Category: selfconsent

Five ways to work with a social comedown

If you haven’t read the last post, you might want to start there, since it has a much longer definition of what a social comedown is. In brief, social comedowns consist of difficult thoughts, sensations, feelings and urges arising after socialising that often include ruminating over past distress and judging yourself for having a hard … Continue reading Five ways to work with a social comedown

Boundaries: From the broken house to the fortress of solitude

When I was thinking about writing this piece I recalled a session that I went to on Boundaries at South West Love Fest in Tuscon last year. At that session, Diana Ryan talked about boundaries in terms of what a home would look like depending on how your boundaries were maintained. This was such a … Continue reading Boundaries: From the broken house to the fortress of solitude

Five things to pay attention to in the transition to existing relationship energy.

Naturally enough, there are lots of things to pay attention to at different times in your relationship. This is just a prompt to think through some common things that come up at this stage: 1) Did your chemistry mask poor compatibility?     One of the reasons that the move from NRE to ERE can … Continue reading Five things to pay attention to in the transition to existing relationship energy.

Practicing awareness of sensations

For a long time, I found it really difficult to identify feelings in my body. If I looked for emotions I would find a tight ball at the top of my diaphragm, but giving it a label was impossible. I could be happy, scared, angry, excited, anxious or embarrassed and the same ball sat in … Continue reading Practicing awareness of sensations

Sexual permission slip

Both Ecstasy is Necessary by Barbara Carrellas and Healing Sex by Staci Haines talk about the concept of a sexual permission slip. Given our culture around sex and consent, you might think that this would be a document written to outline what acts you give others permission to engage in with you, but you’d be … Continue reading Sexual permission slip

Negotiating sex – start with the wheel of consent

The wheel of consent is a revolutionary tool, and there is no way I could possibly explain it better than Betty Martin does here. Effectively the wheel of consent, as you see above, pulls apart any instance of touch into two axes. The first is about who is doing the touch, the second is about … Continue reading Negotiating sex – start with the wheel of consent