Breaking Free from Emotional Outsourcing and Reclaiming Your Life

Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor. We have talked a lot about survival states like fight, flight, and what I like to call flop aka immobilized or collapsed, but we have not covered the nervous system state of Fawn very much. Fawning is a trauma response where you learned that to keep yourself safe you had to put your needs last. If everyone else was alright, then you got to be alright. If you've ever called yourself a people pleaser, you might update your definition that this is not a character flaw. This is a response you learned from the feedback you were getting from your environment. You learned that you had to accommodate others because that was the only way they would look out for you or their presence threatened your experience of safety and you were trying to protect your sense of survival. Please and appease is often a saying that goes along with the fawning response. Fawning can show up in many different ways such as: Ignoring your needs to take care of others Feeling responsible for other's emotions Not speaking up for your values Trouble with setting boundaries Being overly agreeable Difficulty saying no And what I call Food Fawning can show up as: You know a certain food makes you feel sick, yet you eat it anyway to make those around you happy You know that you're not hungry and someone insists that you eat their food or that they make you something and you say yes because you don't feel like you can say no You overeat because those around you are still eating and you don't want to make them feel uncomfortable by not eating more You agree to go to a restaurant that's difficult for you to eat at because you don't want to spark an argument with your friends or family You undereat because others have stopped eating and you're worried others will make comments if you eat more You go out of your way to purchase or bake someone something when you don't actually have the time or finances to do so You engage in these food and other behaviors because your body senses threat and is trying to keep you safe. When I discovered the work of Béatriz Victoria Albina and her new book End Emotional Outsourcing, I knew I needed to have her on the podcast. Beatriz is a UCSF-trained Family Nurse Practitioner, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Master Certified Somatic Life Coach, author of "End Emotional Outsourcing: a Guide to Overcoming Codependent, Perfectionist and People Pleasing Habits" and Breathwork Meditation Guide with a passion for helping humans socialized as women to reconnect with their bodies, regulate their nervous systems and rewire their minds, so they can break free from codependency, perfectionism and people pleasing and reclaim their joy. She is the host of the Feminist Wellness Podcast, holds a Masters degree in Public Health, and has been working in health & wellness for over 20 years and lives with her wife and their handsome all-black cat Wade. We discuss what emotional outsourcing is, how it affects physical and mental health, the impact of codependency, the journey toward self acceptance, understanding emotions, and how to approach change through gentle regulation and kitten sized steps. As a reminder, there are 6 days left to sign up for the Somatic Eating® Program! If you're exhausted and tired of playing out the same food behaviors again and again and ready for a totally different somatic, trauma, and nervous system approach to food recovery, then go to somaticeating.com or click on the link in the show notes to sign up for class today. We get to spend three months together, tapping into the wisdom of your body and the messages it is trying to send you through your food patterns. Now, welcome Bea! I am just so excited to have you here before we even press record, we're just like having such a good time chatting, and so I just want to dive right in, into wherever our conversation takes us today. In getting the listeners to learn a little bit more about you.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 05:04

Yeah, first of all, thank you for having me. You are a delight. And I'd like to tell your listeners that we opened the video chat and immediately made each other crack up and have been sitting here cackling for like 15 minutes. Could barely hit record. And I think that's really special. I feel like it's a really special spirit that's like, hi, nice to meet you. Would you like to be a silly goose with me? Life is really short if you're not going to be silly and it's really long also, if you're not going to be silly and like, not take the moments when it feels easeful to be with someone, to just be easeful. So thank you for being you. Thank you for being a silly goose. It's a great quality. And for those who are watching the video, we have really similar hair, and I think that's really special. I do too, because I am a Leo. So I will introduce y'all to me. I am a Leo and a silly goose, and I have gorgeous hair, and I am at a point in my life where I can just own it out loud, which is really nice and which actually is the like, foreshadows this whole lifelong journey with emotional outsourcing that brought me to this point. So you've heard my bio. What brought me into this work was the practice of medicine in which I saw my patients never getting better in a real way when we weren't addressing the nervous system, when we weren't addressing somatics, when we weren't addressing these core issues of identity that I have reimagined in this term emotional outsourcing, that we can define and get into. But what I really saw firsthand my many, many, many years in clinic was the profound mind body connection and how it shapes legit everything in life. And it sounds so banal at this point to be like mind body connection is important, but like yo, from like a clinical I'm looking at your diabetes numbers, your blood pressure, your digestion, your thyroid, your like, legit, everything from like a super nerd science like it really matters, and the way we talk to ourselves, the way we talk about ourselves, the way we think about ourselves, and the way we relate, shapes everything. How achy you are, how flexible you are, everything, and so that's what led me. I had chronic IBS growing up, which, if you don't know what that is, not I know you do Stephanie, but for other stories, irritable bowel syndrome, yeah, like IBS is the diagnosis that people like me give you, and we're like, damn I don't know. I think you're busted. I don't know what to do with you. I have to write something on paper so I can charge your insurance. And if I don't give you a patient, there's studies that show that patients who leave without a diagnosis are complain more and are more unhappy than the ones that leave with a diagnosis. So here you go. I think IBS is short for, please leave my office now. It must be Latin. Is it Latin for, please get the hell out of my office. Why are you still here complaining woman with all your feelings?

Stephanie Mara 05:04

I've called IBS BS, because they didn't know what was going on with me, and so they were like, yeah, here's just a IBS diagnosis.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 07:49

Bye! Good luck. Smell you later. Yeah, exactly, yeah. No, please don't let the door hit you where the good Lord split you. So goodbye. Thank you. Yeah. So I had that that was fun. Most people with IBS do not have a parasite. The whole Maha parasite obsession thing makes me feel a little bonkers, as someone who had a lab diagnosed blastocystis hominis infection. It's pretty rare, but I killed it, and I still felt like garbage. And I ate the right nutrition, and I still felt like garbage, right? I did all of the white coat, holistic functional medicine, Ayurvedic, Chinese medicine, Western medicine, Weill Cornell, all the right things, and felt like garbage because my nervous system was a dysregulated hot mess. My sense of self and the world was, studies show, not great. So of course, my symptoms kept coming back. My poor, sweet body was like, yo, we need to talk. And the IBS symptoms were the only language it had, you know, and then, of course, like chronic, never ending joint pain, like the body just keeps screaming until we have the capacity to be able to hear it. So how I got to here was decades of that work, working in public health, studying psychology, and wanting to really synthesize what I had seen as this etiology, as this root cause for so many people. And that's emotional outsourcing.

Stephanie Mara 09:34

Oh my gosh. I resonate with so many of these pieces, and also I so deeply appreciate also the silliness that you just said, that we could get into, because it is something that I feel like on any for those who listen here, like food recovery journey, that it is a matter of also tapping into what is joy like inside of your body, and how do I build capacity to like be with joy and feel safe and express myself authentically. And so I think just even naming that like it is a part of the path, and that I really also just appreciate you bringing in because I had a very similar experience of doing literally everything you also named like all of the avenues you could go down if someone's telling me that something is wrong with my digestion. And I'm going to do all both traditional path and holistic path, and every path I could possibly find. And the biggest piece was also my nervous system was dysregulated, 24/7 and living in a trauma response. I've even like seen over the years where, because sometimes it doesn't feel like nervous system work is so tangible. It's not like this, like, oh, this linear path of, like, I have a pathogen, I have a bacteria, and I just need to take these supplements and kill it. Like, it's not this linear journey to get to this place of like, oh, then everything will be okay, because nervous system work is kind of like, how do I live in relationship with my body throughout the rest of my life, kind of work?

Béatriz Victoria Albina 11:04

Yeah, it's the work of, how do I be? Like, who am I being? How am I being? And you're right, there's no, you know, that little pain scale, the Likert scale, there's no like, there's no way to quantify it. It's not like, take two of these and call me in the morning. It's really a profound shift that stirs up our earliest attachment wounds, our earliest relational wounds, ancestral wounds, the stuff we saw modeled for us growing up like how did your parents or caretaker takers relate to each other, to themselves, and then to you, and then to the dog. So many layers of depth on depth on depth, it's hard to prescribe.

Stephanie Mara 11:49

Yeah, absolutely, and that's why I feel like it gets this. But there must be something else, even when I bring the focus back to well, we need to build capacity to ebb and flow in and out of different nervous system states, and to support your body in feeling safe. It's like, well, there's got to be something else. It needs to be considered the same groundwork of you need to eat food every day, or drink water every day, or like, get sunlight every day. That it's just like this is kind of the basis of where healing or recovery needs to start, and then we get to see once you feel like you have grown your window of tolerance, or have greater capacity to like ebb and flow in different nervous system states, or not feel like you're as much in that sympathetic response, then we can kind of check out. Is anything lingering from there?

Béatriz Victoria Albina 12:39

Right. Because, to put a sort of finer nerd point on it, so I had Blastocystis Hominis. It's a spirochete. It's a real jerk, because it's think of a spiral spirochete. It like cork screws into your intestines and super cute. Let me tell you what. You're never gonna flush it out if you're in sympathetic activation. Like I took the fancy drugs. I took 4000 supplements, four and the best drugs on Earth, the strongest like, ooh, I don't know if I should prescribe these to you drugs, were not enough when my nervous system wasn't moving my intestines. Your small intestine moves using magnets, effectively, an electromagnetic wave is a better way to phrase it actually the migrating motor complex. Food won't move through you. Bacteria won't move through you. Parasites, viruses, they're gonna get stuck. If you're stressed out, if you're freaked out, if you're saying meanie pants things about yourself, it's the 101 we're not given. But luckily, there's nerds like us with our good hair, giving people this information, because this is vital. It's vital. And so in looking at my GI patients, largely because that was my focus, because you do what you know, right, what I really saw was these trends that eventually made so much sense. People would be fine, pooping nicely, not super bloated, like doing alright, then they'd be up for a promotion. Can't stop pooping. They'd go home and visit their parents that they have a rough relationship with. Haven't pooped in a month. You know, like things would move from ebbing and flowing to like neither. And that's where I started to realize this sort of venn diagram of codependent, perfectionist and people pleasing habits and really starting to see what I now call emotional outsourcing as the center of that of those concentric circles. So emotional outsourcing is when we chronically and habitually source our sense of the three vital human needs, safety, belonging and worth from everyone and everything outside of ourselves, instead of from within, at a great cost to self. It's the term I needed for the bajillions of years I was living in exactly all of those ways, because, like, what's codependent? What is that? Who is that? But I don't think that's me. I'm like, hip and cool, and went to Oberlin in the 90s, and I'm a, you know, a strong, independent woman, and, like, nah, codependent, probably not, definitely not. I mean, unless you think I am, do you think I am? Oh, my God, are you mad at me? I'm so sorry, right, yes, right. And people pleaser, I was never, I don't know about you, Stephanie, but I was never that, because people were always upset with me. And perfectionist again, if I may, I just fuck I just messed up all the time. So how could I be a perfectionist if I wasn't doing everything perfectly, I was trying really hard, though. So where were we? What? Wait. Are you mad at me again? Damn it.

Stephanie Mara 15:42

Right, and that cycle, even as you're describing that I can remember what it was like to live like that in my own body of constantly worrying about how it was being perceived, or how it was showing up, or what I was doing right, or what I was doing wrong, and how could I predict the outcome even as I'm describing it, or as you were describing that I could feel the sympathetic activation happening in my body, like the tightness of my chest, that my heart rate started to pick up, and I was like, oh, right, I don't live like that anymore. Like body we we're not, we don't do that anymore. But just even as you describe that, if anyone listening like, can take that on of like, how activating living like that, day in and day out, is, I hear you bringing it all together to create more of a framework of like, here's why you don't feel safe, and here's why you have so many symptoms going on.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 16:31

And to extricate us from the origins of codependency, which is the 12 Steps and the war on drug like, that's where the concept comes from. That's where it sort of rose into the popular speak. It comes from a pathologizing framework. And for those who are in 12 step and you're sober and it saved your life, I am not speaking to you or about you. I am talking about my side of the road, which is the codependent behavior. Mwuah, I love you. Keep your hate mail. I'm not talking about you. I'm glad you're alive. I'm glad you're doing well.

Stephanie Mara 17:04

I talk about OA in a very similar way here that I'm like, if Overeaters Anonymous worked for you, fantastic. I'm so happy. That's so great. There's so many different avenues, but a lot of the times I have people come to me having come from OA, and they feel even more disconnected from themselves, because there's all these rules that they're having to live by that were put on them by an external source that kind of just perpetuates what they already grew up in, where it was like all these external rules that were put on you that disconnected you from yourself, that kept you in that sympathetic response.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 17:41

Right. I again, have no opinions about how it works vis a vis sobriety, but when it comes to the survival skill of codependent thinking and living, I think it is really problematic. The very framework starts with identifying as a codependent. I shan't. Thank you for the opportunity. No, thank you. Not interested, not available. I gotta go. Actually, I have other plans, but thanks. No, it's not who I am. I don't think it's who anybody is, and when we frame it that way, as who we are, it does several things. It lets society off the hook, right? Lets our conditioning and our socialization off the hook. It depoliticizes the everything's political, right? Thank you. Audrey, the personal is political, right. And so how can you say that it's an individual issue? If our individual psyches are built in community and in the collective and in this social milieu, it's it's illogical, and it like breaks my science mind of like this isn't that one. Two, it is profoundly pathologizing the very language we are sick and suffering. We are defective, right? Character defects. It just doesn't work for me. My framework is the opposite, and I think this jives very much with yours, which is one of compassion and love and care. Because if we can see ourselves as the six year old little genius teddy bear that was like, okay, when mom comes home from work and she's like, walking heavy, that means she's had a really bad day, and she's gonna start yelling at dad, and then he's gonna this, and then that's gonna happen. So here's what I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna show her my A+ on my spelling paper, and then she's going to get really happy, because she loves it when I get a good grade, and then maybe I'll do a little tap dance for her. That's genius. There is not a defect to be found. That's a smart freaking kid. That's not a kid who should be pathologizing that.

Stephanie Mara 19:37

No, I'm on the same page with you that I actually haven't been using the terms eating disorder or disordered eating anymore, because already just calling it a disorder takes away that this was a wise adaptive experience that someone was leaning on to find some sense of safety within their body and within their world. And yeah, I think we have to start questioning the way that we describe things and in its pathologizing way that we're calling it a problem, rather than seeing the wisdom to it and what it was doing for a person to help them survive to the point that they're at now.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 20:17

Right. Because, if not like, first of all, we didn't learn whether we're talking about codependent experience, emotional outsourcing, or eating concerns, eating issues, whatever language we're going to use. It didn't happen in a vacuum, right? So to create a healing silo where it's just you were the only problem in this room, it's just unkind. I think that's what it really comes down to. To me, it is inaccurate. It is untrue, it is unscientific. But really it's meanie pants. I can't I can't with meanie pants like we also need to point the finger right at the patriarchy. By the way, if fingers are being pointed and white settler colonialism, because everything's extractive, and capitalism, because you're only your productivity. I mean, those three vile forces together have gotten us to exactly where we are. There's a way you can say that that nutrition concerns, eating concerns and codependent experience are two sides of a very similar coin of buffering against a reality that really sucks.

Stephanie Mara 21:21

Yeah, and it doesn't always come from the past, like sometimes we go to the past and we see how our past shaped us, but then we're still living in an environment present day that continues to send us cues of threat that we're still not safe to be here. So even if I heal from my past, am I getting enough cues of safety to land back in my body now, and the answer in that might be no, like I'm not getting enough cues of safety to feel like I can land back within this body and be here as it is.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 21:52

Exactly.

Stephanie Mara 21:53

So in regards to the emotional outsourcing, because you're coming out with this book, what are some of the things that you feel like you've learned in your work and in writing the book that starts to move someone through maybe emotional outsourcing less.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 22:09

Presence. It's the answer, again, that nobody wants to hear us say that, because, like, that's not sexy, and that's slow, and that's, you know, a whole process, but presence, because so often the behaviors we're enacting in emotional outsourcing, like feeling responsible for other people's emotions. You can't rest or relax if someone's upset, you feel compelled to fix things for others. You apologize constantly, even if you did nothing wrong, and you're not even Canadian. You're just trying to keep the peace. You feel resentful, but you don't express it, or you express it all the time, but you don't let anyone help you. All these ways that this desire to feel like you actually matter show up in the world that really what the smallest parts within us that learned these brilliant survival skills just want to be acknowledged, just want to be loved, just want to be held, just want to be cared for, just want to like, sit quietly with you. Really, the way to intervene in our habitual thought patterns and to help our body come back into more regulation is through presence. And so here's where it's really important to clarify. I do not mean meditation. I love meditation, but it's not for everyone, and it's not for all nervous systems, and it's not for all nervous systems at all times. What I mean by presence is a really grounded conscious mindfulness, that really is about bringing yourself back into the actual, literal moment you're in in micro ways throughout your day, as a way to begin to make it less scary when you grow up in emotional outsourcing, you're not at home in your body. Why would you be that's dumb and you're not dumb. Also as like a human, socialized as a woman in this world, like, of course you're alienated from your body, duh. You were trained to be unless you've done a ton of work. Of course you are. And you know, for kids like us who grew up with chronic symptoms, of course you're not in your body. You've done nothing wrong. There's nothing wrong with you. You're not defective. You're brilliant. That leap back into presence in the body. I don't mean to sound so banal, but like it does literally change everything.

Stephanie Mara 24:35

I completely agree with you, we diminish it, that it's just like, what's presence gonna do, but it actually changes the way our brain and our nervous system function.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 24:46

Yeah, and when we are present, we know what we need, and so we don't have to outsource it. We don't have to look outside of ourselves. You know, we get into these habits where we get so unsure of ourselves. Distrustful of ourselves. We don't trust ourselves to like make the tiniest decision because someone else might not like it, and we feel so responsible for their feelings, we'd rather abdicate any responsibility or ability to choose in our own lives to them so we don't have to manage them, which is such a cluster cuss like it really, like, flips your head sideways, you know what I mean. But the way back is okay. We need to take kitten steps. Let us pause to define my favorite term, dear Stephanie Mara Fox, I believe that baby steps are enormous. You've met a baby or you used to be one.

Stephanie Mara 25:37

Yeah and I say baby steps all the time, but like, please reframe.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 25:41

My angel. It's too big. Three inches. It's wild. Three inches is I'm gonna go to the gym every day this week. What are you talking about? No, you're not. I'm gonna go three times this week. No, you're not. You're not, and you're gonna feel like crap because you're not but what you might do, if we're using a gym example, is put your sneakers on one time for about 15 minutes, walk up and down the stairs in your own house, take them off. That's fine. That's enough, not because we don't want to make change, but because we want to show our brain that we are a trustworthy animal. And that's the goal of kitten steps. You'll get to the gym eventually. I'm not worried, but you need to trust you that when you say I'll do it, it shall be done. And so we take the tiniest newborn, itty bitty baby kitten steps, which are like, what, half a centimeter. Those are small step, and you take the wee tiny step, and you do the wee, tiny thing. So if we bring it back to presence, it means one time today, when you pee, you take one breath. Long, slow out. Oh, well, that felt nice, and now you can have that internal motivation to take a breath the next time you pee, instead of aiming for I'm gonna do an hour of seated meditation every day, and then, well, you're just another jerk who let you down. Come on now.

Stephanie Mara 27:14

I completely agree with you, because it has to be what is the most tolerable thing that we can do. And if you start to notice your body's feedback when you say, like, your example, I'm going to go to the gym every day, is you get tight and tense and your breath gets shallow, and then you start being like, oh, but I have this on this day and that on that day. And how am I going to make this happen already? Your body is telling you is too big, that step is not tolerable, and to trust to listen to that and say, okay, something smaller, I find that there's so much self judgment that it can occur in this of all I can do is breathe while I pee, and it's like, okay, can we just, like, ask judgment to step aside for a second and just say, you know what if that feels like, oh, I could totally do that, that is also feedback from your body and your nervous system of that that is within my capacity to do.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 28:11

And so, like most of the tools that I teach, it is, it is somatic experience sneakiness. So we're actually pendulating and we're titrating, and we're doing, like, the tiniest move towards self efficacy and self actualization, because your body, like you brilliantly, said, will be like, oh, hey, girl, hey. I liked that. I liked that one thing. So I love that you said, ask judgment to step aside. And when you hear things like that, I want to invite you, dear listener, to actually picture judgment. That's one of my favorite homeworks. Is write out or draw if you have that capacity, like, if you're a drawer, what your judgment looks like? Like is it some green, mean blob with big fangs, like, who cares? Draw it. Really personify that judgment so that you know what you're thinking of when you can, like, see it, move aside, and then what would love say, oh, so what would love say about you doing one grounding breath per pee? I think love would say, well, that's really nice. I think that's great. I think that's a wonderful place to start, and you can build from there. But the thing is, yeah, why set yourself up for failure. That's not a great choice. I know why, because capitalism, because always bigger, better, more, go, go, go, go. I know why. But let's cut it out, gently, lovingly, compassionately. I say, let's cut it out and let's aim for what we will do.

Stephanie Mara 29:37

Yeah, and it's within that repeated exposure that you're talking about. It's not just like, Well, shouldn't I have gotten this already after like, five times of taking kitten steps, it's you need repeated exposure over and over and over again for your body to be like, oh, maybe this could be safe, maybe this could be safe, maybe this could be safe. And then it starts to feel that way.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 29:59

So two nerd points on this implicit memory and neural grooves. So implicit memory is a big blanket framework for the like, the kind of memory that's baked into the animal. And then procedural memory is how you do a procedure. I get in car, I turn key, you drive car without thinking, because procedural memory drives the car right? It's heuristics, it's shortcuts. So we have shortcuts in the brain about setting goals, about things like mindfulness and being present. Oh, I'm not no, no, don't be present. He made a scowling face. I recommended we go to x place for dinner, and he made that face. And then so procedural memory says I should shrink. I should shrink and get quiet and say, oh no, no, it's okay. I don't want to go. It's fine. I didn't really want to go there. Don't worry about it. And so neural grooves are the highway of procedural memory. It's just like where the choo choo train of your thought patterns goes. And so those neural grooves take about 28 days to solidify, to be safe, to drive on so you're out here yelling at you because you didn't change a habit in three days. Habits takes weeks and weeks to solidify the very base, just like the tunnel for the train takes 28 days. If you're going to be mean to you, at least use some good math. You know what I'm saying?

Stephanie Mara 31:22

Like it hasn't hit the 28 days yet. Maybe I could start criticizing myself at that point.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 31:27

Maybe, maybe, maybe. But you'd know, I have some science to say. Well, actually, we still have it myelinated, and so that's going to be another month.

Stephanie Mara 31:38

Exactly. I think that's where they talk about, give yourself the minimum three months to even start to see change, even as a kitten, step start to occur before you even start being like, why isn't this not working? Because you are creating those grooves, and that takes time and then to myelinate it and make it be the thing your go to thing now is going to take more months. And so I think that it comes back to also what you've been talking about, of capitalism and the patriarchy and all this experience of we need to rush to get to the destination, and we need to, like, prove that what we're doing is worthy of time. And bringing that back to like you started this with of like, presence of what is my human experience like in this to actually enjoy the process of learning something new. And that's not so easy when also the whole world is yelling at us to do it differently.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 32:36

Yeah, context is absolutely vital, and we can change our inputs. If you have a friend who's very kind and loving when you tell her you're taking kitten steps to end emotional outsourcing, keep talking to her. But if your other buddy's a bit of a schmuck about it, choose your context. Choose your inputs, like, what are the causes and conditions of your suffering to borrow from our Buddhist friends, choose who you share your work with and choose who you lean on and be thoughtful and gentle with you about it, because not everyone's going to get it.

Stephanie Mara 33:06

Yeah, completely agree. I just want to also bring back for a second just appreciating you for redefining presence. Because I think there's also this idea of what presence is. It's like, oh, I have to meditate for 30 minutes and no presence is literally like what's sometimes, and what I often find is that presence can also be misrepresented as like I need to be present with the thing that feels most intense in my body, and presence can also be like, what is it to inhabit my fingernail? Like that is also presence that can feel really neutral, and so I appreciated you just bringing in of like, let's actually challenge what we're taught, even about the idea of presence.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 33:48

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. While we're at it, let's remind people that regulation doesn't mean being calm, right? It doesn't mean being Zen all the time. My wife practices Tibetan Buddhism. She meditates for like, an hour a day, but has human feelings. She gets pissed off, she gets sad. So do I right, and we're not trying to regulate or meditate or presence away the human experience. In fact, quite the opposite. When we're in emotional outsourcing, we're not having a human experience. We're not having the full depth and breadth of a human experience. I talk a lot about how when we're in emotional outsourcing, we're largely in the mixed nervous system state of functional freeze. It's when you have one foot on the gas, proverbially speaking, and one foot on the brake, so your body's in sympathetic activation. I have to. I'm anxious. I got to go. Worried what, what's happening. Let's go. Let's get it done. Let's move. And there's another part of you that's detached, checked out dorsal. You're sitting at the back of the cave going, Wait, are the lions still chasing me? Wait, what? Sorry, I'm in dorsal. I just what? And so it's like a go, go, go on the outside. And so the term functional here is not in some judgmental or capitalist way. It's like, in medicine, we talk about, if systems are functional, meaning, like, like a Rube Goldberg machine, does it go from A to Z in the order it's supposed to it's like, literally, are you catatonic? Like, are you in a bed and you can't get up, or are you out in the world? So functional freeze looks like a lot of like high achievers in our world, right? Like very productive people who are go, go, going, but are fully numb to themselves, to their authenticity, to their presence, to their sense of self, to their feelings. I know for a long time, I had no idea I was in functional freeze till I came out of it. I was actually talking with a friend the other day about how the first time I, like belly laughed after leaving my abusive marriage, and I remember it so deeply, because I felt like I went a little sympathetic, because, like I couldn't stop laughing because I hadn't laughed in years, like I hadn't had that embodied full release laugh. And it was magical and amazing, but that's what functional freeze is, right? Somebody, I don't know, somebody's llama dies, and you're like, that's sad. Everyone's happy. And you're like, how happy, but it's not a felt thing. Like, your eyes are kind of vacant. You know what I mean? Like, you're just not there. This is the state I most often see in folks who are living in emotional outsourcing. And the way to come out of that is this presencing work as well, right? So that you can have all the happy and all the sad and all the angry in their stead, in the right size, in the right moment. Because, if not, what happens is we self abandon, self, abandon self abandon, explode out of resentment, throw the plate, scream, say the mean thing, and then we feel so guilty. What do we do? You guessed it, self, abandon again, right? And so we live in this cycle of repression, explosion, repression, explosion. We have no idea who we are. We have no idea what we're feeling. We're just going through the motions and that, I mean, to put it very eloquently and elegantly, again, that sucks.

Stephanie Mara 37:08

Yeah, that's what I see with those who are like, how does this connect with my relationship with food is like, sometimes patterns of binge eating can be a way to either abandon self again, when you, like, tried to show up and then it didn't go the way that you wanted, or it was, like, so overwhelming to feel seen or to express yourself, that binge eating can just kind of shut it all down again. And sometimes, in the other way, binge eating can be a way of, like, I'm trying to get myself back into my body to show up and like, can I feel some sense of aliveness through like, feeling some sensation through eating, and then after the binge is over, that's so overwhelming and draining and exhausting that then you collapse again afterwards. So yes, it becomes this perpetual cycle. And I agree with you that like this first piece is like presence. And I'm curious, because, you know, you said there were a couple of ones if there's any other one that you want to name, what's another kind of core pillar that you've explored.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 38:10

Gentle regulation so that you can, again, no one is expecting you to not get pissed off in traffic, not have the big feelings, right? We're not trying to regulate those away, but what's really vital is we start to develop that watcher of self through presence practice. So then we got, we got to show it what we can do, right? It's like, I think of it so many of us didn't feel fully attuned to in childhood. But you know, like every six year old just wants a loving, caring parent to watch them do a handstand in the shallow end like that's all you want. You just want to be seen and accepted as you and so so much of this self reclamation work,, authenticity reclamation work is like, go do the handstand. And so how that translates to being a grown up is when you feel yourself start to leave self and start to like, I'm about to say yes to taking on this task that I don't want to do and I don't have the capacity for, oh my god, this is what's going to actually kill me. You excuse yourself to the bathroom, and if you're feeling that revved up, call in your watcher. If that's a skill you have, and if not, cool, don't worry about it yet. And you're going to take your thumbs, and if you're going really, really fast, you're going to do this so slow you feel free to curse my name. Bea Victoria Albina, curse me. Fine. That's great. So slowly you're going to tap your thumb to your first finger. One, tap your thumb to your New York finger. Two, tap your thumb to your ring finger, three, tap your thumb to your pinky, four, and then come back, 4321123, and just count. So what we're doing is we're moving our body out of that amygdala activation of fear and big emotions and dysregulation. We're shunting on we're reactivating the prefrontal cortex. The empirical smarty pants executive function part of the brain. It loves patterns. It loves counting. It loves simple maths. So give it that, and do it when you don't need it, so that you have it when you do right. So when you're chilling just pouring a cup of coffee, 1234, so you're again, we're building those neural groups when I do, right? So when I feel activated, I do silly finger counting and going slowly is going to piss you off, and that's okay.

Stephanie Mara 40:28

I apprecite you normalizing the process of being human. This work is not a matter of never having reactions. It's really normal to get angry and sad and disappointed and scared and anxious, and I'm just really appreciating you internally, of like, also bringing in these pieces as you share. Like, yes, there are resources that we can lean on in times where we're feeling like that functional freeze or that dysregulation. But also, you're a human being, and this is going to happen, and let's not shame or judge yourself, even within that experience while it's happening.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 41:05

Right on. I appreciate that. I know I was so meanie pants to myself while things were happening, and it felt like not spiritual to be annoyed with the process. But the process is annoying. It's just annoying and emotional outsourcing. Nobody's doing it on purpose. It is not an honest way of living, because we're always fibbing. I'm fine. Don't worry about it. I'm fine. No, no, no, I don't have a preference for dinner. No, it's not. Whatever you want to eat is totally fine. I'm allergic to gluten and dairy and corn and soy but no, we can totally have baguette sandwiches with brie. Yeah, great. Brie and soy sauce, what a combo. I can't wait to be in bed for a week. That sounds awesome. Let's go. We don't realize it because we're being nice, but it's a trained dishonesty. So let's be real about this other part that really just is kind of so dumb, but so vital, because on the other side it's awesome, because on the other side you say, like, oh no, no, I don't want to go eat there. You know what? So two options, we can go to this other place that I know works for me, if it works, if not, you know, why doesn't everyone go get food? We'll rendezvous in the park, 35 minutes, synchronize your swatches, and suddenly life gets really freaking easy because you're not making everything so heavy. But the price of getting there is it's it's gonna be annoying for a minute, but it's already annoying. Life is already annoying. Life is exhausting and terrible when you're living in these patterns. It really sucks.

Stephanie Mara 42:38

Yeah, it is really tiring. To also feel like, if we see that some of these patterns are coming from, like an inner child and nervous system that doesn't feel safe, that is exhausting to always feel like they're in the driver's seat, to feel like you don't have a say or a choice in your life. And so I totally am there, like I have to show up for my inner child again, like she's showing up again. Like, really, we're triggered by this, and on the other side, it's also like, oh, wait, I have choice, and I have a voice, and I can speak up for this, and that, like, yes, it can be exhausting, but it can also be less tiring long term, because you are showing up for yourself more in situations where you're like, I need to speak up for my needs.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 43:26

Right. It's like working out, like stuff that used to be heavy is not heavy anymore, because I'm used to it. So mental gymnastics, mental CrossFit some days, let's be real. To be all former hospice nurse on it. I've been at a lot of bedsides, and there's people who go with ease because they made peace with life, and there's people who don't. And I don't think we should be living these long lives for the moment of death. That's a bit morbid, but shouldn't we a little you know what I mean? Like, what do you want the summary role, right? Like, what's the closing trailer going to look like? Right?

Stephanie Mara 44:06

Because, isn't it once we are in the last moments of our death? Don't like the most I was reading something recently like the most prominent memories, like the seven seconds before death, or something like that, potentially, but it makes me think of like, okay, on your death bed. What do you want the memories, whether that flash is real or not, like, what do you want the last things to be flashing before you of like, how you lived your life, right?

Béatriz Victoria Albina 44:34

And I know for sure, at least in the great state of California, where I was a hospice nurse, there's no awards are given for most martyrdom, no awards are given in the moment of death, for put herself last, skipped the most meals, stayed the slimmest, no awards was most unhappy while keeping her kids and her husband happy. Not nary an award was given. I think I worked at a pretty great spot, but we didn't. We didn't have a trophy room. Um, so I don't know what we're aiming for here, like what kind of Olympics we're in. We're being jokey, but for real, right? Like we get to realize that the the stories we're telling about ourselves and the way we relate to others right now shapes this moment. And this moment is all you have. That's it.

Stephanie Mara 45:20

Yeah, and this is what I say about somatic work a lot that it sounds so simple in theory, but it is very difficult in practice, because what we're talking about in presence and in simple regulation, that it is really deeply showing up for ourselves, and how many layers of our conditioning get in the way of that.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 45:40

And I think it's really vital for people who are like, oh, I feel all of this, to know that change is not just possible. It's so real. I was talking with someone yesterday who said, you know, if you're in your like, 50s, and you've been this way for decades, is it even worth trying? The oldest person I've had in my program, in my six month program, anchored was 78 and the change I saw in that woman over six months blew not just my mind, but hers and that of everyone in the program, because she radically changed her self story. She radically changed the way she related to her husband. She's also stopped infantilizing an 84 year old man who started like doing his own laundry and was grateful for it. The changes that rippled out into all of their lives are just it's just such a stellar just reminder that change is always possible. You don't ever have to be stuck in emotional outsourcing or eating concerns or any habit that's not serving you, that internal change is always possible. It's pretty cool to remember.

Stephanie Mara 46:52

Yeah, this was such a fantastic conversation. I always like to wrap up with a little baby step, like with all this emotional outsourcing, we've talked about a lot of different things today, but if someone was going to take a first baby step, or today we're going to call it a kitten step, what would be something that you would offer someone as maybe a kitten step to get started?

Béatriz Victoria Albina 47:17

So we've got our little presencing practices. We've got the finger tapping to start to regulate, and I'll add to that, to start asking yourself questions again within the framework we've been working I know who cares what you hear. You may not hear a voice say, turn left. You might feel a sensation in your body, right. You might feel freaking nothing for months or years. I don't know, but you don't know until you start turning inward, not to hear the answer, but to have your body, your inner children, your psyche, your nervous system, your everything, hear you as a consciousness, say, I care enough to ask your opinion. That's it. What comes of it? Who can let it go? Who cares? Who cares? It's irrelevant. But when you ask yourself, hey, girl, hey, do you want another cup of coffee, or do you want to do you want some tea? Or do you want water? Do you want a smoothie for breakfast, or do you want porridge? Who cares? Right? Do you want to go for a walk now or in an hour? Who cares? It's the asking and it's the attentiveness to listen for your own response and then to honor it, as long as it's safe for you and everyone else concerned. That's how we start in this move away from that enmeshment of codependence and the independence that so many of us think are the answer. It's being interdependent with ourselves, finding safety, belonging, worth and value in ourselves, and then reflecting that out into our world.

Stephanie Mara 48:53

I love that, and also just the reframe of like stop looking for the answer, because when you put that pressure on the listening that I have to find something specific, it's really hard to listen. So thank you just so much for naming that.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 49:07

Of course, of course, it's so important, and thank you for being such a delight and so easy to talk to.

Stephanie Mara 49:13

Yeah. Well, how can individuals keep in touch with you, your work, and where can they find your book?

Béatriz Victoria Albina 49:20

Yeah, so you can learn more about the book and emotional outsourcing, how to overcome your codependent, perfectionist and people pleasing habits. Quite the mouthful. My website, which is Beatriz, which is Beatrice with a Z, B, E, A, T, R, I, Z, albina.com/book. My podcast is called feminist wellness. You can find it wherever you get your free podcast, and you can find me on the gram. I give good gram at my whole darn name. It's a choice. I made it. Beatrizvictoriaalbinanp

Stephanie Mara 49:50

And I will leave all of those links in the show notes for people to find you wherever you are. And just thank you so much again for this conversation. I just loved connecting with you today.

Béatriz Victoria Albina 49:59

Likewise.

Stephanie Mara 49:59

Well, to everyone listening as always, reach out Support@stephaniemara.com anytime with any questions, and I hope you all have a satiating and safety producing rest of the day. Bye!

Keep in touch with Béa Albina here:

Website: https://beatrizalbina.com/

Book Website: https://beatrizalbina.com/book/

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Podcast: Feminist Wellness

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