And I think part of your ability to coach people is to say, wow, I know a lot of people in your situation. I've seen this before. Let's look at this with a really open mind and open heart. And I think it's such a hard conversation to have with anybody. And we turn towards therapists sometimes because we don't want to kind of engage our friends and our intimate Pardes sometimes. So I'm really happy we're going to kind of find comfort in this conversation
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 0:34
Hey. And while you're answering how you are and where you are, I wanted to also follow up with a question about the quote you had on your Instagram page, Brene Brown's quote, which says, what makes you vulnerable, makes you beautiful. And I'd love you to just speak to the idea of how this connects to the work you do because Renee Brown is someone we're looking at, obviously, as an inspiration
denise Wiesner
@DrDenise · 3:28
And I think the big thing for me is like more love. I want to have more love in my life. Being partnership, being more love with my children, more love with my friends. Just I want to give and receive more love. I think that's really the theme. I think that's it there's nothing more to say. We're talking about sex, but really, what is sex? It's a physical embodiment of love. It doesn't have to be
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:23
But what's your process when you're with, especially with a couple where one person is really out there and really ready to go and vulnerable and wants to change and wants to grow and be more intimate, but another partner is just layered with stuff, how do you approach that issue? Do you take them individually and can people be vulnerable to hearing about their masks if they're wearing their masks and I don't know they're wearing their masks?
denise Wiesner
@DrDenise · 2:30
It's like you can't wear your heart on your sleeve all the time, right. So it's this journey of back and forth of vulnerability and also learning how to set boundaries with ourselves and knowing what our process is. So that's probably a long winded response to say that most people that come to me are willing to do the work. And sometimes the vulnerability is not so much in their thinking brain, but in their bodies
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:35
But I want to drop into the story of our own relationship to our own bodies in terms of body image and body shaming and body love. And there's all this body positive stuff. And obviously it stands to reason that if you don't have a good relationship with your own body, you're going to have a really hard time allowing someone to celebrate it and let alone you celebrating theirs
denise Wiesner
@DrDenise · 2:26
I think it's really important to love your body. And sometimes we have a lot of shame around body parts, and it's equal for men as it is for women. This shame because we had this ideal and of what it was supposed to look like, and men have it as well. And I just was with a friend of mine, and he was at dance and he said, this is a big thing for me. I'm wearing a shirtless shirt
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:20
And maybe one tip to give us to understand how to move a shock or that might be stuck from even a self soothing place or a palpation place or a way to unstuck something. If you feel like your sex drive is stuck, where would that be? And what have you found helpful in your practice around a stuck drive from a Chinese medicine perspective
denise Wiesner
@DrDenise · 3:10
Let's talk about stuck sex drive. Let's just talk about sex drive, because truthfully, most of the women that come into my practice complain that they don't have a sex drive. And I have to educate them about what sex drive is for women because it's different than men. Right? Men are visual, and they can have a sex drive by looking at a woman or looking at pictures or anything
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:27
You and I think in the realm of feeling stuck sexually to be your own gateway to feeling more available to somebody else and also, obviously, communicating to the person you're with to really slow down and connect with you in that level, I really want to ask your opinion of mental health and the connection between mental health and being sexually active
denise Wiesner
@DrDenise · 1:36
I think for a single we have to engage our senses, buy flowers for ourselves, take a bath, really anoint ourselves with the essential oils, dress up for ourselves. And I think we're finding this more and more in the pandemic too. Right. Just so easy to be in sweatpants and kind of feel grungy. And even today, I don't think I've taken a shower yet. But it's important for us to feel good about ourselves and to love ourselves and to pleasure ourselves
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 1:32
So I think it's like self care is just King and Queen. Self care is Queen. I want to open this panel up so that other people can ask questions over time. But I want to leave one more question here as we open it up, which has to do with stigma. And I guess I want to ask you just a personal question about when you realize you didn't feel that there was any stigma around discussing sex and sexual activity and everything in between with your patients
Finley Ave
@finnave · 2:29
First off, thank you, Deborah, for bringing up this. Well, this is a fantastic topic, and I honestly wish people talked about sex more and it wasn't such a stigma like you have mentioned. All right. And I'm already already nervous before asking the questions for no reason. But I guess a little bit of history for me is the majority of my sexual activity has been rather risky, I will say
denise Wiesner
@DrDenise · 4:01
We're humans and of course we want the pleasure and of course we want to feel protected. And of course we make decisions because it's so natural to just be with a person and experience sexuality without all these other contraptions and stuff. Right. I think that's what we all really want and desire is to be real. So I think there's many ways to approach safe sex Besides using barriers. But barriers is definitely one option
Finley Ave
@finnave · 2:34
But what are the possibilities that I created this other version of myself? I became more comfortable with the idea of having a flat chest because of the shame that I grew up with surrounding bodies, specifically female bodies and any lack of modesty. You see, it was really hard for me to hold up to the standard of modesty growing up because when puberty hit for me, I had a slightly larger than average chest