“There’s this really sweet moment that happens when your attention is focused on another person, and you’re leading them through an experience where you can actually see them shift from a dominant to a submissive state. You basically see them open up and surrender. It can happen in a business meeting. It can happen in a negotiation. It’s happened with my landlord. It’s not erotic in its context, it has to do with putting your attention on someone until you melt them into receptivity.”
— Kasia Urbaniak
“We are right now at a very specific moment in time. It’s a huge opportunity, a huge calamity. We are living in a world that is more divided than ever. It’s scarier than ever. And what happens when there’s a crisis is people revert to their most known, even if ineffective, behaviors.”
Heather: My guest today is a very interesting, very cool, very sharp gal. She's the founder of The Academy, the school that teaches women the foundations of power and influence. She's a teacher, a businesswoman, a former dominatrix. I need to hear a lot about all of this. Please welcome Kasia Urbaniak.
Kasia: Thank you for having me.
Heather: Welcome. I love that your name on your zoom account is The Lovely Kasia.
Kasia: That was a dare I gave myself very, very, very early on in my journey.
Heather: Was to what?
Kasia: I was 18 years old and setting up an email account. And I was wondering if I could say in something as at the time formal feeling as an email that I am lovely. And I was ashamed, embarrassed. And I was 18. And it took me, I don't know, six months before I got used to sharing my email address back in the day.
Heather: And now you embrace it.
Kasia: Well, yeah, yeah, that now that seems like nothing.
Heather: Now I feel like I have to up my zoom name. Mine just says Heather Dubrow. That's so boring. Jesus. You know, what's funny about the email names, like when my kids first got their emails they were little. And one was like, you know, something lambi something or you know, they were like silly like little kid names. And then when they finally got to the age, that it was embarrassing, like they finally had to change them to a real email address. It was so funny.
So tell me about yourself. So first of all, I have to hear about how you got into the whole dominatrix business and what that actually means. But you went from dominatrix to helping people empower themselves. How is that transition?
Kasia: One of the reasons I first became a professional dominatrix was in order to make money so that I could further my spiritual education. I wanted to be a Taoist nun. So I was studying in with masters and convents and nunneries all around the world. So this split existence actually did a lot, the tension between the two, of working in a dungeon in New York City and being on mountaintops in Asia did a lot to create the extreme difference between them. Creating an interesting tension when looking at the human experience. So it really informed how I did my work as a dominatrix. What was initially something I was doing for money very quickly became a place where I could use all the new tools I was learning and the new gifts that I was developing in a context that was completely not meant for it. Looking and seeing the body reading skills, how even martial training in terms of being able to understand what's happening energetically to a person who's holding their body a certain way, when I'm bossing them around how they're responding to it moment by moment and knowing how to move a human being through different states of consciousness. Now, this is like the highbrow way of explaining how the extremes of metaphysics and the extremes of sexual fringe activity, develop the philosophical basis.
But the real thing is that as I was growing up, because I started when I was quite young, 20 years ago, I had this secret life where I was pretending to be the boss of men until I really felt like I was the boss of men. While my girlfriends were growing up beside me, with all these kinds of behaviors that became more and more ridiculous and outrageous to me as time went on. And they are very common behaviors, they are behaviors like endless time spent analyzing a text, a whole belief in a superstitious hierarchy of red flags when it comes, especially to men or in romantic contexts, or bosses, or fathers or brothers or friends. This self policing, the never checking in really to see what's going on with especially men, but I just started seeing a pattern that I didn't know was a pattern. And so I sort of became the mischief maker of all my friends, being like, “why don't you just find out?”
The beautiful thing that happened was, when I met my business partner, Ruben Flores.
Heather: A man.
Kasia: Yeah, who's a man. While I was like floating around the fringes of spirituality, and like dark sexual exploration, he was in a war zone because he worked for Doctors Without Borders. And the moment we met, I met the first person who completely understood the language of power dynamics that I had seen, and understood how women learn differently from men to women's disadvantage. And he understood it because one of the reasons he had left the field was he had a moment where he was surrounded by a bunch of men, in the context where we they were talking about maternal care and there wasn't a single woman present.
Heather: That hasn't changed anywhere nearby has it?
Kasia: No, and also also like there's two matters, because you can get women seats at the table. But how do you get them heard? And so in this incredible way, what we ended up forming was this laboratory, where we could actually see what happens to a woman given a certain interaction.
Heather: Before we keep diving in that direction, because I do I listened to your TEDx Talk and I just think it's completely fascinating, and I really love how you break it all down. But I kind of want to go back to the dominatrix thing for a second, not just because I’m looking at you and I'm thinking like, how does one get into this? And, you know, to me a dominatrix was whips and chains and deviant behavior, and things that weren't spoken of. And I think, you know, books and movies like 50 Shades of Grey, or if you watch Billions, and you see, you know, why people need to be dominated and why they like to be dominated and how a different is for different people. But it's kind of fascinating for you to have started that way given what your work is now.
Kasia: Yeah, absolutely.
Heather: So how does one become involved in that?
Kasia: I feel sort of lucky because I was in New York City growing up at a certain time where it's incredibly unfortunate, that essentially a teenager trying to pay for school, trying to pay for university, I'm trying to pay for Spiritual Education, really can't afford to do it. Really, really can't. And this was the way I could afford to do it. What was lucky about it is it suited me so well. I have always been and probably always will be a closet people pleaser. Putting me in a situation where I have to use my psychology, where I have to use my perception, where I have to use my language – because you can't have sex in a dungeon – it's an hour long session where you're not having sex,
Heather: Right? It's all about restraint.
Kasia: Yes, but you're creating a heightened atmosphere of erotic aliveliness, and it's actually harder in many ways to do that without being able to have sexual contact. So I was very fortunate because once I got there, I was just, “I'm just doing this for money. This is like one of the crazy things of life, I'm gonna be a wild person, I'm gonna, you know.” And what I found was that the intensity of attention and actual human intimacy that was possible with no physical contact really, with just language with just attention, with paying attention, with emotion, with moving people through states, the kind of domination I ended up really leaning towards was a lot of, you'd call it roleplay. But when you when I say roleplay you think of like me dressed up as a nurse.
Heather: Right, right, right.
Kasia: I would be your mother one moment, then I would be Wonder Woman, then I would be the spy that betrayed you. But all of that is inside of a context of watching and seeing what is actually happening to the person in the moment.
Heather: So what do you take away from that? What would be the best lessons you learned that you've taken into other relationships?
Kasia: Okay, first…
Heather: I should say to real relationships, because obviously those weren't relationships. That was work.
Kasia: Yeah, although some of them became deeper than friendships, and not romantic relationships, but deeper than friendships like soul connections,
Heather: Because there's so much trust involved.
Kasia: So much trust involved. And also, I stopped seeing such a huge distinction between people who are into BDSM, and people who are not. I started noticing that almost all men and women want to be dominated, or if given the chance would love to be the boss for a second. Like very few women would say no to an experience where they could fully surrender and be dominated properly.
So instant takeaways. I went very quickly from being a dominatrix, to training dominatrixes. And one of the things I noticed is that there was a huge difference between performing power and having power. So if they walked in, and they were like, I'm Mistress Apocalypse, you have been a really bad boy. Does not work.
Heather: No.
Kasia: If their attention is on themselves, you have this image of a dominant as somebody who's narcissistic, but it actually doesn't work. It actually works when they lean in and look at the person and go, your chin looks stubborn today. Are you exceptionally rebellious, or just a little rebellious this evening? Right? So the difference between performing power and having power has everything to do with having your attention on the person you're trying to influence. So that's the first thing.
The second thing is that there's this really sweet moment that happens when your attention is focused on another person, and you're leading them through an experience where you can actually see them shift from a dominant to a submissive state. You basically see them open up and surrender. It can happen in a business meeting. It can happen in a negotiation. It's happened with my fucking landlord. It's not erotic in its context, it has to do with putting your attention on someone until you melt them into receptivity.
And one of the things that we also noticed with Ruben, the first time that woman in a meeting syndrome, we started testing it. And we started noticing that women have a tendency to hold their attention inwards and when they speak, even if you correct all the up speak and you check all the verbal modifiers, that if their attention is holding the room, even the men, their bodies, shift into a submissive state, and when they shifted into a submissive state, that's when it sinks in. And what very often happens is that a woman's attention doesn't go there, because she's been taught that that's dangerous, she's conditioned in a different way, doesn't go there. And so there's this itch in the room, the ball is almost across the goal line. So a guy will come along and basically restate what she says, and slam it. But if you look at it with the sound off, what he's doing is actually shifting everyone into that state. So they're like, “Oh, I heard it now. I heard it now. My body can now trust the alpha in the room.”
And so a lot of the training that we do at The Academy just has to do with sometimes simple tricks and sometimes outrageous experiments to get a woman unbound in this state where she can shamelessly, unequivocably own a room with her attention. And then shift states if she wants to, to receive the tenderness or receive the softness or receive the adoration or kindness that she wishes.
Heather: So at the Academy, you're just training women.
Kasia: Yep.
Heather: I love this. What are the ages? Obviously, having listened to you, from birth, we need to change how we're training girls and women and how we speak to them. But what age women do you see coming through your doors and and what are they like?
Kasia: It's changing a lot now. Typically, it would be like between 24 and 78. But we're starting to get younger women now. And they're a different breed. We're even talking about separating the classes out to give them slightly different training. Women 18 to 24 are operating from a different angle. In the earlier days of the school, the women who were coming were the ones who had succeeded in almost every area of their lives and still were like, “Wait, what the hell? Why am I independent, or with a partner who’s weaker than me, doing all the work, kicking ass, doing everything from self development to caring for everyone, and I'm exhausted and angry and frustrated, and I don't feel turned on.” In the beginning, it was the ones who had done everything right and were like, “Is this what women's freedom looks like? Because it doesn't feel that way. This isn't the legendary life I signed up for. This isn't why I've been working this hard.” These days, it's a lot easier to start talking about, especially post #MeToo, to talk about things like Good Girl Conditioning.
Heather: That is true. It's funny, because I always have felt that I'm a very strong person. But again, when I was listening to you speak, and you were talking about #MeToo movement, I started thinking about my experiences in Hollywood when I was younger and as an actress, I was very submissive at times where I could have gotten into really bad situations and thankfully, didn't. So I want to give people some of your tips and, and tricks about all this. I'd love to start talking about flipping the power dynamic. What does that mean?
Kasia: So there's a couple of things to consider before we even get into that. Which is, I want to say one thing about strong women and Good Girl Conditioning. What we're calling Good Girl Conditioning is a set of behaviors that is almost invisible to us. And it's time to make them more visible. To notice that we're engaging in one of these good girl conditioned behaviors.
Heather: Give me an example.
Kasia: I can give you lots of examples. The first thing is automatic consent. Saying yes to something before you've had a chance to think about it. Another thing is making something really convenient for somebody else, while it's me inconveniencing yourself. Another thing is a holding on to the belief that if you don't do something, something bad will happen without testing it. Or if you do something, something bad will happen without testing it. Another thing is soft expectations, things that people expect you to do that you never verbally agreed to but if you stopped doing you don't know if they would cause a mess or not. Another thing, Invisible Labor, which people are talking a lot about, but they're talking about physical labor that women do without talking about the emotional labor or the mental labor. The figuring out what something means on behalf of other people so that they don't screw up. Another thing is not expressing needs and desires, not actually saying the full thing of what we want.
Heather: Right. Because to your point, we're conditioned not to do that from a very young age.
Kasia: A very young age. As a matter of fact, I say this a lot, but it's true. If you think about a lot of the ways in which we're still taught to behave, the low maintenance thing, like, “I'm fine,” right? It sounds modern, but really, it might as well come from a marriage manual from 1888.
Heather: Yeah, I've never even thought about that before because it's true. Everyone considers low maintenance a prize. I have news for you. It's only men that consider low maintenance women a prize because then they don't have to do anything that we need.
Kasia: Exactly, because up until five minutes ago, I mean, in 1974 a woman couldn't get a credit card in Connecticut without her husband's consent. This is just like five minutes ago. Up until five minutes ago, the best a woman's ambition could be expressed is for her to marry well. So what are the qualities that get you married well? “I'm fine. No trouble. I don't have big needs and wants. I don't ruffle feathers. I'm on time. I reply on a timely basis.”
Heather: Good girl!
Kasia: Exactly. “I make do with what we have. I can make the most of it. I can turn the cherries into pie into jam then after that into syrup and after that, we'll paint the walls red with it.”
Heather: Oh my God, I'm exhausted from that.
Kasia: Yeah, but we gotta stop doing that. And it's like the independent smart women right now who can't see the link between this imaginary marriage manual from 1888 and how we're behaving now. And so breaking those things. And when you asked about flipping power dynamics, freezing is one of those things. So what we're taught – this is a beautiful gift from our ancestors that we just need to thank our ancestors for and stop. Which is a woman who was safer when she was well policed, right? If she had a skirt on that was too short and something happened to her, she would be she would be blamed for it. So a loving mother would be like, “Your skirts too short.” Right? Police, police, police, police. Police the woman to keep her safe. Police the woman to keep her safe. And what we inherited was this incredible self policing capacity. Women police themselves way more than men. I'm not saying that men don't have insecurities or don't don't check themselves, but women self awareness to the vigilant extreme, that self policing, that inward attention ends up becoming destructive.
Heather: Yeah.
Kasia: Incredibly disruptive. The most brilliant prison ever built is one that no longer needs walls, nor prison guards, we do it to ourselves.
Heather: It’s true. And that's why I think women pick ourselves apart so much from our hair to our skin to our body shapes and our outfits. And you know, I was out to dinner the other night with another couple and this gal, she's beautiful and successful and she was dressed great, and she was she kept talking about her outfit, sort of apologizing for it. It was the weirdest thing.
Kasia: That's completely understandable and totally insane.
Heather: I recognized it. But what was crazy, what was really insane about it is that I noticed it, I recognized it. I appreciated that it was insane. But I also on some level totally understood it.
Kasia: Yes, yes. And this is the age we live in. This is the age we live in, where we see more and more of the normal as bizarre and absurd. And this is a prime opportunity to actually shift the way human beings see and live on this planet. And it's a little bit difficult in an interview to talk about these good girl behaviors and have them actually fully felt in the body because that's where they live. Because when you say yes really quickly, or when you respond to crisis, or when you find yourself performing invisible labor, it happens faster than the word or the thought. It’s in the body.
Heather: I think as you get older, it gets easier and better to be less reactive in those moments, but man, I wish I had these lessons in my 20s and 30s.
Kasia: So you talked about the freeze. And the reason I brought up self attack to begin with – actually, it's really shocking – but self attack is actually easy to surrender. It's easy to give it up. It's easy. It actually is. There's a few steps towards giving it up, but the reason that I brought it up in the first place was, in terms of flipping power dynamics, one of the most important moments to know how to flip a power dynamic is when you’ve frozen. Because this self policing creates kind of like a general more inward state. So when a woman's attention is generally inward, like in a self assessment kind of way, and she's only looking out, putting her attention out to look for cues for how she should behave, right? It's still a very inward focused attention. When somebody else comes along and puts her on the hot seat, puts her on the spot, asks her every appropriate question, an uncomfortable question, or makes a comment, that extra load of attention doubles. Right? So she her attention was already kind of inward. Now all of a sudden someone else's excessive pressure, attention going on her, doubles it. And her instinct in that moment is to go even deeper into herself. That's the default habit. And that's a habit to break. Why? Because this is happens every time. Picture room. This has happened more times than I care to count. 600 women. I tell them about the freeze. I tell them about how women freeze and their default state of attentions inward and when they get pressured, they even more inward, and I tell them, “Hey, so I'm going to go around the room and I'm going to start asking all of you really inappropriate questions. You only have one job, don't answer my question. Instead said put your attention on me, flip the power dynamic, ask me a question. Ask me a question like, “What gives you the right to ask me that question?” I even get even give them suggestions. I go up to the first woman, and I go, “Do you like sex?” And she goes, “Depends with who!” And the whole room laughs, right? And she goes, “Oh, yeah, I wasn't supposed to answer like that.” The next one. I tried to go even more inappropriate. She answers the question, catches. It takes five or six women before they break the habit of automatically giving away information that they don't want to give. Right? That's the default state.
Heather: I am totally guilty of doing this.
Kasia: Try it with a man. Try asking him; he will immediately flip the power dynamic.
Heather: Okay, so give me the right answer. So if I said, “Do you like having sex?”
Kasia: “Are you taking a poll? Are you interested in other people's sex lives? Are you researching so that your sex life is better? Do you know how you sound when you ask a question like that of a woman?” But you actually sounded pretty nice. Pretty sweet. So I wouldn't say something really offensive. If you had said it in a different way. I might be like, “Who the hell do you think you are? Do you know what you sound like? Do you talk to your mother that way?” Right. Anything about you will flip the power dynamic ecause now I'm leading right? You said it in kind of a nice way. So like, “Do you want to have a conversation about sex? Do you want to have a conversation about your sex life? Are you are you trying to ask me questions or for advice about your sex life?
Heather: Are you try to make me uncomfortable, what's going on? And one of the examples that I've heard you give before, which I really liked was, if someone asked you to go up to their hotel room, and your example was, “Well, hey, what could we possibly discuss up there that we can't discuss right here?”
Kasia: Yeah, there's also a thing that we called the school, it's a tool called location, that's kind of in the middle. Sometimes you don't know if somebody is trying to be a predator or just clumsy, you know. And so many men are really innocent, just sloppy, like they don't harm but they actually end up really traumatizing women and a lot of that can get cleared up with a location question. The hotel room question was not a location question. Like, location question, “It seems like you are really – fill in the blank. – Is that true? It seems like you are really angry. It seems like you want to get me into bed.” Maybe that's a little bit more dangerous. But the point is, if you ask them to verify or deny, if you pose something, even if they lie, even if they say, “oh, no, no, no, I didn't intend that at all.”
Heather: It diffuses it?
Kasia: Yes, it does. And it gives you something to work off of. Because so much of these hazy border crossings and boundary violations happen in a slew of ambiguous conversations. I mean, this is old news now, but after the Harvey Weinstein scripts were released, we advised them ad nauseum. The way that a series of separate sentences together imply something.
Heather: Right.
Kasia: “You could use a friend like me. You don't want to be mean to your friend, do you? I could do great things for you.” Those are very ambiguous. In a less extreme situation, you could say something like, “It seems like you want to sleep with me, is that true? It seems like you're saying that if I sleep with you, you'll give me a job. Is that true?”
Heather: I'm not sure he would have cared if I'm totally honest.
Kasia: Yeah, but it doesn't matter when you get it on tape.
Heather: Yeah, well, that's for sure. What so but let me ask you this. So I love how you respond to these. I think it's great. But what do you do if you're a person who isn't as direct? You're a very, obviously a very direct, very confident person. I feel like I'm very much the same. And when you give these examples, I think to myself, I could say that. I'm good. I could do that and not offend them and not come off as like super bitch or anything like that. But how do you train women who are just gentler?
Kasia: You know, everyone's going to have a style. So the examples I gave were not only in extreme situations, they were also in my style. But when you flip a power dynamic, and you do it with a question, one of the skills we talk about is calibration. You're calibrating to the situation, but you're also calibrating to your own style. So you know, it can be just as effective to flip a power dynamic with a question that sounds like this. “Hm. What makes you ask that? What makes you curious about that? What do you need to know? What would the answer to that question give you? Is there something that you're needing right now that you're being indirect about?” I mean, any of these questions, you know, they don't have to be, “What gives you the right to ask me that,” right? Any of these will stop. The point is to stop that frozen moment where you have no words. And all of a sudden, your silence reads as consent and things are happening out of your control. And it looks like you're agreeing with them, when you're really not, and every cell in your body is screaming, “Stop this.” Whether it's the raise being given to someone else, whether it's the company starting to manufacture or invest in some heinous segment of society, or whether it's related to the erotic or the sexual, or whether it's related to child care. It's that moment. All the negotiation training, all of the skills in the world, aren't really going to make a difference if when you need the most you find yourself frozen. Which is why we talk about this particular thing of breaking the freeze with a question. Really simply.
Heather: Yeah, it's interesting. It's a lot about trusting your gut. I was listening to something the other day about, you know, how at about age 13-14, is when we start listening to other people and not ourselves. We start listening to what our girlfriends think, or what our mom thinks is our best color, or what kind of makeup looks good. And I started listening to this, and I was going, “Yeah, that's about the age because that's about the age, you're kind of like trying to figure yourself out, you're going from your tweener. You're not a little kid anymore. But you're not a full teenager or young adult yet. And you get very influenced by other people.” Yeah. So I was thinking when do we lose listening to our gut? Because when you're little, you know, “I want ice cream. I want chocolate.” You know exactly what you want. “I want to go in the pool,” or, “What kind of rain boots you like?” “I like that pair of boots.” Right? We know what we like. We trust ourselves, we trust our guts. And I think at some point, we lose that trust. And we start to look to others for all of that information, which is why when you when you talked about that pause with the freeze, that waiting, and how sometimes it's not even saying the right or wrong thing, it's not saying anything at all.
Kasia: I couldn't agree with you more. I would go even further and to say that we don't lose that trust of our gut, of our instinct, of our intuition. It's taken from us.
Heather: Okay, who's taking it?
Kasia: Everybody who's educating us – and any parents out there, I am not pointing the finger at you, because you went through the same thing. The entire system of the incredible cognitive dissonance of what we tell a three year old versus what we tell a 10 year old, how we raise how we introduce humans, baby humans, child humans, into our society, the entire set of conditioning is to turn them into humans that lose connection with the inner voice. And I'll give you really concrete examples so it doesn't sound like I'm posing a hysterical conspiracy theory about the downfall of humanity. Really simple, simple, simple example looks really, really innocent and is completely common. Right? A child misbehaves. A child does something that disrupts the order of the group. So it has to be dealt with in some kind of way. So that child is set aside is pulled aside and is told, “Say sorry. You must be sorry.” It's entirely possible that that kid at that moment does not feel sorrow, right. Sorry means sorrow. That kid might have some unresolved anger, something might have happened. That kid could have a whole world of things going on that are not sorrow. But the kid knows that unless the kid says, “I feel sorrow, I feel sorrow,” lying about their feelings, they won’t be able to rejoin the group, which is the greatest punishment for a human being. Since the dawn of human history, the way that you punish the human is you banished him from the tribe.
Heather: Isolate them.
Kasia: So the first thing we do is we tell kids to lie about their feelings. “You should feel this way. You should say this.” It's one of 10,000 examples. And then there's the ones that are different for men. They're different for girls, different for boys. We're not really encouraged to trust our gut, follow the instinct, follow the cycle of our flowing attention, the rhythms. No.
Heather: So then the question becomes like, how do you break the cycle? Like I know, for myself, I was taught basically, that I needed my mother for many things and that I couldn't do it on my own. Which was not healthy or good. And I don't feel that way anymore. I got out of that. I broke the cycle. I mean, I have other issues, we could go on for hours. But that's not one of them. But I did have an aha moment when I was like, I mean, honestly, I was like, 35, it took me quite some time. But with my kids, I remember when my oldest two, they're twins, when they were very young, like five years old or something, my daughter just could not make a decision. She’d be like, even ice cream, like, “Mom, what flavor do you think?” I'm like, “I don't know.” I was just trying to teach her listen to her gut, to make her own decisions, to be independent, to come up with what she wants, and all of that. So that's my one little way of doing it. But what do you think in a more global way? How do we raise our children and especially our young girls, to listen to their gut and not have this taken from them?
Kasia: All right, so frankly, I'm working on adult women getting to a place where they know what they want. Because there's a big difference between feeling a spark of a flame of a calling, a passionate desire, some inspiring vision from within, then declaring a goal to meet.
Heather: Right.
Kasia: And I'm finding, consistently, that just like your daughter, but in more closeted ways, adult women are oftentimes not leading the lives they want to live because they're setting goals based on “in order to’s”. Right? “If I get to that place, then I'm going to feel like the person I was meant to be.” Instead of starting right here and now. The trick is with all the masculine, stoic, sociopathic production system and economic system, everything's about cutting off from feeling. So a goal is something you can come up with in 10 seconds, but a need, a desire, and a want? Like what color bedspread, what flavor ice cream, what career, what lover, what country – all these decisions could actually be made in a whole bodied way. But it takes longer for the signal of the body to go from something that's nagging, something that's longing, into a feeling, into language, into something spoken, into something asked for, into something that can be like a crystalline vision. This is something we work on a lot of The Academy because this idea that we're supposed to know what we want all the time, like men, like even men, it's not human to do that. Like there an internal growth process that, yeah, it gets faster when you trust it more, but sometimes there's a desire or something that gestating for a while – it’s like the birth process.
Heather: Well, I will say with men, I think because we're taught so differently, that men aren't is conflicted because it's just part of what they do. They pick something, they don't really question it – most of them. I'm being very general. It’s a generalization, but you're taught, you figure got the job by this age, you go do it and off you go. And that's it. I think with women, it's just a constant struggle and the balance and you're meant to do this, you're meant to do that you're meant to get married, just like you were saying before, and you're meant to have children, you're meant to now in these days and times also have a meaningful career. And do it all perfectly and balanced. I mean, it's insane. Okay, so I understand that the people that you're seeing, you're backtracking a bit and trying to almost retrain them, so that they can really learn how to exist in a way and find their joy, basically. So how do we do this? I mean, if you could take all them and start them over again, and like reparent them, like my buddy, Tara Schuster talks about in her book, how would you do that within these boundaries?
Kasia: How would I reparent them?
Heather: Meaning, what skills would you give them from a young age? So they're not coming to at age 28? When I talk to you, you seem so powerful, and I sit here and I go, “Did she learn this? Is this nature nurture? Or did you just come out this way? Is this just you?”
Kasia: Oh, my goodness, I am my own school’s worst student. I need to keep teaching so I don't forget. I used to be afraid to ask a waiter for a glass of water. The reason I was lucky to stumble into being a dominatrix is I had to pretend to be powerful. And because I was such a people pleaser, I want it to be really convincing. I learned this because I sucked at it.
Heather: Okay.
Kasia: And I have the technique for how to ask someone for something down to a science because in order to get those words out of my mouth, I had to be like a scientist and be like, “how does one go about asking for something when you feel like you can't deserve it and you're afraid of hearing no?” Okay! We do this, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this, we do this. That's what made me such a phenomenal teacher. Because what was natural to some people was so foreign to me that I had to construct a system to be able to do it.
Heather: So let me rephrase that. What do you wish you had learned when you were younger so that you could have been that person from an earlier age?
Kasia: I think I was born that person. I think that the most destructive parts of my conditioning were the things that were done and said, not the absence of encouragement.
Heather: Mm hmm.
Kasia: There were just things I didn't question that people made me question. I was born in 78. So when I was like, eight years old, it was okay for my grandma to be like, “You have to clean up your room or no one will marry you.” I don’t know that grandmas say that anymore. Maybe some of them do.
Heather: I don't know. Interesting things sometimes.
Kasia: When I had a crush on a girl in in high school, one of my parents was like, you’ll grow out of it. But here's the thing. We are right now in a very, very, very specific moment in time. It's, it's a huge opportunity, a huge calamity. We are living in a world that is more divided than ever. It's scarier than ever. And what happens when there's a crisis is people revert to their most known, even if ineffective, behaviors.
Heather: Interesting. Say that again.
Kasia: So in times of crisis, right, when there's a huge unknown, what people try to do, is they go backwards and cling to what they know even if they know it doesn't work, right. So for some people that's going to be fear, conspiracy, violence, anger, divisiveness. And my biggest concern right now is that in the face of crisis, the most loving, enlightened, educated, intelligent, brilliant, hard working women will also revert to what is known, but it won't look bad. It won't look like violence. It won't look like fear. What it's going to look like is what we consider to be the super normal example of female goodness. Meaning women are carrying the pandemic on their own backs. They're not complaining about the pain. They're avoiding more and more difficult conversations more and more often in order to save their strength. They're making things convenient and comfortable for others. Yes they’re angry, but they're not angry like they were a few years ago. They're not talking about injustice like they were a few years ago. They're consenting to things that are not in their pleasure to do. They're all about maintaining harmony. It's all of this is completely understandable but because even among my most diehard students, they're coming back to the school, the ones that were with me seven years ago, they’re coming back to school being like, “I need a refresher because this chaos is turning me into a Stepford wife. I am like the eight armed goddess of achieving everything at once I am the center of stability and everything, and I'm about to lose my shit, because I don't remember the last time I had an orgasm or a long bubble bath, or actually spoke about my own needs and desires.” And what is normal starts to disintegrate, because it is disintegrating everything.
Heather: And by the way, I completely agree that and I see it not only in myself, by the way, but I see it in a lot of my friends as well.
Kasia: And it's not something to call out, because we're all doing it.
Heather: We're all doing it. We’re homeschool teachers and chefs and chauffeurs and party planners and all of it.
Kasia: And making the best of it.
Heather: Smiling.
Kasia: Yeah. So when everything that's normal disintegrates, there's actually a huge opportunity. Because what is the new normal is something we get to decide. And if all of us revert back to the oldest behavior out of just not knowing what the new thing should be, what the new thing could be, without a vision, we're not creating the new normal consciously. The new normal could be worse than the old normal, the new normal could be better, right? Actually the disintegration of a lot of our support systems could inspire a way of being where we're all supporting each other in a much more community-minded way. And we could be using the isolating internet in a way that actually connects us so that we are functionally functioning like communities in a more strong, bonded way. That's just one example. But we get to decide. But if one woman is isolated, and fearing the unknown, and trying to handle everything all at once, that's the last thing on her mind.
Heather: Mm hmm.
Kasia: So you're living together and all of the sudden division starts to appear.
Heather: So okay, I totally agree with that. And I think, just for me personally, I went Stepford wife pretty quickly at the beginning of the lockdown. Because I'm had just lost my staff, and it was me and the four kids, Terry, and all that stuff. And then I kind of found my power again and pivoted pretty well. And I'm lucky because I have this community, this cool podcast community, to meet such interesting people and learn and express and hear about different opinions and views. And even if my audience doesn't take away doesn't agree with every single thing or takes away one pearl, they've gotten something out of it, which is so cool. What do you suggest women do at this point? And in these crazy times? What can they do to get out of that? Where can they go?
Kasia: Well, the first thing is that a lot of this is invisible. So seeing comes first.
Heather: Recognizing where you're at.
Kasia: Also also just like these things feel like rules. So we might as well call them rules. So hidden rules, right?
Heather: Okay.
Kasia: So first is seeing the rules. Second is breaking the rules. And the third is creating new agreements. Now, I would love just to say ever to every single listener that's a woman come to my school, or check out my website, there's tons of free materials there. Because we really want women to have agency in their lives, especially right now. We're doing some free events. But aside from that, just here in this moment now, see it, what to be aware of, if you do a log in a single day, for example, just of your labor, right just give your labor, your mental, emotional, physical labor, really meticulous be scientific. One day, every 15 minutes, you know, logging emotional labor, mental labor. “Who am I thinking about? On whose behalf of my doing this?” Right? Just seeing all of the time. When I had a group of students do this, the first group, the average was 80% of their work was for somebody else. And we're talking about unpaid work. Women with jobs, how is 80% even possible? So turns out, they're thinking about other people at work. They're juggling things. Seeing that all of a sudden explains why there's no room for a passion project or a phenomenal sex life or that novel. That alone. Once you see that, it becomes a lot easier to be like, “Oh, I love that I'm doing this. I love to serve. I don't love that I'm doing this. I'm just enabling somebody else's stupidity. I actually can't stand that I'm doing this. I don't even like doing this. I never want to do this again.” Right? But the decision to start taking things off your plate, or delegating them to others, comes after you really see what you're doing. The totality of it. That's one thing.
Another log one could do is the soft expectations log. What do you think people expect of you? And test it. You can do a soft test of it. A soft test would be take something relatively harmless like doing the dishes and just stop and see what happens.
Heather: By the way, the mothers around the world are all laughing right now. I love that, that's great.
Kasia: There are a lot of there are a lot of things, but the awareness comes first. And the more we tap into our bodies, the easier it is to hear the yes and no of what works. “This feels great. This does not feel great. This feels fantastic.” And this does not make us selfish people because it is a pleasure to give to those who receive well and amplify the gifts given. It feels terrible to give to people who waste what's given. It feels wonderful to receive exactly what it is that one needs and knows how to amplify very well. It feels terrible to receive something that's not quite right, or isn't something we can use well. So you know, exchanges in relationships can really strengthen relationships. And a lot of times when we become clear on our invisible labor and start delegating things for others, we have a chance to create some really powerful roles for people in our lives. That makes them actually feel better about themselves.
Heather: Yeah, and I think that is how you strengthen the relationships.
Kasia: Yeah.
Heather: That's all really amazing. Kasia, I think you're incredible. I think the work you're doing is so interesting. I tell you what I listened to your TEDx talk and listening to you today, I was very inspired. And I really loved learning from you. And you're so young and so wise. And I encourage everyone to go check out your website. Go check out The Academy. Tell everyone how to find your website, where to find you, where to find the Academy, the whole thing.
Kasia: Oh, I have a book coming out I forgot about.
Heather: So exciting! Tell us about the book.
Kasia: The book is called Unbound – A Woman’s Guide to Power. It's possible to preorder it now on Amazon already. It was supposed to come out in a month, but the pub date was moved to Woman's Day. We also have some special offers for anybody who buys the book. The website is weteachpower.com. There's tons and tons of resources. We made a huge effort this year to get as many of these techniques, ideas and curriculums out there. For the for the women who can't afford to take a class, who are down to self study, down to go as far as they can. And lots of video, lots of lots of podcasts. I'm really, really, really, really excited about this book, because this book is like a training manual for battle. It was written before COVID, but it's turning out to be so timely. And the delays that happened because of COVID are putting it in like the perfect moment in time. It's going to fall into women's laps at the perfect moment in time. We've already adjusted to the chaos, but we have to now fight in chaos. And when I use the word fight, and when I use the words love they don't necessarily mean what how they sound. Love is what's needed. And sometimes what's needed is a verbal slap, right? To know what's appropriate, what's required of a moment is actually the best expression of love. And fighting is the same thing. Fighting doesn't mean fighting against someone or something. Fighting means fighting for someone or something. And one of the greatest mistakes we make in relationships – when a couple switches from fighting against each other to fighting for something and explaining their own argument in the context of what they're fighting for – it becomes a passionate, synergetic moment. And it's the same thing with political movements and it's the same thing with all human beings. So fight and love, the essences of the manual for battle known as Unbound – A Woman's Guide to Power.
Heather: That is so cool. I'm so happy for you. I'm gonna pick up a copy too. You guys, Kasia Urbaniak. Thank you so much for being here. Everyone, go check out her website, get the book, preorder it now. Thank you guys so much for being here. Totally appreciate your support. And if you have a second go to iTunes and leave us a five star review. Tell us what you love about Heather Dubrow’s World. Have a great weekend and I will see you next week.
