You promised yourself you'd stop. You didn't. And then you took that as proof of something about you. But what if the porn and masturbation weren’t the whole story? What if they were the strategy quietly keeping something much scarier in place? A man reaching for porn instead of his partner may have found a version of sex that feels safer from shame. Lisa Etherson, UK-based psychosexual therapist and the originator of Shame Containment Theory, offers another lens: performance anxiety can involve fear of shame, and the behaviour we call “compulsive” or “addictive” can serve as a shame containment strategy.
You promised yourself you'd stop. You didn't. And then you took that as proof of something about you. But what if the porn and masturbation weren’t the whole story? What if they were the strategy quietly keeping something much scarier in place?
A man reaching for porn instead of his partner may have found a version of sex that feels safer from shame.
Lisa Etherson, UK-based psychosexual therapist and the originator of Shame Containment Theory, offers another lens: performance anxiety can involve fear of shame, and the behaviour we call “compulsive” or “addictive” can serve as a shame containment strategy.
About Lisa
Lisa Etherson is a psychosexual therapist, researcher, trainer and co-founder of The Shame Training Company.
Connect with Lisa
Produced by Katie Jensen of Vocal Fry Studios, now in her third season with GETSOME.
[00:00:00] Lisa Etherson: The other thing that porn and masturbation does is it helps people to move into a state of dissociation as well. It's brilliant for numbing out. You know, it's a very mindful practice, but no one talks about the benefits of mindfulness when it comes to porn and masturbation, but that's basically what it is.
[00:00:14] Michelle Fischler: Get-
[00:00:31] Michelle Fischler: Michelle Fischler, certified sex therapist, and this is GETSOME. This season, I wanna talk about men, what they're told they should be, and what happens in bed when they can't be it. A
[00:00:47] Lisa Etherson: lot of men are watching porn and masturbating, not because they would prefer to do that necessarily, but the reason why they do is because it's safer.
[00:00:57] Michelle Fischler: My guest today is Lisa Etherson, a psychosexual therapist in the UK. She looks at porn and masturbation as ways that men can choose to experience sex to avoid feeling the pressure that can come from ideas about what could go wrong during partnered sex.
[00:01:13] Lisa Etherson: I think all of the men that I've spoken to have said that if they were given the choice, if they felt better in themselves, they would always choose partnered sex, which is interesting.
[00:01:22] Lisa Etherson: So what my research has led me to believe is that sexual behaviour, porn viewing, masturbation, whatever it is, are actually shame containment strategies. They're the things that we use to keep this contained shame in place.
[00:01:36] Michelle Fischler: And when you take away those containment strategies, it can leave people without a coping mechanism.
[00:01:42] Lisa Etherson: Their erection goes when they disappoint their partner, when they feel like they're not big enough. For those moments, we can shut off from that narrative that perhaps we have in our heads that we're not okay, that, you know, this real strong inner critic. So there's lots of different benefits when it comes to shame.
[00:02:02] Lisa Etherson: This explains to me why it feels compulsive and why people will repeat these behaviours.
[00:02:08] Michelle Fischler: Even if someone believes that they're masturbating more than they should be or craving more sex than what's normal, Lisa doesn't use the word addiction.
[00:02:17] Lisa Etherson: When I looked at the literature, and I looked at it very objectively, couldn't find anything at all that indicated that sex addiction is a thing.
[00:02:27] Michelle Fischler: So who's deciding what counts as too much?
[00:02:31] Lisa Etherson: Who is it who gets to decide this mythical number of maybe how many times you should be having sex in a day, or how many times you should be having an orgasm in a day, or whatever that may be?
[00:02:42] Michelle Fischler: If you've ever promised yourself you would stop and then didn't, and took that as proof of something about you, this one's for you.
[00:02:52] Michelle Fischler: Here's my conversation
[00:02:53] Lisa Etherson: with Lisa Etherson
[00:02:56] Michelle Fischler: I've really been looking forward to this conversation because you have such a compassionate way of understanding something that is so often met with judgment. And I thought a good place to begin is with a question that sounds simple, but it probably isn't. Is there such a thing as too much sex?
[00:03:26] Lisa Etherson: That wasn't the question I was expecting, but it's a really good question, isn't it? Who gets to decide how much sex is too much sex? Like, I really don't know where that category would ever be able to come from. It's ridiculous when you think about it. There was an attempt to get hypersexuality into the DSM-V, and it was rejected.
[00:03:50] Lisa Etherson: So I think it has to become what the person deems is too much for them, really. That they are engaging in sexual behaviour, and they're doing that rather than getting themselves to work or missing social activities or something along those lines. But the idea of too much sex just, to me, that just doesn't make any sense because, as I said, who is it who gets to decide this mythical number of how many times you should be having sex in a day or how many times you should be having an orgasm in a day or whatever that may be.
[00:04:23] Michelle Fischler: So almost like if it's creating some problem, whether it's you aren't getting yourself to work, you're not getting work done, or maybe within your relationship you are masturbating when your partner's wanting to connect, you're not feeling sexual or you're not becoming aroused or getting an erection, and then it becomes a problem within the context of the relationship.
[00:04:54] Lisa Etherson: Yeah. You know, as a psychosexual therapist, majority of clients that I have are men, and a lot of them come to me because of sexual behaviours that they're not necessarily feeling comfortable with or that their partner doesn't feel comfortable with. And in those conversations, what is quite evident is that a lot of men are watching porn and masturbating, not because they would prefer to do that necessarily, but the reason why they do is because it's safer because that doesn't activate the shame that might come if they're having partnered sex, if they're going to lose their erection.
[00:05:31] Lisa Etherson: If they can avoid that within partnered sex and still have a sexual experience through watching porn and masturbation, that's what they're going to choose because they won't feel the same level of shame that they would do if there was someone to witness that or if there was someone to disappoint.
[00:05:47] Michelle Fischler: Yeah, they don't have also that pressure or expectation or worry that they're gonna let somebody down, right? There's not another nervous system in the room with them when they're watching porn.
[00:06:00] Lisa Etherson: Exactly. So it's quite interesting when we get into this, the idea of, well, what is compulsive sexual behaviour and what is the actual problem?
[00:06:10] Lisa Etherson: When you look at it through the lens of men aren't necessarily watching porn because that's what they prefer. I think all of the men that I've spoken to have said that if they were given the choice, if they felt better in themselves, they would always choose partnered sex, which is interesting. So the idea of performance anxiety, actually, I don't think we have performance anxiety.
[00:06:32] Lisa Etherson: I think we have shame anxiety. And what we're anxious about is the shame that we're going to feel when something goes horribly wrong. So that's the anxiety that we're bringing into a sexual experience.
[00:06:44] Michelle Fischler: When you say it's the shame anxiety, how would somebody look within themselves to know, hmm, maybe that is what it is?
[00:06:53] Lisa Etherson: It would look exactly the same as if someone said you're experiencing performance anxiety. It wouldn't look any different. The difference is, is that we're not having conversations about shame, but we're having lots of conversations about performance. And it's back to the language of shame. People don't want to necessarily think about shame, but actually when you really look at what's going on, that can be a lot more helpful than this idea of performance and needing to be better and bigger.
[00:07:19] Lisa Etherson: If we look at, well, actually what you're fearful of is the feeling that you're going to have, this feeling of devastation, this feeling of failure, this feeling of disappointment, this feeling of if I do this, I'm going to be abandoned, the relationship's going to end, I'm going to end up really lonely. We have this catastrophizing thinking.
[00:07:38] Lisa Etherson: That's all actually part of shame.
[00:07:41] Michelle Fischler: How would you define shame? I
[00:07:43] Lisa Etherson: don't see shame as an emotion. I see shame as a system. And shame is there, if we look at it from a developmental perspective, shame is part of our attachment system. So what shame does is if we have what I call an attachment injury, this moment of disconnection in childhood between ourselves and our caregiver, shame comes up with that protective response to tell us that we're bad so that we can strive to be good.
[00:08:08] Lisa Etherson: So shame's purpose is to keep us attached. So it's always about relationships. So if you think about getting back to the adult relationship and watching porn and masturbation, the idea of the attachment injury that might happen between our adult partner can feel just as devastating as what it does between ourselves as a child and our caregivers, and that's the thing that we really want to avoid.
[00:08:35] Lisa Etherson: And I'm very conscious that I haven't give you a very lovely, succinct definition of shame because it's actually really difficult to do.
[00:08:44] Michelle Fischler: And it's also such a physical-
[00:08:48] Lisa Etherson: Yeah ...
[00:08:48] Michelle Fischler: experience. It's almost like a wash that comes over you that is like, oh, you could crawl out of your skin if you had the option. You just wanna be away from it.
[00:09:02] Michelle Fischler: It's just this gross feeling.
[00:09:04] Lisa Etherson: And we have that feeling on a spectrum, so not everything that we do will result in that horrendous feeling that you're describing. You know, like just get this twinge in our gut and think, "Oh, really shouldn't have done that," or, "That really doesn't feel okay," or whatever, through to, I describe it as annihilation.
[00:09:21] Lisa Etherson: Like, we just feel like we wanna be destroyed. So we have this real range. But what I discovered looking at the literature and looking at these definitions of shame is that that's only one element of shame. So a lot of the definitions will focus on that one element, which is what I now call uncontained shame, so that really acute, horrific feeling of shame that just makes us want to disappear.
[00:09:41] Lisa Etherson: That's generally what people are avoiding. So when it comes to shame anxiety, people are wanting to avoid that feeling. But even then, as I said, that's only just one element of shame. We also have what I call contained shame, which is the feeling of not being lovable, of not being safe, of not being worthy, of not being valuable.
[00:10:01] Lisa Etherson: That's a different thing.
[00:10:03] Michelle Fischler: Is there any situation where somebody should be shamed?
[00:10:08] Lisa Etherson: Well, we all need shame. We need shame to help us navigate our way through the world. So if we were shameless, then we have no filter, we have no conscience. There are no consequences to us. So one of the things that shame does is it protects us as society by saying, "We shouldn't, and we can't do certain things."
[00:10:30] Lisa Etherson: It's there to protect us as individuals and the society that we are in, and the culture that we're in, and the groups that we are in. That's its purpose really. That's why as humans we have shame. It's
[00:10:41] Michelle Fischler: so complicated.
[00:10:44] Lisa Etherson: Shame is so complex. But the theory that I've developed, the whole idea was to try and make it quite simple so that people can understand it and have a language to describe which different part of shame they might be experiencing.
[00:10:56] Lisa Etherson: There's contained shame, which are these false scripts about being unlovable, being a failure, being bad, not being good enough, not being lovable, not being worthy. We need some way of managing that contained shame. We need some way of keeping that contained shame in position, because if it becomes uncontained, that's the acute physiological extreme, horrendous feeling that we get when we've been caught, when we've been found out, when we've made a mistake.
[00:11:27] Lisa Etherson: That real physiological feeling that we were describing earlier, that's what that is. That's when that contained shame is felt and seen, when it's come out of its box and it's no longer in a contained state. So what my research has led me to believe is that sexual behaviour, porn viewing, masturbation, whatever it is, are actually shame containment strategies.
[00:11:51] Lisa Etherson: They're the things that we use to keep this contained shame in place. And this explains to me why it feels compulsive and why people will repeat these behaviours is because until those shame scripts are shifted and until we believe a narrative that is more true, that is based in reality, we will always need to contain that shame.
[00:12:13] Lisa Etherson: You know, men will choose solo sex and solo activities as a shame containment strategy because that reduces the risk of uncontained shame when their erection goes, when they disappoint their partner, when they feel like they're not big enough. But the other thing that porn and masturbation does is it helps people to move into a state of dissociation as well.
[00:12:32] Lisa Etherson: It's brilliant for numbing out. It's very mindful practice. Talk about mindfulness, but no one talks about the benefits of mindfulness when it comes to porn and masturbation, but that's basically what it is. So for those moments, we can shut off from that narrative that perhaps we have in our heads that we're not okay, this real strong inner critic.
[00:12:52] Lisa Etherson: So there's lots of different benefits when it comes to porn and masturbation that help us to manage and contain our shame.
[00:13:02] Michelle Fischler: Yeah. I find it so helpful when I walk through the history of their relationship with masturbation, when it started, how old were they, what role did it play? Sometimes the masturbation, especially if people have grown up in homes where there was just chaos, there were things going on, and people just wanted to tap out, to just escape.
[00:13:32] Michelle Fischler: And masturbation became that coping strategy. It worked really well for them, right? And when people can understand the relationship with it and the purpose that it was serving when they were younger, then it gives them more insight. Like, that is a coping strategy. It doesn't have to be the only one, but it's the one they know how to do really, really well, and it works, and no wonder there's a tension of, like, all of a sudden deciding to not do it.
[00:14:12] Lisa Etherson: Yeah. And
[00:14:13] Michelle Fischler: then what? How are they gonna manage, right? How are they gonna cope?
[00:14:17] Lisa Etherson: Yeah. It's a real comfort. It's something that they can do themselves. It's something that gives them a sense of control, a sense of agency. Once people understand the purpose and what's really going on and where it stems from.
[00:14:30] Lisa Etherson: You know, one of the things that I love in therapy is when people get these real light bulb moments, like, oh, and you can just see them sort of, like, settle into themselves, like, oh my goodness, that makes so much sense.
[00:14:40] Michelle Fischler: Yes. It's the making sense that I think can help people because shame can also make you feel just completely, you just don't understand it.
[00:14:50] Michelle Fischler: You don't understand the origin. You feel like it hijacks you. You have no control over it. But then when you start to just help them, almost like a puzzle, putting a piece here, a piece there, it then allows them to almo- like, have compassion for that younger self, and then also gives them choice.
[00:15:12] Lisa Etherson: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:15:13] Lisa Etherson: So I use a lot of psychoeducation in my therapy, and I will literally talk people through the shame process from beginning to end. And I won't necessarily say, "This is your process. This is what happened to you." What I tend to do with the psychoeducation is to say, "Have a think of this idea," and I, I describe it almost like it's outside of themselves.
[00:15:32] Lisa Etherson: I'm just giving them this idea of something. I'm not saying, "This is what's happening to you." Because when it comes to shame, if they can kind of view it from the inside looking out, they tend to be able to connect with that a lot better. And then they'll say to me, "Oh, you've just described my whole life in this thing that you've just told me."
[00:15:55] Lisa Etherson: And that's when things start to change. Just because there's something important about creating that distance initially, that people can then engage with this quite, as you say, complex and real difficult thing and the thing that we want to avoid at all costs. But when they see, oh, actually my shame had a purpose, and this is why I do the things that I've done, and this is why I had shame in the first place, and just being able to put all of that together.
[00:16:19] Lisa Etherson: So one of the things that I do when people are really struggling with this is I ask them to, as an experiment, to go and watch some porn and masturbate or do whatever it is that they would normally do, as long as it's not harming other people, whatever that thing is. And I ask them to really celebrate afterwards.
[00:16:38] Lisa Etherson: And just think, "Oh, I've really enjoyed that. That was brilliant. That was just what I needed." And what I find is, is that people then are maybe there for 10, 20 minutes, and then they get up and they continue with their day. They're not stuck in this rumination of, "I shouldn't have done that. That was really bad," or be there even longer, because what people are often doing with sort of like edging-type activities is they're prolonging the feeling of feeling shit once that experience has stopped.
[00:17:08] Lisa Etherson: But if you can give permission and say, "Just enjoy it. Just, just see what that feels like. Just try and enjoy it and see what happens," they're not there for as long, and as I said, they get up and they get on with their day. And even that is transformative because it's the permission that they've been given to say, "Yeah, it's all right."
[00:17:25] Lisa Etherson: And it's when they can make a differentiation between what are they doing to manage their shame and what are they doing just to access pleasure because it just feels like a really good thing to do. For me, that's when the change happens, is when they can just do that thing and they can feel really good about it, because that in itself is that circuit breaker to the shame anyway.
[00:17:48] Lisa Etherson: So what people find is that they do the thing less, quality over quantity. And for me, that is the difference. It's about moving towards pleasure and not using it as a strategy to manage their shame.
[00:18:08] Michelle Fischler: Someone experience compulsive sexual behaviour and not actually be having a lot of sex
[00:18:15] Lisa Etherson: So the perceived compulsive sexual behaviour might come from the standards of the family that they're in or the religious setting that they're in or the culture that they're in, whatever that might be. If watching porn and masturbation is unacceptable, then doing that once or twice a week, that might feel like that's compulsive because they're doing something that they shouldn't be doing and they feel like they don't necessarily have any control over that.
[00:18:41] Lisa Etherson: So the moral incongruence I think is a really, really important thing.
[00:18:46] Michelle Fischler: Yeah. People will come in to see me and they've been told that they're a sex addict by their partner. They're worried that they are a sex addict. And then I'll ask, "Tell me about your masturbation practices." And they might say, "Once or maybe twice a day." Or it could be like once a week.
[00:19:16] Lisa Etherson: Yeah.
[00:19:17] Michelle Fischler: And it's so much about the meaning that they've received either through the lens of their partner, through the lens of their value system, through culture, through what they read on social media, and there's almost a tension around they don't want to let go of the label, and a partner doesn't necessarily want to let go of the label too because if we call you a sex addict, it means you can get that fixed, and it feels faster.
[00:19:59] Michelle Fischler: People want to fix things, and the process of understanding your sexuality and what feels like healthy sexuality versus compulsive sexuality, it takes time.
[00:20:13] Lisa Etherson: It does, doesn't it? There's lots of layers that you have to kinda get through before somebody starts to feel better, and I think one of the difficult things for our work is when there is a partner involved, there is a very distressed partner who feels a lot of betrayal.
[00:20:30] Lisa Etherson: There's something really important about acknowledging that and validating the level of distress that they feel. They can feel a lot of shame as well, so often the partner who has been found out will feel that uncontained shame, will feel that real acute experience of shame. It's very, very vulnerable.
[00:20:51] Lisa Etherson: Their sexuality has been seen that maybe they haven't discussed with a partner before, and could there be any judgment? And there's often a whole load of anger from the betrayed partner as well, but the betrayed partner can also feel a whole load of uncontained shame as well because they've suddenly discovered this thing.
[00:21:08] Lisa Etherson: And when it comes to uncontained shame, it's usually a shock. So even when a partner suspects something and picks up a phone and looks through a chat or something along those lines, it's still the seeing it sort of in the flesh if you like, really being confronted with this evidence where that can still feel like a shock, and suddenly they just don't know who this partner is anymore, and it's absolutely devastating.
[00:21:33] Lisa Etherson: So then you have both partners in a state of uncontained shame, and both partners are gonna be responding from that place. So one partner's potentially gonna hide and be making lots of reparation, and the other partner, also in a state of uncontained shame, is going to be very angry and want to take their shame and put it onto somebody else, obviously put it onto the betraying partner.
[00:22:00] Michelle Fischler: Is there a place in couples therapy where you can do this shame work while they're in the same room together?
[00:22:14] Lisa Etherson: I think you can eventually. I think it's quite important. This is just how I work, and other people might ha- do something quite differently. But I always suggest couples get their own therapy first.
[00:22:28] Lisa Etherson: And I think there's something important for the betrayed partner to be able to at least have their feelings validated, et cetera. But what I've found is, is that therapy doesn't work particularly well when week after week they just come with all of this anger because you can't get into the work. So they have the right to that anger, but they need to be helped with that elsewhere.
[00:22:49] Lisa Etherson: Because the other thing that I found as well, because of the shame, is often the partner who's been found out, they don't want to disclose everything that they've done. And it might be a really important part of the work that they do disclose the things that they have done, but in a really safe, contained way, which is with their therapist.
[00:23:09] Lisa Etherson: And the reason why they don't want to do that is often it's about protecting the partner, but ultimately it's about protecting themselves as well, isn't it? It's about being worried about the reaction. They're worried about the uncontained shame that's gonna come when the partner discovers something else that they've done, something else that's gone on.
[00:23:26] Lisa Etherson: They very rarely disclose the full extent of everything that's happening.
[00:23:32] Michelle Fischler: Do you think that it's important to disclose all of the behaviour that's happened that would be considered a betrayal to the other partner?
[00:23:50] Lisa Etherson: No, I don't think so because betrayal, it's a trauma response, and what happens for partners is...
[00:23:58] Lisa Etherson: And I know that they're desperate to know everything that's happened, and I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to prevent themselves from any more experiences of uncontained shame. They don't want the shock anymore, and I really, really, really understand that. But equally, there's something important about them not being traumatized by these visions that they end up.
[00:24:18] Lisa Etherson: Even if they don't witness anything, they can conjure up this image really quite easily. But I think there's also something about, with the partner who has done certain things, maybe it's okay for them to not disclose everything because of trying to manage their shame as well. So all of it is about managing both partners' shame and trying to do that in, in the safest and most compassionate way for each of them.
[00:24:45] Michelle Fischler: Yeah, and I think that- How you would do the work and how you think about it is very similar to also how Esther Perel would talk about disclosure when it comes to a betrayal in her book, The State of Affairs, and that getting everything off of your shoulders might feel better for you-
[00:25:09] Lisa Etherson: Yeah ...
[00:25:09] Michelle Fischler: but then you've put that onto your partner, which can also be very difficult when we look at some of these sex addiction programs where there is sometimes partners are brought in and there's this full disclosure.
[00:25:24] Michelle Fischler: They tell their partner everything, then their partner has to take that and go home.
[00:25:30] Lisa Etherson: Yeah. Absolutely.
[00:25:31] Michelle Fischler: Devastating. It is-
[00:25:33] Lisa Etherson: It is devastating, and you're right. I think there's a, a degree of selfishness. I don't mean that in a derog- derogatory way, but there's a degree of selfishness from the partner who has committed the betrayal when they use it as a confessional.
[00:25:46] Lisa Etherson: As you said, "This is gonna make me feel better." That really what they're trying to do is they're trying to manage their shame, and not necessarily by giving it to the other person, but just trying to get rid of it by being, "Oh, if I'm open, this might feel a little bit better for me." But without necessarily the full consideration of what that's going to do for their partner.
[00:26:03] Lisa Etherson: It's, it is a real tricky one because I said I know most partners r- want to know everything, but it is about managing the reduction of trying to stop the shock when they find something else out, and then their nervous system's starting to settle down, and then the shock comes along and they're dysregulated with that uncontained shame again.
[00:26:30] Michelle Fischler: If someone's quietly dealing with compulsive sexual behaviour and they, they've been dealing with this for years and they wanna get support, what would be the first steps to exploring that?
[00:26:47] Lisa Etherson: For me personally, I think it would be about sitting down with somebody who understands that whatever it is that they are doing will have a purpose, whether that purpose is for them to...
[00:27:03] Lisa Etherson: It's simply been to explore their sexuality in a way that feels safe for them, that they may feel some shame about their sexuality and they feel like they can't share it with anyone else, so they're gonna do it quite secretly. Because I think there's something about being able to express all of that and be accepted and to be seen exactly as they are.
[00:27:23] Lisa Etherson: That in itself can re- really shift the contained shame, which is often, I say, the motivator for the compulsive-type behaviour anyway. But also giving someone the opportunity to explore their sexual interests, again, as long as they're not illegal and they're not hurting anybody. To have someone help them to give themselves permission to have those is really important as well.
[00:27:47] Lisa Etherson: So from my perspective, it would be to be able to find a sex positive, probably sex therapist, not necessarily, but someone who's able to talk quite freely about sex and understands that this is, that type of behaviour, that type of compulsive behaviour has served a very, very important purpose.
[00:28:06] Michelle Fischler: How do you know if you've ended up with a therapist that you should probably be walking away from?
[00:28:13] Lisa Etherson: So when it comes to shame, I think every part of shame has a purpose, and even uncontained shame, the real horrible, real nasty stuff also has a purpose, and its real purpose is to tell us that we are not safe. It's an alarm system. So if we're sat with a therapist, and actually this has been my experience with therapists, not all of them, some of them have been very, very good.
[00:28:38] Lisa Etherson: If you're sat with a therapist and you start to move into a state of uncontained shame, I'm gonna suggest that that therapist possibly isn't very safe for you. Now, it's also about being really curious as to that uncontained shame, because it's also a potential that that uncontained shame is coming up because that therapist is actually very, very good, and they are taking you to a place that feels a bit uncomfortable.
[00:29:06] Lisa Etherson: So when it comes to uncontained shame, we have to be really curious because our shame doesn't always have the story right, and it would be then for us to decide, I'm not thinking that this person's very good for me because this feels uncomfortable. Or again, it might be, I'm not feeling very comfortable here, but it might be because they're really on the money.
[00:29:27] Lisa Etherson: So we would have to decide. But I think using our bodies as that barometer of what is it that's actually going on here and trying to be as honest as we can with what that information is would be a start.
[00:29:41] Michelle Fischler: Yeah. I think certainly a really good therapist is going to build that trust where it almost feels like a flow.
[00:29:55] Michelle Fischler: And if you're feeling that unsafe experience, it's about recognizing that this one may not be a good fit, right? You want somebody who's gonna make you more curious and ease you in and ask the right questions.
[00:30:11] Lisa Etherson: The therapist who says, "Oh, you really are masturbating three times a day? Do you not think that's a bit much?"
[00:30:15] Lisa Etherson: What is it that the therapist is actually bringing into the room? What is the work that the therapist has done on their own sense of self and sexuality? And I think this is why having a sex positive therapist is really important, being able to hold the space for that curiosity.
[00:30:31] Michelle Fischler: Yeah. If someone's carried a secret around their sexual interest or their sexual behaviour and they believe that they're broken.
[00:30:51] Michelle Fischler: What do you want them to know?
[00:30:55] Lisa Etherson: I don't think anyone is broken. So I think I would want them to know where have those messages come from? And those messages that they are bad, deviant, you know, they are all the type of things that people come with. Have they been explicit messages? Have they been implicit messages?
[00:31:11] Lisa Etherson: And do those ideas actually belong to you or do they belong to someone else? If you look at social media, it's all about being abstinent. It's all about how terrible men are. It's all about how some men are doing very, very terrible things. But we're just talking about, you know, the standard college guy who looks at their phone and sees all these messages about how bad he is because he's doing certain things.
[00:31:32] Lisa Etherson: He's not bad at all. He's just been a normal college guy. But the messages that men are receiving right now about all of this stuff really fits into this idea of being bad. So it's like this perfect storm. You know, how do we help men in this position to feel differently, to feel better about their sexuality, to feel better about themselves, to be better partners, to change their relationship with shame as well?
[00:31:57] Lisa Etherson: So if they change their relationship with shame, they can change their relationship with self.
[00:32:05] Michelle Fischler: If you have a story that you wanna tell on GETSOME, email me at michelle@getsome.ca. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram at getsome_podcast. You'll get insights on sex and sexuality, dating tips, and behind-the-scenes content between episodes. This show is produced by Katie Jensen at Vocal Fry Studios.
[00:32:28] Michelle Fischler: Thanks for listening. See you later.