Boat. River. Person.: Journeys to Awakeness in Life, Relationships, and Sex

Author’s Note

I’m glad Oprah doesn’t have a daily TV show anymore.

In the years I have worked on this book, I have hoped it would help people, perhaps a lot of people. But not too many. Not so many that Oprah’s people might call me to come talk about my sex book. Because, you know—sex! On TV. On YouTube. Millions of views. The introverted part of me gets nervous at just the thought of that.

This is a sex book, and it isn’t a sex book.

It is true that I am a sex therapist. It is true that I work with people who want to work on their sex lives. And it’s complicated.

I have these ideas about sex, happiness, intimacy, and meaning. Rather than satisfaction and happiness, I propose meaning and Contentment. Rather than being a good person, doing your best, and keeping yourself desirable, I suggest finding your Self. Find your Self. Live from the awareness that Self provides. Not the story of yourself.

See, it’s complicated.

I think the word self tends to be boring. Especially compared to a word like sex. Like a wall painted a beige color, you don’t notice the word self. At least, not like you would notice a deep-red wall. That’s how people react to the word sex. Sex immediately draws attention. It seems to me that in our world of 280 characters including spaces, going viral, and our Borg-like phone Collective, the ideas of Self are like throwing a cup of water into the ocean!

Still, I’m not sure I could say no to Oprah!

Who knows all the sex-related things people will be searching for when this book pops up in a link? Low desire, help with intimacy, satisfaction, or some slangy word like hard. And yes, how to turn someone on. And, of course, sex.

I guess that’s okay. Yet this is more than a sex book.

Another worry is that this will be called a self-help book. Yes, it would feel great to walk into a Barnes and Noble or Books-a-Million and see my book on the shelves, hanging out with the other books like a normal book. Yet the category self-help feels like it minimizes the book. I know quite a large number of people who won’t pick up a self-help book and have no interest in a self-help app or website.

There’s nothing for it. Technically, this is a self-help book.

Yet I wonder, could I call it a Self-find book? A book to help you find your Self?

That is my intention. To help the reader connect with their Inner Self. Their truest Self. Their deepest Self. And as I call it in this book, their Inner Person Self.

In my experience, the stories people tell themselves about their self are what keep them stuck. I have seen that often it is what causes the problem in the first place. Especially in intimacy and sex.

I want to tell you about this Self ¹ thing. If you look at all your relationships and your Sexuality, you can locate your Self. Not the story of your self. Your Self. In the process of working on your relationships, your dating life, or your sex life, you can discover and understand your real you.

So, whether this is a sex book, a self-help book, or something else, my highest hope for this book is that those who pick it up will experience it as an invitation.

You. I invite you.

This is your invitation for you to find and explore the deepest part of you. Let’s go farther than you have ever gone to find that deepest wisdom within yourself.

The deep you that knows how to find your way.

Consider yourself invited.

1 Throughout this book the word self is capitalized to represent the concept of Inner Person Self. The word self without the capital indicates a general reference to you or your understanding of your Outer Self. See the Concept Guide in the Appendices for more working definitions and words that are capitalized to indicate a specific definition.

Contents

Author’s Note

Introduction : Contentment

WHAT IF?

PART ONE

Unknown Places

Just Getting to the Good Part

Campfire

The Real Story

Aha!

Lost in the Story

How the Body Asks What If?

How to Be Sexual

PART TWO

My What If? Journey

Painting

Counseling

Meltdowns

After Session

Second Session

Assignment

Thoughts

Wisdom of the Painting

My Body Asks What If

From Outside to Inside

WHAT IS

What Is Your Experience?

Your Super Power

Your Real You

Equal Say So

The Good Fail

Uncomfortable What Ifs

Naked Holding

Code Zombie

Email

Chess

Couples and the Canary

Jamila Asks What Is

AWAKENESS

PART ONE

Life, Only More Awake

Waking Up

Contented

Jamila Locates Self

PART TWO

Awake to Anger

Toxic Anger

PART THREE

Bridges and Abutments

Healthy Partners

I Count–You Count.

Relationships and Self

Include Your Self

The Promise

PART FOUR

Are You Happy?

He/Him/Their/They

Yes or No, Either Or

Queer: Uncommon, Not Normal, Not Straight

Is Porn Bad?

PART FIVE

About Desire

Outside or Inside

Awake to the Erotic

Pleasure

Secrets of the Erotic

Erotic Flow

Passion and Chemistry

The Secret

PART SIX

How to Do Sex

Wanting to Want Sex

The Real Story of Doing Sex

Painful Sex

How to Show Up for Sex

Incompatible

Graduation

Appendices

Concept Guide

About the Word Practice

Wake Up Opportunities

Knee-to-Knee Practice (K2K)

First Aid for Anxiety and Depression

Breath

Wake-Up Practice

Grief and Crisis

Body Awakeness Ideas

Journeys to Awakeness

Sexual Arousal Pathways

Stages of Awakeness

I Count–You Count Agreement

About the Yellow Light Encounters Exercises

About the Sexual Experiences and Behavior Inventory (SEABI)

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also By Author

Introduction : Contentment

This book is about Contentment, or, more precisely, how to experience and practice more Contentment more often.

Not the not-resting kind of contentment that says, I’m not going to be content until I’ve got what I want.

Not the worried-you-are-settling-for-less-than-you-should kind of contentment that says, I’m not going to be content with this. I won’t settle for this.

Neither of those.

The kind of Contentment I’m talking about is like the children’s story where Goldilocks went looking for the chair, the porridge, and the bed that were just right. It is a sense of peace that you feel inside of you. It’s when our body, mind, and the part of us that feels the body and hears the thoughts of our mind—our Self—all feel peaceful. Mind. Body. Self. Content.

My work as a clinical counselor is about helping people who are not content find and practice Contentment. I see it as a journey that we are all on. We can use the things in our lives that are not going well to help us understand ourselves and keep moving to a better place. A place that is just right for us.

I want to give you some ideas about the journey to Contentment that I think will help you. These ideas are straight from my relationship and sexuality work and are continually refined by the wisdom that each client brings to the work. This book enables me to walk with you for a while and share what I have learned. The three major ideas I am excited to share with you are how to practice Contentment, The Five Views of Self, and a very special painting that provides a profound metaphor about Self.

So, who is this book for? It is for anyone who wants to feel Contentment on the inside.

The single person who doesn’t want to be single

The person who secretly feels they are not in the right relationship for them

The couple struggling to be happy together

The couple arguing over sex

The person who feels like they aren’t sexual

The person who keeps losing their temper and rages

The person who is ashamed of their body

The person who feels betrayed by their body because it is not cooperating with them

The person who doesn’t trust their partner

The person who struggles with anxiety or depression

The person who struggles with addiction

The person who doesn’t know why they act the way they do

The person struggling with memories that keep popping back up on replay

This Contentment journey is one that every human is invited to. It is a journey to understand yourself and learn to wake up to your fullest life possible.

This book is divided into three sections that describe the three steps to getting to Contentment.

Section 1 is What if? We all have stories about what we know and what we don’t. Asking What if? or paying attention to our wake-up moments and Ahas is the place to start. What if helps us find what we don’t know we don’t know.

Section 2 is What Is?/What Is This is coming into the present moment. It is not a story of who we are. It is the place where our wise Self is awake and able to be in the moment. Assisted by your Mind and Body, you are able to do what you want and need to do. You wake up by finding and being in What Is.

Section 3 is Awakeness Being awake is living your life from your wise Inside Self. This section is about how to practice waking up, staying awake, and waking up more often. To guide you on your journey, I will help you examine your story—stories—that you tell yourself about yourself.

The second thing I will share in this book is my trusty map. It is the map I have used many times in my therapy work to alleviate pain and suffering in relationships and sexuality. It is a map of the Five Stories of Self. You may not speak your stories out loud, but they are there and they are what you follow as you live your life day to day. Each of the five types of stories are the paths we follow to understand ourselves.

I want to help you find your You are Here star—to help you find and understand your real You. When you find your Self, you wake up. Waking up is the skill you will need to practice Contentment.

It is a journey each human takes. We may not realize it. We may at times get stuck or turn back on our journey. But we always, always have our Self right there waiting for us.

You will see the Five Views of Self, five ways of understanding our Self, throughout this book:

Latent Self

Performance Self

Validation Self

Responsive Self

Integrated Self

The first three views of Self come from stories about ourselves that come from outside of us. They are our Outside Self.

Latent Self Stories are about how we fit into our world.

The Latent Self is where we understand our self and act from the viewpoints from our Self of Origin. The Self of Origin includes the Self we were as a baby and the life we were and are surrounded by. Our upbringing, our responses to that upbringing, and our stories about life all become a part of us. Our understanding of who we are comes from our origin story. Mother, father, sister, brother, orphan, only child, happy, not happy, rules, secrets—lots of things create our story of origin. As we become adults, we add to the sense of where we came from. Our understanding of ourselves is based on who we are, where we belong, what roles we fulfill, where we are safe and comfortable, where we have our life, our environment, our culture.

Performance Self Stories are about how well we meet expectations and goals.

The Performance Self is our scorecard of how we are doing as a human. We begin adding to our story of origin. We add evaluations based on aspirations of who we want to be, expectations from ourself and others, comparisons to others. At this stage of the journey, we may have numerous stories about how we are faring, how well we are meeting our goals for our self. We understand who we are; our self is based on how we are doing compared to our expectations and compared to what others expect of us.

Validation Self Stories are about how others see us.

The Validation Self is when we look around to get love, approval, and worthiness from other people. We understand who we are based on what others validate, approve of, and give the thumbs up to.

When we are using the stories, the paths of Latent, Performance, or Validation, we are focused on our life as it is lived outside, what is coming at us from our daily lives.

Meanwhile, we are missing something very important. Our Self is missing. Well, not really missing, but sound asleep.

We think that we are awake. We have all these thoughts, voices, and images in our heads all the time. Isn’t that awake? No. All of those thoughts, voices, and images are a river that never stops. This River is a part of you, but it is not your Inner Self—you. Your mind and your Self are two separate parts of you.

Let’s try that out. Right this moment, think about what you are thinking. What are the thoughts that you notice? You may want to jot them down. Write down your exact words that are floating by.

Now, let’s check. Who is the one who saw those thoughts? When you step back to think about thinking, it is your Inner Person Self who is able to step back from your thoughts and jot them down.

This is how you begin the next part of the journey. You work to see and understand your Self. Not the stories of the Latent Self. Not how well you are doing in parts of your life—your Performance Self. Not what any other person in this world thinks or says (Validation Self) you are. Your Self is the inside you, the part of you that can think about thinking and know and understand your body. That’s the real you, your Self.

The next part of the journey is very exciting. It’s the part where you begin to wake up from inside of you, where the view of your self changes to looking at your experiences of your Self. You begin to find the information that is inside you. You start understanding the real story of you. You practice being Responsive and Integrated. These are your Inside Self experiences, your truth.

Responsive Self Truth comes from our own wisdom. The Responsive Self is when we start looking around inside of ourselves. We start thinking about thinking. We notice our inner space. We notice our Body by checking for sensations, energy levels, and what our Body is communicating to us. We consult our Body to see what it has to say about what our Mind is going on about. Who is this we? It is our Inner Person Self. We become more awake and present in our life.

Integrated Self

We bring our actual experiences and understandings of Inner Self, our truth, to our day-to-day life and relationships, and we invite others to do the same. The Integrated Self is when we are skillful at being awake and present when other people are around. We practice watching our minds and check with our body to be fully awake and alive. As we practice and become more skillful at including our Self (not the story of self), we are able to hold onto ourselves and our experience while paying attention to and experiencing another person. We practice including our Inner Person Self in our relationships while paying fuller attention to others’ experiences and we invite others to do the same.

The Responsive and Integrated parts of the journey happen inside us. For all of us, it starts on the Outside and goes In. Although we can’t be perfectly and completely Responsive and Integrated, we learn to use our wisdom gleaned from our What Is to guide and calibrate our actions. We learn what to do when the world around us and our relationships are chaotic and not integrated.

We will know we are on the right track, that we are making progress, when we begin to be able to rest in the moment. We are able to rest because we are beginning to understand that we are okay, lovable, of great worth, and our life is of highest value. We will be more ourselves when we start to learn how to make peace inside us. When we become more awake and alive in our day-to-day life, we will understand and feel Contentment.¹

And last but not least, I want to share a special painting with you. An expressionist type of painting in beautiful colors, it skillfully portrays a picture of a person in a boat who is awake and paddling their boat where they want to go. It is a great metaphor to keep in your memory, a reminder of how to stay awake and alive in your life. It is an awake person in a boat on a river.

As we explore this metaphor, the Boat represents your Body. Boat Body. The River represents your Mind. River Mind. The Person in the Boat on the River represents our Inner Person Self. More specifically, we look to see if the Person is asleep and taking the ride wherever the River takes the Boat, or if the Person is awake. Being awake means you can watch the thoughts in the River and check in with how the Boat is doing to make wise choices. Awake people paddle their way to Contentment.

This is quite the journey. For most of us, it will take a long time. It is my hope that my guidance here will be a profound help on your journey to Contentment.

Depression, anxiety, failing or failed relationships, shame, guilt, lousy sex, no sex, loss, rejection, or unrealized dreams or goals might be the way we start our journey. We could also start our journey when something really good happens that gets us paying attention to our Outside Self compared to our Inner Self. How we start the journey isn’t important.

Begin where you are.

1 You will notice the word Contentment and many concept words are capitalized in this book. The capitals are to alert you that a word is important. It indicates the word is part of the process related to the Journey of Contentment, or a word for which I use a very specific definition in order to distinguish it from vernacular or slang usage. For a list of important words and their definitions, see the Concept Guide in the Appendices.

WHAT IF?

Start with What if?

What if? is a key that opens the door to what you don’t know you don’t know. It’s not always easy to ask What if?

This introductory section has two parts. Part One introduces you to how we all tend to live our lives going with the flow of our minds in response to our day-to-day situations. We live with a focus on our Outside Self. Through Aha’s, distress, wake-up moments, and ordinary days we have the opportunity to ask What if? and enable ourselves to start thinking about things we didn’t know we didn’t know.

In Part Two I share a time in my life when I ignored my truth and was completely immersed in Outside stories about myself. I was adrift and it caused my Boat Body to take drastic measures to get my attention. It was a special painting of a boat, river, and person in the boat that helped me go from my Outside Self to waking up and understanding my Inner Person Self and the wisdom that was already there.

PART ONE

Unknown Places

Welcome to Sex Therapy

It is almost 1 p.m. I get a new client chart, fill my water mug, and freshen my lipstick.

I go down the wooden stairs of the early 1900s–era house where I have my office. The clomp-clomp of my shoes announces to those in the waiting area that I am on my way. Rounding the corner, I meet Marc and Kiersten. Even with the noisy advance notice, both look surprised to see me.

Hello, I’m Dr. Lisa Terrell. You must be Marc and Kiersten?

They both nod, and Kiersten says, It has been so stressful to get here!

Marc had the appointment down as 2 p.m. Kiersten had called him at the last minute to say that the email said 1 p.m. They did arrive a few minutes early only to realize they didn’t know the door code to get into the waiting area. There was a hurried trip back to the car to get the phone that had the code.

Even through all that, you have arrived on time! I compliment. I deliberately slow my words and look each in the eyes as I smile to reassure them. I got this.

We all go back up the stairs into my office and settle into the oversized leather chairs.

Marc and Kiersten have officially begun sex therapy.

***

I always feel uneasy with these beginning sessions. I know that I will be leading them to a place they don’t know that they don’t know yet. It will take courage, theirs and mine. Not everyone is ready for the journey.

Clients coming to sex therapy are often beyond uneasy. It’s hard to come to that first session. They worry that they may be told they aren’t a good fit for each other. They worry that they will feel humiliated when they share what has happened to them. They feel embarrassed just having to be here in this office with me. They wonder if I will tell them to do things that they just don’t want to do or are unable to do.

I get it.

It takes courage to come and tolerate the discomfort of that first session—a journey to an unknown place.

I stay focused. I am their guide. They are depending on me to show them how to get unstuck and continue their journey.

I know that most of my clients will be relieved and glad that they had been so unhappy in their sex life that they came to sex therapy.

The first goal is to help Marc and Kiersten practice something that they will learn to do for themselves. From the first session, I will help them with what I already know is missing. From the very first session, I will take them to their Sexuality to find it.

Their Sexuality is like a book of stories they have collected about sex. Each story in the book tells about how they see and understand their Self.

I will show them what their stories of sex are doing to them. To be content in their sex life together they will need to find the missing part in their sexual experiences. They can learn the process of waking up and becoming Responsive to self.