Shoulds suck the fun out of life

Or at least they do for me.

I’ve found myself feeling creatively stuck recently.

Between two loud voices in my head, both telling me how I should be creative.

You are the boss of your vulva

This may sound obvious and yet it can be very easy to put someone else’s knowledge on a pedestal instead of your own.

Maybe a lover who you judge as more experienced then you

Or the health professional with the credentials

Or the practitioner with the years of experience

Or the healer who’s very spiritual

Or the book author that everyone is raving about

✨My name is Caoilfhionn, which is pronounced like Qweelin. When combined with my surname, my name translates to the blond and fair daughter of the hound of the sea from Irish, which by the way I speak. Although I’m pretty rusty at this stage

✨I’m a life coach specialising in Desire, S/ex and Relationships. I want to live in a world where s/exuality, the earth, our bodies, loving community and honest expression are all treated with reverence. Working as a coach is my way to contribute towards that world.

✨I’m engaged to Matt, we’ve been together 2+years. We had a whirlwind romance where we connected online during the pandemic, when I was in Ireland and he was in London. Within a week of connecting online, we agreed to move in together, which then happened within a month, and then a month later we got engaged! I feel so happy to have found him and we feel very much in love and lucky to have each other

One of the biggest shifts in my relationship to pleasure, came not from my training or courses I attended but from reading Caitlin Moran’s book ‘How to build a girl’.

There was a moment in the book when the protagonist talks about how she used to masturbate thinking about all the pleasure she would give the other person.

Her focus was on her touching THEM and how it would feel for THEM. She wasn’t even the main event in her own fantasies.

And as I read that, I realised that I was doing the same thing.

As I masturbated, I fantasised about all I could do for the other person.

How skilled and adept I would be.

I was getting off on their pleasure, not on my own.

A fixed masturbation style is when we masturbate the same way each time we do it, whether that’s with our own fingers, hands, bedding item, vibrator etc

The reasons why this can make it difficult to experience sexual pleasure with a partner are..

Why thinking positive thoughts doesn’t work to actually shift your life

I see lots of memes online about how we need to change our thoughts from negative to positive, to have our desired life.

They usually talk about how our thoughts impact our actions, which impacts our lives and how the same repetitive, negative thoughts can often keep us stuck.

What these memes are missing though is that our thoughts reflect our state.

So if our thoughts are fearful or angry or sad, its because we have the energy of these emotions in our bodies, and that to shift them, we need to feel them.

Pleasure is experienced in the present moment

This may sound obvious, so why am I writing it?

What I’ve found that I do, and many of my clients do too, is that we put off feeling pleasure until some fantasy moment in the future.

Oh I’ll let myself feel pleasure when …

… I’ve lost weight

… I got this promotion

… My business is in this place

… My health is fully recovered

… My kids are at this stage

… My house is properly organised

… Everything on my to-do list is done

… I have the perfect partner

You are allowed look for a partner

There is a common saying, that you’ll find love when you stop looking

I used to repeat this saying to myself and friends when I was growing up, I took it to mean that I shouldn’t actively look for a partner, instead I should devote my time and energy to living a fulfilling life

Which sounds like solid advice

Except that it reinforces that we need to be passive in our desire to find a partner, that we need to wait for them to find us, and we need to create a perfect fulfilling life to deserve them

Which isn’t how it worked out for me

Years ago, I was working with a coach (@brenda_fredericks) and one of the themes that came up was my desire for a boyfriend. I really wanted one. And in her wisdom, Brenda asked me to list out what I wanted to experience with a boyfriend. Where did I want to go, what would we do, how would he treat me etc. I listed them all out and she told me my assignment for that week was, as much as possible, to do that for myself. Which I did. Brunch is my favourite meal and so I took myself out to brunch somewhere lovely and I really treated myself. I had a great time, so much so that I took this on as a regular practice.

There’s a saying in Irish that goes, ‘Ní saoirse go saoirse na mban’. Which translates to that there is no freedom until the freedom of women.

I love the punch and power of these words, their left wing, anti-colonialist and feminist message.

To me, they evoke this sense of Irish women’s resistance to the status quo. Women who fought against the British Occupation. Women who stood up to the Church and its choke hold over the nation.

Growing up, I didn’t get on well with the other kids around me, so I spent a lot of my time in the school yard, walking by myself, daydreaming.

I don’t remember what I used to dream of then but I do know that the habit stuck with me.

All through my adulthood, as a big walker, I spent hours a day in fantasy as I was getting from a to b.

Dreaming of a life, where I was rich and influential as a creative with my own business. Confident and at ease in all situations. Having hot s/ex, travelling the world and in a loving relationship.

These fantasies were a wonderful escape, and a source of huge inspiration but the drawback was that the contrast between my fantasy life and my real life was stark.

At my meditation circle last night, I pulled an oracle card that said ‘Partnership’

I was confused why I got it and said to the holder, ‘I don’t understand why I’m getting this card because my partnership is really happy’

She responded with something to the gist, ‘that’s why you’re getting it, it’s reflecting how well it’s going and also you should celebrate and share it more’

And I realised that I often come and write about the things we’ve worked through and the challenges etc but rarely come to share just how happy we are.

Which we are ❤️

Being the Good Girl won’t get you what you want

What it will do though, is burn you out

I followed all the rules.

I got a great academic education.

A graduate job.

The desire to have a perfect relationship

I've spent years in the realm of relationship and intimacy classes, intensives and communities.

And when I initially got with Matt, I had this desire to the have the perfect relationship and to do it appropriately so that I could teach on it too.

This desire to be perfect showed up in how I consumed social media.

I would read a post by a teacher who I respected about the best way to do a relationship and I would be like, ‘amazing this is how I should create my relationship’

Then I would beat myself up when my relationship didn’t match that

Or I would feel like the good student when it did

One of the practices I've had this past two years since quitting my corporate job is actually to be kinder and gentler to my body over my period.

For background, I have historically had really painful periods where I've had to take painkillers on a regular basis and kind of walk around with a hot water bottle attached to me. They’ve also been irregular for years and they’ve lasted sometimes for a week and they’ve been very heavy.

I faked orgasms in my first long term relationship when I was 19.

We were both pretty clueless when it came to sex.

I didn’t know how to ask for what I wanted.

He was mostly focused on getting his cock in me and to climax as quickly as possible.

This meant our whole sex script revolved around his pleasure.

And that our sex was often painful and uncomfortable for me.

Because penetration happened so quickly.

I’m pretty sure we all desire more turned on, connected relationships. I certainly do! I’ve devoted my life to studying them so that I experience them for myself and then have the joy of sharing what I know with others.

Today I’ve compiled three tips for turning on your relationship, and the great thing about them is that they don’t require any expensive lingerie or s/ex toys. They just require your attention and your willingness to lean into your relationship. I’ve found them to be really useful, I hope you do too X

Things I learned from having a painful clit this year

- I wasted a lot of time feeling shame for my clit experiencing pain. I made myself wrong because I thought I shouldn’t experience anymore pain because I’ve spent so many years healing and doing different s/ex practices. I also catastrophised and became despondent, believing that I was stuck with this discomfort for life and that there was nothing I could do to change it. Basically I went into many of my negative patterns in the face of this experience. And once I stepped out of these, I was able to do practices that helped the energy shift. So I learned (again) that time spent in a negative down spiral of shame and fear achieves nothing except to keep me stuck.

The death of hustle culture and the emergence of flow

Many of us to a greater or lesser extent have bought into hustle culture.

The belief that we are what we do.

That our worth is reliant on productivity.

That the use of our life-force to make things happen that aren’t in congruence with our values is worthwhile

Because if we stick to these values we’ll get love, safety and success

The joy of healing from freeze, overwhelm and depression using the practice of somatic experiencing.