Navigating Insecurities in Intimate Conversations
In this episode of the Intimacy Lab, Michelle Renee discusses her journey as a therapeutic intimacy specialist and cuddle therapist. She reflects on her recent experiences, including feelings of insecurity about sharing personal stories and the balance between openness and sensitivity in conversations about intimacy and sex. Michelle emphasizes the importance of authenticity, self-reflection, and the need for healing through touch in relationships. She encourages listeners to embrace their own journeys and to seek connections that resonate with them.
Takeaways
Michelle emphasizes following her excitement in projects.
She reflects on the feedback received from her last episode.
Navigating insecurities about being 'too much' is a common theme.
Authenticity in conversations about intimacy is crucial.
Michelle shares her experiences at a cuddle retreat.
She discusses the balance between openness and sensitivity.
The importance of cleaning up any conversational messes is highlighted.
Michelle believes in the power of touch in healing.
She encourages listeners to embrace their own journeys.
Future episodes will explore various topics in intimacy.
Michelle Renee (she/her) is a San Diego-based Human Connection Coach and Cuddle Therapist. Michelle's websites are https://meetmichellerenee.com and https://humanconnectioncoach.com and she can be found on social media at https://instagram.com/meetmichellerenee.
If you’d like to ask a question for Michelle to answer on an episode, https://www.meetmichellerenee.com/podcast
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Rough Transcript:
Michelle Renee (she/her) (00:22)
Hi, welcome back to the intimacy lab. I'm Michelle Renee. I am a therapeutic intimacy specialist, also a cuddle therapist. I have a background in surrogate partner therapy and this is my podcast. It's been a little while. So I sat and thought about like what's been my, hmm. Why does not my special interests come back?
to the podcast in a little while. ⁓ If you've been following me for a while, you might know that I have a real mandate to kind of follow wherever my excitement is, which means projects start and they kind of fall off. And sometimes I come back and like there's there's not a consistency to my schedule. So if you're looking for consistency to schedules, that is not me. If you're looking for consistency in
holding to my responsibilities, that is me. So how I run my private practice and how I run my little pet projects like my podcast, my newsletter, blogging, any of those things, ⁓ I really try not to make them my job, my social media, not my job. Like I engage with these spaces when I want to.
And so you're getting my authentic yes when I'm here. So I've been thinking a lot about the last episode that I released. mind you, I have two other ones that I've recorded. I just have not edited them or released them because I think I've been in this space of like really sitting in the last episode. So if you go back, you had two episodes with my dear friend and colleague, Alex Ray.
And the last one was so much fun and Alex and have such a good time together and I've heard lots of feedback from people that they love hearing us together. So you'll probably see more of Alex and I here. But I've also had the little inside conversation going on in my head that is kind of like not new to me.
you can go back and see an episode with Leela Sinha where we talk about their book, You're Not Too Much. And I will tell you, and this is what I'm here for is like to kind of give you this ⁓ peek inside how my brain operates. ⁓ This episode, this follow up episode with Alex brought back an insecurity of am I too much?
Was that too much to share? Even one of my ⁓ friends and colleagues and clients, like I have a multi multi-layered relationship with this person, said, I know you and that episode was a lot for me. Now mind you, I think that if they were in my regular circles of people, that might not be so much the case. I run with a really
sex geeky group of people where conversations about sex are not new. For this person, that is something that is in their edge growth, right? They are getting more comfortable around sex. They're asking more sex education questions. ⁓ It's different for them. So I don't want to, I don't hear their, it was a lot for me as a wide brush of feedback.
⁓ from whoever my listeners are. But I'm aware of it. And I'll say that thing came up for me recently. I was working a immersive cuddle retreat, what I believe to be the first of its kind in upstate New York a few weeks ago. And interesting about being a cuddler at a retreat like that is that it's not just session time. I got to do
a lot of sessions. ⁓ I did eight sessions over the course of two days. But it wasn't just Michelle being in session. I also was Michelle the professional for all of my waking hours. And I gave myself permission to be myself outside of the session space. I'm myself inside the session space, but I'm much more aware
of who is in session with me. It's for them. It's not for me. we follow, usually we follow their conversation lead. But here at this retreat, sitting at the dining table, I found myself having a lot of conversations around sex and my history and things that...
second-guess myself later of like was that too much? Was that insensitive to some people at the table? ⁓ I don't want to feel like I need to walk around with like a ⁓ content warning. Maybe I should. Maybe that's my next t-shirt is like content warning. ⁓ I love being myself and I've been asked at times to mute or minimize.
my transparency, like my profiles online and how I talk very candidly and openly about ⁓ sex and relationships. you know, my first start in any of this world was a ⁓ blog that I'm re-posting, like I'm re-publishing this blog called Sex After Marriage, where I was like a public diary of navigating
my exploration into the kink and BDSM world and also poly like ethical non-monogamy umbrella. And so earlier in my surrogate partner career, I was asked if I could take some of that stuff down, some of my ⁓ musings and just like I lay it out there and
the clients that were being assigned to me in this office were uncomfortable when they would Google me. We can make a lot of assumptions. One of the assumptions I make is that my openness really reflected their fear of openness. And so working with me felt scary for them. I sat with that. I consulted with a colleague, Kendra Holliday
Thank you for showing up in that space because we've built a really lovely friendship since then and you were always somebody that I really looked up to in the sex work and in surrogate partner world. So in that conversation, I was able to really stand firm in what I, my intention of being so forthcoming was to let people know that I'm really comfortable.
I'm really comfortable talking about sex. I'm really comfortable in some of these edgy spaces. And that hope was that they could see me as like a mentor, see that I've been through a lot of different things and I've tried a lot of different things to really relate to me if that was something that called to them. I didn't consider that
that would push some people away. And what I decided in that moment is that the people I want to work with are not pushed away by that. And so I come back to this episode. I am mostly really, really proud of that episode. I love that. ⁓ Like my intention was to model experimentation and having fun and expanding what sex can look like. And
those little yucky, you might be too much, ⁓ little devil on my shoulder.
he's probably never going to fully go away. I'm probably always going to question myself a little bit and maybe that's good. I don't know what it, I don't want to be the person that runs through the world going, everything I do is great and I never should question anything that I, that I do or say. I want to be curious about myself. I want to like play things back even though I know they're
They're seated in a little bit of anxiety, right? ⁓ Even yesterday, I was at lunch and I noticed that I said something that maybe I didn't have permission to say. And so I went back to the person of topic and said, like, hey, I just want to be transparent. I might have said something. I said this, right? And if I didn't have permission to say that or your consent to say that, I want to clean that up as best I can, although we can't.
push it back in the box, right? And ⁓ thankfully it was not something that I wasn't supposed to talk about. ⁓ But I was worried about that and I want to be really conscious about cleaning up my messes. If I made a mess, I want to clean it up. So ⁓ I don't think that episode was a mess. And I hope that the listeners... ⁓
value the share and value the transparency and take something from it. So thanks for still being here. If you're getting this episode, it means I didn't probably turn you away completely and I love that. And yeah, that episode is going to live and live on and I'm sure it won't be.
the the wildest thing that I ever do on this podcast. It's the intimacy lab. It's about experimenting with intimacy of all kinds. And while I love expanding it outside of sexual intimacy, ⁓ it's not going to not be here sometimes. So thanks for listening. If you haven't already subscribed to this podcast,
I want to encourage you to hit subscribe. ⁓ If you haven't left me a review, please, I would love a review. ⁓ It's not that I have a goal to make this podcast like spread far and wide, but I think that it will help the people that really are seeking something like this, the casual conversation nature, the little bit of
Being a voyeur into my life like it's gonna be easier to find it if you leave me a review ⁓ Check out my websites meet michelle renee.com and human connection lab comm and ⁓ See if there's anything there that resonates with you that you could share with someone else Whether it's somebody in your world that could really use a Cuddlist session or
somebody in your world who really would love to ⁓
address some of their hesitation around touch, ⁓ physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, and you think maybe that we might be a good fit to work together. If you're utilizing a talk therapist, ⁓ let them know I exist. And if they're a sex therapist, you know, I'm a co-chair of
the Somatic Sexuality Professional Special Interest Group at AASECT And we'd love to have them in our conversations about how we can utilize touch work inside of talk work. And I'm gonna die on that hill. There is something missing when we're only engaging in healing through talk. We need to engage in healing through touch and a much fuller.
space to practice being in relationships. And that's what I offer. watch for more episodes. I'm going to get back on a kick. I have a feeling I might be doing a lot of shorter episodes. I might use this more like some long form interviews, but also just some one off monologuing about topics that I notice.
I'd love to speak on but don't have the desire to blog about. So thanks everybody. I hope to see you back here soon.