Ever felt paralyzed with not knowing "what to do" To improve your sex life, to be happier? You know there are tons of things to do but somehow you're stuck in "but I don't know". This episode

03:11 - Types of I don't know

11:55 - What "I don't know" does

18:25 - What to do if you "don't know"

23:35 - Quick recap

"I don't know" is one of the sneakiest sentence you can say to yourself, whether it's in your sex life or in your life in general. Turns out there are several types of "I don't know" that can come at play : the daily-life, the-not-from-me, the automatic, the fear-of-the- void, the-lack-of-knowledge and the numb IDK. They all have pros (coping with anxiety, not crumbling in case of emotional emergency) that can become hard cons : hard dissociation, outsourcing your decisions, reinforcing bad self-talk. How to deal with that ? Educate yourself, ask more specific questions, give yourself patience. Sounds like a real program, doesn't it?

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Loved today's episode? Here are others you might enjoy, related to today's topic :

✨ 16. 7 Sexyhacks that will make a difference

✨ 2. Your Magic Recipe for Thriving Sex

✨ 1. You're not broken, the game is twisted

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If you’re new here, hi, I’m Dr Fanny Leboulanger, French Doctor and Sassy Sex Coach, nice to meet you 😏 My mission? Helping people (like you ?) fall in love with sex life, stop self-hate and reconnect to their pleasure, so that they can reclaim their own Lifegasm. Through 1:1 coaching and magic tools (food for thoughts, sexy education, reclaiming pleasure and inner healing), with a zero bullshit tolerance, we embark together on our journey towards your most Sexyfied Life. 

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And if you want to discover other amazing shows from podcast friends, here is a selection of amazing podcasts :

• My Spoonie Sisters
• Personal Development Mastery
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• Who the F*ck?

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22. Ditch the "I don't know" 
(Truly Thriving Sex #1)

Hello everyone, and welcome to an other episode. If you're new here, welcome. And if you're not, thank you for coming back. And thank you all for sharing your valuable time with me. Today, I'm very excited to kick off this Truly Thriving Sex series, with the first episode: ditch the ""I don't know"". Whether you want hours of orgasms and never-ending nights of making love with yourself or others. Or if at the moment, Thriving Sex just looks like experiencing pleasure in your body more regularly, and maybe having your first orgasm, I got you covered. You've been warned you're in for a sexy wild ride. 


Ah...", I don't know"... one of the sentences, we say way more often than we should. I know I do. What do you want? I don't know. One of the most paralyzing sentence ever. "I don't know" is something you can come across really often in your life, whether it's in your daily life or in your spiritual life. Personally, I've been told " Use your third chakra energy to supercharge your way of doing things, you'll end up where you truly want to be". Great. At the moment I have no idea of where I want to go or who I want to be. And same goes for our sex lives: "Connect to your pleasure". Right now I feel so numb, I have no idea what is bringing me pleasure. "Play with your fantasies". Sorry at the moment, I'm not even sure what a fantasy is, and not even sure that it exists. 


I don't know if I want an intimate moment, at the moment, I'm just so busy, just the idea of taking time to solo play or partner play feels like, argh... I don't know whether I will have the time to do that. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't even know what to order at a restaurant, when I look at the menu, come on. 


The "I don't know" monster comes in several forms. So first, let's meet who we are talking about. And since you are a smart being and don't do anything stupid, "I don't know" is somehow helping you. In some shape or form. So let's discuss what "I don't know" does. Hint, pretty messy things clearly not designed to be helpful to you. And then, we'll discuss what to do when we hit an "I don't know" mountain. And the beauty of all of that? You can apply it everywhere too, not only building your Thriving sex life 


So first, let's talk about the several types of "I don't know". The easy one? The daily life, "I don't know". The one that has only a little impact on your life? What will I have for dinner tonight. I don't know. And at the moment I actually don't care. I'm not a meal prep person, even if, apparently it's life-changing. As an impact, I may get a little bit hangry later, and it might have consequences in my partnership, or I may end up ordering something. Although now that I think about it, we could argue the little impact thing because when you do that on a regular basis, the impact on you, and your wallet, and the planet might start to become important. And also because of decision fatigue. So maybe there's no "I don't know" that has little impact. But you see what I mean... this is like the daily life, "I don't know". 


The other easy "I don't know"? The one that isn't yours. Either the one you just repeat because you've heard an authority figure, like a parent or a teacher say they don't know, and never questioned that belief. Or the one you answer, because you are afraid of your desires, afraid of what you want, of what is socially acceptable. The one we have actually integrated because we've been told to be good girls and good girls don't do that. Don't talk about things like that. Or even think about things like that. Talk about not knowing what you want in your sex life... if the norm is "I am supposed to enjoy penetration and yell like in a bad porn movie", and if penetration isn't pleasurable for you nor your thing, it can be really hard to know what you want in your sex life? Or maybe you don't know what feels good anymore, in your body or even in your life, because you've put everyone else's desires before yours. So it's not that you don't know. It's just that the space where you could actually figure out what you want doesn't have the space to exist, to express, since it's covered by others. 


There is the default, "I don't know". The one that comes out of you when you hear the same question, because you didn't have the answer last time you were asked the same question. The one that doesn't leave you the second to breathe before answering. The beauty of this one? The spiral that comes with it, starts almost immediately. And usually it's not a nice spiral: shame, guilt, unworthiness.. What do you want for your life? I don't know. What is wrong with me? Why can't I figure what I want? That's really a rich people problem to wonder about what I want for my life. I, if I had to hustle, if I had to hustle to put food on the table, I wouldn't have the time to ask myself these questions. I'm such a privileged person, and yet, I'm still not happy. 


And usually this spiral ends up with wanting to be everything and everyone else than you. And that sucks so hard. If you're there I'll feel you. And the thing is, until proven wrong, whatever your beliefs around spirituality are, you only have one life in this body with this story. So too bad, even if we want, we cannot be someone else. And I agree, sometimes it sucks. 


This "I don't know" that comes out immediately is also a fierce protector. Of course, it's scary as fuck to feel the void. The "I have no answer to that question" is scary. I mean, I'm sure many of us have stored somewhere the shame, the guilt, and the trauma of being asked the question in front of the group in school. And not having the answers, while people laughed at you, and the teacher made a comment or anything else. That's traumatic. 


So since our childhood, it's not a good idea to not have the answer. Second, in our Western world, we have the answers to everything at any moment with our phones in our pockets. We literally have nanoseconds between a question and an answer. Of course, it feels scary as fuck to stay here, look inside, one second, two seconds, three seconds... And I still have no idea? Are you kidding me? Also, let's not forget, we are all encouraged to have answers. Even if we have little idea of what's going on. When COVID hit, everybody became a health specialist. When Ukraine war started suddenly everyone became a geopolitical expert, knowing everything about this conflict. Taking the time to dig deep in a topic before taking a part in the conversation is something we rarely do. So, of course it's super scary to stay here. Feel the void inside. Of course your system is panicking "danger, danger, danger, danger. Have no clue what is going on." That's normal. 


We could also even go further and talk about how this "I don't know" helps us complain. Because it starts the spiral of thoughts that you usually go to. And with this complaining, we can feel that we belong. When everybody around you isn't satisfied with their life and complaining. It can be a little bit challenging to say, "Hell yeah, I'm living my best life in here. Sorry". But we'll talk about that in a next episode. So yeah, this automatic "I don't know" is a super strong, and fierce, and useful protector 


There is the "I don't know" from lack of education or lack of knowledge. If you take your sex life for example, of course you don't know what would feel good if you have no idea how your body works, or if you haven't touched yourself, like never. How would you know what feels good? It's also a good idea to educate yourself, that's a sexy hack from a previous episode, I'll link that in the show notes. But the good thing is... this one is the one that is easily dealt with. You just need to educate yourself, and experiment, and it's going to get better. It's also a good defense against the automatic. "I don't know". Building the knowledge, building the sensation, the experiment, and when you have that, you're less likely to go full "I don't know" as an automatic response. 


But in my opinion, the most detrimental, "I don't know" of all is the numb "I don't know". You can ask me whatever you want, I have no answer because I don't feel anything. I'm just navigating my life, day in and day out, not knowing if and why I'm alive, apart from glimpses of joy here and there, especially in vacation. This emotional, sexual, lifeless numbness is here with me. So when you ask me a question, I don't freaking know because I don't feel alive anymore. Okay? And no, I am not suicidal, depressed, or anything. I'm just on autopilot. If that sounds painfully familiar, you're not alone and it is possible to get out of it, I promise. I am living proof of that. 


So quick recap, the main types of "I don't know" are: the daily life "I don't know- I don't care", the "I don't know" that is not mine, the automatic "I don't know", the lack of knowledge education "I don't know", and the numb "I don't know". That's actually a lot of people to deal with. And not so many of them are really useful per se. So maybe it's time to let them go, isn't it? In the second part of the episode, we're going to focus on the automatic and the numb, "I don't know". 


As everything else in life, "I don't know" has pros and cons. We already discussed the first pro: helping you cope with the anxiety of the void of not having an answer right away. Help you cope with the overwhelm of "I don't have the answer. I have no clue. I should know already. What are they going to think?" Et cetera... Which can be really useful. And at the same time, it helps you cope with all of that, and it denies you the time to think. The time to pause, to actually ask yourself inside "What do I want?". Since your "I don't know" default answer is programmed. 


The second pro, kind of, many of us have put under the rug, so many emotions, so many dreams we have buried because there were not quote unquote acceptable. Or we were delusional. So many of us got stuck in "good girl syndrome", following what we were told and played by the rules when inside, we are lionesses who just want to set this twisted world on fire. Playing nice and sweet, when we are the most powerful beings ever. Staying quiet and wondering what is wrong with you, when you face a sexist comment, and wondering why you can't take it as a compliment. All of this, that's a root cause of numbness autopilot, since you are maintaining this rug in place. So this automatic "I don't know" is a way for you to not crumble. When something is threatening your fragile balance of everything that you have lovingly put under the rug. And no judgment here, we all do that. This "I don't know" is needed too. 


I'm sure you saw me coming with this one... the second pro is also a con. Maintaining things under the rug isn't really what is helping you longterm. It can be helpful in the moment to not get overthrown by your emotional reaction. Although we could argue expressing your emotional reaction is a good idea instead of repressing it, and if we did that more often, it wouldn't explode out of the blue and the word would be a better place. But most of the time "I don't know" reinforce the numbness, since it's maintaining everything under the rug. Let's face it, usually when we put an emotion under the rug, it's more a question of "I'll put you down here and you'd better not move and stay quiet here, nice, polite. And most of all still, I'll deal with you later." And usually later becomes never, ever, ever. That's why we end up being numb or having unsatisfying sex life. When we put everything under the rug, since we cannot selectively numb, we end up being numbing ourselves even more. Every "I don't know" numbs us even more. 


The other thing about the numb "I don't know" that reinforces itself? It makes us look outside for solutions. We lose the sense of connection to our inner compass. We're just a boat loading without a direction. And we tend to see every bird as an indication of where to go, which can be pretty interesting and dangerous if you don't have enough fuel, just saying. That's when solutions promising us miracles without an effort, or a perfect plan to follow with a lot of superlative "Become the best, follow the best leaders, et cetera". become very appealing. And this is a human thing to do. No judgment in that, we all do that. Since we're numb and are not not connected inside, there's nothing to make predictions about. So let's just focus on the outside. Definitely something useful to make us buy stuff that we don't need, so that we can get a quick dopamine spike that will last a few minutes, or hours if we're lucky, and then back to square one. 


Second con: it reinforces the bad inner self talk. "I don't know" usually comes with "you never know, you're so indecisive, grow up and decide already, do you think you have the whole day to evaluate the options, choose something already, you're such a lost cause. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Personally, when this type of "I don't know", comes up, it really reinforces my bad self talk. Whereas if I take a few seconds instead of jumping to "I don't know", and if I try to stay in the silence... actually my head stays quiet for a little longer. And the bad self-talk isn't as strong. Not going to lie it's not disappearing forever, it's jusr a little less strong. It actually stops the pattern of reinforcing "there is something wrong with me", or "I am broken because I can't figure out what I want". And since it's unbearable for a nervous system to feel you're not enough, you don't know, you're lost, what do we do? We numb ourselves. Yeah, I know. Broken record. Sorry. 


So quick recap... after meeting the different types of "I don't know", it seems they can be helpful by helping us cope with overwhelm and anxiety, and stay grounded in case of emotional emergency. But the downside? It reinforces numbness and bad inner self-talk. Which in my opinion is kind of a negative risk benefits balance. 


Before we continue, if you're enjoying this episode and the show, would you do me a favor and use this single coming to click on the star rating on your podcast platform to help the Sexyfied Magic spread into the world? You can also subscribe to the podcast if you want to stay connected and never miss an episode. And if you have 10 seconds, you can support the show by writing a review too. Thank you very much. 


So now let's talk about what we can do when we don't know. One of the easiest hack is to educate yourself. To learn. If you're working on your sex life, read good books and listen to empowering podcasts. And yes, I consider Your Sexyfied Life as an empowering podcast. We always experience more pleasure when we know what we're talking about. So many of us are not really familiar with our clitoris being such an amazing and huge pleasure organ. Or that any part of your vulva, vagina, breast, throat, or whatever, can be a source of pleasure. Also know that education comes from experience. If you want a thriving sex life, at some point, you will need to learn how your body works. And there's a good chance you would need self-pleasure to learn that... Just saying. Or playing with your favorite sex toys or try new ones. The more you experiment, the more you will get used to what's a yes, what's a no, what's a maybe, what's a hell no. And the beauty of that is that the more you learn and grow about a topic, the less the automatic "I don't know" answer will come out of the blue. Since you have actually some data to process, things to think about. You won't be scared to actually give space before giving the answer. "I don't know", will become less and less automatic, which is great. 


Another tip is to ask more specific questions. If you consider your professional life: "what do I want to do with my life?" can feel really scary. Like this big mountain of "I should know how to do that already. And I have no idea and that scares the shit out of me". 


Our brain loves prediction. Even if they end up being wrong, it's way better to do a wrong prediction than sitting in the middle paralyzed by too many choices available like "Do I really have to choose between everything ?Really? Really? Too much, too much, too much!" 


Whereas " what do I want my professional life to look like in three years from now?" Or "what new type of self practice do I want to try to expand my capacity for pleasure?" Prediction. And if this feels too scary, you can ask simple questions: " do I want sensual touch right now? Do I want explicit touch, right now? Do I want sensual breath right now? "Asking, "what would feel the most pleasurable at the moment?" is a great question. " What would feel the most pleasurable, at the moment?" helps you stay present moment to moment. And actually staying present moment to moment is an amazing "I don't know" killer. Focus on what's going on at the moment. 


If you stay curious, don't get into "I'm going to need an answer right now" you will get some answers. And if you have strictly no idea of what feels pleasurable at the moment, like zero, zero, any idea, even if you stay quiet for a few seconds. My tip is to ask yourself, "what can I do to make myself more comfortable?" Because before getting pleasure, you would need comfort at some point. So, yeah. Start with "what can I do to make myself more comfortable right now?". 


You saw me coming with this one... if you want more presence, you need more time. Not a huge amount of time. Just to pause to process the question. So many of us are stuck in an autopilot answer, not taking even a breath to think about the answer. 


And last but not least... give yourself grace and compassion. If your "I don't know" answer comes more often than you want, if it's been a pattern that has been stuck in your system for years, even decades, you can't expect things to change overnight. It sucks. And I'm sorry that it sucks, but it's more a question of staying consistent, instead of beating yourself up and stop doing it... but, you knew that already. 


So, if you want to ditch the "I don't know" and are ready to make a change... You can educate yourself with your mind and hands on experience, pun almost intended. Ask yourself more detailed questions. Gift yourself time to think instead of running forward with your default mechanism. And also try to get some self-compassion. Come on, you're doing your best and you deserve a high five just because you're showing up. 


23:34 Quick Recap 


So quick recap. First, we talked about the different types of, "I don't know". The daily life, neither do I know, nor do I care. The not belonging to me. The automatic answer. The lack of knowledge. And the numb one. That's a lot of people and a lot of side effects. Pros, like not being too overwhelmed and decrease the level of emotional outburst in case of emergency or without a safe space available. And cons, like reinforcing the numbness, the inner bad self-talk. So not really the best risk benefit balance. 


And to finish, three things to do when you meet "I don't know" too often. Educate yourself, ask more specific questions, slow down and take a few seconds before answering. And most of all, give yourself patience. Maybe that's for, "I don't know". We all fail way often then we are ready to admit, while we are playing this game. But now that you are aware of what's going on. It's easier to play. 


When you decide to ditch the "I don't know" you're taking a first step towards change. And so many of us, myself included can be stuck in this "I don't know". I don't know what I want, but I don't want what I have, I just want something else. So what do you want? If this question scares you, this is our next, truly thriving sex question. 


If you found this episode interesting. Please feel free to share it with a loved one and check the related episodes, I have suggestion for you in the show notes. If you want to start your journey, you can find there, my free ebook. It's called essence Awaken your body to reclaim the pleasure to feel alive. And if you want to go deeper about how thriving sex can help you feel whole. So that you can experience the life gasm that you want. You can join my email list or contact me directly to book your free connection. Call all the info. We need are into the show notes. Thank you for sharing your valuable time with me. And I'll see you, Next time.