As a note to listeners, this podcast does contain explicit language.
What you’ll hear in this episode:
- How Intimacy Expert and Master Empath Colette Davenport defines relationship
- How to reconnect with yourself and start fulfilling your own needs so that you can give back in relationships
- What a productive and satisfying relationship looks like
“You are never not in relationship,” according to Intimacy Expert, Master Empath, and founder of Badass Empath United Colette Davenport. Now that you’ve taken a moment to let that sink in…
Davenport explains that the word “relationship” is primarily used in society to address romantic partnerships. The keynote speaker and coach expresses that relationships are a much more pervasive and fundamental quality of the human experience, and include your relationship to yourself, your body, your environment, friends, family, coworkers, and more – in addition to romantic partners.
She sits down with host Alli Waddell to explain why it’s so important to nurture your relationship to yourself first, before exploring relationships with others. From Davenport’s experience, it all starts with honesty, self-exploration, and compassion. Davenport encourages the listeners to explore their “five bodies” – the physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and sexual parts of themselves.
Most people stop at the physical and mental aspects of their selfhood, but Davenport stresses the importance of all these parts of being a human. Once we see ourselves as more than just a body and a brain, we can understand ourselves in new and more profound dimensions. Emotional intelligence, for example, can allow us to understand that we have emotions, rather than identify as our emotions. “I have shame” and “I am ashamed” are two completely different self-identifications, and Davenport encourages our listeners to explore what exploring their other “bodies” can do to elevate their self-understanding as well.
These different, empowering, and liberating approaches can only be achieved and applied to create intimate relationships with others – our coworkers, friends, families, and of course, romantic partners – if we have a deep and intimate relationship with ourselves. Davenport encourages the listeners to broaden and “reframe what relationship means in your life” so that they can align their desires with their higher self and find intimacy in new and authentic ways.
Listen to the full episode for examples of engaging your five bodies and other tips for deepening your relationship to yourself and others. If you enjoyed the episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and check out the rest of the Balanced Badassery podcast and share with a badass friend!
Host: Alli Waddell
Guest: Colette Davenport
Transcript:
This is a founding media podcast.
Welcome to the balance. Bad-ass ery podcast, your weekly fixed of wellness wisdom. I’m your host, Allie Waddell. How is your relationship going? How about your relationship with yourself? Well this week, I’m digging into all that with my bestie intimacy expert, Collette Davenport, Collette helps kick ass.
People communicate effectively and connect intimately. But first we got to talk about some self-love and some self knowledge. So let’s jump into our Colombo. No.
I am so excited, always to share space with this amazing woman who I’ve been friends with for a whopping. I think we’re calculating six. Teen ish is years. Yeah. Somewhere about the back. When we were babies, little, little tiny babies, and now we’re big babies. So we’re going to be talking about one of my favorite topics, relationships and how the pillar of relationships really is so paramount when it comes to your wellness.
And Colette Davenport is an intimacy relationship expert. She really helps impasse or highly sensitive people become their bad-ass selves with her bad-ass and past school. But she is my go-to guru. When it comes to all things relational. So Ms. Colette Davenport, introduce yourself to the
baddest. Yeah.
Thank you for that. Uh, yeah. So I’m an intimacy expert and master impath and I love helping other impasse truly mastered their sensitivities. So that, that gift that we have no longer feels like a curse. Um, my career in the field of intimacy started when I was a college student and I was there on a full academic scholarship, but I dropped out to work as a call girl.
And I’m just gonna cut to the chase fast forward, about two decades in today, I’m an international coach, a keynote speaker. And like you said, founder of bad-ass impact academy, which I love to call the school for gifted people. And, uh, yeah, I have this really. Unique perspective on relationships that, like I said began over two decades ago.
Um, as I like to say in the trenches and like in a real world, people are like, oh, did you go to school to be, you know, to do the work that you do? Yeah. But not academic type school, right? Yes. I’ve been a lifelong learner. Yes. I’m always in some form of personal development and specifically in my, in my field, understanding, developing my, my skills and my knowledge.
Um, but I have also very hands-on real-world experience in this area called intimacy and relationships. I have been privileged to people’s most paralyzing fears. And their deepest, most unexpressed desires when it comes to intimacy sex relationships. Um, so yeah, you can tell, I, I really enjoy this stuff maybe by the passion that’s coming through my voice.
Yes, yes. And we were talking briefly before we started, but relationship, I believe is. Paramount to having a healthy, thriving life. And most people define relationship or think about relationship as, oh, I’m talking about my intimate partner, but we both have a deeper understanding of that. And so explain to me.
Kind of the group of why, what is your definition of relationship and not only with others, but also with yourself. Yeah.
And I think, um, rather than defining it, I want to share a little bit of my personal philosophy and that is that we’re never not in relationship, right. In relationship to our bodies ourselves.
In relationship to our environment, in relationship to our friends, our family, you know, potentially some form of a coworker or colleague. And then we can talk about intimate relationships and other sort of more romantic relationships if we want. But the thing is we’re never not in relationship. And so if we can reframe this idea of relationship, when we talk about it, read about it, study about it.
W if we can reframe it from thinking, it’s all about like, Intimate partnership or romantic partnership. Um, and, and think more of relationship as a, um, as an important part of our lives as, as our bodies are, right. It’s just a fundamental aspect of being human. And so if we can lean into relationships as part of our human experience, then maybe we don’t put so much pressure on the intimate relationship.
Maybe we can approach that differently.
Oh, hell to the yes. I mean, Esther Perel, who’s one of my favorite, um, kind of authors in the relationship space. That’s what she says is one of the things that’s damaging our intimate relationships currently is we used to be. We are a tribal people. That is how we have been brought up on this globe is to be this tribal person.
We used to have all of these people to get things like we had intimate relationships with their family stayed very intimate. We had a lot of friends. We had a lot of, we had this giant structure around us to help support us. And now we’re so solely focused on this soulmate idea. This one person that’s going to meet.
All of our needs, be the person, you know, not only raise our children, but also be our business co-person and, you know, understand the intimacy of our bodies and do all of these things for us. And one of the things that I think is so paramount that you teach is that first we need to. Stop looking externally for all of these things, you know, it’s not about finding somebody to fill you.
It’s about filling yourself in then giving.
Totally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And so on that note of what you said a moment ago, we, we expect our intimate part. I will just use it for the sake of simplicity. I’ll say like, you know, if I were talking about my, my partner, my husband, we think our husband is supposed to be our lover.
So mate, our plumber are, you know, the provider, the father to them because all these things, right. And to some extent, yes. But when we put that much expectation and that much pressure on our partner, and it goes both ways, I’m talking to the guys and what you expect from your women as well, and every other right situation.
But, um, When we put so much pressure on our significant other to be all of those things. It really, one of the things that I see, what do I see? I see it hampers intimacy and that sex life, um, is the first thing to go, right? Sex, satisfying sex. I’m not talking about fucking on the kitchen counter quickly, so you can get over before the kids walk in kind of stuff.
I’m talking about really deep, satisfying sexual intimacy. Um, and so back to your second point, Yeah, I do believe that, um, the way that we reel in our expectations of our partner, right, is by filling our needs ourselves. Right? So my first coach will be shimmery taught me that, uh, when we get our needs met, our wants diminish, and really there are only a few fundamental needs that we have.
So if you think about what. What is it that I can give to myself? Where am I not being intimate with myself? And in this case, I’m not talking about sexual intimacy. I’m talking about self knowledge, self care, self love, like truly, fully unconditionally accepting myself. That is what I consider to be intimacy with self.
And so when we’re not being that we’re looking to fill that void or that what’s missing the gap, if you will, from somebody else, oftentimes. That intimate partner, the significant other. And again, hello pressure right now, again, to be clear, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t expect somebody to be intimate with us, affectionate with us, accept us all of those things, but how can we truly expect someone to see us fully when we are unwilling to see ourselves fully
right.
Yeah. So it all really starts with kind of honesty and taking the time to really understand yourself. And so how do you, how do you walk people through, you know, I feel so many of the women that I work with that’s one of the first things is they’ve just become disconnected. Yeah. Become disconnected with self.
So number one, they don’t even know what they want or desire or need not alone. Can they communicate that to somebody else? So they have all these expectations that they’re then not communicating. That’s creating this gap that you’re talking about, that they’re like almost studying. Their partner and their relationship up for failure because they’re having these unexpressed expectations and then getting pissed and, or resentful and or whatever else you want to look at because that person is not somehow psychically reading your mind and giving you those things.
So what are some first steps that you take people through on kind of this reconnection exploration with self so that then they can maybe communicate and create kind of an open line.
Yeah. Yeah. Great question. Um, so I have a signature system called the five bodies and the five bodies are physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and sexual.
And it’s a writing exercise and it’s meant to be done over five days or so. Right. Because it’s meant to be a deep dive into each body and how we relate to that body. Oftentimes we identify and relate almost exclusively to our physical and our mental bodies, physical body being these. Like what you can measure and weigh.
Right? What you see when you look in the mirror and then mental body in this context is the identity that we have for ourselves, which is full of our past roles. Um, our familial, you know, status, or like our relationship status, all of those things that we identify with, um, categorically, um, so people tend to identify and really only relate to those two bodies.
But as human beings, we actually have five. So this exercise can help them to see, first of all, recognize that because it’s not a common conversation. How many people are walking around going? I love my sexual body. No. And, and, and when people think about sexual butters, they’re thinking about body parts while I’m sorry, but that’s all the way back at the physical body.
I’m not talking about penis and vagina and a couple other fun bits. When I talk about the sexual body, I’m talking about the very core essence of our being. Right. And so this writing exercise and that’s the fifth step. So by day five, they’ve got sort of an idea of where we’re headed and what I’m asking for in this writing exercise.
Um, and they’re starting to reframe their perspective of themselves and recognizing their more than, you know, what I call the robot with the computer in the head. Right. We’re more than physical, mental, uh, beings. Right? Thank goodness. The conversation around emotional intelligence is way more popular today because that is another aspect of our human beingness.
That as early as you know, 10 years ago, wasn’t a common conversation in most circles. Yeah. So. The five bodies writing exercise is the first step I find extraordinarily helpful and people understanding their acts like who they are, um, as human beings and start to relate to themselves in a much deeper and comprehensive way.
Yeah,
I absolutely, I love that exercise. It’s transformative for so many people, because I think number one, it’s giving. You don’t want to have to do this, but as an adult, I’m sorry. Sometimes you have to do homework and it’s like one of these things it’s like, you don’t give yourself the space and the time to actually sit and pray, most people are not sending him processing like these things.
And so having a coach or somebody walk you through this process is really just the first step. And like this awareness exercise of like, oh, I need to give myself space in time to tune in with who I am today. What is going on, that kind of thing. And so then once people really tune into kind of their wants and desires and reconnect with themselves, how do you then have them start using that information and relating to others?
Like either on an emotional or physical level or just like personal
level? Yeah. Great question. Um, I’m going to talk about the emotional expression aspect of that question. Um, so when people start to realize that, uh, that as human as humans, we have emotions. That doesn’t mean we are our emotions, right.
So rather than talking about, I am angry. Or, I mean, you know, if you’re angry, you’re not saying I am angry. You’re, you’re fucking pissed. You’re just like, I’m pissed at you, whatever. Right? Like you’re just going off. So rather than just being at the mercy of our emotions, when we can start to see, oh, this is part of being human and I, um, I experienced all these emotions from anger and rage and guilt and shame to, you know, courage and, um, joy and love and all these other good vibrations.
Right. So when we can start to see that, oh, that’s what’s happening. And all of it is natural. All of it is normal. Then we can see. Start to communicate when we have those feelings when they get triggered, um, or when they come up, right? Because expressing joy and communicating happiness and love and peace even is just as important as communicating to somebody I’m feeling anger right now.
Like I’m feeling like shame and yet it takes a level of vulnerability and a really high level of self-awareness. To be able to do that. Like people aren’t just going to re like do the writing exercise and then all of a sudden they’re tough. They’re talking like that. No, but again, a new tool, a new way to, excuse me, approach things, look at things and start to communicate things.
Um, and talking about having emotions rather than I am this thing. I am ashamed. I am. I feel guilty would be more productive than, you know, talking shit about yourself in your head and how you like, you know, drop the ball again or let somebody down, or dah, dah, dah, no going to you’re like having a conversation with yourself, whether that’s in a journal or your coach or somebody that is, you know, a trusted confidant and saying, here’s how I’m feeling that I believe is truly the first step to changing the trajectory of the path that you might be on.
Yeah. And getting yourself where you want to go. Uh,
Colette knows me on a very, very personal deep level. And she does understand like as emotional as I. Seam. I actually have a very, very hard time expressing my emotions in the minute, the lower vibrational one. Oh, no happy emotions. I say LA, I can be joyful and exuberant and it’s very apparent, but if anything is not going right.
My first automatic response is to go in a hole and to hide and to shut down and to like stop communications. And even when we would live as leaving, when we lived together, I would literally go hide out in my room. And this girl has been my best friend for 15 years and I would go out of my room. And now that we don’t live together, it’s amazing to have somebody.
And I am luckily to have two people. I have Collette and then my partner, Ken, that. As soon as I do that, Colette knows if she hasn’t heard from me in about three or four days, there’s a text that says what’s going on. Are you okay? You know, and, and it’s taken me having two very strong. Both of my support.
People are impasse, which is. Very weird for missing an emotional, um, to have two people in your life that call you and actually know when things are going on with me sometimes before I even know. And so Colette and Ken can both tell actually physically and like micro facial motions, they can feel, they can literally feel that there’s a shift occurring.
And so they’re really good about calling me out. And I want to say anybody that struggles. With emotions or tuning into emotions or tapping into emotions, it is very important to find your person or people that will not allow you to slip out of them because being somebody that slipped out of them for 30 plus years, um, and used very unhealthy coping mechanisms to never feel to now have to tune in is a challenge for me, but it’s also my growth edge.
Um, And it’s something that I continually work on. Daily sometimes I’m like, I don’t, why are you making me work on this? I want to work on it. Let me eat pizza and ignore everything and play on my
phone. But that’s an exact, like the perfect example of what it looks like to be in a productive, satisfying, deep, intimate relationship.
And I speak intimate like you and I, we’re not having sex, not that kind of intimacy, but, um, we are intimately engaged in each other’s lives and, and. To have that level of relationship encourages and in an almost, uh, like it implies that you have to be deeper in a, in a deeper relationship with yourself as time goes on.
Like neither you nor I would be friends. If each one of us weren’t in, you know, growth lovers, right. Personal growth junkies. But, um, like in a committed. Continual investigation of ourselves. That’s what has had you and I stick around for so long. Um, I imagine among other things, but, um, is that, that, that we hold each other to that and we, we support each other.
And sometimes when you are wallowing in your shit and I, while I want my shit to, sometimes I can feel it. I don’t need to do anything about it. I’ll just check in and you’ll just be like, you know, need some time or whatever.
I brushed her off for a while. And then I’m like, okay, you know,
And I’m like, yeah, I know.
I know I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.
Yeah. Yeah. And we’ve, we’ve talked about, I mean, I am truly, it is a blessing that not many people have to have a term relationship that continues to grow. And the way that me and Colette, if you would have seen me and this girl back in the olden days, partying like rock stars, because we were doing,
and we still are a lot of drugs
doing a lot of drugs together, act in a full, um, and to just see where we have come now.
It would make your head spin, but that, that is the ability to really have a relationship that is full of blunt, blunt, honesty. And we’ve had some blow up, not talking to each other situations. And what has brought us back is that we both really respect and love each other at a fundamentally deep level because we are.
Very honest with one another and we’re honest with ourselves and it allows us to be that way. So relationship relationships are the Homer to your wellness. Don’t forget it. We’re going to go into our rapid fire question. Who re here we go. What is your real life superpower?
Oh man. Um, I am a maker of magic.
Yeah. Well, you want to explain that further? Yeah.
So I use my words to, uh, to make magic, to, um, literally manifest whatever it is that, um, I want to say that I desire, but I want to caveat that by saying it’s not just my desire, that desire has to be in alignment with the higher power, whatever that may be.
Right. But, um, when I, when I sync up with that, what’s intended for me and I focus on that and I use my words. I verbalize that intention that I have, or that desire that I’m in a, you know, on the path to fulfilling it happens. It happens. It happens. It happens. And so that is, you know, that’s the basis of the work that I do as a coach, as a speaker, um, working with people and using language, right.
To, um, to help people craft what it is that they’re up to and, and then, you know, align themselves with their highest power and their highest good. Then, um, the magic happens for them too, when they can, um, Take that which feels true in their heart and speak it with their words and then take consistent action around it.
It’s it’s inevitable. It will manifest.
Yeah. What’s the shadow side of that.
The shadow side is you can be manipulative. True that. Yeah. Or I shouldn’t say you, I, we, um, as impact, right. Um, we can be manipulative. And the thing is the reason for that is when we were, when we were young as a coping mechanism, we get real good at reading other people, um, in order to stay safe.
So for me, it was reading my dad who was volatile, who was an alcoholic who, um, would blow up at times. And so rather than, um, just Willy nilly, like riding the waves into that, you know, environment. I had to get good at reading his emotions and then responding to what I, what I knew was happening in that moment to stay quote unquote safe.
I was never in physical danger, but a lot of emotional danger. Right. So, um, we can be manipulative if, if, if we’re out of alignment, if we’re in our ego, if we’re, you know, going unchecked. Yeah. Yeah.
What’s one thing that you used to believe that you no longer believe.
So much. Um, okay, so I’m just going to go here. So I used to believe that I was an ugly, disgusting waste of time. I no longer believe that. Right. And that was a deep. Lee embedded unconscious, most of the time belief that was driving my life. Um, thank goodness I got over that shit because, um, it was yielding a lot of unhealthy and productive to say the least behaviors.
So yeah.
I remember when she first read that to me and we were both crying. It was a really emotional moment. Um, that realization that, that was some background story playing out that so many of us have that we. You know, talk about honesty with self it’s. Like you need to get crystal clear on what is the background programming that you are operating from that you don’t even consciously?
It’s not a conscious, it’s not like she was consciously thinking that it’s, that, that was a background program that you knew was coming. Yeah. So final question two parter. What would you tell your younger self? You can tell me how old she is and what advice would your nine-year-old self give you today?
Okay. To my younger self, let’s see she is, I don’t know, eight years old. And what I would say to her is it’s okay to feel what you feel. It’s okay to be different. It’s okay to say what’s in your heart and on your mind it’s oh, K it’s. Okay. Even if you like, when you do other people, don’t get it. Even if when you do you get laughed at even if, when you do.
You know, it’s not pleasant. It’s okay to keep being you no matter what other people say or do. So. And then my 90 year old self, what would she say to me? Right. Yeah.
well, thank you as always for sharing space with me and me and my amazing best friend and my number one relationship person, both personally, and my go-to guru right on girl. Thank you. Is there anything that you would like that you didn’t get to say on the podcast or you would like to share? Um,
yeah, I think just to re-emphasize that relationship is the thing that we do and we’re never not doing it.
So if we can, um, really, um, Except that relationship as a part of our lives, then we can start to look at it through a different lens, one that has it be inclusive and not exclusive of ourselves or exclude, you know, or only about intimate partners. But relationship neces is more about, um, A part of being human relationship to our body’s relationship, to our besties relationship, to our environment, all the things.
Right. Um, I think that that would be ultimately the message that I would like to convey here is that you’re never not in relationship. So give yourself the opportunity to reframe what relationship means in your life.
Love it. Love you. Bye.
It all starts with the relationship with yourself because as RuPaul says, if you can’t love yourself, then how the hell are you going to love someone else? Amen to that. Thank you, Colette, for connecting with me on the pod, the balanced bad-assery team includes me, Allie Waddell, the producer, Mariah gossip and audio engineer, Jake Wallace.
Thank you again. Founding media for your continued support, love the cast. Make sure you’re sharing it on all of your social media channels. So more people can be bad ass. You could also leave us a little review love on iTunes. So more folks can find the show. You can follow me on social media at Allie Waddell, a L L I w a D D E L L.
Thanks again for listening. .
