Breakup Bootcamp

by Amy Chan

  The next time someone compliments you, resist your urge to downplay and deflect. Instead, follow these steps:

  Pause to take the words in

  Listen to what’s being said

  Feel the love and positivity behind them

  Articulate your thanks and accept the compliment

  Even if you don’t want to receive the compliment, the first step is saying “thank you.” Give yourself permission to feel the discomfort. The more you practice, the easier it becomes. Soon, compliments will even feel good!

  * * *

  EXERCISE: Notice Your Tendency to Give Back Right Away to “Balance Things Out”

  How do you respond when someone gives you something? Is your inclination to immediately return the favor in order to keep balance? Your practice for the next week is to simply accept whatever gift, favor, or compliment comes your way. Sure, you’ll probably feel the urge to give back, but resist and relish in the feelings of just receiving. Remind yourself that you are worthy of receiving. In the words of Renew’s tantra coach, Lauren Harkness, “It’s generous to receive.” Give someone the opportunity to give to you. That is a gift in itself.

  * * *

  EXERCISE: Make a List

  You are now familiar with the power of cultivating gratitude and journaling. Using these tools, keep track of all the receiving you experience on a daily basis. This will help you notice how much you’re actually getting from others and thus grow your capacity for doing so. So, for the next week, keep a journal of every time you receive something. This could be as simple as a stranger opening a door for you, a compliment from a coworker, or a favor from a friend. The purpose of this exercise is to create awareness around receiving.

  * * *

  EXERCISE: One Week of Asks

  For the next seven days, your practice is to ask someone to help you. Depending on how comfortable you already are asking/receiving, you can ease into this by starting with small asks and gradually increase the size of ask. Here are some examples:

  Low

  (low commitment from the person who is helping, instant/completed quickly):

  At the grocery store, ask a staff member to help you with picking out the perfect squash.

  On the subway, ask a stranger for their seat if your feet are aching.

  Medium

  (medium commitment, requires some time/effort):

  Ask someone if you can borrow a book (or another practical item).

  Ask someone to bring a dish to the dinner party you’re hosting.

  High

  (higher commitment, requires someone to make effort—what you might consider “going out of their way”—in order to help you):

  Ask a friend if she would be willing to hop on a phone call with you to work through a job-related problem.

  Ask a love interest to help you fix something in your home that is broken.

  Balancing giving and receiving is an art form. As we’ve discussed, it takes practice and time: the discomfort of asking for what you want starts to fade, and being able to receive without guilt or doubt eventually becomes more natural.

  INTIMACY REQUIRES BALANCE

  If you can’t give, you can’t get intimate. If you can’t receive, you can’t get intimate. Intimacy requires balance to grow and sustain in a healthy way. This doesn’t mean you keep score or play tit for tat. There will be natural fluctuations in all relationships, where you may be more on the receiving or giving end at certain times, but overall, there’s a balance. And if that balance doesn’t naturally ebb and flow, dysfunction will form, showing up in resentment, disconnection, and power struggles.

  To dive deeper into how intimacy and power are connected, let’s heed the confessions of a Dominatrix.

  8

  Tapping Into Your Inner Dominatrix

  I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.

  Madonna

  That tightness in your chest when he doesn’t call. That proverbial punch to the stomach when he breaks up with you. That angst when you want more and he wants to keep it casual. That sinking feeling . . . when you know you’ve lost your power.

  You know this feeling. I know it too. We’ve all been there.

  The women who come to Renew certainly know this feeling. There was Kathleen, the feisty, funny, fifty-eight-year-old chief financial officer for a billionaire media mogul who kept dating narcissistic men. There was thirty-one-year-old Loretta, who sold her first company at twenty-eight and, a few years into her relationship, found out her boyfriend had a second girlfriend but still couldn’t let him go. There’s Tammy, who was raising five children while performing at a top level as partner at her law firm and, years later, was still obsessing about the ex-boyfriend who had left her. These are some badass women. They are all powerful and accomplished, but when it came to their romantic relationships, they’d surrendered themselves and turned that power over to someone else.

  Culturally, many people believe that power is gained through aggression, taken by force or through exerting control over someone else. This idea leads us further and further astray from what power really is. True power comes from within. It’s a mindset. It’s an energy. You don’t exert power; you live empowered. The former is fake—it’s overcompensating behavior to make up for what’s lacking on the inside. The latter is earned. Empowerment doesn’t come from hardening; rather quite the opposite. It comes from being so strong, resilient, compassionate, and full of love on the inside that you are comfortable in your own skin, able to withstand difficulty without having to create defensive walls that block you from feeling.

  We all have power. The key is tapping into the power within. So how do we learn how to do this?

  Let’s start with some confessions from a Dominatrix.

  A DOMINATRIX BARES ALL

  At Renew, one of the highlights of the weekend is when professional Dominatrix Colette Pervette leads a workshop about power dynamics. At first glance, you wouldn’t guess that Colette’s job is to help her clients play out their wildest sexual fantasies using BDSM (the acronym for bondage/discipline, dominance/submission, sadism/masochism).

  Colette stands at five foot three inches tall, with long black hair and side-swept bangs that frame her delicate face. She wears no makeup and speaks softly with a calm demeanor. Throughout the weekend, she inconspicuously blends in with the other women and is best described as “cute” and “sweet.” Little do the women know that Colette has a Ph.D. from Berkeley, is the recipient of a Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation scholarship, and has been a professional Dominatrix for fourteen years. You can imagine their surprise when during her session, Colette completely transforms from an unassuming, innocent-looking girl into the ultimate symbol of power.

  THE SESSION BEGINS

  Colette stands before the group of women in her typical attire of black sweatpants and T-shirt with the added flair of a lace mask.

  “I have some things to tell you,” she confides. “I was that girl who would starve herself and, when she did eat, would throw up.

  “I was that girl who had every type of eating disorder. I would vomit in the stairwells of my dorms because it gave me more privacy than the public bathroom. I took diet pills until the age of twenty-nine, when my whole body shut down and I was pooing out blood for months.

  “I was the Asian girl who wanted to be white. My mom gave me a Vietnamese name, which I was so ashamed of, I would beg her to change it to Sarah, something super normal, so that no one would know I was the daughter of immigrant parents.

  “I had ideas of what perfect was. Perfect to me was being white. Perfect to me was being super skinny. Perfect to me was being rich. And that was everything I wasn’t. I didn’t realize that the thing that was holding me back from being perfect was simply the idea that I wasn’t.”

  Colette shakes when she tells the group her story. You can feel her struggle radiating from her body. It’s palpable. Some of the women have tears streaming down their
faces as she recounts her past. They too can identify with her pain—of hiding, of not being enough.

  She then takes off pieces of clothing, starting with her socks.

  “Now, I’m ready. I’m ready to let go of the shame of my body and be comfortable with my shape. I’m ready to let go of the shame of my race.”

  She then proceeds to take off her black T-shirt.

  “I’m proud to be the daughter of Vietnamese immigrant parents who risked their lives to come here in a boat. My mom smeared my sister’s feces all over her thighs so that she wouldn’t be raped by pirates. I am so proud to be the daughter of such a courageous mother.”

  Colette then removes her last piece of clothing, her baggy sweatpants, to reveal her full outfit: a black corset, a strappy leather bodysuit, and fishnet stockings. She then puts on five-inch stilettos and walks to the center of the room.

  “I’m ready to step into my truth. I’m ready to step into my power.

  “The name my mother gave me, my name, is Hanh.”

  She removes her lace mask and throws it to the floor.

  “I love my name. I love all of myself.

  “Why did I tell you this? Because we are all looking for our power. We are all looking for intimacy. And sometimes we don’t know where or how to find our power, and so we look outside of ourselves to find it. And we think maybe power is in having that right job, or that right amount of money, or that right man. We have an idea of what power looks like, so we keep looking outside of ourselves.

  “But power is in the truth that’s inside us, waiting to come out. That truth is that thing we’ve been hiding. That shame we silence. How we alchemize that shame into power is our expression. And that becomes our power, once we let it out. It’s by letting it out. It’s by speaking it out. It’s by owning it.

  “The minute you can own your story, you can own all of yourself . . . that is your power.

  “There is power in vulnerability, because when you can get vulnerable, you can get intimate. And the most important person that you need to get intimate with first is yourself.”

  Colette explains that for the first half of her career as a Dominatrix, she appeared to be a woman of power on the outside but didn’t feel powerful on the inside. She led a double life—hiding her profession from her parents and certain friends who she was afraid would judge or reject her. But the truth was going to come out one way or another, and one day, her sister exposed her to their parents. Her sister told their parents Colette’s secret, painting a grim picture of how Colette was putting herself in danger. This created a huge rift in the family, and Colette’s parents demanded she quit her job. Colette refused and decided that from that moment on she was going to start telling the truth. She went on a quest to confront her shame and began a five-year journey of self-exploration to learn to first accept and then love herself. She went on dozens of silent retreats, immersed herself in spiritual study, explored various plant medicine ceremonies, and launched a disciplined practice of self-care, along with a daily meditation practice. Each time she felt intense emotion, she would sit with it, explore it, and learn from it.

  Who would have thought—a Dominatrix, the ultimate symbol of a woman in power, only became truly powerful when that power came from inside out, not outside in?

  Watching Colette morph from a quiet, soft-spoken introvert into a ball-busting (no pun intended) leather-clad Dominatrix delivering an important lesson to the women at Renew is very powerful. She teaches that change can happen in an instant—that inner Domme lives inside each and every one of us, waiting to be unleashed. The decision to embrace her is yours.

  POWER IS TRUTH. TRUTH IS POWER.

  Colette shows the women that by accepting all parts of herself, including the aspects that she felt shame around, she discovered her truth. Standing in her truth is where she found her power. Power is not something you can outsource, because the minute you do, you lose it. When you base your validation, your love, your sense of happiness, or your self-esteem on anything outside of yourself, you lose your power.

  Think about how you feel when you’re very hungry. You’re more likely to eat junk food or whatever you can get your hands on fastest in these moments, to alleviate the discomfort. But if you’re well nourished, you are much more selective in choosing what you want to eat. You’re not just trying to alleviate the pain of hunger as fast as you possibly can; you’re choosing to honor your body.

  Relationships are no different. If you’re starving for attention, love, or validation, you become desperate and needy, and other people can sense it. When you are desperate you do not have power.

  Colette’s profession consists of a transaction where the roles of her as a Dominant and her client as a submissive are clearly defined. A submissive seeks her services so that he can consciously give up his power. He has fantasies of what she will do to him and how he will feel. Typically, these men are highly dominant in their daily lives, and in the hands (or cuffs) of Colette, they get to experience not having to control, not having to decide, not having to give directions. They can, for those few hours, surrender and feel the satisfaction of having their fantasies met.

  This dynamic is no different from when you go on a date and immediately start checking off boxes because the guy fits a fantasy you have been conjuring in your mind. When you leave the present and start to fast-forward into the future, attaching him to how he’s supposed to make you feel—desirable, loved, special—you’ve become the submissive. The more you hope for your fantasy to come true, the more you blur reality with projection, the more you create expectations—the more power you relinquish.

  What’s different is that in the case of Colette, her clients pay her to play the part of fantasy dealer. And once the session is over, both Colette and her client go back to their regular lives. But when we date and begin to attach our fantasies, expectations, and projections to a partner, the relinquishing of power is neither conscious nor consensual.

  Colette distinguishes two types of fantasies: ones that disempower you and ones that empower you. Disempowering fantasies are centered around people or situations that are out of your control. These include wishing for the past to be different, getting stuck in what your ex should have done differently, or hoping your ex will change his mind.

  Empowering fantasies are ones where you have full control to actualize. These could be in the form of a goal, developing mastery in a skill or hobby, or writing that book you always dreamed of. She suggests that if you’re stuck in a loop with a disempowering fantasy, examine it closely, identify the unmet need, and try to meet it yourself.

  The fantasies and projections we associate with others can help us discover our unmet needs. Your fantasies live outside of you and reveal insightful information about the feelings, emotions, desires, wants, and needs that have been suppressed or ignored.

  Colette encourages the women to practice exploring the reality of the situation when fantasies arise. “There’s a fruitful way to engage with our fantasies, by examining them and trying to understand their roots and finding ways to fulfill those needs positively (practicing self-love and care). There’s also an unfruitful way to engage with our fantasies, which is to get lost in them and addictively feed off their feel-good chemicals, to chase them or try to re-create them in real life (i.e., thinking we need that ‘person’ in said fantasy to feel this way) in order to feel good again. And that’s what leads us to feeling powerless. That causes us to lose our grip on reality, which diminishes our perception of the choices that we have.”

  AUTHENTIC SELF

  A wound developed in childhood is the rejection of the authentic self, and as long as we reject our authentic self, we are disempowered. John Bradshaw, father of the self-help movement, explains in his book Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child:

  When a parent cannot affirm his child’s feelings, needs, and desires, he rejects that child’s authentic self. Then, a false self must be set up. In order to believe he is loved, the
wounded child behaves the way he thinks he is supposed to. This false self develops over the years and is reinforced by the family system’s needs and by cultural sex roles. Gradually, the false self becomes who the person really thinks he is. He forgets that the false self is an adaptation, an act based on a script someone else wrote. It is impossible to be intimate if you have no sense of self.1

  The following exercises will help you explore the different sides of yourself so that you can start acknowledging the hidden parts of yourself and bring your authentic self to life. The more we bring the shadows into the light and accept and embrace our many sides, the more we become an integrated, fully expressed, whole self.

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  EXERCISE: Bring the Shadow into the Light

  Take out your journal. This writing exercise is to help you explore your shadows. Your shadows are the parts of you that you hide—your insecurities, your trauma, your wounds, your darkness. The longer we suppress and hide those parts of ourselves, the harder they become to access. Sometimes, in a subconscious effort to restore balance, those parts express themselves in unhealthy ways. Let’s bring them into the light.

  PART 1: THE WARM-UP

  As you ponder the following questions, look for common themes and patterns that you experienced growing up. The prompts are to help you explore how and why you adapted certain ideas around what you “should” and “shouldn’t” be.

  What was the first/predominant message you were taught about sex and sexuality growing up? Was the topic discussed with openness, or were you taught that sex was bad or sinful? Reflect on the messages that you may have absorbed from your family, culture, and society around sexuality growing up and how that has affected your relationship with sexuality today.