Are you exhausted from over-giving and over-doing? Do you tend to look to others for validation or lean into people-pleasing behaviors? If so, you’re in solid company. From childhood forward, many of us learn to tend to others’ needs to feel valuable and worthy. And from my experience, these hardwired habits can foster perfectionism, enmeshment, and dependency–and even open the door to being exploited by thoughtless or self-serving people. Yet I’ve found that small changes over time can foster the awareness and inner strength you need to create healthy habits and set yourself free. Today, we’re joined by a fabulous guest who specializes in helping others gain self-worth from within–instead of from others.

Topics discussed include emotional outsourcing, perfectionism, self-care, self-love, habit change, midlife crisis, perimenopause, menopause, life changes, role changes, codependency, red flags, neurolinguistics, GABA, boundaries, marriage, children, parenting, healthy relationships, reciprocity, mutuality, and grief.

Please note that this episode contains sensitive material; listener discretion is advised.

Emergency Assistance Details: If you or someone you know needs immediate support, please call your emergency services. In the US, 24/7 help is available by calling “911,” “988” (Suicide and Crisis Hotline), or SAMSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). As applicable, additional resources may be provided in the show notes.

Non-Emergency Online Mental Health Information: https://www.nami.org/support-education/nami-helpline/

and https://odphp.health.gov/myhealthfinder/healthy-living/mental-health-and-relationships

IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER: No expert is offering medical or psychological direction or advice; the content is purely informational in nature. Please consult your physician or healthcare provider before undertaking any new regimen or procedure.

Connect with Dr. Carla Manly:

Website: https://www.drcarlamanly.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drcarlamanly/

Twitter/X: https://www.twitter.com/drcarlamanly/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/drcarlamanly

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-marie-manly-8682362b/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@dr_carlamanly_imperfect_love

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@dr_carla_manly

Books by Dr. Carla Manly:

Joy From Fear: Create the Life of Your Dreams by Making Fear Your Friend 

Date Smart: Transform Your Relationships and Love Fearlessly

Aging Joyfully: A Woman’s Guide to Optimal Health, Relationships, and Fulfillment for Her 50s and Beyond

The Joy of Imperfect Love: The Art of Creating Healthy, Securely Attached Relationships

Imperfect Love Relationship & Oracle Card Deck by Dr. Carla Manly:

Etsy

Amazon

Connect with Beatriz Victoria Albina:

Website: https://beatrizalbina.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beatrizvictoriaalbinanp/?hl=en

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beatrizvictoriaalbinanp

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beatrizvictoriaalbina/

Additional Resources:

End Emotional Outsourcing: https://beatrizalbina.com/book/

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The Secret to Unshakable Inner Confidence and Self-Worth

Breaking the People-Pleasing Cycle

Do you tend to look to others for validation? Do you find yourself pleasing other people at your own expense? If so, you’re in solid company. From childhood forward, many of us learn to tend to others’ needs to feel valuable and worthy. From my experience, these hardwired habits can foster perfectionism, enmeshment, and dependency. Even open the door to being exploited by thoughtless or self-serving people. Yet, I have found that small changes over time can foster the awareness and inner strength you need to create healthy habits and set yourself free.

We are joined by a fabulous special guest who specializes in helping others gain the self-worth they want from within themselves rather than from others. In this episode, we’ll focus on this reader’s real-life question. “I feel like I’m being sucked dry by everyone in my life, and I know it’s my fault. My teenage kids, husband, parents, coworkers, and friends know me as the doer and the giver. That’s always been my role.”

“It’s what I learned from my mom, and it worked for her because she was a stay-at-home parent but I just can’t do it anymore. I’m afraid that if I start saying no or setting boundaries that I’ll get too much pushback. What can I do?” With that question as the focus of this episode. I’m Dr. Carla Manly and this is Imperfect Love. Please note as this episode may contain sensitive information. Listener discretion is advised.

We’re joined by a delightful special guest, Bea Victoria Albina. Bea is a UCSF-trained family nurse practitioner, certified somatic coach, and bestselling author. Bea is going to guide us into the intricate world of learning how to gain your self-worth from within so that you’re not looking to others for validation and a sense of worthiness. Welcome to the show, Bea. It’s such a delight to have you with us.

Thank you. I was thinking those exact same words. I’m just delighted to be here with you.

I am so excited. Before we launch into this topic, it’s such a great one because I imagine many of our readers and I can truly identify with doing and giving in order to be liked, to keep the peace, to not make waves. It’s such a great topic for us to look at, and I am excited for that. Before we do that, will you please tell our readers just a little bit about what makes you, you?

The first thing that came to mind is my silliness. You shared some of my professional credentials. I’m a wicked smarty-pants. I love school, but what makes me, me is I love sharing. I love teaching. I love connecting with humans and animals. I love joy. I do not know that everyone has as much of an affinity. I can see it in your eyes that you do. I just love connecting.

It is the thing that fills my heart the most, connecting with other people and getting to share our stories. I was a hospice nurse back in the day, and it was my favorite, because I just got to listen and say, “What else?” Also, share presence. Maybe that’s the thing that makes me, me. I value presence, heart, and love above pretty much anything else.

You’re making my soul so happy, and I’m getting some chills. I have never heard that. Most answers to that question are very different, but that is different in a beautiful way. When you say what you love is presence, I’m thinking of how that is so diluted in this world. We’re on the go. We’re looking outside ourselves for validation and a sense of being worthy. We forget the importance of just being present. Being present for the self, for nature, or for a partner. Only present, as you said, when you were a hospice nurse. Being present for someone who is moving on from this earthly place. Present for our children and for our pets because we are always doing that we forget the power and the sheer joy.

I’m with you. I’m a joy fan. Joyful being. I realize that the more present we are, the more we are able to cultivate joy, notice the joy, and also notice and be with those times that maybe aren’t so joyful instead of pushing them away, where we realize, “This is some melancholy. I’m sad. I’m feeling angry.” Whatever it is that we’re feeling, including joy. If we make space for it, if we’re present for it, it is a game changer. Thank you.

It is a beautiful segue. Plus, I know from our very short pre-episode chat that you and I share a deep affection for big dogs. We do have many things in common. Let’s get going, because we could talk a lot about dogs. Readers, we promised each other that we might come back with a special wild episode about how dogs, animals, can have a special place in our hearts and our lives.

Let’s pop into this reader’s question of the day, because you’re a specialist in this area, somatic coach, family nurse practitioner, and being an author, you walk the talk about being genuine with yourself, being solid within yourself. This is a hard thing for many of us who are trained to be outside ourselves. Please go ahead.

It relates to the issue of presence. Since this is training from our youth, it’s our socialization, and our conditioning. From so little, especially for those of us who are socialized as girls, we’re trained to help mom in the kitchen. It’s like, “The boys are going to go watch football after dinner, but stay in the kitchen and help mom clean up. Can you clear the table, please?” You’re like, “ I’m six and I want to play.” There’s a big dog that needs cuddling. It’s like, “The boys are going to do that.” My role in life is to be of service, be a good girl, to matter, be worthy, and get praised.

We don’t realize until we do just how written into procedural memory that is, like how much that becomes the operating manual for living our whole lives. We need to start there. We don’t even know it’s in there until like, you wake up one day and you’re like, “What the heck?” I think perimenopause is often that wake-up for a lot of us. Hormones shift. We don’t have that GABA buoying us through to carry us through the things that feel like crap. All of a sudden, it hits us, “I have been living for 40-plus years, not for myself.” This isn’t the direction I usually go in, but I want to go toward grief.

Thank you so much for thinking of that. Before we dive into grief, because it’s critical. You said some things that I don’t want readers to think, “I don’t know what she’s talking about.” To you, as a family nurse, practitioner, somatic coach, and emotional regulation, these are all things that are common for you. Let’s talk about two things first just to get some definitions down. When you’re talking about procedural memory, that’s a big one. Let’s define procedural memory. Let’s also pause after that to just talk about GABA, because a lot of people are going to say, “What are you talking about, GABA?”

The cycles of GABA during perimenopause and afterward, what are we talking about? Also, with a nod to our male readers, some of these things are also going to affect them because there are a lot of guys out there who were raised to either not care at all about other people or if they grew up especially in abusive households, no matter your gender. You’re going to be walking around on eggshells trying to stay quiet and please people. All of this will ultimately take us back to that unexpected place of grief.

We’re going to start with defining procedural memory. It’s analogous to how when you get up in the morning and it’s time to go to work. You know all the steps. You go downstairs, you turn on your Mr. Coffee, and it makes your coffee. You pour the water and pour the grinds. You’re not awake or even thinking about it. You have got a procedure in your brain. Do the thing.

Understanding Procedural Memory

You get in the car, put the key in the ignition, you turn it, the car starts up and off you go. Procedure is done. It also can lead us in the wrong direction. Have you ever driven to your kid’s school on a Saturday morning when you’re going to the supermarket and you’re not doing drop-off? A lot of us have done that.

You forget that you’re turning here and you’re just on. I call it going on 101 North. You’re just on there and you’re like, “I wanted to go over there.”

“Where am I?” How that relates to your reader’s question is that we go into these defaults. These default ways of relating to the story of self, the story of others, the story of belonging, worth, value, and where that’s sourced. Somebody in the household says, “I’m hungry.” Your procedure takes you to, “What shall I make you? Would you like a sandwich? Shall I order you something?” It goes straight into doing what you were taught makes you good and worthy and lovable, which will keep you in attachment.

On an animal level, we know we’re pack animals like our beloved dogs. What will keep me beloved in this pack? What will keep me from being abandoned, from being left on the side of the mountain? What will keep me safe and fed? Night is coming and there are lions out there. Let me make you a sandwich. Let me find the laundry. Let me take care of you instead of me. That’s the procedure.

That’s perfect. To emphasize for readers, it’s not that we’re saying don’t care for others. We’re saying slow down. Take care of yourself. The old thing of putting on your oxygen mask or being able to fill up your cup so you can fill up others. I don’t know if you were talking from personal experience, but I was raised where the girls were in the kitchen and cleaning, and the guys got to sit on the couch and have man talk or do manly things.

Watch the World Cup.

I was lucky enough that we enjoyed the chitter-chatter. In those situations, it may be okay, but it would also be okay, ideally, for you to say, “I don’t want to be in the kitchen. Let’s have the guys go in the kitchen and do that. We can go and chatter in a circle.” Wouldn’t that be a wonderful flip? The idea is having equity and choice, rather than the default of the procedure that this is how it should be, and you cannot deviate from this pattern. Let’s segue into GABA.

The Role of GABA in Midlife

Who doesn’t love GABA? GABA is the brain’s primary calming neurotransmitter. To keep it simple, hormonal shifts in perimenopause affect GABA-related signaling, which can contribute to anxiety, irritability, sleep issues, and low mood. That’s about it. I would pause there because then we’re going to get into allopregnanolone and all the complicated stuff. GABA makes you calm, and we just do not have it so much in the luteal phase anymore once we’re in perimenopause.

Thank you for that last piece because if we look at it in terms that are that simple, where we had an abundance of it before, perhaps. Not everybody. Now, in perimenopause and beyond, we’re having to cultivate experiences, mindful experiences, that are going to get us that calming sense and find those little bits. Again, bringing dogs into the picture.

One of my favorite ways is getting a hug, whether it’s a hug from a loved one, which includes my dog for pausing to do something kind for yourself. What you’re saying here is we want the brain to be calm. We want the body to be calm. We want to make friends with GABA in natural ways of fostering some of that very important calming.

I will also just add that this shift at midlife can reduce the brain’s braking system. Stress feels harder to buffer against. To put it less elegantly, you could put up with a lot of junk when you were 26 and 36, but at 46, no, ma’am.

This is making more sense. The less GABA we have, the more we are intolerant of doing too much.

Which is pretty freaking cool.

 It’s very cool.

It’s great. It would be great if we got some more education about it so we felt less bonkers and bananas when it happens, but that’s in process.

It makes sense because as a young mom, as a parent, you want to have loads of tolerance. You want to be able to adjust to a new marriage, a new job, new friendships, new college experiences, or little ones running around and messing everything up or whatever it is they do, and have loads of tolerance for this. Yet as we get older, we might have this awakening, as the person who wrote in was saying, “I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s coming from my kids, my husband, and my parents. Everybody.”

I was reading the question. I got this image of someone who is like a tree where all these people are clawing at it and trying to hang on, or a mama monkey where all of these people are hanging on. I was like, “Get off me, please. I want to be me now. I want you to take care of me.” When we think of what people often call a midlife crisis in a negative way, I like the way Carl Jung looked at it. Which is not that we’re going to go out and buy a new car, get a new boyfriend or girlfriend, have an affair, or buy a new handbag.

Those things aren’t going to do the trick. What’s going to do the trick is finding out within yourself, what is the self-asking for here? As you’re saying, this is about being able to say, “It’s time for me. I’ve done child rearing. I’ve done this or whatever it is.” Not that everyone has to have kids, but now this is about me.

I would say that the shift toward my life can be about me. It’s not to the exclusion of others. When we know who we are, what we want, what we need, when we know our limits and thus our boundaries and can speak them. That is one of the greatest acts of love possible. When you say to your sister, “I don’t want to go to your fourth kid’s christening this weekend.”

When you say to your mom, “I don’t want to go to that retirement party for an uncle I haven’t talked to in twenty years. I don’t want to pick up your laundry. I don’t want to do this. I don’t want to do that.” What you’re also saying is, “I love you enough not to resent you. I love you enough not to think negatively of you. I love you enough not to talk poorly about you behind your back, even if it’s just to my journal. I love you enough to risk communicating with you,” which is quite a gift.

I like how you were listing off, “I don’t want to,” and how you weren’t saying what many people resort to, which is, “I can’t.” When they may be able to, but they’re putting a strong boundary of saying and feeling strong enough in themselves to be able to say, “I don’t want to.”

Our words create our lived experience. I don’t want to speak into the world about something that’s not true, number one. Top of my list of values is honesty. I don’t want to be creating a world where I have to lean on “I can’t” versus standing in my truth and my power because I can and I shan’t. I shan’t. “No, thank you. Not interested. Not available.” That’s my truth. That’s a part of this whole move out of emotional outsourcing and into interdependence. It’s stepping into our truth and stepping into our honesty. What else is there?

It’s so funny that we’re having this conversation. With my last client, we were talking about how you cannot be faithful to others because she was talking about someone saying, “They’re so faithful,” but they had betrayed her in many ways. I said, “How can this person be faithful if they’re betraying you?” They’re like, “This person says that they’re faithful.” We can say lots of things, but it’s about our actions.

We cannot be faithful to others if we are not faithful to ourselves. We cannot be truly kind to others if we are not kind to ourselves. Put a word in the slot like respectful and honest that we have to work on. I noticed that behind you, you have a few things that say, “Be your own anchor.” From that, I personally take, be that person in yourself, that strong, true, integrity-filled person that you want other people to be. That will help.

You’ll be able to recognize the people who are going to take advantage of you. It will help you with the red flags, which is a topic I want to get to. Before we try to get us to the red flags. We’re talking about neurolinguistics here, and the importance of it is to be able to say, “I don’t want to.” It sounds a little harsh. You might want to have a slight variation on it.

I like, “I’m not available.” “I don’t want to.”

If somebody says, “What do you mean? Do you have another appointment?” “Yes, I have an appointment with myself. I want to sit down and suck up some sun. I have an appointment with myself to clean the bathtub because that feels good.” Whatever it is. You can hold your truth in kind, respectful ways. If it’s not too soon, Bea. How do we tie this into grief?

The Necessity of Grief in Growth

When we’re coming out of emotional outsourcing, our codependent, perfectionist, and people-pleasing habits, and stepping toward interdependence, which is a way of living based in mutuality and reciprocity. There is a grieving for those 20, 30, 40-plus years where we were, as your reader states, someone who felt like a doormat. Someone who felt or was taken advantage of. Someone who lived for everyone else because that’s how you were trained up to be .That’s what you learned is the good and laudable way that a person moves through the world.

It’s one of the steps that’s often missed as we come home to ourselves and as we remember who we are. Most people will push back and say they have no idea who they are, but we need to do a process of remembering. In that process, we get to grieve all the time that we were living as a false self, generally without even realizing it, with no clue.

That is valid. I can say from personal experience. A huge part of my first three decades on the planet plus were for others. I was in service as a child to others’ needs. I was in service as a teenager. As much as I tried to be in service to my own needs, it did not quite work out. I got lots of penalties for that. We continue going on and trying to do the right thing to be loved, to be safe, all those things. We wake up, let’s hope one day, and sometimes there’s a big penalty to pay for this because people do not like it when we change, often people who love us.

I want to help us not think of it as a penalty, but a gift. You’re going to lose people, but you’re going to lose the people who want you to still be in your old role. If your old role was stinky, why do they want you to live that way? I get it. You do all the chores, all the work, and all the emotional labor. The number of women, both back in my medical practice and now in my work as a coach, who are like, “I work with you, a therapist, a functional medicine person and this person, so I can change and so this marriage can work.” I’m like, “What is homeboy doing?” The crickets get real loud. That person does not want you to change, but what about your life? I do not know if it’s a penalty, but rather like, “Heck yeah. Right on,” which does not mean it does not suck.

That’s more what I meant. Thank you for calling that piece out so we could expand on it. The penalty can be so many things. A lot of people who truly were friends but now do not want to be friends with the different side of you. The evolving, deeper, growing side of you. It can be a loss of family members. There may be a penalty on one hand, but in truth, I am with you 100%. Having been through this process, having lost a lot. There were good things to lose in the end. Most of them did not serve me or the me I wanted to become. Again, this has helped. Another gift is that it has helped me help other men and women evolve.

Bountiful gifts do not mean that there is not pain. Back to our reader who wrote in, but also the piece that we’re weaving in about grief, it does not mean that there is not grief for the loss of people, certain things you may have liked, like maybe holiday gatherings with people. I agree with you, there is so much grief. A lot of it is the grief, in my way of seeing it, based on illusions, because we had illusions that other people loved us for how we were. That they would reciprocate and they would be there for us. As you’re saying, if you’re looking at a relationship and you’re saying, “Homeboy, what are you doing? I’m working to evolve.”

It might be that you start grieving a relationship where you realize, “I want to grow and evolve and make a big, rich life, and this person does not want to shift with me.” There’s going to be some grieving involved and some reckoning, so to speak. The grief is such an important and often missed piece because not only are we grieving all of the lost years, all of the relationships that we might leave behind. We’re also in some way grieving hopes and dreams for the future of what we thought we would have. These lifelong friendships and lifelong marriages or partnerships.

If we have faith, we create more abundance in the future that is genuine, true, and authentic, that we could have never dreamed possible. When I was going through this process, I put up a sign and I just said, “Don’t break my spirit.” Also, reminding me and those around me, “This new me, you may not recognize her.” I may not recognize her all the time. She is more vibrant and colorful. That was a heavy don’t. It was not a plea. It was not, “Please don’t.” It was, “Don’t break my spirit because it’s getting strong and it’s getting big. Watch out. Here she comes.” We want that for every person on the planet. When you come into your own, into your true, genuine, authentic, joyful spirit, it’s formidable in the best of ways. What do you think?

There are opportunities and gifts beyond anything imaginable when we step into our authenticity and presence. So much of what reads as and is experienced as a lack of presence in emotional outsourcing is our nervous systems being in a functional freeze, which I can define if you would like. I find that so many of my clients are there where they’re just in this shutdown.

We’re not in our truth, in our realness and in the moment. We’re like your reader who is managing the moment, doing for everyone. Always doing, as you spoke about earlier in our conversation. We’re not home in our bodies, in our marriages, our lives, our neighborhoods, or our communities. Dreaming about a big future? I can’t even go there because I can barely see 3 feet in front of my little snout.

It’s so common. People often feel so embarrassed, like, “How did this happen to me? I’m a smart person. I’m a smart individual. How?” As you were saying so wisely earlier, it’s conditioning. It’s not your fault. It’s what you’ve learned and what absorbed as your tiny little brain was growing full steam.

You’re just looking around, thinking, “How am I supposed to be? Who am I? What do I do?” What your parents were modeling, healthy or not so healthy, intentionally or unintentionally, is what your little brain soaked up as the right way to be. Unless you have something big happen in early life to make you reconfigure and rethink that, many people don’t ever have that exposure.

You do what you were taught to do. Looking at this reader’s question again, we’re talking about how common it is to get to this place where it’s enough. You’re throwing up your hands and saying, “I’m afraid I’m going to lose these people.” That is what I’m hearing. I know what the person wrote. They were afraid of the pushback.

Can we talk for a minute about how intense, as you were saying, the freeze mode is? When our nervous system is activated, we go into fight, flight, freeze, appease, or fawn. That shutdown mode, that freeze mode, is once like, “Let me get it. Let me do what everybody else wants me to do.” How can this person and any reader understand and work with that default mode? It’s often an early default mode.

Functional freeze, as you said, is this mixed state in the nervous system where you have one foot on the gas and one on the brakes. You have sympathetic and dorsal pushing against each other, and we’re often frozen inside. This is a metaphor, my people. We’re metaphorically frozen to our own emotions while racing around, speeding through life, getting everything done for everyone else. There’s a dissociative effect in there, wouldn’t you say? We’re not present for any of it.

Therefore, breaking the cycle of functional freeze and emotional outsourcing is about rewiring both our brain and our body simultaneously so that we can feel safe existing as our own whole people. What we tend to do is spend a lifetime orienting everything toward others. We are hyper-attuned to their emotions, like, “He has that upset face. She is in one of her moods. Walk on eggshells.”

We are wired to prioritize that external safety over internal stability. Somatics, or body-based modalities and practices, help us start to feel ourselves as a real and whole person. That helps us to stop melding with others around us.

The core of emotional outsourcing is that role melding that your reader talked about. It sounds like she does all of the things for all of the people, and there’s a lot of role confusion here. Before we can shift behavior, we have to feel ourselves as separate people. I am me. You are you. My favorite thing to begin to do when we’re in these early stages of individuating in this way is to set a timer on our phone three times a day.

When the timer goes off, take three slow breaths and ask yourself, “What am I feeling now?” When your brain goes, “What? Feeling? I don’t know. I’m not feeling anything. What are you talking about? What if I get it wrong?” You can go, “Okay. Cool.” That’s what I was expecting you to say. Now, when we are working to individuate, we are not asking ourselves, “Girl, what are you feeling?” Since we want some perfect, correct answer. Don’t be a silly goose. We are asking ourselves because no one has ever asked us.

It’s because being asked is a thing you do for an individual. Not like a robot in service of the household, the society, and the culture. We ask, “What are you feeling,” when we care about someone and their feelings. Ask yourself with consistency, “What are you feeling?” Who cares what the answer is? It’s irrelevant. I don’t care. Don’t make notes. Don’t write it down. It doesn’t matter. The pattern interruption is that I asked.

The pattern interruption and what works is, I’m practicing noticing myself without judgment. The stronger your internal reference point becomes, the more you remember that you can be the center of your own universe. Every baby knows it. You have met a baby. They scream a lot. They’re the center of their universe. They’re like, “Mom, hungry. Tired. Pooped on myself.” They’re going to let you know. That’s within us, and we just need to come on back to it. I recommend we strengthen that.

Become your own North star first through these annoyingly slow practices. This work is so annoying, but here we are. As it builds up and you start to feel those shifts, setting a limit and setting a boundary with your family and their pushing back will start to matter less and less because you will be your own North star. When they say, “Mom, you always used to do it.” You’re like, “That is factual, and is Wednesday, the 47th of the month. From now on, I’m no longer doing it. If you want it done, you have one option,” but you have to get there.

Beautifully said. To recap, I like how you make it so simple with these daily practices, whether it’s a deep breath in and a deep breath out, followed by, “What am I feeling?” If you don’t have an answer, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter. You can feel grumpy. You can feel like, “I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it.” These sound so simple, yet as you were saying, as I’m thinking of my mom. God bless her, ten kiddos she had. I don’t think once until she was older, as a kid, I ever said, “Mom, how are you doing?” It was, “Feed me or I need a dress,” that kind of thing.

When we realize that as mothers, as fathers, as individuals, as workers, as friends, many people don’t say, “How are you feeling?” Even if they do, it’s often just a nice comment, a nice question. We’re not listening to the answer. It’s like, “How are you doing,” then we’re already on to something else, because being seen, but as you’re saying, coming back to the self first and saying, “What am I feeling? How am I doing?” It increases that awareness of the self. Now, a question for you. For those readers who don’t know, when you tucked in a word like dorsal. Let’s talk about dorsal and ventral, just so that anyone who was like, “What is she talking about?” They would have a quick understanding of how important that is in the nervous system.

The quick of it. Dorsal in Latin is the back of the body. Ventral is the front. The way we’re using it, I almost said colloquially because it has become colloquial in our circles. It comes from Dr. Stephen Porges’s, PhD, polyvagal theory. As a scientific theory, it is not 100% correct, just for the nerdy nudges who are like, “Excuse me.” I know it has some serious problems, dorsal break included.

The way I use it in my book or on my show, with my clients, is that it has another metaphor that’s helpful. The ventral vagal is the chill safe social part of the nervous system. When something’s scary and we get adrenaline. There might be a lion and we may have to run, we start moving into what’s called sympathetic activation, which is fight or flight.

When we’ve been chased by a lion for way too long, we’ve got no get-up-and-go juice. We’re exhausted. There’s no gas in the tank, then the dorsal system takes over. In this chasing model, it’s when we are in that dorsal state. I like to picture it that you’re at the back of the cave, the dorsal is shut down, depressed, and is like, “I can’t anymore. I have nothing left to give.” That’s dorsal within this framework. There’re also positive aspects to dorsal, which is the end of yoga when you do the lying down practice and they dim the lights.

That’s also an experience of dorsal. You and me before we hit record when we were geeking out about dogs and we were both getting excited. That’s a tone of sympathetic. That’s lovely, but here what we’re talking about is when we’re in emotional outsourcing. We are reactive to the world. Somebody else’s facial expressions when we state a need is sympathetic. Once we’ve been gasping in response to the world for so long that eventually we just can’t like, “I’m worn out. I’m burnt out. I’m stressed. I can’t.”

Thank you for the beautiful explanation. It takes us straight back to the question of the day, which is this individual sense of being exhausted. She’s like, “I am just worn out and I want to do it differently.” That’s what we’re hearing. I want to do it differently so I can be me. I can experience the world. I can do it for me.” Do it for me without feeling as though I’m bad. It was interesting when they wrote in and said, “I know it’s my fault.” How interesting that they’re blaming themselves.

Defining Emotional Outsourcing

Part of why I coined the term emotional outsourcing is to move away from the old use of the word codependency that’s used as a descriptor, as an identity. It’s like, “I am a codependent person.” Our popular use of it came up in the ‘80s as the analog to the very terrible, bad drug addict who is a terrible person.

Which was very much the Reaganite, Thatcher, crime and punishment moment of the ‘80s. That was the gestalt of the war on drugs, the codependent, enabling, and very bad wife. She was enabling him. It’s pretty much her fault and she’s pretty much terrible. More than a lot of people realize, it seeped into the water. It’s like this osmotic gradient. It’s women’s fault anyway. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but it’s our fault, everything.

I got that memo.

It’s just one other way. It’s like, “It’s all my fault because I just let them. I did too much. It’s on me.” This is where this line between personal responsibility and recognizing. You were trained up. Whose fault is this, the patriarchy? Whose fault is this, late-stage capitalism, white settler colonialism? These are extractive systems that rule so much of this world and taught you to be this way. Once you wake up to it, you can find another way. Saying, “It’s my fault,” like you’re inherently wrong and bad and like a defective codependent person. No, thank you. I’m not interested in that as a framework.

I’m so with you. Sometimes I get chills of joy or chills of synchronicity. In your case, I was getting a different chill, which is a chill of a little bit of rage. Readers, it’s okay to feel a little bit of anger, a little bit of rage, or lots of it. It’s what we do with it. We don’t want to use it to harm people, but we do want to pay attention to it when it’s saying something like, “That resonates with me, and I’m angry about the system. I’m angry about how it affected me or my mother or my grandparents or whatever it is.”

Being able to say, “I want to be that change. I want to be part of that change.” As Gandhi would say, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” We can use these awakenings, as our reader wrote in. Don’t spend the time blaming or shaming yourself. It’s what you learned. If anybody is trying to shame you for that, and I agree with you 100%. You’re the first person I’ve ever interviewed who talked about codependency. I steer clear of the word because it’s not used.

It’s not loving. It’s not kind. It’s not compassionate. We started by talking about presence and love. It is the antipathies. It’s blame and shame.

The more we can learn about how important it is to be able to not blame or shame ourselves, because that’s just what keeps us stuck. The blame and shame keep us stuck. It is a way to kill that inner joy. It is a way to kill that sense of “this is who I am.” We just want to notice it when it comes up. Notice if somebody is calling you codependent, or saying you do too much, or you should do this or that. As you’re saying, shake it off.

Setting Boundaries Without Guilt

Readers, it’s okay to say no. Not only is it okay to say no, it’s healthy to say no, particularly when you’re saying yes to yourself in healthy ways. That healthy yes leads to a, “No, I don’t want to” response. This is something you can do. Sure, people may roll their eyes and say, “What’s happening to you?” What does this look like? This looks like freedom. This looks like self-awareness. This looks like love. As you said, taking it full circle, and how important this is for everyone in the sphere.

As you were saying earlier, people may worry, “I’m being selfish.” No. When you’re standing in your truth, growing yourself, and respecting yourself, you become the world’s best role model. You become a model. You become that change, that force of love, and that force of strength and inner stability that lets you shine and radiate all the good things. Not this small cowering individual that has been put on the planet just to please others. You’re so much more than that.

Well said.

Bea, you are amazing. I wish we had more time, but are there any other pieces that you would like to highlight?

We have hit it, and I’m excited for part two, how to find true self-love through loving dogs.

I like this. We will do this. I thought of something we didn’t cover. Only a quick soundbite, please, because we touched on it. I mentioned earlier that I would be sure to cover it. Many people say, “How did I get here? I missed the red flags. How did I choose this friend, this partner, or this boss?”

Re-evaluating Past Decisions

I asked my cat to do my taxes, and now I’m surprised he did them wrong. Cats can’t do taxes. They are known tax evaders. What are you doing? You can’t get mad at a cat when you ask it to do taxes. Fourteen-year-old you, 26-year-old you, or 42-year-old you, couldn’t see what you couldn’t see because your nervous system didn’t have the capacity. The way my cat, who is a brilliant gentleman, is terrible at math.

He doesn’t have the capacity. His neurons don’t fire that way. Yours didn’t either. When you’re yelling retrospectively at past you for, “I married a schmuck. I divorced a schmuck, but I married an abusive jerk. I saw it out of the corner of my eye, but I didn’t have the neurons firing to say, ‘Run away.’ I had the neurons firing that said, ‘Be a good girl. Don’t upset the apple cart.’“ Getting mad at my cat for doing my taxes wrong and getting mad at the version of me who was doing the best she could with the neurons she had are equally not great moves. Don’t get mad at cats, and don’t get mad at you.

I love the analogy to the cat and the taxes.

He’s terrible at math.

My dog Freedom doesn’t make very good tofu scramble.

Terrible for lack of thumbs. Why are you going to judge him? Don’t judge him.

In fact, maybe it’s worth giving that part of the self a cuddle or a big hug, because as you said, and I’m a big fan of this, we can see things now, especially if we’re on a self-growth path, that we didn’t see then. We weren’t equipped.

We didn’t have the firing because if you could have seen it, you would have. On a science level, like neurons firing, if your neurons could have fired that way, they would have. I just trust and believe that.

Leaning into it, just one more piece. You said a critical thing that I’ve experienced too, where you said, “I saw it. I married the schmuck, and I saw it out of the corner of my eye.” We see it out of the corner of our eyes. That part says, “I knew it. I am bad. I should have known better.” We see things out of the corner of our eyes a lot of the time and we just keep marching forward because marching forward is what we’re taught to do, particularly if we’re good girls.

Don’t be hard on yourself. Whether you did or didn’t catch it out of the corner of your eye, been there, done that. Let it go. Move forward. Now that you can see things out of the corner of your eye and at 1:00 and 2:00, that’s where we want to go, “Now, I want to pay attention to it. I can, because I’m in a calmer, more regulated, and more self-aware place. I can trust what I see out of the corner of my eye.”

Thank you so much for having me. This has been such a delight.

It has been such a joy for me. As we said, readers, keep an eye out in a while for part two. We are so excited about that one. Baa, where can our readers find you? Where can they find your End Emotional Outsourcing book?

The book is available wherever you buy books. I always recommend an independent, locally owned bookstore. It’s great to support your locals. We need them. My show is called Feminist Wellness. It’s available wherever you get your podcasts. You can get a bunch of free, beautiful meditations on my website at BeatrizAlbina.com.

Thank you. Readers, do not worry. You’ll be able to find her, and her full name is Beatriz Victoria Albina. I’m realizing now, as I’m soaking in the nature of your show, Feminist Wellness, we will probably have to have you back a third time too at some point because it’s one of my favorite topics, women’s hormones. I work with them so much, and I have a feeling that you are going to be a great expert. I can’t talk enough about how it’s so important for us to get the word out there about hormone health for women and everybody.

Thank you so much for having.

It’s been a pleasure. To our readers, thank you so much for joining us. It has been, as always, a privilege and a delight. This is Imperfect Love.

Important Links

• Beatriz Albina
• Beatriz Albina on Instagram
• Beatriz Albina on Facebook
• Beatriz Albina on LinkedIn
• End Emotional Outsourcing: How to Overcome Your Codependent, Perfectionist, and People-Pleasing Habits
• Feminist Wellness on YouTube
• Feminist Wellness on Apple Podcast
• Feminist Wellness on Spotify
• NAMI HelpLine
• Mental Health and Relationships
• Dr. Carla Manly’s Website
• Dr. Carla Manly on Instagram
• Dr. Carla Manly on X
• Dr. Carla Manly on Facebook
• Dr. Carla Manly on LinkedIn
• Dr. Carla Manly on YouTube
• Dr. Carla Manly on TikTok

About Beatriz Victoria Albina

Beatriz Victoria Albina, NP, MPH, SEP (she/her) is a UCSF-trained Family Nurse Practitioner, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Master Certified Somatic Life Coach, author of the bestselling “End Emotional Outsourcing: a Guide to Overcoming Codependent, Perfectionist and People Pleasing Habits” (Hachette) 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 from Boston University School of Public Health and a BA in Latin American Studies from Oberlin College. Born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, Béa (Bay-ah) grew up in the great state of Rhode Island. She has been working in health & wellness for over 20 years and lives with her wife, Billey Albina, on Occupied Munsee Lenape territory, also known as New York.