In this episode of PolySoCal, the panel is joined by Dr. Deborah Lukovich, depth psychology coach, author, and host of the Dose of Depth podcast. The conversation explores depth psychology, the unconscious, midlife unraveling, projection, shadow work, sexuality, spirituality, and how these concepts show up in relationships, including ethical non monogamy.
Through listener questions and real-life reflections, Dr. Lukovich explains how emotional triggers, attraction, jealousy, body experiences, and relational conflict can be understood as messages from the unconscious rather than problems to suppress. The discussion moves through individuation, ancestral wounds, projection, and the idea that relationships function as laboratories for self-awareness and growth.
This episode is reflective, emotionally grounded, and educational, offering listeners language and frameworks for understanding themselves more deeply through their relationships.
Alonzo Banx (00:00)
Welcome back to the PolysoCal podcast. am Alonzo Banks. And tonight we’ve got the amazing Dr. Deborah Lukovich on board tonight. And I can’t wait to get talking to her. She’s going to talk to us all about depth psychology, which I had no idea what that was until I read her background stuff and she’s going to explain it all in a minute. Welcome everyone.
Heather (00:20)
Hi.
Beeb (00:21)
Hello.
Jon (00:21)
Hello!
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (00:21)
Hello?
Noah (00:22)
Hey there.
Cupcake (00:22)
Hello.
Lana (00:23)
Hello.
Alonzo Banx (00:23)
Doc, it’s awesome to have you here, but we’re to do a quick round the house so everyone can say who’s on the call tonight. Blake, welcome back.
Blake (00:30)
Howdy howdy, I’m Blake and I’m in a relationship with Lana. We’ve been together about three and a half years and we consider ourselves monogamish. ⁓ We’ve been ⁓ open to being with other people for some time.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (00:41)
you
Alonzo Banx (00:45)
Welcome back and we have Ms. Lana on tonight. Lana, good evening.
Lana (00:48)
Hello, hello, ⁓ I’m so happy and…
We will enjoy this conversation, first conversation in new to 2026. Happy New Year, everybody. I’m in relationship with Blake and we are exploring, expanding and learning new stuff.
Alonzo Banx (01:05)
It’s good to have you back. That’s right. First call of this year. Mr. B, welcome.
Beeb (01:10)
Hello, hello, I am Beeb, I am married to Heather.
and I am dating ⁓ Patty and John is my metamorph.
Alonzo Banx (01:17)
Heather, jump in.
Heather (01:19)
Hi, I’m Heather. I’m married to Beeb. We’ve been married for four years. ⁓ I am dating John and I’m engaged to John’s wife, Patty.
Blake (01:20)
you Okay.
Alonzo Banx (01:31)
And Patty couldn’t be with us tonight, but we do have John. say hi.
Jon (01:35)
All right.
Hello, I’m John. I am dating Heather and Beb is my metamorph. I’ve been in E for 31-ish years and still working it out.
Alonzo Banx (01:47)
to Noah.
Noah (01:49)
Hey, I’m Noah. am in a relationship with Cupcake, who’s on the podcast tonight, and Cookie, who is not, and she’s my nesting partner.
Cupcake (02:01)
As Noah mentioned, I am partnered with both Noah
and Cookie. I’m also married of three-ish years and my husband officially has another partner.
Blake (02:13)
you
Heather (02:15)
Congratulations.
Blake (02:16)
you
Alonzo Banx (02:18)
Dr. Deborah Lukovich. So let me read this like enter this introduction I’ve got for you and see if I can get through this whole thing. We are thrilled tonight to have Dr. Deborah Lukovich. Deborah is an in-depth psychology coach and author and the host of Dose of Depth podcast.
She holds an MA and a PhD in psychology, the study of the unconscious. Her work is all about helping people slow down and actually listen to what their inner world is trying to say. Her approach is grounded in Jungian psychology and the process of individuation. And you got to explain that one to me later. She brings
Blake (02:40)
Okay. Okay.
Okay.
Alonzo Banx (02:58)
it down to a very human, very lived place.
She’s the author of When Sex Meets God, a midlife unraveling, a raw and honest memoir about the unexpected awakening. And Look Your Soul Is Talking Are You Listening,
Blake (03:02)
Okay.
Alonzo Banx (03:15)
which explores how the unconscious
quietly nudges us towards growth, healing, and wholeness, especially around sexuality and spirituality. Her work is thoughtful, candid, and deeply reflective. Wow. I have a feeling this conversation is going to live quite a while after we hang up tonight. But with all that, Doc, did I miss anything?
Blake (03:22)
Okay. Okay.
Jon (03:36)
It’s a fun.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (03:42)
my gosh, no, that’s a beautiful, I told you what a beautiful introduction. really appreciate it. All true.
Alonzo Banx (03:49)
And I even managed to stumble through most of it, but
you gotta go back and start with the basics. What is depth psychology?
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (03:58)
Depth psychology is the psychology of the unconscious. many of you might have heard of Carl Jung. And if you have taken the Myers-Briggs personality inventory, that’s actually based on Carl Jung’s psychological types theory. If you’ve heard of concepts like complexes, mommy complex, money complex,
Blake (04:06)
Okay. Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (04:21)
daddy complex, those are Jungian concepts.
understand associations. So people are more familiar with like the theories of Carl Jung than they know. But he is one of the founders of a part of psychology that studies the unconscious. And
Blake (04:27)
. Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (04:40)
how do you study the unconscious? Because you can’t see it. You study it by its effects, by the effects of the unconscious. So even science now affirms that up to 80 to 90 % of you
who you are, your personality, who you’re attracted to, why you’re doing what you’re doing for a career is influenced by mysterious unconscious forces. So any moment of the day, you could just say, huh, I only know 20 % of what’s going on right now.
Blake (04:56)
Okay.
Alonzo Banx (05:13)
So what got you started in this?
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (05:16)
well, my life started falling apart. And interestingly, there was a moment that it sort of, felt that there was a synchronicity. That’s another concept of Carl Jung. A synchronicity is a coincidence, but it’s meaningful because of an emotion it stirs in you. So a synchronicity is when something in your inner world is looking for something in the outer world to grab onto it. And then you’re like, my gosh, what is that?
Aha, ⁓ just some kind of moment like that. So there was a synchronicity and ⁓ I felt really, it was crazy actually. It was in the back of a magazine and I saw this logo for Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria, California. And I had a bodily visceral response to it even though I didn’t know what it was. And then right after that, my life kind of fell apart. So things ⁓ within the next week or so,
my former husband who struggles with alcoholism, that peaked. ⁓ My business fell apart after I had a peaked and my middle school age son said he didn’t want to live. So like what happened was that my unraveling paralleled this calling to go study. It’s very young and in-depth psychology-ish, right? I had this mysterious irrational sense that I needed this and I knew it would save my soul. But the funny part of it is that then
my whole midlife unraveling experience, I lived all the concepts over my three years of education in real time. Like I remember being out and being and having a really weird experience. And I was like, oh my God, this is what it’s like to be in the grip of a complex right now. Like, I don’t know why am I, what did I just do that? Why did I say yes to that when I wanted to say no, let me take it back. Like if you’ve ever like been in an experience where later on you’re like, why did I do that? I’m so embarrassed that I did that. You’re in the grip of a complex. So.
Blake (07:05)
.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (07:05)
So, you know, I still am sort of coming to understand what was my unconscious doing? Why did my unconscious lead me to that? And part of it was that depth psychology then was a framework for me to understand my unraveling experience and the deeper agenda behind it.
Blake (07:10)
.
Alonzo Banx (07:23)
Now you can catch up with on that.
Noah (07:28)
Yeah, I I’m actually really glad you you brought the the midlife unraveling up. It’s something I wanted to talk to you about ⁓ It’s something I think I’ve been going through. I’m 42 years old ⁓ Divorced a few years ago jumped into BDSM into a polyamorous relationship of all sorts of life changes all happened very quickly And I think a lot led up to it and I guess I wanted to ask you ⁓
kind of a two point question. One is, you know, is this different or is this what we would consider like a midlife crisis? And if it is different, how, but also, ⁓ you know, do you have any like insights on trying to maintain your head through all of this?
Blake (08:06)
Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (08:12)
Yeah. Well, I love the word crisis, actually. A lot of people like to stay away from it because it’s kind of scary and they like to think like, I don’t need to be in a crisis, right? But real
Blake (08:13)
Okay.
Okay. Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (08:25)
transformation really does come about because you have a kind of identity crisis. So Carl Jung would say, you know, the first part of our life, we’re learning how to be separate human beings, right? When we’re born, we don’t know we’re different from the mother.
And then eventually we learned as a child that, ⁓ I can have different opinions than those people over there. And so we go off into the world sort of discovering who we are while at the same time trying to fit in.
And what happens for many of us is that there are parts of us that get left behind and they may be parts that either…
you know, you were the oddball in your family or a teacher shamed you or some kind of trauma happened. But we just go on. We develop these patterns of living and dealing with life. And then what happens is that we may live too one-sided, right? And so as we’re trying to please maybe society’s rules or our achievements or, you know, we need people to validate us, whatever it is, at some point that sort of breaks down.
Blake (09:17)
.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (09:28)
So sometimes it can be very dramatic and an event like either, you know, when mothers become mothers, nobody knows what it’s going to feel like. Like, you know, you can say, I want to go back to work. And then suddenly you’re like, my God, I never want to go back to work. Right. Or it can be a death in the family or divorce or you’re cheated on or just something that that moment. the midlife crisis or unraveling sort of starts with this. Things don’t make sense anymore.
They don’t fit into, you you made assumptions about marriage, for example. So one of mine was like, for me, getting divorced was the hardest thing that I ever, ever did because I thought, well, why would I need to get divorced? We could work out anything, right? Well, that assumes like both people want to work it out. So I never imagined that. So that was ⁓ a crisis for me. So, you know, and then yes, how can you, I would say,
Blake (10:05)
.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (10:24)
I would say reading my book will help you actually, because in the background, I’m teaching you sort of these Jungian or depth psychology of framework. And Alonzo, you asked about individuation. So I think this is a good time to offer that to Noah as a framework. So individuation basically is consciously coming into deeper relationship with your unconscious, because that’s how you get out of
the midlife unraveling is you begin to shine a light on all these parts of you that aren’t conscious yet, or maybe some of them are sneaking up and you don’t know what they mean. So that’s all individuation is. Now, my book, Your Soul is Talking, actually teaches people the different ways your unconscious is trying to speak to you. So dreams is probably the most popular way that my clients have access to their unconscious, but so are fantasies.
Blake (10:59)
Okay. Thank
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (11:21)
So are OCD behaviors. So are emotional
reactions to things when somebody triggers you. So is your psychological type. So if you’ve ever actually taken the Myers-Briggs, if you haven’t, you can go to 16personalities.com and you’ll get the four letters. Knowing your psychological type can help explain a lot about how you experience life. So, you know, there’s…
Blake (11:32)
.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (11:47)
It’s not a linear process because it’s the unconscious, but there are like components to it. So one of the first components that you would want to explore are your parental complexes. So what are the patterns of thinking and behaving? What are the lessons that you learned in childhood? For example, Iyanla Van Zandt has a book called In the Meantime. She has a lot of great questions. And the one that really did it for me was what did I learn about love as a child?
Blake (11:59)
. Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (12:16)
And I was like, I don’t know. My parents love me. That’s all I know. I didn’t
like my mother very much, but you know, whatever. I know that they love me. Well, over journaling over months, I discovered that what I learned about love was that it was conditional upon my behavior. Well, that’s going to cause problems when I get out there in the world, right? So that’s kind of the first step is like really understanding what are the ways I think about the world? How do I solve problems? What’s the perspective? What’s my lens?
Blake (12:28)
So.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (12:45)
And what are these patterns that were rooted in childhood
that helped me get to a certain place until they stopped working? And so those patterns are neutral until they become a problem. And sometimes it’s, sometimes it’s hard to, you know, I mean, this is what I help my clients with is discovering that. But then after that, then you’ll, you’ll find your wounds. And so for me, I didn’t realize that I had a sex and God wound.
Blake (12:51)
Okay. Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (13:12)
that sexuality and spirituality were sort of at odds inside me. I didn’t know that until my life fell apart and I had these odd experiences. Then I was like, ⁓ wow, this is so interesting. I didn’t realize that that was beneath the surface of my life. so, you know, taking the time to work through that is really important because otherwise we sort of, like you said, you jumped into some relationships and that’s very common.
Blake (13:16)
Okay. Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (13:39)
And those relationships in the beginning seem like, that’s so different than what I had before. But then you’ll start to see little things like, this feels familiar. What do I do about it? Do I just put it, suppress it, or do I like, am I honest about it? And sometimes it’s our fear that a relationship won’t last that causes us not to be honest about the issue so you can then grow through it. So that’s a long answer, but.
Noah (14:02)
That was a great answer. You know, and it’s really interesting too, because, you know, I did jump into a relationship that I have. However, you know, it’s been a few years now of living together and it’s still probably the best thing that’s ever happened in my life. And I still feel that way. But, you know, in my other relationships around me, you get a lot of concerned looks, lot of concerned eyes, like, what is this guy doing with his life? You know? And so,
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (14:03)
good. Okay.
Yeah, so you can, I mean, you
can be accidentally like reconciling things, right? So you found something that like something is working in a really good way. So in that case, depth psychology could help you discover what, like what is really happening here. And Carl Jung had this, ⁓ he had this term, ⁓ psychological marriage, not literal marriage, but relationship where when we’re both
Blake (14:40)
.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (14:52)
people realize that they don’t know everything that’s going on in their relationship. That’s a psychological marriage. So if there’s like pretty good conversation and you could debrief things
that went wrong and then you learn how to develop new traits, etc., then you’re kind of doing it without really knowing that you’re doing it. But what usually happens is I even have clients I’ve seen for like three years and, you know,
Blake (15:04)
Okay. you.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (15:22)
this pattern is still there. So they’re really great at like slowing it down and debriefing and figuring out,
but it’s still there. So they haven’t like gotten to the point where they’ve learned the right lesson so that it doesn’t sneak up on
So juicy, like you, there’s a lot for you to explore.
Blake (15:39)
it.
Alonzo Banx (15:43)
John, I see you have your hand up. Cupcake, though, you were up first. What was your question?
Cupcake (15:49)
So hopefully this comes out ⁓ making sense because it’s a little jumbled in my brain, so I apologize in advance. ⁓ In talking about subconscious, I’ve been through
the last maybe year and a half going through a lot of changes in my mental state and myself as a person. It started with I had been diagnosed with PCOS when I was trying to get pregnant.
Blake (16:13)
Okay.
Cupcake (16:17)
I’m kind of sitting in this like mindset of like a lot of things changed and a lot of things happened. And I want to say it’s coincidental or it’s fate, but would you say it’s
Blake (16:20)
Okay.
Cupcake (16:28)
more of like your subconscious finally going, you need these differences and these changes in your life. And it actually just kind of, you know what I’m saying? Does that make sense?
Blake (16:31)
Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (16:39)
Yeah, I love
it. So there’s a whole branch of ⁓ depth psychology called somatic depth psychology. So one way our unconscious communicates to us or one way our inner world manifests is through our body. My daughter has PCOS, by the way. So I know just a little bit about it. But one of the things that I do with my clients is we do look at whatever body issues they have.
Blake (16:42)
Okay. .
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (17:03)
So for some it’s weight, for some it’s, I don’t know, their knees are bad
Blake (17:08)
.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (17:08)
or whatever it is. And I love, you can do this yourself. I’ve actually done it with PCOS, but I don’t remember what I read. It was a while ago. You can ⁓ search for ⁓ what is the psycho-spiritual aspect of PCOS or what is the spiritual meaning of this issue, prostate cancer for.
Lana (17:27)
Thank
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (17:27)
For example, one of my clients got diagnosed with prostate cancer. When we looked at like the deeper psychological issues, it was like, yep, yep, that all makes sense. So, you know, this is also why we can, you know, we can heal. We can heal our body when we, you can also relate it to chakras. So women often have a lot of issues in the womb. I mean, think about it. We don’t only carry our own psychological and biological DNA, we carry ancestral wounds.
Blake (17:40)
.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (17:56)
We also, Carl Jung said, we have a psychic DNA, much like our biological DNA, that has a memory of the
entire psychological experience of humanity. So that’s why like in dreams, you can be talking another language that you’ve never heard of, like we tap into the collective. So I’m very in touch with the collective ⁓ suffering of women over the centuries.
Blake (18:05)
Okay. Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (18:22)
being killed and raped just because they’re women. I don’t have any personal experience of that, but I really am in touch with that. So it can be quite complex, which part of it is your personal
unconscious, which part is your ancestral. There’s a really good ⁓ Netflix series. It’s a Turkish series. I love them. They’re very young and called ⁓ Another Self. You might like that. And it touches on this aspect of ancestral wounds.
I don’t know if that answers your question, but yes, your intuition is correct. It’s more complex, but you can come into a deeper relationship with whatever that situation is. Also, Joe Dispenza is a scientist, a neuroscientist, and he healed himself. And so he helps people understand that you can breathe to your cells.
Blake (19:00)
Okay. Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (19:18)
you really can focus on healing your body. But also there’s psychology involved too. So if you have any psychological trauma, that’s something
that you’ll want to explore, not to relive, but to understand like, is this happening to me right now? How does this lead to or inform my purpose? Because there’s a purpose underneath it all.
Blake (19:30)
Okay.
Cupcake (19:42)
Thanks, mom. No, I mean, as you talked about it, I’ve been really going over my relationship with my mother and how, yeah, and how I’m kind of at this impasse of just recently possibly cutting ties and it’s difficult.
Lana (19:45)
Yes.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (19:54)
mother wound. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Well, you know, first of all, ⁓ if you need to cut ties temporarily to maintain your sanity, you should do that because you can always go back. sometimes that distance, had a record, my daughter had to do that with her father for like a year. It’s not like a ⁓ easy thing to do, but it will be okay because the distance, so you can see things from a distance and journal about it and you know,
Eventually, as you come into relationship with what this wound is and you begin to feel deeper relationship with yourself, then there’s room for compassion for the other person, but not really before you deal with yourself first. crying is really good too. Crying is good. Crying is soul shifting, soul making. Thanks for sharing.
Alonzo Banx (20:53)
that answer that for your cupcake. I’m going to move on to John’s question. John, you had your hand up.
Cupcake (20:55)
No, absolutely.
Jon (20:57)
Hello. ⁓ So early on you were talking, you were responding to Noah and you saying something I think in terms of the signs that you might get from your unconscious that can give you some information. I was kind of curious about that. In our relationship here, we’re fairly open and we meet new people all the time. We belong to a club and we meet a lot of new people. ⁓ And
I am curious if ⁓ some of these sort of unconscious signs can be used as a tool or as like identifying red flags or something like that that might ⁓ make somebody seem more incompatible with you. And I’m curious if that’s an appropriate use of some of that like sort of deeper ⁓ digging into yourself.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (21:48)
Yeah, absolutely. mean, I just, there’s a framework that I developed and I use it with my couples and it’s really relevant to any kind of relationship with anybody. So the thing to know is that we all, we learn about ourselves by interacting with other people. That’s just how we do it. And we relate by projecting onto each other.
It’s nothing to feel bad about. This is just what we do. And what is happening is that whatever it is that you feel about another person, like let’s say there’s a sense, there’s an attraction or there’s a hatred or there’s annoyance or whatever it is, is your unconscious, it’s mirroring back something to you about you. But it’s tricky because sometimes people will
make the wrong assumption. They’ll either go automatically negative or they’ll either go like, you know, rose-colored glasses. So, for example, in a situation where you’re very enamored with someone, it’s never what you think it really is. So, it might be a little bit, but when you’re really enamored with someone, a question would be to ask is, huh, what am I? What do they represent for me?
because that person is just connecting with your unconscious. So in one regard, people that you have some kind of emotional reaction to, there is ⁓ something going on beneath the surface that is, yes, telling you something about yourself. So another concept of Carl Jung’s is between, and this is why your situation is so juicy, because between just two people, there’s four conversations going on.
There is your mind to mind communicating, right? So I’m looking at you, I’m seeing you nod, I think you know what I’m saying and I think I know what I’m explaining, et cetera. But your unconscious is absorbing more, my unconscious is absorbing a lot more. And where the real fun is, is between our unconscious. There’s, it’s a playground in there and we have no idea what’s going on, but our unconscious will pull us towards other people. And sometimes it’s to help us see
a part of us we’re not embracing. So let’s just use a stereotype example. A woman who’s really attracted to a very successful man. And she’s looking forward to him taking care of her. Well, she is enamored with him, but her attraction is really her unconscious saying, I want that for you. But what happens is she ends up
projecting her financial independence and her success onto this other figure. And men sometimes can do the same to women when it comes to domestic affairs or affairs emotions, right? Sometimes men project onto their wives, you’re the emotional one. You’re the one who does this. And what happens when you don’t have an awareness that this is going on is that people get more rigid.
in their expectation that the other person is the one that does that. That’s the, that my partner does that. And the more you hear somebody say, yeah, my partner does that, that is them not taking responsibility for developing something in themselves. So, I mean, it’s, it’s really juicy, but if it, if it’s about like attraction, your question would be like, huh, you know, what’s going on here? What, what is it about this person?
their traits, the way that they walk in the room or something like that, that my unconscious is like, yeah, you got that too.
And when it comes to red flags, ⁓ that also is… So when it comes to a negative reaction to somebody, ⁓ depending if it’s more than annoyance, then what you feel the negative emotion about is not that thing or that person. It’s something old, but they have triggered it in you. They’ve triggered a certain reaction. So it’s not about them and even what they did.
So you would want to say, ⁓ God, the first time I will ask my clients, like, what is your earliest memory of feeling that way? Boom. I was eight and I was walking home from school ⁓ right away. So either way, whether it’s negative or positive, it’s a benefit to you to explore your emotional reaction. Is that helpful?
Jon (26:12)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (26:14)
I think I
shared with you guys my blog post about my three P’s framework about the hidden purpose of relationship. Why are you with each other? You only know part of the story. Projection. And then what’s beautiful about all of your curiosity and exploration is that you probably have less of a fear of things not working out.
which automatically lends itself to more honesty in your relationships. If you’re really, really worried like, my gosh, I can’t take it if this doesn’t last, then you’re less likely to be honest and to be able to grow through whatever the challenge is.
Alonzo Banx (26:51)
John, did that help? was a lot of good information in there. Noah jumped back up, so Noah, what do you got?
Jon (26:53)
Yeah, that was great. Thank you.
Noah (26:58)
Yeah, I just wanted to talk real quick. had mentioned projection was just something that you talk about a lot in your work. And I wanted to kind of get your opinion, I guess. ⁓ You know, with projection, it’s a way to see our own hidden parts in our partners, right? ⁓ Is being in a polyamorous relationship, having multiple partners like a larger laboratory for this, you know, where we can see ourself more?
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (27:15)
Yeah.
Yeah, I love it. The root of, I think I also shared a link to one of my earlier podcast interviews with Dr. Jolie Hamilton. And so she is in a polyamorous relationship. She’s also in the BDSM community. She did her research on jealousy, the Triangle of Jealousy, which is very interesting. And, you know, in getting ready for that podcast, I looked up what is the root of polyamory.
It’s not specific to sex. Polyamory is many loves. And so even with my monogamous couples, what has happened through the evolution of this romantic love ⁓ is that we’ve come to ⁓ really project a lot of expectations onto our partners.
that it is impossible that one partner can provide all of those needs, right? So, I mean, I’m a nerd and I’m a depth psychology nerd and I’m like addicted to like learning. I was exhausting for my former husband, but I didn’t expect him to be as excited about everything I was excited about. So I had other people and I had a lot of male friends actually, and they ⁓ were more like intellectual.
romantic partners because my brain is my biggest sex organ. And I remember the experience that I had with him. We were both really passionate about social justice. And as we’re talking, I grew like warm between my legs and I was like, what is going on? And in my head, I was having a little argument with myself. Am I attracted to him? No, I can’t be. He’s married. I know his wife. like no, I imagine kissing him. No, I’m not attracted to what’s going on. Why am I aroused? And so
Yeah. So for me, polyamory has to do with like this idea of many loves. So yeah, the answer to question is absolutely, absolutely yes. And you you also represent the deconstruction of what we’ve been told is appropriate relationships, right? And so you are part of that. And so is the younger generation is part of like, you know, our most important relationship is with ourselves.
But have we ever really been told that? Like we don’t get any curriculum on developing a deep relationship with ourselves. And so we’re just sort of thrown out there and we, I’m going to date this person. ⁓ it makes sense. We should get married now. Like, ⁓ and then, you know, and then when it doesn’t work out, it shouldn’t be surprising that it doesn’t work out because we have never been given a framework to find, you know, the deeper lessons that we’re supposed to be learning. So yes, definitely. And you probably find like,
I don’t know if polyamory is always about ⁓ sex or companionship or I’m addicted to movies so I need a movie buddy but we like to cuddle at the same time we’re watching movies. yes, I’m very intrigued with them, especially I have clients who are in different forms of relationship, but I love it.
Alonzo Banx (30:25)
Now, if you listen to many of our podcasts, I think you’ll realize very quickly that while the sex is good, 90 % of us will tell you that polyamory is about things way deeper and much more about life. You also commented about the younger generation, and I always find that funny because look around this room. We’re not the younger generation. Now, Juana, you were smiling way too much and nodding way too much there, so I’m not letting you off the hook.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (30:37)
Yes.
I know, I know, that’s why I said and younger generation. Yeah, absolutely.
Lana (30:55)
Okay, so Dr. Debra mentioned a connection between sexuality and spirituality. I grew up without religion. My religion is love. And knowing I love a lot of people and I love pleasure itself, what I have and what my worry about and it’s yes, it’s happened from my childhood. After pleasure, I gonna have punishment.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (31:11)
Mm-hmm.
Lana (31:20)
what you can suggest, how I can overcome this, and how punishment and the pleasure and sexuality and spirituality connected together.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (31:30)
Yeah, mean, I think that’s why I, you know, I, one of the reasons I wanted to write my memoir is because I knew I couldn’t be the only one who had this sexy God wound, right? So if you look at, ⁓ first of all, I want to mention a book by Rhianne Eisler called Sacred Pleasure. It’s this big and it’s very, it’s got a lot of theory, but it’s all the most ⁓ current theories about how did patriarchy come about.
because a lot of people don’t realize that it hasn’t always been this way where there’s been shame and there’s been a difficult relationship with pleasure, which is why it’s called sacred pleasure, that there was a time when the union between the masculine and the feminine, the male and female was revered and that actually, and sexuality, the union through sexuality was revered and it was considered spiritual.
And there’s a really good book called The Sacred Prostitute, which is about how there was a time when the goddess was revered, appreciated, and that there were certain women who were sort of the bridge to God through sex, through sexuality. So it’s not true that we’ve always had this difficult relationship with pleasure. So even just knowing that, right? Like there are many women who know that. They have that memory that the pleasure is good.
So, ⁓ you know, what to do about it. I have a guided meditation called self-intimacy. So our intimacy with self really comes first. And many people, what they’re doing when they’re, you know, when they’re attracted to people and they don’t understand the deeper meaning, they’re looking for a kind of completion, right? They’re looking for this moment of connection.
And ideally, you want to get to the point where you don’t need that connection with another person. You already have it. And that makes your experience with sexuality different, even you’re lovely or more delightful when you don’t have this neediness. ⁓ So it’s a process. coming into relationship, I mean, all of us, everybody pretty much has a wounded feminine.
We also have a wounded masculine if it’s been too rigid, right? So we all have a wounded feminine men and women. And part of coming into ⁓ relationship, reconnecting with the feminine is through the body and sexuality and nature. So I did that guided meditation. It’s mostly my reflections about this, but I suggest that people just be with themselves. could be naked, they could be clothed, they could be whatever, but I sort of take them through like,
What do you notice? Notice what you notice about this as I’m talking about this. Are there areas that are arousing? Is there clenching happening anywhere and just noticing what you notice? And then going back to the root of, okay, what’s my earliest memory of getting in trouble? Being told that I couldn’t feel what I was feeling. It’s a process. I think my book will help.
going through the story because I had it, I had it, you know? And so the beauty of me writing it as just a story, and I want it to be a Netflix series or a movie, but writing it that way is a story that’s entertaining, but also you can sense beneath the surface. Without telling people I’m teaching them depth psychology, I sort of am.
Lana (34:42)
Yeah, I start.
Alonzo Banx (35:03)
Laundry, did that answer your question for you?
Lana (35:05)
Thank you, yes. I ⁓ another time remind myself the best or my main sex organ is my mind and all of that very complex and just it’s so much more to explore and I start reading your book. So we’ll see.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (35:22)
Yeah. Explore,
explore is a really, yeah, explore. It’s an adventure. Explore and be curious about yourself, your relationship with yourself.
Lana (35:32)
Thank you.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (35:34)
I’m sorry. I just want to say, well, you haven’t gotten to this part of the book yet, but when I am sort of, ⁓ the irony of my swept up relationship, ⁓ I got to a point with this man where he was younger, but he felt a conflict having sex outside of marriage right when I found my healthy sexual holiday. like, what are you talking about? What? You cannot deny me. But…
What was so fascinating is I still felt the need to be with him. And so I talk about this journey of no sex sex, meaning learning how to be in a sustained aroused sort of existence without the need to climax or to have a certain completion to that activity. And then that led to me wondering about the connection with spirituality. And as I became closer in relationship with myself,
Blake (36:02)
you you
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (36:29)
which
is the bridge to the transcendent, you don’t have to call it God or religion, I had the most explosive spiritual orgasms. So all of my most pleasurable experiences were alone in solitude and didn’t have anything to do with another person. So that’s waiting for you.
Lana (36:48)
Thank you.
Blake (36:48)
Okay.
Alonzo Banx (36:49)
Okay, so, Beb is having some audio problems.
Beam is asking, do you see ethical non-monogamy as a spiritual practice for some people? And if so, what disciplines does it require to avoid chaos?
Blake (36:57)
Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (37:06)
Well, chaos might be part of the plan of the unconscious. Right? So sometimes we just get swept up in things and we have
to have compassion for ourselves. And often there’s another concept, Jungian concept that
Blake (37:19)
you you
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (37:24)
When you’ve suppressed a part of yourself or repressed a part of yourself and you might not even be aware of it and then you’re starting to heal and suddenly feel liberated because you either got divorced and you got out of that situation that was too rigid for you, sometimes we overcompensate and
we go the other way. And then we get embarrassed that, my gosh, some of the things that I did that you’ll read in my book, I’m like, people are just looking at me like, why are you doing that? I’m worried about you.
Even me, was like, my God, I can’t believe I did that. But it all makes sense. It was a way of me overcompensating and then finding my sort of happy, my happy middle. So, ⁓ and what was the first part of your question? I’m sorry. I sort of answered the second part.
Alonzo Banx (38:10)
Do you see E ethical non-monogamy, as a spiritual practice for some people?
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (38:15)
I see all relationships as spiritual because if you look at what a spiritual means, spiritual means connection. At the most inclusive right definition, spiritual means oneness. And somebody mentioned love. ⁓ love, love is your language. you know, love is the energy of the universe. Creative intelligence is love. Consciousness expansion is love. God is actually is
Blake (38:34)
.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (38:41)
consciousness expansion, right? So there is either love or there’s fear. When there’s love, there cannot be fear. This is Marianne Williamson. When there is fear, there cannot be love. So when there’s fear in a relationship, that’s not love. When there’s neediness in a relationship, there’s not love. It doesn’t
mean you don’t care about the person, you love them, but that’s not really love. And so I see all encounters, even my…
all my little online datings that I did, every encounter was a potential learning opportunity, even if it didn’t go well. So I just see it all as not religious though, right? Not doctrine, not that, not that one set of rigid stuff, but I see all encounters between people as spiritual.
Alonzo Banx (39:28)
Steve, did that answer your question? Blake, do you say you want that?
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (39:29)
They’re thinking.
Blake (39:31)
⁓ sure. So I’m curious about the Jungian idea of the shadow. And particularly in polyamory, so much of the journey for at least speaking for myself has been identifying my triggers and transforming my triggers. And I see that very much as a matter of shadow work. And I wonder if you can say anything about how we deal with the shadow and particularly in the context of multiple relationships.
but also just in relationship in general.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (39:59)
Yeah, so, you know, I tell my clients that a trigger is a gift and it’s an invitation and it’s a doorway. So it takes self-compassion to be like, oh, shit, that just happened to me again. Oh, there’s my mother wound again, but now I’m going deeper. The spiral is just a great like symbol for, you will continue to circle around.
So one of the things that you can do is there are big wounds, right? That show up in different areas as maybe different triggers. If you can like narrow them down. So I’ve got a fear of being trapped wound. I call it my prison wound. ⁓ And so I made sense of a lot of my behaviors. Like I have to sit on the aisle seat in the plane and in the movie theater because I feel like I gotta escape because
my mother wound, my mom was 19 when she got pregnant with me and she came from a very abusive family and what I came to learn through all kinds of active imagination, we haven’t even really talked about that, exercises is that when I was in her womb, all she wanted was to be a better mother than her mother and I felt that pressure and so the purpose of my life was to prove that to her.
Well, how does a parent know they’re being a good parent? We really don’t, right? So unless your child is perfect and if they’re perfect, they’re neurotic, right? Children are not perfect. And so, you know, if you can find your core wounds, so all complexes, all patterns of reacting, so when you’re triggered, you’re reacting emotionally, all of them sort of circle around what we call an archetypal human need. So it could have to do with
You didn’t get unconditional love or you didn’t have a sense of security and stability. So once you identify that, you can name it and you could start to have a sense of humor about that wound so that when you do get triggered, you’re like, hello there, old friend. There you are. Now, what we don’t want to do is banish and shame that part of ourselves into the shadow, in a closet and lock it up.
Because as Carl Jung said, is in the dark and there’s no light shining on it, it will find its way out in not a good way and chaos, right? In a chaotic way and sometimes a damaging way and you’ll do something you might regret or something like that. So it’s really more like how do you develop a relationship with that part of you? So it might be inner child work like, come here, honey.
Oh, come here. I’m sorry I’ve been embarrassed by that. Come here. I got you. I’m going to bring you into my life right now. And we can personify these parts of us to make it a little easier for us to deal with and not be so hard on ourselves. I don’t know. Does that help?
Blake (42:55)
Yeah, yeah, I think that’s real direct, yeah.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (42:58)
And also in our shadow are our potentials. So in our shadow, in our personal shadow is things that are difficult memories that we don’t want to remember. They’re parts of us we’re embarrassed about, but they’re also parts of us that we are not claiming because someone told us, you know, like I had an artist complex because I have two very talented artist sisters. Now I’m coming into my creative, you know, my creative self.
And then we also not only have a personal unconscious, we have our ancestors that are in our unconscious. So we can be acting out something that has nothing to do with our personal life, but it’s our great aunt handed her wound down to us. So part of our lives is actually healing and releasing our ancestors. And then we’re part of collective, we have collective shadow. You know, the United States has a dark, you know, we are oppressors, right? And so we,
tap into that collective shadow as well.
Alonzo Banx (43:55)
Heather, you’ve been way too quiet tonight.
Heather (43:57)
I have been absorbing so much and I am like totally an internal processor. So I need time to like really I’m loving everything that’s said. I don’t really have a question more of a reflection on what Cupcake said about her mom. ⁓ If I could just share a little bit. ⁓ I got emancipated from my parents when I was 16 ⁓ and I chose to cut ties with family, which is not not easy.
Blake (44:22)
Okay.
Heather (44:27)
⁓ to choose yourself over a family. Cupcake, if you ever need someone to talk to or any kind of support, ⁓ I’m just sending all kinds of love your way right now.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (44:40)
I love it. I have a client right now and we’re working on, she is estranged from her
father and then eventually her brother ⁓ and she has two sons. So she started seeing me because she didn’t want to fuck up her relationship with her sons. ⁓ But we’ve come so far in her journey that now we’re actually ⁓
she has reached out and written a letter to an aunt. I said, you’ll be surprised at what you might get back. But she’s afraid of getting sucked back into that. her father is going to die. And so she is looking ahead to that and wondering she’s going to have to face her brother, and that’s going to be difficult. And so you know,
Blake (45:12)
you you
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (45:32)
exploring it ⁓ and using active imagination and your dreams contain clues for you as well. ⁓ Over
time, you come to, ⁓ through your self-compassion for yourself and exploring and accepting these other parts of you, you’re able to actually see the other person and their life differently. But you can’t see it until you separate and detach.
Blake (45:41)
Okay.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (46:00)
and explore this and then, you know, nothing is forever. Nothing has to be forever
or it can be and that can be totally fine too, right? So, ⁓ yeah, it’s difficult, but ⁓ there is light at the end of the tunnel after exploring it.
Alonzo Banx (46:20)
So as we start wrapping up tonight, normally I ask anyone if they have a last question for you, but I’m going to turn this around tonight. Do you have any questions for any of us?
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (46:29)
Well, I guess I’d like to know what’s the mission of these conversations that you have, or what’s your larger goal or purpose, and who listens, and how do you, you know?
Alonzo Banx (46:44)
Who wants to take that from me?
Go on, Heather. Or Noah, were you gonna do it? Heather, why do we do this and who listens to us?
Noah (46:46)
No, no, no, you called on Heather.
Blake (46:46)
.
Heather (46:49)
And. ⁓
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (46:52)
She needs to take a turn
anyway, right?
Heather (46:58)
⁓ I don’t know who listens to us, ⁓ but I do know that one of the goals is to help the community or help anyone who’s interested in an E dynamic. So, and just help them navigate conversations and, ⁓ you know, be a support system to the community.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (47:20)
I it. I love it because people can just dive in without and people can get hurt. And I love it that you guys are so honest about your own situations and adventures and I suspect you share lessons learned.
Alonzo Banx (47:21)
Noah, go ahead.
A lot of them. Noah, you were gonna say, you were gonna add something.
Noah (47:45)
Yeah, I just wanted to say, think, you know, for me, I’m hoping that we are a way for people to safely explore their own feelings, you know, love in traditional monogamous socially acceptable relationships is hard enough as it is. And if you are new to polyamory, it can be very intimidating and scary. And you’re not sure if you’re being ⁓
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (47:53)
Mmm.
Noah (48:12)
morally right or spiritually right and there’s so much confusion and if you’re experienced ⁓ You you have your own, know baggage that comes with previous relationships that you’re still trying to navigate and I think that this is a great way for People to hear many perspectives and get an understanding about what other people are going through in the same same world
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (48:34)
Yeah.
I often tell people that people who are in these different types of arrangements automatically have to become better communicators and more honest than most heterosexual, monogamous ⁓ couples. Because we just go into things like, this is just what you do. But in your situation, when you’re doing something a little, as Dr. Jolie-Hamilton will say, coloring outside the lines,
you’re just automatically like, huh, you think about it more like, ⁓ why am I doing this? What am I going to get out of? God, that jealousy, that J word is going to come up. What am I going to do about that? And ooh, it’s just so rich for, you know, self-knowledge. And then also I think it probably leads you to be more thoughtful about other people as well.
Alonzo Banx (49:25)
we don’t break the internet, but we average way above average to the number of people that listen to our podcast. It actually surprises me what our numbers but we’re up there.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (49:31)
I, ooh.
Alonzo Banx (49:35)
we put a normal face. There’s between 17 and 20 people are a rotating cast on here. And one of the things that we really personify is that polyamory isn’t about sex. It’s about human connection. You talk about communication. If you’re not good at communication, when you come into the poly lifestyle, you get good at communication, or you don’t stay in the poly lifestyle for long. Because when two people are in a relationship, it’s hard. When five or six people are in
Heather (49:46)
you
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (49:55)
Yeah.
Alonzo Banx (50:03)
relationship you damn well better be able to talk because if you can’t communicate it doesn’t work we started this because we like putting a different face on it the outside world thinks the young people are doing this or you know we’re all a bunch of sex fiends it’s like no we’re just humans getting through life like everyone else and yeah we have our fun but that’s what keeps it all exciting sorry
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (50:08)
Yeah. ⁓
Noah (50:25)
Speak for yourself, I’m a sex fiend.
Jon (50:26)
Good. ⁓
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (50:27)
And
that’s okay too.
Alonzo Banx (50:31)
We won’t take that away from you, Noah. And, you know, we have a few other people who would have argued, as I said, that if they were on tonight. Doc, it has been a fantastic time having you on tonight. Thank you very, very much. Before we let you go, though, please ⁓ give us some links. Tell us how we can find you. Tell us what stuff you got coming up. Plug all your stuff for us.
Dr. Deborah Lukovich (50:50)
Well, I’ll make this easy. You can get to everything having to do with me on my website, deborahlukovich.com. So it’s D-E-B-O-R-A-H-L-U-K-O-V-I-C-H.com. And right up at the top are like all my links to my podcast, to my YouTube channel. I’m trying to grow my YouTube channel. I’m doing shorter videos, for example, about I’ll take a chapter from my book and talk about like
the, you know, like sort of the Jungian theory that’s in the backstory or I’ll read a little part of it. And I also have a series where I demonstrate through exploring my own dreams, how people can explore their dreams. So I walk through my goofy dreams and here’s the process of how I found some meaning in it. And so I’m trying to grow my YouTube channel. ⁓ I also write on my blog and ⁓
You know, I’m on all the other ones too, LinkedIn, things like that. And then also right on my homepage are links to When Sex Meets God. So for those who don’t like Amazon, like me, you can buy it at bookshop.org along with my other book, or you can get out on Amazon. I have 24 really thoughtful, beautiful reviews of it. And ⁓ yeah, you can find everything there. So thank you so much. This was a really fun conversation.
Alonzo Banx (52:08)
Thank you. Anyone have any last parting comments for the doctor for we let her go? No? No? All right. Doc, it’s been great having you on tonight. As always, I’m Alonzo Banks. This is the PolysoCal Podcast. It was another great week. Blake, Bebe, Cupcake, Heather, John, Lana, Noah, and of course, Dr. Deborah Lukovich. Thank you very much. We’ll see you guys all in another week.