Inner Child, Arrested Development & Why Trey's Juggs Magazine Makes Perfect Psychological Sense — S3E15 with Dr. Nicole Thompson

About This Episode

In Season 3 episode fifteen of And Just Like That… We Found Therapy, host Isabel MV is joined by sex and relationship psychotherapist, relationship anarchy researcher and psychedelic-assisted therapy practitioner Dr. Nicole Thompson to unpack Sex and the City's "Hot Child in the City." It's the episode where Carrie dates a man who lives with his parents, Miranda gets braces and immediately removes them after a bad date, Charlotte catches Trey pleasuring himself to a magazine called Juggs, and Samantha takes on a 13-year-old Bat Mitzvah client who orders Dom Pérignon at lunch.

What We Cover

• Why Carrie passing Miranda's number to a man who then handed it back is actually a consent culture problem dressed up as romantic comedy

• Is dating a man who lives with his parents a waste of precious time — or is "precious time" just the biological clock talking?

• Why adults struggle so much to play — and why the inability to play will eventually show up in your sex life

• Trey's Juggs magazine: what his erotic profile might actually be telling us about why he chose Charlotte

• The Madonna-whore complex revisited — and how classical conditioning via Charlotte's face on a magazine is not actually a bad therapeutic idea

• Why couples therapy should start with one direct question: do you both actually want to have sex in this marriage?

• The repression paradox: the more restricted children are around sexuality and their bodies, the more it comes out in problematic ways

• Miranda removing her braces: the evolutionary reason why we never fully stop caring what people think of how we look

• The cortisol problem — and why you cannot flip a switch to have a great sex life if the rest of your life is all go, go, go

• Relationship anarchy: what it actually means, why it's not the same as polyamory, and why you can be monogamous and still be a relationship anarchist

• Psychedelic-assisted therapy for sexual shame and intimacy issues — why set and setting changes everything, and why ketamine is Dr. Nicole's practical favourite for the therapy room

About Our Guest

Dr. Nicole Thompson is a sex and relationship psychotherapist, founder of the Pleasure Practice, author of the Psychedelic Jealousy Guide and host of the Modern Anarchy podcast. She published the world's first research study on relationship anarchy and is trained in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy. Find her free resources, newsletter and dissertation at modernanarchypodcast.com. All links in the show notes.

Transcript

Welcome back, Boundary Babes. This week's episode of And Just Like That We Found Therapy dives into Season 3, Episode 15, Not 16, Of Sex in the City, Hot Child in the City. And this week, I am joined by Dr. Nicole Thompson, who is a psychotherapist based in Chicago. She's actually super young, but so well-prepared, and I can wait for you guys to hear.

At the end of the episode, she dives into how she uses psychedelics to facilitate some things in therapy that I found so, so interesting. I hope you guys enjoy it. I'll see you on the other side.

I love you. Hello, everybody. And welcome back to another episode of And Just Like That We Found Therapy.

I am your host, Isabel Envy, and I am delighted to be joined by Dr. Nicole Thompson. Dr.

Nicole Thompson is a sex and relationship psychotherapist, founder of the Pleasure Practice, and the academic who published the world's first research study on relationship anarchy.

She's also trained in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy, author of the Psychedelic Jealousy Guide, Craft and Secure Non-Monogamous Relationships, and host of the podcast Modern Anarchy. Welcome, Nicole.

Such a joy to be here, such a joy. I'm such a big fan, and so excited to talk about sex and the city.

I often, when I write my newsletter to folks, I feel like I'm Carrie, just like walking around the city of Chicago, being like, how do we liberate sex? So I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah, exactly.

I feel like my SAPSAC channels the worst and best Carrie Bradshaw.

But today we're here to discuss season 3, episode 16 of Sex and the City, Hot Child in the City.

This episode, we open up with Samantha taking a meeting with a bit of a brat, Jenny Brier, who is celebrating her about Mitzvah and she is kind of out of control being like, well, you know, what do I know?

I'm just a kid, but I guess we'll be fine if we can swing this for under a million. And this is how we get introduced to the theme of the episode, inner child, being a child versus being an adult.

And then the girls are grabbing lunch at the latest hip syndrome power lunch, aught cafeteria cuisine, whatever that means.

Miranda is looking at a guy and then she starts talking about her TMJ, saying that she's going to go to the orthodontist to fix it and blah, blah, blah. And then the girls are acting like teenagers in the school cafeteria.

And they're like, oh, but he's cute. You should go and say hello and blah, blah, blah. And she's like, no, stop looking.

No, I want to talk about my TMJ. And then eventually, Carrie's like, you know what? I'm going to write your number down, go over him, and take your number to him.

So my first question to you is, what do you think of Carrie taking the note over? Friend or foe?

I don't, yeah, I don't love it because for even more context, Miranda is repeatedly saying, no, Carrie, do not do this. No, do not do, like, said, I think like five, six different no's at that point, and Carrie really pushes her off.

I mean, if we really ground in consent culture, right? There was multiple no's there, and so to extend that without Miranda's consent, that was, I know it's playful, but also like that's not consent culture.

If I tell my friends not to do something, they push me beyond that, I'd be like, can I trust you in the future?

Yeah, I mean, I have to say, if I put myself in Miranda's shoes, I'd be super okay with Carey doing that for me, as long as he was a yes. If he was a no, I'd be like, why did you have to do that for me?

I have a bigger issue with the fact that when Carey gives him the note, he says, tell your friend Miranda to call me, and gives Carey his number. I'm like, whoa, whoa, ball was in your court.

Do you agree or do you think that I'm reading too much into it?

No, I mean, I thought it was a great question because I know you sent me that via email to think about because the first time I watched the episode, I didn't even catch that.

I was like, oh, yeah, and then when you sent the email and I was going back through and I was like, that is, you're right. This is really fascinating. Why does, and we know that the writers chose that, right?

They chose that intentionally as a moment. And so I wonder if that's giving a nod to female empowerment, to have Miranda call and to have her initiate and do that and kind of give her that opportunity?

Or is it kind of him, yeah, negating the responsibility to take the next move and kind of like not as empowering? I mean, I'd be so curious if I could sit in on the writers board and be like, what was your intention with that?

Because I didn't even catch it the first time, but you're so right to point it out.

I unfortunately think I've been in the dating scene for way too long and I am super sensitive for these things.

After their lunch, Carrie goes over to her favorite cobbler, Shoe Guy, and she is distraught to find that the cobbler is gone and now there's a comic shop. And she meets Power Lad.

They have this kind of like cute interaction where he's like, oh, you know, he moved back to Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Colonial, and now I got the rent. But like, if my sales continue to be as they are, got to move as well.

And I think we keep seeing the theme of like, okay, this grown ass adult has like a childish hobby. There's a lot of like very shy, childish boys at the shop as well. In the meantime, Charlotte is dealing with a very grown up problem.

And she is determined to find a solution for Trey's problem, which we found out was erectile dysfunction, not physical, but emotional. Charlotte finds this invention that is like $8,000 worth of hydraulics for Trey's penis.

I am dying to know, please tell me what does that mean? Like, how does it work? And what do you think about the way that Charlotte brings it up to him?

Yeah, I mean, even the framework of the erectile dysfunction doesn't feel like it's accurate, right?

Because clearly, we know in the scene that he starts to masturbate and enjoy solo pleasure to other sorts of content. So clearly, he's not having that issue, right?

It seems like it's a bit more of the intimacy that's going on between them, which we can get into. But the way that she brings it up, I remember she hands him this piece of paper which shows the hydraulics, right, of, oh, we can get this fixed.

And I would say that's not the best way to bring up that conversation, right?

Like, you're having this disconnect in your sexual relationship, in your marriage, and rather than bringing up the more vulnerable things, which would be to say, like, hey, I'm feeling this is really impacting my sense of self.

I'm feeling really disconnected to you. How can we work on this together? She goes to the quote unquote easier route, which is less vulnerable.

Here's the solution, I'm going to slide it over to you, which I think is very reflective of her character, right? Her character is always really anxious around sex and doesn't really talk about it, so it makes sense.

In all that fear and anxiety, she would go with a subtle pass of the paper to say, hey, maybe this is how we fix this.

But I think ideally we want to have much more of a vulnerable conversation about what's actually going on between the two of them and what they're experiencing with that, rather than going for the solutions first sort of method.

And that might clearly wasn't the solution he needed, so we can even get into that.

But like just we really, when we're feeling disconnected in our relationships, we want to speak from the I statements, like I'm feeling hurt, I'm feeling disconnected.

And then that opens up much more vulnerability with our lovers to be able to talk about that.

Yeah. I have to say though, I love the way that she tried to make it a we statement in the sense like, this is our problem and you're not alone. But I agree with you that you have to bring it to you in the how I feel and how that makes her feel.

But I'm curious to know, have you ever seen this? I don't think I've ever found this kind of like hardware going to... I was like, what is going on inside?

It's like a robotic penis.

Fascinating. Yeah, no, I've not done enough research on that to know. Absolutely not.

I've never seen that in my clinical work.

I think the writers are playing with the bussing. Yeah. Being like, burn much up.

After that, we see Carrie and Power Lad, whose name is Wade, have a date at the arcade. So the writers continue to showcase this kind of like very playful teenage kind of romance. And the guy is like, oh, do you want to come over to my place?

And he is in his scooter and Carrie is just like, I'm not a girl to scoot over a guy's place on the first date. And then he's like, well, I have air conditioning. She's like, okay, fine, let's scoot over.

And then we find out that Wade has a beautiful apartment with a beautiful terrace overlooking Central Park because he lives with his parents. Which all this to me, I'm like huge deal breaker, dude. Like what an equivalent of boner killer for a woman.

But I have to say, after seeing Carrie fall for Mr. Big, the Russian and stuff like that, I'm like girl, I am surprised by the range that you have.

So my next question to you is, do you think that Carrie is wasting precious years as I hear a lot by dating somebody that it's so outside her type? Or do you think that it's actually a good exercise to sometimes think outside the box?

Yeah, there's so much here. We could have a full multi-hour conversation on just this question. Because it kind of depends on what your intentions are.

When you say precious time, my understanding of that preciousness is often the biological clock piece that kind of put onto there for women. So Carrie's never talked about wanting to have kids, right?

So for her, I don't know if we want to frame that as precious. Obviously, our whole life is precious. I love that intentionality with your time and your energy.

Now for Carrie, for someone who doesn't want to have kids necessarily, then she's not on that biological clock trajectory. So at that point, it comes down to intimacy and connection and being able to enjoy.

I mean, if Carrie is on the relationship escalator in terms of attraction, dating, exclusivity, being married and dying together, she might have in her own felt sense like, oh, I need to be married by a certain age, which then creates a lot of

pressure and the sense of preciousness. But I feel like one of the big things of Sex and the City is that Carrie has her own apartment. She has her own job. I think that's why I connect with this so much too, where it's like, I have my own apartment.

I have my own business. Like, I don't need a man to have a house. I actually don't want to move in.

Like, my own life goals are to live by myself. Intentionally, in terms of like Virginia Woolf and the Feminist Revolution in terms of a woman having a room of her own, I've always wanted to have an apartment and a studio of my own.

And we see Carrie kind of carry through to that into the older age version of the Sex and the City show, Just Like That. They see her still living by herself.

So she's really carried that arc even beyond this episode into the recent remake where she's living alone.

So in that framework where Carrie doesn't want to live with somebody, where she doesn't want to have kids, then we think about, we're here to enjoy our life.

And what I think is really cool about that experience with this guy that she's with is they do so much play. They smoke weed, they have a great time together, they go to the arcade, they do all these things.

And I think there's often this push to get to some destination of seriousness and settling down. But what she's really enjoying is playing. She's having a great time.

Again, she's not trying to ride the biological clock or the escalator in that way. And she's having a lot of fun. But I think it's important that you don't have to push yourself to hit some life goal destination.

You get to choose which life goals. If you want to have kids, then yeah, this is a whole other situation we are looking at of like, okay, what's your timeline and things like that. But that's not Carrie's trajectory as a character.

She's playing. So I really don't think it's any waste of time. I think it's actually really healthy for her to have play.

Yeah, I love that.

I think that she's a relationship girl. As much as she might not be the woman that wants to like get married and have children, she is a relationship girl. And then the next scene, we see her sitting down with Samantha for lunch.

And Samantha's like, drop him immediately. And Carrie starts just fending him like, no, but you know, it's because you know how the market is. It's crazy.

And he's saving up to get his own place. And he put all his money in the comic store. And Samantha's just like, no, the only way that I would like shack up with like a man that still lives with his parents would be with Prince William or Harry.

I don't remember. Which I thought was hilarious.

I should just say that.

But here, Miranda sits down with them. She is sporting a new set of braces, which I used to have when I was a teenager. And like, my God, it does hurt just by looking at her.

And they get sent a bottle of Dom Perignon compliments of Miss Jenny Brier, the Bat Mitzilla, whatever you want to call it. And she comes over with all her friends and she's like, Oh, my God, I didn't know that you were friends with Carrie Bradshaw.

You are fucking fabulous. And like, they have this super provocative, frivolous conversation where they are talking about having sex, low jobs, dressed like maybe I was allowed to dress when I was 17, 18.

And there is this conversation of like, how old are they? And she's like 13. And like, but they dress like, yeah, and they talk like, yeah.

It's like, like them in their 30s. So my next question to you is, what did you think about this click? And I think especially in this day and age, I see a lot more like very hurried growing up.

What did you think of this?

Yeah, especially with the internet, even more so than when this was made, right? Children these days have access to everything, including AI and access to even creation of their own worlds with that.

I mean, it is infinitely more complex in terms of the things that people are having access to. So it makes sense that there's going to be so much more speeding through some of those eras of childhood and development.

I don't necessarily think that's a good thing. I think that when you look at what they're reaching for, they're reaching for the ability to have a lot of freedom. They're reaching for the ability to have sexual experiences.

I do, it's, you know, children will masturbate as early as like, you know, even two years old, that can be seen clinically, right? And very, it's not uncommon. It's not uncommon at all for kids to touch themselves and to feel really good doing that.

And so our society is so repressed around that, that I think most parents don't feel comfortable having that conversation with their toddler. And obviously age appropriate, right? In terms of, hey, this is your body.

It has places that feel good. And we do that in private spaces and with ourselves. And we also know how to say no with other people, right?

And that's really important that kids know how to communicate that for their safety at minimum, right? But also for their long-term development around releasing shame. So thinking about how that's not the world we live in, most people don't do that.

It makes sense that at 13, you're right, starting to have those hormones, you're getting, you have so much more access to the internet that was coming out at the time, and you're pushing because our society is so repressed, they probably didn't get a

very age-appropriate level of education along the way, right? So once you get that first taste of freedom, you start to really step into it, be like, hey, look, I'm this, I can do that, I can have this sex and all of that.

I'd love to see another world where people are really taught from a young age, more age-appropriate ways, and what we know is that the more repressed you are, the more it comes out in problematic ways, right?

So what we're seeing with them when they're using it as control and ability to feel older, to feel respected, I think some of that is the repression that often comes from our society, especially around sexuality and children, because it's often such

an area so many parents kind of tighten up around. But then we see kids being uneducated and exploring things that are not safe, doing things like that.

And so I think that's kind of the edge of them trying to reach into freedom when it hasn't been age-developmentally shown to them in that way. As adults, it's so hard to play. It is so difficult to play.

I run a Pleasure Liberation Group on sexuality. It's a 16-week group program. And when I was making the content for that, I have a discussion of pleasure.

And the three components of pleasure that I think are so important are presence, practice, and play. And even when I was looking for art to include with play, just a quick search of play. And it shows kids at a playground, like not adults.

So we see here the kids who are supposed to be playing trying to reach for adulthood because they're restricted.

And then we see the adults reaching for playhood because they're restricted by capitalism and the work and the job force and the realities of like the timeline of having to be like, let's settle down. Right?

So you're seeing the ways that the repression is impacting both groups differently.

Yeah. And I love how they tie the threat through the entire episode because like, yeah, sometimes I just want to be a kid with the innocence of like not having to worry responsibilities, et cetera.

But after this, Miranda goes on her first date with a guy from the cafeteria. And she is talking to him and like being super cute and she smiles at him. And she has a bunch of like, I think it's like all of tapenade.

It's horrendous all over the braces and the guy brings it up to her and she's mortified. So in the next scene, she's talking about it to Carrie and she was just like, I'm never dating again because I am mortified. It was horrendous.

And then they have this really candid conversation when Miranda says, Well, I don't think I could date a guy that wore braces. What do you think about that? Do you think that she is more childish than him for that?

Yeah, in some ways, right?

Because it's not all about the physical attraction, right? And the braces are a short period of time, right? She's sitting in so much of the felt pressure of society.

Even if you were talking about, like, are we wasting time? There's these other pressures that we have that, like, yeah, you should look a certain way. Adulthood doesn't have braces, right?

You shouldn't be attracted, like you're saying, even with Samantha in that moment with the, I would only want to date a man who has a full life built out and money and establishment.

There's all these different pressures here around what is acceptable or not. Let alone Samantha kind of talks about coming from poverty, right?

So like, you can see how maybe some of that is coming out for her of like then wanting the provider, and especially we could get into gender roles around men and providing too. And so, yeah, there's a lot here.

You see how all these different systems are impacting them, right? Rather than actually saying, hey, I really love this human. This is a person I'm in love with.

I want to be with them whether they have braces on or they go through a period of disability or anything in the world. Like, what does it mean that we're ultimately landing in just the physical rather than the actual soul connection of a person?

Yeah, I think there's a lot to unpack there.

Yeah, I was super disappointed on Miranda in this scene because I was like, you're the one that has like the good head on her shoulder. But the next scene is the best.

And I love to have you here for this because Trey and Charlotte are at a therapist's office and it obviously was someone that Trey found through the referral network of Yale alumni.

Of course.

But like it's so funny because the guy starts to talk like, maybe we need to, you know, bring the stakes down. Sex can be something that is very intimidating and like the stakes are very high.

So why don't we refer to like our genital parts with like a name that is not maybe as aggressive? And he mentions the fact that a client called his anus, I think it was a chocolate star ship or something like I.

Starfish, I think, yeah. Starfish.

Yeah, it makes more sense.

I was like, can't forget that one.

No, but he is so funny. And as he says that Trey says, are you quite sure you went to jail? Which I love.

But I am very curious because obviously I was trying to get them to have an exercise when they go back home that is like to sit down, look into each other's eyes and share a sexual fantasy where they don't say vagina and penis, but they say Rebecca

and schooner or whatever their nicknames were. What did you think about this as a professional that works, I'm sure, with couples in very much this part of relationships? What did you think about this Yale psychotherapist?

Yeah, I appreciate that he stayed in the moment, right? And he gave an example of another client of like, hey, this is what other people have done. And he kept it very, like when you watch him do that scene, he doesn't feel uncomfortable.

Some therapists are really uncomfortable to talk about sex. So his ability to kind of laugh with it, stay present with it, I think that was all really good. It's interesting to kind of have this bait and switch, right?

Like rather than actually sitting with the discomfort and really sitting with it to kind of be like, there's a crutch. Now, crutches are helpful when we have a broken leg. So who am I to say that that's not the best?

I don't think that's the approach I would go with because it just feels like when do we then take the crutches off and actually start talking about what this really is?

I think when they say those words and they're like, oh, I feel really tight, my approach would be, okay, where do you feel that in your body?

Yeah.

Oh, your stomach feels really upset right now. Your chest is really tight. This is where we do bottom up processing, which is using the body to change the mind.

So with the body, we would do that scan, we would do some grounding techniques, and we could really take some long, slow, deep exhales because when we're activated and we're stressed, quite literally, we move into a different part of the brain.

So the prefrontal cortex is where we do all our executive, critical thinking skills. But if we get scared, we go into the older parts of our brain, like our amygdala, and so the prefrontal cortex goes offline.

So at that point now, you're in your fear. You're not thinking in your critical front part of your brain. So for me, I'd be thinking, okay, you're scanning, you've got that going on with your body.

Now we're going to take some slow, nice, deep breaths, truly pacing in that way. Rather than the pacifier, the crutch of giving a different piece to it, I would do pacing with the body of like, okay, you're feeling that tightness, let's stop here.

And maybe that's all we do for session one.

Truly.

Okay. Word, vagina. Got it.

Wow, I feel really tight. Okay, let's take some more deep breaths. Again, vagina, right?

Like until we could really sit with that. And hopefully there'd be some movement in that session that by the end, we're having a little bit more ease to breathe with that. But that's how I would work.

I just get a little hesitant around the like, crutching kind of do it. But I can also see what he's doing, which is giving them a space to communicate about this without so much charge.

I like that because I think sometimes when you're so much in your head, being in your body takes that away a little bit. But as you mentioned previously, then they're back home and Charlotte hears Trey crying from the bathroom.

So she feels so bad that she made him cry because the experiment when they were trying to connect about Rebecca and Schooner did not work out. So she opens the door a little bit and she sees that he is jerking off to Juggs. Yeah.

Why do you think that Trey can be so sexual with something so removed as women on a magazine, but he cannot see his wife in a sexual light?

Oh, what a question. This is my favorite one. I was like, there's so much here.

Yeah.

So one, I always like to hold the space for our authentic desires.

Okay. Like, hey, this is just what he's into. We can just let it be.

We can just let it breathe. This is what he's attracted to. And just honoring that for what it is.

There doesn't have to be a problem about it. This is what he's attracted to. Larger chests, right?

Big jugs. That is what he's attracted to. And we don't have to get, so what's...

Is there a problem with him? Because I know sometimes the field of psychology can often come with that lens of what's the problem? What's going on?

Maybe that's just what he's attracted to.

Okay?

I think it's important to recognize that in terms of characters, right? Charlotte doesn't have a big chest. So maybe that is just a part of his erotic profile of what he's attracted to.

And so we want to honor that for what it is. That doesn't have to be shamed or judged or anything, right?

Now, then the complexities of choosing Charlotte, if that is his erotic profile of really liking bigger chested women, like why did he date Charlotte? What's going on there? I think this is a pretty rich conversation to have.

The reality is Charlotte is such a pretty princess character. And what we know from Trey is that he, in other episodes, also has a really deep connection with his mom. His mom is really deeply integrated, so much so that she takes care of him.

At times, you kind of see her hover in the relationship with Charlotte and him, and is really closely, closely intimate. And it's almost like Charlotte takes over that role for him and plays that motherly role, right?

Like, it's almost like he can't see her in the sexual figure because he's replaced his mom with Charlotte, and that's not a sexual figure. Plus, we also have the other pieces going on of like the different identity factors that they really like.

They come from a lot of money and the wealth. And Charlotte can really play that role of being the pretty princess and the wealth. And so she fits into this really easy mold of what his mom wants, of what they're doing, and all of these things.

And so I really wonder if part of his attraction to her was finding another caregiver who could replace his mom and who could fit the social role rather than an actual erotic connection in that way.

Yeah. I thought also about the Madonna-whore complex that Samantha had mentioned. I was like, look at Samantha.

She knew. But then we kind of come to the end of the episode where Miranda decides to get her braces removed because some people are laughing at her. Like, she's just so insecure about it.

She's like, I can't. I'd rather suffer from TMJ. Then Wade shows exactly the kind of not grown up kid that he is when his parents come back home while they're smoking marijuana.

And because they had told him, if you ever do this again, you'll go sleep in the comic store. He coughs out and says that it's Carrie's. And Carrie takes it with her.

Samantha makes peace with the fact that she got to have innocence in her childhood. Jenny Brier unfortunately called it short and is already starting to be an adult in her teen years.

And Charlotte finds a purpose for the wedding proofs that were not suitable for framing by putting her cutout face onto Juggs magazine. So I would like for you to maybe get some advice to the girls in this episode.

So for Carrie, would you have pushed back if maybe you were to push back on Samantha as well when she was defending Wade to you, being the relationship girl that she is?

I think my feedback would have been like, that's so great. You're having fun. Cool.

What's your intention with him? Like if you're just wanting to play right now and connect and have a great time, like, cool, who cares that he lives with his parents?

Now the scene where the pot comes in, what really troubles me about that is that the way he lives with his parents, there's still such a power dynamic. What's happening in the show is that they're still controlling him.

Hey, you can't smoke pot here and we're going to kick you out. Now, that I actually have a lot of reaction to, like he is a full adult, he should be entitled to make his choices.

I think there's the possibility for someone to live with their parents and feel like they have their own autonomy and their own choices.

Yeah.

Does he have his own freedom? Does he have his own autonomy? Can he make his own decisions?

And especially because Carrie has her own place, why can't you just invite him over to your house? Who cares? Maybe you just don't go over there.

As long as you're having fun. That's my biggest question. Are you having fun?

Are you in alignment with your values and your goals? And again, if this was Charlotte who wants to get married and all these other pieces, she is at this time.

But that sort of character archetype, I would probably be like, hey, Charlotte, curious if this is in alignment with your goals. I know you want to have kids and get married. This guy seems like he's not really in alignment with that.

So I think my biggest hope as friends is that I can support them with stepping into their own empowerment and their values of what are aligned with them.

And so we see each one of the different characters having different arcs, different values, things that they crave. And so my hope as a friend is to support my friends with becoming more of who they want to become.

And so in Carrie's narrative, are you having a good time, Carrie?

I love that. I think that's actually good advice. What about Samantha?

What do you think about the way that she related to Jenny Brier? Because I think there was a bit of jealousy.

Yeah, there is a bit of jealousy in terms of the socioeconomic difference because she mentions growing up working at... Wasn't it like a Dairy Queen that I think she said? Yeah.

This world is full of so many deep inequalities and someone like her, who's not Samantha, but the Jenny at 13 to have access to buying a $200 bottle of champagne and having million dollar parties.

There is a true inequality there of experience and that frustration is something that we should all reflect on of how can we make this more of an equitable world where people all have access to things that are important to them, which includes

recreation and play, right? And so I feel that frustration with Samantha when she says, I was at Dairy Queen and I wasn't getting to have all of this, right?

Yeah.

Do we really need to be spending millions of dollars on her party at 13?

Like my heart breaks having worked in community mental health, I've seen worked with so many clients who do not have access to food that I was working with that reaction, I don't want to say is wrong in any way, shape or form.

So how can we work with those systems? If she is taking her on as a client, how can we redistribute some of that money into other groups and people and mutual aid? And so she feels like she's actually being a powerful steward of that money.

That's a powerful way to take that of like, hey, this is the reality we're in. You want to hire me for this? I'm going to take this money and redistribute it to other people who deserve this money, you know?

And then what does it mean to have empathy for her instead of being so stern for Jenny to actually, which she does get to, right, in terms of the, wow, she's losing out on her childhood.

So I think that's kind of where Samantha gets to, of like, wow, she has all this access and money, Jenny, but is she really free? Is she able to be a child in this? And the answer is no.

So I think that empathy comes down to seeing how we're all hurt by the system.

So I'm grateful that she got to that space of the arc and how can you redistribute that money, Samantha, so that you feel like you're being a good steward of all the millions of dollars that are coming into you with that work?

I mean, she probably thinks that it was fairly distributed by going into her pocket knowing the character. But I love what you're saying about having empathy and meeting somebody where they're at.

Because I have a big issue with a cancel culture that I think is what's causing such division in countries. And I think it's because people don't talk.

Totally. Totally. And it's wild to think about the money landing in her pocket.

This is something that we see with the newer episode of The Sex and the City, The Just Like That. These are four white women. They're like, where is the diversity in this cast?

There's truly none.

Oh, they tried. They tried.

Yeah, they were doing it and still failing.

This season, it failed like, oh, let us cast the widest net that we can to check all the diversity boxes. But it was hard to keep the episodes to what we knew them to be.

Because like, wait, whoa, there's the non-binary, the Indian girl, the black woman. It was a lot.

Yeah, and we need more, right? I think we need more.

And that's why I'm so grateful in the new season when they bring in more diverse cultures, you know, Samantha, Charlotte has a child who is trans, we have more black representation and what that's like to create content.

Like, I think it's a product of its time where like they were pushing their own edges and boundaries and like still needing more. And so I think that's, I'm really grateful that the new show is still trying to push a little bit more.

Yeah, I mean, hopefully they're not canceled forever, but I do wish they would do it with less of a woke agenda.

Because what I'm realizing as I do this podcast is how well-written and how every single sentence tied back in to whatever the episode's theme was almost. It was very intentional. And with the new seasons, it felt a bit like spray and pray.

Like they're trying to make up for their mistakes in that way.

Yeah.

Jen Sears, Will, Tik Tokers, whatever. It felt very much like that meme of Josh Ushemi or whatever his name is being like, what's up fellow Tik Tokers? I don't know.

Okay. About Charlotte, how would you have maybe taken them into your office after having that first in-body therapy session? How would you have like bridged them into maybe having sex successfully?

I guess my first question is, does Trey want that?

Fair enough.

You know, when you're a couples therapist, we talk about how our client is the couple, right?

Our client is the couple and what do they want? And how do we find mutuality of this connection? Because I don't know if Trey really wants to have sex with Charlotte.

And I would feel uncomfortable if I came in pressuring that agenda. So I think my first question... Yeah, black cat's coming.

She loves to tap the mic.

I love the cat. I know, I know. It's just like out of here.

Exactly, exactly.

She's my co-host with Modern Anarchy. My first question would be direct with Trey of like, do you want to have sex in your marriage? Okay.

Statistically, a lot of marriages that don't have sex, pretty high, like that's very common. I'm not going to say it's healthy, but or whatever, but it's very common for many people to have sexless marriages.

People have marriages out of financial perspectives and desires and things like that. So like, I would first ask Trey like, do you want to do this?

Yeah.

And if he wavered, I'm not about to be like, you need to do this. At that point, I'd be like, hey, Charlotte, this is the person you're with. Is this what you want?

And if not, how do we separate? How do we find new ways of being together? If that's a possibility, right?

Depending. Given that Charlotte is monogamous, I think that would be tricky. So it sounds like they would need to have a full separation in terms of their romantic and sexual connections and hopefully be able to maintain a friendship.

That's ideally what we'd like. But I think my first question would be, does he even want this? Now, if he does, again, because you can't force someone to take the experience, you can't force the horse to water.

I work with psychedelics. You cannot force somebody, and you should not force somebody to take the psychedelic, right? So they have to want the change.

And so now if he does, now with Charlotte placing the face on the jugs, I actually don't think that's a bad idea. I mean, granted, she does it without his consent, which I don't love that. She goes into his stuff and does that without a full yes.

But from my side, what I see happening is a rewriting of the neuronal pathways and the classical conditioning.

So he is, especially if we're working from the theory that I shared earlier that he is so enmeshed with his mom and his mom has played the role of what traditionally a wife has played. And that's not a space where we cross into the erotic.

So when he has Charlotte step into that role, he is having a really hard time stepping into the erotic. Okay, great. So yeah, now we're going to bring in more classical conditioning of seeing Charlotte as a erotic being.

So yeah, she puts the faces from her wedding photos on the face of the people with Juggs. And so now every time that he is masturbating and solo pleasuring, he is learning to rewrite his neuronal pathways to see Charlotte as an erotic being.

That's not a bad idea in terms of rewriting those pathways. I would love for the two of them to talk about what's going on and how that feels for the two of them.

Because I think in a lot of these scenes, we see how they're not talking about it at all. Even when she puts the photos on the magazine, they never have a conversation. And we never see a conversation afterwards.

We just see him get off and she's in the bed reading the book, going with a little smirk. So my work would be like, how do we actually start to bridge these conversations? Even in the session with the Yale psychologist, right?

They're looking at him. One of my favorite things to do in couples work is say, hey, can you actually look at each other?

Yeah.

How does it feel? What are you craving? What are you wanting in this relationship?

Because it's the two of you. I'm helping. I'm creating the container to process this.

But at the end of the day, it's the two of you and you need to look at each other and say, do we want to have sex in our life or not? There are many successful marriages that never have sex.

There are many open relationships that get that need through other people. What do you want to co-create? So I think I would start in that first place.

And then, yeah, for Charlotte's work, it would also probably be a bit of how does she separate herself worth from Trey's lack of attraction right now?

Right.

Right, because you see her really struggle with that. But again, if she wants to have sex in her marriage, that's an absolutely valid thing to want and crave.

And if he's not willing to do that, that could be a reason to reorient, to rediscover new ways of being in connection and potentially find other people to be able to meet that.

Yeah, I think it kind of happens in the next episode. But, okay, finally, Miranda, what do you think about the way that she handled the whole thing and like she removed the braces because she couldn't take it anymore?

Like, I do think that, yes, we grow older and we're supposed to grow out of like caring about not looking our best at all times. But when I had a pimple in high school, my parents would say like, you're still going to school. Now I have the choice.

If I don't want to leave, I don't leave. I'm like, let me tell you, I haven't left the house sometimes because of a pimple. So what do you think about that?

Do you think that that is a wound that is from her childhood or being bullied in school? Or do you think that we all carry a bit of that vanity with a bit more seriousness into our older years?

Yeah. Well, from an evolutionary perspective, one of the biggest pieces is that we need to stay in connection with other people. So isolation is actually a form of torture.

We put people into isolation. It's a way that we historically have managed communities. You're exiled.

And from an evolutionary sense, we couldn't survive on our own until very recently in modernity where now we have access to all the things that we have now.

But historically, surviving on your own was pretty difficult, especially depending on your climate and even psychologically. Again, isolation is what puts us into complete psychological pain.

So that was a big piece of my feminist theoretical training in psychology, is how connection is at the heart of all mental health disorders, is a craving for connection. And we could nerd out on all of that, of what I was trained in.

But for the moments of vanity, we're constantly in a world where we want to stay connected, and connection is equated to what is a cultural norm.

So if at a young age, you get really bullied around having a pimple and people really make fun of you, then you're feeling that disconnection where people are actually moving themselves from you, laughing at you from a distance.

And it brings up all that evolutionary fear. This is something I've felt even doing video podcasting and stepping into that, like, can I wear my hair up at a bun? Do I have to wear makeup all the time?

Will people judge me if, as a woman, I don't have all these perfect put together things all the time? And I'm still showing up with makeup.

Because I want to.

That's also true.

Same. And I have so many lights.

Exactly. And I love it. I think that's another thing.

Like, I got laser hair removal on my bikini line, but like I grow out my armpit hair. And I think some people would be like, what the... But to me, like I like my armpit hair.

I like the freedom. It makes sense to me. I want to have really like sex where it's clear.

And this feels great to me. And it feels good. But like...

But some groups of people will look at me and be like, that's gross, Nicole. Like, how dare you do the French thing? By the way, it's very common in Europe, right?

But in America, there's a lot of like men who look at me and they're like, oh, but like I really don't want that man who looks at me like that.

Right?

So you have to hold the cultural connotations, right? So hence where braces are okay in childhood, quote, unquote, not okay in adulthood, armpit hair, not okay in America, maybe very okay in Europe, right?

So like, we are all constantly navigating that and looking for connection. So I think that's really at the heart of what's happening there.

And so for Miranda, if I'm coming into advice, do you want to really date people who are going to judge you for your braces?

Yeah.

Full stop there. Okay, first question. Because if they're that shallow, like is that the kind of person you want to connect with in the first place?

Yeah. So I really, again, I think one of my biggest hopes is with my lovers, with my friends, with my clients, with everybody that I meet, like how can I support you with being in alignment with your values? So Miranda, like what are your values?

Do you like your teeth? Do you not? If you don't like them, then like hell yeah, I'm going to stand by you.

I'm going to be with you through every shitty guy that says no, or girl, because she ends up being gay later on. And it's so funny, in the scene, they have a line about her having a tongue with the TMJ. Do you remember that?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Being a tongue thruster would be good if you were a guy.

Which is so funny, because she ends up being gay later. So then I was like, oh Miranda, you don't even know your trajectory arc yet, but it's going to come back and this is actually going to be a really big gift.

I hope they put that there on purpose. Yeah, exactly. I have one more question.

Because through all this episode, we also see Charlotte at one point when they get into that heated discussion with the psychotherapist, she's like, oh, Charlotte wondered if they could go back before sex. Complicated everything.

And then all the girls meet at Carrie's to have a joint, and she says, I wasn't 34 going on 13. I was 34 going on 35.

And how important do you think it is that we stay connected with our inner child, and maybe let our hair down, and let loose, and not take ourselves so seriously, even if we have a lot of responsibilities and seriousness going on in our life?

Yeah. What a good invitation for all of us to really sit with that.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, I mean, straight up, we already know that cortisol, the stress hormone, is one of the most dangerous killers.

Yeah.

Right? We know that.

I stress a lot about that, which is...

You stress.

Yeah.

I hear you. I hear you, right? And so many of us are running on survival mode, and stress, and using stress, essentially as like a drug to keep us running and functioning under these systems.

I've definitely been there. And I'm not speaking from any pedestal at all because I work at... You were like, you're bio.

There's so much. I'm like, I work really hard. And so that's something I'm always trying to think about.

Like, how can I step into play? And we all need to be able to play because it's about balance.

And so if you're always taking yourself seriously, ultimately that ends up becoming its own form of repression, which means it will come out in sideways ways. Right?

So how can we step into a more balanced lifestyle, which means, yeah, letting your hair down, being able to just go for the walk and not listen to the podcast at 2.5 speed. I love my clients.

When I came in, I was like, I've been listening to sex stuff on 2.5 speed. I'm trying to learn. I'm trying to get better.

I'm trying to do it. I'm like, whoa, okay. Let's also just take a walk and just enjoy the beauty of the outside world that we have.

Because again, so many of my clients, they come in and they're like, I want to have a better sex life. But the reality is, you don't just step into a good sex life in the bedroom. You have to feel pleasure in your life in other areas.

You don't just flip the switch. You're like, cool, now I have good sex. It's really about your head space.

When you're walking and you're outside, can you feel the sun on your skin? Can you feel the wind that is rustling through your hair?

Can you feel the gratitude of this moment and the joy that you have the space, the capacity to go for a walk right now?

Like that framework is absolutely going to translate when you're in your sexual experience and you're feeling the touch of a lover, you're feeling the gratitude of intimacy. And you can be really present, right?

And so if you're constantly in the go, go, go, go, go, you're not going to just flip that switch and then be enjoying your sex life. So the ability to play, which is such a crucial part of sexual joy, such a crucial part.

Yes, I really want to invite all of us, myself included, as like an invitation to like how can we bring more play into our life and find that balance and know that that's actually a part of our longevity and our health as well, because the cortisol

No, I swear, sometimes when I see a kids party and somebody's blowing bubbles, like it brings such a big smile to my...

And I really get into it. Yeah. But that's it for the episode.

I'm really curious to have you talk a bit more about your work.

I got really curious while doing research on you about how you work with psychedelics and also what your paper about anarchy around relationships was and anything else that you think my listeners might find interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I love this work, truly. It's such a joy. It's a place where I get to play the podcast.

I run Modern Anarchy as a place where I get to play and have so much fun with guests. And yeah, we unpack so much more of what it means to have a liberated sex life, what it means to have pleasure in your sex life and to get outside of the scripts.

And that's really what is at the heart of my dissertation. The concept of relationship anarchy is a movement of deconstructing the power structures that impact our ability to love and be in connection. It is as simple as that.

And I could get much more nerdy on it and all the 200 pages I wrote on it and the people I've interviewed and blah, blah, blah, blah.

But at the heart of it is can we step into liberation from these boxes that we've been put in and then can we also do that in community because our liberation is braided together.

So that balance between the individual liberation and knowing that it's connected to the collective. So how do we care for the people and bring more of that into our world? And so there's so much to learn about that.

On my show, I had a whole series of relationship anarchists who I would interview about their life and what they practice that like. And you can be a monogamous relationship anarchist. You can be a relationship anarchist that gets married.

You can be one that is polyamorous. You could be one that's kinky, that's vanilla, like all of the things. And at the core of it really is this deeper question of how much of this desire I have is really my own versus the system's?

How can I sift through that and make sure that I'm really in authentic desire with what I want with my life? Like for example, the Madonna and the whore. What a great example, right?

In terms of like women perform like this and this is how we exist in relationships.

Relationship anarchy would be really stepping into that and we would be constructing that very hard and say that you can absolutely embody both and that it's the patriarchy that put that on us and so...

The concept of relationship anarchy is so broad. The dissertation is for free on my website. That's really important to me.

Free resources, I have different resources about expanding sexual pleasure and relationship check-ins and tools for non-monogamy and so many other things for free on my website. And the work I do with psychedelics is deeply connected to this.

It's all liberation work. So we know that when you step into psychedelic spaces, you are really playing with the neuroplasticity of your brain.

There's a 72-hour window during the experience and afterwards where you're really having more neuroplasticity, which means you're making more new connections in your brain.

And so, for example, if we're thinking about the Madonna and the whore complex, if you come in with that intention when you're working with me or any sort of psychedelic healer, you're going to make new connections on how to dismantle that.

And what it means to be in your authenticity as a woman who loves people and also has beautiful sex. Like, absolutely, those two things can be tied.

And so we can have a psychedelic experience to help kind of like move that through the body and be able to process new novel ways of looking at that.

And so, yeah, there's so much power in psychedelics and there's so much going on in the movement that's really at the heart of dismantling these power systems for more freedom and collective care.

Do you have a favorite psychedelic that you think welcomes a neuroplasticity? Wow.

In what context? In a therapy? Yeah, gone.

I'm very curious.

In a therapy, like one maybe for conversation, have a bit more of like the capacity to follow a thread and push the boundaries in conversation and maybe one that is more on the physical.

Yes. So the reality is all of the drugs, you could have a conversation level. It's about dosing.

So all of the psychedelics you could, well, I shouldn't say all of them, you know, like salvia is a whole other thing.

But even that, like most of the substances you can have on a microdose or in the psychedelic framework, we call it a psycholytic dose. So that's when I would take a client in a smaller dose and we actually are doing talking during a session.

So I want to say that like you can take a microdose of Molly, you can take a microdose of LSD, you can take a microdose of the little side, but like I can just list the whole thing out.

So if you are interested in doing more conversation and that is possible with all of them. And also the more intense psychedelic trip is possible with all of them too. And each one is going to have a little bit different feeling in the body.

Like when we're working with MDMA, that is a stimulant. So you will feel that as a stimulant. You'll have that jaw tightness, especially if you're going into higher doses.

And that is a very different experience than ketamine, which is often a dissociative. So there's much more softening of the body and it can kind of feel like you're in a warm bath.

Yeah.

Now, where they each take you, I mean, that, we could get into the specifics of all of it. And I love, it's kind of like, my polyamorous heart is saying, I love each one of them for their own unique sides of what they bring, you know?

I'm like, you can't force me to tell me. In a therapeutic context, I love ketamine because of the time frame. When we're working under systems of capitalism and you're paying to sit with me, you have to think about that.

If we were to do LSD together, do you understand that could be a 16-hour trip that you'd be paying a therapist on an hourly rate for? That's pretty intense, okay? So, Molly, we're looking at 4-6 hours.

Silicebin, we're looking at 4-6 hours. So, with ketamine, you can take a much smaller dose and still get a pretty significant trip. So, we do intramuscular as the main form I do with my nurse practitioner.

And, you know, it's a 45-to-an-hour experience. And that's really beautiful for the systems that we live in and the ways that we structure work. Because then you can have that full psychedelic where you're tripping and you're in that space.

And you're able to have the full experience and process that and then still come back. And because it's intramuscular, because it's medical-grade, it does process through the body pretty cleanly and pretty quickly.

So, it's not like multiple days after a feeling disconnected. Sometimes that's some of the harder points of Mali for me is the come-down, the pretty significant depletion of the serotonin. All that can be pretty tough on the body.

Man, is it a beautiful experience though in terms of talking to beyond Mali or is it just that really big heart opener? Because it is a stimulant, you're still so present.

Sometimes when you do so much of ketamine or so much of psilocybin or any other really intense psychedelics in that way, I shouldn't even say intense, but they just produce more of that ego death visual experience than Mali really can where you're

still pretty present, pretty clear because of the stimulant pieces. So, in terms of talking, that can be more powerful. See, I can nerd on it for a long time.

I could listen to you talk about this for hours, but I have to say now I can only think about having Trey drop acid in the session.

Oh my God. Yeah, could you imagine?

What comes out of that?

I would see, yep, I'm ready for that. That's kind of work I'm so passionate about, like maybe a shorter time frame. And when I first got into the ketamine work, I was very like, oh, ketamine?

What a bummer. Yeah, I was like, why can't we do psilocybin? Why can't we?

I mean, yeah, that's a fair question. Like, I'm not here to say no to play and recreation, but I will say in lived experience, having medical grade and doing it in a set and setting where it's a container of being held is a radically different drug.

Radically different drug. The amount of clients I've had who said, oh, I've done this at Burning Man, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And when they do it in the therapy session, they're like, this is not the same drug.

And that really comes back to the frameworks of set and setting. And for your listeners, that's a huge...

Yeah.

And that's a huge part of how I work with sex therapy and non-monogamy in relationships. What is the set and setting of your relationship? What is the set and setting of your life?

What are your sexual life, your intentions? And so the psychedelic jealousy guide that I wrote is really combining all the set and setting with non-monogamy and those sorts of frameworks.

And it's, yeah, the living, breathing thing that I'll keep studying, talking about.

Fascinating. Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Nicole.

It's been honestly fascinating talking to you. And I'll drop in the show notes, everything. And if you want to plug your socials quickly now as well.

Yeah.

Dear listener, would love to have you come over to modernanarchypodcast.com. That's where you can find all of my free resources, all of the links, all of... I write a newsletter, very similar to Carrie, similar to your sub stack, right?

All about these things and more. So all of that's for free at modernanarchypodcast.com.

Thank you so much, Dr. Nicole. I'll talk to you soon.

Thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of And Just Like That We Found Therapy. If you loved it, follow the podcast, leave a five star review and send this episode to somebody who needs it. It really helps the show.

And don't forget about our new segment this season, He's Not Your Mr. Big. If you have a love dilemma you want answered by one of our in-house experts, you can now submit directly through the form of my website.

The link is in the show notes. Or if you prefer to keep it personal, slide into my DMs on Instagram at wefoundtherapypod. See you at our next therapy session.

I love y'all. Bye.