Ever feel like life has become one long to-do list, with pleasure and play relegated to the bottom, if at all? Certified sex therapist, Kaya Spicer, joins us to remind us that play and pleasure are not frivolous extras, but essential components of our well-being. This episode takes a deep dive into our societal structure, which often encourages us to sideline joy in favor of work, leading to dissatisfaction and even mental health issues. Kaya shares her unique, decolonizing perspective on this, exploring how play and pleasure can help us connect with ourselves and our communities, reduce stress and reintroduce joy into our lives.
But how exactly can we start perceiving pleasure differently? Kaya reveals intriguing insights into how we can find pleasure in simplicity, like feeding bunnies or doing the dishes. She emphasizes the power of language in developing our relationship with pleasure and encourages us to give ourselves permission to experience it. We also look at societal pressures that promote work over play, and discuss how we can break free from this mindset. This episode is not just a conversation, it’s an invitation to challenge your preconceived notions, to explore, and to reconnect with joy and pleasure today!
Find Kaya at Individual, Couples, & Sex Therapy | Austin & Houston, Texas (infinitezentherapy.com)
This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast
Feel free to share your thoughts at www.makewordsmatterforgood.com or email me at Beth@makewordsmatterforgood.com
If you are a therapist or psychologist and want to be a guest on the show, please complete this form to apply: https://forms.gle/ooy8QirpgL2JSLhP6
www.bethtrammell.com
Ever feel like life has become one long to-do list, with pleasure and play relegated to the bottom, if at all? Certified sex therapist, Kaya Spicer, joins us to remind us that play and pleasure are not frivolous extras, but essential components of our well-being. This episode takes a deep dive into our societal structure, which often encourages us to sideline joy in favor of work, leading to dissatisfaction and even mental health issues. Kaya shares her unique, decolonizing perspective on this, exploring how play and pleasure can help us connect with ourselves and our communities, reduce stress and reintroduce joy into our lives.
But how exactly can we start perceiving pleasure differently? Kaya reveals intriguing insights into how we can find pleasure in simplicity, like feeding bunnies or doing the dishes. She emphasizes the power of language in developing our relationship with pleasure and encourages us to give ourselves permission to experience it. We also look at societal pressures that promote work over play, and discuss how we can break free from this mindset. This episode is not just a conversation, it’s an invitation to challenge your preconceived notions, to explore, and to reconnect with joy and pleasure today!
Find Kaya at Individual, Couples, & Sex Therapy | Austin & Houston, Texas (infinitezentherapy.com)
This podcast is meant to be a resource for the general public, as well as fellow therapists/psychologists. It is NOT meant to replace the meaningful work of individual or family therapy. Please seek professional help in your area if you are struggling. #breakthestigma #makewordsmatter #thingsyoulearnintherapy #thingsyoulearnintherapypodcast
Feel free to share your thoughts at www.makewordsmatterforgood.com or email me at Beth@makewordsmatterforgood.com
If you are a therapist or psychologist and want to be a guest on the show, please complete this form to apply: https://forms.gle/ooy8QirpgL2JSLhP6
www.bethtrammell.com
All right, welcome back, listener. I'm so glad you are here to the podcast Things you Learned Therapy. I am thrilled to share the beautiful, wise words of our guest today, kaya Spicer. She is here to share so many thoughts on a topic that I think may rock some of our socks. I am ready for it and I am excited about it. I say that because I don't think we talk enough about it, either in our field or in the general conversations that we might have in everyday life. I'm your host, dr Basterma. I'm a licensed psychologist and an associate professor of psychology at IU East in Richmond, indiana, where I'm also the director of the master's mental health counseling program, and my focus tends to be on making words matter for good. So I try to talk about behavior and communication strategies to increase connection between people and between kids and adults also, and so, kaya, thanks for being here. I'm so glad you're here, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited, I'm so excited to be here.
Speaker 1:Okay, so tell folks a little bit about you and tell us one fun thing about you.
Speaker 2:Okay, so my name is Duaewa Kaya Spicer. I'm an LCSW. I'm also a certified sex therapist. I am an anxiety treatment specialist and a corporate wellness consultant.
Speaker 2:So I we were talking about this before you record, but I have my hands in a lot of facts which I love, and a lot of my clinical work is with couples and relationships, as well as helping everyone all humans access their pleasure through decolonizing lens of mental health. So one fun thing about me I love to frolic, beth. It's like a thing that I do. It brings me so much joy. I'm so silly and I have these bunnies in my neighborhood and I I think it's dusk and sunset and so I bring them Brussels sprouts and we frolic, we hop, we jump, we play, we spin. We just act like we're six years old again. So that's what I love to do. That's one fun thing about me, and I encourage everyone to play outside.
Speaker 1:I encourage everyone to frolic. Freakin love that word frolic.
Speaker 2:We need more frolicing in our lives. Kaya Do we do? I love it and I love to have people join me in frolicing and and everyone. It's so fun. Sometimes I go and people in my neighbors will see me and they're like what are you doing? I'm frolicing. Yes, let's frolic together.
Speaker 1:You're like, leave me alone. I'm frolicing people Back up.
Speaker 2:So that's one thing about me. I'll just go outside and I'll run and skip and play and be a kid.
Speaker 1:I love that and I couldn't agree with you more that we need to spend more time and play. And you know I do a lot of parent and teacher trainings and one chapter that I talk about is play, because I think, as girls, we forget One. I think we forget the importance of play, but I think sometimes we forget how to do it.
Speaker 2:Absolutely we do, and that's kind of what we're talked about here today with decolonizing, decolonizing. The way that we access pleasure in our bodies and our communities and our families is we have been taught in training to let go of play, to let go of the part of us that can be silly and experience joy, because it's not adulting, right, it's not growing up. But I think when we let that go, we brought in more anxiety, more displeasure, dissatisfaction in life, which you know leads to anxiety and depression and oh, which can lead to anxiety and depression at times. And yeah, we need to play so much more play, we need to play.
Speaker 1:And I mean, when you first approach kind of talking about this topic, I mean I think I remember saying to you like that sounds amazing and I don't even know how to do that. You know like. So I want to kind of take it to the very basic right. So when you talk about decolonizing, you know our framework around pleasure. Let's just sort of like dissect that, like help us understand. When you say that, what does that mean in my like kind of everyday life and how do we kind of get here?
Speaker 2:So think about that word that we talked about earlier, just frolicking, right, and how it kind of feels in your body. It might be two things. It might be like I'd love to frolick, but then there's this part of us that says, but I can't, right, yeah, because someone might see me or someone might think that I'm not well, or someone might think that I'm not mature enough or professional enough to be out here skipping and jumping and dancing in the street. And so when I think about it, I think about, first of all, we've been taught about being like pleasure. So from school age where I mean, think about this about five years old in school, sit at your desk, buy a bill, eat. When we tell you, go, sit back down, play for about an hour, maybe less, yeah, come back, sit some more. I go home, sit on the bus and then maybe sit some more because it's 2023, who goes outside For real right? And so we're kind of taught from a young age that we have to schedule our play. Just let that stick in, mmm, it's work first play and then sleep. Yeah, well, actually, when you think about our day, it's sleep first, wake up Right and get ready.
Speaker 2:And why can't you start your day with play. I don't Understand why can't we? I started it with play, but we're in this structure when we have to start our day with work and so we drag along, we get some coffee, we Take our bath and we think about all the things that we have to do. And how many of those things are fun. How many of those things lighten up our heart, lighten up our body, put a smile on our face and a smile on someone else's face that sees me Right, or you like I was telling you earlier. When I follow up, my neighbors are like what are you doing? It looks fun. I want to join you. Yes, please come, let's play, yeah, and so that's how I think about it. To start with that, we've got to reconstruct the way that we start our day, the way that we teach our children to be Right, because we're teaching them that pleasure comes after you work really hard. But why?
Speaker 1:both. Why? Yeah, I, I mean I love the start of this conversation and I find myself asking I Probably have sort of this bias around this word pleasure. I'm kind of a words person and so I kind of like get stuck in some ways. You know where I'm having to sort of broaden my definition of what pleasure is to include what you're saying, right, it's like, okay, well, here we go. I might as well just lay it all out here.
Speaker 1:So for some of us myself included play as it relates to, you know, my relationship with my kids, who I love, right. So I'm like I'm walking down this path in my head and I'm like, okay, listeners are gonna have this whole new view of me. But, right, so sometimes when I play with my kids, it like doesn't always end up being fun or pleasurable. So I'm having to really like Fix these ideas in my mind and like kind of broaden them or adjust them or erase them and change them, and so I'm wondering if there's also listeners or clients that you've worked with that To to your point. We've had all of these experiences with even all these words like play and fun and pleasure, and I've got to like relearn how to do all of this as an adult.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. And you hit it really on the head when I'm talking about, like decolonizing that, even the word, like going into thinking about how this word came up right Around pleasure and play. What does it mean? Yeah, and who has access to it? If we don't give it access to our children under until they we don't let children play until like four or five years old, and then adults I don't know when they get to play again in their life like really legitimately prioritize pleasure and play.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, it does come up and honestly, I get the same, the same kind of feeling. I get this kind of dog ear, dog ear care, Hmm, hmm, hmm, like you want me to do what? Huh, yeah, I want you to take some time out of your day and play and be in your pleasure, and so I do think that we have to change our relationship with the word on a somatic level. Yeah, I think that it shows up in your body. So the first thing I tell I do with clients that I talk to them about what is your relationship with pleasure? And even as the word sleep my lips, I can feel them being like, oh, you're asking me this really weird question, like what.
Speaker 2:And it depends. Some people are like most of us are raised. We're like I said earlier we work first and play later, and at some point the play time becomes even smaller. Even the hour becomes shorter, to where it's just pleasurable for me to sit on the sofa and watch Netflix and I'm like are you really pleased, or are you so freaking tired that that's all you can do with your time before you go to bed? What about on the weekend, when you don't have work? Are you still in front of television all day? And it's so. Tell me why.
Speaker 1:And I love this sort of challenging question of like are you really pleased when you're doing that? I want to come back to this question that you asked about what is your relationship with the word pleasure? And maybe the same thing you can do with what is your relationship with this word play and this word fun? Right, like identifying what is our body's reaction to these words, because that does say a lot. That's what you're suggesting, right? Our immediate reaction, our body's responses to just saying these words is something we should pay attention to.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. That's the first step. Right, pay attention to what I say to you. What is it like to be in your pleasure? Because a lot of times when I say that to clients or friends or anybody, like when I just said it to you, right, it's like whoa, I mean, how far back do you want to go? Like whoa, right, like what is that? And we all have a story with that word. So I like to start there. You know, I don't really go into just go play, yeah, like I said, somebody will be like OK, that means I'm going to go work, build some other things that I wanted to do or go on these other tasks that I wanted to do. If that brings you pleasure, ok. But if it's something, if it's more work, why are you doing that? And I think it's because we're programmed to work, work, work, work, work, work, work, yes, and pick it up.
Speaker 1:Work, work, work and then take it out, but not really identify ways that we are experiencing pleasure in the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, If you don't have an embodied vocabulary around what it means to be in pleasure in all the different ways, right? Recreational pleasure, sexual sensual pleasure, pleasure of being with your friends, the pleasure of the first bite of your favorite meal, and you're like, are you doing a happy dance when you eat your favorite ice cream, Then we're skipping over some parts. You know, a lot of times you talk about mindfulness. This is mindfulness, yeah Right. So how does your body even respond to saying to me saying what is it like to be in your pleasure? When is the last time you're really pleased to wear your whole self Lita?
Speaker 1:OK, so I'm going to say kind of what I have been I kind of mentioned this before we started to that this word pleasure, for me personally has been one that the only way that I ever sort of connect this word pleasure is just sexually right. It's like I hear the word pleasure and I automatically think about sex, things related to sexuality, whatever right. I have to believe that I'm not alone in only connecting those two things.
Speaker 2:And if I am?
Speaker 1:maybe it is just me. And then, kaya, this is just you and I having this conversation, I'll send you a check in the mail for the therapy that you're about to have with me. But how do we break that, knowing that, you know, these messages have been kind of built into me for, you know, 42 years. And how do I start to understand pleasure in a different way if I'm a person who kind of experiences this word in only this way?
Speaker 2:I love that question. I love it because I get it all the time. First of all, I think that our sensual self is, even as it starts outside the bedroom and it starts in you, before wherever in a sexual relationship, right, and so I don't necessarily think that you have to separate those two things, but I think that one enhances the other. So when clients come to me for, you know, sex therapy or sexual issues, we do start with what's your relationship with pleasure too, because it starts outside the bedroom, right, starts outside the erotic space, and so I start with, let's just say, like I said before, a meal, right, I start with what's your favorite beverage? How do you know what's your favorite? The next time you have it, I want you to be able to describe it in all types of ways. Right, tell me about it, and it becomes sensual, it becomes pleasurable. So even and we were talking earlier about the bunnies in my neighborhood, right, so even with the bunnies, when I go feed the bunnies in my neighborhood, I like to think about it as a way to slow down time. Yeah, that's how you get into your pleasure. So I watched the bunny before I get to, before I get to it, and bunnies are more receptive than I am. So I think I'm watching the bunny before I get to it.
Speaker 2:The bunny already saw me like 10 feet away and you know they have this really clean sense of smell. So they're like they can already smell a bag of Brussels sprouts. So I see their ears go up, I see them start to kind of look around and my body is starting to respond to that and I want to take it slow. So my suggestion is to take it slow, right? How do we ease any two themes in this rush rush world?
Speaker 2:That's the first way to kind of start to get into your pleasure, to ease into it, to take it mindfully, one step at a time. What did you smell, what did you see, what did you hear, what did you taste and what did your skin feel and what did your sense of self around you experience, right? So find one thing it could be a great meal, it could be your favorite game, it could be a massage. But how do you really get into it and sink into it, instead of getting a massage and thinking about all the other things that you have to do when there's a massage in? I just think to it that way.
Speaker 1:Is that a good question? Yeah, and I have to believe that that is hard for people. I mean, I can imagine you being in session with somebody and kind of walking them through this and then kind of looking at you like I ain't got time for this, who has time for that? And I kind of talked about this too, this issue of time that I also challenge folks to think about. It's not really that we don't have time, it's that we're filling our time with all these other things. And so what investment are we making in our health? What investment are we making in our body, in our mind, in our whatever?
Speaker 1:So the challenges you probably have faced with folks that you're like, take it one step. You said it's a way to slow down time. And when I hear that I'm like, yes, I want to do that. And then the practicality of really forcing myself to do that, making it not feel like an arduous task to slow down time. We're just so programmed to just go, go, go, go, go go. Or my mind is just go, go, go, go, go all the time that it has to take practice to do this. Well, is that right?
Speaker 2:Yes, it takes practice and it is somewhat of this and that's what I talked about earlier when I was talking before that obviously deconstructing of how we even enter the space, how we even enter what it means to be in our pleasure, because it can feel. I mean, I had a client say to me that this feels icky, yeah, and it's like tell me more about that. Yeah, and it's like, well, I wasn't allowed to sit. Still, you know, if I was watching TV, I'd be folding laundry. I had to always be doing something, and to not be doing something feels picky, yeah, and so how do we talk about that?
Speaker 2:Being in your pleasure is something that you're doing for yourself and ultimately that's for the community, right. And so sometimes I bring it into whatever work that they do, whatever they kind of prioritize in their life, how can you do that in pleasure, even if you're washing the dishes, including the kitchen? Put on some of your favorite music, you know, if you drink, pour you a nice beverage and wash the dishes as you dance and sway in your kitchen, right? So those are ways that you can incorporate being in your pleasure, even when you have a task, but then I try to move them out from there. How about we leave the dishes there for a minute and just start dancing? What would that be like for you? Take a few minutes and just get down boogie.
Speaker 1:Get down and boogie. For those of you who can't see the video yeah, I made the big eyebrows face because I'm imagining some people could be like, yeah, I could get down with quote multi-tasking, which we know isn't a thing. Research suggests Multi-tasking is not really a thing. But doing the dishes and listening to music like I could get down with that. But now you're saying what if you give yourself the gift of one step further and you just let the dishes sit for a second and really get down? What would that look like?
Speaker 2:Yeah, with a big smile on your face and bringing your kids into them. If you have kids, bring your partner in there or just be doing alone. But how do you do it and really feel it? And music has a really, really good way of entering our bodies. So I use music, I totally use music, right, and, like I said, it's anything that's with our five senses. So, taste, sound, yeah, and one step at a time, one day at a time.
Speaker 2:It's not easy, but I do think the beauty of it is in the journey. Right, I've seen clients go from work a holic and burnt out and not knowing why to like, I pulled my car over and got out and danced on the street today and I'm like you did what. I'm like, yeah, I parked in the park and I pulled my car over and I got out in the park and I just danced. I'm like, ok, safety first, right, but it's safety first. But, yeah, it's beautiful thing to be able to say that I get to do this. I don't need permission. I don't need permission. And I think the permission part really comes from living in this world where you have to ask for your time. You know, hey boss, can I go on vacation. Hey boss, my kid's sick. Can I go be with my kid right? Think about that. How that's programing your body. Oh my god, I really need a vacation. I have to ask now to get rest, to recover. I have to get permission.
Speaker 1:I mean that's where I stopped when you said that. I was like, oh snap, yeah, I mean sometimes it is like I need actual permission from my supervisor, my whatever right. But I was even thinking about that pulling over on the side of the road, and I think earlier you'd said I'd love to frolic, but I can't that permission, that we even no one is telling us we can't frolic, but we have this sense that I can't, oh, I couldn't pull over on the side of the road. I have to get from here to there. I can't possibly pull off and have any kind of pit stop for my own pleasure. I can't. I need permission from whom, kaya? Who do we need permission from?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you need permission. And I think, when to go back to your question, like you know where do you start, how do you do this? It is giving yourself permission, right, it's starting with you to say I have permission to be in my pleasure. I can go out in frolic, right, like, right now, I could just go, and there's a freedom in that, and even just accessing those words in the body, even if you don't do anything. So when I sit with the client, I say what do you feel like?
Speaker 2:To just say that right now, that I'm going to take I don't know 10 minutes before after the session, before I go back to work to put on a song and dance and I have to challenge people to talk about. Come on, the song is three and a half minutes. Right, you want to twerk, twerk for three and a half minutes? So awesome, do the robot, do the robot, right, like, whatever you want to do, but turn that music up and have fun and don't worry about anything else but being in that moment, right here, right now. And then tell me how you feel. Right, let's, let's process that next time. What was it like to sit back down and go to work? And it's complicated. That it's not like it's always. Oh my God, I did two minutes of dancing and I was like, yay, it's a process.
Speaker 1:That is something that I know we tend to come back to, even in therapy right, and so I'm thinking about yeah, this is exactly what you learn in therapy right, where we're sort of challenging people to say, to pause and think about what does it even feel like to say out loud I'm giving myself permission to dance, I mean even just pausing there to say, like, when you say that out loud to yourself, when you say that out loud in this room, in this space, and listener, if you're here and you're in your car, if you're, you know, taking a walk, or if you're just in your house somewhere and you say out loud, I have permission to do whatever. What does that feel like?
Speaker 2:What does that feel like? That's where we start, because, even as you said before, I have a relationship with words and this word, pleasure, is bringing something up for me. Yeah, and in the room we talk about what does that feel like? And sometimes you can hear a pin drop, because the feeling is so, so ingrained somatically that it takes a while even come up. So when you're with a client, you might not expect the answer in that moment. Yeah, they don't have it. But now you've planted the seed.
Speaker 1:And it's okay if they don't have it.
Speaker 2:Exactly.
Speaker 1:Right, it's okay if you don't have it, because even just pondering some of these things and just thinking about my relationship with this word, where does that come from? How did I learn this relationship? What messages did I receive about this word? All of that is useful, even if I can't necessarily articulate it right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and sometimes even as we do, as we know, we think sometimes have our, our clients, go and talk to their parents or family about it, and that's happened in the room with me, right, and they've been. Like I talked to my 80 year old grandmother about, you know, being at a pleasure in the relic and she was like, yeah, let's dance. And she put on some music and she's like, and so I? That's why I say it can start with you, but it can go out into your community, right, and I think that's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:All right. So I know we're wrapping up, but I still have this question that I know lingers, I think for folks, and I know for me I've I've approached it with folks before and I even in my own life, you know I think we talk a lot about balance, right? I think in this field, we talk about balance and we say, like, how do we, how do we balance fun and work? And as I'm sitting here thinking, I feel like that's almost part of the problem, right? Isn't that part of the problem where I'm like so focused on how do I balance that I'm like I've like lost the whole purpose.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that is a part of the problem. And when you think back to you know, I don't know, maybe 200 years, maybe even a thousand years, even we, we worked together. We worked together, yeah, and now we work together apart. Yep, and now now 2023, we work together apart, apart.
Speaker 1:So apart, apart, apart.
Speaker 2:Together alone in these desk and these cubicles and these, but we used to even do our work together, so there was laughter. When I'm skinning a deer or whatever, we're talking and we're laughing, we're playing, the kids are laughing in the background. Think about that as you're working, there's laughter of children in the background. That's totally different than being in a quiet office but in a way, at the keyboard, and so I think it is. Part of the problem is the way that we think about it, and that's what I mean when I say be colonizing that. Right, because we start to think about how do we get here, how do we get away from the communal life into this really highly individualistic life, and it's lonely, and so you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1:In this loneliness. Obviously, we know all of the health risks associated with loneliness specifically, but thinking about how all of that ties back to the decolonization of fun and play and pleasure and how we just kind of see it all is so good, okay, so, kaya, we have lots more things that we need to talk about, but for today, how about you tell folks how they can follow you or find you or learn more about you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so on Instagram, that's infinite Zen therapy. I think it's infinite Zen therapy on Facebook too. On LinkedIn, it's to AWA, d-u-e-w-a, kaya Spicer, lcsw, cst. You can also go to my website, infinitezentherapycom, and that's where I am, that's where you can find me, but take a peek and then go out and be in your pleasure. I don't want you to stay online with me.
Speaker 1:Isn't it true? It's like I have recommendation for people, too, sometimes, where I'm like this is kind of the opposite of what I really want you to do, but you have to kind of like learn this part first and then go do it. But I love that, that's great and I'll link to all of your stuff in the podcast description. But I just am so grateful for you and I'm grateful for your thoughts and your wisdom and that you came here today to share it with us, because it really has. I mean, I already wrote down a bunch of things that I know, even in my own life really challenging some of those things, and certainly in my professional life as I work with other people, because I couldn't agree more that we kind of mess this up in a lot of ways, and so getting back to figuring it out, I think, is just so important. So thanks for saying yes to being here.
Speaker 2:Yes, absolutely, it's been a pleasure. Yeah, I think, with a lot to talk about, can't wait to come back. But yeah, up to your listeners and everyone, it's your right, it's your birthright to gain your pleasure. So go out and do it, Go on and frolic, go frolic everybody.
Speaker 1:I love it All right, yeah, until next week. Thanks for listening.