Hi, thank you for joining the Empowered Relationship Podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Jessica Higgins, licensed psychologist and relationship coach.
Today’s episode – we are talking about how to deal with sexual performance anxieties, an interview with Dr. Ian Kerner. Today’s episode is 252. If you’re interested in the show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com click on Podcast there in the top navigation bar, and you can find all of the episodes. Again, today’s episode is 252.
Before we get started, I just wanna take a moment with you and center, bringing our attention and awareness to this moment, knowing that our power and our availability to make change is in this moment. We can’t do anything about the past, as much as we might ruminate or worry or try to unpack or analyze, our power is not in the past. And it’s not in the future either. As much as we might wanna anticipate, game-plan, strategize and be prepared… And even in this show, a lot of what I’m recommending is being better prepared, more well-equipped to navigate the terrain of long-lasting intimacy… And yet, when it all comes down to it, it’s really in the moment where we have a sense of agency, and a sense of ability to respond and choose.
So with this invitation of just centering, and bringing your awareness to this moment, and what’s happening for you, what you’re experiencing, whatever you can bring noticing to – mentally, emotionally, physically, relationally, on whatever level. And this can often be a nudge to you; it can be an opportunity to explore. Perhaps even a signpost that alerts you to, again, an opportunity, or something perhaps to explore more deeply, for learning.
And again, on this show I often talk about being willing to tolerate some discomfort in the interest of growth. We don’t do it for fun, or to be self-flagellating in any way, but it is for our growth and our development. And oftentimes relationship will show us, will be a teacher., or even a mirror that’s bringing to the surface things that perhaps we haven’t been aware of, or are in our shadow… Or things that we haven’t wanted to give a lot of focus to, oftentimes because it’s painful.
But as we turn towards this opportunity, that often again is in the guise of pain and discomfort, what’s on the other side can be quite transformational, and be freeing, and so much better than what we’ve been used to… Again, if we’re willing to heed that call. And that call might be, again, in the package of your partner doing something that you don’t like, or feel threatened by, or challenged by. Or perhaps noticing your own reactions.
So the topics on the Empowered Relationship podcast are intended to support you along the journey of individual growth and development, particularly as it relates to relationship. And as we grow ourselves, we also show up more fully in relationship, and therefore enter into co-creating with our significant other and developing deeper and more expanded ways of being in relationship; essentially, developing our intimacy and our long-term relationship.
If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Podcast in the top navigation bar, and there you’ll find all of the episodes. Today’s episode, again, is 252, “How to deal with sexual performance anxieties”, an interview with Dr. Ian Kerner. Let’s get started in today’s interview.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Ian Kerner is a nationally-recognized sex therapist and New York Times bestselling author of numerous books, including She Comes First, which has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Ian is regularly quoted as an expert in various media, with recent features in The Atlantic, the Economist and NPR amongst others and he contributes regularly on the topic of sex for CNN. He teaches and supervises at the Institute for Contemporary Psychotherapy in NYC. His new book will be published by Grand Central Publishing later this year.
Ian, thank you so much for joining us today.
Dr. Ian Kerner: Thank you. I’m looking forward to this conversation.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, I am too, and I’m grateful that you said yes to this interview. I know I reached out to you originally because you’ve spoken about the impact of porn, or where people get stuck around porn… And I know that’s not gonna be the whole book of what we’re gonna talk about today, but I know you’re an expert in this area, just around helping people around sexual issues… And just helping people who are listening get to know you a little bit if they don’t know you already – what got you into supporting people with sexual issues?
Dr. Ian Kerner: Sure. Probably the thing I’m best known for is being the author of She Comes First, which is a book that has been out there for a while, and sort of was designed to help men develop a realistic view of female sexuality. I sort of joke around [unintelligible 00:06:56.08]
How I got involved in this field and became a sex therapist and ultimately found myself writing about sexuality is probably my own personal battles with sexual dysfunction. I think I grew up in a somewhat fairly typical environment. My parents divorced early. I was growing up primarily with my mother. It was sort of way before the internet and men’s magazines, and so I don’t think that there was necessarily a lot of modeling around sexuality. I wouldn’t say that I grew up in a sex-positive home, but it certainly wasn’t sex-negative. I’m in New York City, so if you hear sirens in the background, that’s what you’re hearing, even though I’m on the 12th floor; it can get loud.
I would say I grew up in what would be more like a sex-evasive environment. We just didn’t talk about it… So I think I was left to figure out a lot of things on my own, and as a young heterosexual cisgender young adult growing up I didn’t really know too much about sexuality. Certainly [unintelligible 00:08:06.13] my likes or dislikes, or even learn what my likes and dislikes were… So I’ve found that I’ve suffered as a young man from what’s a very common sexual problem, early ejaculation, somewhat chronically, pretty poorly, and it really left me — at a certain point I realized I was not connecting in ways that were mutually fulfilling, and so I developed a lot of anxiety around sex, and depression around the fact that I couldn’t really change this aspect of my sexuality… There was very limited reading, and help, and it really plagued most of my early relationships.
It led me to do a lot of research on my own, to try and figure out what was going on, and probably to be a little more reflective about both sexuality and how to be creative around sexuality; when you have an issue, if you can’t solve the issue, how to work around the issue and find other ways of connecting sexually, other than just penis and vagina intercourse, that depends on a penis being able to last as long as a guy would like it to…
So those were sort of all the issues that I dealt with, and I think that that’s what ultimately led me when I decided to become a therapist, to ultimately specialize in sex therapy. So that journey was both healing and cathartic for me individually, and it continues to replenish and rejuvenate me professionally.
Today I deal with a lot of young men who are at the age at which I started to really worry and think about this stuff, and so it gives me a great feeling of connection and accomplishment to be able to provide men and women and couples with really good, solid, scientifically-accurate information and clinical experience, and really to create an environment of emotional safety, where one can talk about sex… Because as a culture, we don’t really have that vocabulary or skills.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. And you’ve done a level of transformational work within yourself and then done the research and the professional work and training that you’re bringing this role in a beautiful blend to support people in this process. What are you seeing where couples get really stuck? I imagine some of the things that you described are also in existence now, and then perhaps even compounded by the influence of what people might be referencing in the way of porn, or erotic images, or you name it.
Dr. Ian Kerner: You know, there’s a handful of problems that I think most individuals and couples often deal with. Of course, how they’re dealing with them is incredibly individual and unique, but certainly sex ruts and what we would call a desire discrepancy, where maybe one partner desires sex more than the other, or their libidos have changed over the course of a relationship… I would say differences in what I would call just sexual personality or erotic personality; a difference between what turns people on and off.
Someone for example might be very sensually driven, and love intimate touch, and connection, and kissing, and massage, and just skin against skin, and they might actually be paired with a partner who is more psychologically oriented in their sexual personality, and loves fantasy, and creativity, and novelty, and unpredictability. So there’s a lot of discrepancies, just as one would expect to find personality differences in any aspect of a relationship. They certainly manifest in sex. We have different sexual personalities.
And then I would say on the outside it’s certainly still dealing with issues like early ejaculation… A big issue that I deal with amongst men these days is erectile unpredictability, or erectile impairment… But really more of a psychological nature, not organic nature. So really affecting younger men in their 20s, 30s, 40s… But men who otherwise can get erections on their own, are facing psychological hurdles that impede erections during partnered sex. So that has certainly increased in my practice over the years.
For women, I think I consistently deal with what would be called a pleasure gap, or an orgasm gap, especially in heterosexual relationships, where they just don’t feel like their arousal arc is sort of synchronized with a partner… So they’re often getting left behind in the distribution of pleasure; lack of orgasm. Of course, sexual pain is an issue that is quite common, but a lot of women just sort of bear with it, or expect that they should have to just bear with it.
In any given day I might be dealing with infidelity, or the ways in which relational issues like anger and trust and disgust or laziness can affect one’s sex life… And you mentioned porn – certainly differences in attitudes around porn, and how one might differ from a partner, or how one might even label their own porn use, or masturbation… Sometimes the label of sex addiction might quickly come into the conversation, and that usually warrants a little bit of unpacking and deconstruction.
And these days I’m also dealing with couples who want to be together and want to be in a relationship, but no longer find themselves sexually compatible or interested in one another, so they’re looking to open up the marriage in some way, or sort of outsource the sexuality piece. I’m sure there’s more, but that’s sort of a sample of what I might encounter on a daily or weekly basis.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you for that. I’m listening to you and I’m recognizing so many different people’s stories, or what I’ve encountered myself. One of the big things I’ve heard you say was your role and your position creating that safety for discussion; that so many people have a difficult time confronting some of these anxieties or fears or expectations or pressure they put on themselves, and then to be able to unpack that and deconstruct it, and look at it… But most couples don’t really go to this place on their own. Is that what you’re finding?
Dr. Ian Kerner: Yeah, absolutely. Sex is a topic that has a lot of shame around it, and a lot of embarrassment, and we don’t always have a particularly vast vocabulary to express it. Sometimes we don’t even know how to describe what we’re feeling. First and foremost, when couples come to see me, they know that I’m gonna honor sexuality. A lot of individuals or couples who have come to see me have tried to talk about sex maybe previously in a therapeutic alliance, and especially in a couples therapy environment, and have sort of been misdirected away from the directness of the sexual topic into something that’s more relational. I think a lot of people and couples therapists especially are under the idea that a sex problem is a relationship problem… Which it is. And if you fix the relationship you’re gonna fix the sex, which is not true.
First and foremost, people are usually coming to me eager and ready to have this conversation, so that’s important. And then I really think that the difference between any good therapist and any good sex therapist is just the information and clinical experience and scientific data that a sex therapist is able to access and process into a formulation and an assessment and a treatment plan. So I’m really good at normalizing my patients’ experiences simply through really good data, that allow them to not feel so isolated or alone in the world.
Then I think the other thing is just recognizing the difference between a defensive emotion, like “I’m angry, I’m frustrated, I’m pissed off, I’m avoiding”, the difference between a defensive emotion and a vulnerable emotion, which might be “I feel scared, neglected, I feel ignored, I feel rejected.” So that’s the job of any good therapist, especially a couples therapist, to create emotional safety, and allow the individual or the couple to go into those vulnerable emotions and to create a holding environment for those vulnerable emotions.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. When I’m listening to you, and so often I find people are motivated by pain, and that’s when it comes on top of awareness, or are most conscious, and these moments where sexual intimacy isn’t working, and that frustration or anger arouses… And people often want to address it, but it’s fueled by that anger. And then maybe it doesn’t go so well, and they don’t have a real platform or a way to talk about it after the fact. They could perhaps be a little more vulnerable, like you’re saying… And honestly, I agree with you so much. I’ve actually experienced that myself, where a couples therapist was really redirecting the conversation to relational dynamics, and I did not find that to be true, that it really supported — I mean, for years I had some hormonal stuff that was affecting my libido, and I feel like my husband was like “I’m not sure how to support you in the foreplay”, and it was a little bit tricky. I mean, as far as the love-making, that was fine; it was just that first beginning. And you were talking about women who perhaps don’t — I mean, there’s so many things that go into this, but the pleasure part of this. If a man is having a difficult time helping her, or she’s having a difficult time advocating for herself, it’s a difficult start, right? But I do agree with you that having that space where somebody can really support a direct conversation around sex, and like you say, substantiate it and really normalize that “Look, you’re not alone. Here’s some facts and research that really support that.”
Dr. Ian Kerner: Exactly. I mean, sexuality, like a lot of things, has a very specific body of knowledge. If a therapist is working with a patient who’s experiencing low desire, early ejaculation, or erectile unpredictability, or sexual pain – you really do have to access a specific body of knowledge, and it really requires what’s called a bio-psycho-social perspective. Something as simple as desire can be affected by hormones, as you said, by lifestyle, by side effects of medication, by injury… And that’s just on the biological side.
Then you have the psychological side – all the self-esteem issues. And you have the relational side, and how you’re actually connecting and feeling about your partner. So there’s a lot to talk about.
I get a lot of patients who – whether it was from another therapist, or just simply from what they’ve read in the media – are sort of self-diagnosing. I think that’s one of the big problems with porn today. We live in an age where porn is so accessible, and so prevalent, and has both so many positives, as well as problematic aspects… But people are very quick to either self-diagnose or be diagnosed as sex addicts. So that’s an example too of just sort of jumping to a conclusion, as opposed to really unpacking.
And the last thing I would say is that sex is a very important part of relationship. Studies have shown that couples who have good, healthy sex, even once a week, have much higher levels of relationship satisfaction than couples who do not. And you don’t have to have sex 2, 3, 4 or 5 times a week to get that boost in positivity. It’s simply one time a week. So sex is an important part of a relationship, but it also operates on its own channel, with its own physics.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. And it just sounds like — one of the things you mentioned earlier, that sometimes women will grin and bear whatever discomfort or pain that they’re feeling, that sometimes that can lead to a traumatic event. Trying to subtly say stop, and it’s not seeming like your partner cares, and then we have previous trauma that could potentially influence what either partner is experiencing… So there’s a lot here.
Let’s work with the erectile — I like that you didn’t call it dysfunction; you called it — what did you call it?
Dr. Ian Kerner: Well, they call it erectile unpredictability. If somebody comes in, dealing with erectile unpredictability, the inability to gain or maintain an erection, the first thing — again, I’m using my bio-psycho-social lenses, and I wanna know “Is there anything physically going on?” Has that patient done any kind of medication? Today so many medications, even hair medications like Propecia, can lead to erectile unpredictability. So if they’re on any kind of medication that might be having the side effect of erectile unpredictability. If there’s any trauma going on… What’s happening in the sex script itself, in the sexual event between two people; is the sex incredibly intercourse-oriented, without enough of what I would sort of call arousal runway, the connecting both physically and psychologically to really generate arousal…
Again, I’m looking at it through a few different lenses. I’m trying to determine the nature of the erectile unpredictability. A lot of men come in, they’ve read in the media about porn-induced erectile dysfunction; that’s a term that gets [unintelligible 00:23:00.24] about quite a bit, and so a lot of men, or a lot of female partners will come in and say “I have erectile unpredictability. I watch too much porn. I messed myself up.” And again, coming back to research, that is somewhat of a media-concocted term, or a term that really came out of the sex addiction business, and the sex rehab business. There are really no good studies to support that watching porn would alter your brain structures in such a way that you would no longer be able to provide adequate oxygenation to the penis to create an erection. There’s simply no such thing as a porn-induced erectile disorder.
However, when you start to unpack a few things, like is a man self-pleasuring with a kind of grip and type of friction that he’s become accustomed to, what would be called an idiosyncratic masturbatory style that makes it difficult to replicate during partnered sex… You know, very often what I find with men, and I’m finding it more and more with men, is just incredible anxiety around intercourse. And that can be somewhat of a function of porn, but not solely or necessarily. So a lot of men will find “I’m able to get a perfectly usable erection without a problem quite quickly or spontaneously when I’m masturbating or I’m watching porn, but I can’t during partnered sex, so I must have done something to myself with the porn. I exposed myself to too much visual stimulation.”
I think the truth of the matter is thought that porn and masturbating can be a relatively anxiety-free, simple act, whereas sex with another person can be very anxiety-provoking and complicated. So the problem isn’t usually with the porn as much as some other aspect of sexuality.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. I couldn’t agree more. So what do you do to help people with these anxieties? Whether or not it’s — for both partners, perhaps if we’re talking about heterosexual, or just even both partners period, that have certain anxieties approaching sex and love-making together.
Dr. Ian Kerner: Yeah, so anxiety is prevalent across so many sexual issues. I give homework to all of the patients and couples that I work with. There’s only so much I can accomplish in a session, so I always give homework, and use the data back from the homework… And the homework is always something that is targeting some aspect of the problem that I’ve developed a formulation or a thesis about. For example, if two people aren’t finding that they feel as much desire and getting as aroused, I may say “Well, to what degree are you relying solely on physical stimulation, versus psychological stimulation?”
We know for example that women can fantasize their way sometimes almost to orgasm without even touching themselves. And men can get perfectly usable erections simply through fantasizing or watching some erotic material. So that speaks very powerfully to the role of psychological arousal and stimulation. So I may give specific homework assignments in the area of cultivating psychological arousal.
So I’m always giving homework that I think is gonna move the needle for a patient, and certainly in the area of anxiety you wanna sort of practice good mindfulness, and help someone be present in the sensations of sex, and learn how to redirect away from distracting thoughts… I think in providing psycho-education and good information you’re also really undoing irrational or negative beliefs, for example around the idea that somebody should always have an erection, or a woman always should be able to have orgasms during intercourse. So much of the good work can just come through providing accurate information that can undo some kind of a negative belief, or some kind of shame that’s leading to the anxiety.
So it’s multi-dimensional work, and sometimes there’s even a pharmacological approach that can work in the short-term. Somebody with psychological ED or psychological erectile unpredictability for example might really benefit from using a medication, a PDE5 like Sildenafil, which is the generic of Viagra; or Tadalafil, which is the generic of Cialis. Those medications work really well. So again, I take a kind of combination, bio-psycho-social approach.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Thank you for sharing an example. I know listeners are just very interested in where you’re coming from, and I like that you’re using this very holistic – I know you’re not using that word, but it’s covering many aspects of one’s life, because it’s all interconnected.
When you’re talking about anxiety, do you ever find that it’s helpful, whether or not with your guidance in session, or in a homework for them to (it sounds like) identify pressures or expectations they put on themselves, and maybe have shame about to reveal back to their significant other, and kind of open up that space of things that they’ve been holding?
Dr. Ian Kerner: A hundred percent. I think it was the original sex researcher [unintelligible 00:28:57.13] who said “In any couple, the sex problem is co-owned to a relationship problem. It’s not any one individual’s problem, it’s really something that’s owned within the relationship.” So as much as possible, if somebody’s paired in a relationship, I will be thinking relationally, and either trying to get the partner into session if they’re not already there, or giving an individual some of the language and tools to go back to a partner and open up.
And it’s hard, Jessica, because people bring very rigid (what I would call) sexpectations sometimes… A guy, for example, with early ejaculation, who simply from a biological perspective has an ejaculatory setpoint that really doesn’t allow him to maintain thrusting, or too much contact to the penis for a prolonged period of time – that person might be very open to other ways of pleasuring. To manual stimulation, and oral stimulation, and adding more fantasy. There’s so many roots to creating pleasure with a partner… But he may be with a partner who has very rigid ideas about what sex should be.
So I often find that it’s not just undoing your own negative beliefs or irrational or misfounded beliefs that’s creating anxiety, it’s trying to create an arena or an environment of empathy and flexibility with the partner.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Absolutely. And I think it’s very understandable why people get into these sexpectations, just given how we’re typically brought up, with a lack of discussion or a lack of information… And then I agree that oftentimes culturally we don’t really talk openly about sex, and are very sex-positive. So I think in couplehood there’s this expectation, especially in media – it just looks like it just happens so effortlessly… And “What is everybody else doing? I think everybody else is having great sex.” So it can feel very private and isolating and alone, and even with what an individual is caring, and how to open that up.
So for people that are a little bit maybe more rigid, what do you do to support opening up the terrain for the couple, or even helping them contemplate?
Dr. Ian Kerner: It’s interesting, it can be sometimes easy, sometimes there’s more flexibility right there under the surface, once you get people talking… And sometimes there’s rigidity. Again, coming back to that example of early ejaculation, that partner may really wanna provide stimulation via cunnilingus and oral sex, which is something that I deal with quite a bit in my first book, She Comes First. But if it’s a heterosexual couple, you may have a partner who is unfamiliar with that act, or has general self-esteem issues and worries that that’s not the prettiest, or just may have issues around that, or be unfamiliar with those sensations, so I’ll have to work to kind of create that flexibility.
And again, in the end there are many paths to pleasure and to connection and to excitement, and you have to have the openness… But very often, what can happen is if you’re too rigid, then you’re sort of exiling a sexual part of yourself, in a way, or sex is not allowed to flourish in the relationship. You have to decide how important is this relationship and how important is sex in the relationship, and how important is being a sexual person to you.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Is this where we start to enter into the compatibility question?
Dr. Ian Kerner: Sure. The compatibility question, or just dealing with any kind of issue, really, that comes up because we don’t grow up talking about sex, because it’s not normalized to us in the way that going to school or socializing with friends or doing homework or showing up for family dinner – like all those things are normalized and talked about and refined and explained… Whenever something is not talked about, whenever something is not explained, it really has the ability to get the heart rate going and to create some anxiety and fear, and trying to slow things down and create some emotional safety and comfort is really important, because that’s the only way to tap into people’s empathy and flexibility and expansiveness, is if they are not on guard.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes. And perhaps even opening up the space to have a new experience, because so often it seems that when somebody has a negative experience, that definitely promotes more of that fear and anxiety; and if it’s happened a lot in their life or throughout their life, it’s just daunting. So to give them a kind of pattern interrupt, if you will – it just is, I think, adding so much resource.
One more question – I’m curious, do you find… I am a fan of Elaine Aron’s work on the highly sensitive person, and I just find that it does inform how people are experiencing, and I wonder if you find this in your work around sexuality – if you’re not familiar, it’s like, 20% of the population is more sensitive, and they’re just kind of absorbing and sensing more, and being overwhelmed and overstimulated is part of the thing that they’re faced with as well… I’m just curious what you think about that as it relates to these anxieties.
Dr. Ian Kerner: Yeah, it’s funny, I’m not so familiar with the highly sensitive person, although about a dozen of my patients have come in talking about that work… So I definitely do a lot of reading, and that’s something that I should definitely put on my bookshelf to absorb directly.
You know, I would say for anybody sex is a process of turning on and getting aroused, but just as much it’s about turning off stressors, turning off inhibitors… Studies have shown especially with female sexuality that the closer a woman is to orgasm, the more she’s aroused, the more parts of the brain that are associated with outside anxieties are stressors literally deactivate… So it’s like, one part of the brain, the real sexual part of the brain, that notices and detects genital sensation is getting turned on, but another part of the brain is getting turned off. So really, the essence of good sex is about being able to get excited and turned on, but also about really being able to relax, get calm, and turn off.
You asked the question, and my mind sort of goes to the turning off part, eliminating stressors. It’s sort of been contended that the human sexual brain also has two systems that operate at once. A sexual excitation system and a sexual inhibition system. And it’s kind of like a car that has an accelerator and a break. The excitation system is the accelerator, and all the things that turn you on – your partner’s smell, his/her eyes, their body, a memory… But we also have these breaks, this inhibition system; all the things that turn us off, from a baby crying in the other room, to being angry, to a sink full of dishes, to not feeling good in our body…
So I guess I would say, without really knowing too much about the highly sensitive person, if you are very sensitive to sensation and cognition, your job during sex is to work hard to not just turn yourself on, but turn yourself off.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: That’s a great point. Thank you for that. Well, it’s been such a pleasure to talk to you. Is there anything else you want to say before we switch into your work and how people can learn more about what you’re up to?
Dr. Ian Kerner: No, just thank you for the engaging conversation.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Well, how do people get in touch with what you’re teaching? I know you write on many different platforms, and I’d love to hear more.
Dr. Ian Kerner: Yeah, so for now I haven’t been doing too much on the social media front, although I have a new book coming out in April, so I’ve been encouraged to do a little more on that… In the short-term though, the best way to be in touch with me, to learn more about my work is just through my website, IanKerner.com. It’s all there.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: And what do you offer on that website?
Dr. Ian Kerner: I’m New York state licensed, so I can sometimes do a sort of consultation, and especially in this time of Covid, where people are sort of distributed all over the place, and need help, and don’t always have access in their own region… I think that there’s a little bit more flexibility being offered. But in general, to really work clinically with somebody in a therapy environment, they would have to have some kind of basis in New York state.
But you know, my website is more about how I work, and certainly links to my books, and a lot of different writings, and articles, and interviews, and podcasts… So it’s more of an informational resource.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Yes, wonderful. Is there anything else you wanna say about your book, around She Comes First, and when we can be looking for your next book?
Dr. Ian Kerner: Well, She Comes First has been around for a while, and continues to be out there and getting purchased. I definitely recommend it for anyone who’s partnered with a female, or any female who’s partnered with somebody, male or female, or trans, anybody who finds that there’s a pleasure gap, and especially around arousal and clitoral stimulation, and ways of synchronizing arousal, I would say She Comes First is still a good book for that.
And the new book, which I’m not quite ready to fully talk about yet – it will be out in April. Stay posted.
Dr. Jessica Higgins: Nice. Well, keep us posted, because we’d love to support what you’re doing, and I know listeners will be really interested in your new material. Ian, thank you so much for sharing and just being open to talking about your work and what you find relevant and helpful for couples facing sexual issues.
Dr. Ian Kerner: Great. Thank you so much, Jessica. It was a pleasure to talk to you.
I hope you have enjoyed today’s interview with Dr. Ian Kerner. If you would like access to today’s show notes, you can visit DrJessicaHiggins.com. Click on Podcast and there you’ll find all of the episodes. Again, today’s episode is 252.
I also wanna bring your attention to a course that I’ve been talking about in the last couple of podcasts, the “Hold me tight”, by Dr. Susan Johnson. You can find this on my website as well, clicking on Courses in the top navigation bar. There you’ll have access to the “Hold me tight” online course with Dr. Susan Johnson. I’m promoting this because I believe in this work, being able to fundamentally, on a very core level, shift dynamics in such a profound way. It’s really getting at the root of so many disconnect patterns.
So if you’re noticing — and many of us in this pandemic are feeling the extra stressors and pressures and limitations, not having access to our normal support systems are feeling, are feeling the compounding effects of all of those stressors, and it’s magnifying our pain points in relationship… And therefore what used to be tolerable or used to be workable feels now unworkable.
At the very root, I have found, again, this work to be such a game-changer. So again, as we are talking about relationship, I really wanna encourage you to utilize that resource. Again, it’s an online course that’s very affordable, that you can access from the comfort of your own home. And again, you can find that on DrJessicaHiggins.com, click on Courses, and find the “Hold me tight” program online.
Thank you for listening to today’s episode, and until next time, I hope you take great care.
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