Sex Gets Real 234: Feelings, emotional labor, and empathy with Kate Kenfield

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If you’ve been thinking about working with a coach around your desire, relationship, body, or shame, I am now accepting new clients and my rates are increasing January 2019. Learn more at dawnserra.com/work-with-me.

Why story hijacking and advice are rarely what the people we love need.

Kate Kenfield is back and setting a new record for the show with her third stint as a guest.

As a sex educator who is now diving deep into empathy, feelings, emotional intelligence, and self-care, we adore having brain sex and geeking out about all the things.

Plus, Kate is joining us this week to celebrate a huge announcement – her Tea & Empathy cards have been turned into a Kickstarter campaign. If you’ve been wanting to grab some cards for yourself, the prices are awesome AND you can help Kate get this incredible resource out to even more people with your support. Check out the crowdfunding campaign here.

Follow Dawn on Instagram.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Kate’s Tea & Empathy Cards Kickstarter. GO SUPPORT IT! I use these cards ALL THE TIME.

In this episode, Kate and I talk about:

• Empathy and using it as a social skill to improve the different kinds of relationships in our lives.
• The importance of curiosity and asking questions in long term relationships to invite a healthy, working conversation between you and your partner/s.
• Why the way empathy is being taught as imagining yourself in someone else’s shoes is flawed and why it can lead to projection and assumption.
• Unsolicited advice and story hijacking may seem like empathy, but it’s not. So what is?
• How self-care plays a big role around empathy and how it’s OK to not be able to hold space for support for others if you’re not feeling your best.
• Pair Care and how self-care doesn’t always need to be done alone. We heal in relationship.
• Using the Tea and Empathy cards to practice being in connection with your emotions when it feels overwhelming, and how using the cards to name the many feelings that you have can offer clarity and more communication in relationship.
• A listener asks about holding space for his partner. She constantly asks for advice but then doesn’t follow through, so they keep circling the same issues over and over again. What can he do?

About Kate Kenfield:

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Episode Transcript

Dawn Serra: You’re listening to Sex Gets Real with Dawn Serra, that’s me. This is a place where we explore sex, bodies, and relationships, from a place of curiosity and inclusion. Tying the personal to the cultural where you’re just as likely to hear tender questions about shame and the complexities of love, as you are to hear experts challenging the dominant stories around pleasure, body politics and liberation. This is about the big and the small, about sex and everything surrounding it we don’t usually name. The funny, the awkward, the imperfect happen here in service to joy, connection, healing and creating healthier relationships with ourselves and each other. So, welcome to Sex Gets Real. Don’t forget to hit subscribe.

Hey, you! Welcome to this week’s episode. I am ridiculously excited for this conversation with Kate Kenfield. This will be the third time Kate has been on the show. The reason we’re talking is for a very exciting project that she has going on right now. You have heard me talk over and over and over again, about Tea & Empathy cards, which is something that Kate created that helps people to name and interact with their feelings. They are a tool that I highly, highly recommend that can be used in so many different ways. In fact, I’ll share with you a little feeling card pull that I just did. She’s got a Kickstarter going right now for her Tea & Empathy cards. She wants to get them further out into the world and to update them. So if you want to get your own Tea & Empathy cards, don’t miss this Kickstarter. 

Dawn Serra: Kate’s work is fantastic. We’re going to spend this entire episode talking about empathy and communication and feelings and advice and relationships and self-care and emotional labor. It’s so rich and it’s such an incredible way for all of us to better connect with each other. But I am so, so, so excited for Kate and this Kickstarter. I will share with you the feeling cards that I just pulled for myself in a couple of minutes. 

But before we get there, I want to let you know that starting January 2019, my one-on-one and couples coaching rates will be going up. If you’ve been thinking about working with a coach – me – around your relationship, your desire, your libido, your body, you need a little bit of help to get unstuck, to process to reconnect to change the stories that you’re telling yourself because things just don’t feel quite right. I would love to work with you. 

Dawn Serra: If you go to dawnserra.com, there is a Work With Me section where you can check out everything about my coaching practice. I will have a link in the show notes. Right now rates are $120 an hour if you want to do pay as you go or you can book an eight-session package for $850, which works out to about $106 a session. Rates will be going up January 2019. So if you want to get that coaching, I recommend that you book now before rates go up. My practice is expanding and I would love to work with you. 

I’ve got my deck of Tea & Empathy cards in front of me. One of the incredible things about using these Tea & Empathy cards is you can use them on your own to just gauge what you’re feeling about a certain situation or life in general. You can do them with a friend, with a partner as a way to really get your experience from inside your head onto the table in front of you, to move the cards around, to organize them, to engage, to ask questions, to journal – whatever it is. It’s so easy for us to spiral and to obsess and to get stuck and to overthink. So being able to really externalize our feelings is a pretty powerful thing. 

On top of that, I’ve been doing a lot of work lately around body trust and embodiment. One of the things that I have done with these cards is I’ve actually pulled different feelings cards and then thought about where my body do I feel this feeling. How do I know I’m feeling this feeling? What lights up? What tenses up? Where is my attention drawn? It has really helped me to get to know my body in a whole new way. 

Dawn Serra: So whether you’re looking for new ways to get to know your body, to become more embodied or you’re just trying to develop the language you have for your emotions and how you communicate them, they’re such a fun, delightful tool. 

I sat here just a few minutes ago and I pulled out the cards that most resonated with me in this moment. I thought I would just share them with you. It’s interesting when you just do like a general poll. There have been times when I’ve had like 40 feelings cards in front of me. Today I have nine. It might be fewer, it might be more. But it just really demonstrates our ability to hold so much inside of ourselves and to experience so many things all at the same time. 

Dawn Serra: Here’s some of the things that I pulled: Confused, in process, disconnected a little bit, longing, ease, growth, evolution, competent, peaceful and self-loving. 

Every single time I do this, I pulled different sets of cards. So that’s where I am right now. If you’d love to get your hands on the Tea & Empathy deck, there are some wonderful rewards with Kate’s Kickstarter. Of course, the link is in the show notes and it’s sexgetsreal.com/ep234 for this episode. 

Dawn Serra: Let me tell you a little bit about Kate and then we’re going to jump right in. We field a pretty tough listener question about a partner who’s always asking for advice, but then doesn’t take that advice when their partner gives it to them. Plus, the basics of empathy. Why it’s a social skill and what we get wrong when it comes to communicating around feelings and the people that we love?

Kate Kenfield is a speaker, writer and empathy educator based in Melbourne, Australia. Her workshops, talks and writing have improved people’s emotional literacy, whether in a professional or a personal context. Kate’s internationally sought after feeling cards called Tea & Empathy have been used across the world to train doctors, students, educators and many others to better understand, engage with and talk about feelings in a practical and non-confrontational way, changing professional and personal interactions. 

Kate holds a Master’s in Public Health from the University of Melbourne and a Bachelor’s in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. She’s a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Melbourne and has provided hundreds of invited presentations in corporate settings and institutions, such as UCLA, New York University, Indiana University and Australian National University. She regularly consults for organizations in the education, healthcare and non-profit sectors. So here is my delightful, eye-opening opening conversation with Kate.

Dawn Serra: I forgot to mention, to Patreon supporters, if you support the show, patreon.com/sgrpodcast, at $3 a month and above, you get access to weekly bonus content. Sometimes it’s extra interviews and conversations with guests. Sometimes it’s other listener questions or adventures and things that I’ve been going through. If you support it $5 a month and above, you can actually lend your voice by helping me to field listener questions. 

So Patreon supporters, I did not put a bonus up last week because I was down in Portland for the kickoff to the Be Nourished Body Trust Provider Training, which I will be up to my eyeballs in for the next six to eight months. It’s basically a graduate level program, all about eating disorders, trauma, bodies. I was down in Portland for six days to do the kickoff for that certification program. I didn’t didn’t get a chance to post last week. You’ll be getting two this week. One, all about my Narrative Therapy Training because several of you wrote asking for more details. The other one is going to be all about the Body Trust Work with some really yummy prompts and questions for you to think about what body trust means. So head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and to listen to your yummy bonuses.

Dawn Serra: Welcome back to the show, Kate Kenfield. I am so delighted to talk to you today. 

Kate Kenfield: I love talking to you, Dawn. Thanks for having me back. 

Dawn Serra: Here’s a welcome I love talking to you, too. For listeners who have heard you before, I’m sure they’re excited to hear you back. And for folks who are new to the show and haven’t heard you, this is your third time on the show, I think. 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. I think so, too. Yeah. I just I can’t get enough of being one of your amazing guests. I’m always in such a great company. I love the questions you ask me.

Dawn Serra: Pro-tip for folks listening. Kate and I have the most amazing like Skype dates where we just geek out and talk all about life and our professional woes and all the things and your brain is something to be adored.

Kate Kenfield: Likewise, likewise. I always feel so rich and full and abundant after our calls. I always get new insights on life in the world. It feels like such an amazing thing to have in my life. So thank you.

Dawn Serra: You’re welcome. Thank you. So listeners, we’re just going to love each other for this whole episode. The thing that we often geek out about is around feelings and empathy and communication with good reason because you spend a lot of your time thinking and practicing and teaching in these spaces. I think it’d be really fun for folks who maybe haven’t heard previous conversations of ours, for us to just start kind of basic around how do you define empathy and why do you think it’s important? 

Kate Kenfield: Yes. So the way I define empathy, you can think about empathy in a lot of different ways. But the definition that I find most useful that I teach in the trainings that I run is that empathy is about being curious about and non-judgmentally engaged with someone else’s emotional world.

I think that empathy is important because it’s really the backbone of every kind of relationship that we have, whether it’s our romantic or sexual relationships or whether it’s our friendships or professional relationships. It’s really this kind of relationship glue that allows us to connect better and support one another better. What I’ve observed is just that when we improve our empathy skills, it just upgrades every single relationship that we have in our lives. We tend to think of empathy as a personality trait when it’s actually social skill, like anything else. I love how you talk about how sex is a social skill and I think empathy is also a social skill. But it’s this thing that we think of people either having or not having. But it’s something that I teach people how to improve. It’s incredible to watch what happens when people get better at it.

Dawn Serra: One of the things that I love so much about that definition of, it’s about being curious and also non-judgmental is there’s something that I’ve noticed happens in so many different kinds of relationships over time, most often with family and with intimate partners, is that curiosity piece kind of goes away. We stop being curious and we start being very assumptive and prescriptive. As soon as that curiosity starts waning, the people in our lives stop feeling so interesting and mysterious and feel a little bit more stagnant and stale. It’s really hard to be empathetic when we think we know someone else’s world and when we think we know who they are and decide before the interaction’s over what they need. 

Kate Kenfield: There’s so much in that actually. I think that it’s something that can be really relaxing about long term relationships, whether there are intimate relationships like romantic relationships or their intimate relationships like familial ones. It’s relaxing to feel that sense of certainty– 

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Kate Kenfield: That we know the people with whom we live or who we see really often. Curiosity is something that really has to be worked at. I think people can forget that that’s something that’s really pivotal to making these relationships work and asking the right questions of the people in our lives is really, really important. I think about this as it’s such a skill set that you have.

This is one of the reasons I love being friends with you and talking to you. You’re so good at asking the right questions to stimulate curiosity and making people feel heard. And it’s just– It’s really one of these building blocks of high quality empathy and keeping relationships strong.

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Kate Kenfield: But I think it’s something that people can resist because it’s almost uncomfortable. Because in order to foster curiosity, you have to recognize in that that you don’t know what’s going on. It’s like an acknowledgement of uncertainty. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Kate Kenfield: Does that make sense? 

Dawn Serra: Absolutely. 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. And that’s not something that we’re really good at. It’s something that can make us quite uncomfortable. I think one of the things about the way we conceptualize empathy that relates to this is that sometimes the way that we’re taught about empathy is this imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes and something that I think is a little bit flawed about this. Sometimes the way that I see empathy taught is that you’re supposed to imagine yourself in someone else’s shoes, but without that question asking curious engagement piece. You’re just supposed to imagine how you would feel if you were in someone else’s shoes. That’s really quite assumptive. Right? 

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Kate Kenfield: It really doesn’t… If you don’t actually ask someone directly without direct engagement, you really have no idea how someone else is feeling because your experience might be completely different than theirs. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. I think that’s so important. 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. I mean, it’s really just kind of projection. I think it’s a good stimulation of the brain, sort of imagining how someone else might be feeling. I think that’s good to stimulate your brain in the right direction. But you don’t– Without actually asking someone how they might be feeling or engaging with them and getting their feedback about how they might be feeling. You really don’t know. 

There was a really interesting study about this that a friend of mine who’s a psychology researcher at University of Melbourne. She sent this to me about how they did this study where people were supposed to imagine the way someone else was feeling. They lined that up with how accurate these guesses were to how someone actually was feeling. So one group just did that – imagine themselves in someone else’s shoes. Then another group imagined how someone else is feeling if they did that direct engagement where they actually then asked that person, “How are you feeling?” and then that person actually told them. 

Kate Kenfield: The people who just did the imagining, but without the direct engagement, were no more likely to be accurate than a control group who didn’t actually imagine at all. They were just more likely to be arrogant and just assuming that they– They were just more likely to think that they knew, but they weren’t actually more accurate in their guesses. It was only the people who did that direct engagement with someone that actually made accurate guesses about how people felt. So it’s… Yeah. I mean, that one-on-one interaction is so pivotally important. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I think that’s such an incredible thing for us to just really think about. I mean, that advice of, “well imagine how it is to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes” or “picture what you would have done in that scenario.” It’s only helpful, as you said, it’s like an interesting exercise for yourself. Because when we really think about it, I mean, I’ll never know. I will never come remotely close to know what it’s like to move through the world as someone in a black body or in an indigenouos body or a body that’s in a mobility device because of a certain disability. 

I mean, it’s literally just a mental exercise. There’s no lived experience that I have that I can draw on that would ever get me close to that. I can’t imagine what it’s like to move through the world as a cis man. I mean, I can see how it is to move through the world as a cis man for a lot of ways, but I don’t actually know what it’s like to carry that in my body. Even further, people who are similar to me – other fat people or other people who have had similar stories – we have such different families and such different cultures. I mean, there’s just… We are too complex, which is the beauty. Right? I mean, the nuance and the depth that we all carry inside of us is just too infinite to really be able to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes. I think what comes up for people is the terror, then, in admitting you don’t know and asking. Because culturally speaking, we’re told we should know and to not know is a weakness. 

Kate Kenfield: Yup. We’re taught that we need to be mind readers. 

Dawn Serra: Right. 

Kate Kenfield: And I think about how we’re– Emotionally we’re like overlapping Venn diagrams. There’s some emotional shared experience that we are going to share with other people. We can all relate to– With anyone you meet, there’s going to be some overlapping emotional experience where you do have shared reality with someone and that can feel amazing. You can find those touchstones where someone’s describing an emotional experience and if you have the same experience, you would have the same shared emotional constellation. But it’s not all going to be the same. 

This is something that gets highlighted beautifully in the empathy trainings that I run, where people talk about the things that are stressing them out or feeling frustrating or overwhelming to them and then they get the feelings cards out and they literally lay their feelings out on the table and people are making these feelings guesses. Some of them are right and some of them are wrong. It’s incredible to see that basically that overlapping Venn diagram, but then also these incredibly unique feelings that people have about their experience. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. So before we move on, I just love to ask one more question and it’s one that I know you love talking about which is, what do most people get wrong when they think they’re being empathetic?

Kate Kenfield: Oh. How do I nail it down to just one thing? So many things. So I think, I’d say it’s two things that I see most commonly. One is giving unsolicited advice. This is huge. They confuse empathy with advice. So a common thing that when empathy is needed is someone’s coming to someone who they need support from and with something stressful, sad, challenging in some way that they need support around and the support person’s reaction is to give advice about how they should be handling their situation. 

Advice can be wonderful and beautiful, but only when it’s wanted. Nearly always, people need empathy in order to be able to action advice. Empathy is also a data gathering exercise. It’s hard to give someone good advice unless you really understand the feelings around what it is that they’re experiencing.

Dawn Serra: Their feelings, not your feelings.

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. Exactly. People need to be heard first. So that’s something that can really go wrong and people can confuse. But in our culture, we’re often taught that our value is to solve people’s problems, when really the way we are often most useful is to just listen and help someone feel seen and heard. Anyway, that’s one thing that people get wrong. 

The other one that people will do is story hijacking, where someone will describe something that’s emotionally challenging in some way, then the support person will go, “Oh. I totally know how you feel. The same thing happened to me,” and then will go on to describe something, at best, vaguely similar or at worst, something totally not similar at all and will take the focus of the conversation away from the person who’s actually needing support. 

Kate Kenfield: People will often really think that that’s empathy. They’ll think, “Oh. I’m sharing my feelings that are similar to this person’s and this will be useful to them.” And once in a while that can be useful if it’s actually a similar story and what the person needing support is feeling is a sense of loneliness and isolation and they feel like, “I’m the only person that’s ever gone through this.” There’s a time and a place for that story sharing. But more often than not, what a support person needs is to just be listened to about their own pain. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Kate Kenfield: So those are the two things that I see people really not doing so well around empathy. 

Dawn Serra: Story hijacking is one that I default to especially when I’m feeling very uncomfortable or I’m not quite sure what’s needed. If I’m not well-resourced and just really thinking, “What does this person need?” my default will be to story hijack, of like, “Oh. Let me share a little bit about something that I went through that sounds like it’s kind of similar.” Sometimes I do well at then circling back and bringing it back to them. But sometimes it’s like I don’t know what to do. I’m really uncomfortable in this situation or I’m feeling not resourced to hold the space and I didn’t share that with you, so now I’m going to share the story and hope that it wraps it up. It’s like exit strategy, in a way. It’s nice to see those patterns when we’re able to so that we can make better choices when we want to make better choices. 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. I think story hijacking can also happen when people have their own unheard pain. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Kate Kenfield: Like when someone shares their pain with us, it can be this beacon of permission that “Oh, God. It’s safe to talk about pain now.” Then it triggers and it’s like, “Oh, gosh. Can I talk about my pain now? Is that safe now?” You see this a lot around grief. As a society, we have all this unheard pain around grief and that this can be a real harmful dynamic that happens like someone loses someone and then they talk about it, and then you get this intense story hijacking with people then telling their grief story that’s a bit old. And someone with the fresh grief story doesn’t get their pain seen and can feel that really, really hijacked in a way that some can be quite destructive. Yeah.

Dawn Serra: Something else that I’ve really learned from you when it comes to empathy and being able to witness is the importance of caring for self and setting boundaries and also asking consent like, “Is now a good time to share about my day?” “Is now a good time to–” do whatever. Sometimes falling apart just has to happen and then afterwards like, “Wooh. Sorry. How are you feeling?” “How can I support you because I just had to verbal vomit?” And so, doing that tending and that caring and giving people the opportunity to opt in or opt out. And so self-care is a big part of empathy. 

Kate Kenfield: Oh, absolutely. I think something I frequently say is that sustainable empathy requires sustainable self-care. This expectation that we should all be highly empathetic all the time is just completely unrealistic. I think empathy is the backbone of healthy relationships, but it’s also emotional labor and needs to be tended to as such. 

Yeah. In the trainings that I do around empathy, I also teach about sustainable self-care and what that really looks like – self-care with boundaries and self-care that’s beyond spa days. I think spa days are wonderful and I’m all for a bath bomb and a pedicure. But how do you practice self-care that’s beyond that and that’s really bespoke and customized for you because it’s not a one size fits all thing. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. The last time we chatted, you shared with me this new wonderful little phrase that you had come up with. Because often, when we think about self-care, we think about those kind of isolating activities of, “I’m going to take a bath,” “I’m going to read a book,” “I’m going to go for a walk.” You had shared with me this concept of pair-care. Can you tell us a little bit about that? 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. So pair-care is just based on this idea that self-care doesn’t have to be solitary. I’m certainly not the first person that’s said that. I just like the term pair-care because it rhymes. So when I talk about self-care, I define it as that it’s self-directed, but it’s not solitary. It doesn’t have to be solitary. I think it’s important that self-care is self-directed because ultimately, we only have control of ourselves. But sometimes the most powerful forms of self-care are things that we do in tandem with others. 

One of the things I often think about a lot of the people that I train are healthcare providers and one of the most effective forms of self-care that they have are debriefs after confronting patient interactions. They’ll have a challenging patient interaction of some kind, something that would be likely to cause them secondary trauma or just something upsetting or challenging that happens. Often, one of the most healthy things that they can do is find another healthcare provider with whom they work and just debrief about that for a few minutes. And it’s something that they can fit into their incredibly busy workday. That’s really self care for them. 

Kate Kenfield: I think this is true for people in a lot of different fields. If you just have that person on call who understands the nature of your work, who gets you and you could just do that efficiently and someone else who has good emotional labor skills, that’s something that can really help ease the burden of your life. But there’s other types of pair-care, too. Like someone who will go on a walk with you or someone you can talk on the phone with or someone that will go to the float pods with you. I mean, there’s lots of different ways to do pair-care. Like someone who will bring you soup when you’re sick or I mean, there’s lots of different ways that can look.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I’m thinking, one of the things that’s been the most rejuvenating for me over the past year has been exploring play. Being able to explore that play with others is endlessly fun and also endlessly nourishing to get to fart around in the pool, doing ridiculous things like we have done or… You know, Alex and I have been playing frisbee a lot lately. So we go to the park and we don’t just play frisbee, we do ridiculous versions of frisbee. 

Kate Kenfield: That sounds like the two of you. I remember playing in the pool with you. The last time I visited Vancouver was like a peak travel experience for me.

Dawn Serra: Yay! Good! Yeah. But just you know… I can certainly do fun things on my own and I love alone time– 

Kate Kenfield: Oh. Yeah. 

Dawn Serra: But being able to laugh and be ridiculous and get my body moving with someone else and sharing that space is healing for me and it fills my tanks and it makes me feel connected. That’s a way of caring for myself and my body. Being able to do that with someone that I really care about is a gift. I feel a lot of gratitude for that. 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. I mean, it’s a gift that you can provide others like I often think about what are the ways of doing care like that, that come more naturally to you than maybe to others. It’s a profound gift that you can give to your friends and your loved ones. It would never have occurred to me to do handstands in the pool. I’m not an not playful person, but that just wouldn’t have occurred to me. I had so much fun in the pool with you and Alex. That was like next level play for me. 

Dawn Serra: Yes.

Kate Kenfield: That was some hardcore pair-care that you two facilitated.

Dawn Serra: Oh. That’s wonderful. Yay! Good! You are welcome back anytime for more handstands and cartwheels.

Kate Kenfield: I talk about these different types of self-care in the trainings that I do and one of the types I talk about– I talk about Meg-John Barker’s kind self-care and reflective self-care. I love these concepts that they talk about. Reflective self-care is these forms of self-care where you’re really reflecting on your emotional experience of life. That’s something that I’m often facilitating for friends of mine. But I think these kind self-care, things that you know, playfulness would really fall under that umbrella. I mean, that’s you and me and Alex in the pool that’s a perfect example of you facilitating that for me.

Dawn Serra: It even made me think… You know, I attended the ASDAH Conference in August, which is all about Health at Every Size and reducing weight stigma inside of the medical industrial complex and mental health fields. One of the things that got talked about a lot was that for a lot of people, who either have disabilities or who are in fat bodies, literally taking care of the vessel of going to the doctor, going to the dentist, can be really highly traumatic. 

One of the ways that people are able to actually do that is to have someone come with them to be an advocate and to be able to do a lot of the labor, so that this vessel can get the attention that it needs from people who can provide very specialized kinds of care. It occurs to me that that’s another version of pair-care, when we can show up for someone– 

Kate Kenfield: Oh. Wow. Yeah.

Dawn Serra: And really help to hold space and to advocate and to help them take care of themselves in ways that they otherwise might not be able to. That’s a beautiful way to do self-care with someone that you care about.

Kate Kenfield: I love that example. That’s spectacular. Yeah. That’s really powerful. I can think about just times in my experience navigating the healthcare system with my migraines. You know how often I’ve had a friend come with me just because I didn’t have the energy to navigate the bureaucracy of healthcare, not even dealing with something like weight stigma on top of that. Just how incredibly kind and loving that kind of care could be.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. So for people who have listened to the show for a while, they know that I am a huge fan of your Tea & Empathy cards. It’s been a tool that has helped me and I’ve also used with a lot of my clients in coaching and as part of the Explore More Summit. For me, one of the most profound things about this is, going back to the conversation we had at the top of the hour, we can’t ever really know someone’s internal experience. But having an opportunity to actually externalize your feelings to get them out of your head and into physical space that can be manipulated and shared and discussed by pulling cards out and saying, “Here’s how I’m feeling about this thing” or “Here’s the feeling that’s most prominent right now” and having a thing that you can hold and move and grapple with.

I know you’ve got a Kickstarter that’s going right now – because we’re in October when this airs. So before we move on to the next question, can you just tell us a little bit about your Kickstarter? 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. Absolutely. So I’m doing a Kickstarter to be able to get these cards out to more people and to improve the design. I’ve been selling my Tea & Empathy cards for a couple of years now. Originally, I created them just as a tool for my workshops that I was teaching around empathy. Then participants in my workshops asked if they could buy them. I started selling them print on demand. But I’ve realized that I need to make them better. 

I’m doing the Kickstarter so that I can create a custom box and an instruction manual and make some improvements to the cards and the deck. Yeah. I’m super excited about them. But I need to raise some initial capital so that I can actually make those changes. 

Dawn Serra: So I’ll just say for anyone listening, whether you want to be able to just do some of that reflective self-care and to really get curious about your own feelings and your experiences and often the nuance and the complexity, these cards are such a gift in doing that. But they can be such an incredible way to connect with a loved one and to have new curious conversations, especially around stuff that can be really tender and scary. 

One of the other things that I’ve been doing recently is I’ve been working with my therapist around finding new pathways to be embodied, and to be in my body and to experience it and to kind of map my body and where I feel certain things. I’ve actually used the Tea & Empathy cards to help with that, of being able to pull a feeling. Right now, connection is at the top of the deck and ask myself, “Where in my body do I feel connection?” “How do I know I’m feeling connection?” “Where do I feel that?” and “Where do I feel silliness?” or “Where do I feel resentment?” You know, it’s given me– 

Dawn Serra: Tara Brach has this quote that as soon as you enter the body, you enter the wilderness. I find that your cards and having these visual cues of this particular emotion, and then being able to ask myself… A lot of the time the answer is, “I’m not sure yet” and that’s okay. But just being able to like, “Wow. Where do I– I’ve never thought about that.” “Where do I feel resentment?” “How do I know I’m feeling resentment and where do I feel connection?” “How do I know I’m feeling it?” It has been an incredible exercise of tying together the heady with the embodiment peace.

Kate Kenfield: Thank you. I feel so honored to how you use them. I think it’s been amazing for me to see how other people have found innovative ways to use them because so much of why I created them was because they were a thing that I wanted to exist. I often think about when I’m feeling something, feeling a constellation of feelings that is overwhelming to me, it is so helpful for me to get them out of my head. 

If I think about a situation that is challenging for me in some ways, I can often identify a handful of feelings that I have. But when I have the cards, I can go through the deck and pull them out. That process is so profoundly cathartic for me. And having the cards in my hands like what you’re describing, getting it out of your head and being able to touch the cards and move them around makes that connection, that kind of brain-body connection. Easier and– It makes being mindful and present with your feelings easier. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Kate Kenfield: And then it also–

Dawn Serra: So– Oh. You go ahead.

Kate Kenfield: I was just going to say that, and then the next piece to that is… I mean, you can just have it be a solo self-care practice where you’re getting those feelings out of your head and processing them on your own. But then, when you get them out on a table, it also has that ability to communicate that to someone else if you’re wanting to communicate how you’re feeling–

Dawn Serra: Yeah.

Kate Kenfield: Which is difficult for so many of us. 

Dawn Serra: It is. It can be so hard to say to someone, “I’m feeling excited and nervous, a little shy and confused and frustrated.” It’s like when to articulate those things clearly and to have them held, especially when there’s so many, I think that’s one of the things that surprises people like in Tea & Empathy workshops and stuff. 

Most of the time, unless there’s something really acute going on, there’s not just one or two feelings floating around you. Sometimes there’s five, ten. Sometimes there’s something like 30. Right? Because it’s like work and friends and family and my body and my health and my partner and my fucking cat and you know… I mean, there’s a lot going on. 

Kate Kenfield: It’s amazing how that’s something that I’ve needed to start saying to people, because they’ll get these meta-feelings about their feelings–

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Kate Kenfield: Where they’ll be doing the Tea & Empathy exercise and people will be making the guesses about what they’re feeling. Then partway through, they go, “Oh. Shit. I have so many feelings and I have a story about what it means to have this many feelings about something.” 

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Kate Kenfield: And they will have shared something that’s relatively minor. You know, it will be something like they’ve had a frustrating situation at work. It’s not necessarily the biggest, most traumatic thing that’s ever happened to them, but they realized that they have… I don’t know, 15 feelings about it and then that story kicks in, about what kind of person has this many feelings about a thing.

I realized that I have to say it is completely normal to have this many feelings about something. It’s normal to have even more feelings about it. And this is just– We’re just not normally prompted with that many names of feelings. But it’s valuable and if they can let go of that story, they end up feeling quite a lot of relief at having someone help them name all of those feelings and get all of that language to describe what it is that they’re feeling. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I remember one time, someone in my life and I had a really challenging exchange. Shortly after that, they sent me a picture of their Tea & Empathy cards and they had spread them out. There was about 20, 25 of them. It was like, “Here’s where I am right now” and all of the cards they were like I was just reflecting on our relationship. 

All of the cards were these beautiful, generous, easy feelings. There was just one card on there that said frustrated. All of the other feelings were loved and appreciated and excited and equality and honesty. It was such an incredible moment of like, “We’re in the weeds right now. We had some words and we had some feels and this isn’t easy.” Yet to know, yes, this person’s feeling frustrated and they’re feeling 19 other things that are all so loving and generous and connected and beautiful, it just gave me this sense of like, “Okay. It’s more than just this immediate story. This is one tree in the forest. Yes, we can talk about that frustration, but we can also talk about all these other things like, “Tell me more about this connected feeling,” “Tell me more about this excited feeling and respected feeling.” I mean, it was a really wonderful opportunity to be able to say, “We’re not just this singular problem.” 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. That’s such a powerful thing when you’re using the cards with a friend or a partner and they’re laying them out. Just the question, “Tell me more about this thing that you’re feeling.” “Tell me more about this card and why this one’s coming out for you.” That’s just such a great curious question that can yield such powerful connection.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. And even using the cards to do a debrief about the sex you’re having or the sex you’re not having or to do a debrief about your body and how you’re feeling at that day. I mean, there’s such an incredible array of ways to use this for pleasure and connection. And whether it’s the cards or just a list of feelings that you print off from some website, it’s really how can we use some tools that make it easier for us to now engage in a dialogue and to find that curiosity and to just hold space for each other. That I think is– That’s such a different way of relating than so many of the relationships that I had earlier in my life, especially in my 20s, where it was just at each other and on a good day, maybe we’d hear some of it. But mostly, it was just talking at and talking past and maybe we’d have a good day and the rest of the days we are just not really understanding each other. 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. Absolutely. I think it changes everything when we get more words for feelings and can be present with other people’s feelings. That just changes everything.

Dawn Serra: Well, speaking of getting present with other people’s feelings, I got a listener question in a couple of weeks ago that I was like, “Well, I’m talking to Kate soon. This seems like a Kate question.” How are you feeling about fielding a question with me? 

Kate Kenfield: That sounds great. Let’s get to it. 

Dawn Serra: Okay. So Jeremy wrote in and it says:

“Hey, Dawn! Jeremy here. Thanks for your show. I’ve learned a lot. I’m writing because my wife and I have been together for 15 years. In that time, we’ve had some great times and some not so great times. The one thing that I really struggle with is my wife never listens to my advice. Now, I know you’ve talked about this before and I have tried listening. I’ve tried asking questions. Then she asks me what to do over and over about the same couple of problems. I tell her what I think. She agrees with me and then she doesn’t change her behavior. We’ve gotten into so many fights because it seems like no matter what I try, she just keeps getting stuck in the same dramas with work, with her family, with her friends, even with us. 

Dawn Serra: I’ve tried being super blunt and being super patient. I’ve listened to her cry and rage. But no matter what I do or don’t do, she keeps doing the same thing she says she won’t do. Any advice for me? I feel like I’m at the end of my rope. There’s only so much listening I can do when the things she’s upset about and complaining about are the same things she was upset about and complaining about two or five or ten years ago. I love her, but this is slowly killing me. Help. Jeremy”

Kate Kenfield: Goodness.

Dawn Serra: Yes. Thank you for this Jeremy.

Kate Kenfield: It sounds like there’s quite a lot going on between the two of them. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Kate Kenfield: Okay. Where do we start? I think in a dynamic like this– I mean, it sounds like he’s trying quite hard to implement some of what– I’m sure the advice that you’ve already given is what I would give right off the bat, which is not giving unsolicited advice ever. Which I imagine from what he’s described has probably been his MO historically, is when his wife has come to him seeking support, he has been giving her advice rather than lovely, non-judgmental present listening. 

Dawn Serra: Yup.

Kate Kenfield: It sounds like he’s tried a lot of different strategies. But part of me wonders how his listening strategies have actually landed with her. That’s something that I would be really curious about. The other thing is that I wonder how attached he is to fixing all of the problems in her life that are outside of their marriage. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Kate Kenfield: In her work and in her family and her friends, it sounds like he’s really heavily invested in fixing those which is something that can feel really heavy and burdensome in relationships. Those are often things we can’t fix about our partners. But I can understand his frustration there with her not implementing that advice. But I think he also has to, to some extent, distance himself from that.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. The unsolicited advice thing I think is, especially for people who have been in long term relationships… I’ve seen this pattern in a lot of couples work that I’ve done – which we talked about a little bit earlier – which is, there’s a lot of comfort in those rhythms and those rituals that we can get into with the people that we have in our lives for long periods of time, whether it’s family or friends or intimate partners. But with that comfort often comes a lack of curiosity. 

Sometimes we can get a little judgmental like, “You should do better.” “We’ve talked about this before. Why are we here again?” That’s judgment coming in. So I think often, when we’re talking to someone – whether we’re saying it or not – if other people can pick up that subtle judgment and that subtle aspiration, they’ve already shut down.

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. 

Dawn Serra: So it’s hard to feel heard when the other person is not really holding space for you non-judgmentally.

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. I wonder that too with the attempts at listening when you’ve had years of offering unsolicited advice. There can be some healing that needs to happen there. In my experience, people need to feel really heard in order for advice to really land with them. And obviously, I mean, this is true for any question that you’re getting, we don’t know what’s going on with her and what exactly the problems are in her friends and family and work what that drama entails. 

But what I’ve often seen happen in relationships and in dynamics like this is that what people are wanting from their partner is not someone to fix their life, but someone to provide a soft place to land from the rest of their life. Not someone to provide solutions, but that takes a different skill set than we’re often taught. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. And it requires a lot of– You have to be humble to be able to say, “I really don’t know what you’re going through and I really don’t know what would fix this. But I want to show up for you anyway. 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. 

Dawn Serra: I’m also curious sometimes, I mean, let’s not be fooled folks. I have done this shit. But sometimes, we complain and we feel big feelings when we’re feeling stuck and frustrated because we want things to change. But we’re not yet at a point where we’re ready to invest in the discomfort that’s required to make the change happen. Right? 

Kate Kenfield: Yes.

Dawn Serra: There might be some of that happening where she wants something to change, but she wants it to be easy or she wants it to magically happen. I spent so many years wishing that I would just wake up and my body would magically be different. That there would be a magical pill or a fairy godmother or something that would make me not have to be in this body that I felt so much anger towards. 

The same can happen with work where we feel stuck. “Well, if I take this chance and I actually do something different, what if I lose my job and then I lose my stability.” So it’s easier to just be angry and complain about it because I don’t want to risk losing being able to pay the mortgage. There might be some of that going on too of, she may not be ready to actually do the really, really hard, scary things.

Dawn Serra: In the meantime, until she becomes ready or she’s ready to just move past it, there’s just going to be a lot of discomfort because the only thing that she can do is lament and vent and complain or at least that’s what she thinks. Right? 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. In fairness, that may be profoundly draining for him. I mean, he’s saying he’s at the end of his rope. What he might need to be evaluating is, what does he need to be doing to be better resourced or create better boundaries around how much support he’s giving? I mean, that might be something that they need to be visiting in couples counseling or– Cause I mean, it sounds like he’s quite exasperated. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Kate Kenfield: So that either needs to be like a boundary setting thing or a perspective changing thing or both of them need to be getting support outside the marriage, so that they’re not draining each other. 

Dawn Serra: I think that’s such an invaluable point of, so often we burden people in our lives. Because, you know– Especially, I’m thinking about in monogamous relationships, but it can be all kinds of relationships where there’s that one person that we go to for so many things. It can be so hard to know, “I’m the person that they always come to when things are hard or when they’re struggling and you don’t want to let them down.” 

But when we have multiple places to turn, when we have multiple resources for support, we have multiple people who can hold that space, there’s so much more generosity that can show up because then we’re not feeling that drain and that burden. I mean, he sounds exhausted. 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. He really does. Yeah. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. And so I think you’re so right. The boundaries could be so important of like, it’s okay to kindly and firmly tell someone “I love you so much and I really want to support you. I’m feeling really exhausted right now and I don’t think I can show up for you in that way. So is this something we could do later? Or is there someone else you can call because I want you to feel supported and heard. I’m just not sure I can do that for you now.”

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. Absolutely. That’s a great script. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Kate Kenfield: It’s a really, really great script. It’s long, but stitch that on a pillow. 

Dawn Serra: Right. Exactly. It’s a little more generous than, “Not now. Not again” which is kind of where it sounds like Jeremy is at. You know? 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. I think there’s two things from– I think about this a lot in my work. I’ve seen this. It’s just that part of why people can get so exhausted with emotional labor is when they’re really attached to fixing everyone’s problems. When they actually increase their empathy skill, it can actually be less exhausting to do emotional labor. It’s still labor. It’s still effort. But when you don’t feel solely responsible for fixing someone’s life and what you’re actually doing in that moment is just making space for their feelings and listening and then at the end of that interaction, you have good boundaries and you’re just done with the interaction, it can actually be a whole lot less draining than feeling like, “Oh my God. I have to help this person solve all their problems.” 

Dawn Serra: Right.

Kate Kenfield: Like there’s actually a skill set there that can make the whole interaction less draining. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. 

Kate Kenfield: But I think there’s this other skills set on top of it around self-care and self-awareness of, “How well-resourced am I in this moment to give this person emotional support?”

Dawn Serra: Right. And, “Can I show up generously right now?” I think that’s a really important question that we often – especially in intimate relationships – don’t ask ourselves because we’ve got those patterns that we’re already in of like, “Oh. Great. She came home. She threw her bag down. I know what that means. I’m already on the defensive because I’m already feeling exhausted because we’ve done this a hundred times.” 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. And what’s the overall health of the relationship? Because it sounds like with Jeremy and his wife, there’s quite a buildup of resentment.

Dawn Serra: Yeah. 

Kate Kenfield: It’s like he’s really been making a lot of a lot of effort, but that he’s built up a lot of resentment over the years. 

Dawn Serra: Yes. Yeah. And there’s so much that couples counselor could help with – a therapist or coach – just someone that can help Jeremy and his partner to get unstuck, because adding in new paths to communication, creating new memories, trying new techniques, but with the safety of someone who can really hold that space as you navigate that place can be such a powerful experience for people. But too often, just kind of culturally, with this “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality, we feel like we’ve got to just muscle through it. Often, that just digs us deeper into a hole that we really can’t see the light anymore and we can’t get out of. 

And so, my hope is Jeremy opens the email with, “We’ve had some great times and some not so great times…” and great. Find someone who can help you to find more of those great times and help you to practice some of these skills because just doing the same thing over and over again is just going to make things worse. It sounds like whatever you’ve been doing to now isn’t serving either of you. So let’s not do that anymore. 

Kate Kenfield: Yeah. 

Dawn Serra: Thank you so much for helping me to field that. I appreciate it.

Kate Kenfield: Oh. My pleasure. My pleasure. I hope it’s helpful to Jeremy and his wife, too. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. I hope that gives Jeremy something to think about and maybe chew on and even talk to his wife about. Maybe trying some different things or getting some help. So thank you so much for listening to the show, Jeremy and for trusting me and us with your question. I wish you the very, very best. 

So Kate, for people who want to learn more about your Tea & Empathy Kickstarter and just stay in touch because you’re super rad and you’re doing cool things in the world, how can they find you?

Kate Kenfield: Well, I’m on Twitter and Instagram @katekenfield and you can find more about Tea & Empathy at teaandempathy.org. 

Dawn Serra: Woohoo. Nice and easy. Well, I will have links in our show notes and at dawnserra.com, so that you guys can all check out the Tea & Empathy cards because if you don’t have some yet, you’re going to want some and if you do have some, but you’re thinking about holiday gifts, this is a stellar gift. All the coolest people I know pull out their Tea & Empathy cards and do little readings and some things like that. So join the club and feel your feelings and share it with the world because goodness knows there’s a lot of us putting out our little pictures of our feelings cards on social media.

Kate Kenfield: It’ll have to be holiday cards for next year because I don’t think we’ll have them in production for this Christmas and holiday season, but yes. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. Print out a little certificate like, “Hey, I got this cool thing for you and it’s going to come out next year. But here’s your little placeholder gift and you get to be part of the cool crowd that was on that first flight. So get on it.”

Kate Kenfield: I love that. 

Dawn Serra: Yeah. So to everybody who listened, thank you so much for being here with us. Of course, I appreciate you tuning in and sending in your questions. If you’ve got any questions or stories you want to share, just head to dawnserra.com. There’s a little send a note link that you can use. You can also send it in anonymously if you’re not up for sharing your name. To you Kate, thank you so much for being here with me and doing this with all of us. It was wonderful. 

Kate Kenfield: Oh. Thank you so much, Dawn. It’s always such a pleasure talking to you and interacting with the amazing community that you’ve built. It’s always such a joy. Thank you so much for having me. 

Dawn Serra: You’re so welcome. To everybody who tuned in, I will of course be back next week. So until then, enjoy your week and think about those feels. It might lead you somewhere interesting. Bye.

Dawn Serra: A huge thanks to The Vocal Few, the married duo behind the music featured in this week’s intro and outro. Find them at vocalfew.com. Head to patreon.com/sgrpodcast to support the show and get awesome weekly bonuses. 

As you look towards the next week, I wonder what will you do differently that rewrites an old story, revitalizes a stuck relationship or helps you to connect more deeply with your pleasure?