Hello everybody and welcome to the Sex, Love, and SuperPowers podcast show. I am your host Tatiana Berindei and today I have with me Rachel Alexandria and we are going to be discussing conscious conflict and why we avoid it. Rachel is a MA/MSA and she worked for eight years as a licensed psychotherapist and now serves as a sole medic and reality mentor. I love that. Rachel gives clients a better way to adult. Her clients become masterful at expressing their truth and stepping up to create powerful lives of purpose and meaning. She’s written two books, an Amazon bestseller about navigating conflict and an illustrated mind hack about conquering the inner critic. I just want to give you a good warm welcome to the show, Rachel.
Yay, thank you for having me. Glad to be here.
Absolutely. Yes, I’m looking forward to this conversation. Before we dive into this juicy topic, will you tell us what your superpowers are?
Sure, there’s so many.
I know, right? It’s a tricky question to answer.
One of my superpowers is my ability to be selfish enough to love myself.
It is. It is. You know, I was thinking about the idea of self love because it was suggested in one of the idea questions and I thought you know I think just answering for today, one of my superpowers is my ability to be selfish enough to love myself and focus on myself more than anybody else. Not a ton more, just enough more and I feel like that’s a superpower, to not be ashamed to love myself first.
Yeah, that’s huge and there’s so much that comes up for people around that, you know? There’s so many stories about selfishness.
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Yeah.
I think everything that I’ve developed and built and the boundaries I know how to hold and all of that comes from having that power to put myself first.
Can you give some of our listeners who might be a little bit astonished at that concept and idea of what that looks like to put yourself first?
Sure. I don’t, of course, mean that I’m lacking compassion for others or that I don’t ever serve others because I absolutely do. I come from a background of being more of a people pleaser but there’s also a fierce love within me that really got harnessed when I read Richard Bach’s Illusions when I was like 15 and one of the examples, I think, in that that’s useful in that story is Richard is being taught by this other barnstormer character named Donald Shimoda in this book, it’s sort of a magical fictional autobiography, and Donald is saying we all get to do whatever we want and Richard is saying well, as long as it doesn’t hurt anybody.
Donald magics into existence a vampire to come join their campfire and the vampire is talking to Richard and he’s saying well, it’s excruciating for me if I don’t have some blood to drink. Could you please give me some of your blood? I really need it or else I’m in terrible, terrible pain. Richard is like no, get away from me you terrible thing. Then the vampire looks at Donald and says I think you’ve made your point and disappears off into the darkness. Donald says I’m sure glad that you don’t act as you say you believe.
I think the world and people consciously and unconsciously go around trying to ask things of us that are too much sacrifice and if we’re entirely focused on the other, then we keep giving ourselves away in ways that are harmful and painful. Basically I’m talking about boundaries, you know? There are ways in which I will not let someone abuse me, you know, in all the meanings of that word.
I had someone recently ask me, a friend asked me for a favor that I felt … I mean, I love my friend and I want my friend to succeed, but they asked me for a favor that was beyond what was appropriate. They asked me for a favor that would involve a fair amount of my time and professional service and professional advice and I said you know, I want to help you, I really love you, I want you to succeed at this big project you’re about to embark upon. I agree with you that my feedback and my assistance there is going to help you a lot, but you need to pay me. That’s just how that’s going to go.
It was an awkward conversation but that’s how much I love myself. It’s not that I don’t love my friend and I don’t want that friend to succeed. I absolutely do, but I also know if I’d said yes to that request without any kind of modification, then I would have felt angry at myself, angry at my friend, less valuable, etc. And I love myself too much to let that happen.
I love that and I love that especially in regards to this topic of conflict. I was really struck by your book Women Overboard and why women in particular avoid conflict. You know, I think so many people, but especially women, would not stand up for themselves or advocate for themselves in that kind of a situation because they would be afraid of what the other person would think.
I’m just so curious, I mean we’re going to dive deeper into this but why do you think that it’s women in particular who have such a hard time with conflict?
We’re starting to come out of this hypnosis.
Oh, centuries of oppression basically. I mean, you know, our mothers and our mother’s mothers and our mother’s mother’s mothers, at least in most countries, coming from most places, have been told to not have a voice, to sit down and be quiet, you know. To stay relegated to smaller jobs, smaller arenas, lower positions, not positions of power, and if you even look at advertising, for years. I mean, I remember the first time I ever saw … Oh, I’m going to totally space on her name right now, but the amazing woman’s video about … Oh, I’m going to space on the title too. It’s a movie, documentary basically … Not even a documentary, it’s a presentation about how advertising is extremely sexist and suppresses women all the time. I can’t remember her name, but she’s featured in Misrepresentation.
When I first saw that and then started showing it to my classes when I was teaching undergrads, I was so struck by all of the unconscious ways that advertising sneaks in, just visually even, into our minds and says here’s all the ways that women are objects, here’s the way that we are just meant to be … To go along with the flow while the men are the ones in power and they make decisions over our lives, our bodies, etc. We’re starting to come out of this hypnosis.
Right.
It’s been a long time, so I think it’s that, you know?
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that’s definitely a topic we dive into a lot on this show and I couldn’t agree more with you. I do see more and more, especially the young girls, I feel like, are being empowered in a different way but it’s become such a norm, this sort of ubiquitous message that we are powerful when we’re sexy and that’s it. Yeah, so you know, there’s a lot that I do want to discuss, particularly around standing up for ourselves in situations that could seem adversarial or where we would, you know … It could be scary that we might hurt somebody or that we’re going to be stepping into a position of power and all of the subtle nuance dynamics that come up for us when we start to really claim our voice and step more into that.
We do have to go to a quick break, however, before we go to the break, would you tell our listeners where they could find out more about you?
Absolutely, so you can find me at RachelAlexandria.com.
Awesome. We’ve been talking with Rachel Alexandria about conscious conflict and why we avoid it, and more when we get back. Stay tuned.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Music Credit: All instruments played by Amanda Turk. Engineered and produced by Tatiana Berindei and Daniel Plane reelcello.com
Podcast: Play in new window
