing. Well, thanks so much for being with us and sharing your expertise and your time. I'm cheering you on.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Cindy. Yeah, this was delightful to chat with you.
SPEAKER_00And community. Let's just sit with some of these things Matthias and I discussed the shame, the worthiness, and give ourselves grace and space to investigate it and in time let it go when we find safety there, so that we can heal and give ourselves permission for pleasure.
