Intimate Interactions

Tillie is back to chat with us about kink, edge play, when we discovered we were first interested in those things, queerness, gender dysphoria, and self-acceptance. How has power exchange changes for us as we’ve gotten older? Let’s get to the session and hear Tillie’s perspective.

Chronic conditions are rarely easy. It’s a seemingly permanent change to your quality of life and the habits and behaviours you can have for the rest of your experience on this planet. Sometimes, the conditions are long term and treatable, but other times there’s nothing you can do.

Today, we’re talking with Charisma, a former addict and HSV positive person about her anxiety and depression. We talk about social acceptance but will dig into stigma in another episode. However depression and anxiety can be chronic conditions. I’m excited to chat more about mental health with an old friend with whom I haven’t caught up in years.

Okay this session with Tillie is much more content rich than the last one I recorded while experiencing intestinal distress. We chat about power exchange and how it informs self-domming or executive function as it’s more academically described.

How do you plan or organize for having reduced function? We note that managing self care can be exhausting but list strategies for dealing with chronic conditions and talk about how we reduce the emotional labour behind self care.

We share strategies like touch and somatic movement as a way to manage and distract from pain. Tillie offers a model of expensive versus cheap feelings. We briefly touch on ring theory, and I talk about my fear of trying to hold down a job.

We also talk about processing the loss of connection or loss of experiences that can come up when chronic conditions or our bodies demand we miss out on something or someone.

About half way through we take a break to check in with friends and then come back to finish our conversation about boot blacking - our initial topic. An anonymous friend consenting to podcast with us joins us to chat about ADHD, and connective tissue disorders like Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Tillie and friend share their origin stories. I say goodbye afterwards and do a brief summary. Enjoy!

We talk briefly about consent and art. In and among these conversations, we somehow get on the topic of consent in bestiality - consider this your content warning that that’s in here. We also talk very briefly about a warehouse fire in California where some people died. So content warning for that. And with those in mind, let’s go to the session with Sophia here on Intimate Interactions.

We talk briefly about consent and art. In and among these conversations, we somehow get on the topic of consent in bestiality - consider this your content warning that that’s in here. We also talk very briefly about a warehouse fire in California where some people died. So content warning for that. And with those in mind, let’s go to the session with Sophia here on Intimate Interactions.

At WCB this year, I had some pretty severe chronic pain. I get periodic intestinal issues leading to severe headaches and sometimes nausea. I’ve had the same gastro enterologist for almost two years now and nothing we’ve tried has helped except hydrating more and eating low FODMAP which have helped a little. When I’m in distress, a little goes a long way. The difference between an 8 out of 10 and an 8.5 out of 10 is significant in my emotional exhaustion.

This session, I chat with Tillie about self-care and our chronic conditions. I’m pretty sick for most of the episode so if you find it’s not content rich enough for you, I understand. What this episode does in my opinion is open an intimate window into what my experience of the world is like. If you don’t have chronic pain or illness, this might give you a look into what one specific kind might look like - very different from other kinds.

About 20 minutes in, I get interrupted to go do my volunteering duties. I take some medication and then get right back to it. To be honest, the podcasting was a helpful distraction from my condition.

My friend Sapphire is back to chat about the thinning of the veil tonight on Samhain or as you might know the night, if you’re not pagan, Hallowe’en.

Some of you might be celebrating All Saints Evening, the evening before All Saints Day, especially if you’re Catholic. Some, especially in certain parts of Europe, take All Saints Day seriously enough to go to the graves of their loved ones and pray for their departed dead to help get them from purgatory into heaven.

Some of you, especially in Latin America and the United States, are getting ready to connect with your departed relatives over the next couple of days on Dia de Muertos.

Or maybe this is just another day in the two weeks before Diwali, this year on November 14th. Keep in mind Indians don’t follow the Gregorian calendar, meaning the holiday falls on different days each year. Last year it was October 27th, and the year before, November 7th. Or perhaps you’re celebrating one of many other traditions. If I missed you, write in and let me know. I’ll happily give you a shout out on a future episode.

I also want to shout out Islamic Emperor Muhammad bin Tughlaq - apologies for my pronunciation - who ruled from his court in Delhi, India from 1324 to 1351 for being the first muslim emperor to celebrate a Hindu festival in his court. One of the reasons the Mushals made up a quarter of the world’s GDP at their height, eclipsing even the superpower of the age, the Ming dynasty was their inclusion of many different cultural groups in their empire. India is a bit of a buffet of varied cultural traditions and uniting most of it could not have been easy. I hope we can learn from their example and encourage those around us to be tolerant, especially as we approach a divisive and polarizing election season.

Speaking of collections of diverse cultures and traditions - for many of us secular folks like myself, Hallowe’en is just that. In Vancouver, Canada or the stolen unceeded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Wautulth peoples, it barely resembles to me, traditional All Saints Eve even though it is technically the same holiday originally.

This modern version of Hallowe’en with Trick or Treating, horror movies, Autumn harvest feasting be it Samwain or a day early for All Saints’ Day’s feast - it is what many modern holidays are: an excuse to curl up warm after dinner and share some laughs with those who matter most to you.

The pandemic has made so many things harder for so many of us, especially those who are currently unpartnered. I encourage you to reach out and connect with groups online. There are plenty of folks on discord or reddit or many other places, who are just as desperate for a warm human voice to talk to. If you are really struggling and can afford it, consider joining some kind of distraction as a service provider like World of Warcraft or if you don’t have any money, something like Heroes of the Storm or Modern Warfare or any number of other free gaming communities online. There are *tons*.

We’re also approaching the darkest months of the year, and I’m extremely grateful to have found the mental health medication that works for me. Do you need to check in with your GP about starting into a medication? Or maybe you need to google what kind of sliding scale counselling is most readily available where you live? Don’t forget to do those things if they sound like they might be right for you. I can’t stress enough how important planning is in dealing with seasonal depression, something I’ve struggled with my entire life. I started trying medications in the summer. I do counselling every couple of weeks. I am working through workbooks on mental health and healthy communication. I’m also not saying any of those are right for you...

Sophia invites me to her hot tub for a skinny dip and podcasting about kink, BDSM, consent, consensual nonconsent (though Sophia doesn’t like that term), switching, bisexuality, pansexuality, hierarchical nonmonogamy, and many others. It’s sure to be an intimate session.

We talk about the origins of the Safe, Sane, Consensual or SSC paradigm. The origins are credited to Slave David Stein whose name eludes me in the recording. Feel free to google it if you’re interested in knowing more.

The director of Pan Eros Foundation in Seattle, Sophia is one of those bad asses that in my opinion has dedicated her life and efforts to making meaningful change in culture. Pan Eros supports the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, Consent Academy, and an erotic art gallery in downtown seattle.

The hot tub was low so we had to add a lot of water and were worried it would be quite cold because the night was cold and in traditional Pacific North West fashion, it had been raining. The first thing I do on getting into the hot tub is lose my footing and almost submerge myself (and the recorder).

Note: I erroneously say 3 V of power when I recognize voltage isn’t power. The maximum capacity of those batteries is 1.2 Ah meaning the power varies by amperage draw. After reading some sites online, one said a short circuited AAA battery typically maxes out around 4.5 Amps which means less than 15 watts of power, so my point stands but my needs for security, accuracy, and correctness decided to spend your time explaining this. Thanks for your patience.

Also, no recorders were harmed in the making of this podcast.

Depression is a serious mental illness that affects most of us at some point in our lives through our friends, loved ones, or personally. Lots of folks have some experience of depression during their teen years, but what if that depths-of-the-ocean kraken never went away? What if there was an ongoing lingering threat that you could slip back into it at any time?

My experience of depression has been sort of like that, an ongoing, cyclic struggle with depression that’s worse in the winter and then a little easier to manage when I’m out in the sun. I cope with therapy, UV light treatment, meds, and a host of strategies implemented from therapy. Currently, my depression is peeking through all of that as it’s January. Friends on meds have suggested I increase my dose in the winter, which is a great idea.

Today, I have one of my older friends, wicked, on the show. Her experience with depression isn’t that different from mine, but I’ll let her tell you about it herself.

Resources

Unhelpful Thinking Sylte

https://healthywa.wa.gov.au/Articles/U_Z/Unhelpful-thinking-styles

https://twitter.com/odawnip/status/1003036622429016071 (or if broken see https://intimatevictor.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/unhelpful-thinking-styles.jpg )

Questions

Jazz Goldman is back to talk about an orgy they invited me to at which we got to have fun sexy times. We talk about best practices, how we sometimes suspend best practices, and not being too hard on ourselves.

I process my feelings about having chronic illness and about not noticing an allergic reaction that happened to me at an orgy. While you can’t control what life throws at you, you can control how you respond to it and the people you choose to support and surround yourself with. Fortunately for me, I surrounded myself with the very best people who were incredibly understanding, kind, and compassionate. Jazz even helps me cultivate more self compassion.

Since we were both returning from a hot tub session, a demanding orgy, and then showering and getting ready for bed, we’re both pretty tired and dopey. While it picks up later in the session, I decided to do my nails. It may not seem like the best life decision to choose to do it while recording a podcast, but I wanted to get my thoughts down while the emotions were fresh and doing my nails is a form of self-love and self-validation because that kind of femme feels more authentically like me.

So while to cope with feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy, I do my nails while recording which results in a slower-paced conversation. Jazz and I usually record intimate sessions but this one takes the pie for most intimate in my opinion. Enjoy.

Wicked is back to talk about sexual scripting, relationship anarchy, butt sex, and friends with benefits. We talk about people not being need fulfillment machines, how damaging scripting can be, and how liberating writing our own scripts is. Wicked helps us dispel myths that relationship anarchists are always non monogamous - she’s a perfect example of a mongamous or more recently monogamish relationship anarchist. Let’s hear it straight from the Wicked’s mouth on Intimate Interactions.