Let Perfect Burn

All the Beautiful Pieces with Sex Therapist, Sarah Tomakich

• Tara Beckett • Season 1 • Episode 3

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In this week's episode of Let Perfect Burn, I sit down with Sarah Tomakich, a Licensed Sex Therapist. Sarah learned to fly airplanes as a young woman in her attempt to escape her home of origin. Later in her life, Sarah's divorce brought her back to the ground— she found her own therapist and was forever changed.

Through her own therapy, Sarah began a journey of unpacking all of the pieces of herself that she had kept closeted —her perfectionism being very effective at protecting her from pain.

Sarah's devotion to her continued work on her own self-discovery is what allows her to show up for her clients as the most authentic version of herself as she can be.

Now believing with her whole heart that love is infinite and that every piece of her deserves to be seen and heard, Sarah has found another chapter in her life where both she and her clients are allowed to show up fully and allowed to believe that they are, by nature of being alive, enough.

Some highlights in this Episode from Sarah:

" It's important to be curious about ourselves and to have a way of developing a very connected inner world. To be able to ask, 'What does my inner world look like? And what does it give me? And why did I need to protect it from somebody?'"

" I needed my perfectionism. It helped me, it protected me from some things that happened to me. But now I don't want to live as protected anymore. So I think that this idea of it burning away is the idea of whatever is underneath is the woman I want."

" I no longer feel the need to be different than I am today. That what I'm offering, who I am is loving and messy and disappointing. But enough. Enough for me and enough for those around me. And that... that is my recovery."


Don't Miss a Beat.
Follow my Instagram for news from me, Tara Beckett:
https://www.instagram.com/letperfectburn/

Reach out to Sarah Tomakich, Licensed Sex Therapist:
https://www.instagram.com/sarahtomakich/?hl=en

Original Music for Let Perfect Burn by Eleri Ward
https://www.instagram.com/eleriward/

Tara Beckett:

Hi, I'm Tara Beckett and welcome back to let perfect perfect. Today I sit down with Sarah Tamika, a licensed sex therapist. Sarah sits down with me to talk about early traumas, as well as her winding path to finding her calling as a sex therapist. Sara self compassion, and her willingness to be the most authentic version of herself that she can be is a gift to her patients. I'm here today with Sara atomic hitch, full disclosure, we were friends back in middle school. And we were talking before we started recording about how Facebook and social media is this weird thing where we see each other's lives without necessarily talking to each other. So I'm really excited to have you Sarah and actually get to hear more about your journey. We were also talking about this diary we had in middle school, where we were practicing how to be rageful teenagers. But we were closeted. Like it had to go in a diary. Sarah, is this something you remember?

Unknown:

I do. I remember writing to the diary and asking it why it was so angry. Why or why it was so mad. I don't remember the exact text. And I remember being you know, very interested in the diaries feelings, I

Tara Beckett:

think it was Dear Diary, why are you so upset? And why are you

Unknown:

so of course you have to be a little bit quieter. so upset.

Tara Beckett:

No big feelings allowed? Right? And I think we responded who the hell knows. But I digress. Say Sara is a sex therapist and has a long journey with some cool twists and turns. And Sara, I would just love to know, as you went off to college, or maybe you need to start a little bit before then take us down your winding road and how you got to where you are now.

Unknown:

And so Tara and I grew up in Michigan together and so there was an airport that was sort of in in the neighborhood of our where we grew up. So I would drive by the airport all the time and thought about that I wanted to take a lesson so I convinced my mom to go in and talk to the flight school about taking a lesson and then the flight instructor guy was really cute. Yeah, and 20 years that would became my career for 20 years. I was a professional pilot, I flew for families that had a lot of money and had their own airplanes. I was their private pilot. Ooh, oh, yeah. So I got to travel to many beautiful places. I went to Aspen for Christmas and seeing the Four Seasons in New York City, it was a very glamorous life. Um, in the in between time though, I got married and my I got married and divorced. And when I I quit flying after my divorce and moved to Washington DC, and did took a consulting job, which ended up being like a particularly serendipitous experience for me, because within a walkable distance, I found my therapist and I went to therapy originally presented into therapy because I wanted my therapist to validate for me that I won the divorce that I was right I should have that I was a good person and I was right about the divorce. Well, that really didn't work out that way. No, and ended up have my a therapy ended up becoming like truthfully, a very life changing experience for me, we really dug into sort of what it meant for me to be an angry person to be angry, but some of the things that my life had sort of that were confusing to me, and inexplicable. And through that the course of my own therapy i i loved therapy so much I wanted to

Tara Beckett:

be a therapist. And so that after the divorce that was seems like that was the turn into something new,

Unknown:

was it and that was now looking back I've been divorced for a long time that I can look back and look at my divorce as something that was very good. For me, it was something that really helped me move into one of the things that I learned in my therapy and through the course of unpacking my divorce was that I really believed that my love was so strong and so powerful that I could turn my ex husband into somebody that I needed him to be if he wasn't just okay as he was, but I needed to fix him, I needed to love him into fixing him, in that it was my very strong will that could save our marriage and certainly not a healthy way or way that I wanted to be in relationship.

Tara Beckett:

And would you say he was trying to do the same.

Unknown:

I would say he was more avoiding his life. He he really, I think he had different reasons for I think we both used each other to escape our lives, he I needed to figure out a way to get out of my family home. And he offered a way out. And I think I did the same thing for him. But we just we were using each other for different reasons. You know, one of the things that I like about being a career change therapist or therapist later in life is that I already brought with me a lot of opinions and a lot of feelings about what it means to be a therapist, and what kind of therapist I wanted to be and who, who I was as a person. Truthfully, the most important thing to me about being a therapist is showing up authentically in therapy showing up as myself. And that was something that my previous career, really, you don't show up as yourself, you show up as a part of the machine to do the work. But one of the things I really love about being a therapist is I, I show up in therapy as myself. And that is something that is truly so important to me so that I don't have to hide or I have to. And I'm not for everybody for that reason, not for everybody. And that's okay. But I really like that I can show up in and I mean, I'm a therapist.

Tara Beckett:

Absolutely. And when you say I'm a sex therapist, what do you think people think about what you do versus what do you do?

Unknown:

Yes, I think that's a great question. My friends who are sex therapists here and I talked about this, we're like we people must imagine we had like these crazy sex lives that no one knows about, you really enjoy our sex lives are so much less important. But I'm a sex therapist, because I think that I'm the kind of therapist that wants nothing to be taboo. And what we talk about, I like talking about death, sex, joy, pleasure, pain, all of those kinds of things. And I think when I'm a sex therapist, it sends the message that you can come in, and we can talk about anything, I'm open to anything, anything that is on your mind is welcome in my office. And so that's how I conceptualize being a sex therapist. And sex is part of all of us were born from sex, or most of us are having it or would like to be having it. And so it's a big part of life, just like death. And so these are the things that I want to talk about, I want to talk about the things that are really impacting our lives. And I think that my sex therapy banner really advertises that, that that openness.

Tara Beckett:

And I'm just thinking, we grew up, I would like to call it like plain vanilla ice cream Michigan. Yes. And I didn't understand how what pleasure was, or, you know, all I knew was that the people having sex in high school, were kind of the dirty kids, or you didn't talk about it at all. And it just didn't seem like there was any healthy conversation available to us where we lived.

Unknown:

No, and I think that's one of the things that I like about being a sex therapist is that one of the fun parts is I get to be sort of like an adult sex educator, which means I can send her pleasure I don't have to pretend that sex isn't fun, or the sex isn't enjoyable or that sex is something that we should want to desire and, and that arousal is a part of our life. I get to dig into that with people. And I do think that sex education as children is limited, because I think there is sometimes secrecy involved, like, here's a thing that's going to happen, but like you said, the connotations or it can be that it's bad, it's dirty. We don't talk about it, we talk about it only medically, and there is no emotion connected to it when sex is a very emotional can be a very emotional,

Tara Beckett:

absolutely, and I it in good and bad ways. Right? Like, trauma can come from sex pleasure can come from sex. You know, the whole gamut feels like it's available just in talking about that topic. But

Unknown:

just in that topic, and that's what's so cool about it's this umbrella topic that there is no one way to talk about it. But there's always an emotional access point to sex there it is not. You are not devoid of yourself when you're having sex. And if you are that's there's an emotional experience is happening because of that.

Tara Beckett:

When you were saying that flying was an exit out of your home, what were you escaping?

Unknown:

That's a good question. I think I had a very confusing childhood. My parents were kids when they had me. And one of my favorite authors, Alice Miller talks about how often people who grow up to be therapists were therapists, when they were kids in the way that we had to negotiate the emotional lives of our parents. And I think that that really encapsulates meaning one of the one of my gifts as a therapist is that I can navigate the emotional lives of people, but I had a lot of practice in it. And I started very young. I joke sometimes with my mother that she's my first patient, but it's it's a joke based in reality, you know, she she was a young, very young when she had me and I think that it was a confusing time for her and very much a confusing time for me as a child. My husband and I were dating so I'm, I'm re I got remarried. And my husband I put together for a few years. But when we were dating, I lived in this apartment it was across the street was a Coney Island. Which if you're from Michigan, Oh, yeah. 1/3 like, oh, you know, right after

Tara Beckett:

every football game.

Unknown:

Every mobile game, the Coney Island. So we were across the street at the Coney Island, and one of his ex wife's relatives saw us there and reported to his ex wife that I was five foot 10. This is an important part of the story. So she texted him later that night. I know your girlfriend is five foot 10. And we sort of thought that was curious, but we didn't really think much of it. If you fast forward three years later, his daughter, their shared child, got on my bike, and was surprised that she could ride on it because she said to my husband, I'm surprised I can ride on Thurs bike because she's five foot 10. So an important part of the story is that I am not five foot 10. I have since adulthood been five foot seven. But I think part of what happens when we're kids is we, there's folklore that exists around things. So like, for instance, I'm a five foot 10 woman. And this was the folklore of their family. And even in the face of our own realities, our own. Standing next to me seeing that I was that I was five foot seven, can't necessarily be trusted. Because when one of our parents tells us this person is five foot 10, that becomes our reality. And so part of my job is therapists and part of our jobs as adults, I think is to look at Can I trust myself? Can I trust that Sarah is five foot seven? Can I trust that? That my reality and the way that I experienced my reality is real instead of integrating? What are the folklore from our families? And that I think really is our job as adults is to figure out what's real and what's what was part of the folklore of our family.

Tara Beckett:

Yeah, so Sarah, that is hitting me hard in that. I feel like I'm just now at 40 coming into an authentic self. And that can be really exciting that I actually got there. And it can feel really sad that I didn't know how to for a long time. And did you have a similar experience or something different when it came to, you know, being this person you are now

Unknown:

I had a very similar experience. And I think that one of the things I admire about what you're doing here is you're modeling that healing happens in community, right? We need helpers to find, find our own reality to find our own truth to learn that we can trust ourselves. And what you're doing with this podcast is creating that, that group of helpers to say this is how I arrived on this journey. And that was a similar experience. For me my experience of figuring out what in my life was a five foot seven woman. And what I had been told is a five foot 10 woman, that space and those three inches created so much grief for me, because of all the people that I want to trust and all of us want to trust her life are the adult caregivers want to believe that they're helping us find our own reality. That is, it isn't always the case. And I think that the that space in between there creates so much can create so much sadness. And that was my journey was really getting in touch with that, that grief. And truthfully, like we talked to our earlier a lot of rage. Why don't you tell me? Why didn't you tell me she was five foot seven? Why? Why was this like this and that was really, really a hard journey for me because I felt I had to first go to my anger to get to my grief be one of the best parts of my journey was my journey into forgiveness. And it wasn't forgiving them for for doing the best that they could. But it was forgiving myself for needing more and not getting it to say that it was okay that I needed more that I didn't get and I forgive myself for for, for wanting so badly that I that I squashed her, that I squash that person. And that, that journey for me forgiveness, I just play with it a little bit differently. Forgiveness is for me to be gentle with that person who needed more, and didn't get what she needed. But it's not for my parents, it's for me, my parents were doing the best they could. And the forgiveness comes from me wanting more and not being able to get.

Tara Beckett:

And for me wanting more and not even asking.

Unknown:

Correct not even knowing how to ask

Tara Beckett:

or feeling like if I did ask. I was crumbling, some kind of image that if it crumbled, what does that mean? And do I have any value if I'm not doing the thing?

Unknown:

If I mean, my husband, I were talking about this the other day, one of the values something I value about myself still to this day. But that was something I placed an even higher value on early in life was my competence, right? I could figure things out. I didn't need someone to help me I could sorta I could do these things. And I think that that that was a way that it was harder to say I need help. I need something I need more. I don't know I have needs like to be able to turn it back and say I need is a difficult thing to do.

Tara Beckett:

And I'm also, like you said, with creating community. I'm hoping that we as women can need can get hungry for honesty and falling down and falling apart or being joyful. Like we can also celebrate together. Heck yeah, we did something. But I just feel like for me, I've always felt pretty silenced. If I go outside, you know, by society if I go outside those limits those limits.

Unknown:

Yeah, I I couldn't agree more. I think being messy person or being playful. Sometimes it's very difficult as an adult right to say really want to find that playfulness and that messiness, and I don't need to know how this is going to turn out for it to be okay isn't necessarily what you're supposed to do on your competence. Good thing.

Tara Beckett:

And, you know, I, you asked me, you know, when I reached out to you and wanted to have you on, you're like, how did you know, I was a perfectionist? And I'm like, I don't know, I had an inkling, right, and what is being a perfectionist to you? And, you know, I feel like, I don't know that it'll ever leave me and I don't know how you feel about it.

Unknown:

I don't think it ever does leave me I think it's, it's I liked that you framed in your intro, sort of being in recovery. I like a recovery model, which is the way that my perfectionism is a high value to me because it was something I needed at the time to feel my own value to feel valued by others. And it's still there if I need it. It's still there. It's still accessible to me. But I think for me, being a perfectionist was kind of what I talked about with my ex husband was loving people with an expectation that they'd be different. And one of the things that you're able to recognize and identify my perfectionism or my rigid way that I looked at people was to be open and loving to people as they come to me is to say, I don't need you to be any different than you are today. And that's kind of that of course always starts with us right was that I know longer feel the need to be different than I am today that what I'm offering who I am is is loving and messy and disappointing and Rowson. But Enough enough for me and enough for those around me. And that is, that is my recovery

Tara Beckett:

my therapist who I also have a very close relationship, just because she has been there for all of the stuff, right, and you just formed this bond with this person who has held you in all of these states. And I was really, really frustrated with my session yesterday, because, you know, I'm changing medication. And it is so frustrating because this symptom over here goes away, but then you feel like you want to throw up all day. And so it could feel like this will never end it'll never get better. What is the point? And, you know, thinking about perfectionism as a recovery, or mental health as a recovery, trauma as a recovery is, you know, the boat is slow moving. It's not, it's not like the perfectionist, snap your fingers. Will it to be so it's not that way. Oh, I wish it was

Unknown:

this. It wish it was too. And this is such a hard thing. And I think about this a lot. Oh, we logically like I logically knew for a long time, like whatever I was doing wasn't working. But it was the way I knew how to do it was the way. And it was it's very difficult to sort of integrate your logical experience with your emotional experience, which is much harder, which is just much more, I want to say ruthless in the way that it's honest with you.

Tara Beckett:

In your second marriage, can you just talk about meeting your current husband? And how was that different than your first marriage?

Unknown:

That's such a good question. Because I think about this a lot. So I met my husband when I was in my late 30s. And I think that I had already been through my therapy, I was really looking for a relationship where we both could just show up as ourselves where it didn't have to be something that was this pre preconceived notion of what what a good marriage looks like. And I think that that's something that I will say the thing I am the most proud of in my life is my marriage is my and my husband, because we show up when it's messy when it's difficult. And he is certainly my biggest cheerleader and, and he really is like, such a wonderful confidant. And I really give that the credit to both of us for being able to show up. And even when it wasn't easy. You know, I hate when this is hard for me, because I hate when people are like me are just so so hard. We're just such hard work. And I think it is marriage is hard work. But I like the work the hard work that we do, because it's about being in connection with each other. It's about not losing sight of the connection. And that is something that is really, really valuable to me. And really something that I am very proud of in my life is that the work that I had done, letting go of my perfectionist tendencies and my expectations that people had to meet a certain standard to be lovable has really brought me a lot of peace and a lot of joy in my marriage.

Tara Beckett:

It's awesome. So Sarah, like you were talking about with a five foot 10 Five, seven story. He has children from another marriage. Yeah. Can you speak to that? And how how to navigate that.

Unknown:

I don't know that. You know, one of the things that's I work with quite a few step parents, I think I wrote to you about this too is that parents, I think it's such a hard label because I'm, I'm not a mother by the standard of motherhood that means that I have born a child or adopted a child to raise. I define motherhood a bit more broadly. That is for me to decide. But I'm but I do not have children of my own. And I think that each family is so different and blended families are so challenging in their own way. And I think that, again, we're dealing with you come into a family with their own folklore. And then you're just sort of this person that's in this new role and I really prefer in the way that my step family is arranged to be my husband's wife. Like that's the role that feels most comfortable to me. I don't feel like their stepmother. I would love to be their step friend or their stuff is connected with them in a way that I care about them a Make sure their favorite ice cream is in the freezer. And I do these little things to make sure that they're comfortable in my home. But I don't take, I don't worry about their future, I don't worry in the same way that a mother would do. So I think that that, but every person has to find what works for them. And one of the one of my clients who's come into a step role, which she and I were talking about this about how there's a way people will say things like you knew what you were getting into, you knew what you signed up for, you know, the kids will always come first. And there's all these tropes around step, family hood, that can be very difficult when you're in the situation to say, did I know what I was getting into? Will the children always come first, because just to pick apart that the children are will always come first thing, it sets it up where love is a pie, and there's only so much love to go around. And one of the ways my husband and I have decided to do it is that are real in our relationship, the marriage prioritizes the children. So we decided together that the children are a priority, but there is no, he loves one of us more or less than anybody else. Yep, love is infinite. And he has an infinite love to give. And so there is no he loves the children more, or he loves me more. He loves all of us. And he loves all of us in the infinite way that love exists. But I think that that prioritizing of love has somebody on top is an old folklore from a lot of people's families to

Tara Beckett:

absolutely or. Yeah, and I'm just thinking about the trope that you mentioned about No, the children will come first it almost feels like it's setting up the the partner and the Partnership for failure. Right? Like, sorry, sorry, Sarah, you're never going to get what you know, the as much as you need, you're gonna go hungry if you marry this man.

Unknown:

Amen. And I think that that's why 67% of second marriages end in divorce is because we have these faulty tropes around love being a pie lovers out of high love can and one of the things that can happen is if you set it up where the children always be the priority and you come second, if you have a need, where does your need go that and the children know this, they can explain that they don't do this intentionally. But they sense this imbalance. And so they know that they can, they can separate the the parent and the step adults from each other because of the that when you make love hierarchical, it sets everybody up for feeling uncomfortable for feeling boundary lists. And when you when you I think when you set it up where the adults contain the children, whether it's a step family situation, or a family of origin situation, the adults contain the children. It doesn't, you don't divide people, you're all there together for the same reason.

Tara Beckett:

Yes, and I am guessing there's either in your own therapy or as you work, I struggle as a perfectionist to remember that triangle of actually, you at the top is the most important thing. And then your partnership, and then your family, right. And even with kids that I you know had had through my body, right or if you have stepchildren in your family. It feels like remembering that triangle every single day because I always flipped the triangle upside down and put me at the bottom.

Unknown:

And this will be model for children that right is that our needs are always coming last when we are comfortable in our triangle saying that I have needs and I'm comfortable owning those needs, even if they make others uncomfortable. We're modeling autonomy we're modeling needs. And one of the ways people talk us out of those things is to tell us that we're being selfish by doing that. It's selfish for us to have our own needs and our own wants and our own desires, their own hobbies. And I think it's part of our job to just not buy it. Don't buy it

Tara Beckett:

not buy it. No, no, no I'm

Unknown:

a better person when I can show up fulfilled. My face therapist, therapist is an author. And he wrote a book and he says that he believes that therapists like doing therapy because it's like being in therapy all the time. In their instance, like, I love that, because I'm like, Yes, that is why I love being a therapist, because my, my, the people that I work with Teach me as much as I hold space for them. And so I don't I think my divorce was a gift to me in that way, seeing the way that it helped me see that what I was doing wasn't working, that what I was doing was or was the hamster on a wheel that was going somewhere, was only going to wear me out. And so yes, I feel very thankful for my discovery. feel thankful I found the therapist who is right for me, because that can be a journey to it's finding your therapist. Yes.

Tara Beckett:

And, Sarah, I feel like we're coming full circle. And that. Just, you know, in middle school, we had that rage closeted anger. And I think we are definitely on this journey of not being closeted anymore. And it feels good.

Unknown:

Right? It feels good to be out in the open and be like, Yes, I get angry. Yes, I have a full range of emotions of which I am not going to mute for others comfort. And not that I'm not not that you and I are both conscientious and kind of giving people but these are things that it's just we're tired. I'm tired of pretending that it's okay, because now I know it's not and I can't pretend anymore.

Tara Beckett:

Yeah. And it's freeing. Is it it's, you know, it's Yes. To just circle back to that sex therapist, it's our guest. In I don't want to call it conclusion, because I really hope we can just keep this conversation going. It's awesome to talk to you. And just to hear your story. What does let perfect burn bring up for you?

Unknown:

Know, I really like the work that you're doing. Because I think that it's such an important thing for for each of us. And I think what you just like we were talking about modeling before your modeling that there is no right way to do this. There's no right way to figure out how to unwind the stories of our life, how to figure out if the stories of our life are our own stories, or they were stories that were told to us that we've integrated in I like watching this with you and being a witness with you, too. You get to figure that out. And I saw I think what let perfect burn means is I needed my perfectionism. It helped me it protected me from some things that happened to me. But now I don't want to be I don't want to live as protected anymore. And so I think that idea of it burning is that idea of it's slowly eroding away the idea that whatever's underneath is who I want.

Tara Beckett:

Yeah, one of me is a good way to say it, because that is what continued therapy and continued work in this space. asks me to walk up to this person and give her a look, right?

Unknown:

Yes, absolutely. Give her a look. Ask her what she's doing there. How does she What does she look like? You know, one of the one of the activities I do with my clients all the time, see, like, what does she like? How old? Is she? Where? Where did she get lost? What is she hiding behind? I mean, not? Because I think it's important to be curious about our selling, this is my this will. This is my guiding mantra is it I think it's always important to be curious about ourselves, and that way of developing a very connected inner world. What does my inner world like? And what does it give me? And what did it why did I need to protect it from somebody?

Tara Beckett:

Yes. And my therapist one time, not one time recently, actually. I had this idea that if I was struggling with mental health, there was something to fix. If I was doing my perfectionist thing again, I wasn't being authentic. There's something to fix. And she said, Tara, like, there's going to be times you put your lipstick on and present in a way where you got everything together. And there's going to be times where you call me with no makeup sobbing and you can't stop, right? But put an arm around all those women and give her love and compassion that she has all these different moments. And that just because you had this crisis that really affected your life and that you're doing all this work, doesn't mean that all those pieces should disappear. Right? So

Unknown:

Oh, I love that so much because I really do think that those were all pieces like I'm part of my perfectionist as part of me she protected me she was there she's there when I need all of her my angry part you know what I don't have to access her as often she's there if I need to protect myself, she's there to defend and advocate for me. But, and then there's the sad part of that gets to come out and play to win. It's really meaningful. But there is the, the all of those. I love that. I love this that your therapist gave you this image because it's all of those pieces are pieces of Austin. None of them need to be discarded or changed or fixed.

Tara Beckett:

Yes. Well, Sara, oh, this is so fun. I love the work you're doing is so real and brave. And you know, your patients are so lucky to have you in their camp. Just to really be able to have somebody who shows up in the way you clearly show up for them. That is huge. Which you and I both know is when you get that person. They really are integral to your self discovery. So it's been a pleasure and hang

Unknown:

in there if you haven't found if you haven't found the right therapist. Keep looking. Yeah, this it's not you it's you haven't found the right match?

Tara Beckett:

Yes, absolutely. So and you know, Sarah and I will say a million times listeners. Therapy is this thing where if you are interested in that authentic self and discovering her like you said find the right person but they will take you on a ride that is so worth it.

Unknown:

I could not agree more.

Tara Beckett:

Well Sarah, thank you so much. And let's keep this conversation going. Please, bye. Perfect. Perfect

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