Hidden Intimacy Challenges for Over-Achievers & What to Do About Them

I'm breaking down the special challenges that over-achievers tend to have with intimacy, sex, and relationships today. I'm also going to tell you exactly how to overcome those challenges. If you're a person who's afraid of failing in relationships and intimacy, or frustrated that other humans and our own bodies don't come with better manuals -- I've got you. 

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Transcript

Welcome to Sex Help for Smart People. I'm Dr. Laura Jurgens. I'm here to help you have better sex, intimacy and relationships. So let's get at it. Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 64. So today we are talking about. Hidden intimacy challenges for overachievers and what to do about them. And I'm gonna do today exactly what all the business advice for coaches says not to do.

'cause to be honest, I don't really listen to that much advice. I'm going to talk about stuff they say never to talk about because I think it's going to help you. For overachievers and like smarty pants people, we actually need this information. We have special, unique problems with intimacy and relationships in general that no one really talks about.

So we're gonna talk about them today, and I think those particular problems mean that it makes sense to break these business rules. So bear with me. Let's start with the problems that overachievers tend to have in relationships and sex. And there are two ways I see that our own strengths tend to bite us in the ass.

So one is for those of us who didn't have to work super hard in school, if you. Are one of those people. Sometimes, well, one, sometimes we don't even like to identify as one of those people. It's like we get ashamed. We were maybe called nerds or SmartyAnts or like whatever derogatory terms people use for people for whom learning comes pretty easy in a scholastic setting and it's a bummer, but.

Yeah, it's, there's a lot of derision for that. And so if you are one of those people like me who was a total nerd and who really enjoyed learning and it actually did come easy, sometimes we don't even wanna like come out of the closet about it, but it's okay. You're a big kid now and we can actually be proud of having some strengths.

Right. The kid who's like really great at soccer doesn't have to hide that. They're really great at soccer. So if you're really great at math, you don't have to hide that either. But if you are one of those people where learning was easy, what happens is we start thinking that we should quote unquote, have everything come really easy.

It should all just be easy to learn stuff, and it starts being associated with our identity. Really early on in school. So when something is hard and like if we've tried to learn and it we don't do well, we wind up tending to avoid it, and we tend to quit because it threatens our identity, right? The one thing we were praised for sometimes was how smart we were, and yet relationships and intimacy and sex, it's not easy.

It doesn't come easy, so sometimes we wind up avoiding it. So that is one of the big problems for those of us who had learning come easy. And I ran into this actually, you know, school was always really easy. And then I got into grad school and I was with all the other people for whom school was also easy and the.

Quality, the level of expectations was so high that people were just having like breakdowns all the time, identity crises all the time because all of a sudden they didn't feel smart that one thing that they'd always felt, they didn't feel smart. And I see people have that in my office sometimes around sex intimacy relationships is, it's not quite so dramatic as in grad school, but there is this sense of.

This should be quote unquote, easy for me, and it's not. Okay, so let's also talk about the other style of overachievers. The ones who were like the nose to the grindstone and their pride comes from actually being able to do the hard work. I always really admired these people. I wasn't very good at doing hard work in school and I admired people who could like sit down and do it.

I had totally undiagnosed A DHD, which was also probably contributing, but there are a bunch of. People who are just so good at like focusing, jumping through whatever hoops are put in front of them, they can really get it done. And I had to learn how to be one of them to get myself through that whole grad school process.

And I learned even more respect for this approach. But this sort of like nose to the grindstone thing kind of gives us a similar problem as those of us who are used to learning coming easy. If you are one of the ones who kind of got there from hard work, the tendency is to think that you quote unquote, should be able to just work hard enough to get the relationship you want or the sex life you want.

And yet, even no matter how hard you work, it's not coming for you. The sex. Part may be challenging. Maybe the relationship part is challenging. Maybe both are challenging, emotional and physical intimacy. And I just wanna say for both of these styles of overachiever and the hybrids among us, of which I now consider myself one.

I got you. I see this. I see it. It's okay. It is absolutely okay that what you've been trying hasn't been working. But the thing is, for both of these styles of overachievers, there are two big problems. The first one is pesky. Other people. Other people are involved in our ideas of our ideal sex life usually, and relationships.

Any other people? You know, any relationships require other people, right? Except for the relationship with yourself, which I promise is a part of this too. And you can control that more easily. But back to our big problems, our big problem number one is fucking other people, God damn them, they don't always do what we think they should or act how we want.

And you know what? I'm not even totally joking when I. Say that because it's legitimately frustrating for all of us humans, whether you're an overachiever or not, that other people don't just like do what we want and in the way we want and do everything perfectly for us. And I think that's just one of life's disappointments that we sort of have to get through.

But it is a one that sometimes people feel bad about having, feel bad about being frustrated by that. And I just wanna normalize if you are frustrated that other people don't do shit the way you want them to and like. Treat you the way you want and talk to you the way you want, and touch you the way you want.

Oh my gosh, it's so understandable that you get frustrated by that. So do I. So do does. Literally everyone, but that doesn't mean it's not frustrating. Okay, so number one problem. Other people, darn it, they don't do what we want them to. Number two is our own body, which also. Doesn't always do what our brain thinks it should, no matter how much we try to force it to.

And bodies sometimes, like we get almost the same kind of frustration for our own body that we get for other people not doing things the way we want. It can sometimes even be worse where we just are really mad at our body. For not responding the way we want, not looking the way we want, not doing what we want, not having things come easily to it, not performing like a porn star, whatever our arousal, taking a while, our arousal coming and going, which is very normal by the way.

Or we get mad at it for the type of orgasm it wants to have or not have or whatever. So there can be like a lot of oppositional frustration for overachievers, but because people and bodies are the places that we tend to have trouble. And because we've achieved a lot in our lives in other areas, we are often quite failure, intolerant.

Anything that seems like we might fail tend to terrify us, and we've often had a lot of failures with people and bodies not doing what we want. So the big problem for overachievers. Is that we tend to avoid the shit out of things. We can't see an easy way to figure out, or even a hard way to figure out when there's no manual.

So when there's no manual, we tend to run the other way, and that means we stay stuck a lot of times more than someone who isn't such an overachiever because they haven't actually expected it to be easy or expected that like just some hard work is gonna make it happen. So we sometimes overachievers will sometimes stay stuck in intimacy, relationship challenges longer than necessary, and I do not want that for you.

I, I just, I know that there's a way out of this. I've been there myself. I had to learn from the ground up, and so I've got good news and bad news. So I'm gonna give you the bad news first, which is that it is true that people and your body or your partner's body. They don't have well-written manuals. I have never actually seen a book that taught how to deal with other humans in relationship well, and I've never seen a book on really how to have a great relationship with your own body and how to approach somebody else's.

Well, maybe I should try to write those someday. It does sound challenging, but I. Now I'm all curious about it 'cause I just had the thought. So I'll think about it. But for now, that is the bad news, that relationships and bodies are actually not things you can learn from a book. You actually do need to practice with someone, and that means getting vulnerable enough to say, Hey, I need help.

But that's the good news. There are actual practical, effective. Skills, real skills that you can learn, that everybody can learn that will help with how you relate to other people and how you relate to your body or their body, and you can learn those skills to connect well. With your body and with other people, even if you don't already know.

I know that because I did, I had to learn from the ground up and I had these overachiever issues badly, and that's why my practice now is all about having a relationship lab. So we actually. Have like, we have like a relationship lab where we use our relationship to practice real connection skills. I love it so much.

It's really fun. My clients love it. It's really fun for them and they learn so much and feel so much more confident because we've actually practiced instead of just talking about shit. It is better than book learning anyway. It's kind of like, you know, trying to read the manual to your Subaru and fix the engine versus taking.

An actual masterclass in an auto shop where there's hands-on learning and real feedback and like correction. No, not that part. This part? No, not that wrench. This wrench, right? I think nothing beats hands-on learning. But today my point is actually I want you to realize that there are actual things to learn.

Actual skills to learn, which will make a huge difference in your life. And the cool thing is that learning is your wheelhouse. You as an overachiever are fucking great at learning. So even though there's no manual, the good news is there are specific skills and you just need to know what they are and then have somebody help you practice them.

So I'm gonna break down the three main skill areas today. Yeah, and I have just absolutely broken all of the quote unquote business rules for coaches because what they tell me is that no one wants to hear that there is something they have to learn. The unspoken rule from like all the business coaches out there for coaches is that, hey, we all know.

That we have to actually teach people something, but we're not supposed to tell you that, which I'm cracking up about because I think it's so weird. But essentially they're saying no one wants to know that there is a process that they have to actually learn stuff in order to change. It sounds like too much work to the human brain.

So their advice is to just tell you about the change that you're gonna get. And act like it happens magically because they say that you don't wanna know That change actually requires learning. And I might be wrong, I'm probably wrong, but I disagree and I'm gonna just go with what I think because I think you are smart enough to actually realize that change takes trying new things and learning new skills, and I think that's okay.

I know that you can do uncomfortable stuff like trying new things and learning. And you know what? I love learning and I think there's people out there, especially the overachievers in the world who also love learning. And I think that you are smart and capable, and even if you don't always want to have to learn how to do something, that once you give yourself a chance to, you actually might even enjoy the process.

Because that's my experience all the time with my clients and I don't have to pretend that we're not gonna do some learning with them. So business coaches of the world, just hold on to your little horses out there and just know I'm going off the rails here. I'm gonna tell people that they actually need to learn some shit, if they want things to be different, and I needed to, and I made things different, and I'm so grateful.

I, when I was starting I trying to learn this stuff, I just couldn't figure out who could help me. That was my problem, like, who's gonna help me with this? And I eventually cobbled together a bunch of different types of learning and then created my own process from that based on what worked for me and what I see working for all the many, many people that I practice with in my actual practice, my clients.

So I. Pulled together different types of learning on how to communicate better with people, how to sort out my own emotions and how to connect with my body. Once I did, it made such massive dramatic changes in my relationship and therefore my quality of life, my relationship with my own self and my own sexuality, my quality of life.

Because of that, my sense of empowerment, it made such huge changes that I actually changed my entire career in order to teach other people. The same stuff. That's how much I believe in learning these skills. So I actually think you want to learn, even though the business coaches would disagree with me, but here's the three things that I think are so important.

To learn and I'm just gonna break 'em down for you so that you know what they are. I can't teach you all this stuff in a podcast. We actually do need to get in and practice and see where you're at and like build on those, the skills that you already have. The strength. Strengths that you already have. And then ident, like really identify specifically for you where the challenges and roadblocks are and remove those so that you can learn and practice and have fun.

But I do wanna outline for you what those things are. So whether you decide to work with me, whether you decide to work with somebody else and find a different coach, whether you decide to try to. Find manuals out there in the world. If you do, let me know. I have not found any. But I would love to.

But whatever you decide to do, you'll have a sense of the, the things that you really need to work on. If you are an overachiever who wants to have better sexuality and relationships sex, life, and relationships, then these are the things, number one. Learning to have a great relationship with yourself.

You can't skip this part and it will make you feel so much better. So trust me, you don't wanna skip this part. And it does take some practice. We gotta get in there, figure out what. You need specifically in order to be compassionate with yourself, able to trust yourself, be in integrity with yourself, and to be loving to you.

We need to make sure you know how to actually give yourself validation so you're not just looking for someone else to do it for you, because that ruins relationships. It just creates so many problems when people are missing this great relationship with themselves part. It is very hard to have a successful relationship, and it is very hard to have an open, playful sex life.

So having a really good handle on how to deal with your own emotions is part of this, and there are actually skills that we practice to help you know how to do that. It's gold. No one in the world is sexier than someone who is genuinely confident and knows how to be responsible for their own feelings.

Holy shit. So sexy. It is the opposite of codependent. It is absolutely boss, and that is a really key thing to learn. Okay? Number one is learning to have a great relationship with yourself. All right, number two. Number two is communication. A lot of us think we're good communicators. To be honest. I thought I was a crap communicator and I still think I was.

I still think I was really bad. I was really bad at it, and now I'm pretty decent, so I feel. Much better. I've learned so much, and the results I get in my communications with other humans are so much better. We gotta be able to ask for what we truly want. We have to do, number one, in order to know what we truly want, right?

We have to have a good relationship with ourselves and really be open and unashamed of our desires in order to know. But then number two, we have to know how to communicate it effectively. In a way that other people can hear, well that's not attacking or just gonna get us like not the right results. We also need to learn how to truly listen without defensiveness.

Even when somebody's talking to us about something we did that might have hurt them who, that is a skill and we practice that. It's way more fun to practice with me than like. With somebody you have beef with, I promise. We also need to learn how to repair misunderstandings and hurts effectively and how to give boundaries kindly and how to communicate with our whole body, like our face, our tone, not just words.

People don't really just take in words and they don't take in words well, when the rest of us is communicating something completely opposite from what the words are, which happens. A lot of the time, and I am sure you experience all the time in different communications in your life where somebody is kind of saying some words and they just don't match up with everything else that's coming from their whole self.

Right? So communication is a learned skill. It's not actually that hard to learn. All that stuff makes sense. And you have this like innate knowledge of it. It's just that our socialized patterns. Our kind of coping mechanisms, and a lot of times our defensiveness gets in the way, so we need to remove those obstacles so you can communicate really well.

Number three is understanding genuine human sexuality, arousal, play and touch, and the variations for different people. This is like the practical stuff. And this is so important because we just don't get this in most cultures around the world today, it's certainly not in the US or in like Anglo, whatever, you know, the UK diaspora sort of like exported English culture.

In English speaking countries, we do not get good human sexuality and sensuality training. So this helps us not get hung up on all the bs, all the like stuff from porn that's completely not applicable to real sex. We want to give you the practical stuff so that you are genuinely good in bed and responsive to a lover's desires, and you can have fun and play together.

Right? So that's number three is all the like real, just like nitty gritty logistics about human sexuality. That's it. Those are the things that you really need to learn. Those are the sets of skills that we work on in my practice and that I recommend whether you come to see me or not, that you think about working on if you want to improve your relationships and intimacy.

So if you are an overachiever, I want you to just consider right now, does it scare you to know that there are things to learn that you might not have already mastered, or does it empower you? Just because the business coaches say not to tell you this stuff, that you actually need to learn things if you wanna change the way you operate in life.

Right. I actually feel like it's so empowering, and especially for those of us who are overachievers, it actually helps us to know. What we need to know, right? I feel like that like lays a path in front of me that's like, oh, I can do this 'cause I know how to learn stuff. I'm good at that, right? So whether it comes easy to you to learn stuff or whether you identify as more of like a hard worker to learn stuff, doesn't matter.

You're good at learning stuff, right? You just might need someone to help you lay out that path and know what steps actually make sense for you. So whether you want, you know, come to me if you want some help, I'm here to help. That's what I do and you can go to my website if you want, but also if you just have questions about your particular situation and whether coaching might be right for you and your situation, please also feel free to reach out to me.

So my email is laura@laurajergens.com. You can send me an email and say, this is what I really need help with. Is this something that like. Fits within coaching. 'cause sometimes people don't even know if, you know, an, an intimacy coach actually works on that kind of thing or like how we would do it. And I'll tell you, you know, they, they, the business coaches tell me not to ever talk about the process in our free consultations that we do, that I do with people who are interested in potentially coaching with me.

But I always talk a little bit about how we would approach it because. I think it helps to understand at least the first couple steps on the path, right? And then also talk about like where we're going, what is, what does the end of the path look like? Where do you wanna be and what's realistic, right?

'cause people don't want me to sit there and like, I'm, I'm not one of these like, intuitive guides or whatever that's gonna pretend that we're just sort of gonna magically follow some, you know, I do think human intuition's important, don't get me wrong, but. I'm not gonna pretend that we're gonna sort of magically follow some unknown path and get you everything in your dreams.

We're gonna figure out, okay, what is it that you want? What? What can we do in coaching and what can't we do? Because there's always stuff that we want. We just don't have time in our life for absolutely everything that we want. Fine. So we just need to prioritize, right? We can get you a lot of it. And in my experience, it's those three sets of skills, the understanding, all the sort of practical stuff about actual human sexuality.

That's number three. Number two is communicating really well in relationship. That's number two. And gosh, we do not learn that in our society. So there's no shade if you don't already know how to do that. And then number one is learning how to have a great relationship with yourself. And I also think we don't get taught that so.

Needing to work on these skills is very understandable, and boy, I do wish there was a manual and maybe I really should write one, but I hope for you that it feels empowering to learn that there are actual skills to work on to get what you want in your relationships and in your sex life. All right, my friends.

Let me know what you think and I'll see you here next week. Hey, if you're curious about how you could have better sex and connections, go grab my free guide. Find Your Secret Turn-Ons. It's right on my website, www.laurajurgens.com, and the link is in the show notes. I'll see you here next time.