Ep #122: The Connection Between Mind and Body with Beatriz Victoria Albina

Hi there, and welcome back. So today I have a very special guest.
Her name is Bea Albina, and I'm going to just tell you a little bit about her.
She's known also as Beatriz, Bea, Victoria Albina. She is an NP,
MPH, SEP, and she is a UCSF trained family nurse practitioner,
somatic experience practitioner, and master certified somatic life coach. She is the
host of the feminist wellness podcast, holds a master's degree in public health from
Boston University, and a BA in Latin American studies from Oberlin College.
She was born in Argentina, but grew up in the state of Rhode Island. And with
that, I would like to welcome Bea. Hello, hello. Thank you so much for having me.
I'm delighted to be here. - I am so excited to have you here. How you're here is
that we have this mutual friend, Maggie Reyes, who we both adore and who has been
on my podcast. And I think probably on yours too, yes? - I think so. At this
point, I have no idea. (laughs) - Well, you're like hundreds of episodes in. - Yeah,
yeah, yeah. - But what I love is this introduction has brought me to your podcast,
which is so good and so informative and so intelligent,
soulful. Your voice is so easy to listen to and I just can't wait to get into all
the things. Things I don't know much about, which I'm really curious about asking,
and also things that we both coach on, which there's a lot of overlap, although we
sort of come from very different backgrounds, you being a nurse practitioner, me
being a former television executive. But we sort of converge in this, as you would
say, beautiful Venn diagram of overthinkers, people, pleasers,
and perfectionists.
So I'm super excited. But I wanna start with kind of the low hanging fruit and the
thing that I don't know a lot about. I'm very familiar with the word, but like I
have a million questions about what does it really mean? How did you get your
background in it? How can we apply it? And that is somatics. Yeah. So first of
all, thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here and I am receiving
your kind words and also want to say hi Maggie. I love when good people bring good
people together, right? Me too. It's a really beautiful thing. Yeah. So somatics is
really my passion. that's really what all these years of training has brought me to.
So soma means body in Greek. It's quite simple. And somatics is the study and
practice of embodied awareness, the direct experience of your body from the inside
out, rather than focusing on how it looks or functions externally. So it's really
about sensing, feeling, and responding to your internal landscape in real time,
rather than overriding or ignoring your body's signals which like let's be real right
most of us have been conditioned to do exactly that right and so at its core
somatics is about relationship your relationship with your body your nervous system
your history all the ways that all of that shapes how you move how you emote and
what your emotions are and how you respond to and react to the world.
Hmm. So interesting. So it's really mindfulness of the body.
In a way. Yeah. Yeah. It's listening to your body when it's reacting to external
events and experiencing external events. So we hold space for neutrality as well.
And so what that allows us to do is to step into a new kind of choicefulness,
because when we recognize that patterns in the body are held because of the past,
we realize that we do what we do based on old patterning in the nervous system,
old scripts, old stories, old narratives. And when we realize what all those stories
are and how we have been holding them, yeah, we can make decisions,
we can have choicefulness. And so this can be as esoteric as you want it to be,
but also let's hypothetically say someone has a new puppy and it hypothetically goes
to the bathroom all over the house. Wait, I'm going to stop her right, Bea, right
now. I just told her the story offline about the last hour that I have spent
cleaning up my puppy's accidents in the house, which he hasn't made very many, but
I made the mistake of leaving my office door open and I was left with multiple
surprises and I was telling her how I was a little unnerved by this. Unnerved,
unnerved, yeah. And so if you grew up in a household where knocking over your milk
at dinner was met with screaming, a mistake might lead your body to retract,
to brace like a boxer in the ring. And so how do you react to somebody else's
mistake? Much less your own. Breece, crap, I'm in trouble. Yeah,
right? Then what do you do? You get defensive, you get jabby, you push outward, or
you self -recriminate. God, I'm the worst, I'm an idiot, I'm so dumb. I'm always
messing up, right? - I kind of did all those things this morning, by the way. - I
just ran through your list this morning as I'm cleaning up. - You got an A + and
so on, so far. But yeah, you're quite welcome. I will put that on your permanent
record. And we get choicefulness. We step back into agency, into choicefulness when
we realize what the old pattern of reaction and responses, and we can pause,
regulate the nervous system, ground through the body and say, "Do I want to do what
I've always done here. Do I want to scream at puppies? I'm not saying you did
this. No. Do I want to scream at puppies? Do I want to self -recriminate? Do I
want to make this a 10 out of 10? Or do I want to make a different choice? So
Maddox brings us back that agency where we get to choose the next thing. And that's
the magic. That's the point. That is what is so liberatory and generative about so
Maddox. It's that choice that it allows us to step back into and situations where
we didn't maybe even realize we had choice because we didn't realize we were running
on an old script. Right. So in that moment, right, I'm racing to get ready for
this interview. It's early in the morning. I have not had even a glass of water
yet. I need to jump in the shower. My puppy got out of my office and raced around
and made a mess and I am now late, tense, there's super judgy eyes from my husband
who's enjoying his latte and his two newspapers. He doesn't know that the puppy's
pooped, but he sees me cleaning it up. What in that moment could I have done
differently? Of course I cleaned it up, of course I got on the call, all the
things. But what could I have done differently so that my body didn't feel that
rush of tension? Because I felt the muscle tension immediately. And I didn't get mad
at the puppy. I got mad at the situation and at myself. I want to zoom out. Okay.
Right. Everyone wants, and this is where I think nervous system education, somatic
education is moving in problematic ways, secondary to social media, because people who
don't have a lot of actual training are saying, when you feel stressed, you should
do like XYZ movements and then you'll be We come to believe that if you like stand
on one foot and pull on your left ear lobes seven times while tapping your nose
Then like you'll be this calm Zen master and that's somehow the goal of life. Yes,
I don't think it is at all Somebody pooping on your floor. It's okay for that to
incite an emotion Yeah, right. Particularly when you're running late for a business
meeting I don't like it when anybody poops on my floor full stop. I am I veto
like we don't want to like somatic practice our way out of having human emotions.
So the thing to do in the puppy moment, you do long before the puppy moment,
right? So it's about reorienting the nervous system towards safety,
so that regardless of what comes up, regardless of what happens,
you have this buffer in the positive sense, this spaciousness, capacity,
resilience within the nervous system to meet life on its very life -y terms without
getting dysregulated when life doesn't call for it.
So reorienting the nervous system towards safety, it's not about overriding discomfort
with affirmations or intellectual assurances or somehow telling ourselves don't have
feelings. I think that's what's happening. Instead, it's about creating conditions
where the body experiences safety. And if you're out here and you're like, Wait, why
are we talking about safety? This is about dog poop. But I think it's applicable
here because it's in this minutia of the dog poop and the running late, where it
feels like everything important and life comes to this pinhead, right? I have to get
to the interview, because the interview is my podcast, is getting clients, is my
business, is whether I live on the street or not. Do you know what I mean? Like
it's a spiral. And so when we can find a way to be calm and safe and grounded
while still having emotions in the minutiae, in the quotidian BS, life becomes better
and easier overall. So, orienting the nervous system towards safety is about creating
conditions where the body experiences safety in this deep physiologic level. Because
if safety is a thought, the nervous system doesn't buy it, right? It needs to feel
it. And so we need to work with sensation, movement,
breath to give the body enough grounding and enough tools in moments where we are
totally not stressed, where we're like sitting on the beach or on our couch with
our favorite squishy pillow, whatever. So the nervous system begins to have this
automatic, a heuristic, a shortcut, a neural groove pattern go to that says when
stressed, it's okay to feel emotions, it is safe to feel emotions. And I don't need
to go to 10 out of 10 over things that require a two.
- So let me give you an example of what I think you're saying. - I would love
that. - I have had a multitude of sports injuries. Nothing catastrophic.
Trains, sprains, tweaks, you know. And all it does is keep me from sleeping and
doing the sports I love but nothing catastrophic so grateful for the body that I
have and all that I get to do. I have had an inordinate amount of X -rays, MRIs,
ultrasounds because when they're doing their diagnostics of is it broken or is it
just tweaked you have to do those things. If anybody's ever had an MRI it's
uncomfortable it's claustrophobic it's noisy if you do it wrong,
meaning if you move during it, you have to do it over again. And the last thing
you want to do is hear that jackhammer for another 45 minutes when you're like in
a frozen position. So you want to kind of get it right, meaning you want to be
still. And the interesting thing is I had had to have an MRI when I was very
young. And I remember thinking, I think I'm going to suffocate. I think I'm going
to die in this chamber listening to this jackhammer, only because I wasn't accustomed
to sitting still for that long and being in an enclosed space. The interesting thing
is as I got older, I also now meditate and I've meditated every day for eight
years. So I can control my breath and I can control calming my mind down when I
know that I need to. So when I go into an MRI chamber, I don't love it, it's not
fun, I meditate. I use my skills to meditate. So Is that kind of what you're
talking about where you're like, I have a well -worn neural pathway to say, this is
gonna be annoying and irritating and uncomfortable because it's boring and
claustrophobic and noisy. So I'm going to meditate during this period and I will
stay calm and the time will go quickly because I'm used to this. Is that a form
of somatics? - I heard a couple of questions. So is meditation a form of somatic
practice? Depends on the type of meditation, right? Two, you ask,
is meditation like the somatic reorienting that we're talking about?
Yes. Not really in that what happens in the nervous system in a moment of trigger,
of stress, of distress, is the nervous system loses, and I'm going to generalize,
I'm a scientist speaking colloquially here my age. It's like it loses its sense of
time and place and all of a sudden your temporal reality is suspended,
right? So all of a sudden your 46, 56 year old body is six and you're when the
scary thing happened or when you couldn't find your whatever and it was terrifying
because your binky was your whole world because you know like We get sent back into
another time and place. - Yes. - When something told the nervous system, this is
dangerous, mark this. And it's something that smells like this, looks like this,
tastes like this, sounds like this happens again, flip out. Because this is worthy
of fight, flight, freeze, fawn. This is worthy of dysregulating the nervous system
'cause this is how you get launched, Right? You're six and you're on the savannah
and you hear a lion. You're never going to not hear a lion and book it.
Right? Right. So when the nervous system hears its proverbial lion,
meditating is it depends on my wife said Tibetan Buddhist, we meditate every day to
give for that background. Meditation doesn't work for everyone. So I'm loath to go
there as our first line. Okay. What we want to do is orient the nervous system
like you'd orient, you know, like when you start a new job and they're like, Hi,
welcome. Here's the front desk. Here's the bathroom. Here's your desk. Here's the
kitchen. And they've oriented you to the space. Yes, that's what we want to do. So
there's six tools I love to teach to reorient towards safety. Okay. Establishing
sensory thinkers. So instead of meditation where we might, and in the Shambhala
tradition or the Tibetan tradition, Hema Chodron teaches us to let our minds be like
the sky and the thoughts float through, right? So we're kind of in a way doing
that but the opposite.
Paradox is a bound. So the nervous system needs reliable cues that signal safe
enough in order to relax out of that hypervigilant state lions or the shutdown state
too many lion. And so we do that by orienting it to this time and this place.
My favorite, simplest, easiest one is to use sight. So we look around and we let
the nervous system know, I'm here in my office. I can see the sky and clouds.
There's no lions around, right? So that lets the nervous system know it's not just
okay to be here and now it's safe. And I'm not actually in that trigger. Like I'm
not a little kid anymore, right? Like I'm a grown woman, pays my own rent, right?
So that's what we can do in a moment of anxiety, but we can also set these
sensory anchors up for ourselves beforehand. So we can use touch. So feeling the
texture of your shirt, feeling the texture of your own skin. I like to spin my
rings, feeling your feet on the ground, holding a warm cup of tea, feeling the
pressure of your chair or the couch against your back. I'll tell the nervous system
I'm hearing now. We can use sound. So using a steady rhythmic voice.
So it can be your own or it can be mine or yours, right? Folks who listen to our
podcasts, you can listen to a show that's supportive, familiar music. There's actually
a study about the music of our teenage years. They had this particular calming
effect. And when I was writing my book, this is, I'm going to both date myself,
which is totally fine and get a little embarrassed. But here we go. I'm halfway
into it. So why not? Pearl Jam's even flow and that's about 10. Oh my God.
I listened to that probably about 400 million times because it was the album.
I think it's 'cause it activated like when I learned how to be a good writer, like
in high school, right? And so like I would just put it on and just write like a
monkey at a, you know, typewriter, just like wild. But so those sorts of things
tell our brain and our nervous system safe enough. - Yeah. When we are activated in
the nervous system, what we need generally more than silent, steady meditation is to
complete the stress activation cycle, right? So again, lion nervous system got
activated and then we're up here. Because it wasn't a lion, your mom texted it,
wasn't a lion, you're in a boardroom, it wasn't a lion, you're at the PTA and
they're asking you to do all the baking for another bake sale. But oh my God, you
just got this big oven, "Oh my God, you want to die, right?" - Yeah. - So a system
that's up in fight or flight hyperarousal or, "Oh my God, another big sale." And so
you're in that hyperarousal, that freeze, that collapse, that check out. It doesn't
need reassurance, silence or stillness generally. It needs movement to process that
stress activation. So that can mean, let me give you a couple examples. So if
you're wired and restless, then rhythmic movement, bilateral stimulation,
walking, swinging your arms, shaking, swaying, these things can help discharge excess
activation energy. If you are feeling collapsed or foggy, if you're having a case of
the like, wait, what? Sorry. What? That's that nervous system going into what's
called dorsal, soul that checked out that there's so many lions. I just friggin
can't. That's who we bring in tiny movements. So wiggling your fingers and toes,
but like, holy softly, slow stretching,
gentle rocking. So not like a big sway, but a gentle rock can start to bring that
life force activation energy back online. And then finally, if you're anxious, but
frozen, that sort of stuttering kind of energy of like, I wait, what?
In a low stakes vocalization, because usually we can't get actual words out. Right.
So instead, sighing, humming, or a deep can start to cue the vagus of towards
safety without jarring it. So when we're in activation, the body wants to complete
the cycle, right? When a gazelle is chased by a lion and the lioness catches her
by the ankle, she falls to the ground and plays dead. Then she like, I picture her
opening when I am being like, lioness is gone. - Is it gone? - Right, and then she
stands up, shakes her whole body and off she runs. - Interesting. - And we need to
do the same thing. Dogs do it all the time. They shake their whole body. I love
the little tag goes click, click, click, click, click, click. But we don't do that
because polite society, right? You're not supposed to scream and throw something in a
boardroom. Right. Right. But we want to, we need, we need to not scream and throw
things. Come on now, but we need to complete this because that stuck energy just
needs permission to move. - That's so interesting. - Isn't it amazing?
Body's is amazing. - Yeah, and the animal kingdom does all those things innately.
- Yes. - 'Cause like you're describing it and I'm like, yeah, that's what animals do,
right? - We would too, but we like, quote unquote, civilization ourselves out of
these primal reflexes. - Well, we prefrontal cortexed ourselves out of it because the
rational thinking brain is like, well, that's not appropriate to sway in this
meeting, and that's not appropriate to hum to get myself back, and you talk yourself
out of it, or somebody else has talked you out of that being appropriate. Well,
think about how many little kids, like how many women, whirl their hair as little
girls and get their hands slapped. What are you doing when you're twirling your
hair? Self -regulating. You're self -regulating. Kids are it and go stop it.
Stop it. We're in church. Stop it. We're at wherever. Stop fidgeting. They're just
regulating. More fidget. More fidget. Really,
really interesting. Thank you so much for that. First of all, the course correction
of what I thought was somatic regulation or using somatics to reset something that
otherwise would create more nervousness. But the distinction and differentiation of
depending on the circumstance, which modality, if you will, of somatics you use,
super interesting. And I almost like, I think my editor will do this. I'd love her
to summarize that in a list so that that's in the notes section of this podcast.
- Fantastic. - It's really great. Let's segue for just one second and then I wanna
get back to a really important question. What is the name of your book? - Oh,
thanks for asking. So it's called End Emotional Outsourcing, a guide to overcoming
codependent perfectionist and people -pleasing habits. And I'm more than happy to break
down where that all came from. - Love that. Feel free to do that. And is that book
already out or coming out. It comes out on September 30th, 2025. I'm so excited.
It's been as a book is many years in the making. Oh, I love it so much.
I just, yeah, I can't believe it's finally real. So the title comes from my own
journey as these things often do. I totally had what anybody with a set eyes would
call co -dependent perfectionist and people -pleasing habits. I was living large on
that one. But I didn't get help because I didn't identify with the words. Co
-dependent was like, not me, no, co -dependent.
No, I don't need nobody. I'm a smart, independent, super overly educated woman.
I don't No, thank you. I am a rock. I am an island. No, I do not co -anybody.
Perfectionists absolutely get out of here with that. I mess up all the time. Pretty
much all I do is mess up. (clears throat) People, please, are you kidding me?
Everyone's mad at me. I please no one because of the aforementioned complete mess
up, right? (clears throat) So here I am living out all these habits, but none of
them resonated. And when it finally clicked, when I finally got it,
I realized that there must be hundreds and thousands and millions of people, but
particularly human socialized as women just like me, who are like, "Nah, that's not
me." But they keep dating the schmucks who treat them like crap. They keep giving
their worth away to everyone and everything and we need a term that resonates and I
needed to rescue the term codependent from the 70s and 80s when it got really coded
with so much shame and blame and guilt and talking about how our personalities are
defective and we're suffering and there's something wrong with us because I don't
think there's anything wrong with us. I think these are brilliant survival skills
that we learned in childhood and within the societies and cultures we grew up in.
And I want us to reclaim those habits as brilliant so we can honor our inner
children and we can friggin cut it out. I mean that's the end of the day. It's
like let's do differently but we need to honor what's been in order to do that
because if we keep shaming what's been, where are we? Right? We're in the same
harass.
Emotional outsourcing is, for me, the kernel of what we do. We chronically and
habitually source our sense of safety, worth, and belonging. The three is human
needs, right? Everyone and everything outside of ourselves instead of from within to
our own detriment.
100%. 100%. I too wrote a book last October, The Overthinker's Guide to Joy,
the name of this podcast, not duplicative, but a lot of the same themes, the
subtitle being a handbook for overachievers, people -pleasers, and perfectionists.
That's really where the Venn diagram intersects is our work in specifically people
pleasing and perfectionism. Now you go way deeper and have the background with your
education into the science behind codependency. That's something I talk about very
superficially because I'm not an expert in it. I talk much more about the people
pleasing and where that comes from. But let's talk about the intersection of those
two co -dependence and people pleasing. - Yeah, I mean, again,
it's really at its most core about thinking I am not safe as my authentic self.
- Uh -huh. - I don't belong in my family, in my community, in my culture,
in my society. My belonging, which is a vital, existentially vital thing for tiny
human mammals. And if you're listening and you're like, I'm six four, I don't care.
You are not the size of a rhino. You are tiny, right? We are very small.
We need each other. We are pack animals by design. We're not the size of lemmings,
but we need one another, right? And so if we don't have that sense of belonging,
if we learned in childhood, I am only safe and have belonging,
if I'm pleasing others, then our existence is dependent on those others.
And what they think of us, how they feel about us, how they treat us, their story
about our lives. So then I begin, you know, safety, belonging and worth. So how do
we feel worthy? Well, we meet other people's external standards, right? We keep them
pleased with us or we don't have worth. We're not worthy of love,
of care. I mean, if we're not a good girl, right, and we don't help mom in the
kitchen, and we don't brush our teeth and get straight A's and do all the things
instead of being praised and cared for and loved for who we are, then that creates
those tension patterns in the body, those somatic bodily habits, those patterns of
reactivity that are also then coded as neural groups in the mind as heuristics as
shortcuts as thoughts and ways of holding the body feeling, responding, reacting of
least resistance. Right? And so then we're living from this autopilot instead of in
intentionality. And I think intentionality, choicefulness,
agency. That's the link, right? So in people pleasing and codependent thinking,
we're not in our agency. We are not living our lives for us. We're living them
such that everyone else will give us that out of girl that we came to believe we
need in order to survive. Yeah. Do you have research or have you read research on
and I know it probably changes constantly because the world is always changing. So
whatever statistic was true even two or three years ago might be different today. Do
you have a sense of the propensity of people pleasing being more inherently female
than male? - So I would actually look really at gender as a construct and not
biology. And so I would really be more curious about our socialization and
conditioning. And I think that all sorts of things are taught to all sorts of
mammals. And in the patriarchy, those children who are assigned female at birth and
are raised as girls in my lived experience. And there's no research that I can
point to on this. I haven't found anything. If I'm wrong, someone please email me.
I'd love to read your study. But I think it's part of the training, right? - That's
what I'm asking. - Exactly. - I'm sorry. I asked the question wrong. I didn't mean
biologically, I meant culturally. - Right on. - Yes, sorry. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's
okay, when I hear female and male. - No, what I meant was for my female clients,
and I see both, I coach men and women. - Right, right, right. - I see a much,
much, much higher
- Or it's my female clients being much more concerned about what their mother's,
daughter's, sister's, - Totally. - Husband's, friends think. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - Than
what the men think. - Agreed, agreed. And so I was responding to the word female
and male. - Got it. - Which are biological terms that have the social construct
removed from them. - Got it. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yes, and of course, you know,
we're analyzing but not globalizing, I find that human socializes women are trained
up as girls to put everyone's and everything's needs ahead of their own,
to help mom in the kitchen instead of going to watch sports after dinner, to be
the ones cleaning up, to do the emotional labor and to hold the invisible labor of
the household, of the family, of who's the kid's pediatrician, what size shoes do
they wear? What's their blood type? What are their allergies? What's for dinner?
We're also working a full -time job. - Yeah. - Right? - Yeah. And there's exceptions
to every rule 'cause there's plenty of stay -at -home dads, and you know, but all
the things, but predominantly that has been my experience or my observations in my
work. - I would agree very much. It's part and parcel of living under the
patriarchy, as well as white settler colonialism and late stage capitalism, right?
They all converge to create this morass in which, of course, we emotionally
outsource, because so much is being demanded of us. That doesn't allow us to
actually be who we are at our core.
And I suppose men now women, because we're so much a part of the workforce.
And we've changed our rules so much over 50 years. But I suppose men have a
version of it too, which is scorekeeping, right? Winning the game, making the most
money, getting the promotion, you know, like those things are all externally
outsourcing validation as well. Great point. Yeah. So they have it in a different
way. It's not so much people pleasing as it is, where's my atta boy?
- Right, I would call that-- - We'll call that concrete atta boy. - Right, I talk
about that as people proving. - Ah -ha, that's a nice distinction. - Yeah, proving
your worth. - I love that. I know we can do a whole episode on it,
and I think we should, but I would love to just scratch at the very surface of
this subject, 'cause I love it so much, and I've done so many podcasts on it, and
I never get enough of it. But the nature of codependence as a pattern that starts
very early in childhood, for all the reasons you've just listed, you've been very
articulate about that. For my listeners who are saying, "Oh my God, I don't want to
admit it, but I know that I'm codependent in some capacity," whether it's with their
partner or boss or friend, maybe even a toxic friend.
What are some just very simple thoughts or habits or course corrections that someone
can do if they suspect they're in a probably unhealthy codependent relationship?
And again, I want to articulate. I'm not talking about having an alcoholic partner
and pouring their drink before they walk in the door. I'm not talking about that
kind of codependence. I'm talking about the, "Oh, I don't have agency to make that
decision on my own," or, "That will upset my partner slash boss slash whatever."
What are some of the tiny little things we can tell the audience to say?
Hey, you have choice here. Yeah. So some of those more sneaky insidious examples of
codependent thinking would be feeling responsible for other people's emotions such that
you can't relax. If someone's upset, someone's unhappy, someone's disappointed, and you
feel compelled to fix it. So a great example was my ex -mother -in -law. Her son got
engaged. She threw him this huge incredible party. They were running low on the
snack everyone was loving, she left the party drove an hour to buy more and came
back because she was so rattled by thinking he would maybe be upset.
There was tons of food. There was leftovers for days. But in her mind,
him having a disappointment was the worst possible thing such that she missed three
hours of the party and stressed herself out no end, which again nuggets.
Feeling resentful but not expressing it because you don't think your feelings count
as much as someone else's? Well, he's had such a long day and he worked such long
hours and I just, I don't know, I mean, it really hurt me that, but bond,
which then parlays into avoiding conflict at all costs, even if it means lying,
downplaying your needs, stuffing down your down your feelings, which then leads into
apologizing constantly, and we'll leave Canadians out of this. Sorry.
I have a lot of Canadian friends, so I love that. We love them. Apologizing
constantly, even when you didn't do anything wrong to keep the peace, believing that
if you don't stop taking care of someone, they'll leave you or stop loving you, and
that's the subconscious subtext. And it shows up as giving and giving and giving and
giving and giving and giving until you're thoroughly exhausted, but not letting
yourself receive help. And then the upregulated nervous system version of that is the
whole family sitting on the couch, Saturday night. And all right, everybody, we're
going to go watch the movie. But oh my gosh, I didn't make popcorn. Yeah, get up.
Oh, I just need to let the dog. Oh, you I'm just going to fold the laundry. Oh,
I'm just going to up and up and up because your nervous system is so revved up
and hasn't completed the stress activation from your childhood in your teen years and
your 20s and your 30s and your 40s and you can't sit still. You just described me
every night, which is hilarious.
No, literally, that is me every night. We sit down and watch TV and I fold a
little laundry, I emptied the dishwasher, I take the dog out six times. I, yeah,
every night. - Yeah, yeah, nervous system regulation. For reals, with no judges,
I used to be that way for sure. It was a stressful way to live, eh? - Not
compared to my old life. I consider this like, yeah, I consider my current life
like a dream and I'm still, you know, juggling a million things at night, but it's
not under the same stress that I once had in my old career, not even close.
- Thank you so God. - Me too. - Yeah, yeah. So speaking of career at work, it can
be saying yes to extra projects, unpaid labor, emotional caretaking of other
employees, right? Because you don't want to disappoint anyone or you don't want
anyone to think badly about you, feeling guilty when you call out bad behavior, when
you take a break, when you set a boundary, avoiding for yourself. So for a raise
for fair treatment, for credit for your work, because it feels selfish, or just like
scary, attempting to manage people's reactions to feedback, even when it's like just
literally your job, right, trying to pad their emotions, make sure that it doesn't
hurt them, right, instead of just directly and simply doing your job.
Yeah. And I just want to be clear, there's no judges here, right, in decision
making. So asking everyone's opinion, the first version of the peanut gallery,
before you make a choice. And at its root, it's because you don't trust yourself
because you're not your authentic self and you're not in your intentionality because
you've lost this connection with your intuition because you're not somatically
embodied. You're not present in your body, right? Feeling paralyzed by guilt when you
say no, even if it's something you truly do not want to do and you're going to be
so for later. That's a big one. That's a big one. Yeah. And I can keep going for
hours because this is the work, right? Is these like subtle? And sometimes not so
subtle, but like deeply insidious, sneaky kinds of codependent perfectionists and
people pleasing habits is kind of sneaky, emotional outsourcing because it just
becomes the soup you're swimming in. And so you don't even realize it, right? Like
ruminating endlessly about something you did or said, believing your worth is tied to
how much you do for others.
You know, giving lavish presence when it's just not what's happening, but you really
want to make sure that they feel really good. Yeah. Right? Really interesting.
We have to do a part two of this because I think this of co -dependence,
I think it deserves its own episode. So, Bea, we gotta do this again. - Let's do
it. I can't wait. - Yeah, me too. And really dive deeper into,
also back to the how, like how do we break some of these patterns?
- Yes. - I cannot thank you enough for coming today to sharing your wisdom.
There is so much that you said, like I need to go back and listen to this episode
to process it all. And I encourage my listeners to do the same because you are so
intelligent. You speak so quickly. And I say that with absolute admiration and like
awe. There's so much jam packed in here. So thank you. And I can't wait to have
you back. - And can you let my audience, your audience know where can they reach
you? How can they work with you? How can they listen to you? All the things.
- Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my website is a great hub for all things my work. My
website is my firstnamelastname .com, Beatrice, B -E -A -T -R -I -Z, Albina,
A -L -B as in bunnies, I -N -A .com. And I have a special treat, a little present
just for your listeners. - Okay. - Isn't it exciting? - Yes. - I love treats. - Me
too. - So if you go to my website, beatricealbina .com /overthinker, you can download
a suite of nervous system orienting exercises, inner child exercises, all sorts of
beautiful meditations and guides for free, zero dollars, just to say thank you for
listening. While you're there, isn't that fun? - Love that. - I'm excited, I hope
your people go get those treats. You can go to BeatriceAlbina .com /book to pre -order
the book now. I can't believe you can already order it. It just feels so exciting.
And my podcast is called Feminist Wellness. It's for humans of all genders and it's
available for free wherever you get your podcast. And you can follow me on the
gram. I give good gram at my full name Beatrice Victoria Albina NP.
That is Awesome. So I can't imagine people aren't going to look you up,
get that free resource, order that book, listen to your podcast, all the things, and
hopefully they'll look forward to you coming back and we're going to talk about more
good stuff in the future. Wait, I can't wait. Thank you again and I want to thank
our listeners for listening as always and wish everyone a great week and bye for
now.