Resurrecting Your Sexuality

Introduction and Nikole Mitchellu2019s Story 0:00

Hi, everybody. Welcome back for another session with the solving sexual dysfunction summit. You guys are in for a real treat. This conversation is just going to be amazing because we have the amazing Nikole Mitchell with us today. Thank you so much, Nikole, for taking the time to be with us. Thank you, Dr. Betsy, I am so excited about the conversation we're going to have today. You know, I think people don't know you. I want to just tell them right now they need to go to Google and Google pastor turned stripper, which I'm sure you're probably sick and tired of that title, but really it's more than just that.

And it's it's something I do want to talk about in, in the context of sexual dysfunction is. How. We're often kind of suppressed by organized groups that we are part of and religion being one of those things. So I just, you know, if you can enlighten people to your story and how you got to where you are would be wonderful. Yeah, totally. Yeah. If you Google that tagline, you'll get a good glimpse of my story of how I really went from, like, very repressed and very committed to the good girl life, to finally liberating myself and becoming who I actually came here to be.

And now I like to think I'm an expert on pleasure. I used to be the expert on purity culture. I used to joke that I was a poster child for purity culture, and now I am the poster child for helping unleash next level pleasure in your life. And it was a journey. It was terrifying to leave all you've ever known to become something you don't know yet. It's terrifying to leave the religious community for the adult industry. It was a massive transformation in my life. But as you've seen Dr. Betsy, you know me, you've seen my journey for years.

It has created such a beautiful life that if I can help people say yes to their pleasure, yes to their bodies, yes to a life lived on their terms, it has the potential to create so much happiness and satisfaction if we can get over the humps of fear and hesitation and doubt. And that's what I hope our conversation helps with today. And it's such a difference when people can live in their like, authenticity, like their lives just become completely different. And, you know, and I know we're talking about a sexual dysfunction summit, but really it's just spills over into every area of life and vice versa.

Your life spills into the bedroom, too. So it's if you can get balance in who you are and how you want to live your life, everything's going to be better. Yeah, it's all connected. I think it's easy to think the bedroom is separate from everything else, but it's all connected. And something I have noticed working with my clients over the years is when we start cultivating more and more pleasure in the bedroom for example, it ends up trickling over to everywhere else. Or if they hire me for business coaching or business support, when I help them create a business that feels good to them and pleasurable to them, that trickles over to the rest of their life.

So there's a beautiful thing about it being connected. It's also a little frustrating because if you have repression

How Repression Affects Pleasure and Life 3:14

or suppression somewhere, it probably does trickle over everywhere else. But the flipside is, once you start working on it, it will also benefit every every other part of your life. At what point did you realize that your were and I don't know if this is the right word stuck because there's a lot of people that I, I said that might not be the right word, but there are a lot of people are just kind of stuck in their situations that don't know where to even begin to get out. I want to say it's really common to feel stuck.

So if you are feeling stuck, I don't you be discouraged that there's something wrong with you or that you're broken. We often internalize it and make it mean something negative about us, but it's actually a really good fine for you to do something about it so no longer settle for. Well, I guess this is how it's going to be for the rest of my life. So for me, I think it's like when nothing was working or in fact everything was getting worse. So financially, you know, my then husband and I were working longer, harder hours and we were making less money each year sexually.

I never was given an orgasm or couldn't have an orgasm for 12 years of marriage. Like I was stuck in every sense of the word. Things were even getting worse to some degree, and at that point it's like, okay, this is stuck or this is getting worse. Is it time for me to do something? And I had tried I had tried hearing this expert, hiring that expert, and no one was able to help me. And I you could feel cursed like this is your lot in life. But I deeply believe the right person, the right support, the right solution is available.

Don't give up your pursuit and finding it. And how would you recommend to people like how? Where do they even begin to figure out like who they are, where they are? Because like, I'm just thinking back on my own experience, even when it comes to sex, like I remember I was really, really big in the church when I was growing up to the point where like I was told I was too religiously advanced for the youth group, but I'm like, Are you kidding me? But you know, and I remember at the same thing that good, that good girl syndrome.

Like, you know, I got to be good, are going to be good to be good. And then all of a sudden, poof, you're married. And now you're like, Wait a minute, now you're allowed to have sex. I like it's like, how can you be something is bad, bad, bad. And then all of a sudden it's not. But then even then there's this difficulty in, like, letting go. Totally. I had a lot of sex, shame and body shame. I think a lot of that, no matter where you are raised, you get it culturally. You can get it from your family, you can get it from religion, you can get from society like it's it's inundated.

Our world is is we we can walk into any relationship. We can leave our childhood behind and step into adulthood and still not know our own bodies, still be afraid of our own pleasure, still think we're broken. And so when we like when you ask, like, where do you even begin? I think as soon as you are willing to open yourself up and work on it, the solution appears. So. A common phrase you'll hear in the personal development world is when the student is ready, the teacher appears. Same thing that does.

I think if you are listening to the summit, those people are like, I want something to be different. I want something to be better. Good news. You're already on the path. The fact that you're even open to it, you're curious about it, and you sign up to be part of the summit is like confirmation that you are on your path to liberating yourself, to empower yourself because you're going to make connections. You're going to be introduced to so many different people here in Dr. Betsy's world, you might resonate with one of them the most, and then you might contact them.

And like all kinds of options and opportunities and support systems exist. And my encouragement to them and to everyone listening is don't stop until you get the support that you want and you get the results that you want because you can have pleasure, you can have freedom, you can leave the good girl script behind and you can step into being a free woman. That's what I want for them. You know, even more so. Like you get all this input and people making comments like I see it all the time now that I'm putting myself out on social media, which is crazy.

Like, for example, back in May it was, it was international masturbation May and I did some posts on the health benefits of self-pleasure and you know,

Finding Support and Quieting Internal Shame 7:18

just to see like the comments like people were completely opposite. They were like these are like, yay, somebody is talking about this, someone's normalizing it. Or I felt so bad for the people that were like angry and disturbed that I was talking about something like and the misconceptions like, I don't need to do that. I have a partner are like, you're only talking about this because you must not have a man or like, you know, or like or you need to read the Bible more. Or that was like, I couldn't believe the number of now those are the people who really need to be listening to it.

Now, the ones who need it the most and who are the most closed off to it. Right. And so like some of they've had to learn and I know you've learned this Dr. Betsy and anyone listening when you put yourself out there. So going out to learn is I can't help the unconventional. I can't help that surely obstinate. I can only help people who are like, I'm ready, I'm hungry, I'm scared, I'm nervous, but I'm, I'm ready. It's like, that's who we can help. So it does. It kills me when I read the comments, I'm like, Oh, I can help you if you would just let me help you, I can.

But all the people who are either watching in silence because there are Senate watchers and they're so hungry or the people are comment in support of it. And I love that you talk about taboo topics because you're normalizing basic human function, basic human behavior that has become a moral debate which morality doesn't have to play a part in it. So I want to say thank you, Dr. Betsey, for normalizing conversations, for creating content and creating space for people to come and ask you the questions and learn about things that really do have a potential to set them free, have less shame, increase their pleasure, feel more connected to themselves, feel more connected to their partners like it is a goldmine mine.

If you're willing to address the uncomfortable and become familiar with it. You know, and I think other than all the voices especially I mean, I can't speak for men because I'm a woman and I've only had a woman experience. So I know, you know, the good girl like, you know, from the time I was like a little girl, you know, don't touch yourself, cross your legs. Don't sit with your legs open, you know, don't wear things that are too revealing, you know, all that and all the in those comments gets even worse as you get older.

But, you know, it's one things like tuning out the world chatter. Then there's the internal dialog that I think has to be harder. Where in your journey have you been able to come to peace and do you have any suggestions on how to do that with the internal dialog? Like, Oh, maybe I shouldn't be doing this or I don't know, you know, is this wrong? Or, you know, even though you know, you're doing the right thing, but then the other, the other people are kind of creeping in through your. It's so true Like, I think it's really important to have a mentor, someone who can to support you because you feel crazy when you start down a path of trying things differently and being differently and expressing yourself differently, you're going to you are you're going to question everything.

And if you can have a trusted advisor, a guide coach, mentor who's gone before you, it's just going to help you feel less crazy. You're going to question yourself less and those voices get quieter over time. And why? So just a mentor or even a community right away is this is so personal and it's it's so vulnerable that sometimes when you share in a group, other people aren't there yet and they're not ready to support you and they react rather than respond. And so I think at first, if you're newer to the journey, hire a mentor to have someone you trust that you can open and be really brave because it's so important that you don't feel inhibited in any way, that you don't feel like you can't ask something.

You have to feel safe asking everything. Then as you start getting a little bit more confident and comfortable in your own skin, then it's really great to invest in a community of people who are also on the journey, because if someone says a reactionary comment to you, it's not going to affect you the same because you've developed some skills to not take things as personal. But that would be the both and approach. Start with one person that you trust and then slowly expand your circle. And then when you do do things differently, you have a whole group of people who get it, who love you, who adore you, who want more of you, and who have your back.

And I think, you know, it's it's it's such a this is such a nice time for women, you know, like, I mean, we've always historically been, you know, suppressed. But I think there's a lot more opportunities for us

Confidence, Sexiness, and Authentic Self-Expression 11:43

to express ourselves in even a lot more examples. Like, I think one of the best thing that you ever did for me was buy me that book by Glennon Doyle. So that because even her story, she grew up like and was living this really, you know, straight good girl life and then one day was like, that's not me. Like, you know, realized she wasn't being her true self and was like, okay. Yes. That's how we pass on like wisdom from woman moment. Woman is like and this is why I love memoirs so much. And I swear I bought Glennon untamed book for every woman I know.

So I'm so glad I got that for you, doctor, about. It's like every woman needs this book. Every man, every person needs to read Glennon book untamed. But there's just something about like learning from other people's stories gives you the courage to maybe, like, pave your own path. So I will do that by reading inspiring memoirs. I watch inspiring movies, I follow inspiring people, even if they trigger me a little bit because it just, again, not somebody who massively triggers me because hard to heal in that environment.

But if someone like has what you want but kind of does it as you're not quite comfortable, I kind of look forward to that because that to me is something I get to grow into or work on or finally address because I do want to be stretched. I want to get to the end of my life and be like, I lived the most wildly beautiful, wildly true, wildly authentic, wildly pleasurable life. And I gave it my all. And so if people have gone before you, if they've created movies about it or books about it or their social media about it, like pay attention to them, draw courage from the stories that's going to give you what you need to do, what your heart is calling you to do.

And you're right after Betsy like, I'm getting ready to celebrate my 40th birthday, which I can not believe, because I swear to God, I'm 22. But I just think about what it looks like to be a 40 year old today versus a 40 year old 20, 30 years ago. When I look back on women in the forties, in the eighties and nineties, they were like grandmas, grandmas dress like. But now those of us in our thirties or forties or fifties like we are a little more sexy and we are more confident and we show more skin like we know our value and worth more than ever before.

And it gets me so excited that as I step into this new decade to show women what's possible, what's available, you get to define what feels good to you. You get to live life on your terms. There is no script you have to follow like you get to be your own author. There's so much freedom and opportunity and possibility available to you if you can have the courage to go after it. And there's so much power in having that kind of confidence in like knowing exactly who you are. And it doesn't always have to be, you know, like, all right, if you have the courage and the body and you know, where we're like, I'm still not at the point where I can wear some of the stuff that you wear.

But if you can and you. Do, I. Think it's great. But you don't have to always even do that to feel like that confidence and sexiness just kind of exudes from inside. You can be like in a turtleneck and it's clearly. Sexiness is an energy right now. Sexiness is not a side. Sexiness is not a style. And this is a common misconception. Sexiness is an energy. You get to exude it, embody it, express it, whatever you're wearing, whatever you're doing. And for me, like a core, a core principle of sexiness with confidence, are you confident in you are what you have to offer?

And I personally love when I see women of all body sizes wearing sexy things and I girl work it want it so it like those curves deserve love your skin deserves to be cherished like there's nothing that you need to hide or be ashamed of. But I know you and I both know how big of a journey that is to go from, you know, fearing yourself, hating yourself, judging yourself to getting to a place of radical love and acceptance of who you are. But that is your birthright. You deserve to feel good. You deserve to take up all the space that you desire you do not deserve or you not do not owe the world a tiny body.

You do not owe the world to look pretty, but you do owe yourself to live your authentic truth, whatever that is. Whether society agrees or not, your family agrees or not, you owe it to yourself to live your authentic truth and to have as much pleasure as possible. And so don't cap yourself. We have plenty of other people and systems training, capisce. Do not be one of those people. Set yourself free. I love that. And Alison was making me think of we all know that person that when you first look at them, they're very attractive.

But on the inside you can tell they are insecure. They have a lot of self-hatred that spills out into like being critical of other people. And now that person just becomes not very attractive, not beautiful, but sexy. And that's why the energy is so important. I get often asked by my people like, What's your number one attractive trait in a person? And for me it's confidence. Now at the end of the day, our looks are going to fade. We all know this. Our looks are temporary. And so if I only base value on someone's external looks, I have a very short window from which I can enjoy that because their looks are going to fade.

I care more about your confidence. I care about your character. And just like you said, Dr. Roberts is the opposite. You can find someone who's not attractive to you initially and then you spend time with them and their energy, their personality, your country. You're like, Oh my God, this person is massively attractive, like who they are and how they carry themselves and how they treat other people. So like, no matter where you on the spectrum of looks of body size or style, you can be sexy. You can be massively attractive to so many people.

It just starts in here. And I think that's so important because I think a lot of time we're so self critical, you know, and we're thinking like, oh, our partners not liking us or they're like, No, that's an internal dialog. Like if you like turn around in a room like I am sexy, I am awesome, I am, you know, that's it.

Creating More Pleasure in Daily Life 17:28

Then guess what? Everybody around is going to think you are so. And it's hot when you're with someone who thinks confidently of themselves. It's hard to, like, fill a vacuum inside someone else. If if someone's like, I'm never pretty enough. I'm never good looking enough. I'm never going to conceive to constantly tell me, tell me, tell me something they don't ever believe you. That that's exhausting is draining versus if your partner is working on themselves and like working on their confidence, working on their energetic sexiness too.

You're like, damn, who just walked in the room like that? That is attractive. So don't downplay your role of helping your partner feel more attractive to you in the sense like when you like you, when you're confident who you are, you become more manic magnetic to everyone in the room. You know, I'm laughing here because it's what's popping in my head is when I first met my husband, we would go out and he'd get hit on by everybody, male, female, any gender. Everybody would hit on him. And I would sometimes like laugh at him about that, which, you know, this was a this was a long time ago.

The world was not as as understanding, but I was kind of being an asshole, too. But but I remember the best thing he said to me. He's like, I'm a sexy motherfucker. And everybody should want me. And it was like, You know what? That's great. I love that energy. Like, I want a little bit more of that. So when I think that should be my new mantra, I think. Everybody winds up because it is. I love it like and just like I was saying earlier, when someone kind of pushes your edge a little bit and like, it's actually a good thing, maybe we can't get to that point, but if we can extract a little bit of that from that person and like infuse that into how we show up and how we feel about ourselves, that's amazing.

Yes, that should be your should be everyone's mantra. I'm a sexy mother of four and everyone should want me. So I love it. I love. You. Magic. I mean, honestly, if you just said that, like if you were somebody like who's been in like, oh, maybe like a long term marriage or long term relationship or even even a new relationship. If you just like couple of minutes to go in the bathroom before you're like, you know, coming out to be with your partner and you just said that a couple of times, like your face would change, like your demeanor would change.

And guess what? I'm sure everything else would be a lot better, too. Yes. Like our body mimics our energy, right? Like drilling down our body, like our shoulders are slumped or heads down. We sort more. We like everything goes down. But when we feel excited or hopeful, we feel like we straighten, we look up, we're excited, we're bright. Like our body reflects our energy. And so if you notice in your photos that there's a lot of like and we notice this as women like this are parts of our body, we try to cover up and you see it in your photos and it's like not saying you can stop that overnight night, but it's like, do you like your posture?

Do you like the way your caption on on camera or would you like to sit up straighter? Would you like to have a more of a smile than a glare on your face, like these little things that we can realize like, Wow, my body's reflecting back to me how I feel on the inside. How can it begin to shift that? I love that. And do you have any like secrets about I know we can talk for hours, but any secrets on how to add more pleasure into your life? Yes. So one of my favorite things I call pockets of pleasure.

And so it's like we're so busy living our lives, doing all the things the 27 plates are spinning that like we literally are not connected to our sense of pleasure. We have no clue what pleasure is. Not even on the radar. It's like task, it's things, it's this, it's that. And so the way I tried incorporates like, what's one thing you can do today to bring yourself a little more pleasure? Maybe it's like popping on my your favorite shows because you never watch TV or movie because you don't have time.

Or maybe after you drop off your kids at school instead of rushing back home to do all the chores. I'm going to stop by a coffee shop and treat myself to a coffee. Like, what are these little pockets of pleasure you can do for yourself? And then just even being aware of pockets of pleasure when you get a random five minute break with nothing to do, and usually you wouldn't even notice it because you just force yourself to go find something. Do you pause and you sit there and you take it in 5 minutes like it just start thinking about your life in a five minute space, like these little moments do you return to Does this bring me pleasure or what can I do to feel pleasure in this moment?

If we live with that question each day, what can I do to feel a little pleasure in this moment? Or What can I do to create a little pleasure? In my day we would increase our pleasure threshold by a fortune. If we did that every single day, you increase your chances of pleasure by 365 times. We do it more than that. We get more than that. So I think just giving ourselves permission to even center and ask and prioritize our own pleasure. I know because I'm guilty of this, I push myself too hard and I do the well.

I'm going to do something pleasurable once everything's done right. But I have learned I've learned unfortunately. Nothing's ever, ever gets done, nothing's ever done, nothing's ever done. So then it's all allies. Why? You have to pause in the middle of your full day, in your full life and have some pleasure like you just have to, because that is an illusion you'll chase to the day you die once this is done. Because as soon as you think you're going to finish something, you already have ten other things lined up right after it's you.

You are the author of your story. You are the decider of your day. You you are the only one who can prioritize your pleasure. And my God, my hope is at the end of the life, you look back and you see that your life was rich with pleasure. But it's because you chose it. You prioritized it and you centered it, and you researched in small ways. That's enough to make a difference in your day. And I think this is really good reminder for everyone to hear this, because I think what you said before, too often we're getting so busy, we're so busy, we're putting things off, you know.

And I see and fortunately, too, like too many people, like, they're like waiting until they retired, have more fun or they're waiting. Everyone's always waiting and like, I'll wait till vacation, I'll wait till I'm retired to do the thing I always wanted to do. You know, I had somebody asked me today something and I'm going to say it and probably put it out in the universe. They were like, if, if money was no object, what was is something that you would do right now. And I said I would take acting classes and that person said to me, Why aren't you doing that? And I'm like, I don't know.

You know, I don't know. So I guess I'm going to go do that. You're out. You have to. I was just telling my partner last week how much I missed my acting classes.

Relaxation, Pelvic Health, and Closing Encouragement 24:18

I did it. But then COVID hit me. They got shut down, but they're up and running. They don't do it anymore. It's like these little things. And I think this is really hard for those of us who are really productive and who do a lot of things to do things solely for pleasure. So for example, I've been taking Korean classes once a week for months now, all the way through the end of the year, purely for pleasure. And it is the most odd sensation of my body because I even want to do things for pleasure.

I'm still always trying to be productive, but I'd do something that's just for fun and just for creativity and just feels good to me. Is like, this is next level pleasure when it is not tied to productive productivity, it is simply for pleasure. I want everyone to have it. So yes, your acting classes, I'm going to get back into it, too. I just I miss it. I love it. There's there's plenty of opportunity for all of us actors. So, yes, I wouldn't do it, you know, and. I had said, this is actually so perfect during our whole conversation, if anybody's been watching.

But your cat in the background, your cat is like the pure epitome of taking some time for yourself in my go because I don't, you know, I don't know. So I guess I'm just going to stretch out and relax and like, your cat is inspiring me. I love it. And, you know I love her. She almost always lays with her legs spread open. And it is a constant reminder to me to like Nikole, to open to pleasure, make yourself available for pleasure, like she is the epitome of like prioritizing herself. She feels her pleasure.

We should all we could all incorporate a little bit more of that our lives. That's amazing. You know, that's actually making me think of something, too, because as women, we do tend to keep our legs very close and as a gynecologist, I can tell you the hundreds and thousands of people I've seen with pelvic pain, women hold their stress often in their pelvis. We're tightening, we're protect eating. And from an energetic standpoint, that pelvic chakra is supposed to be the root of creativity. So if we're able to open up more, it's not just even just open the legs, but open relax in that area and express it and letting that energy out, the creativity.

Yeah, it's like your portal is of pleasure. It's your portals of playfulness is your portal to powers or portal to creativity. When I was senior physical therapist a year, a little over a year ago, we found that my pelvic floor doesn't know how to relax. She's always in tense mode. She's always go, go, go. And she's like, training me on how to do these massages and, like, speak to my pelvic floor, like. And I laughed. I'm like, of course this is the know how to relax. Like that is like Nikole is just like, go, go, go.

But it, it was a symbol to me. Like, you deserve relaxation from the inside out. Your pelvic floor doesn't have to be in goal or tight or tense mode all the time. Like, can you soften and can you open and can you relax and like learning to connect with that part of my body and even massaging it and like it's been so healing for me energetically. It's been healing for my body physically. And I think that, like you said, it's so common for women to clench and we've been taught to clench, fight or flight mode our whole lives.

But we as women deserve to relax, spread our legs, better energy and just be open and being able to be penetrated with joy and pleasure like that should be our baseline and our norm. And you're helping with that in so many ways, Dr. Betsy, so thank you for that. Oh, no problem. Is there anything that I didn't bring up that you wanted to mention? Gosh, I know it's could be hours. I know it's terrible hours. No, but when I think about your summit and like when I think about sexual dysfunction, I just think about women.

Like, if anyone can speak directly to them, if you are listening and you feel like there's no hope for you or you feel like you've tried all the specialist or all or whoever, or maybe you've never even tried because you're afraid. I just want to encourage you. There is hope. I really do believe and I know Dr. Betsy believes, although she wouldn't be doing this whole summit, like we believe in your potential for pleasure. We believe in your potential for freedom. We believe in your potential for relaxation.

Like this isn't something that's you're not reaching for the stars. You are not asking for something crazy. You're asking for something a basic right of relaxing and receiving and having pleasure. And so keep that hope alive. I'm so glad you're attending the summit because all the people that Dr. Betsy's introducing you to, the tools that everyone is sharing, like if you can only take one tip or one tool, that is enough from her summit, you want to do everything. Just take one tip and one tool. Use it to start incorporating more pleasure in your life.

And it will add and it will add up. It will compound. And you deserve a life of compounded pleasure. I love that. That is such a beautiful message. So. And where can people find out more about you? Yeah, come say hi. I love meeting new people, especially from Dr. Betsy's world. I know all your people are amazing. You can find all my socials at my website. NikoleMitchell.com Nikole is spelled with a k, N I K O L E But I'm the most active on Facebook and Instagram. You can always come say hi, let me know that you saw this.

And if I can help you create more pleasure our profit in your life, I'd be happy to chat. Thank you so much, Nikole, for taking the time to talk with us. This is always wonderful to talk to you. So thank you. I love you and love watching the work that you do. And thank you again for this amazing opportunity. So everybody just remember, stick around because we have more great sessions coming up and you don't want to miss them.