How to Love Your Body and Reclaim Passion in Your Relationship with Susan Bratton

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Find everyone's must have gifts from Nike, FP movement, Adidas. Need your gifts fast? Stop by your local Dick's or shop Dick's.com for fast shipping, curbside pickup or same day delivery. Every holiday starts at Dick's. Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show where I give you the latest cutting edge intel to help you look, feel and think better. Now, today's show is all about how to love your body and overcome stress, self criticism and body shame. You know, a topic that we never talk about and is massively important. And I have the perfect person to talk about it. This is a gal who I've known now for a couple of years. One of the benefits of living in San Diego is there's just a super cool group of people around here and one of them is my pal Susan Bratton. She is considered the Dear Abby of hot sex to fans around the world. And she, she just, her big thing is helping people create a passionate relationship. She's going to share her hero's journey and how she got into this and resuscitated a, you know, saved basically a relationship with her husband of 26 years that was heading towards divorce. And how she overcome came her own body shame and has really earned true body love. She's written over 20 books, including her new Amazon number one international bestseller, Sexual Soulma Six Essentials for Connected Sex. And she's also got an amazing gift for everyone on the show today, the Sexual Soulmate pack. You're going to be able to get that@jjvirgin.com forward slash Susan, of course it will be in the show notes as well. So I'm very honored to have my buddy Susan Bratton with us today. All right, let's do it. Susan Bratton, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

I am so glad to be here, Ms. JJ.

Such a, such a big topic we've actually never covered on this show before.

I thought it would be a really good one for you. You know, I've written quite a bit about self criticism and body shame. I've written a lot about body shame being in the business that I'm in which is helping people have more intimacy and passion. But I've never talked about it with anyone else besides just my fans and followers. And I thought gosh it's a perfect connection for the two of us.

Yes, it is. I love it. So I want to dive right into it. But before we dive into that, I just, you know, would love to go back a little bit and talk about your journey and how you got to here and doing all the work that you're doing.

Well, you know, my, my tagline, what, what I call myself is a trusted hot sex advisor. And that's because what I do is I teach people how to have more self love and intimacy with themselves and connection with themselves even before they have connection with others. And I'm kind of known for my passionate lovemaking techniques for my heart connected conscious relationship techniques, communication skills, strategies, things like that. That's my area of expertise. That's what I've studied. And as a matter of fact, one of the things that we're going to talk about today is one of the six essential for soul mates to have that really heart connected love making. And it has a lot to do with body image and overcoming your own self criticism during times of intimacy. And so I was, my husband and I have been together for 26 years, but we almost got divorced 10 years into our marriage because our intimacy had withered. And a big part of it for me was not really feeling very sexy. It was body shame. And when I was thinking about how much, how much of what we did was my husband helping me love myself for exactly who I am, that was really what got me into this whole world of helping other people have that same connection.

Yeah. And it's such a key thing because I know when we talked about this offline, I mean, you guys were so close to getting a divorce and you are, you know, I've spent some time around the two of you aren't like just, you are very aspirational couple. So I love that. And you know, I think people aren't talking about that. They go into marriage counseling not realizing that this could be a key problem here. So let's dive into it. What the heck, Susan? Why are people so hard on themselves? Well, women specifically. What's going on there?

Yeah, I wish, I wish this was video because I'm wearing a T shirt today that says in women we trust. And a big part of what we as women have to do is support each other around all of the cultural shame that's heaped upon us, around our sexuality, around our bodies. You know, all of the ads we see and the images we see out there are all retouched to perfection and we're aware of it. And we know it in our rational minds, but somatically, which means in your body you still can get a lot of feelings of shame from feeling like you don't measure up. On top of that, there's a lot of shame that comes from religious experiences sometimes for people growing up in households where sex isn't talked about, where girls aren't told they're pretty, where they're not valued as much like, you know, there's a real double standard with men and young men and young women in some households where they grow up. So a lot of people come through a lot of shame around that. There's also things like childhood labels, you know, oh, you know, skinny, mini, fatso, ratso, all those things. And you end up getting self abusive thinking. And so what we can do about that is really focus on our strengths and I'll give you some coping mechanisms. It's not going to go away. It's very hard to get out of self criticism and body shame. What I think you can do is you can manage it and you can mitigate it, you can slay that dragon. But sometimes he'll still come up to want to breathe his fire on you and you have to breathe your fire back.

So you say you can't get rid of it.

Well, I think it's very, I don't think it's impossible to get rid of it. But I think sometimes no matter how good you feel about yourself, no matter how confident you are, no matter how much you love your body, there are still moments in every person's life where things sneak back in, no matter whether you feel like you've gotten over something. I think if you struggle with self criticism and body shame, it's very hard to eradicate it down to the cellular level. And so it's more about mitigating it and knowing that when it comes up, you can just look at it like a thought that floats by and come back to the positive things that you love about yourself.

So it comes up because I know you have like, you have some, some hacks for this. Um, I'm trying to think. So I was listening, going, all right, you know, I think I've really worked a lot on, on you know, being positive and not, and working on this. But hey, I still have it too. You're right. I'll go, oh my gosh, look at that. You know, so I would imagine none of us are immune, but let's say we catch ourselves in it. What do we do?

Yeah, I mean people, people would look at you and they would go oh, my God. I mean, jj, you're one of the most beautiful women in the world, and you just said yourself it comes up for you.

Oh, my gosh. See, and it's so funny because literally, don't you think every woman looks at all the other women and thinks, look at how. Look at her.

Right?

Yes, exactly. And so if. If JJ Virgin has moments of feeling like she's not the most gorgeous woman in the world, well, the rest of us do.

Right.

And so I want to go into that circular logic thing that I was telling you about. So women, we. We have, culturally, we kind of have this permission to criticize ourselves, and we end up kind of flogging ourselves needlessly.

You.

You know a lot. You're probably very aware that most men don't have these negative body issues like women do, although more and more now, men are having them more and more because.

Why is that? Let's. I mean, because. Because that. Maybe that can tell us why. Like, why I always figured we had them because we were confronted with these ridiculous images in the media that were completely unrealistic and airbrushed. As Cindy Crawford says, I don't wake up looking like Cindy Crawford. Right.

Well, now there's airbrushed images of men, too. And there's Men's Health and there's ripped abs everywhere, and, you know, all that stuff. And so now men are feeling it, too.

But.

And there are a lot of surveys that say that as many as a third of women even struggle to have climaxes during lovemaking because they're in their head or they have body issues or whatever. So this is keeping us from having connection to our love, not just for ourselves, but with others, you know, with our. With our partner. And most women are ashamed of how they look, especially naked. And so there's this really interesting thing about self criticism, and that is that self criticism, interestingly enough, is a predictor of loneliness. It's not just that you're at risk when you self criticize. It's that you feel lost, you feel disconnected. It's actually directly related to depression. So the very first thing you have to do is self kindness. And that's what begins to heal you, is every time it comes up, you look at it and go, wait a minute. That's programming. I need to love myself. And I'm not saying that positive affirmations are, like, the solution to all things, because I think some people can get carried away with positive affirmations as well. You have to really feel it. But here's what I think is really interesting. And I, I read this wonderful book by Dr. Emily Nagoski. She is a. She's a teacher at, I think maybe Brown University. She's written a wonderful book called come as you are. And it's about. A big part of it is about accepting ourselves and our bodies for what they are. And she says that we women think it's good to torture ourselves a little bit. Like, if I stop beating myself up for the ways I'm not perfect, it's like admitting to the world and to myself that I'll never be perfect and that I am permanently inadequate. That we women hold onto our self criticism in order to maintain this kind of hope that will be better in the future and to motivate ourselves to get better. And so if you stop criticizing yourself, you're a loser and you'll fail. Like, that's the mental torture put ourselves through.

There's no winning that one, is there?

The only there is actually the winning is you can become aware that that's the negative loop that you've gotten caught in. And I would say one more thing, and that is that if I have a friend who criticizes herself in front of me, I say to her, hey, could you do me a favor? I don't feel that way about you. And when you're doing that to yourself, it makes me really sad. And I was wondering if you could try to not criticize yourself. Just do it as little as possible. When it comes up, don't speak the words. Because the more you spend in the negative time, the more negative stuff you create, and the more you say, whoo, wait a minute, that's old programming. You know what, what do I love about myself? And so I think getting into negative body image hacks is probably.

Yes, let's go there. And I'm just thinking, you know, the perfect example of this is when someone says, oh my gosh, your hair looks so great. Or that's a great dress, this old thing. Or I look so fat. Or, you know, all the stuff that we say instead of thank you. Right?

Yeah. When someone says that, I say, just say thank you. And they're like, oh, all right, okay, for them to say thank you. You know, So I think as women, we need to call ourselves, to stand for each other and support each other in loving each other and loving ourselves.

Amen. Yes. So next time you compliment one of your girlfriends and she starts the whole, like, you just say, say thank you. So let's, let's go over to those hacks because you said you had Some hacks for these things. I can think of one thing, Susan, that one of my early mentors had me do for negativity in general that I think could be an interesting one here. And it was whenever I, you know, voiced a limiting belief or something negative, I had to, I had this rubber band on my wrist and I had to snap myself. So.

That is somatic reprogramming. That's exactly what I was talking about earlier on. And that is that it's not about your rational mind. You've got to, you've got to get the stuff, you got to push it deep into your body, the change so that you feel better about yourself. But here's some things you can do, some negative body image hacks. The first one that I talked about was pushing the limiting thoughts out of your head as soon as they come up, reminding yourself it's programming. And then every day look at yourself in a way that you appreciate and admire what it is that you have. The second thing is to find workarounds to your issues. For example, and this is for, you know, times of lovemaking, if you're up in your head and you can't relax because you're worried about, does your butt look big in this position or do you have, can he see your cellulite or are your boobies hanging down? Funny. You know, these are the thoughts, all the thoughts we've all had as women. One thing that I say is turn down the lights, wear lingerie that covers the parts that you don't like, and know that in this moment, you're as young and perfect as you'll probably ever be. Don't. You can't wait for perfection because it never comes. And that perfection is actually allowing yourself to love your imperfections and getting intimate with another human being who allow them to adore you, adore yourself and allow yourself to be adored. Because one thing I can tell you is that generally now I like to say things that go across the gender spectrum. So when I say something like men aren't that picky, what I'm really saying is the masculine isn't that picky. And that we women are our own worst enemies about our bodies and about our desires. And that men are dying for us to just be comfortable and not say one self deprecating thing during lovemaking. They want us to just enjoy our bodies and feel good. They want to give us incredible pleasure. They don't want to hear those things. You're, you don't need to say those things. Just let go and enjoy yourself and Say, hey, tomorrow I may die. Let me carpe diem the heck out of this moment. Let me just enjoy what my body can do. That's so amazing. So those are some things that I think are. Are very important.

Yeah. It's so interesting because, you know, I. And I've. I've heard this and just. I have so many guy friends, and from what I hear, what we women think is the ideal body type and how we should look and what men. Men think is attractive and awesome are so different. Like, they're not looking at any of these things we're pointing out at all.

No, they don't even see them. They literally don't.

You're sitting here worried about what everything's looking like. They don't. They have no clue what you're even talking about.

We feel so good to them. They love it. They love the way we feel. Our fat, the kind of fat that we have on our buttocks, our thighs, our belly, our breasts. That's called gynoid fat. G Y N O I D. And that's the fat of a fertile woman. That's the fat of youthfulness. That's the fat of desire. Not only does it signify to a man that he's with a woman, it also feels so good to him. I remember that when my husband liked to touch my belly, I would always kind of clam up. I didn't really. I always felt like my stomach was fat. And jj, my stomach is not fat. I mean, it's a normal stomach is not fat.

I can tell you it's not.

And. Yeah. Does it have a little layer on it? Yes. And it. Does it go up and down 5 or 10 pounds as I go through my life? Yeah. But I have stopped worrying about it. Not only that, but at 56 years old, the ugliest and worst shape I've ever been in. But it doesn't matter. I love to just model being comfortable with myself, loving what I have. And after my. My husband told me, I would say probably about 10,000 times that he thought I was beautiful, I finally let it sink in. And now one of my favorite things that he and I do is that he gives me a belly massage. I've actually let go of the armor that I was holding so tight in my body, and I allowed myself to soften and open to him. And the belly massages are just so releasing and such a lovely way to start a connection with him. So wherever it is that you feel armored, see if you can really appreciate that there's nothing wrong with it and enjoy it instead.

So you talk about this body love game that you can play with a partner. Is that part of that? What is that?

Well, it comes from a little game that I've been playing with my husband for over 25 years and that I've taught to thousands and thousands of people. And it's called tell me three things that you love about me. And anytime you want to play a jj, you just let me know because I play it with my friends, I play it with my mother, I play it with my husband. It's just a really beautiful game that you can play with your girlfriends and you can. You can make it specific to body. But there's some. There's this thing about women where one of the things that we really need is verbal appreciation. We need to hear you tell us that you love us. It's not enough to show us that you love us. We need the words to go from your mouth to our ears and our brain. And you can do three things I love about you, about your body. And so anytime that you're feeling a little bit low, a little insecure, because we all do. Whenever you need to have those things said to you, ask for them. Ask your partner if you're in a relationship. Ask your partner if you're not. Ask your mom or your dad or your sister, who, your best friend, whomever you're close to. Hey, could you just tell me three things you love about me? And the way we've played the game for 26 years now is that we try to never repeat the same thing twice. And so when you. When you can come up with things that are new all the time, it's also a really nice way to play the game. You don't have to do it that way. But we like to play high level when we play games. We're a little competitive. You should do.

You know, you. Honestly, this could be a very cool, you know, I'm thinking cards against humanity, but not cards against humanity thing.

Oh.

I mean, there's this, like, what a different type of thing to look at and to never repeat. Wow.

Well, I just made that card game for a girlfriend of mine for her birthday. I gave it to her and I printed out 40 or 50 questions that I'll give you a copy and you can post it if you'd like to. I made up. I. I don't. I don't have them here in front of me, so I remember what all the questions are. But she really loves verb appreciation more than the average bear. We all love it but she just adore it. For her birthday, I just wrote up 40 questions and I put them on paper so she could cut them out and she would have these little cards that she could hand to people and say, could you answer this question for me?

That is awesome. Well, I'm a, I'm a for the five love languages, which is just, I think one of the best all time books. I am. Words of appreciation are my first. So I'm listening to this going, this is awesome. We need a game. This needs to happen.

So then I'm gonna have, I'm gonna do a little body love game with you right now and I'm gonna tell you three things I love about your body. Can I do that?

Sure. Okay.

Well, of course. I just dig how tall you are.

I figured that'd be your first one. We're both for you listening. You don't know, but Susan and I are, are we the same height?

I'm five ten and three eighths. And I know that exactly. Cause I, I just measured my husband, my daughter, and I could see how tall she was. How tall are you?

I'm like five eleven and a half. And we both wear super high shoes.

One of the things that I love is looking you in the eye, but I just generally love how tall and beautiful you are. I also really love your sweet face. You have such a beautiful face and it's framed so perfectly by your hair. You're just an exquisite creature. I actually called you one time recently a statuesque. Got a statuesque goddess.

Wow.

That's how you show up for me. So I think about you as really like the Oscar statue. This tall, live, golden, shining beauty. And I guess the third thing I love about your body. I think what I love about your body is just how strong it is. I really admire what great, what a great job you do taking care of yourself. You're really at the pinnacle of perfection. And, and so I really enjoy that about you. I really, it makes me happy when I see you. So those are three body love things I love about you.

Wow. Thank you so much. It was a little uncomfortable to hear. So just for people listening, I sit there going, all right, just like, take that, take that.

Everyone else is nodding along. Anyone listening say, this is like, yep, it's true. She is a statuesque goddess. Yes, she is in perfect shape. Yes, she is so beautiful.

Well, thank you, honey. And for everyone listening, I know that you have something super cool that you're giving everyone, which will of course have in the show notes, and it's also at jjvirgin.com forward/susan. So tell us, tell us what you got for everybody.

Yes, I have a really neat excerpt from my best selling book called Sexual Soulmates, the six essentials to connected sex. For the last decade I've been studying what it is that turns your mate into your soulmate. What? Your sexual soulmate. How do you find that kind of real, surrendered, passionate, erotic, sensual, heart, connected love in the bedroom. And this is a perfect one for overcoming self criticism and body shame because it's the sexual soulmate pact. It's a pact you make with your partner. Now you could, if you're single, you can teach this to someone you're dating. And if you're in a long term relationship and you've even given up on them, I want you to try this technique and it has two parts. The first part is what I call reporting in from your animal. As women especially, we are hormonally cyclical, even after menopause. And every day what we want is something different. Some days we want to be held like a baby and rocked by our partner and our hair smoothed and other days we want to be taken and passionate kissing. And so and sometimes we like harder pressure, sometimes tickly pressure. And you don't know what you're going to like until you ask your body because your body is just a little animal. Sometimes she's a kitty cat and sometimes she's a lioness and you need to tune into what she wants in the moment. And then once you say, oh, okay, here's what I'm feeling today, this is what I need today, and really honor that. Then you communicate it to your partner. That's the pact. The pact is that you're going to tell your partner what they need, what you need, because they're not a mind reader and all they want to do is make you happy and give you pleasure. And so your agreement with them is that they don't take it personally when you give them feedback, that there's no such thing as failure, there's only feedback. And that you want your partner to be really eager to hear how they can please you. And you of course want the same for them. They should tell you, hey honey, go a little harder there or lighten up a little bit there or could you pull on this thing or whatever it might be. And so the idea is that when you give your partner feedback, all they say is thank you. They don't say, ooh, I'm sorry or you know, oh, I thought I was doing you liked it yesterday. Like none of that need to use manners. The deal is that if you're together in a surrendered relationship where you're intimate, that the whole idea is that you want the best for each other, that you're playing the higher game, which is everybody wins with what you're doing. And so if you have to stop and think about how to say something nicely to your partner, honey, could you please blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, go to the left or whatever, then you have to get out of that state of mind that's completely relaxed and surrendered and you have to get into your beta mind, your, your, you know, your work mind, your directed mind. And that takes you out of your turn on and desire. So to stay in your turn on and desire, you just say, oh, up to the left or oh, rub it harder. And you don't have say please and thank you in the bedroom. Once you start practicing, the first couple times you do it, he's going to be like, wow, you kind of barked at me. I'm not used to that. You're like, but baby, remember you didn't want me to have to worry that I was upsetting you. And, and so once you practice it a few times, oh my gosh, things really take off in your level of comfort with your partner. And then your partner gets really good at making you, your body feel great in that moment and that keeps you in the present and it's a no blame game situation and everybody wins. And so the sexual soulmate pact is just be clear about what you need in the moment and don't worry about manners because you're all in it together.

All right, so I'm reminding everyone, jjvirgin.com forward/susan to grab that bonus. So that, and you know, it's, it's just so interesting. And again, I'm sure people will get more when they read the bonus is that your history of being able to basically resuscitate a dying relationship where you're really close friends, but this piece of the relationship had just kind of drifted off. And that I just see when you, you know, it's, it's one of those things, 26 years later, you've gotten this all and you have an amazing relationship and it can be done and, and it's easier than you think. So you're going to give everyone all the tools. So I want to thank you so much for joining me, Susan. Super appreciate it. And now after the break, I'm going to be answering the listeners questions. So stay with me.

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Welcome back. This is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question comes from Carrie in Philly. She says, jj, I am so bloated all the time. There's like half the clothes in my wardrobe I don't want to wear because I'm so embarrassed by how I look at them. What can I do? All right, if you've been listening to my podcast, you know how much I like to connect up the questions with what we've been talking about. So I kind of see two different approaches to this question. And one of them is I'm going to share with you what you can do about feeling bloated and some strategies. But the other one is grab the freemium by susan@jjvirgin.com forward/susan and learn to stop beating yourself up over your over your bloat because you're probably making it worse for yourself than than it is. So that's the first thing is make friends with that. But the second thing is let's talk about the things that you can do to address it from a physiological point. And the first thing is we got to figure out why you're bloated. And there's a couple different things that be going on. It could be a food intolerance situation, which is so common. So if you have not gone through the Virgin diet and gone through your own personal discovery process to find out which foods work for you and which foods do not, it's time grab the Virgin diet and go through that. Because, boy, if you're reacting to gluten or dairy or soy or corn or peanuts or sugar and artificial sweeteners or eggs, it can just make you bloated all the time. Now the next thing that could be going on is you're not digesting your protein well. And if you're over the age of 30, 35, or under any kind of stress, which is probably anyone and everyone listening, you owe it to yourself to do a round of protein digestive enzymes, because quite often you're just not breaking down your protein. Well, this can also, of course, lead to food intolerances. So I have a product called metabolic digestive Balance that is like the Tesla of enzymes, because the. It has protein digestive enzymes that help you break down your protein.

The.

But it has a special nutrient in there called phase two, white kidney bean extract that blocks amylase enzymes so that you don't. You are not able to absorb your carbohydrates as well. And this is key because a lot of these enzymes out here that, that have everything, they break down your carbohydrates as well. And now you've got blood sugar, you've got a faster blood sugar response and a bigger insulin response. You don't want to do that. And the other thing it's got is a little boost. That's why we call it Metabolic digestive balance. Will slow down or block carbohydrate absorption. It helps with protein digestion, and it's got little green coffee extract to give your metabolism a little boost, but without any of the hype of some of those other products. All right, so that's another one. And the final one is you may be struggling with something called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, or sibo, and that's when you have too much bad bacteria in your gut. This can happen from a lot of different medications, antibiotics. But one of the big things that happens is from eating a higher sugar impact diet, which then feeds the bad bacteria. So if you have not gone through the sugar impact diet, I would tell you, if you're listening and you haven't gone through the virgin diet, start there, but then also make sure these programs were built to, to go together to help you go through your personal discovery process to figure out which foods work for you and which foods don't. That's the virgin diet. And then to pop on over to the sugar impact diet to really figure out your carbohydrate tolerance levels, find out how many carbohydrates you should have in your diet. One of the questions I get asked all the time and to really know what the sugar impact is of different foods, so you don't feed that bad bacteria, which can make you bloated and gassy all the time and look kind of pregnant. And I so relate to this question because I literally got asked once walking through a store how when I was due and I was not pregnant. So I get the whole bloaty feeling and it stinks. So there you go. Hope that helps Carrie. And if you'd like to ask a question, probably the easiest place to do it is jump over to my Facebook page at JJ Virgin Official. I do Facebook lives there every week. Love getting your questions and interacting with you there. And of course we've got a very active community, very engaged. So if you drop a question there or on my Instagram or Pinterest, we will look for the ones that fit well in the podcast and match them up and answer them here. I also want to give a shout out to this week's review. Every week I do a shout out for the review of the week. Show some big gratitude. And this week actually is to a girlfriend of mine. I was like reading through the reviews and I saw this one that says, dang Girl, exclamation point, 5 stars by Renee Aria. And I'm like, oh, Renee. And Renee's a really awesome girlfriend of mine who is pregnant and she says JJ is continuously inspiring, empowering and educating. I'm so happy to have access to her through this podcast. I love it. Thank you. I love you, Renee. I super appreciate it and I appreciate you for tuning in and I would love it if you feel so inspired. Since you're already over here on itunes, just jump on over there and leave a review. It helps a bunch and the whole team reads them and we all appreciate it hugely. All right, thanks so much for joining me today. And remember, all this cool information only matters if you use it. So hopefully you heard something today that you can put into action. Start loving your body because it does make a massive difference in your life. All right, see you next time. Goodbye.

How does it feel?

Hello listeners. This is Anne Boeckle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week, I take all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next reading. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately. And I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading. Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy. Troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website, whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.