#16. A discussion on harassment, independent women, and making spaces safer - with Shawna Potter

Part 3 of 7! This season on To Hump a Pillow, I invite my fiance Mike to the podcast in a 7-Episode Relationship Series to discuss challenging conversations that occur in couple-hood. We'll deep-dive into 7 deliciously uncomfortable topics:

1. How to talk about envious and jealous feelings
2. How to talk about money and finances, spending habits
3. Sex life - how it's changed over our relationship and how to ask for what you need
4. On taking things too personally
5. Maintaining individualism and ensuring alone time
6. Day to day compromising
7. Coparenting in a blended family

In this episode, Mike and I discuss difficult feelings and values around money, like:

1. The beginning of our sex life (early dating), first sexual experience
2. First trimester sex
3. Second/third trimester sex
4. Post-partum sex life and how to navigate the emotional and physical mess
5. Things that get in the way of our sex life

For questions regarding this topic, please email hump@ellenmelon.com

Episodes I've called out in the episode:

• #60. The trick to using dating apps - a real convo with my boyfriend Mike
• #19. Finding self-love with The 4 Agreements
• #14. How sex changes in partnerships for first time parents, genito-pelvic pain, and arousal disorder - with Dr. Natalie Rosen
• #9. Vaginal tearing during child labor: Sex, anatomy, fear, and lessons learned - with Alyssa
• #7. The messages I received about sex when I was young - Part 1 of 2 - with Ellen Melon

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For more info on 1-on-1 coaching program:

https://www.ellenmelon.com/intimacy-coaching

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Coach Ellen Melon links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenmelonshow/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenmelonshow

Website: https://www.ellenmelon.com

Dear listeners, pardon my absence! After taking a year off of the podcast, being pregnant, buying a house, having a baby, getting engaged, I am back and ready to share some new content on the podcast.

This season on To Hump a Pillow, I invite my fiance Mike to the podcast in a 7-Episode Relationship Series to discuss challenging conversations that occur in couple-hood. We'll deep-dive into 7 deliciously uncomfortable topics:

1. How to talk about envious and jealous feelings
2. How to talk about money and finances, spending habits
3. Sex life - how it's changed over our relationship and how to ask for what you need
4. On taking things too personally
5. Maintaining individualism and ensuring alone time
6. Day to day compromising
7. Coparenting in a blended family

In this episode, Mike and I discuss difficult feelings and values around money, like:

1. Money mindset
2. How money was discussed in our homes, upbringing
3. Our challenges with talking about money
4. As a woman, making my own money to be able to make empowered decisions
5. Spending money seperately, together, and on large purchases

For questions regarding this topic, please email hump@ellenmelon.com

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For more info on 1-on-1 coaching program:

https://www.ellenmelon.com/intimacy-coaching

____________________

Coach Ellen Melon links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenmelonshow/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenmelonshow

Website: https://www.ellenmelon.com

Dear listeners, pardon my absence! After taking a year off of the podcast, being pregnant, buying a house, having a baby, getting engaged, I am back and ready to share some new content on the podcast.

This season on To Hump a Pillow, I invite my fiance Mike to the podcast in a 7-Episode Relationship Series to discuss challenging conversations that occur in couple-hood. We'll deep-dive into 7 deliciously uncomfortable topics:

1. How to talk about envious and jealous feelings
2. How to talk about money and finances
3. Sex life - how it's changed over our relationship and how to ask for what you need
4. On taking things too personally
5. Maintaining individualism and ensuring alone time
6. Day to day compromising
7. Coparenting in a blended family

In this episode, Mike and I discuss difficult feelings around envy and jealousy. We'll discuss:

1. dating and setting the expectation that it’s okay to talk about previous relationships within boundaries
2. the difference between jealousy and envy and personal examples of how to navigate those feeling in our relationship when it comes up
3. how jealousy and envy feel in the body (body mapping excercise) so that we know when it comes up

For questions regarding jealousy and envy in your life, please email questions to hump@ellenmelon.com

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For more info on 1-on-1 coaching program:

https://www.ellenmelon.com/intimacy-coaching

____________________

Coach Ellen Melon links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenmelonshow/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenmelonshow

Website: https://www.ellenmelon.com

How do you integrate painful losses into your life while living?

Grief is something we in the United States are known to do poorly. Perhaps it's the European decent that curved our culture's inability to feel feelings, perhaps it's industrial era-based where we learned that there's no time in our 40 hour work week to sit with grief, or perhaps our modern day fear machines (the media) have signaled to our bodies, 'It's not safe here - eject from your body.'

Whatever got us here, grief is an important part of our learning to be resilient and self-compassionate. And it's part of the human contract with life — As Dr Susan David says, “Discomfort is the price of admission to meaningful life.”

In this episode, I provide some education and philosophy on grief, the definitions, different types of grief. I also share about my year-long season of grief, showcasing how I found a place for grief, having successfully learned how to do it and how to integrate it.

Grief is something we must all feel and move through in order to have the highest level of relationships with people we connect with and love. For, it is in our relationship to the self that we treat and extend to others.

For more info on the Remember Your Worth coaching program:

https://www.ellenmelon.com/intimacy-coaching

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Coach Ellen Melon links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenmelonshow/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenmelonshow

Website: https://www.ellenmelon.com

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In this episode we get to hear from a former client on his experience working with a sex and relationship coach. Addison and I worked for 4 months together back in January, meeting every 2 weeks via Zoom. Listen to the challenges he overcame in this episode. 

I’m a coach who specializes in working with people pleasers, codependents, and people with anxious-attachement styles. 

If you are someone who identifies with those labels, some challenges you might be having are…

• Being angry and blamey — sick of playing the victim and ready to stop being so judgemental all the time
• Tired of seeking external validation, or tired of being a person who gets into relationships and says, “okay how can I mold myself so this person likes me”
• Fixated on every little thing — your perfectionism gets in the way of you living life because you’re so busy hustling for worthiness and what you produce
• How much control you need to have on everything, all the time and it’s ruining your life and relationships
• Tired of leaning on coping mechanisms- ways in which you numb out, like emotional eating, netflix bingeing, shopping, drugs and alcohol
• Tired of the harsh and critical voice inside your head that’s hating on you all the time

If this sounds like you, it’s time to remember your worth. It’s time to cultivate happiness, authenticity, and self compassion, because my dear you have been performing what you think everyone else wants you to be and have lost your truest self and desires. Let’s call your authentic self back shall we?

For more info on the Remember Your Worth coaching program:

https://www.ellenmelon.com/intimacy-coaching

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Coach Ellen Melon links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenmelonshow/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenmelonshow

Website: https://www.ellenmelon.com

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Welcome back to To Hump A Pillow! We're kicking off Season 4, our 20 episode season with episode #60 — on dating apps.

1. intention: what part of me wants to download a dating app? what part of me is holding me back from trying dating apps?
2. profile creation: what meaningful and authentic stuff can I put out there?
3. swiping considerations: what parameters do you have in place for swiping? what red flags are you looking for? what green flags?
4. communications and boundaries: how do want to protect your time and energy by setting boundaries on communications? how long do you want to talk on the app until there's a sense of trust built? when is the right time to meet up?

This framework is mostly geared toward people with an anxious-attachment style, historically quick to have sex, and often attract emotionally immature partners, people that are only physically attractive (vanity-based dating), or emotionally unavailable partners. 

Coach Ellen Melon links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenmelonshow/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenmelonshow

Website: https://www.ellenmelon.com

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Ayahuasca is a powerful medicinal medicine that comes from the Amazon. It has been around for centuries, needs to be taken seriously, and is not for everyone. In this episode, fellow coach and healer, Kate Bandmann and I discuss our ayahuasca experiences — the terror and discomfort to the enhancements and growths.

This is the last episode of Season 3! I'll see you in the fall when we kick off Season 4!

Interested in work with a coach on your relationship style and sex life? Check out more info here: https://www.ellenmelon.com/1on1

Find Kate here:

https://www.instagram.com/elevate.integrate.therapy/

https://msha.ke/elevateintegratetherapy/

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Coach Ellen Melon links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenmelonshow/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenmelonshow

Website: https://www.ellenmelon.com

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In this episode, I fly solo in offering a different perspective on the Texas School Shooting. Yes, maybe it’s gun law reform and yes, it’s also hurting children in angry bodies. As more people feel disconnected, they grow angrier. Happy, secure children who have a sense of self don’t shoot up schools. It’s time to teach people how to process their childhood and FEEL THEIR FEELINGS.

I will discuss:

• My own experience of middle school and high school and what I noticed
• What is emotional neglect and emotional immature parents?
• 10 Themes of emotional neglect
• Mother wound
• Perfectionism as a byproduct of shame
• Belonging & Connection
• Shame, Empathy, Guilt, Humiliation and Embarrassment
• Cultivating authenticity

10 Themes of Emotional Neglect (from Dr Jonice Webbs “Running on Empty” Book):

1. Feelings of Emptiness
2. Counter-Dependence
3. Unrealistic Self-Appraisal
4. No Compassion for Self, Plenty for Others
5. Guilt and Shame: What is Wrong With Me?
6. Self-Directed Anger, Self-Blame
7. Fatal Flaw (If People Really Know Me They Won’t Like Me)
8. Difficulty Nurturing Self and Others
9. Poor Self-Discipline
10. Alexithymia: Poor Awareness and Understanding of Emotions

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenmelonshow/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenmelonshow

Website: https://www.ellenmelon.com

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Books discussed:

Running on Empty by Jonice Webb PhD with Christine Musello PsyD

Adult children of emotionally immature parents : how to heal from distant, rejecting, or self-involved parents by Lindsay C. Gibson

Atlas of the Heart by Brene Brown

Interested in working with a Somatic Sex & Relationship Coach? Apply for 1on1 or couples coaching with me: www.ellenmelon.com/intimacy-coaching

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Links we talked about:

Episode #10. Thinking about a career in sex work? Common misconceptions about the sex work industry - with Alice Little

10 Skills for Repair Blog Post: https://www.somaticainstitute.com/blog/10-steps-to-successful-relationship-repair/

Dipsea: https://www.dipseastories.com/blog/the-new-look-and-feel-of-dipsea/

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Coach Ellen Melon links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenmelonshow/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenmelonshow

Website: https://www.ellenmelon.com

Do you avoid conflict? Does it feel like you're walking on eggshells in your home, in your relationships? Then you need some education around repair. 

In this episode I pull out the Erotic Ed Archives — a YouTube Channel Show hosted by S x Coaches, Jessica and Ellen Melon – where we discuss the fundamentals of a repair conversation. Repair meaning, a hard conversation after an argument or rupture between 2 people. It's important to learn repair because it is a skill of empathetic listening and self awareness that will greatly enhance your relationships. We'll talk about our own experiences with repair, our own examples of avoiding conflict, and walk through the 10 Steps of Repair, created by Celeste & Danielle of Somatica Institute.

Interested in working with a Somatic Sex & Relationship Coach? Apply for 1on1 or couples coaching with me: www.ellenmelon.com/intimacy-coaching

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Links we talked about:

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Coach Ellen Melon links:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenmelonshow/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ellenmelonshow

Website: https://www.ellenmelon.com

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