Leela Sinha

In this conversation, Michelle Renee and Leela Sinha discuss the concepts of intensives and expansives. They explore how intensives are passionate, risk-tolerant, and make unexpected connections, while expansives are steady, reliable, and prefer predictable environments. They also discuss the importance of understanding and appreciating both types of personalities. Overall, the conversation highlights the value of self-awareness and finding balance between intensity and steadiness.

Leela Sinha is a coach and author. Leela created The Intensive Institute and wrote the book You're Not Too Much. You can find Leela and the book at ⁠https://IntensiveInstitute.com⁠.

Michelle Renee (she/her) is a San Diego-based Platonic Intimacy Guide and Surrogate Partner. Michelle's websites are ⁠https://meetmichellerenee.com⁠⁠ and ⁠https://humanconnectioncoach.com⁠ and she can be found on social media at ⁠https://instagram.com/meetmichellerenee⁠.

If you’d like to ask a question, for Michelle to answer on an episode, https://www.meetmichellerenee.com/podcast

Links from today's show:

*Note, I'm cutting back on the amount of resources I share as it takes a lot of time to pull them and I'm finding myself not putting out new episodes due to the time requirement. My compromise to myself is to put in less time. Thanks for understanding that is a hard area to cut as someone who prides herself as a "resource maven". I trust you can google and find what you need.

To grab your own set of We’re Not Really Strangers https://amzn.to/47XJjvm

You're Not Too Much by Leela Sinha https://amzn.to/3YsPm9T

Rough Transcript:

Michelle Renee (she/her) (00:20)

Welcome to the Intimacy Lab. I'm so excited today to be joined by my friend, Leela Sinha, who I met. You guys are going to get tired of me saying this. I met at Sex Geek summer camp. I feel like so much of my life is still connected to that one year that I went to camp. It's like 2015. Like.

all these connections were made and I didn't know what I was going to be doing yet in the world. And in that ever like so many people kind of have stuck around in my life is kind of cool. And Leela is one of those people. So Leela, you would probably do a better job introducing yourself than I will. But if you want me to take a shot at it, I will.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (01:03)

I would love to have you take a shot at it. I always like to hear how other people perceive me because I know what I think, but I'm inside my head.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:07)

Okay.

Yeah. Well, Leela Sinha is this, I know you're a UU pastor. I don't know if that's the word they use in UU. Is it pastor?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (01:20)

Usually we use minister, but pastor is correct.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (01:22)

I grew up in like the Methodist Church and pastor was very common for me. So, Leela, I met Leela at Sex Geek Summer Camp and I was like, you, you pastor and sex educator and how do these things go together? But now that I've learned a lot more about the UU church, it makes more sense because you guys have a fabulous sex education program. So, it all kind of came together in my head that way. But you also, if I remember the story correctly, you were laid up on your back.

And you got to thinking about life, and you came to this commonality of all these things in your life, come back to you're too much. Right, and I was like, in this time when I met you, and when you are an author and your book came out, I was really in the feelings of feeling like too much. So that part of your story just stuck so, so close to me.

And now you have the Intensive Institute. I know you're doing a podcast. You do a lot of coaching, corporate coaching, if I recall, but like how I describe you is like, you'll come in and like figure out who is a good fit for different positions. How am I doing?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (02:30)

You're doing pretty well actually. Yes, the origin story is that I was laying up on my back. I had an idiopathic rupture of my L3, L4 disc, which is probably too much information. But what that means for people who haven't had a back injury is that I couldn't walk, I couldn't move, I was hopped up on painkillers. And so I was just lying there.

in bed, I literally could not even roll over without pain. And so I'm lying flat on my back, no pillow, on a super hard futon, just trying not to move or breathe too much, honestly. And in those moments, first you think about how things are good, and then you might think about how things are bad, and then you might think about, if you're trained in coaching and ministry, you might start thinking about where the commonalities are. Because of course, as a coach,

were conditioned to think, okay, well, what's the common factor? The common factor is me. So it's my fault. But then I said, hang on a second. Hang on, hang on, because it's not just me, right? It's me and most of my closest friends. It's me and most of my best clients. It's me and most of the people I admire. So what is going on? What are the common, what is happening that I keep getting called too much? And

After a while, what I identified was this kind of cluster of behaviors. And then I of course went looking for the cluster of behaviors that was the other end of the spectrum, because if you have anything, it throws a shadow. And once I established that and started talking about it, amusingly enough on Facebook, people started responding and started to really feel a resonance and I was not used to getting that kind of engagement on Facebook at that time. And so I took notice.

And next thing I know, I had written a whole bunch and then I looked up and it was like, well, you have about 50, 60,000 words. And I was like, well, then I might as well write the rest of it and finish the book.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (04:29)

That's the hardest part, I imagine, is the rest of it. Is it one of those 80-20 rules where it's like the first?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (04:32)

Um.

Yes, yeah, well, so the 80-20 rule didn't kick in until I was in the editing phase. But I was still laid up. So I would wake up in the morning and I would like roll out of bed and crawl to the bathroom and then slide back into bed and lie down flat on my back with my Bluetooth keyboard in my lap and my phone suspended over my face in a like off a boom stand, a boom mic stand. And I would just type for an hour.

every day for an hour, which is the most un-intensive thing I can think of. That is not how intensives behave. Every day, disciplined, the same thing. But because I was doing it first thing, and because it was fresh in my mind, and because I couldn't really do anything else, it happened to work. And that 80-20 rule, which for the listeners that don't know, you get 80% of the way through a project, and then...

You know that it could be done, how it could be done, and that you could do it. So the mystery's gone, challenge is gone, you're not interested anymore, and you just walk away from an 80% completed project.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (05:36)

Okay, I just brought Dax into the camera for those that are not watching the video and Dax and Leela have a very special relationship. So I knew there was gonna be a moment when Dax would want to come up and I was gonna be like, let's reintroduce the two of you. Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (05:37)

I doubt.

Hi, buddy. Yeah, we got to meet when I was on the book tour and I stayed with you when you were still living in Michigan.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (05:59)

Yeah, the underground house. Yeah. It was a really cool house. I miss it in some ways, and I also love being free from it. It's a both and. Yeah, so yeah, when I moved out, I realized how much mold was in that house, and it probably was really bad for me. But god, I love that house. We should back up. And we've mentioned intensives.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (06:01)

Yeah, that was a really cool house.

Yeah, Underground houses are a special commitment.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (06:25)

I think it's a pretty intuitive word to know what it means, but I think that let's define intensives and the counterpart expansives, and then let's pause for a moment and take care of business and do our we're not really strangers card because I start every one like this. So, intensives and expansives.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (06:46)

So intensives are people who are intense. We go like hell and we rest like the dead. We have what I call a phasic work cycle, which means we don't do slow and steady an hour every day things very often. Mostly we go like hell for 14 hours a day for four days and then we sleep for a week. And whether we do that or not depends on whether we're into something. We're all either all in or all out. So we're the kids who get like three A's and two F's in school because we are

absolutely not interested in working on the things we're not interested in. And then we get comments like not living up to full potential. No, I'm living up to my full potential. My full potential does not involve your class. That's all. We tend to be very opinionated. We tend to make wild kind of unexpected connections between things that nobody else can perceive those connections between. And so we...

show up in a meeting at work and we're like, okay, all right, so we should do this. And everyone looks at us like, we should what? And we're like, no, you don't understand. We should do this. It's going to work. I promise. And they're like, how? Do you have data? Do you have charts? Have you done analysis? And we're like, no, I just know. You just have to trust me. And our gut.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (08:03)

Mm-hmm. An intensive with a firm gut instinct, right? Like power, is it either a power couple or is it incredibly dangerous? Yes.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (08:07)

Mm-hmm.

Yes. Yes, because we know that we're usually right. We don't know why we're usually right, but it teaches us to kind of blow off people who disagree with us or who push back at us. And sometimes that's good. Sometimes that allows us to innovate. We are the disruptors, like intrinsically, that's who we are. And it can mean that when there's a warning sign, when there's a problem, especially a problem between us and a member of our community or our

team or our company that we won't listen because we're so conditioned not to listen. And what we have to do is gather a group of other intensives around us that we trust enough that when they say, oh, no, stop, back up, you got to go apologize to that guy, that we can hear it coming through our natural resistance to being told that it's impossible. Because everybody tells us stuff is impossible all the time and then we go do it. So

we really need a trusted cluster of advisors around us to make sure that we don't do that so much. When we do, like when intensives go bad, we get Elon Musk.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (09:19)

That's, that's a, I remember when you used to describe intensives. I'm going to go back to like 2016 and probably almost word for word quote you, because I say this like when people look at me like, well, how do I know? And I'm like, oh, okay. So an intensive, when you call up your intensive friend, because you just had this really exciting news drop on, drop in your lap and you're like, hey, I have this great news to share with you.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (09:29)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (09:48)

Your intensive friend is going to be like, oh my God, dinner's ready. Come on over. Let's talk. I can't wait to hear. And your expansive friend, the other side of this is going to go, that's so great. In two weeks, we should get coffee. That's how I remember you like talking about this. Right. And that like the intensive, you learn everything about them in two hours. And it might take you two years to learn the same information from an expansive. So that's how I remember, like the most basic way of like, what is the difference between these two? And it's like the Kinsey scale where

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (10:00)

Yes.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (10:18)

most people are going to be somewhere in the middle, right? Like it's not, it's a spectrum. It's not a you're intensive or you're expansive. It's where do you fall in certain ways.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (10:29)

Intensive or expansive, but you're not necessarily a 10 or a zero. But most people fall one to one side or the other of five, which is like actually a true in the middle. So you might be a six, which means that you're sometimes pretty intensive. You get really into stuff. You can get really focused on one project and like dive into it for a while, but

Michelle Renee (she/her) (10:34)

Right. Yes.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (10:53)

You can see the benefit of some of the expansive tactics. When you need it, it's pretty easy for you to be like, I'm just gonna do a little of this every day, that'll be fine. Right, whereas a nine is gonna be like, oh my God, I feel sick just thinking about doing it that way.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (11:02)

Yeah.

So this was the interesting thing. So I'm an 8, at least last, I mean, I've only tested once. I don't know if you've found that people have retested and land different places at different times in their life. Okay, yeah, because I haven't even thought about retesting but right as we were getting on this call, I was like, huh, I wonder if I still would be an 8. Like I've changed a lot and I wonder if I took that test again if I would answer things differently and I might score higher because now I'm more

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (11:16)

I don't have retest information on people.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (11:35)

integrated with myself and maybe masking less and this evolution. But with Paul, I remember going through the test with him because there was a part of me that was like, the way he relationships is so expansive in some ways. I should say in romantic relationships, he's very expansive.

but you talk to the man about video games or something he's super passionate about. He's just not super passionate about relationships, right? So he moves at a very different pace. And so it was interesting to watch him kind of toggle back and forth in how he would answer those questions.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (12:05)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, and I wrote the assessment with the best information and knowledge that I had at the time. And I'm not a social scientist. So that assessment is a course tool at best. But it does give people, a lot of times, people read the book, or people talk to me, or people see a video of me, or whatever, and where they hear me reference it in conversation, and they go and take the assessment. And then they're like, I don't.

I don't know, like that was a little weird. Or they'll say like, I came out of it with this number, but that just doesn't feel right. And I will tell people across the board, if your number doesn't feel right, figure out what number does feel right. At least it gives you a place to jump off from.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (12:55)

Yeah, I think it was... Okay, do we have more to say about expansive? Yeah, let's go over to expansive because I do want to stay on some kind of track here because I know we could just like, I would love to just meander, but I do want to do a card with you. So I want to make sure I make space for that, but explain expansives because I've kind of already explained it a little bit.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (12:57)

Do you want to go back into expansives?

Okay.

So expansives are at the other end of the spectrum. Expansives are the slow, steady, if we're thinking about the story of the tortoise and the hare, the hare is the intensive and the tortoise is the expansive. And that's how a lot of our cultural narratives go. I'll just insert that piece that the virtuous way to be, the right way to be, the adult way to be is the expansive. So we really have to watch out for expansive bias when we move through the world. Expansives are the ones that like.

putting everything in an eight little row expansives. They're often the ones who have like, not only do they have a bullet journal, but they have like a ruler with their bullet journal and they use the ruler to cross things out. They're the ones who often we find them very happy being things like accountants, like things that are steady and predictable are the realm of the expansive. And we need that in the world. I think often when people hear me talk about intensives with such joy and love,

They think I must not like expansives, but that's not true. I love my expansives in work relationships. I love my expansives because they love to do the stuff I don't love to do. Yes, desperately. We need each other. Intensives are willing to ideate and go out on a limb and have these connections that I was talking about earlier, have, you know, all kinds of unexpected things, risky things, where intensives tend to be pretty risk tolerant. Expansives aren't. Expansives do not wish.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (14:20)

We need them.

Mm-hmm.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (14:40)

to be in risky situations, they do not wish to have their heart rate elevated, they would like everything to stay in this fairly narrow emotional expression range, whereas intensives are like this, they're this huge wave. And so because the amplitude of the wave for expansives is so narrow, they also don't want to encounter something that makes that wave jump unexpectedly. So if I wanna get the attention, say I'm doing marketing and I wanna get the attention of someone who's intensive.

I'm going to tell a story that's emotionally engaging, that, you know, either tugs at your heart and makes you feel a little sad or a little excited or a little whatever, because I know that that's how intensives connect often to work, to stories, to material. Expansives? I'm not going to do that. Like, there might be a nice little feel-good story that's like a cupcake size, but we're not doing an entire banquet table full of desserts. That just doesn't make sense.

for expansives and expansives are gonna want stuff that's like regular, like every Tuesday at three o'clock the thing arrives. Intensives don't wanna hear from you unless you've got this huge big thing to say and then they'll spend the time to find out what it is.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (15:53)

I'm like, I'm like creating my ideal client avatar in my head as you're talking right now. Cause I'm like, Oh yeah, I really like the intensive clients like they're my jam. Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (16:01)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, which is how I started. I was like, who are my best clients? Oh, they're all the same people. They're all these intensive people. So expansives are like soothing, reliable, steady, calm. Like all of those are things that we think of as expansives. And intensives are conditioned to think expansives are boring. And expansives are conditioned to think that intensives are irresponsible. And that conflict causes so much discord.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (16:30)

It's so interesting because all those qualities that you just listed for expansives are totally my qualities. And I'm totally in intensive. But that's what I bring to my work is that it feels weird to me now that I'm like, how do I do that as I'm just like trying to like connect the dots. I really like how do I show up as all those things because I really value those things. And that's probably the biggest thing I bring into my work is those things. So it's an interesting like, huh, it just gonna leave me thinking.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (17:00)

I think. I think, do you mind if I reflect a little bit on that?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (17:03)

You can, yes, the floor is yours, my dear.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (17:06)

So I think that one of the things I know about you is that you have this deeply almost maternal nurturing quality to your work, specifically your work. And my experience of you, although we haven't spent time in person in a while, my experience of you is that outside of your work context, outside of your professional context, your intensiveness is much more visible.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (17:18)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (17:31)

And I think what happens often with intensives is that if we are intensively carrying that value set, we intensively care, often we will create a work. I don't wanna, I'm hesitant to use the word persona because it sounds fake and we're not good at being fake, but we will surface those particular qualities and that will become kind of how we are at work. I see this a lot in my clergy colleagues too.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (17:58)

That makes sense.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (18:01)

And so you put on your professional hat and you're working with a client and you just reach down and you have this deep grounded, nourishing way of being with people and you know that's what they come for and you provide it and then you take off that hat and you get to be everything else.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (18:20)

Well, the space is for the client, right? I'm not coming in with my own needs, right? I have boundaries and certain things I won't do, but for 99% of that space is all about for the client, as long as I'm a mutual yes for them, right? So that makes total sense, because I always think part of my work is very relational, and I'm like...

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (18:27)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (18:47)

inside of the work container, that is nothing what my relationship actually looks like, because I'm not coming in with my giant feelings, right? I'm not coming in like, my clients have no idea, they think of my giant feelings as I often cry with my clients, right? I was in a session yesterday and my client wasn't even crying over the story that she was sharing with me, but it was just, I'm a huge like over-empathizer and I'm just like,

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (18:52)

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (19:17)

Oh, I felt it. And I'm just like tears are just streaming down my face as she's telling me a story. So big feelings that way, but not in like the, I'm always intensely working on myself in connecting dots and pausing people. I just told the story earlier, like post sex. Okay. Imagine Michelle has an orgasm. She sits up and goes, oh my God, let me tell you a story. Cause I'm downloading in the moment, right? Like

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (19:44)

late.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (19:45)

Those are things I probably held back for a long time that I was always capable of. But part of this, like, as we're gonna come back to talk about here is how it has Leela in this, this idea of intensiveness kind of set me free in so many great ways. So I'm gonna pause this conversation. I wanna bring in a card. Okay, I pulled this card.

I don't remember what it was, but I thought at the time, well, this makes sense for us. Okay, and you can tell me, you get consent here, Leela. I wanna say, you can say, Vito, I'm not answering this. And I would be like, thank you for taking care of yourself. I totally love this. Okay, if you could prescribe me one thing to do for the rest of this month, what would it be? And I thought Leela is always onto some interesting shit. And like, I am like kind of really curious what you would prescribe me.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (20:42)

I think I need to know what you feel like a couple of your deep needs are right now.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (20:47)

Somebody asked me what I would ask Santa for. And you know, we want to say world peace and all these things, right? But ultimately, if Santa could help me figure out how to market, how to actually describe what it is that I do, just give me like one line of what it is I do, I would be so freaking grateful. That is one thing that I need. Another thing I need is.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (20:50)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, but really.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (21:11)

I need to release control of taking care of every little thing in my life and let some other people do it for me.

That would be another thing I'm kind of working on right now.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (21:18)

Okay.

So I just had the pleasure last week, I don't know, time is wobbly, of going to my hypnosis instructor, Melissa Tears, did a free class on self-hypnosis and specifically rapid inductions because she's a New Yorker. And so nobody wants to wait around for, you know, five minutes of induction. They're gonna be onto something else. And...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (21:48)

Especially intensives.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (21:50)

especially intensives. And so she did, and the first induction she had us work with was a fractionation induction, which, I mean, we're way off in the weeds for your listeners probably, but fractionation is when you come out of trance and go into trance and come out of trance and go into trance repeatedly. And it makes it easier to get deeper into trance the more you do it. And so she just had us

open our eyes and close our eyes and feel a wave of relaxation. Open your eyes and close your eyes and feel a wave of relaxation like 10 times, which produces at least for me a very lovely, very predictable kind of trans state.

And then she invited us to see ourselves in a movie.

and to put in that movie screen something, something that we wanted to be or do, and see ourselves doing it, and then see what the next tiny step was, and see ourselves doing that. So my invitation to you would be to do that once a day for 30 days and see what happens.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (22:53)

Okay. Is there a place where I can go like get or do I just play back these this instruction from you and that'll be a guidance for me to do it like.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (23:05)

I know that wasn't, if I wanted to actually induce you into trans, I would do a better job of it.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (23:09)

No, I know. Like, would it be like, you're like, there's a, there's a recording out there that I can send your way, or is this just a hypothetical you like, this would be the thing. I would love to see you do for 30 days.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (23:20)

There are lots of recordings on the internet that will help you get into trance if that's something you're interested in and we can talk about it more offline if you're interested in it.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (23:27)

I remember when you were when you were doing training because we did a thing one time on Zoom. Do you remember that? It's a long time ago. Yeah. Huh.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (23:31)

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So I would be happy to help you with that. But for people who knew hypnosis, I wanted to just outline what we were doing. But it's a very effective and very simple trans induction. And once your brain is kind of soft and melty in trance, it's so much easier to understand what you need to understand who you are to make change because

Michelle Renee (she/her) (23:43)

Catch ya!

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (23:59)

As she says in her pre-talks, you know, this, our minds are divided between the conscious, which is like 10%, and the unconscious, which is like 90%. And often we run into this wall and we're trying to make chains. And she's like, this is what trans does. Just bends that wall over so you can just walk your thoughts right in.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (24:18)

I mean...

I have done that pretty productively consistently through sex, like orgasm in general, but certain specific, like getting there through certain types of touch is like, it's become like a go-to. Like I have something I need to work on, this will help me figure it out because it does, it lowers something. Or, you know, psilocybin is a nice one too, but you know, that takes a little bit more of a commitment.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (24:43)

Yeah. Yeah, there are lots of ways to get through that wall. What I like about this one is that it's really easy.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (24:52)

Yeah, that's what I was saying. Like I don't want to have to do a mushroom trip to have to do that.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (24:55)

Like, you know, I really love sex, but it's sometimes really complicated for me. So it's not always the best energy to bring into like discernment or manifestation or any of those other kinds of energies. And this is just so easy. And it's so light in the sense of not being fraught.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (25:03)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you. I was like, what am I? What do I offer Leela as a what would I prescribe to you for 30 days? Like, what am I been really excited about lately? There's a couple of things and we were talking before this, you don't really do caffeine. So I don't want to like offer you up this mushroom coffee that I'm really loving right now.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (25:25)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (25:40)

I'm a, God, I'm an information hound. Like I have to be feeding my brain all the time. And so one of those easy, like usual brain food sources is Huberman Lab podcast. I don't know if you've, yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (25:53)

Oh yeah, it's been recommended to me like three times in the last month, so I now have to go listen to it.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (25:59)

Okay, so, sometime I think it was in December. No, it was in November, because I remember talking about this over Thanksgiving, so it had to have happened in November. Did an episode on this one specific type of journaling that they've shown is scientifically proven that it helps your immune system. And I was like, oh, I perk up. I always like this kind of journaling and health and whatever. And so in this protocol,

You take a traumatic memory and you write about it for 15 to 30 minutes or you can type it. Either way shows the same results. You write everything down you can remember from this memory and how you felt like truthful, like not sugarcoated, not just like whatever your experiences is the fact, right? Just the facts. Like write everything down you know.

anything else that comes up related to that memory, right? Right for 15 to 30 minutes. And then you either do that once a day for four days or you do it once a week for four weeks. And it's shown, I think what's happening is memory reconsolidation during that time, right? But they've got the data to show how beneficial it is for your immune system. And I just think that's a cool thing that I wanna share with you.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (27:22)

Thank you. That's fascinating. Now of course I'm all kinds of curious.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (27:26)

Yeah. It didn't make sense. Like, it... Well, I tried to do it. I'm really bad at holding patterns that long. Like, I'm like, oh, yeah, I'll do it. And then I fall off because I'm in intensive. Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (27:37)

because intensive. Is it the same memory four times? Okay.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (27:41)

Mm hmm. Because every time you're going to it's going to feel different, right? You'll you'll basically experience a good lesson and like less activating, right, as you go through it. So that's why I think it's like I took a class on memory reconsolidation earlier this year. And it was a it was on the neuroscience of memory reconsolidation, which is what's at play when we do EMDR. It's what's in play when we do

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (27:45)

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (28:05)

internal family system. It's like all the therapy kind of stuff really goes back to how are we getting to this re-working our memories. It happens in cuddle space, like it happens all over the place. And this, the formula for this, and I love a good formula, is like regulated nervous system plus just a little bit of activation equals your mismatch system kicks in and goes, wait a minute, I thought the world worked this way.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (28:13)

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (28:30)

this is challenging that, you know, like subcordial memory from like our childhood, right? And that's the formula, right? So I'm like, oh, this is just that, right? This is another way to access that.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (28:36)

Right.

Yeah, Melissa talks about that a lot in her trainings. And she's like, every time you remember something, it's like you rewrite the story and it overwrites the previous file. So if you narrate and if you continually narrate the same story, then you reinforce those neuronal pathways. But if you...

allow the story to shift. Or if you, like when we do memory and consolidation work in trans spaces, we will deliberately shift the emotional tenor of a space. We won't say that what happened didn't happen, but you might say, okay, now imagine your adult self coming in well-resourced and doing something different, offering the little version of you some resource that you didn't have before. And it changes what the emotional hooks are.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (29:23)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (29:36)

that are on that memory.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (29:37)

Yeah. So between that and like, have you ever read complex PTSD from surviving to thriving?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (29:45)

Not yet. I'm familiar with his work, but I haven't gotten like all the way through the book. I just haven't had very good concentration.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (29:47)

Okay.

One of the things, one of the highlights, the Cliff Note version, the stuff that I really love, is one thing was verbal ventilation when you're verbally telling the story, right? It's great for you as long as you stay away from the critic. So telling the story without the critical aspect of it, super great for you. You bring in the critical voice.

not great for you, right? And then like the critical voice shows up as an inner or outer critic, whether you're criticizing yourself or someone else, he says is like a sign that you're in an emotional flashback. So as I've got that data, what I feel that the critic is really rare for me now. Like I've gotten to a point where I notice when the critic shows up, it's not a regular thing that I have going on. So you kinda gotta be to a place where it's not.

something that's happening all the time, that your brain is a safe space. Now when it shows up, I'll go, oh, okay, so where's the emotional flashback happening? Right, and tie those two together, and it makes the, like I had a regular thing that was happening for me, and when I was able to connect those dots with that information, I was like, doesn't happen anymore. I don't hear that little voice show up. It's like, oh, okay, that feels, it's just been rewritten.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (30:56)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (31:12)

Good stuff. So we answered the card. We can get back to business now. Thank you, Leela, for playing with me. So you wrote the book in 2016. You wrote it before that. I know you went on tour in 2016.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (31:27)

Yeah, it came out in 2016.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (31:28)

for me, that book was like the first place, like almost like looking in a mirror where I was like, oh, you're saying all these things I see in myself are okay. Like things started to, like it feels so isolating life does, right? Like we don't know other people's experience. And like the book was like a way of being like, oh, this is actually a really common experience. Even though I think if I remember, did you used to say like in our culture, it's like 30%.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (31:39)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (31:57)

intensives.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (31:59)

Yeah, I still think that, that the intensives are about 30% of the population and of that 30%, only about 10% are really self-aware because we absolutely could not cover it up. And the other 20% have spent most of their lives trying to cover it up. And so part of my mission is to help that 20% of people figure it out and help the other 10%.

feel like you do now that it's okay, that these are gifts, that this is just who we are and that there's no judgment that needs to be attached to that.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (32:28)

I just always felt like I was too much. My feelings were too much. Like how I shared was too much. Those are the two things that really stick out, but I joke that I'm the person that gets an idea in the shower and by the end of the afternoon, the website's up, right? Like, yeah, like that's totally me. And I used to, like, I don't have any judgment about any of those things anymore.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (32:45)

Absolutely.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (32:53)

I'm a crier. I used to get on calls when I first started with Cuddlist and when I was operations manager, there'd be so many times I'd be in leadership meetings and I'm in tears. And thankfully, that's a community that is very emotionally intelligent. And they're like, it's awesome. And I'm like, I'm embarrassed. No, this isn't right, right? Like I shouldn't have to do this. And now I'm like, yeah, look at me. I'm a badass. I fucking cry all the time. Like, it's just

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (33:15)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (33:22)

difference. Like it's just an accepting of my like self. Right?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (33:28)

Yeah, yeah, we're taught so much of being intensive is unprofessional and irresponsible and so many other things that start with ear or on. And, and there's a whole piece that I that I talk about sometimes that ties it all into racism, right, because there's definitely systemic racism that comes in as part of it. But even if we don't discuss that,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (33:40)

Hmm?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (33:54)

right now, like this idea that correct ways of behaving are coded language for expansiveness and incorrect ways of behaving are coded language for intensiveness and that incorrect behavior and children's behavior is often tied together. Like there's so many interesting societal norms and ideas that are embedded.

And so much of it ties back to intensiveness or expansiveness, which is part of why I felt like we needed to have language around it.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (34:28)

Yeah, I was just numb. Like I look back now and part of my like pulling away like the shell of me, like who is the crystalist that will come out kind of thing. Like I remember having a moment. So I would say that when I was married the first time, I didn't cry. Like I had to look for a movie, a sad movie because I would feel a need to cry, but that was the only way I could get it out. And then I got divorced.

And I think that there wasn't the whatever pressure Jason had on me. I don't know that he even would say now that he felt any way about me crying, but I felt it probably carried over from my childhood also because my dad was like, uh, you can argue with me unless you cry. Like the minute you cry, we're done. Like that's, we're not having this conversation. Yeah. I know. Right. Like if you're adult enough, kind of, that was the messaging.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (35:17)

What a fascinating rule.

Right. And adulthood means you're not emotional, and not being emotional means you don't cry, right? So this like, we don't express our feelings in a big way is expansiveness, but we call it being mature.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (35:34)

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, so, so fast forward, I'm coming out of this 20 year relationship, not having fully grieved my mother's lot, like the loss of my mother. All these I have so many, like I say, like the big adult things that people go through, I got through most of them in my 20s. I just feel like I got hit over and over again. And but I didn't really get to process all of that.

And then I come out and I find myself just crying everywhere. Like I can't keep it in for anything. And I just realized it's just so much bottled up. But there was this moment when I got into the BDSM world. And I'm finally, I asked somebody, could somebody push me, like push my limits? I wanted to, I was experimenting with impact play. And one of the first people I met in the community was a pretty...

pretty decent sadist. Like he was like, the joke was like, there is no warmup. Like his hand is not the warmup. That is like his hand on its own is enough, right? And I'm sitting in his basement. I'm on like a spanking bench and there's a mirror right in front of me and I am bawling, right? And I look at myself and I go, this is worth crying about, right? Like it's like.

My father would say, like, I'll give you something to cry about if we did cry. Like that was a threat. You're going to get spanked. Right. And here I'm getting beat. Like, who did I take a beating? And I was proud of myself because look how strong I am. And this is legitimate tears, right? I've come a long way since then. It was just part of, I think, my reparative process. I don't enjoy pain anymore. I don't want.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (36:52)

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (37:17)

to, I don't need a reason to cry. I can cry because I want to. I can cry because I'm happy. I can cry because I'm sad. I cry all the time for orgasm out of my eyes, right? Like it's just another way of expressing myself. But it's so much deprogramming of this, like, and how does that affect your health? Like, like holding all of that in all, like, thankfully I'm so grateful that in my late thirties.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (37:35)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (37:46)

I got to start to move through that process. And it wasn't something that either I never got to address or that happened later or whatever. Like I look at my mom, my mom died when she was 50 and I'm 48 now. And so much of our life really was the same path until it wasn't. And like how much of that affected her if she was probably also an intensive.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (38:00)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (38:15)

and very squished. Like my grandparents were very much squishy parents, like would want to squish her. She was the

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (38:21)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, silent generation culture was really very squishy. And so not in the soft, squishy, squish mellow sort of way, but in the I will squish your intensiveness until you can't find it anymore kind of way. And so those of us who have either very late silent generation or early boomer parents often see that. That like, you know, and then when we look back,

across that. It's like, oh, well, it wasn't great, but at least I understand why it happened.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (38:56)

Oh, I'm thrilled to have figured it out when you look at other people that haven't figured it out. Right, that the Stoics, the very like everything is buttoned up, kept back. Yeah, it's. I'm thrilled. I'm thrilled, delighted that I've gotten to where I am. But it's it's.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (38:58)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (39:21)

It's been a process. It's been an interesting process. And it's funny for me to pull the word squish out. I just realized like, that's like something I used to hear you say all the time, like a squished intensive. And I'm like, Whoa, look at me. I'm like, having like, interesting like memory, like pulling up memories from years ago, from when we used to talk about this a lot. And I know you talk about it a lot. I'm sure I mean, this is your, your baby.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (39:50)

It is, although I've talked about it, I think less directly in the last couple of years, because one of the things that I realized, you talked about marketing earlier, and like, I too would like Santa to bring me the perfect marketing phrase. But one of the things that I've recognized is that

While teaching this framework is a lot of what I do, it's still what I do. A lot of the corporate training I do is like, okay, here's the basic framework. What do you think you are? How does that mean that you interact with other people on your team? How does that mean you interact with your supervisors or the members that you supervise, the team members you supervise? That's a how. And in marketing, we talk about the results, don't talk about how you achieve those results. So I haven't been talking about it as much.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (40:29)

Hmm.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (40:34)

But I think I may be moving back toward talking about it a little more directly because I have a membership and it hasn't been particularly robust. Like, I don't have a lot of people signed up. But especially as so many of our independently employed colleagues are going back into the traditional workforce. I don't know if you've seen this in your circles, but in my circles, tons of people who have been entrepreneurs for a while are applying for and getting jobs and going back into traditional employment.

I feel like there's this moment, especially for intensives, where, okay, you're gonna have your honeymoon, it's gonna be two weeks, it's gonna be six weeks, whatever it's gonna be, and then you're gonna start to feel the friction. And at that moment, if I can give you these tools, if we can have a place to talk about it, then that transition can be stronger for you, because I'm not gonna tell people that they shouldn't go back to having a job and some stable paycheck situation. That's great, I think that people who can should, but.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (41:15)

Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (41:32)

But these tools are really useful for making that a smooth transition for helping to ease those relationships and strengthen those relationships and keep the Gottman's Four Horsemen out of the workplace. We don't want them in our personal relationships either, but we definitely don't want them in the workplace.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (41:47)

So are you saying that to talk about it from this direction will help people understand that they are that so that they can find the support? Is that why you haven't been talking? Have you not been talking about it from the stance of, here's how you know if you're an intensive, here's how you know if you're an expansive? Am I following the?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (42:09)

Yeah, I haven't been talking specifically about the basics of the framework. And part of that is because I wrote classes and offered classes and for a while they were for sale. Now I have, I still have to relaunch them on the new platform. But, um, part of that was just because I felt like I had saturated my audience, the people who are listening knew and nobody else was listening because yay, algorithms. So I just stopped giving the basics and because when you're working with, you know, as an

Michelle Renee (she/her) (42:10)

Renaissance.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (42:37)

kind of an internal consultant with a team and a corporation, I would bring that as part of the beginning of the training. The 101 thing is like the first session. I usually do about six sessions with the company and the first session is typically the 101 and the second session is typically, okay, so everyone in the room, what are you and how is that affecting your dynamics? And then I move on to specific applications. How does this affect

Michelle Renee (she/her) (42:57)

Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (43:03)

your marketing, how does this affect your hiring, how does this affect your job descriptions, all that other stuff. And finally, how does getting your needs met affect your ability to hold to your ethical standards? Which is for me, the really juicy part.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (43:17)

Yeah, I see you swimming in the ethic conversations online all the time. Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (43:24)

because it's so important. And I think there are so few, there's so few like ladders into that conversation for the average person. Like I went to seminary, but if you're not in a couple of very rarified environments, there's no easy way into that conversation. And it really does have to do with, are your needs getting met?

Because if your needs aren't getting met, you're building resentments. If you're building resentments, those become the foundation for bending the rules just a little bit, just this time. And we see that in relationships too. I mean, I'm sure you see it in your work. You know, oh, I'm in my marriage and I have this commitment or this promise or whatever, and my needs aren't getting met. And so I'm just gonna justify to myself that it's okay for me to go try and meet that need in a different way that might not be within my agreement.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (44:12)

this is why I hear, we're the best of friends, but, and I'm like, but does she know you're here? You're not that really good friends if you're going behind your wife's back, right? Like your roommates, you're not even friends. Like, I don't know, that I could get into my whole like, if this isn't working for you, just renegotiate your relationship. Like it should be easy for everyone, right?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (44:21)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (44:42)

Simple.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (44:43)

Right, sure, that's not a big deal. Not for people raised in like straight hetero monogamy world.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (44:45)

Yeah, sure. No, it's an easy conversation.

Yeah, we're just queer everything and we would be in such a better place.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (44:57)

I mean, I often think that's true, that even if you're gonna end up back in a straight relationship, if it's an examined straight relationship, even if you're gonna end up back being cis, if it's an examined gender, that's a wildly different circumstance.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (45:13)

I'm in a monogamous relationship right now. People hear me talk about non-monogamy on here all the time. Not all the time, but I do mention other people and partners and whatnot every once in a while. But we're in a monogamy phase right now. And I like the fluidity of like, let's just keep renegotiating things because we're never stuck in one rigid way that my partner isn't coming to me and telling me when things aren't going well.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (45:15)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (45:42)

they're running to some professional to get their needs met because they won't talk to me. Like that doesn't happen in my relationship. We would just renegotiate it.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (45:53)

Right, I mean, ideally when you're in a relationship, no matter how many people are involved, if your needs aren't getting met, or if you're having a hard time or whatever, you go to the people or person you're in a relationship with and you say, hey, listen, I need X. And then everybody's like, okay, let's collaboratively problem solve for X.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (46:13)

Yeah, but like you're saying, in the corporate world, it's the same thing. If people aren't getting their needs met, I listen to my oldest son networks for one of the big guys. I won't name names. I'm very proud of him as a homeschooling mom that let him kind of do whatever the fuck he wanted to do, that he's found his version of success, right? But when you're...

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (46:24)

Mm-hmm.

That's fantastic.

or a version that works for now.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (46:37)

Well, for now, right, we have these conversations of like, yeah, you're 26 years old and you're really questioning what you want in career. You're just doing it before everyone else. Like other people would be doing this at 40, right? Of what is success? Is it the money number or is it your culture where you work or how you spend your free time or like?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (46:58)

And maybe this like financial backing that you build up for yourself now at 26 will give you the freedom to make some different choices later and that'll work out well for you.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (47:10)

So I get to watch what this company, how they treat their employees. And I'm just like, how is that supposed to turn out for them? Like, it's not building goodwill. It's not. It's it's same thing. My other son works for another big company that might serve coffee. And the shit they do in the backside of it, it's a company that has this faults. People see them falsely as being this progressive company, and it's not true.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (47:14)

Yeah.

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (47:36)

And how long can they sustain that? And what does that do overall when all of your employees resent being there? It just, it's gross.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (47:45)

Right.

Right. Like I would love to have a local manager even bring me in somehow, I don't know, write a grant, bring me in and train their coffee shop team. Because that coffee shop would be a better place to work than most of the other coffee shops in that chain or that branch or whatever.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (48:10)

It's like there's no investment in longevity. It's like, we know that turnover is expensive.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (48:17)

We do. It costs an entire salary, year's salary, to replace most people. Not quite as much at the lower levels of pay, but especially as you go up the chain.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (48:29)

Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (48:30)

If you as a software engineer cost you that person's salary, an entire that person's salary to replace them.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (48:37)

Yeah, we keep joking that he'll be the young one to unionize the store. And I couldn't be a prouder mama if that happens. Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (48:43)

I mean...

That would be awesome. Your other kid could also unionize. Just saying.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (48:50)

Yeah, right. Yeah, I don't think he's that infested. But the younger one, he has my heart, he's very like social justice minded. And he, you know, debates whether he wants to be a therapist, or he wants to go into law and work in politics and in policy. And like, he's just

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (49:00)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (49:14)

big-hearted and what will he do with it is the other question. They're both intensives for sure. My ex-husband, he was an intensive too and long lineage. I might have accidentally done okay with the two.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (49:19)

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, my impression is that you did great with them and that, you know, there are problems in parenting no matter who you are, right? Like it doesn't matter, but that when intensive kids have understanding, intensive parents, that it actually works out okay, because the kids, some part of the kid recognizes that it's okay to be intensive.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (49:52)

I think the fact that we ended up homeschooling, because my oldest has type 1 diabetes and the school system was just really fucking with us when he was really young.

That just opened up so many options for him as far as like, I'm really laid back as far as the school side of things. Once I deprogrammed from what you're supposed to do, like the rigidness of like, this is, you're supposed to know all these things. When I had a homeschool mom, I got involved with the hippies. Right. First, I found the Christian homeschoolers and they had to run the other direction because I wouldn't sign their statement of faith. Caused a lot of problems. It was kind of fun.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (50:15)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (50:32)

I found the hippies and the hippie moms were like, look, all your kid needs to know how to do is find the answer. Make sure he's well resourced and you're going to be good. And so I was like the, it wasn't an unschooler in the sense that we were completely free range, but I was like, okay, I would feel better if we at least get these core things.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (50:49)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (50:56)

like reading, writing, and arithmetic, like three Rs that aren't Rs, right? If we can just make sure we do those, and then the rest of it, you just do what, like either you're coming to me and telling me what you wanna teach me. That was what I did with my second one. That was super brilliant of me because I hate planning and plotting. And I was like, so what are you interested in? What are you gonna teach me about this year? And he's like, mom, I'm so into World War II. And I'm like, great. Like he would just tell me all the things, right? The other, the older one, he was into Minecraft.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (51:09)

Mm-hmm. Yes, it was.

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (51:24)

Like that was the big deal. And he used that to learn how to program. And he made this really successful mod back in the day where he was getting recognition from YouTubers and really cool stuff. And I was a little like worried like, oh God, is he gonna get hit with like bullies and like a lot of negative feedback? And it didn't happen for whatever reason. And he turned that into love for programming and he just self-taught.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (51:24)

Mm-hmm.

That's awesome.

Good.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (51:52)

So here's a kid that self-taught, went to community college, got his associates, but only because he was working there and it was free, and didn't have great self-esteem. Like that was where I kind of dropped the ball in their younger years because I was a very emotionally immature parent and we're trying to make up for that, I guess. Like, I don't know if, maybe nobody comes out of childhood with great self-esteem. I don't know, but.

He says to me one day, he's worked at the community college. He moved on to a credit union as a programmer there for a little while. And he says, mom, I'm really bored. Like, I'm starting to question if I could actually do more than I think I can. Like I'm capable of more than what I've been doing. Cause I just haven't had anything to gauge myself against. He goes, I think I might wanna apply to one of the big guys. And I said, oh, do you think you should stay at this job for a little bit? Like.

I feel like you just like he was maybe there for like two months, right? He was bored out of his mind. It was work from home and he was like, I get all my work done on Monday. Like what do I do for the rest of the week? And he's like, I'm just applying mom. I'm just going to see what the process is like. And wouldn't you know it, he got a fucking job, right? Like and he's like, oh, I'm actually have a, he really helped him see himself from somebody else's perspective of like actually.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (52:47)

He was bored. No, he was in intensive. He was done.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (53:10)

I'm like the best guy on my team. Like that says a lot and that starts to build that. And I remember when I went to work for Cuddlist and Operations, it was nice to have somebody tell me I was doing a good job because I'd always been self-employed. Like I didn't have any feedback into like have somebody else telling you, you're doing a good job. Even I'm his mom, I can't even do that, right? It doesn't mean the same. It doesn't carry the same weight. So I raised two intensives that...

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (53:22)

Right, and so you didn't have any feedback.

Right.

Well, and he had a contact sp-

Michelle Renee (she/her) (53:35)

are doing great things or potentially doing great things as my youngest isn't quite old enough to have realized exactly where he wants to land. But it's cool to watch intensives like thrive.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (53:49)

Yeah, and it's wonderful to create spaces and systems and opportunities for intensives to thrive because like everybody should not grow up wrestling the system the way we did.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (54:03)

Well, I don't know if you, I mean, we know you can't get away from the system completely, right? But certainly having parents that are understanding is helpful.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (54:09)

No, but you don't have to press.

Yeah, I think there's a difference between having to wrestle the system for like every last little drop of food and drink and recognizing, you know, this is the difference between a squished intensive and a tempered intensive in a lot of ways. So tempered intensive is one that...

knows they're intensive and knows in which context that's going to be a liability and makes a deliberate choice to not act so intensive in certain places at certain times because it doesn't meet their goals.

And a squished intensive is someone who internalizes the judgments about intensiveness and tries not to be intensive because they think it's bad.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (54:54)

Yeah, so conscious intensiveness versus unconscious intensiveness. Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (54:59)

To some extent, yeah. But also there's a kind of universality to squishness. Squish people are usually trying not to be intensive everywhere. They think they're too much in their relationships. They think they're too much at work. They think they're too much in their family of origin. They think they're too much, you know, if they have a hobby they're passionate about, they think that's too much and they're kind of shy and hiding it because, oh my God, what if somebody finds out that I have an entire room full of Legos or whatever?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (55:23)

Do they also apologize a lot? Okay, because I'm like, oh, this, yeah, I bet you they're with my apologizers, the ones that come in and apologize a lot. Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (55:25)

all the time.

Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm crying. I'm sorry, I'm laughing. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And you spend like the first six months that you know them going, it's okay, you don't have to apologize. You're fine. No, you're fine.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (55:35)

Mm-hmm.

I'd literally say, if you're not physically hurting me, you do not need to apologize to me. That's the rule. It's like, unless you actually like physically harm me in some way, I'm resilient.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (55:56)

I mean, in a non-professional fashion, if you lash out at me, I would probably want an apology too, but like... Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (56:03)

Oh, sure. That doesn't happen in my space. Like this is the love space. Like we are all in our happy feelings or sad feelings. Right. But we don't anger can show up a little bit in the sense of like, sometimes people really get a lot of grief and anger at like. Lost time. Things like that, but it just doesn't. I mostly see sad, like the grief side of the sadness side of the grief and just.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (56:10)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (56:31)

good feelings, like it's oxytocin, right? Like, so yummy. Like we come out of here just like, I'm like, don't sign any contracts. You're gonna love everyone today. Like, it's like, I'm Snow White, right? Like it's just this, I don't have to, I don't deal with people being hurtful. They're not lashing out at me. They're more so sharing like frustration to other people and how they've been hurt.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (56:34)

Right. Oxytocin is so yummy.

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (57:01)

but not at me. So I'm more like, I'm so sorry you had to go through that. That sounds horrible. That should never have to happen to anybody. That's more so the.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (57:09)

Right. That's the vibe.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (57:12)

Yeah, we don't need apologies in here.

Thankfully. Unless I step in it.

which has happened. My intensiveness, in this case, definitely, the one I'm thinking of is definitely an intensive thing. And then we got the opportunity of repair, which is such a wonderful opportunity to have. I don't recommend people purposely go out and look to step in it so that you can repair. But it's like the silver lining of if it can go well, it can be such a healing process for people

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (57:15)

Which sometimes happens.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (57:43)

the people involved in it, especially if you've never had anybody attempt to repair with you.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (57:49)

Yeah.

Yeah, there's so much healing possible in the kinds of cuddle spaces that you create. It's, I think it's really transformative because I don't, I think there are some things you can't really, you can't really learn out of a book. You can't really learn by theory. You have to learn by experience. You have to lay down the experiential pathways in your brain.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (57:50)

That's extra special.

Mm-hmm.

I got naked with a client yesterday. I think she reported that she's never actually seen another naked body or been naked in front of someone. Don't quote me on this, I might be off. But I think she even said, like, I don't even think I saw my husband, my previous husband naked. So I think I'm right here. Just being able to experience yourself in a container that is full of love.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (58:21)

Well.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (58:39)

and actually get to experience it in your body, being held in your natural state, right? And being loved even in that state. Cause we don't get a lot of spaces to just be just loved on and especially without clothing on, right? Especially when those were spaces that were not safe in your past, right? It's such a transformative space.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (58:43)

Yeah.

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (59:07)

And like, you can't even sometimes do that with a partner because there's too many things at play. Right? Like, this is a space just for this person and all the energy is directed right at them. Right? I'm not coming in with my own stuff. It's just about them. Nope. It's just to help them feel better in the body that they're walking this earth with.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (59:14)

Mm-hmm.

Right, they're not there to meet your needs.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (59:36)

right? And to then be able to recognize, Oh man, I feel really safe right now. Super cool.

And she's an intensive, but yeah. Yeah, I'm always recommending like ever as soon as I my antenna goes off because they come in and they start to tell me everything about their lives without hesitation. Right. And I get the sense that they're not. Super positive about that aspect of themselves. I'm like, oh, I have a book for you, and I wish I could track.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (59:43)

speaking of things that you see in your clients.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:00:07)

Like I would love to know how many people I've referred to the book that actually have picked it up because it comes out of my mouth still in 2024 now. I haven't said it this year, except for in this conversation, but I know it'll come up with a client again. I know it just started. It's just one of my, like, how to better love yourself books.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:00:07)

Yeah.

the years young.

love that. I love it. When I wrote it, it was like, it felt like I had a mandate from the universe because people kept resonating with it and people kept wanting it and people kept spontaneously applying it to things like their children and their partners and their mothers-in-law. So I love that.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:00:33)

Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:00:53)

you recognize it in your clients and that it's able to help, even if they don't buy the book. I love it when people buy the book, but they don't have to buy the book. Even when you recognize it and you just name it and you give them that piece of information. This is a known thing. This is a way that people sometimes are. And you're not alone and it's not bad.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:01:14)

Yeah, I'm here too. Like in most of my work, it's like me too. I've been through this too. I've been through this process. I've hated my body. I've whatever the thing is that they're showing up for. I've had a hard time with orgasm. I've had like, that's what I love about. Like, I'm just like, I'm in it with, I've gone through it. I'm doing it. You can do it too. And

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:01:16)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:01:38)

Let's talk about why you don't like fast food sex. It's in the book, right? Like, I love that chapter and I've gone back to it a few times over the years to like share it with people specifically that chapter of like trying to help people understand their sexuality and why some things don't work for them when it works for other people. And we're all so comparative, right? We just wanna put ourselves against what some kind of normal is.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:02:05)

Yeah, and I think we, especially with sex, because it's not 100% but largely relational, it's almost impossible to escape whatever stories the other person brings into the room and into the bed or onto the couch or wherever. And that means that

It's not just, like, if you say, I don't like fast food sex, and then the other person's like, well, I don't know why all my other partners were fine with fast food sex. Or they don't say that because they're trying to be respectful. They're not trying to be rude, but they're just baffled. But sex is fun, like snacks. We could go get snacks, we could go get an ice cream, or we could have sex. Either way, that's fine.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:02:54)

Yeah, I think if like I could just get people to just figure out what they like, write their owner's manual and just believe in themselves in like, not look at like who's right or wrong, but are we compatible? Because

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:03:04)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, and do your honors manual revisions because you don't stay the same.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:03:17)

Leela, since we have last talked.

Oh my gosh, I'm just like, it's so funny to me. The things that I'm learning about myself, I keep saying like, okay, I've heard the thing that we're all onions and we just have to peel layers and layers and layers, right? But let's say onions on like an apple peeler where it's just this spiral thing because like I'm just getting to know myself. I don't, I think it is somewhat that I've changed. But also I think some of it is just like being able to get rid of enough of the junk that the true parts can come through. And like,

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:03:44)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:03:48)

Last year I learned that I have aphantasia, which means that I don't see pictures. Paul was like, I got to tell you about this thing I learned about. It comes in all excited, right? And we're at this kinky board game weekend up in the hills of West Virginia with some friends. And he's like, I just heard about this thing. He goes, I'm going to ask you a question. Tell me what you see. He goes, when I say red truck, what do you see? And I go.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:03:53)

You can't imagine things, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:04:16)

I see the words red truck and he goes, no way. You're the thing I was just going to teach you about. And I'm like, what? And he's like, you don't see a red truck? And I was like, no. And he's like, you have a fantasia. And I'm just like, oh shit, this is like in backwards, like, oh, this is why when we went rock climbing and I said, hey, babe, could you help me with this? Not because I can't tie in. I haven't climbed in a long time and I don't remember how to do it. And he goes,

Come on, Michelle, there's only two ways you can tie this knot. And I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about? He's like, just try it. There's only two ways. And I go, could you just tie the fucking knot for me? Like, I got really mad. And he's like, whoa, looking back at it, he pulls up a picture of that knot. I don't have that, right? So it's like making things make sense.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:04:59)

Yeah.

Yeah, I pull up, I get fully realized images and or usually and tactile, sensational memories.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:05:15)

Oh. See, I get a lot of the... I can tell you how I felt.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:05:20)

I can tell you how the rope felt moving through my hands. That's how I learned to tie knots for rock climbing.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:05:22)

Okay.

Okay. Well, I don't have either one of those. So, so I don't know if I'll ever become a rope top. Like I don't know.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:05:30)

But, yeah, but like with, I mean, if you became a rope top, you would need to figure out what the accommodations are, right? This is just like being an intensive and being like, okay, if I'm an intensive, I'm not going to plan to do an hour of whatever every day because it's not happening. If you wanted to become a rope top, you would like eroticize referencing a book or a picture

series of instructions.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:05:57)

I would probably, yeah, I would probably take a bunch of pictures and have a very specific, easy way to access them because I would need to pull that up.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:06:05)

Or you could have your rope bottom read you the instructions one line at a time.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:06:11)

I don't do reading. I wouldn't need to see a picture. And I have top for Rope, to be fair. I just haven't really dove into it because it makes sense to me now why I struggled with it. It makes sense to me why I felt like I was a bad top in general because visualizing a scene isn't something I can do. I don't fantasize, right? So that was an interesting thing. Yes.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:06:14)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Do you, can I ask you a question? Do you enjoy any kind of erotic media?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:06:38)

anything you want.

I like audio.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:06:45)

Uh huh.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:06:46)

And I don't pursue any of it. It's so funny. Like it's so not important, but yet I have recorded my own sex, like just the audio. Love it. I've listened to it over and over again. And if I was going to pick, like if you said you have these things to pick from, I would probably pick the audio file.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:06:48)

Right.

Okay, when you listen to the audio, how do you experience it?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:07:06)

So in the case of like the memory, like the ones of us, because that's the only one that comes to mind, I could put, I could picture, picture is a weird sense. I could put myself back in that space and have the memory of that space, right? I do, I can pull up an image if I try. It's just fuzzy. But I can remember the feelings. I can, I could play, give you a play by play of what was happening in that moment.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:07:11)

Mm.

So you have the feelings and the sequence, but not the image. Does that happen for you?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:07:35)

Mm-hmm. And if I, if I smoke pot, the image comes up easier.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:07:41)

Oh, now I'm like, oh, that's an interesting, because it means that your brain doesn't actually not have the image available.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:07:42)

So...

FFFF

Right. I'm like, is this trauma? Right. So then I'm telling the story on a podcast. Cool. Queer Sex Therapist up in Portland. I should totally connect you to. Also an intensive. I was on their podcast and was telling the story about having aphantasia. My sisters listened to the podcast. They both separately messaged me and go, oh my God, I think I have aphantasia too. So then I talked to the aphantasia people. I'm like,

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:07:52)

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:08:16)

I commented on something on Instagram and I'm like, hey, so my sisters are identifying this way too. Is this normal? They're like, actually we're seeing a lot of like.

hereditary factors here, but also we grew up in the same house. It still could be a trauma response and all these things. Who knows, but I think it's fascinating.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:08:26)

Mm-hmm.

Yes. I mean, brain geek to brain geek. Yeah. It's like, what are the things that allow us? Our brains hold so much and our brains can do so much. This is what got me into hypnosis. It's like, there's so much our brains can do. When I took that training in 2019 or something, like 2018, 2019, something like that, when I took my eight-day training, she showed us video of someone undergoing

a c-section with nothing but hypnosis for pain.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:09:11)

Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:09:12)

Like the medical stories, if you go digging into the medical history of hypnosis, the things that have happened, our brains are so powerful.

And then you look at things like people with DID or who are systems, and like some members of the system have diabetes. Some members of the system do not have diabetes.

How is that even a thing?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:09:33)

Yeah. Well, I'm remembering when we tried to do the hypnosis thing and I think you had me at a door. And now I'm like, I think I could visualize the door, but maybe I wasn't able to visualize it as well as maybe somebody else could have. Right? Like, like I say, I have like, I can pull a fuzzy image up, but it's not my first, it's not the first thing that happens. It's like I have to, it takes extra work kind of thing.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:09:33)

So yeah, it makes me.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Right, and knowing that about you, I would probably choose a less visual, like instead of having you picture yourself on a movie screen, I would have you like, feel your way into something. Because you've told me that feelings are a thing that you can recall.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:10:11)

Right. Yeah.

Yep. Oh, I can. It's so like I can remember feelings so strongly. The other thing.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:10:19)

Right, so I would key into that. I'd be like, you're going down a set of stairs and you can feel the uneven, you know, worn texture of the wood under your feet as you go.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:10:25)

Right?

Yep, yep, that I can embody that. So this year, that was last year's thing.

And also, I want to add, I have a colleague in DC who was one of the three, three out of 10 of us in this weekend, all identified as a Fantasia is supposed to be really rare. I don't know if 30% is that rare, but anyways, she's a surrogate partner colleague of mine. She's another a Fantasia person. So fast forward. So we have this thing together. I get a Marco Polo from her and she's like, Hey, so I have this client that's, um, asexual.

And so she's also a LCSW. So she's like, I'm reading this book on asexuality so I can better serve my client. And I'm kind of relating to some of these stories. And she goes, I don't think I experienced sexual attraction. And I'm like, yeah, you say that. I don't think I do either. Because my sexuality is starting to get incredibly interesting for me and the fact that it feels like it takes a lot of spoons. Like.

I'm really relating to responsive desire heavily. And I know some of that's because I've been in my relationship for a long time and what have you. But when she says this, I'm like, yeah, I think that too because I think I had sexual attraction one time and it scared the shit out of me. Like I have one thing to compare to that was so different of an experience where I walked into a party and I saw this man and I went, holy shit, I'm going home with him tonight. Like it was this...

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:11:59)

Wow.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:11:59)

scared the shit out of me and a girlfriend said, do you want to go shoot pool? Like leave this party? And I said, yes, get me out of here. It scared me because it was such an odd feeling for me. So when I look at that and I go, oh yeah, well this makes sense. This is why I bring up Aubrey Lancaster. She was very helpful in helping me figure this out. I have lots of other attractions, right? I'm very sensually attracted. When I see somebody I'm not thinking I want to have sex with them. I'm thinking, oh, I would always like to cuddle with them.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:12:28)

I want to touch them.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:12:30)

I want to be emotionally intimate, like I want intimacy, but it doesn't translate initially to I want to have sex with this person. But my owner's manual that I've been so carefully crafting, I know that I can get to sexual desire, which is not about a person. This is what I learned from Aubrey. Sexual attraction is aimed at a person. Sexual desire is I want to have sex. So I know myself as a person.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:12:33)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:12:57)

I have this one friend and we have no sexual chemistry unfortunately. We've tried many times. Not many times, enough times. But we like to cuddle. And when I'm cuddling with him, I still go, man, this is feeling good. I get to the desire part, but I know that we don't have the thing. But with my husband, I'll say, I like to have sex with him, but I don't think about it. So we know the dance is you get Michelle in bed.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:13:05)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:13:28)

with no expectations, because expectations are a real killer for me. We start to touch, things start to feel good. I know there's this thing, if I do it to him, he makes this noise, right? The odd hole part of me kicks in. That turns me on. So arousal shows up and then sexual desire shows up, right? It's interesting to start to talk about this with people, especially people I've had sex with, and they're like, you're not sexually attracted to me? Like it's an ego hit.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:13:31)

Right.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:13:56)

kind of thing. It's like I'm not sexually attracted to anybody, right? Which then makes my work extra interesting. Or it made it easier in some ways. Let's say that part again.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:14:04)

Yeah. I think it probably creates capacity for it. Yeah. I said it probably creates capacity for it.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:14:13)

Yeah, in some ways it does, except for where I'm at now, where I'm like, sexual spoons are hard to come by these days. Do I really want to spend them on my clients?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:14:23)

I've heard a lot of sex workers talk about that issue at various points in their careers. Like, you know, at some points in their lives it was easy and now it's like, it's a lot of work and I'm willing to put the work in, but like not for a stranger, a relative stranger, not for a client, not for a business relationship. I find I've always been what people call dummy and you've probably heard me rant about

calling it demi because it does not feel like a partial sexuality to me. And I feel like calling it half is weird. Um, but, but I've always been like that. And it took me a long time to work out what was happening. Like for a long time, I was like, I guess I just don't want to date. And that's not true. But for me, what I need is I need the relationship first and out of the emotional connection and the relationship comes.

a quality of sensuality. I can have very sensual, lovely, yummy, juicy cuddles with no sexual desire involved. But out of the relationship comes the sexual desire. And out of one of the things you talked about responsive desire, one of the things for me is that out of being wanted.

doesn't seem to want specifically me or specifically something about what we have together. I'm not interested because for me it's about the relationship. It's an expression of relationship.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:15:46)

Yeah, there's a term for that.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:15:49)

Yeah, there are so many terms. I can't even keep track anymore.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:15:50)

Aubrey gave me this whole list and there was like, I need I'm attracted to a person because they're attracted to me was a was one of the options but you're saying maybe it's more than that.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:16:00)

But that's, yeah, it's not, I have to like the person and be engaged in relationship with them, like some kind of relationship, not romantic relationship necessarily, first. Like there has to be emotional connection. If there's no emotional connection, it doesn't matter how attracted they are to me. And in fact, if someone is too attracted to me when I'm not attracted to them, then it's a turnoff and I don't even wanna hang out with them.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:16:12)

Mm-hmm.

Isn't it fun to figure these little nuances? Or maybe it's a burden, I don't know, but it's fascinating to me.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:16:27)

It is.

I mean, I'd rather know what's going on. I'd rather know what to expect. I'd rather know how to explain it to people. But the challenge is for me, when I'm in a relationship that has some duration to it and that those routine expressions of mutual desire drop off, then all of my creative energy, because for me, it's creative energy. All my creative energy goes other places. I have so many creative pursuits.

And I can just like pick up a sewing project or pick up a woodworking project or pick up another brand new art or pick up my brush and do some painting. Like I can do so much that if I've, like I won't even be thinking about it, but my energy will just go elsewhere. If the person I'm with and like I'll still love them, I'll still respect them, I'll still cuddle with them. Like all of that other stuff will be easily present. But if they...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:16:56)

You do.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:17:25)

Stop expressing interest in me.

It just goes away.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:17:28)

Yeah, I'm glad that, right, like I'm really glad that Paul and I have both taken a pretty conscious approach to it and that he also doesn't have like a super, like we're both kind of very like, yeah, sex is great if we think about it. Like it doesn't, it's not on the top of our mind all the time and we both like try to prioritize it.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:17:28)

Which is too bad, because I really like sex.

Right.

Put it in your daily app.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:17:51)

you know, just because we know that otherwise we won't. If it just, if we're waiting for it to organically happen, it's probably not, but I also can't schedule sex, right? To me, it's, we can schedule time to connect and it might turn into sex. And I feel very safe that if I don't get there, he's totally okay with that. And it's just such a blessing to have that compared to my first marriage, which would have been whining and complaining and turning into a toddler and, you know.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:17:56)

It's just not.

Yeah, that's not a great situation.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:18:22)

It does not have a good look. It doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't build more desire. Like it goes quite the other direction. Yeah. So that's like my two big like, wow, Michelle, 47 and 48 have been very interesting for you. What's coming? Like, what am I going to hit by the time I hit 50? What's next? I'm kind of excited about it. I was like, what's the next iteration of, of me? And.

Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:18:50)

I feel like there's this, the level of like, when you're peeling the onion, the first few levels are just trauma, at least for a lot of us, it's just trauma, trauma. And there's trauma piling up around you and sort of rotting around your feet as you keep peeling and you keep peeling and you're tired and you're crying because it's an onion and you just keep peeling and it's, and it feels like it's never gonna end. It feels like, you know, Drappaddi Sari, where it just keeps unwinding and unwinding and unwinding and unwinding. And you realize that it was probably, you know,

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:18:57)

Mm-hmm.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:19:19)

larger force protecting you from something, but still like after a while you're just tired. And then there's this pause when you realize that you've peeled back all of the like most obvious, you know there's more in there, but you've peeled back that outer husk. And you take a breath and then you start to reveal like the first version of you that isn't completely coated in trauma with trauma sauce. And then...

that version has to be lived through. And then you end up with a second version. And the thing about the way that we're living so long and the way that we're becoming so self-aware is that I think we're going through more versions of ourselves before we die.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:20:01)

I'm in my teenager right now. I'm loving my no, it's so fucking fun. And like, it's exactly what you just described. Like I say, like my reason to have sex has changed, right? In the trauma part, I was having sex to affirm myself, to like, it was a validation, it was a temperature check in my relationship. It was, I had lots of reasons to have sex.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:20:03)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:20:29)

And then like I did a I did MDMA in 2019. Had the most amazing grounding experience with myself that changed my self worth. That day, I left a completely different person and with self worth. Okay, now why am I having sex? Because I'm not worried about proving myself or these things. And it changed.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:20:33)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:20:56)

It changed my drive. My drive was protection. It was covering for these other things. And now without that, I just get to come at it for a different why. Why are we having sex? Why do I want to have sex? What do I like about sex? Why is it still important to me? Like it's still important to me. It just doesn't have to. It's not proving anything. And so.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:21:14)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:21:23)

Yeah, it's such a cool place to be that I've gotten to this layer of the onion.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:21:29)

Yeah, it's... I think it's... For me, sex is more important to me than I have given it priority to reflect. That was a really convoluted sense. I'm not giving sex the priority that would accurately reflect the amount of importance it has to be. But it's always been a little complicated for me.

because I sometimes have flashbacks and stuff and like I have to be, I have to be in a context and with a person that I think can withstand that and not take it personally. And...

I think sometimes especially in the harder years, it's just been easier not to think about it too hard. And then, you know, there've been years and years when I haven't had a partner that I was having sex with and that. Oh.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:22:14)

too.

Yeah, I had a moment the other day. I still haven't figured out why, and I'm not super concerned about why. It was more so a victory in recognizing it at the time. Whereas laying my head in Paul's lap, he was like, we were going through, we had a rough situation experience. Hit some of my old, old trigger-y trauma stuff, right? And a couple days later, and he goes, can we just go cuddle? Like, I just wanna like play with your hair.

And I said, okay. So I went and laid in bed and put my head on his lap. And I was letting him do it. And then I felt this like fear come over me. And I was like, all right, Michelle. So I just said, hey, you know what? Like that's not actually feeling great to me. Why don't you try just like placing your hand on my head, but not moving. I think that might feel better. And he goes, okay. So he does that. And then I was like, nope, still there. Okay, I'm gonna, this isn't working for me. I need to stop.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:22:54)

Interesting.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:23:16)

didn't explain myself. He didn't ask me. He just said, okay, like, not a problem. And in Paul's kind of way of like, he doesn't necessarily go super deep on stuff, you know, he'll ask the most amazing question out of the blue and like, open everything up for me. But in a lot of cases, he just goes, okay, like doesn't even like know why, know nothing. Next day, I said, thank you for just like letting me.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:23:22)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:23:42)

just say not to do that and not like poking at me about wanting to know more. What was happening was that I was feeling incredibly unsafe. It had nothing to do with you. I'm 100% sure of that, but I was so it was so interesting to be able to feel it and do something to advocate for myself, even though it didn't make sense. And I was like,

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:24:00)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:24:05)

I'm winning. Like, this is the thing, right? Like, this is the gold star moment of like, oh, you're doing this. This is what you, my inner child would have loved if I could have done this so many years ago, right? And it's not too late. And like I say, I'm in my inner teenager years now where I'm getting so much, like, I love being angsty and just being like, no, mm-mm.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:24:11)

Yeah.

Thank you.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:24:33)

Not going to make me. Like, it's just... I imagine my 20s will be interesting. I don't know. Like, I don't know what's next.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:24:40)

Yeah, I think it sometimes does. Like, we get, I think we get developmentally stuck in the course of traumatizing events. And sometimes we don't get unstuck until we do all that peeling. And it's not always trauma. Like, I spend a lot of time in the transmasculine spaces and a lot of people who are entering transition.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:24:50)

I'm gonna go.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:25:03)

later in life, which is becoming younger and younger, which is great, but also really disorienting. Like it used to be later in life was in your 40s, and now later in life, like people come into the spaces sometimes being like, well, I'm 26, is it too late for me to transition?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:25:20)

Oh my God, I have a story for you. I'll let you finish this one and then I'm gonna tell you the opposite side of that spectrum.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:25:25)

And we're like, no, it's never too late unless you're dead. Dead bodies don't heal from stuff very well, but unless you're dead, it's not too late. And frankly, if you were a ghost, you probably could transition. We just don't understand how that would work. So people come in and they often arrive in these spaces when they're very fresh in their process.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:25:30)

Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:25:49)

We say in trans spaces that people's eggs crack when they kind of realize that they're not cis. And frankly, sometimes people come in years after their egg has cracked, or they've been like, it's cracked and they've been like, consuging it back together. They're like, no, this will be gold and it will be fine. And eventually they give up and come and say, okay, here we are. And watching the unfolding, unfurling, like, and then...

They might be 38, but they're like, I feel like a teenager. Everything is different. I had no idea my desire worked like this. I had no idea my body would work like this. I had no idea that any of this worked like this, and I'm not even on hormones yet.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:26:33)

Right, yeah. So the other side of that, and it was the coolest thing, one of the coolest things of last year was I got, I had somebody reach out to me that was in their 80s, and their grandchild had come out as trans, and they started to question themselves. And I was just like, this is so fucking cool. Like.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:26:49)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:26:56)

I didn't get to work with them because they were on the East Coast and I was right at the point where I was moving, but I got to send them over to a trans surrogate, which was just, I think, the best combination for them. And I just, oh, it just made my fucking week, right, maybe my month at that time, because I think we have an idea that people get really less flexible as they get older.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:27:09)

Mm-hmm.

Not always. I think 40 is the first fuck it age, but I think that's creeping downward too. And then I think there are a couple of other like transition points where people are like, I could die tomorrow.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:27:24)

No, not always.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:27:38)

well, when am I going to do this? In 10 years? Yeah, yeah. And so, and I think sometimes it's like, sometimes it's like that ADHD chain up and down the family, where like one person gets diagnosed, usually the kid goes in to get diagnosed because of school stuff. And then the parents like, what were those questions again? And then

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:27:41)

Yeah, if not now, when? Yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:28:02)

The parent is like, and looks at their parent and is like, mom, mom. And mom's like, those things are normal. And the parent's like, mom, they're normal for you and for me and for my kid because we all have ADHD. That's what's going on. And.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:28:18)

We are looking at a lot of that stuff in our family.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:28:21)

Yeah.

And I think it's, and of course the question of how much of this is nurture is also really interesting. But I think watching people come out intergenerationally and watching people figure themselves out intergenerationally, watching people figure out that they're intensive and then be like, and my mom is intensive, but oh my God, she's squished. Right, like that story is so real. And it's so transformative because then they look at their kid.

And they're like, my teenager, my 11 year old, my five year old, right, is intensive. And I don't have to do that to my kid.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:28:57)

I don't know how you felt about the book Untamed. I know there's lots of people have different feelings about it. I don't know if you ever came in contact with it.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:29:04)

I don't remember if the title is familiar, but I didn't... I don't think I read it.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:29:09)

It was a big COVID hit, like in the very beginning of COVID.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:29:12)

I had no focus at the beginning of COVID, so I wouldn't have read it.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:29:16)

Okay, well a lot of women came out as lesbians after reading this book. There was a big influx of, I don't know, I might be gay. But one of the messages from the book that I really love is that liberation is never one direction.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:29:24)

Mm-hmm.

Oh wait, is this Glennon Doyle's book? I did read that. I actually liked it. I was surprised. I went into it prepared to not like it.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:29:34)

Mm-hmm.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:29:39)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:29:39)

I did

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:29:40)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:29:40)

pass it on to my own family member of like, let me just shake up your whole fucking life. She's not divorced. She said, she shared that she read it and I said, oh, I was thinking about reading it, but I don't know if it'd be worth it. And she goes, oh, Michelle, you will love the chapter three on blow jobs. That will be your chapter. And it was, I loved that chapter because it's all about.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:29:44)

Right. Good.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:30:04)

Glennon goes to the therapist. She's still married to her husband, but she's thinking about um, I Can't remember what her partner's name is. Anyways, um, she's thinking about her and she's like look I just cannot have sex with my husband anymore Abby. Yes. Yeah I just cannot have sex with my husband anymore and The therapist turns to her and says have you considered blowjobs? They're less intimate and I had this like oh holy shit, so

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:30:17)

Abby, well, isn't it right to Abby?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:30:31)

This message of we're supposed to perform for our husbands, this sexual need fulfillment dispensary bullshit, that was my ex-husband, right? It's like, I have needs and you, what are you gonna, you can't deny me of these needs.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:30:38)

Right.

That hits my demand avoidance so hard.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:30:48)

Well, I just rolled over and let him do whatever he wanted to do, which killed my sexual desire in lots of ways. So in this chapter, I just bawled because I thought he wasn't necessarily a monster on his own because I kept thinking, why would you want this? Why is this fun? This isn't good sex. Like I basically just have like a pulse and a warm body. And why is that enough? But then I read that chapter.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:30:52)

Oh, honey.

has dispensing for the jobs.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:31:15)

I'm just like, oh, this is society. Like the whole society is broken in this sense of like these messages and religion comes into play here and all sorts of things, right? But I was able to take the focus not just on my ex-husband, but blow it up and go, oh, he was getting this message from all sorts of places, right? I was getting this message. Yeah, yeah.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:31:19)

Mm.

Right, he was embedded in the system.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:31:40)

So, so it was like, I ended up finding it to be a really great book. But that the liberation part, like I got out of the relation, that marriage and eventually got into therapy. And then one of my kids got into therapy and then the other kid got into therapy. And holy shit, my ex-husband eventually got into therapy. And he was actually said to one of my kids, why are you going to there? Why do you want therapy? Therapy is for crazy people. Like, who says that to their actual child?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:31:57)

Mm-hmm.

Nice.

more people than you'd expect.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:32:12)

I know. But like, the positive part of this is that even he eventually got into therapy, right? So this liberation, this doing the work, it's like a pebble in a pond, right? It just keeps going out. And so the work I've done on myself gets to show up in my children, it gets to show up in my ex-husband, it gets to show up in my clients, and then they get to show up in their...

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:32:21)

Mm-hmm.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:32:35)

with their kids and their partners and we just keep doing this multiplying because I decided to liberate myself at some point, right? Like it just keeps having this rippling effect and we're all doing that and it can make a change.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:32:52)

Yeah, yeah, and basic systems theory is that if you change one member of a system, then nobody gets to stay the same, which is why people get so resentful of one person in the system doing the work. If the whole system didn't sign up for the work, people get so grumpy. And it happens when people read my book, and I'm sure it happened when people read Untamed. And it happens, I'm sure it happens when people show up for cuddling and like...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:33:19)

Thank you.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:33:20)

the system change, right? That one figure in the system changes and when that figure changes, it changes how they operate in the system. It changes their role in the system. It changes their behavior in the system. And so nobody else gets the privilege of just pretending that they're not impacted because the gaps are no longer being filled the way they were. There's no longer the same shape space for anybody.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:33:46)

I joke that I have some worse business model and that I actually try to talk clients out of working with me a lot of times if they're not single. Because if they're, especially when their partner doesn't know that they're coming to me, that even if it's in strictly platonic space, they're going to be changed and it will affect their relationship.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:34:05)

Mm-hmm.

I mean, I think that's true of any good change work, therapeutic, anything. Like, right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:34:13)

Oh, for sure. But it's informed consent though, right? Like, like I have, you know, a couple that worked with, well, one person in the couple worked with me in full knowledge of the other person. And it was great for the individual. They're now, you know, separated and I think that's for the best, right? But I don't think anybody, that's not what they signed up for when they, you know, sent me, sent him to me.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:34:26)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:34:40)

Like that wasn't something that they knew was gonna happen. And so now I'm just kind of like, just so you know, I need you to have a full understanding of what you're signing up for. Cause you don't, even if you don't think you're coming here to work on something, right? Even if you're coming just for straight cuddling, you're going to learn things. There's no way that you can hang out with me and not change. It's just impossible. So I kind of like want them to really opt in.

like really opt into it, because I'm not holding the responsibility for that.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:35:11)

Yeah, I mean, I don't think anybody can really hold the responsibility for the impact that their relationship with someone else has on everyone else that person, like, and maybe I've just been queer and polyamorous way too long for that to make any sense to me. But, you know, to me, like,

If I came to you or to another catalyst, because we have a different kind of relationship, but if I came to a catalyst because I had something that I wanted or I wanted to work on something, I would, and I wanted to maintain my relationship and the health of my relationship, I would make a practice of including my partner in the journey.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:35:56)

Mm-hmm.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:35:57)

not necessarily in coming to sessions, although maybe I would bring them once to introduce them, be like, this is the person I'm working with, they're not a boogeyman. But also because, this is something that I really learned to my bones when I was in seminary, although I knew about it in various other contexts before and after. But...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:36:02)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, I would love that.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:36:19)

If people go to seminary and they don't bring their spouse along for the ride, and when I went to seminary, most seminary programs were fully residential. Now a lot of them are low residency, so people don't leave their homes in the same way that they used to. But if people didn't bring their spouses along, it was extremely rare for the relationship to survive. Because you've got somebody in a bubble immersed in what we know is a top-to-toe, transformative...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:36:28)

Mm-hmm.

Makes sense.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:36:48)

four year long transformative experience. I used to describe it as that you come in, they take you apart, they hand you the box of Legos and they say, okay, build a minister. Which I think they give people more support now. I certainly hope they give people more support now. But the dismantling and reassembling experience is still fairly similar. And if your partner is there and watches it happen and participates in it and engages with you throughout the experience, then most of the time the marriage is lost.

The people that I went to seminary with, who I met their partners, trying to think if this is true. I think only one of the people who came and was like in a solid, well-established marriage is no longer with that person.

But people who didn't bring their partners, it didn't last. And so if I were entering a deep transformative experience, I would come home and I would talk about it.

I'd come home and I would.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:37:41)

but this is the problem, right? That's the part that's not happening in their relationship to begin with, right? So it's like, we're not starting from a place. It'd be very different if a couple showed up and said, hey, we're looking for some support, maybe a wheel of consent or whatever, right? That's very different than the person that's like a specific example. I'm having erectile issues.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:37:59)

Right.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:38:08)

Cool, how do you think working with me by yourself is going to solve that? It doesn't help your relationship at all. Like this is stuff you could be working on with your partner, right? It's already starting from a bad place.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:38:12)

Mm-hmm.

If the problem is a wiring problem, we can't fix that here. And if the problem is a psychological problem, you can't fix that without your partner. That's relational. Yeah, I'm lucky to be in relationships now that are fairly well-rooted in communication. And I think if I were going to see a catalyst for support, I would...

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:38:32)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:38:45)

I would just be like, hey, listen, we've tried to fix this problem. It's not getting fixed. I'd really like to go get some support. You know, this is what I'm thinking. This is how I'm thinking it'll work. I'd like your, I'd like your support in doing it. Like, I don't want to be doing this out by myself. I want you to be engaged with it. So I want to go there and then like, come back and talk about it and see if we can figure it out and then my time with the Cuddlist would largely be like.

Okay, so this thing worked, or this thing feels like it was important, or this thing felt like motion. So how can you help me figure out how to bring what we did home?

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:39:24)

Yep, yep, exactly it. So I have a client right now that asked me, can I bring my partner to our next session? And I was like, yes. Like we were doing a lot of like exercise, we're doing more Wheel of Consent. I always have cuddling in my work, but so they wanted me to be able to help them be able to do the exercise with each other. And I'm like, this is...

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:39:32)

Mm-hmm.

Great.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:39:47)

I was a little nervous because I don't do a lot of couples work because it's a little too close to home. It's just so like, I have too many negative things, especially when it comes around like sexuality stuff with couples. If they showed up really healthy, it's a whole nother situation, but I can sniff out like any kind of negativity is like, no, I can't do this. But this was not the case here. So it was like, I got to show them like three minute game. And like,

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:39:51)

Yeah, it's tricky.

Uh-huh.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:40:18)

hand caress, like sunset focus stuff. And it was just like, oh, it was so healing for me to be part of their process. Like because I've had negative stuff, I don't have many couple stories, but they're generally like, nothing starts out good when you start with fix my wife. Right? Like in the early days, the things I let show up in my office, I would, I would, I would sniff that one out really fast these days, but

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:40:19)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:40:43)

Yeah, this was a great experience. I'm like, yeah, I would love to show you, your partner how to do these things so you can practice at home. So good.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:40:49)

Yeah.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:40:51)

Anyways, okay. We could talk for a very long time. I know. I know. I thank you, Leela, for obliging me in this request of like, I love talking about like how I got to where I'm at because I think it's so relevant to the people that I work with because they're generally on the same journey that I am. And you are such a major component of just learning to love myself.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:40:51)

beautiful.

We've already been talking for two hours.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:41:20)

And I couldn't, you're one of the top, influenced like five influential people, I think in my earlier development.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:41:30)

That's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing that. And thank you for being open to it. Like, I can write all the books and make all the recordings and tell all the people in the world, but it's only good if people take it in.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:41:34)

Yeah, I'm so glad I met you.

Yeah, well, you need an army, too, of people that are willing to be intensive about it and share it with all the people, right? Yeah, and when you start to spot them and you're like, oh, you're an intensive, let me introduce you to this book. Yeah. So thank you for being here. How can the people find you?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:41:47)

Yeah. Tell people, tell people, tell people.

Yeah.

So my business website is inte If you go there, you'll recognize that it's much more business focused and business oriented. I work a variety of ways with people. I do coaching one-on-one with founders. I do team leadership work in companies. And I also do one-on-one work with people who are, I'll just say the right people. Like right now I'm working one-on-one with a budding author.

who wanted some support around moving forward and isn't intensive and needed that kind of context around their support. So if you think we're fit, let me know. But the focus of my work is usually on helping people have better work relationships, better team relationships, that kind of thing. If you go to the website, there is a link to book, I don't remember what I call it, intro call, I think.

which is not, you know, it's free and we have 45 minutes to talk about what you need and whether I'm a good fit for you. I also have a podcast, it's called Power Pivot. It's mostly me talking about 20 minute episodes and then there are also interview episodes that usually run about an hour, sometimes a little longer because if I get an intensive in the interview seat, sometimes it just takes a while. And of course the book, You're Not Too Much, it's available

through IngramSpark if you want your indie to order it or on ebook and paper through Amazon. And like I mentioned earlier, I do have a membership. So you can contact me about that. The easiest way to contact me is, honestly, I'm just gonna tell you to text me, 510-309-4240, just send me a text message. I won't answer a phone call because I'm, oh.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:43:43)

Who does that anymore?

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:43:44)

I'm a zennial. I don't answer phone calls unless I know who it is. But that's really just the easiest way to get in touch with me. I'm in a bit of a website transition that I've been in for a while. So actually, I think inte should get you there too.

It's, yeah. So you can type inte slash membership and that'll get you to the membership page.

Let me see, I've lost my camera.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:44:07)

Oh, I can still see you. I want to say, lastly, I love how many mutuals we have on social media anywhere that I'm like, how are y'all connected? Never mind. It doesn't matter. You're clearly an intensive and that's why you're there. Like. So I it either the word spreads through me or through other people, but somehow we end up with a bunch of overlap that isn't just sex geeks. Right. And that's super cool. And I it's I just.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:44:10)

Okay.

Oh my god, yes.

Yes.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:44:36)

the kevin bacon six degrees of separation has got to be about two degrees at this point

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:44:41)

I'm sure it's like one and a half. It's like, there are so many times these days when I look at somebody who's friend requesting me on Facebook or who ends up in the comments somehow, and we have like 10 people in common, and I'm like, oh, which circle of friends is it? And it's three different circles of friends. Like that's a stage, and that's why I don't leave Facebook, because my overlap is just incredible. So.

You know, you can always, if you are connected to me on Facebook, you can always DM me on Facebook. I try to keep my channels of communication fairly open. Um, and I, I love this work. So thank you for letting me be here and talk about it and talk about everything else. I don't get to talk about the sex geek part.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:45:25)

come back if you want to just, yeah, if you just want to shoot the shit in general, you're always welcome back. Like, I just really want to make sure we cover this topic specifically. But if you ever want to talk about, like, I don't know, if you find out something new about your owner's manual and you want a place to talk about it, I would be down to geek out with you about that. But thanks.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:45:30)

Thank you.

Oh yeah, we should definitely do that. Oh, and inte slash assessment will get you to the assessment that we were talking about earlier.

Michelle Renee (she/her) (1:45:50)

Oh, yeah, I'll have a robust show notes. That's what I do. I love sharing information. So this just gives me another platform to like connect people to resources, which makes me very happy. And the circle continues. Yeah, okay. Well, thanks for being here and we'll have you back. All right.

Leela Sinha/The Intensives Institute (1:46:01)

Right.

Yes.

Thank you so much.