The UNcivilized Podcast with Traver Boehm

At twelve years old, Tanya Marie Dubé left home with $18.

For the next several years, she moved between friends' houses, church bathrooms, cars, closets, and the street while trying to finish school. She learned how to read a room, anticipate danger, handle everything herself, and do whatever needed to be done to get through to the next day.

Those skills helped her survive.

The problem is that survival strategies don't always disappear when the danger does.

In this episode, Tanya and I get into what she calls the five survival identities — the hyper-independent, the performer, the pleaser, the caretaker, and the invisible one — and how the versions of ourselves that once kept us safe can eventually become the same versions keeping us stuck.

We also get into something I see all the time with high achievers: checking every damn box and still wondering why success doesn't feel like enough. What happens when slowing down feels more dangerous than working harder? Can you actually feel satisfied without losing your ambition? And how do you tell the difference between genuinely trying to survive and continuing to live like you still have to?

This one's about the identities we build to survive, what happens when they outlive their usefulness, and what it takes to stop dragging them into the rest of our lives.

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👉 Men, come train with us in The UNcivilized Nation:
https://www.manuncivilized.com/thenation

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Tanya's 5-Day Identity Challenge: https://identity-collapse-challenge.com/

Connect with Tanya:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tanyamariedubeofficial/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tanyamariedube/

Connect with Traver:
Website: https://www.manuncivilized.com
Substack: https://traverboehm.substack.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/traverboehm/
Get my books: https://www.manuncivilized.com/books
CHAPTERS
00:00 Tanya's Return to Acting
02:06 What Is a Survival Identity?
08:27 Leaving Home at 12 With $18
13:42 How Survival Becomes an Identity
18:16 The Five Survival Identities
20:22 Do Men and Women Have Different Survival Identities?
23:18 Step One: Notice What's Not Working
27:57 Why Success Still Doesn't Feel Like Enough
35:15 Can You Be Driven and Still Be Satisfied?
41:26 What If You're Actually Just Trying to Survive?
51:07 Tanya's 5-Day Identity Challenge
53:28 What Does "Soul-Led" Actually Mean?

I left my suitcase on an airplane, sprinted through a Houston terminal, and blew out both calves in the process. That was day one of seven weeks in Costa Rica — and it was just the beginning of the jungle trying to teach me something.

In this solo episode, I'm sharing three lessons I brought back from Costa Rica — through injuries, a viral post about men's mental health, and a free diving course that scared the hell out of me.

Lesson one — slow the hell down, even when everything in you wants to move at full speed.

Lesson two — how you talk to yourself matters more than almost anything else, and why I made a promise to myself back in 2016 that I still keep today.

Lesson three — what free diving 15 meters underwater taught me about the power of a single thought, and how fast it can change everything happening in your body.

If you've ever felt like you're moving too fast to hear what's actually going on inside you — this one's for you.

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Men, come train with us in The UNcivilized Nation

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Connect with Traver:
Website
Substack
Instagram: @traverboehm
Get my books

Chapter List
00:00 Flight Chaos and Injuries in Costa Rica
06:00 Lesson One: Slow the Hell Down
07:37 Lesson Two: Speak Kindly to Yourself
11:42 Lesson Three: The Power of a Single Thought
17:12 Costa Rica Recap and What's Next

Sasha Cobra spent her twenties pouring drinks at a private cocktail bar in San Francisco — sober, vegan, healthy, and getting paid well to serve people poison. Then one Saturday morning in Golden Gate Park, she closed her eyes and saw herself doing something else entirely. She called her boss from a tea house that same afternoon and quit. She never went back.

That decision started a twenty-year path that's led her to work with thousands of people around the world on sexuality, trauma, and healing. In this episode, she and I get into what she calls Love, Truth, and Eros — three words that sound simple until you actually try to live them. Why she believes love isn't a feeling but a regulated nervous system. Why almost nobody you've ever met actually operates from truth. And why she thinks the most repressed, most misunderstood part of being human might also be the most healing.

This one goes into the body, sexuality, and trauma — and we don't tiptoe around any of it.

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👉 Men, come train with us in The UNcivilized Nation

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Connect with Sasha:
Website
Community
Instagram

Connect with Traver:
Website
Substack
Instagram: @traverboehm
Get my books

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Love, Truth, and Eros: The Framework
06:58 Personal Truth vs. Societal Lies
16:59 Masculine and Feminine Energy
22:15 What Eros Really Means
32:35 Coming Back to the Body
34:23 Releasing Emotion Through the Body
42:39 Facing Emotional Overwhelm
45:57 Lovemaking as Medicine
51:48 Living in a Different Paradigm
58:51 Why No Teacher Has It All Figured Out
01:01:34 Sasha's Story: Quitting the Nightclub, Finding Her Path
01:12:41 Social Media: Tool or Poison
01:18:33 Building Community, Wrapping Up

Laurita Gorman almost never got called up to read her poem in front of the audience.

She signed up for her first poetry slam and spent the whole night waiting to hear her name — the host had forgotten to add her to the list. She got up anyway. And wouldn’t you know it, placed second. That accident put her in the finals, and by the end of that year she was reading a poem about a woman named Laken Riley to a room that went completely silent.

Laurita is a Canadian-born poet and therapist living in Australia. A poet from an early age, she filled journal after journal. In her twenties, she started taking those journals into therapy sessions to figure out what she'd actually been trying to say. Life eventually stopped her in her tracks and pushed her back toward performing — and within a year she was standing on the Sydney Opera House stage.

We get into what it actually took to go from writing privately to reading in front of strangers. Why she stopped trying to be "nice" and started saying the true thing instead. What it felt like the night a room full of women grabbed her arm without saying a word. And why she believes a poem can do something years of talking can't.

If you've ever had something true stuck in your throat you didn't know how to say — this one's for you.

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Connect with Laurita: Instagram

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Men –– Join us in The UNcivilized Nation

Connect with Traver:
Website
Substack
Instagram: @traverboehm
Get my books

00:00 Introduction to Laurita Gorman
02:54 The Journey from Personal to Public Poetry
15:51 The Power of Voice and Expression
30:04 How Poetry Became Her Therapy
37:48 Connection Is Our Instinct, Not an Inconvenience
47:42 Sharing Poetry and Its Impact

Fair warning — this one is not safe for work. It's also not safe for anyone who wants to keep pretending that what happens in the bedroom has nothing to do with who you are everywhere else.
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Athos Khan is a board-certified physician, Jungian-influenced philosopher, and author of several books on kink, intimacy, and the deeper psychology underneath both. He's been kinky since the beginning — and he's spent the last several years writing and thinking about why that matters far beyond the bedroom.

We go deep on things most people are too uncomfortable to say out loud. Why the West stripped the meaning out of sex and what that's actually costing us. Jung's conception of libido as a generative force — not just a rush to orgasm. Why great sex is dangerous, what your fantasies are actually pointing at symbolically, and why the shadow doesn't disappear just because you ignore it.

We also talk about what it means to orient all of this toward good — even when what you're doing looks, from the outside, like it has no business being called that.

If you've ever felt like your sexuality was bigger than you knew how to hold, this episode might be the framework you didn't know you were looking for.

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Connect with Athos:
Substack
YouTube
Books — available on Amazon:
Love is a Kink | The Architecture of Intimacy | Structuring Desire

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You might also enjoy these related conversations:
The Deep Psychology of BDSM & Kink w/ Dr. Douglas Thomas

EP 415 — Living an UNtamed Life by Following Your Truth | Kati Bird

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Men –– Join The UNcivilized Nation

Connect with Traver:
Website
Substack
Instagram: @traverboehm
Get my books

Chapter List
00:00 Intro
01:01 Meet Athos: Doctor, Philosopher, and Kinky as Hell
07:27 Why the West Got Sex Wrong
13:32 Sex Like LSD — Not Chardonnay
22:41 Safe Containers and Starting Points
29:58 Your Darkest Fantasies and What They're Actually Pointing At
41:33 Why This Energy Is So Big
50:24 Integration: When the Mask Becomes Your Face
01:00:37 Orientation Toward Good
01:04:58 Wrap Up