Intimacy, Sexuality and Sensuality with BJ Miller
Our podcast is hosted on Spotify and Anchor.
BJ Miller, Mettle Health founder, palliative care and hospice physician and author, hosts an informal and interactive conversation on intimacy and sensuality as relates to serious illness and disability. We tend to lose our connection to our sensual selves when illness or disability enters the picture, but there's no reason to remove this aspect of what it means to be human; to be sexual, to be intimate, to be sensuous.
Show Notes:
0:00 Introduction
3:00 How relationship dynamics change when illness enters the picture
5:16 How our bodies change, and thus our relationship to our body changes
6:10 Exploring your “new” body
7:38 Staying within your body and not comparing yourself to your past body
9:20 You will have to have uncomfortable conversations, communication is key.
13:00 Dealing with levels of discomfort: there is a spectrum of sensation
16:28 Not everyone has a partner, how to connect while also being alone and not distancing yourself from yourself
18:23 Sex is not the point, connecting and connection in whatever way is best for you is the point
22:52 Differentiating between sexual, sensual and sensuous
25:20 How can a social worker/clinical person practice bringing up sexual health with patients?
31:20 How can someone who is dealing with a serious illness navigate dating and romantic partnerships?
35:40: Navigating the natural aging process vs. a disease symptom with a caregiver, focus tends to become the diagnosis instead of the person with the diagnosis
43:05 Participating in support groups and the value of peer to peer support
48:05 Thoughts on sexuality in the world of COVID
49:50 Loss of privacy in older age leading to a loss of intimacy
51:43 Caregivers who might project their own discomfort onto the patient
55:28 The challenges of intimacy and romance for elderly adults in skilled nursing or long term care
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