Endo Battery
Welcome to Endo Battery, the podcast that's here to journey with you through Endometriosis and Adenomyosis.
In a world where silence often shrouds these challenging conditions, Endo Battery stands as a beacon of hope and a source of strength. We believe in the power of knowledge, personal stories, and expert insights to illuminate the path forward. Our mission? To walk with you, hand in hand, through the often daunting landscape of Endometriosis and Adenomyosis.
This podcast is like a warm hug for your ears, offering you a cozy space to connect, learn, and heal. Whether you're newly diagnosed, a seasoned warrior, or a curious supporter, Endo Battery is a resource for you. Here, you'll find a community that understands your struggles and a team dedicated to delivering good, accurate information you can trust.
What to expect from Endo Battery:
Personal Stories: We're all about real-life experiences – your stories, our stories – because we know that sometimes, the most profound insights come from personal journeys.
Leading Experts: Our podcast features interviews with top experts in the field. These are the individuals who light up the path with their knowledge, sharing their wisdom and expertise to empower you.
Comfort and Solace: We understand that Endometriosis can be draining – physically, emotionally, and mentally. Endo Battery is your safe space, offering comfort and solace to help you recharge and regain your strength.
Life-Charging Insights: When Endometriosis tries to drain your life, Endo Battery is here to help you recharge. We're the energy boost you've been looking for, delivering insights and strategies to help you live your best life despite the challenges.
Join us on this journey, and together, we'll light up the darkness that often surrounds Endometriosis and Adenomyosis. Your story, your strength, and your resilience are at the heart of Endo Battery. Tune in, listen, share, and lets charge forward together.
Endo Battery
QC: Communicating Intimacy Challenges Without Losing Connection With Mallory Oxendine
Send us a text with a question or thought on this episode
Certified sex therapist Mallory Oxendine provides practical strategies for communicating with partners about pain during intimacy while maintaining connection and avoiding shame. She addresses the fear of rejection that often prevents these crucial conversations and introduces a framework that transforms vague concerns into specific requests partners can fulfill.
• Fear of rejection often prevents difficult conversations about sexual pain and limitations
• Avoidance of these discussions only deepens disconnection and misunderstanding
• John Townsend's "People Fuel" framework offers language for requesting specific relational nutrients
• Being clear about needing acceptance, comfort, or encouragement helps partners know how to respond
• Most partners want to be supportive but need guidance on what response would be most helpful
• Clear communication preserves emotional intimacy even when physical intimacy needs adaptation
Check out episodes 120 and 121 with Mallory for more insights on intimacy, endometriosis, and chronic illness.
Website endobattery.com
Is intimacy in the bedroom getting harder to do, but you're really not sure how to communicate this to your significant other. Mallory Oxendine walks us through techniques and ways that we can communicate to our significant other about the pain that we're experiencing while also maintaining a sense of intimacy. Stick around. Life moves fast and so should the answers to your biggest questions. Welcome to EndoBattery's Quick Connect, your direct line to expert insights. Short, powerful and right to the point. You send in the questions, I bring in the experts and in just five minutes you get the knowledge you need. No long episodes, no extra time needed, and just remember expert opinions shared here are for general information and not for personalized medical advice. Always consult your provider for your case-specific guidance. Got a question? Send it in and let's quickly get you the answers. I'm your host, alana, and it's time to connect.
Speaker 1:Today I'm joined by my expert guest, mallory Oxendine, who's a licensed professional counselor and a certified sex therapist, and is certified in EMDR therapy. She focuses her work on sexuality, informed and trauma-informed care and working with both individuals and couples. Mallory's areas of focus include intimacy issues, women's health issues, sexual and chronic pain and dysfunctions, infertility and the prenatal years. She works diligently in educating, empowering and journeying with those suffering with endometriosis and other chronic pain issues. Let's get into this. When someone has an immense amount of fear, reservations, maybe they're even feeling insecure in their relationship and things are starting to shift and change within their body, they're feeling more pain, they are anxious about being intimate with their partner, how do they talk to their partner about this? How do they tell their partner I really love you or I really want to engage with you intimately, but I'm in pain and I don't know if I can do this? And how do we do that without the guilt and the shame that can follow that?
Speaker 2:I think one of the factors that comes up for me and I see most often in my office, is the avoidance of talking about it because of fear of response. Right, and really, when we kind of dig down it's often a fear of rejection what if I say I can't and they don't accept me or they don't want me anymore, they don't pursue me anymore? Those are just some of the narratives I hear come out of the fear that kind of stops us and holds us from being emotionally and verbally vulnerable with our partner. So one of the things that I work through is there's a really good book called People Fuel by John Townsend and he talks about relational nutrients and giving people the nutrients they need to thrive as a human, and I just love the language he uses in that book.
Speaker 2:But I introduced that he has a little handout. It's easy to find. It's a free PDF download, it's easy to find. But it talks about giving acceptance, giving comfort, giving containment, giving encouragement, giving hope. So sometimes when we go to have hard conversations, a lot of times the person listening doesn't really know how to respond because they don't know what they're looking for, right, right, they're like do you?
Speaker 2:do you want me to say it's okay? You want me to say I don't care? Do you want me to say, cause? The fact is, they probably do care, right, and it does impact. That doesn't mean that love's not there, that doesn't mean they're not going to journey with you, but, like, they do have an experience of this with you. And so I really encourage clients to read that, read the book, or at least review the PDF of the different relational nutrients. And like what do you need? Oh, I really just need acceptance, what she defines as connection without judgment. I just need to know that you accept me when I say that I don't have energy to have sex, yeah, right, and most, most partners are going to go okay, how can I do that? Yeah, or like, this is hard for me, but I want to try to do that for you. Right, they're going to have their experience of it, but they want to engage because of the love and care in the relationship.
Speaker 1:If this resonated with you and you want to hear more for Mallory, you can listen to episodes 120 and 121, where she sheds light on intimacy, endometriosis and chronic illness. Those episodes are the episodes you didn't know you needed. That's a wrap for this Quick Connect. I hope today's insights helped you move forward with more clarity and confidence. Do you have more questions? Keep them coming, Send them in and I'll bring you the expert answers. You can send them in by using the link in the top of the description of this podcast episode or by emailing contact at endobatterycom or visiting the endobatterycom contact page. Until next time, keep feeling empowered through knowledge.