4 Steps to Confidence & Comfort in Intimacy

These are the steps to confidence and comfort that work. Tune in to learn the 4 key steps that will take you from anxious and underconfident to a true, deep, felt sense of comfort and capability in sex and intimacy. Frankly, they are not all easy, though some are surprisingly fun. These steps are what my practice is based on and why it's been so effective for my clients. That's why I'm sharing them with you today. 

Get my free guide: 5 Steps to Start Solving Desire Differences
(Without Blame or Shame), A Practical Starting Point for Individuals and Couples, at https://laurajurgens.com/libido 

Find out more about my offerings and read the blog: https://laurajurgens.com/

Copyright notice: All content in this podcast is copyrighted and copying, scraping, data mining, or using the content to train AI is prohibited. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Welcome to the Sex Help for Smart People podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Laura Jurgens, self liberated former science professor, sexologist, and dual certified master intimacy coach. I specialize in helping you transform your relationships to get the kinds of sex, intimacy, and connection you crave using research backed practice and play.

[00:00:22] So let's get at it. Hey, my f Friends, welcome to episode 52. I am celebrating one full year today of podcasting because this is episode 52. That's amazing. I'm so excited. And I hope that this has been as fun a ride for you as it has been for me. And I'm looking forward to another year with you all. Please, here is a question for you.

[00:00:52] Please, if you have some topics that are like burning a hole in your pocket or your head where you just really want to ask me about, I want to invite you to email me, Laura, L A U R A, at laurajurgens. com, L A U R A J U R G E N S. com. Don't spell it with an E. It's not hand lotion. I want you to email me and ask me to do that topic.

[00:01:21] And if you have some like questions you want me to answer, I would also totally do some Q& A. So if you want to email me with specific questions, that's cool too, or a topic. So feel free, that invitation is open to you. Okay. So today, what we are going to talk about is how to feel confident and comfortable in intimacy.

[00:01:50] And I'm going to share with you the four steps to confidence and comfort. I think a lot of people want confidence and comfort. They may not know they want confidence and comfort. We may be thinking. Gosh, what is it that I really need? We may be feeling a little anxious. We may be feeling a little like there's something missing.

[00:02:10] We may be feeling a little blocked. We may just be feeling like that sort of, I don't know what to do. I don't know if I'm any good at this. I don't know if I should be better. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But at the end of the day, a lot of us just want some confidence and comfort. And. I think these are the same four steps for confidence and comfort with anything in my experience.

[00:02:35] I mean, it's a decent amount of experience. I've, I'm 47. I've been around the block a few times. I have also tried lots of things and I have learned a lot of things and I have always started out neither comfortable nor confident in them. And so I have to tell myself and remind myself of these four steps all the time, including in my business.

[00:02:58] Because I haven't actually been in business for that long. And there are still a lot of things about like sales and marketing and all that stuff that I am a really big beginner at. I have focused so much on becoming the best possible coach for people so that my My clients would really get great results, and that is one way that I have built my own confidence in coaching, but not so much in marketing.

[00:03:23] I'm kind of clueless in social media, and I kind of avoid it. Just, you might have noticed, or not. This is a much more comfortable space for me, and it is also how I'm building confidence and comfort in podcasting, right, is my experience. But we're going to dive in. We're going to talk about the four. key steps.

[00:03:42] And this is a process that is really woven in throughout all of my work with my clients. And I would say, Yeah, it might work with myself for sure, but also just my perspective, and you will hear it kind of sprinkled throughout all of my podcasts. Okay, number one is deciding that you are absolutely capable and not believing your own bullshit that tells you that you're not.

[00:04:12] This is a harder step than it sounds like. Most of us tend to believe that. All of the evidence of the past is that we haven't done this thing, or like we haven't been good at it before. So how could we possibly actually be capable? How could we really be good at something that we haven't ever been good at before?

[00:04:37] And the truth is, if you believe in advance that you are bad at it, you will be bad at it. That's just how it works. That's how it works. If you are up in your head about anything, learning how to swim, say you're like, I'm bad, I'm bad at swimming, I can't swim, I'm scared, I'm just not good at it, I'm not capable of learning, you will not be the person who learns really well.

[00:05:02] You will not be the star of the class. Knowing that you are absolutely capable, deciding that you are absolutely capable, that everything you need is already in you. is so, so important. And that is absolutely true. It has been true for every single one of the clients I have ever worked with. That everything they needed was already inside them.

[00:05:26] You are the expert on you. They are the expert on them. I am the expert on me. But we've just got shit in the way. Right? We need to clear out what is in the way. We were all born 100 percent capable of being really deeply connected to our own sexuality, of being sexual beings, unless we, you know, maybe we are, some of us are born asexual, totally fine to have an exception to that rule, but the vast majority of people, everybody's born capable of really feeling pleasure in their body.

[00:06:02] And yes, that also goes for asexual people. Everyone is capable of feeling pleasure in their body. Everyone is capable of feeling relaxed. Everyone is capable of feeling comfort. These are just human emotions. We're all capable of them. We're all capable of feeling playful and silly and experimental and adventurous.

[00:06:20] Everyone. including with sexuality and intimacy. You are a hundred percent capable. It's just that we get socialized or we get repressed or we get negative experiences that take us out of that, the connection with our authentic sexy. So in order to find our authentic sexy, our freedom, we need to remove those blocks.

[00:06:48] But those blocks don't mean that we're not capable. So I think a really important step is recognizing and deciding that you know damn well you are absolutely capable. Everything you need is already in you. All right, that is really important. Number two that's really important. And this one is also really hard.

[00:07:09] So maybe these steps, there's only four of them, right? And they're not all hard, but. I think sometimes deciding that we're capable feels like a really big leap. We're like almost afraid to actually give ourselves that much credit. That doesn't do us any good. It doesn't do us any good to think that we can't do it.

[00:07:28] It doesn't motivate us. It doesn't help. If you think back to everything that you thought you can't do, you didn't do it better because you thought you couldn't do it. So it's not helping, right? But it does somehow feel like almost easy. It's like an easy out because you can fail ahead of time. You don't actually have to try, right?

[00:07:45] But if you actually believed you're capable, oh shit, now you're on the hook for actually doing something. But it's important. So that's why it's hard. The second one is hard because it also takes bravery. And the second one is honesty. I think Honesty is really important to building confidence and comfort in intimacy.

[00:08:09] And it's actually really important to building confidence and comfort in general. We need to be really brave to actually tell ourselves the truth and to see what's true. And what's true is that there's some things that we can control. There's some things that are in our sphere of influence. Most of those things have to do with ourselves.

[00:08:30] And there are a lot of things that we can't control that are outside our sphere of influence. And a lot of those things have to do with other people. When we try, and I see this so much, when people try to control others, They will always feel powerless and it's because the truth is you are powerless to control other people.

[00:08:59] We are. We all are powerless to control other people. Doesn't mean that we can't get different outcomes with people in relationship by trying different tack. That's actually really possible. But we ultimately don't get to control them. We don't. get to decide what their capacity is, we don't get to decide how they're going to respond to certain things, we don't get to decide what they're going to like or what they're going to be up for or what their boundaries are.

[00:09:27] And when we try to make everything about other people, that other people, somebody else has to do stuff in order for us to be happy, we will always feel powerless. But when we are honest with ourselves and we say, there are ways that I can make myself happy, and we take responsibility for our own joy and pleasure and decisions in this life, with absolute honesty, we will always have more power.

[00:09:59] easy to do, and it's really hard to do when you can't see it clearly. And usually, so this is one of the things that a coach can really, and I help people with this all the time, but a coach can really help you with, is seeing clearly what's yours and what someone else's. And the reason that it's so much easier for a coach to do that than for you to do it yourself is because you are just too close to the problem.

[00:10:25] It's like trying, you can't see the thing, right? If you are two centimeters away from a cow, you cannot tell that you're looking at a cow. All you see is like some white fur. You have no idea what the hell that is. You can't see the whole animal. You don't know what it is that you're looking at. You need to step back and be like, Oh, it's a gal.

[00:10:47] Someone farther away from your situation can see much more clearly what is going on. And someone who's willing to be honest with you about those, that situation and willing to ask you enough questions to figure out what is yours and what is someone else's that is worth gold. It is just so valuable. It is an amazing, amazing thing and really, really worth investing in getting help on that because it will clarify things so much quicker for you.

[00:11:18] You won't stay stuck in a mire. And that doesn't mean that you can't also do a lot of work on your own to separate out it. What is yours, and what is someone else's? But I do think that feeling confident and comfortable in intimacy really does require honesty with yourself, and a lot of times people resist knowing what they know.

[00:11:41] Because it seems scary. And there may be some fears of like knowing what you actually like and don't like. And actually like, oh gosh, maybe I would actually have to say that. Or maybe that would change my relationship. Or maybe that would challenge my sense of self and how I think about myself, right? So I do think honesty is an incredibly important step for confidence and comfort because if you are secretly bullshitting yourself, you will never actually feel confident.

[00:12:11] It will all be a facade and a mask and it will be a palace built on sand. It will be All ready to crumble at any moment, right? So being really truthful and honest with yourself is a cornerstone of confidence and comfort because otherwise your subconscious is always going to know that you're full of shit.

[00:12:29] That's not helpful for anybody. Okay. So number one was knowing you're capable. Number two is being absolutely honest with yourself and being brave enough to do both of those things is the key. It's a challenge and it's one of the reasons why people also come to coaching because they need to borrow my faith in them.

[00:12:47] And I'm always happy to lend it because I have so much, I have so much overflowing faith in my clients because I have seen them do all the things that they thought they couldn't do over and over again. They always do stuff that they always surprise themselves. We are always more capable than we think.

[00:13:06] So if you need to borrow some confidence. in yourself that is always available. And hopefully you have some other people that you can ask for that if you don't want to reach out for coaching. But if you do come grab a consult, you'll get at least to experience what it's like to have somebody fully believe in your capacity.

[00:13:27] All right, number three, steps to confidence and comfort and intimacy is step by step, playful practice. Taking small, fun steps. That's what I'm talking about. No one learns how to play soccer by talking about soccer. You, you can't learn how to have really great football. Intimacy, really great sex life by talking doing nothing but talking about it.

[00:14:03] It doesn't work. You have to practice, and it's also really hard to learn how to play soccer by jumping into a Premier League football game in the UK, right? Like, you can't go from, I don't know how to play this, to I am going to be in the Olympics. That is not. the way to learn, right? So we have to go step by step.

[00:14:28] There's a lot of skills that I didn't even know I needed until I was like, Oh, I actually don't know how to do this, right? And it was because I was practicing and I'm learning a new thing. Okay. So we're, how does that apply to sex and intimacy? We need to work up a skill progression for anything that humans want to learn, right?

[00:14:54] Humans learn best by staged, step by step skill progression. And that's how we build confidence to try the next step, is doing really well at the one before, right? So mastering a new skill of connecting with yourself, for example, being able to like really notice and connect with your genitalia being able to feel whether like, how aroused am I being able to really tell what's going on inside your body.

[00:15:23] That's a skill and it takes practice. And. That's why I have exercises for people that take them from like the first step of that practice up to step, you know, level 10. And you build the confidence not by throwing somebody in the deep end right away, but by starting with the first step based on where they're at.

[00:15:47] Things like communication, so many of us have a hard time with communication. And there are really great ways to learn how to communicate with people better. We have to learn by practicing step by step and having success. And then be like, Oh my God, that works so well. This happens to me all the time. I'm like, what?

[00:16:09] They're like, Oh my God, I tried out this thing that we did last week in session with my partner and it worked so well. I didn't, he hasn't listened to me for 20 years on this topic and he finally heard what I was saying. I was like, yeah, totally. And they're like, Oh my God, it was magic. I'm like, it's not magic.

[00:16:23] You just learned something and you applied it and now we're ready to do the next step. Right? It's simple, but you need a process and you need to go at your pace that works based on where you're at. Right? And then you're like, Oh my gosh, that was so easy. I just didn't realize how to do it. Yeah, no big deal.

[00:16:42] This is like when people are struggling with orgasms. Maybe they've never had an orgasm, right? There are steps to get you there. If you just try to go from 0 to 100, and then you fail, you're just going to feel bad. But it doesn't mean that there's not a path that works, we just need to take it step by step.

[00:17:02] So that is step three to confidence and comfort in intimacy is allowing yourself to do a skill progression. That is suited to you and tailored to you based on where you're at and the things that you need to learn because you won't need to learn everything. There are some things that you're inherently amazing at or you've learned along the way of your life and you're already like nailing.

[00:17:25] So we, we can skip those. But somebody else needs those things and they need it from the ground up, right? And you might be vice versa. Maybe you need some specific skills that they don't have. And that's what's going to fill in the gaps for you so that you feel confident and comfortable. with intimacy of all kinds, right?

[00:17:46] So skill progression, number three. And you don't get that. I will tell you, you do not get that from therapy. So it's really important that if you need skill progression, which pretty much everybody does, that at some point you're going to have to stop talking about it and actually start doing it. And that's where I see a lot of couples have gotten really frustrated and given up because they've gone to like couples therapy or something.

[00:18:08] They just talk about all their beefs over and over and over again. Talk, talk, talk. Don't actually get to practice really connecting. They don't get somebody who's guiding them through attuning to each other, for example. And. Those moments, those skill based practices are game changers and they will change everything and then you will feel like, oh, I actually know how to do this now.

[00:18:31] I don't have to just talk about it. Okay. The last one, number four, is reinforcement of motivation through celebration. Now this might sound kind of trite and I want you to invite you to suspend disbelief if you were a person who's like, ah, I don't need to do that. Right? Bullshit. Everybody needs to do it.

[00:18:56] I mean, obviously you're listening to this because you don't mind me telling you my absolutely honest opinion. So my absolutely honest opinion is that everybody needs to celebrate the fuck out of themselves way more. Because what's happening with skill progression, right, is when we have these little wins.

[00:19:11] If we just tell ourselves, Oh, that was easy. I was stupid not for knowing it before. It doesn't really matter, right? If we don't sit there and say, Oh my God, that was awesome. Look, I just totally did this thing I've never done before. You know, I just had my first orgasm or I just had my first, Okay.

[00:19:29] conflict with my partner without anybody like crying or getting mad like we actually feel good about our relationship now after having this really difficult discussion or I just set my first boundary really effectively or like, Oh my God, I just, you know, whatever it is, right there. When we celebrate those things.

[00:19:50] When we give ourselves the gift of celebration and really, really just take pride in what we've accomplished, we are giving ourselves the gift of motivation for the next step. And we are honoring the part of us, that person who we were before we just took this step, who didn't know how to do it, who was scared, who was resistant.

[00:20:16] We're saying. Oh my gosh, you were so brave. You did it anyway. And look, it worked. And that gives us the energy that we need in order to take the next step. If we discount our steps along the way, we will, we will quit somewhere along the way. And I don't know about you, but you have probably, if you are anything at all like me, have quit on a bunch of shit before because you didn't actually notice how much progress you were making or you discounted your progress.

[00:20:47] I've quit on so many things because I didn't believe that it was, where I was, was good enough and I was so frustrated that I wasn't perfect at it or better or like as good as somebody else at it that I couldn't tolerate being where I was. And so I quit. And that's okay. That's okay. Sometimes I've like picked something back up and it's okay.

[00:21:13] And sometimes I haven't, and that's okay for you too, right? Those are learning experiences. But I did teach myself really effectively how to quit, and it's by sapping my motivation by not actually appreciating every single time I put effort in, and every single win that I have along the way. We all know how to do this really well when we're babies.

[00:21:35] So you at some point in your life learned how to walk, which is actually really pretty amazing because bipedal movement is not that easy. If you look at a baby who hasn't learned how to walk, you can see that it's actually not that easy. It takes a lot of coordination, a lot of muscle strength. It is not easy for them at all.

[00:21:58] But, have you ever seen a kid learning how to walk? They will get really bummed when they fall over and, you know, they, they kind of, they pull themselves up and then they'll like try to toddle like a tiny little bit and then they'll fall over and they'll, you know, sometimes they're kind of bummed, sometimes they're like whatever, right?

[00:22:17] But when they take a couple steps, you'll see them get like super happy. They like light up and they clap and smile and they're like really excited. And if you have. Parent, they'll do that on their own. If you have parental reinforcement or somebody else who's like reinforcing it and clapping and smiling with them, they're even happier, right?

[00:22:37] They're like super proud of themselves and that, that natural tendency to celebrate our little accomplishments. Right, just taking a couple steps is positive reinforcement. We are wired for positive reinforcement and humans work well that way. If you skip it and just say, Oh, I, fine, I mastered that thing, you know, that little baby step, but it was easy.

[00:23:02] I'm still no good at it. XYZ, like the next level, right? You basically are just shitting on your accomplishments and you sap your motivation. So, it is really important to celebrate for yourself. It's even better to celebrate with someone else so I celebrate the crap out of my clients and we celebrate together and I help people celebrate because a lot of us have lost the knack.

[00:23:22] We have lost the knack because we haven't given ourselves permission to celebrate every time we are making progress along the way. And the truth is that no one quits when they are having fun and when they are winning. When you feel like you are winning and you are having fun, you always reach your goals faster.

[00:23:43] We only stall out when we stop celebrating our wins along the way. So that is another key to confidence and comfort is celebrating the crap out of yourself and inviting everybody else to celebrate with you and really leaning into that. So those are the four things and I think you can apply these to literally everything in your life.

[00:24:02] If you are here, it might be because you want some support in your life around feeling more confident and comfortable with sex and intimacy and in romantic relationships. So, my hope for you is that you feel capable, honest with yourself, that you feel like, I can do it. I get to do this for me. I get to learn the things that I haven't learned yet.

[00:24:29] That's amazing. This is like, life is full of possibilities. You get to have the adventure that you choose, right? My hope for you is that you understand those steps are actually all fun. Those four steps are great. They may be a little hard at times, right? Deciding that you're capable, being totally honest with yourself.

[00:24:47] Ooh, that one can be hard, right? Asking for help to be honest with yourself. That can be hard. The playful practice step by step. That can be challenging when you haven't actually taken that step or you don't know you can do it and you have to borrow some confidence from someone else. Totally fine.

[00:25:03] Celebration, to reinforce your motivation, you know, that can feel uncomfortable at first if you're not, if you haven't been in the habit of celebrating. But all of those things are actually really fun. Every single step to confidence and comfort can be fun. So I want you to take a look at your own personal goals in sex, intimacy, relationships, connection.

[00:25:25] And really think about, okay, how do I build these four steps more into my life? How do I have more fun with these? How do I let this be a hopeful, exciting process, not a slog? We don't want to do that. That's not what we do here. You can do that elsewhere. How do you make it fun for yourself? And these are the four things, these are the four things that will not just make it fun, but they will also make you successful.

[00:25:56] And so that's why I wanted to share them with you today. And I hope that has been kind of just fun to think about and how you can apply that. All right, and I want to re invite you to send me, you know, on this anniversary of 52 episodes, please think about if there are some topics that you are just really wanting me to cover and I haven't covered yet, or I haven't covered them as in depth as you want.

[00:26:23] or you have specific questions, please feel free to reach out to me. Really, I don't get like inundated with emails. I know a lot of people are like, well, I shouldn't email her. I'm actually inviting you to contact me. So if you would like to, please do and don't if you don't want to. But if you would like to, please don't stop yourself.

[00:26:44] Go ahead and reach out. I'm always happy to hear from listeners. All right, my dears. I'll see you here next time. Hey, if you're curious about how you could have better sex and connections, go grab my free guide, Find Your Secret Turn Ons. It's right on my website, www. laurajurgens.com, and the link is in the show notes.

[00:27:02] I'll see you here next time.