A Mindful Self-Love Journey

Do you find yourself constantly putting others health and mental well-being before your own?

Do you feel guilty when you take time out to show yourself a little love?  Is your cup empty?

Why is one of the most important steps to self-love so difficult and riddle with self-doubt and guilt?
My speccial guest, psychotherapist Tracy Brady, tells us what steps we can take to ensure we fill our own cup daily.

Join us as we openly discuss why it's important to fill your own cup and the importance of self-awareness, self-love. Tracy shares steps you can take to start showing yourself the unconditional love you deserve.

Tracy has made it her life's work to use self-awareness as a bridge to self-improvement and endeavors to help others live their best lives. I think you'll enjoy her unique and relatable manner when discussing topics that most of us find difficult to navigate alone.

Connect with Tracy Brady via Instagram and her website TracyBrady.com
Connect with Cassie Burton and the Love And Healing Podcast on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

Dr Talei says everything that happens in the gut is connected to all sorts of different systems. She starts by looking to see if your body can digest food and if your body is able to absorb the nutrients, because these provide the fuel for your brain, for your skin and basically everything in the body. It’s important to know if you are able to excrete toxins from your body.

These toxins and bacteria from the gut create, bloating, gas, frequent headaches, fatigue, and you see it in the skin. Our skin is a mirror for what’s going on inside of the body.

There are certain foods to avoid when it comes to overall health, like don’t eat processed foods, don’t eat foods where you don’t understand the ingredients. 

And then in general there are 3 big food sensitivities.

1.       Dairy – most people can’t digest dairy which can cause inflammation for many people.

2.       Gluten – especially with all the glyphosates that they spray it with.

3.       Eggs – not that eggs are bad, it s that many people have a sensitivity to them.

So food sensitivity test are great for identify what foods your specific body is reacting to.

Connect with Dr. Jasmine Talei on Instagram or Beverly Hills Natural Medicine
Connect with Cassie Burton and the Love And Healing Podcast on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube.

What are Attachment styles and how do they impact our relationships?

Attachment styles are a habitual pattern of relating to others. Specifically significant relationships , like a parent, a romantic partner or maybe even a best friend. Mostly we are talking about how one responds relationally in these relationships around points of connection and disconnection. So, basically what we do when we start to feel insecure or dis-connected. Or when that sense of safety, closeness or trust with a partner feels threatened.

There are four different attachment styles

1. Secure Attachment
2. Anxious Attachment
3. Avoidant Attachment
4. Disorganized Attachment

Coming in, having that awareness, helps you sort of know when you're being triggered and you can pause. Then you can make a choice to have a different reaction or to respond in a different way.

Join the conversation with Dr. Jessica Waldron and Cassie Burton host of the Curiosity Junkie Podcast to learn more about attachment styles and how they impact our relationships.

Connect with Dr. Jessica Waldron via Instagram or her website DrJessicaWaldron.com
Connect with Cassie Burton and Curiosity Junkie Podcast via Instagram, Facebook or YouTube.

What is self confidence? 

Self-acceptance coach, Annie Gospodin says a better question to ask is, “What does confidence mean to me?” and see what comes up for you. Because ultimately we are the ones who decide.

Annie believes confidence is rooted in self-acceptance. It's not about the way we look or act, and it's not  what the media portrays as confidence. It's also not something we are born with or without. We can always learn our version of self-confidence.

Here are a few to consider as you work to understand and define confidence.

• What does confidence mean to me?
• What have I observed as an example of confidence growing up?
• What have I learned about confidence?
• Do I perceive myself as confident? If not, why?
• In what way do I see my friends as being confident?
• How does their confidence align with my confidence?

Connect with Annie Gospodin via her website AnnieGospodin.com. You can also find Annie on InsightTimer and Instagram.
Connect with Cassie Burton and the Love And Healing Podcast on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. Discover the Love And Healing Blog.

Self-Acceptance starts with little actions of self compassion, where self-love and self-acceptance feel like a state of being. Kayla Estenson says self-acceptance comes from the little actions we do for ourselves.  These actions can be as small as grabbing a blanket when we're cold or being kind to ourselves by honoring some physical need. 

Understanding your values and how they show up in your life is important. As you begin the work of identifying your values, you might start to notice some values keep popping up in each of the realms of your life. And then be curious about what feeling do I notice as I’m thinking about this value?

Kayla's number one message with practicing self-acceptance and self-compassion is bringing a little acceptance to being human, because we seem to have such a hard time accepting that we are human. We are going to make mistakes because we are human and that and our values is what makes us human.

Connect with Cassie Burton and the Love And Healing Podcast on Instagram and Facebook

Connect with Kayla Estenson on Instagram and TikTok @KaylaEstensonWellness

Have you ever wondered what happens to your mind and body during and after intimacy?

Therapist janice Leonard is here to help us understand what’s happening during sex and how we can show care for our partner(s) as we come down from the hormonal high.

There are two things we need to consider before having sex. 

1. We need to know why we are having sex
2. We need to know what kind of sex we are having

Join the conversation
www.loveandhealingpodcast.com/blog/lets-talk-about-sex-with-therapist-janice-leonard
Connect with Cassie Burton and the Love And Healing Podcast on Instagram, Facebook 

Connect with Janice Leonard via Instagram  https://www.instagram.com/hersexualspacepodcast/ 

Or visit her website https://www.hersexualspace.com/ 

You can also listen to Janice's latest episode on Her Sexual Space Podcast.

Have you ever been curious about the world of Kink and Fetish?

Relationship and sex therapist, Paula Leech is here to enlighten and educate us about all things Kink and Fetish.

I have to say, for me, this conversation was an educational and eye-opening dive into understanding the dynamics, boundaries and communication that takes place within the kink community.  An understanding we can apply within the “Vanilla” sexual experience.

Paula says Fetish is desire or arousal that’s linked to objects, material, body parts, types of people or types of bodies. It can be that the individual needs this thing to become aroused or it may be that this thing enhances the overall desire and arousal.

Kink encompasses any behaviors, lifestyles and relationship arrangements. For example it includes, non-monogamy, BDSM and basically anything that is not mainstream, “Vanilla” sex.

If we find ourselves curious and wanting to explore the world of kink, Therapist Paula Leech recommends we seek out resources. She says there are many resources that talk about how to incorporate elements of kink and fetish into our relationships. Several discuss how to navigate it with our partners and how to explore the kink world and the kink community safely.

Here are a few resources Paula shared:
Fetlife.com is a social network for the BDSM, Fetish and Kink Community. (like facebook, but for kinky people.)
A book that can help us understand and navigate the world of kink.
Playing Well With Others
By: Lee Harrington & Mollena Williams-Haas

You can connect with Paula Leech Therapy via Instagram or visit her website PaulaLeech.com

You can connect with Cassie Burton and the Love And Healing Podcast via Instagram, Facebook. YouTube https://youtu.be/sQb7Zw8ZK00 

Once we experience ED it can lead to more pressure and stress the next time we go to engage. And then the natural byproduct is our desire tanks, and often those with erectile dysfunction also struggle with desire.

Female pain and discomfort during sex; should we just take one for the team? If we do, then we begin to associate sex with pain, and we are also overriding our boundaries. When we do that we often find a loss of desire or feel less inclined to want to go through the pain and discomfort next time.

All of this requires communication about how we are feeling. Start a conversation with “I’m not there, but I’m open to getting there and this is what I would like to do”. There are so many ways to find pleasure together, outside of traditional penetration.

Join Cassie Burton and Paula Leech as they explore and share suggestions and tips on how to communicate your desires or discomfort in a loving and compassionate way.

Connect with Paula Leech: Instagram: @paulaleechtherapy
https://www.instagram.com/paulaleechtherapy/
Website: https://www.paulaleech.com/

Connect with Cassie Burton and the Love And Healing Podcast, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube

There's a saying "Everything is about sex, except sex."

Sex Therapist Paula Leech says this is so true because when we are working with our sexuality, we are working with our self-worth, self esteem and our relationship to vulnerability and closeness and attachment. Those are really big themes at work in that space, so it is incredibly complicated.

And on top of that we have terrible funky ideas of what our sex life means for our relationship. Like if you're not having sex 5 times a week then your relationsip is broken and you're in a sexless marriage. Which causes a lot of unnecessary distress unfortunately. Paula says, a lot of sex therapy is also just normalinzing peoples experience.

The difficult piece of this is, it does require a level of sort of re-educating yourself. Exposing yourself again, anew to information about sex and sexuality and sex positivity.

The ideas that we are raised with tend to go unchecked and we go on autopilot when it comes to our sexuality.

So as you are re-educating yourself, ask yourself a few questions  

1. How do I feel about that?
2. What do I think about that now?
3. What would I have learned about that growing up and how does it feel that that is maybe different now?

Join Love And Healing Podcast host Cassie Burton and Sex Therapist Paula Leech as they discuss how to have conversations with your partner(s) about sex, and what you like and don’t like, with less anxiety and without blaming or becoming defensive.

Connect with Paula Leech via her website PaulaLeech.com or on Instagram @paulaleechtherapy

Connect with Cassie Burton and the Love And Healing Podcast on Instagram, Facebook and Youtube.

How important is a healthy sexual connection in a relationship?

Dr. Jessica Waldron says it turns out that when we have a healthy, positive, satisfying sexual connection both individually and with our partner or partners, it's a significantly smaller portion of the relationship. It only accounts for 15 to 20 percent of the overall relationship satisfaction.

Dr. Waldron wants us to expand our idea of what sex is or can be and take the focus off the erect penis. There is so much more to sex than the erect penis. There are vibrators and toys, you have hands, you've got a tongue so let's take the focus off the erect penis.

Advice from Dr. Jessica Waldron:

Don't Yuck My Yum
Be good, giving and game
Communicate, be open and create a safe space
Be curious, explore and try new things and remember it's not all about intercourse
And yes, sometimes we have to plan and put effort into finding time and keeping it interesting.

Connect with Dr. Jessica Waldron on Instagram @DrJessicaWaldron

Connect with Cassie Burton and the Love And Healing Podcast on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube