Ep 90: Part 3/12, Andrea Says: Your Roles are Not You: How to Build a Relationship with Yourself Series

In this soul-baring episode, Janelle sits down with the unfiltered, fire-hearted Andrea Enright to discuss the tears, truths, spirit and confessions (I’m terrible at letting things go!) involved in building a relationship with yourself. Apparently, her intuition was so tired of being ignored, it threatened to pack up and move out. If youve checked the boxes, but still feel off, this is where to start. You’ll hear:

-Why motherhood, polyamory and feeling “empty” at 29 cracked her open

-How she stopped mistaking control for love—and the brutal wake-up calls that came with that

-Why being honest with yourSELF is the big hurdle

-The wild power of listening to your body when your brain is lying

-What happens when you realize a ROLE is not an IDENTITY

-How making space for spirit is part of the path

TRANSCRIPT:

Janelle Orion 0:00

Janelle, struggling to discuss sex and intimacy with your partner, not feeling met, seen or heard in your relationships. I'm Janelle And I'm Andrea. We're two midlife Mavericks sharing our own experiences, messy AF and no regrets with marriage, divorce, polyamory and pleasure. We've learned that when you're brave enough to figure out what you want and ask for it, with partners, friends, family and most importantly, yourself, you'll feel more alive and free question everything, especially your mother's advice. There's no rom com formula for this. But don't panic. Being alone matters, honey, I can't miss you if you don't leave, what if your breakup could be your breakthrough? Our podcast is for brave hearts. Anyone who seeks or has found the courage to confront their fears and limiting beliefs about breaking societal norms in the spirit of finding their truth. If you're seeking permission to be brave in your relationships and want to feel less alone along the way we got you. Hey, Bravehearts, so excited. Welcome back to permission to be human. I'm Janelle And I'm Andrea, and you are in for the next episode, episode three of our 12 part series on how to build and maintain a relationship with ourselves. Andrea is our guest today, and I will be our host. And yeah, so excited to talk to her. And in our 12 part series, we interview each other, we interview experts, and we interview other brave hearts, and this idea of what is it to build and maintain a relationship with yourself includes two parts. It is about inner work and outer work, and it's a never ending dance between them. The inner work is being honest with ourselves and discovering what we want, and then the outer work is living our truth as a daily practice. So we are going to get to hear Andrea's story today. Andrea, thank you so much for being here.

Andrea Enright 2:15

I'm so happy to be just answering questions.

Janelle Orion 2:19

Yay. Okay, I would love to get started with listening or hearing you say, what were the catalysts?

Andrea Enright 2:27

Yeah, what were the catalysts for building a relationship with myself? I think there were whispers early on, at a few pivotal points. One, well, let's just be clear that if you had asked me this when I was 29 or 36 I would say, What do you mean? A relationship with myself? What are you talking about? I wouldn't have known what you meant, but the early catalysts were first. I felt empty at 29 I didn't know why I checked all the boxes. I'd gotten a good job and found the right guy and gotten married, and we had a house and we had a life, and I went to book club meetings and went shopping and ran marathons, and I was like, huh, something's missing, like, I need to there's an uh, feeling like, I feel empty. Like, why aren't I fulfilled? And I think that is often a catalyst for building a relationship with yourself. And so we decided to do something crazy that you've probably all heard about, is that we shut down our lives and quit our jobs and rented out our house and joined the Peace Corps at age I turned 30 the day that we left for the Peace Corps, and I'd say that began the relationship with myself, because I started going a little more inward. I didn't have my social I didn't have the usual things I was supposed to do. I wasn't working, so I spent more time writing. So I started building the awareness. But still, it was pretty early, you know, at least I was aware of myself and who I was. I was looking closer at it.

Janelle Orion 4:03

I'm gonna pause you for a second so it sounds like, oh, you knew there was a feeling of dissatisfaction or unfulfillment.

Andrea Enright 4:11

Yes, based on what society told me to do, right?

Janelle Orion 4:15

Okay, so that you those were words you could have used.

Andrea Enright 4:20

Then, yes, they were something felt empty. There was a missing piece.

Janelle Orion 4:25

Okay, okay, great. So then what happened next? I

Andrea Enright 4:29

did go inward. I was more aware, playing with meditation, trying to figure it out. Not really good at it. Didn't really get it, still treating it like a box, checking kind of thing. And then came back and fell right back in after three years, I came back and fell right back into the same routine of life and society and the script, the Hollywood script. Then I went through a couple other situations where something felt off. I went to a few yoga classes. I realized I. Wasn't really tapped into my body, but I didn't know that I needed to be like my whole life I've been I'd been not worried about my body like I sure I exercised, but I didn't take care of my body, and I didn't listen to my body. That wasn't something I was taught or ever thought I was supposed to do. Wild hair, signed up in the minute, didn't talk to my husband, signed up for yoga training. Oh, this put me in my body, exploring. Oh, I'm supposed to lead with my body. I'm supposed to take care of my body. I'm supposed to be more aware, more in the now, these were all kind of foreign concepts, really, or I was just exploring them. So

Janelle Orion 5:40

what I'm hearing is that you came back from the Peace Corps. You were like, okay, like, fall back into your life. Somewhere along the line, discovered yoga, and through that, there was a something in you inspired, okay, I'm supposed to go deeper into this. I'm gonna sign up for yoga training, even though you didn't consider yourself a yogi, is what I'm guessing. It was just

Andrea Enright 6:01

to deepen my practice. Okay? I didn't even want to be a yoga teacher, okay?

Janelle Orion 6:05

And in that process is when, because you're saying, like, you didn't, like, think or care about your body, but what I'm hearing is, is that it was this relationship with your body, of like, Oh, my like, my body is something that has wisdom, or I'm supposed to take care of it, or, yeah,

Andrea Enright 6:21

it's talking to me. And so in a sense, I probably started by building a relationship with my body, which was missing. I wouldn't have called it building a relationship with myself, certainly, but it was my body first.

Andrea Enright 6:36

Then I was working at a corporate gig for a while. I was a contractor, and I noticed I can remember the day when I was sitting in my car and I realized that I was doing all this stuff, making good money again, checking all the boxes and shit. I wasn't happy with it anymore. So I was going in this upward spiral of growth, right, coming to the same realization kind of again and again, of like, why did this feel off? This was what I was supposed to do. I'm working for a big company. I'm making money. I feel good about what I'm doing. And that's when I started my business.

Andrea Enright 7:18

And so this, in a sense, took me inward again, because I had to say, what do I want? What are my skills? What do I value? And it led to more introspection. So

Janelle Orion 7:29

it sounds like you quit your job at this corporate contracting gig so that you could be more in control of your life, like you thought, Okay, you're like, Okay, well, maybe entrepreneurship, or maybe my own business, will lead to more fulfillment.

Andrea Enright 7:44

Yes, I had done that on the side while keeping this corporate gig, but I knew that something was off. So I was like, Okay, I need to shift. And I think in each of these points it takes a little bit of it takes courage to shift and change. And I can say too that I because I was younger, because I had more energy, probably I remember going through some confusion, but certainly not as much as I go through now. I think unfamiliarity and uncertainty and newness and discovery and adventure felt easier, less risky. So then there's a few more points. Then after my daughter was born, I was doing the thing I was supposed to do. I was staying home, I was taking care of her, and I was not loving it. I was depressed, and I was like, wow, I need to go in again, right? But I didn't really know how, and so all I knew is that something was off.

Janelle Orion 8:44

Mm, hmm. I'm curious, were you judging yourself in that moment of like, now having a child, being at home with her, taking care of her, and feeling like, oh, I mean, as someone who didn't do that myself, but like the society says, oh, becoming a mother, it's like, the best thing ever. And then you're like, No, it's not,

Andrea Enright 9:05

yeah. I was just like, What the hell. Why didn't someone tell me this? It doesn't work for me. They kept saying to listen to my intuition. And I think this is a key point, because I didn't know how to listen to my intuition. I was listening, and I'm just like, what I don't hear anything. What are you talking about? What do you mean? I'm supposed to know what I'm supposed to do. I don't know what to do. The baby's crying and I'm fucking confused. I used to say that my intuition was so tired of me not listening to it, that it eventually threatened to pack up and leave, because I was just so hell bent on getting proof and seeing what everybody else thought, that even though I had these whispers, I just I would listen, and then I would just be like, uh, you know, piss off. And so this happened. So then I went back to work. So then I went back to work instead of staying home. After about eight months at home, my husband, I switched. Roles. He stayed home and I went back to a job, which you were happy about. Yes, I needed to, for sure. I was like, wow, I need to listen to my intuition. But I did. I still didn't know it yet, right? I just knew something was off, and this was right, so great. We switched roles.

Janelle Orion 10:19

So I've got a couple of questions here. You've said this a few times, like I just knew something was off. Can you describe a little bit about the off feeling? And then we just said, oh, and I knew this was right. Going back to work was right for me. How did you know it was right?

Andrea Enright 10:35

I wasn't happy. I wasn't happy, and I thought I would be

Andrea Enright 10:41

I was told I would be happy and I wasn't. I was told by society, parents, culture, that this was would bring me satisfaction and happiness, and it didn't like I loved my child and I did love being a mom, but I didn't want to stay home all

Andrea Enright 11:01

day, so I was not happy. But sometimes in the beginning, you lie to yourself and you're like, No, I do love this because I'm supposed to. And so really building your relationship with myself was is centered. It was centered around intuition and listening to my intuition, but I was very stubborn. I heard it and then I would ignore it. I heard it and then I would ignore it. And what I

Janelle Orion 11:28

also heard you say earlier was that not only did you ignore it, you actually went to someone else to be like, Well, what do you think? Right outside of you, looking for approval or recommendations, I was

Andrea Enright 11:39

told I think my whole life because I was an actual extrovert, partly because I was an extrovert, I was looking outside myself for the answers, for sure. I mean, I was looking in a book, I was looking online, I was looking at other people's opinions. My identity was based very much on what I wanted, but also what others thought of me and what others thought I should do. And this is a hard thing to grapple with, because when I think back

Andrea Enright 12:08

to the decisions I made between, say, 18 and 36 I was doing what I wanted. I liked those things, but I wonder how much cultural society or parents played a role in steering me toward those things that I did. Mm, yeah, and so building a relationship with myself meant that I had to take full responsibility for those decisions, and that felt pretty scary. Mm, hmm, and it still does sometimes, yes,

Janelle Orion 12:37

okay, so what I'm hearing is at various moments you recognize you were in you were unhappy, you ended up discovering your body along the way, discovering your intuition along the way. What were other moments where you found yourself unhappy

Andrea Enright 12:57

at 42 I

Andrea Enright 13:03

thought, huh, is this the way marriage is supposed to be? Because it felt flat. I didn't feel vibrant, I didn't feel very connected. My husband and I weren't sexually active.

Andrea Enright 13:18

We didn't have as many overlapping interests anymore. It was largely centered around largely centered around my daughter, and I felt like a failure. Like I felt like I'm like, Oh, I must have done something wrong, you know, because things aren't amazing, right? Silly me. Like I really thought things were supposed to be amazing all the time. It seems like so ludicrous. Now that really was what I thought like I didn't realize. In fact, I remember early on in our relationship having fights or conflict and me thinking, oh my gosh, it's over. Oh my gosh, he's gonna leave with every fight when you're early in a relationship, yes, I don't think somehow I did not, had not learned to navigate conflict successfully, right? When things got meh about my marriage, I didn't see an answer. I didn't want to get divorced. That was the worst thing of all right? And I still loved him and I still liked him, that wasn't the plan. But I was also a little lost as to what to do next. We tried lots of different ways to connect, and nothing seemed to really take hold. We seemed to be on different paths, and this is when I ran into an old flame and felt some chemistry and thought, oh, like, could we play with an open relationship? Could we be polyamorous? It was a completely foreign concept to me then, but my husband and I were naturally a little more risk taking about our relationship. We had threesomes in the past, when we were in college or when we were in our 20s. We played around with that idea, and both of us were a little more flexible, I'd say, than, than the average. Rich couple about it. And so thus began my polyamorous journey where I really started being forced to build a relationship with myself, because I suddenly had alone time when my husband was not here, and he was with his girlfriend, and it was super scary. I was like, Oh, I don't like being alone. This is awful. And you remember we went through these many nights of the witching hour, it being awful. What are we doing? This is so bad. This hurts so much. I don't like being alone. I didn't like being alone for one night, let alone thinking about being alone in the future. What if he left me? He really forced me to build a relationship with myself as uncomfortable as it was, I don't think I would have done

Janelle Orion 15:44

it right. But also in that, what I do know about you is that you know you just said being alone was part of the poly, but you also got met in with the part of the person that you were seeing in a different way that lit you up, that felt aligned. Yes,

Andrea Enright 16:00

exactly. So I was getting that benefit out of it. So in a sense, both being home alone and building this other relationship with another partner helped me see myself in a different way. Thus began the building a relationship with myself got it, and I think it's important here to define what we mean by building a relationship with ourselves. It's so vague and abstract, I think it really means about that I put my needs first, that I know who I am without anyone else, maybe that's it. I know who I am without anyone else because I was so accustomed to understanding myself in a context, as a performer, as someone who got good grades, as a good student, as a good mom, as a good wife, as a daughter, as a sister. I, in a sense, was basing my identity off the context of others.

Janelle Orion 16:53

That feels really potent to call out brave hearts for those listening, I'm curious what you feel when you hear Andrea say that, because how many of us know immediately who we are, if we're standing alone, sovereign individuals, not describing ourselves in relationship to someone or something, a career. Yeah,

Andrea Enright 17:25

this shows up when I have asked women over the years, so what do you love in life? What do you do to find joy? And so many of them say, I am an HR director. I run a craft business. Oh, I love spending time with my kids. My kids are my whole life. They light me up, which is great, and I love that you love being a mom, but a role is not an identity, least to me, and

Janelle Orion 17:56

really there's even a deeper question is, what is our identity? Right? Is, is any identity actually the whole of who we are, and are we just multiple in many parts?

Andrea Enright 18:08

Great question, great question. That's true. So Polly helped me build a relationship with myself the most. It was my biggest personal growth catalyst by far. Finally, at 45 I wanted to bring a dream that I'd always had to live abroad with my child to fruition, and that's what we did. I wanted to show her another country. Wanted her to learn another language. It really started out as that sense of adventure and kind of global citizenship and getting out of the American bubble. I also really wanted to get away from Amazon. I wanted to live in a small town. I wanted to live by the beach. And so off we went. And where'd you go? We went to Costa Rica for a year. Total pain in the ass. Like, super hard to leave the country. So much admin, a lot of work, a lot of anxiety, unfamiliarity, uncertainty. But this also helped me continue to build a relationship with myself, because I was in a different setting. I was not surrounded with the usual trees or people or stores or jobs or routine and Bravehearts, this is a great way to shake up your life and start building a different relationship with yourself. I spent more time alone in Costa Rica because I didn't know anybody. You also didn't speak the language. I didn't speak the language. I was living in a more rural setting where I couldn't I didn't see, I didn't see people walk by every day. I was working a little bit less. I was more in touch with nature. People say this, oh, I have to go, you know, I go to the mountains to find God, or I like to be outside. And I think that is does have some merit to it, but I have. Learned, not that I put necessarily put this into practice, that we can make space for spirit or God or something bigger, whether we're sitting in our kitchen or we're sitting on top of a mountain, it's just that we get distracted when we're in our kitchen, because we're distracted by the dishes and the house and our children and food and dopamine hits and TV, but this is how you make space for the spirit of you. You can call that the Spirit of God, the Spirit of the universe. But I wrote a blog many, many years ago when I was in the Peace Corps, about how my relationship with Jesus had changed very much at the time, I had rediscovered a different religion. I felt like Catholicism was not the platform I wanted to live on anymore. And I remember saying at the end of a blog,

Andrea Enright 20:56

Jesus is pretty busy, like out, you know, getting coffee, picking up his dry cleaning, going to dentist appointments, but mostly he is just living in me, in my heart, like he is me. This just gets into a broader spiritual conversation about how I really feel like there is a higher power, but ultimately I honor it in myself.

Janelle Orion 21:23

And would you say that is an outcome from building a relationship with yourself? That's your viewpoint now, yeah, I would say that is.

Andrea Enright 21:38

That is true. So I'm here. It

Janelle Orion 21:40

would answer what I'm hearing with that is building your relationship with yourself is essentially a spiritual path. Not to say everyone's gonna find Jesus in their heart, but they're gonna find a higher power in their heart. Potentially,

Andrea Enright 21:57

there's no guarantee. Certainly, everyone's different, but like that is definitely what happened for me. I think at each moment, at each catalyst for building a relationship with myself, I can say now that my inner life was not aligned with my outer life, and that's what inspired me to make the change and then ultimately start building relationship with myself. Mm, myself, although I didn't have an inner life in the beginning, right? I just knew that something was off,

Janelle Orion 22:28

right, and which you described as a feeling of unhappiness, of unfulfillment, of dissatisfaction. Yes, correct. Okay, beautiful. Okay. Andrea, so what I heard you say, right? You just described all of your catalysts. And in our journey home to ourselves, we've discovered that these two parts, right, this inner there's an inner work and there's an outer work, and there's a dance between them, right? And the inner work is being honest with ourselves and discovering what we want. So I feel like you just described, through these catalysts, all these opportunities for you to discover how to be honest with yourself and what it is that you wanted.

Andrea Enright 23:08

Yeah, I think that's true. And my resistance to change was part of each each catalyst. Right in the beginning, I thought, Well, why aren't I happy? I should be happy. I think she should be fine. And to be honest, I probably didn't make those changes as soon as I could have right? I put them off because I I wasn't being honest with myself that I was unhappy because I thought, well, I should be happy. I've done all the things like, like, and so I was trusting not my inner self, not my intuition. I was trusting the outer world. They told me this was right, so it must be right, because, and if I had been honest with myself, I would have gone back to work after two months of being home, not eight months. But I was afraid, because I was like, well, so part of the reason I think I wasn't honest with myself is cultural conditioning. Is using context for expectations. Well, everyone else seems to be liking their life. Why aren't I? I'm sure that I should just like it too, right? Like something's wrong with me, not the situation. I think I'm also really terrible at letting go of things. It's like a chronic thing for me, like, just don't want to let go, like, in the same way that I keep box upon box of keepsakes from my childhood and my teenage years. My husband has one. I have seven, like ridiculousness, just scrapbooks documentation. It's like a record of my life, and I don't want to let go, and so I don't want to let go of that stuff. I don't want to let go of people or of jobs or of houses or of mementos, and what's it? What do you think that's about? I think it's about documentation. I'm a writer. Everything should be recorded, but

Janelle Orion 24:53

that's but if you don't want, you don't want to let go of a job because you want to document it. Like,

Andrea Enright 24:57

yeah, that's true. That doesn't make sense. Is. Exactly? Yeah, I suppose there's just, there's a fear that the next thing won't be as good or will be worse, right? It's a distrusting of the future, a distrusting of higher power, a distrusting of of the world, right? Like, are you sure I should let this go? Why don't I just try this other thing first and just hold on to this old thing, just to make sure, like, just in case, I think it's probably my seeking of security and stability that like, like, I want the grounding, right? Like, floating freely is a little too scary,

Janelle Orion 25:33

okay? And then also, I would imagine, is there comfort in what you know? Yeah, of course.

Andrea Enright 25:37

I mean, just like, so much more comfortable. Just like, Yeah, I know this already. It feels good. It feels good enough, right? I

Janelle Orion 25:48

think that's when I forget. I don't even remember who it is that says, like, the danger of good enough,

Andrea Enright 25:53

yeah, for sure. And so I'm just terrible at letting go it, you know, it. I kept the same hat, like, white cowboy hat, for a long time, even after it was, like, so mangled and dirty, I just kept wearing it. I didn't even see it anymore. I'm like, Scarlett's like, or my daughter's like, mom, like, what are you doing? You just have to stop wearing the hat. And there's a purple sweatshirt that I kept also for years. I mean, I was wearing it in a picture when the cat was born, and the cat is eight years old, and I recently left it at an airport. I still think about that fucking sweatshirt, and I still want it back, and my daughter is like, Oh, thank God that sweatshirt is gone. So very hard at letting things go. Certainty is better than uncertainty. I'm an Enneagram six. I want things secure and stable. I think this is, you know, these are all reasons that I that I wasn't honest with myself, okay,

Janelle Orion 26:53

and so as a result of being honest with with yourself, what do you know now

Andrea Enright 26:59

that I have to listen to my head and my body, that the body actually comes first, which is a complete unlearning that I had to do because I thought that the head came first. For sure, I am someone who for many, many years did not go to the bathroom. When I needed to go, I would hold it for hours, fucking hours, dude, like that was just like my MO did not get gloves when I was cold, did not wear a heavy coat when I was cold. Was much better to look good than to be worn. That was just the deal that's huge, like listening to my body first and then following my head. I know now, because of what I've studied about this topic, that the region beta paradox is something that tells you, Oh, we're much more likely to just stay where we are if things aren't that bad. And sometimes it takes something more tragic to make us think, Oh, well, now we really need to fix this. I remember reading the book existential kink, which I read most of, which is not true of all the nonfiction books I read. Mostly I just read the first 30 pages, but I read most of this book, and I realized, like, oh, I have an existential kink. I,

Andrea Enright 28:18

for example, really like to hurry, right? I like intensity, and so I wait until the last minute to get ready, because I like that intense feeling of being hurried. I mean, I still do this. It's not a huge problem, but so transfer that existential kink concept to bigger

Andrea Enright 28:38

life happenings, and I'm attracted to intensity, even though it's not necessarily healthy for me. Andrea, can you

Janelle Orion 28:45

just describe for bravehearts who may not be familiar, what is an existential kink?

Andrea Enright 28:50

Yeah, it's something perhaps, that you grew up with that wasn't necessarily healthy, but it was very familiar and comforting, because you had it for so long that could be anything from eating lots of food at lunch to having a mother who insulted you. There's also something called the Baumeister concept, which is pretty familiar to a lot of marketers, especially that people will fight much harder to keep what they have and to avoid pain than seeking more pleasure, right? And so to me, it was painful to look at things, to actually face myself, to think, oh my gosh, my marriage isn't working out. Oh my gosh, am I not cut out for this motherhood thing? Then actually seeking to have more pleasure during my day, right? And actually, like, go back to work, or, you know, change my marriage, right? It was painful to look at those things, and so I was just avoiding the pain. Now I'll just stay here. It's fine. We work much harder. Yeah,

Janelle Orion 29:54

you were comfortable avoiding the pain because it's what I'm hearing, right? You are not. Willing to prioritize finding more pleasure,

Andrea Enright 30:02

correct? And that is a concept. It's rampant throughout marketing. Like, you can't just say, hey, this thing's really great. You have to say, look, we can help you stay safe with this product.

Janelle Orion 30:14

All right, so Andrea, tell us, what are the pillars Have you just that you've discovered for building a relationship with yourself. I think we've

Andrea Enright 30:21

covered some of them. It's spending time alone. It's taking care of my body first, which is an ongoing practice for me, and an ongoing coming back, an ongoing forgetting and then realizing again. I think you said really beautifully on the last podcast, using the mind as a tool instead of the truth,

Janelle Orion 30:44

which I think that's those are actually your words, really? I think so, oh, okay,

Andrea Enright 30:52

that's so funny, interesting. Okay, maybe so, yeah, we probably confuse each other. It's like, Wait, did you say that? Or did I say that? Yeah, yeah, using the mind is a tool rather than the truth. It's really hard, because when I'm in panic mode, I'm gonna go to the head right instead of going to the body, instead of breathing, instead of coming back into body, which I'm always struggling to get better at. And then it's ultimately just tapping within instead of looking outside yourself. It's just so much easier to look outside yourself, whether I still do it now I'm like, uncomfortable chips, uncomfortable phone and oh no, we just have to be quiet and listen like, what's going on inside? Right? Sitting in the discomfort, sitting in the discomfort. Yeah, tolerating the discomfort.

Janelle Orion 31:41

Were there tools that you used along the way? We know what the catalysts were, but were there tools that you discovered along the way to build a better relationship with yourself? I think

Andrea Enright 31:53

medicine journeys definitely helped a lot. I would have them every once in a while with different people with different substances, but when they were intentional, when they were done with a lot of purpose,

Andrea Enright 32:09

they really did help me go inward and reveal what I was really thinking and feeling, even if that's something I didn't want to look At. So they were a huge tool for me. In fact, I think anything to do with the body is probably was probably end up being a big tool for me.

Andrea Enright 32:29

I think even working out can be framed as a time when you go inward to get answers, to get downloads, to get aha moments, if you're not thinking about it, if you're not putting any intention before it, it can just be a workout, but if you do that, I can now feel clearer and feel like I understand myself better after a run, after a yoga class, after breath work, after a massage.

Janelle Orion 32:59

You go into those with an intention of tell me more about that. What's your intention when you go into one of those?

Andrea Enright 33:04

I don't always go into these experiences with intention, but because I know, in the past, I feel as though I've attained different states of consciousness, when I've run, when I've yogad, when I've done breath work, I know that there are answers within that sometimes come to the surface. And so last night, I did breath work, and I went in with an intention. And I don't always do that with running or yoga, but it tends to come no matter what, because I I know that I'm more open and I'm more surrendered. And this can be done with a gummy, a THC gummy as well, like if you go into just smoking a little bit of pot or or taking an edible in some way. It doesn't work for everybody, but this definitely works for me. If I am alone, if I'm not watching TV, I'm not on my phone, I'm journaling, I'm lying feeling I do actually come away from that experience with new information about myself.

Janelle Orion 34:07

Okay, okay, beautiful morning

Andrea Enright 34:09

rituals too, you know, are huge, and something I didn't really start doing until maybe five years ago.

Janelle Orion 34:18

Okay, so you've talked about the body, we've talked about various ways of being, you know, of being alone, right? And some of the other things you've mentioned, you've mentioned morning rituals, journaling, breath work, you've you spoke about how, like, a side effect of polyamory was that you had time alone because one of you is not with the other, and

Andrea Enright 34:43

getting a reflection from someone new, someone different. You talk about

Janelle Orion 34:47

psychedelics, yoga, training, running, I've known you've done cleanses as well of the body.

Andrea Enright 34:56

I think that's also definitely help you build. Relationship with yourself. So what did you find

Janelle Orion 35:03

when you built a relationship with yourself? What did you discover? Yeah, usually

Andrea Enright 35:07

really hard news. Okay, that's not exactly true, but beautiful stuff, but stuff that was had just been pushed down, that I already knew but was not acknowledging. It's amazing how the dissonance comes in. Just not some of it was not surprising, but also was uncomfortable. It made me think, Oh, wait, did I choose the wrong person to get to marry? Oh, wait, was I not supposed to have kids? Right? Oh, wait, you know, have I gotten something wrong? Like, Oh, am I afraid to be alone? Or I wouldn't have said that or known that consciously five years ago, after going inward in Costa Rica, I was like, oh, yeah, you bet I'm afraid to be alone.

Janelle Orion 36:01

So you so in this way, when you like, building a relationship meant facing some really deep fears and asking yourself some really hard questions,

Andrea Enright 36:09

yeah, and I think also, like, it made me look at some bad parts of myself. Oh, I'm passive aggressive. Oh, my love is sometimes selfish.

Janelle Orion 36:19

But is that bad? I mean, like going back to like a journey of a relationship with their self is a journey of self love, so and putting yourself first, right? So that you said earlier in the podcast. So why? How would you how is it that you're defining putting love for yourself first, or that your love was selfish is a bad thing.

Andrea Enright 36:44

No, my love with other people was selfish. I was realizing that I had some selfish love going on with others, a selfish love. Now I feel like I can identify really quickly and in others where, no, they're loving so that they can feel good about loving you, not that, not that they don't also want you to feel their love. But there is a selfishness sometimes and like, No, I want to feel needed. Could you just like, receive my stuff, because I need to feel needed, okay, and I need to feel important in your life. So please receive my love and love me back. Okay, because it's part of my identity to be your mom, your husband, your sister, your brother,

Janelle Orion 37:29

your friend. Okay, thank you for that. That what I'm what I'm hearing, is that you saw in yourself where someone else's response to you. You had an expectation on how they were supposed to respond, Yes, because if they didn't respond that way, that reflected poorly on your own feelings around yourself.

Andrea Enright 37:49

Yes, exactly. Now, not all of my love was selfish, but there were parts of it where I was like, oh, you know what? There's something off about that. And then I experienced someone else's love being selfish with me, and I was like, oh yeah, this isn't honest. It's not pure. So there's a couple other not so great things I realized about myself was that I was in a co dependent relationship. You know? I was really depending on that other person to complete me, and that wasn't healthy. I needed to look at that. Then I got some good things. I was like, Oh, wow, I am actually this way, and I'm not showing that I really love music and dancing, and I'm not listening to music and dancing because it feels too big, or it feels like it's not appropriate, or people won't like it, or and that got to come out in me that got to blossom, and it felt so fucking good, right? But I did not know that that was a scratch that needed itched, right, or that you were suppressing or denying it exactly. I just, I just didn't know. And I've been, I've been doing this since I was in high school, like I can remember specific incidences where, oh, I could have been big, and part of me really wanted to, but then the other part was like, no, no, you can't do that. And so I just pushed it down. Just pushed it down, yeah. And so this has been a big journey of really becoming the full me, and that's been huge. I mean, that's been the massive one of the massive changes for me across the last 10 years. Mm,

Janelle Orion 39:24

hmm, so funny. I can remember being made fun of at a sweet 16 for how I was dancing, and I remember I didn't dance until I was in my 30s as a result of that, yes again, and dancing is something that I do I also love. But I was just like, Oh, I'm a bad dancer, and so I just completely cut that part of myself off. Wow,

Andrea Enright 39:44

yeah. It's just like, amazing how these little moments can impact our whole life. Yes, I think I also had a need to blame, like, I had this odd, like, penchant to like, well, if something happened, it must be someone's fault. Yeah. Like, that was all, you know, just awful, and that's something I'm constantly more aware of. Now, I really have a big need for control, right? Because I want, I want to be safe and and stable. It doesn't come from an evil intention, but because of my need for control, I was mixing that up sometimes with love, right? We're like, Oh no, I just want to do this for you. No, actually, I just want to be in control of the schedule. And so recognizing that was was really big. And I realized one, one more important point that was told to me in yoga class, where one of the instructors said, Look, most people are either strong or they're flexible, but they're not both. And I thought, Okay, well, I'm like, I'm flexible. I don't think of myself as particularly physically strong, but I do feel like I have a strong personality, right? But what I was actually doing so often was being strong in my choice, and then also being so flexible in my choice that I let others choose and then resented them for it.

Janelle Orion 41:06

Mm, yeah, speak more about that. It's really

Andrea Enright 41:10

passive aggression. It's just saying, like, oh, I don't care. And then you go for pizza, and you're like, I didn't really want pizza. And so that's what happens, right? Like, I was like, Oh, I'm really strong, I know what I want. Oh, I'm super flexible. And then you get just, it's a recipe for passive aggression, interesting, and I don't know how I fell into that pattern, but that was definitely something I realized I was doing, and I catch it much more now. Like, I just, I just texted my my husband yesterday. I was like, oh, sorry about the passive aggressive, about the cat, just like, you know, just like this little interaction we had with the discussion about taking the cat to the vet, like I said it was okay, and then I complained about it.

Janelle Orion 41:49

Okay, okay, so in that way I were you, are you? By, I'm curious. Are you bypassing your opinion? So you're not even stating your

Andrea Enright 41:59

opinion? Oh, no, I'm stating my opinion. That's just it. I state my opinion, and then I say, Oh, it doesn't matter to me, whatever, whatever you want, because my people pleasing takes over. Okay? And so that was a really important thing I started looking at and started working on as a result of a relationship with myself, and ultimately, we if we know ourselves, then we are a better person for everyone in our life. And that's ultimately, the prize of building a relationship with yourself is that you know yourself better. I mean, know thyself. It's like matrix. It's like they're really not two and more important words, like, if you just wanted to sum up all of life Know thyself, just keep working on that you're good. I should just put that as a post on LinkedIn. Know thyself. That's all.

Janelle Orion 42:52

That's it. I actually remember when I was married that my husband, we had, like he used to love to explain things in diagrams, and we he had a big white board, and in one of our conversations, it was, know thyself. And we had a whole conversation about that, yeah,

Andrea Enright 43:08

for sure. And this is why we build a relationship with ourselves,

Janelle Orion 43:12

yeah, yeah. Okay. Is there anything more that you want to share about what you discovered? No,

Andrea Enright 43:21

I'm exhausted. I need to lie down. No, okay, okay, which is great,

Janelle Orion 43:26

because you have that opportunity. Because, babe, friends, what we're gonna do is we're gonna, in next week's episode, Andrea is gonna tell us about all the changes that resulted from her building a relationship with herself,

Andrea Enright 43:42

yeah, yeah, definitely big changes in life,

Janelle Orion 43:45

yes. So stay tuned for part two of Andrea's story. And thank you so much for listening and Andrea. Thank you so much for your honesty and your vulnerability about sharing the hard parts of the journey

Janelle Orion 43:59

of self love. Mostly, yeah, that's what I was doing. Thanks, bravehearts. We love you. Hey, Bravehearts, looking for permission, work with us. Andrea offers permission coaching, and Janelle offers erotic wellness sessions. Follow us on Instagram, meet us in real life. At permission to be human workshops in Denver. Subscribe to our newsletter. Do all this and more at our website, permission to be human. Dot live. You.