Ep. 165: Create an Intimate Relationship With Yourself | with Allana Pratt

Today our expert guest is intimacy expert Allana Pratt, a global media personality and the go-to authority for those who’ve suffered heartbreak and are ready to live apologetically and attract an open-hearted, ideal relationship. Her vulnerability and courage landed her a featured weekly column on the Good Men Project, and she’s been featured as a guest expert at the Huffington Post, People Magazine, Forbes, CBS, Fox, and the Jenny McCarthy Show.

She is also the author of six books and hosts the edgy podcast Intimate Conversations, where listeners learn to find the relationship they deserve.

Allana got into the work she does today to take care of herself. She was a self-proclaimed people pleaser and always striving for approval and appreciation to fill this void inside of her—which she thought had to come from the outside in, not the inside out. After two divorces and a custody battle, she started to look at the common factor in both relationships—herself—and what her blind spots might be. The blind spot, she found, was that she did not have an intimate relationship with herself.

When you create an intimate relationship with yourself, it can save your marriage, help you find the right partner, make you peaceful in your skin, make sex better, and even bring in more money. It completely up-levels your life.

Creating an intimate relationship with yourself requires embracing the light as well as the dark. Most of us are addicted to something that keeps us from feeling: Facebook, porn, ice cream at 3 A.M. And since we’ve never been taught to feel, or that feelings are bad, we keep going back to these behaviors that won’t allow us to rest and be present and feel safe in our own body.

When you start to take a look at your inner self, keep this in mind:

• Stop resisting the parts of yourself that you’re judging and come into acceptance of that side of yourself.
• Assign labels or names to aspects of your identity without negative connotations. It helps identify which emotion is calling for our attention. By labeling them and acknowledging them, you can balance them within yourself and take on the positive aspects of those feelings.
• Give yourself permission to play, slow down, or create unique experiences. Some things might sound silly, gross, or illogical, but if you have the urge inside of you, decide if you can give yourself permission to do it.

Most people think their self-worth is earned from the outside in. They think that if people outside of them, or circumstances outside of their control, just behaved in a certain way, then they would feel okay on the inside. But that doesn’t work. You need to integrate the feelings within yourself and earn that self-worth from the inside.

The Biggest Helping: Today’s Most Important Takeaway

“Do you have a thriving, intimate relationship with yourself? Do you even check in? So a simple practice you can do at the beginning of every day and the end of every day, you can have one hand on your heart and one hand on your belly and go, ‘Hey sweet thing.’ And breathe. ‘What is it that I haven’t slowed down enough to hear you say? I’m listening.’ If you begin to do this very simple, 30 seconds of your whole life at the beginning of the day and the end of the day, your inner self will go, ‘I matter. I belong. I’m enough.’ Because you care about you. And that fundamental practice will spill into all areas of your life.”

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Thank you for joining us on The Daily Helping with Dr. Shuster. Subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or Google Play to download more food for the brain, knowledge from the experts, and tools to win at life.

Resources:

• Learn more: allanapratt.com
• Listen: Intimate Conversations
• Instagram: instagram.com/allanapratt
• YouTube: youtube.com/user/AlanaPratt
• Facebook: facebook.com/coachallanapratt
• Twitter: twitter.com/allanapratt

The Daily Helping is produced by Crate Media