(00:00) Stuckness can be physiological, but stuckness, the mythology is that it’s our identity. We know brains aren’t like that. Brains aren’t static. Biting into a really sour lemon when you’re procrastinating will disrupt your autopilot settings for probably about 2 to 3 seconds.
(00:20) Just long enough for a choice window to open for you to do something else. What is the role of motivation in this kind of movement? This idea that we have to feel something to do something is a myth that keeps us perpetually stuck. The whole construct of mental illness necessarily shifts. What we call mental illness is often a reasonable response to the chaotic nature of living with access to everyone everywhere. How you think about stuckness, what it actually represents.
(00:48) The glib answer is hi and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan and today I sit down with neuropsychotherapist Britt Frank who is the author of the science of stuck and align your mind and a fellow parts work enthusiast. We talk all things stuckness from feeling trapped in a situation as dramatic as domestic violence all the way to just the disconnection from inspiration and not knowing what direction to go in your life.
(01:24) We look at addiction and explore how it could possibly be that addiction including to what she calls addiction to people shaped substances maybe isn’t actually a problem at all. We also talk about why motivation isn’t necessary for change and action and a lot of the misconceptions around motivation and you may learn why biting on a lemon is the procrastination remedy. Enjoy.
(01:48) Welcome Brit to the show. Thanks for having me on. I am so delighted that our paths have crossed because as I’ve learned more about your work, there’s just bullet point after bullet point after bullet point where we have come to the same conclusions and we have walked I think there’s probably been some overlap.
(02:11) But we have walked very different journeys you know and both have found ourselves in the practitioner clinician seat somehow working on our own wounds through the professional lens which is you know often how it is and I sometimes think like I became a psychiatrist so that I can have really regimented boundaries like the the session starts on the minute ends on the minute because I couldn’t muster those like in my actual lived experience.
(02:35) So there’s so much that professionalizing your own, you know, traumas and struggles and difficulties can confer, but then there’s a certain point where yeah, you realize that that much like your patients. So I would love to unpack this journey.
(02:54) And I was telling you offline, I don’t often ask on the show, you know, tell me about your story, tell me about yourself because there’s usually something that I want in the juicy bits of your work to convey, right? because you have, you know, a work a workbook and a book and you have uh put out there incredible resources and people may or may not get around to them and I want them to get a flavor for what it is that you have to offer.
(03:23) And the subject that you speak most about is very near and dear to my heart because I’ve come to identify this exact same subject as like the core of suffering and it’s stuckness. Right? So this this sysphician boulder up the mountain over and over and over again forever hellscape. It really is a hellscape.
(03:46) And I want to start just dive right in and we’ll weave in, you know, your personal credentials as we go. But I want to dive right in because I think a lot about this concept and I want you to share your perspective on stuckness and and if you think that it is a perspective issue, if you think that it’s like a physiologic state, you know, or if you think it’s just a a stage like a phase that’s necessary to go through as we grow and develop or how do you characterize it because I think even the word most of us are with you right like we we have some arena in our lives where it just the
(04:26) inertia is like a silent scream or maybe it’s more comprehensive you know I have even girlfriends who are in their 50s who feel like this is their primary no major crises or cataclysms but it’s just a sense of the existential quicksand that they’re that they’re in. So maybe let’s just start with how you how you think about stuckness like what what are your conclusions as far as what it actually represents. So the answer the glib answer is all of the above. It can be all of the things some of the things
(05:00) or none. So my disclaimer first is that what I’m talking about any kind of stuckness. I am not referring to oppression. I am not referring to enslavement. Assuming that you have choices is the type of stuckness to which my work focuses. If you don’t have any choices at all, and that’s not always the case. I mean, it’s very rarely the case that we have no choices.
(05:24) Sometimes stuck is code for I don’t like my choice points and I don’t want to do any of the things, but that’s not the same as being stuck. So, disclaimer, all of my work assumes you have relative safety, which means you have access to at least a few choices and you have your basic needs met.
(05:42) So with those caveats in place, stuckness can be physiological, especially if you are given chemicals and told they’ll help you, but what they’re doing is making things worse. Or if you’re not given chemicals that you need and being told you’re fine. So there is a physiology component. But I find that stuckness, the mythology is that it’s our identity. This is just who I am. And we know brains aren’t aren’t like that.
(06:01) Brains aren’t static. So stuckness can very quickly become a very unpleasant, uncomfortable, but familiar blanket. And we know brains don’t like change. All change, even good change, is going to initially register as threatening. And so I’ll speak for myself.
(06:22) I’m stuck was a wonderfully convenient excuse for my own inertia. I could I could have done things different. I didn’t want to cuz I was comfortable in the chaos. It was like a warm weight blanket I wrapped around myself. I have taken a hard look at the semantics and the spellcasting that we engage in even in my own life.
(06:41) So the I can’t or I have to that pepper this landscape of of stuckness and I want to kind of double click on what you said about choices because a lot of folks imagine that they don’t have choices, right? Like they might say in the affirmative to to your opening position, right? They might say, “Well, I’m one of those people. I actually don’t have choices. I’m out of money.
(07:04) I can’t get a job. I am stuck in this relationship even though it’s abusive.” You know, there there are many different ways that uh you can feel paralyzed by all of the potential paths being blocked at the outset. But my sense is you are suggesting that not only do those choices exist and you just don’t prefer them.
(07:28) But there are actually these micro yeses, right? There are these tiny choices, there are these little steps that exist even between the big arcs that we contemplate as we are um considering what the rest of our life or even the next chapter might might look like.
(07:47) So, how would you help somebody determine like what the existing choices even are if they feel like, “Well, but I don’t have any.” And that’s not actually true. It’s an illusion. It’s an illusion for a lot of people. So, I would say let’s just start with the assumption that you have them. So, someone says to me, “I have no choices.” I would say, “Well, we’re starting with the assumption that you have at least one.
(08:06) ” And I have been in a situation where I had no money and no job and was actively being abused in a domestic violence situation. So, I have a lot of compassion for the dilemma. I’m not sitting here being like, “Oh, just leave.” If that would it was easy enough to just leave an abusive environment.
(08:23) We all would and podcasts wouldn’t exist and we wouldn’t need books and therapists and all the things. So, I I have a lot of compassion for the dilemma. However, I had choices. I did not like them. So, when you have no money and no job, it might be that you don’t have the amount of money that you want or the amount of money that you need to leave the relationship. fine.
(08:43) And it might be you don’t have the skill set for the job that would then afford you the money which then means what skills do you need? I also didn’t want to do and I ended up waitressing because I didn’t want to but I could and I was able to scrape together money doing that.
(09:03) And so you may not be able to get a job that you are happy to discuss at cocktail parties. Is it that you can’t get a job or is it that you don’t like the jobs that you can get? Is it that you have no money or is it that you’re not willing to look at your finances and the financial options? So micro yeses are we we have to make the choices not only there but manageable because if you said to me your choices are to stay or to go. That’s too big. Brains don’t like big.
(09:28) Too much too fast that’s trauma according to Dr. Peter Lavine. Too much too fast too soon is his definition of trauma. So, okay, what how much money would it take for me to live leaving this abusive relationship? What job skills would I need to do a thing? And then where are the people, places, and resources where that might be available? You might not be able to do all the things, but is it really the case that you can’t do any? That’s very rarely true.
(09:54) And to even mobilize in the direction of these small steps, these baby steps or micro yeses, would you say that you have to already have chosen? Right. So, so if you’re if you’re available to go into your experience, I think it’s probably one of the most um illustrative examples of imagining that you are stuck because there are so many variables that factor into a domestic violence situation.
(10:22) Uh including I mean this is my I guess uh perspective on it including that there’s an arc that that dynamic has to fulfill, right? And if you are still in it, there’s probably a very good reason, right? And uh the readiness to leave is something that especially when outside eyes are gazing upon the situation can feel pressurized, but there are all of these preparatory steps you’re referencing that would be necessary to engage once you’ve even decided that your choice is to leave.
(10:56) So, do you kind of marinate in the uncertainty? Do you sort of like open yourself to divine inspiration? Do you just follow like the littlest teeny yeses, the littlest teeny impulses as they arise to your awareness? Like what was that like? Because everybody looking on to that situation would say, “Go, go, go, go. You’re not stuck. You just go.
(11:21) You go with the clothes on your back and you figure it out.” And there are reasons that that is not actually what typically happens, right? that there is a long for many women marinating period before there is the the readiness to actually extricate and that has logistical you know factors there are emotional there are trauma-informed you know details so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about that particular process because maybe that’s yeah the best way to see what this movement towards choice actually looks like even when it seems like all the choices are [ __ ] really
(11:53) it’s so real and I don’t think you need to make the decision. I don’t really think looking back that I made a definitive decision to leave. It was more crawling through the sludge one micro yes at a time. And the thing about micro yeses is because they’re so insignificant looking. It’s a baby step cut into a thousand pieces. You’re not going to cause any ripples.
(12:18) There’s not a micro makes a micro mess. So if you do a micro and you don’t like the direction that you’re going, you haven’t made any decisions. It’s sort of like running an experiment. So let’s just I didn’t decide to leave and this wasn’t conscious. This was in retrospect what I was doing.
(12:36) I’m not ready to make any decisions about anything, but like let’s play a game. Let’s run an experiment where I’m going to find out how much it would cost to live. I’m going to find out if there are any therapists I can see. I’m just going to see what it would be like.
(12:53) and wondering about a possibility is a lot easier of a lift than making a decision. And so whether it’s something heavy like domestic violence or something like changing your career or moving to a new city or whatever, we have to make room for wonder because there’s physiological implications to that. You can wonder with your front brain on when you’re making a decision.
(13:15) Often you can go into that amydala overwhelm where you go into fight, flight, freeze, and then you’re not gonna go anywhere. Then you’re going to shame yourself for not doing anything which gonna release cortisol and then we’re off to the races with stuckness. Wonder is sort of the opposite of stuckness.
(13:34) If you can create space for I wonder what, I wonder if, I wonder how versus why. I really detest the why questions when we’re in the midst of stuck. I get why is important. We’ve made our careers off of understanding the wise of humanity. But when you’re stuck in a habit or a relationship or a financial mess, why am I here? Is not really a first line like defense.
(13:55) If my office caught on fire right now, you are not going to say to me, Brit, why is your office on fire? You’re going to say, “Bye, get out.” And so, we don’t want to ask why questions when we’re running little experiments. It’s not why am I like this? It’s what is my micro yes that I can do.
(14:13) I wonder what my little step might be. So wondering what and how and who is going to do more for us than wondering why or trying to make a definitive directional decision. That’s too much for our brains. So I want you to imagine what it would be like to never ever be afraid of a symptom again.
(14:37) to be comfortable in your body, have easeful digestion, stable energy, to never need a doctor or prescriptions again, and to learn the language of your body so that you can read your yes and your no and trust your intuition. The truth is that you already have the power to heal anxiety, resolve depression, and to put an end to all of the enduring effects of stress. I’m Dr.
(15:03) Kelly Broen, an Ivy League trained clinical psychiatrist who once believed so much in the conventional model of medicine that I specialized in prescribing to pregnant and breastfeeding women until I was diagnosed with my first potentially chronic illness and I decided to find a way out.
(15:28) And what I learned was how to walk through a life crisis and into your power. Since then, I have published many history-making cases of others doing the same through my 44-day health reclamation program, Vital Mind Reset. And I’ve learned that despite what I was taught in medical school, your lifestyle choices do matter. And you can make chronic illness a thing of the past.
(15:52) You can also disrupt patterns of struggle in your relationships and in your life scape through an intentional reset. No deprivation, gadgets, supplements, doctors, healers, or gurus required. I’d love to invite you to my free calm body clear mind master class where you will learn three quick win steps that you can take today to ease anxiety, resolve brain fog, and restore your energy.
(16:20) Inspired by my vital mind reset program. Comment below to check it out. So, what is the point then? because we explore these sort of like covert intentions and this like secret need meeting of a lot of codependency dynamics that I know you’re super versed in as am I have like a graduate level expertise and it’s not from a single institution right because at some point to recognize that this is working even if it sucks is sobering right it really is to to to see like this seems to be a huge problem But it’s actually functional. It’s working. I’ve heard you talk about addiction in
(17:00) these terms, and I I couldn’t possibly agree more because the taboo and what I would call like erotic life force energy that gets bound up in the the shamefueled rejection of what it is that you’re doing is the addiction itself, right? The whole thing just dissolves when you can take the piss out of it and just see it as like neutral.
(17:28) So, I know you’re thinking in these these terms, right? Like this seems bad, but you also are it’s working and maybe you’re getting something out of it. What’s the right timing to to explore that? It’s not when you’re in the midst of feeling trapped. It’s not when you’re feeling at this crossroads. It’s not when you’re, you know, sort of mired in choice paralysis.
(17:47) Is it later? Is it, you know, is it just sort of an interesting framework that helps us to to move through the world differently? How do you see that as being helpful to people? I love that you just said, you know, like what are you getting out of this? And I have gotten so much heat with that question because if you tell someone who’s being abused, what are you getting? Victim shaming. Yeah. Right.
(18:11) And my answer to that is number one, I’ve been there, done that, have the concert t-shirt. I’m not victim blaming there. If we can take the good bad binary of morality off of it and actually look at objectively what’s going on here. I’ll speak for myself. I won’t say for everyone. This is why I have a whole chapter in my first book about the hidden benefits of stuckness. This is not a shame exercise nor is it justification.
(18:35) It’s just what am I getting out of being in this relationship? All behavior is functional. Not all behavior is healthy or safe or optimal, but it’s serving a purpose. It’s doing a job for me. One of the many jobs my codependent abusive relationship served was as long as my partner was bad, I could be good. Cuz I was obsessed with I have to be the good person.
(18:59) And so I need a bad per if you’re going to be a good person, you need a bad person in order to have that state of goodness. And so when we pursue goodness at the expense of wholeness, we’re going to get stuck somewhere. Stuckness will show up anywhere we’re invested in the I’m a good person. I’m not saying do bad things.
(19:17) I’m saying we all have characters in our heads that are good and bad and morally reprehensible and neutral and chaotic and that’s human. That’s just being human. Behaviors can be good and bad. Let’s start with all parts are there to try to help. And so when I understood and I didn’t understand this till later, but I also didn’t have anybody helping me.
(19:42) So I think it’s helpful if you have a compassionate witness who can skillfully and lovingly guide you and that can be a podcast a book a therapist it could be anything. So like gently like with love sweet human what might be the benefit of this because if we can understand not why but what’s the benefit can help us find that elsewhere when I realized I needed to be good that’s when parts work and shadow work and all of that wonderful depth psychology stuff was really useful because then I could accept my wholeness without investing in the goodness and that made room for humanity like mine couldn’t agree more and you also expose you know, the the tiny wizard behind the
(20:16) curtain, right? Because otherwise your behavioral compulsions are driven by invisible forces and you don’t have awareness of the upside of staying stuck and not changing and maybe even also the downside of the change that you purport to desire or or seek. Yeah. So, so we’ve talked about this sort of, I don’t know, for lack of a better word, dramatic situation where your higher self is is offering you a path out and you’re trying to figure out what that could possibly look like and you’re trying to get all your parts on board to so that you can move in a
(20:54) certain direction. What happens when people just cuz I I hear this sometimes and I know some folks in my personal life who struggle with this and it’s so unrelatable to me because I’m very I’m a double Gemini. I’m like very sort of like oh shiny object you know syndrome.
(21:13) What happens when you just don’t feel any sort of pull any sort of interest. You don’t feel inclined to have you know necessarily any particular hobbies. You have no idea like what job would be interesting. Like I know somebody who’s like coming off of alimony for example and later in life and she’s never really worked and she has no idea what should would could do.
(21:39) There’s there’s nothing ignited. Right. So in that kind of uh desiccated you know landscape is it the same like just feel for the tiny the tiny little Yes. um and move in that direction or does it have any sort of nuance different than when you’re trying to make the hard choice make sense for you? I could argue that that’s a harder situation because at least in a capital T trauma situation you can kind of see what’s going on when everything is just sort of fine and men blah nothing sounds interesting and nothing really feels
(22:16) good but nothing’s really that bad. That one is a tough one. And so I would say the first step if you’re in that situation where things are fine, we have to start with the assumption that you’re not going to feel it. Like desire is a really overrated thing to shoot for when you’re in neutral.
(22:41) So motivation or passion or purpose or that spark of inspiration, that is not a good thing to shoot for when you are shut down and feeling nothing. I’m with you. I’m like, I want to follow all the sparks. But the state of shutdown that you’re describing, I found, especially with the parts work framework, the idea that we have infinite aspects to ourselves, all of whom have opinions and jobs to do and roles to play and belief systems and reward systems.
(23:06) I would start with let’s not try to find what you love. Let’s figure out what’s needed here. Like how much money do you need to live? How do let’s start with the assumption that as a mammal you do need hobbies and humans like you may not want to do them and you might be fine doing nothing but you’re not because science so then it’s less what do you want to do and more what are you willing to do what’s the easiest thing to sign up for I don’t care if you like it I don’t care if you’re interested in it because a step in the wrong direction will get you further
(23:36) faster than doing nothing waiting for the perfect inspiration so just movement of some variety do anything join a pottery class, take a walk, hug a tree, doesn’t matter because if you do the wrong thing, quote wrong, like tongue and cheek, wrong, that will give you feedback. It’s sort of like in your car, your GPS system isn’t going to tell you anything till you start driving.
(23:59) If you make a wrong turn, it’ll recalculate. But if you sit and park in your driveway, it’s not going to do anything. And our minds are the same. We have to generate feedback in order to know which direction to move. But you can’t do that if you’re doing nothing. Yeah.
(24:19) When I was in my kundalini yoga training, there was um one of the teachings was it was a quote I think from yogi budgeon and it was start and the pressure will be off. And I just think about that right because as somebody who’s I probably heir on the more impulsive side of starting before considered contemplation and I can also see how just I love that GPS analogy actually.
(24:37) It’s perfect because just some movement Yeah. It it allows for the part that insists on perfection only and contributes that to the paralytic dynamic to maybe be reassigned uh another another role. You talk about motivation, sort of the myth of motivation and and I wonder because right in that scenario there seems to be an absence of motivation and you could even get into the the you know sort of psychiatric pathological realm and see that as diagnostic of some sort of you know core imbalance or however however they characterize things these
(25:13) days. And you I’ve heard you say that you don’t actually find motivation to be a necessary ingredient for change whereas that to me that is such a powerful statement because most of us are are waiting for motivation or we characterize ourselves as unmotivated or undisiplined and what is the role do you think of motivation in this kind of movement? So the way motivation is commonly described when I say we don’t need it, that’s sort of what I mean.
(25:44) Like this feeling of instinctual desire to move in a direction like the thing that gives you the I want to get up and get off the couch and now I’m getting up and off the couch. We don’t need it. Like you don’t need to feel anything to do anything. You don’t have to feel like it. And any parents who raised humans know like how often do your kids feel like going to bed, brushing their teeth, taking a bath, going to school, doing the homework.
(26:13) This idea that we have to feel something to do something is a myth that keeps us perpetually stuck. So that’s one side. The other side is I can make a case for there’s no such thing as unmotivation. It’s just you’re either motivated by comforts, you’re motivated by familiarity, or you’re motivated to mobilize in a direction of your choosing, but it’s a myth that you can be unmotivated.
(26:37) It’s more like, well, which part of you is driving the car and what’s their motivation? If I’m laying on the couch binge watching White Lotus, that’s because I’m motivated by numbing out. I’m not being motivated by pursuing a passion. And so like we’re always motivated, but the feeling that people describe is often the thing that happens after you move, not the thing that gets you moving.
(26:59) Motivation is a function of doing things, not the thing that inspires movements, unless you’re really fortunate. I don’t know those people. Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s very relatable. And you know, I I’ve chosen, I guess, to parent in a certain way relative to this because I was raised with a lot of extrinsic motivation, shall we say, and the disconnection that is engendered by a lot of dominant culture and if we want to call it conventional parenting is to really make it impossible for us to sense whatever our internal drive actually even is. Right? So we have all of these shoulds that are coming from somewhere out there and
(27:40) we don’t know other than that I’d rather not do anything right what’s actually happening inside. I mean I encounter this on a micro level pretty much every day cuz I I have I do some kind of movement every day and I go to a lot of classes like dance classes and whatever. I love these CL like I am voluntarily electively going.
(28:03) Okay, nobody’s making me. I often haven’t, you know, it’s not like I’ve invested already in advance or something like that. I want to go and there’s just like a half an hour period before almost every single one where I’m like, I don’t know, maybe not today. Maybe I need to rest. Maybe it’s important to just chill and do less.
(28:23) And I do it anyway because there’s what I call a little yes. there’s just underneath all that confusion and noise and all the parts bickering is this tiny like yep go you want to go and sometimes it’s the opposite where there’s just like a tiny like forget it and there’s like oh but you should and it’s important on top right so do you think that there is I don’t know some kind of channel that we can open to connect to our intuition on that level how do you how do Do you imagine it’s best for people to to navigate, you know, these
(29:02) these little micro decisions that we make every day to do nothing and stay still or to do something? Like literally, as we were saying, anything, any action, any movement in any direction? I love that question so much because it really dismantles this idea that you have to have a full body yes or else it’s a hell no.
(29:23) cuz like all of the big things I’ve ever done, the scary big fun things were not full body yeses. Like even coming on a podcast, like there’s always a little voice that says, “But she’s really smart. You’re going to sound like an idiot.” Like that’s not impostor syndrome. I hate that we’ve pathized our humanity by calling it a syndrome.
(29:44) Every, and you’re nodding because I know you know this, too. Every person from every level of success I’ve ever met has a little but what if you suck voice and so let’s start with the full body yes is great in no like not not always and hardly ever for a lot of people the framework that I use for this dilemma is the parts work approach the idea that your mind is a multiple house of characters all of whom have different motivations none of whom are evil or out to get you. So if we start with the assumption your brain is on your side,
(30:17) even the most shadowy, not healthy, objectively not good parts of you are trying to help you do your human incarnation. And if you don’t talk to them, and this gets this sounds weird, but we all think to ourselves every day. Parts work suggests that how about it’s a conversation and not a decree.
(30:41) Because the part of me that doesn’t want to do the thing, it might be that that part just needs me to recognize, yeah, you know what? She’s really scary. You’re not. But like, what if I just validate like you’re awesome, but what if I just validate, you know what, it is kind of scary to talk to someone that we respect and who is so intelligent.
(31:00) And it’s probably a little bit true that we’re going to sound like a jackass, but it’s not all the way true. and I will be here with you little parts in this thing so you won’t be alone. If we could actually speak to ourselves with ourselves and have a dialogue instead of this internal monologue, life works a lot better because a good parent or a good coach doesn’t cuddle, but also doesn’t berate and browbe.
(31:26) A good coach knows when to push and when to pull and when to encourage and when to all right, like we’re getting in this thing, no more discussion about it. and we wonder why our minds are running around wildly. But if we don’t talk to the parts of ourselves or listen to them, of course, it’s not going to go well. Even highly athletes need coaches and kids need parents. Our voices in our head also need an inner leader.
(31:50) So, there’s one tool that you can find lying out and about in my house any time of day and that is the sonic slider. It’s a highly calibrated tuning fork developed by my friend and bioenergetic and sound healing pioneer Eileen Mikusk. It delivers a deep, penetrating, very specific vibration that tones your body from the inside out.
(32:16) I think of it as like harmonizing and organizing anything that I apply it to. So, it works on fascia, lymph, and subtle energy, of course, and it unwinds tension. It boosts circulation, vitality, and coherence in your electric body, which by the way is where it’s at, in case you haven’t heard. I use it on my face actually to lift and brighten. And I use it on my joints if I have any postworkout inflammation or pain.
(32:44) And then also on my midline to harmonize my nervous system. And every night before bed, I vibrate it on my third eye just because it feels good. So, this is one of those tools that bridges science and soul in the way that only Eileen knows how to. It’s super simple to use. You literally just tap it and then gently hold it anywhere that you want to apply it and it feels amazing.
(33:11) So, use code kelly broen at bofieldtuningstore.com for 15% off your first purchase. And it also happens to be one of my favorite gifts to give people. I just love that you um you’ve you’ve come to parts work the same way that I have.
(33:32) I mean, I’m like a zealot about it because it it is one of the only ways that I have seen family consolation is is another. But to truly move beyond the dialectic of the good, bad, victim, you know, driving uh triangle is when you can recognize the benevolent intention of every single part and also know when you are blending with one uh in contrast to another.
(33:58) But most of these parts, as I know you’ll agree, they just want to hear and feel like I see you. I know this is hard. I’m right here with you. Right? That’s it. It’s like this kind of uh you know, they call it capital S self. This kind of presence that we can bring as really the good parent, but without sort of that even that much agenda.
(34:25) So when you uh come to view human behavior through the lens of parts work the whole construct of mental illness and psychological psychiatric pathology necessarily shifts. So I wonder if we could go there a little bit and talk about yeah how you how you came to study and learn the DSM rubric and how you moved away from it and what you actually think about so-called mental illness these days especially as informed by your parts work perspectives and then brick gets cancelled so perfect tea but it’s true you know my psychopathology professor in grad school called the DSM the doors stop manual cuz he said the only thing it’s good for is
(35:09) holding the door open. And again, disclaimer for everyone listening, we need the DSM for access to services and healthcare and as a framework for categorizing symptoms. It can be useful. That’s like my very generous like I get it. It’s not perfect, but here’s the analogy that I give and it it goes with this pathology thing.
(35:31) If my car’s check engine light goes on, and I take my car to a mechanic and I say, “My car’s check engine light is on,” they’re not going to say to me, “Well, your check engine light is on, so you have check engine light disorder.
(35:50) ” That’s insane sounding, right? Like that’s everyone laughs when I say that because it sounds so ridiculous. But if you go to a therapist and say, “I have anxiety, now you have anxiety disorder. If I go to a doctor with bipolar symptoms, now I have bipolar disorder. So, the symptoms are signals. I’m not suggesting people don’t suffer and I’m not suggesting that there are symptoms that are debilitating to the point of being lifethreatening like obviously.
(36:16) But what the traditional mental health model which is antiquated and politicized and it comes from a group of very select group of men from the 50s. That model assumes that all of the symptoms that make us human are what make us broken. Women were given lobotomies and called hysterical for having orgasms. So like I’m not saying we’re not suffering. I’m saying what we call mental illness is often a reasonable response to trauma.
(36:42) A reasonable response to the chaotic nature of living with access to everyone everywhere where brains were never evolved to know everything about everyone everywhere. And then we wonder what’s wrong. It’s like obviously you’re suffering but it’s not what’s my diagnosis, it’s what’s my injury. Symptoms are always clues.
(37:06) They are not the end zone, but we stop with the symptoms as if that were the full story. Yes, manage the symptoms in whatever ways make sense. And symptoms are storytellers. They’re not little demons out to derail us. And this idea that anxiety attacks us. All of these war metaphors, right? We battle addiction. We fight depression. We have to kill our ego and banish our critic.
(37:27) Like, holy crap. And we wonder why we feel bonkers half the time. What if we called a ceasefire and learn to connect with these different symptom carriers and storytellers inside us and understand what’s going on for you? What are our options for helping to unburden you? And the parts work model that I’m trained in that we’re sort of referencing is internal family systems, Dr. Richard Schwarz.
(37:52) The model is amazing. I went rogue with it in my new book and uh it’s sort of like IFS’s like scrappy sassy little cousin, but it makes so much all pathology makes sense in context and I know you’ve seen this. I’ve worked with severe and persistent mental illness inatient hospital stuff and if you read the case file it’s not hard to see how we got from point A to in the hospital.
(38:22) Why is it not referred to as an injury or a response instead of just this is who you are and this is your disorder and your disease. So that’s my very long rant on I do not use a pathological model symptom categorization is useful but disorder disease I who said this was it Victor Frankle someone said I don’t remember who that you know insanity is a reasonable response to an insane world it’s interesting to apply you know because I woke up if we want to call it that after I was already leaving the system and entering into private practice so I I didn’t have to live in two worlds for very
(38:55) you know, on the locked units in Belleview Hospital and then also, you know, exploring reparenting and shadow work. Like I didn’t I didn’t have to uh live in that, you know, fugue state. And it’s interesting to apply the lens of adaptive response to injury to even the most extreme and dramatic expressions of psychosis or, you know, any sort of perceptual disturbance or suicidality, etc.
(39:26) And I wonder you know when you work with somebody is there a manifestation of symptoms that you feel is like beyond as long as the person is motivated and willing let’s say that you feel is like beyond this perspective it it’s like that’s too much that’s something that you know needs management needs regulation or do you do you really believe as I do I’ll just put that out there that when there is a readiness on the part of a given human who’s had an experience to integrate these fragments, there’s always a way to trace it back and to reclaim, you know, these um experiences of of the past. Like, do you
(40:07) think that trauma is a driver in all of these cases of what we are otherwise calling mental illness or do you think sometimes it’s like a chemical imbalance? Bit of a loaded question or the right answer, I’m kidding.
(40:26) if I haven’t gotten canceled yet, like okay, like we’re going to eliminate the rest of the people now. So the the tr the problem is is that understanding the function of a symptom doesn’t excuse the behavior that manifests as a result. And so I’m not suggesting that people stay in narcissistically abusive relationships because they’re so blended with their protectors and they’re just trying to like no, you know, someone who’s blended with a part who does killings like we should hold people accountable.
(40:55) And I am not suggesting we live in this chaotic enabling pseudocompassionate world of just let everyone do whatever they’re going to do because everything is a function of trauma or parts. No. With that said, I do believe that often when we say people can’t change, assuming we don’t have some sort of cognitive or medical like dementia, I don’t think that you can parts work your I mean maybe someday that’ll be proven to be untrue and I hope so, but I’m making room for yes, there are certain medical things, brain structural things that would impede parts work from being useful. But often when people say they
(41:32) can’t change, what that means is they won’t change. Because given access to the right resources, relative safety, and the willingness to explore in a skillful container, most people when they say they can’t change, it’s not because they can’t. It’s because the behaviors are being enabled to the point where change is not necessary.
(41:52) narcissism being the chief of this. When I hear people say narcissists can’t change, it’s like, well, first of all, I think of narcissism as a process addiction and not as a personality disorder. It’s a pattern of behavior that persists despite negative consequences and grows in severity despite all evidence being that this is objectively bad. But we have too many personalities to use the binary of normal or disordered.
(42:18) So, narcissism and what we call cluster B personality disorders in the mental health world, I think of those as process addictions because they’re enabled. The behaviors persist. But even the most ragingly out of control narcissist, if they wanted to, again, assuming there’s no brain impairment there, could if they chose to. So, when we say they can, often we mean they won’t.
(42:43) And so yes, I do believe that with the right set of resources, which may or may not involve chemical assistance of a variety of sorts, psychedelics or whatever, like yeah, the capacity for humans to change is is there. We know that from neuroplasticity. So can’t is often won’t or doesn’t need to or can’t have or doesn’t have access to.
(43:02) But yeah, people can change. And when you look at your trajectory and you look at the the ways that you personally have changed, what would you characterize as like the signature nature of that change? Like for example, in my case, I’ve spent, you know, the better part of like 15 years on inner work and exploration, self-development, all the things.
(43:29) Much of which, by the way, was an elaborate avoidant strategy of the actual work, you know, right? like looked looked like spiritual selflove and actually was yeah complex avoidance but nonetheless I still have a lot of the same traumainformed responses to the world reactions I even sometimes have the same somatic sequence of triggering and the only difference and I wonder if if you would agree the only real difference is that there’s a pause right there’s a pause inserted where I can exercise choice and I can do often the more uncomfortable thing or I think of it as
(44:06) courageous, you know, in interpersonally usually. And that’s really how I’ve changed. So, it’s even hard to be in like a spiritual meritocracy where I say like, “Oh, I’m so much better now.” I’m not I’m not sure that’s the case. I just know that now I have this this little bandwidth where I can do a different thing than I used to do if I choose to.
(44:30) So when you look back on your journey and I know you’ve had like a colorful uh adventurous wild magic carpet ride of an experience would you say the same or do you think that you’ve like actually changed like your your whole trauma core has been you know melted down and rebuilt into a you know a gilded castle or something like that. Oh I don’t know.
(44:54) I really appreciate you teeing that up that way because I can already feel the angry DMs coming. When I say people can change, I mean their responses, not the structure of their psyche. So Sam, you adapted in a very healthy like your complex avoidance took the form of a really useful, helpful, skillful undertaking.
(45:14) Mine showed up as borderline person or what the mental health world classically calls borderline personality disorder for almost 20 years. Just I was such a bless my heart and bless my parts. They were kind of [ __ ] and like not super awesome. I mean, behaviorally, I’ve gotten to know them and they’re delightful and I love them, but uh I love all my parts.
(45:33) But borderline personality coach disorder, also a process addiction, in my view, is I was told this is who you are. This is not curable. And to a degree, they’re right. But the thing is is I no longer act out in rage. I no longer self harm in that way. I no longer have high levels of impulsivity marked by recklessness and this and all the things in the DSM.
(45:56) But it’s not that that changed because I’m with you. I still have my full set of impulsive, reactive, emotional, illogical, whatever. But now there’s someone in charge of the group and now I understand who’s in charge of which things and who’s getting it’s not why am I triggered, it’s who’s getting triggered. And so with me, my capitalist self at the center, those parts have someone to help them.
(46:24) So I don’t need to act out compulsively and repetitively the same pattern. You know, when I said symptoms or storytellers, we will act out in this grand theatrical way whatever story or parts are needing to be witnessed. So I think of addiction sort of this very shadowy, deadly form of performance art. It’s unintentional, but the theater of performance art is to tell a story and create questions.
(46:47) And that’s what addiction does. Yeah, I’m not advocating it. It’s not like great. And I’m not saying people who do amazing performance art are at the same I’m not saying everything is the same. I am saying addiction is a really interesting, unintentional form of performance art.
(47:05) And art demands that we listen and pay attention, not just shut it down because it’s grotesque or it’s unpleasant to look at. So, that’s a long-winded answer for I no longer manifest the symptoms of BPD and I am no longer dominated by reactivity and impulsivity in that way, but those parts are still there. I’m still a hot mess. It’s just I have a loving, skillful, compassionate center for which the hot mess parts to settle and relax into.
(47:29) So, yeah. Explain in case people don’t know what a process addiction means. Yeah, because I know what you’re I actually love that phrase and I hadn’t encountered it before you. There’s some debate over whether that’s real, but like it’s it is. So ask any gambling addict. So a chemical addiction is where you ingest a substance.
(47:54) So including food, anywhere you are in and sex technically is an exchange of chemicals, you know, through the someone’s body or some other thing. A process addiction is where there’s no ingestion of a chemical. So that would be gambling or shopping or video games or doom scrolling. So any habits that does not involve a chemical would be considered a process addiction.
(48:18) So a pattern of behavior and you know addiction defined a pattern of behavior that persists despite negative consequences grows with increasing severity over time and persists despite it’s bad it’s harmful. So often what we call addiction as a disease might be a process which is an adaptation that will continue until the parts are taken care of. It’s so interesting because in borderline classic as I was classically trained you know one of the symptoms is this split you know internal splitting is considered pathological.
(48:50) I have found the more I split my psyche and understand all of the different parts the better I feel and the more functional I am. I call it the paradox of wholeness. In order to feel whole you have to separate all of the parts of your minds because if it’s you’re unblending. Right. Exactly. Yes. That’s so true. I mean, for for those listening who aren’t familiar with, you know, the the sort of psychiatric jargon we’re throwing around, borderline personality disorder is classically taught to be the most I would say the most recidivistic maybe, you know, if we’re talking about like antisocial or whatever, but it at least in my training, it was it was
(49:28) assumed that there isn’t really a treatment. And you know, you can kind of do some dialectical behavioral therapy plus minus. I mean, this diagnosis was like one of the few that we didn’t throw meds at typically. And I was in one of the most med forward uh institutions, you know, there is probably I mean it was just so psychopharmaceutically driven my training.
(49:51) And the thought was just basically like they’re helping complainers and I mean we use these phrases, right? Help rejecting complainers and there’s really Yeah. They come in with their teddy bear to the impatient unit and you just sort of like tolerate them. But everybody also kind of like loved them because they were so dramatic and funny and exciting and like had so much like joie de vivre coupled with like their suicidality.
(50:17) I mean it was just it’s so much honestly now that I look at it through this on like feminine energy like truly uncontained feminine energy. Men don’t get that diagnosis very often. Almost never. Yeah. Almost never. So it’s it’s a fascinating Yeah. consideration like as to explore what’s actually being controlled through the uh psychiatric labeling of of borderline.
(50:39) And I love hearing that you’re it’s almost like I can feel when you’re saying it your your presence with these parts that are just protecting like your little squishy little girl, you know, exile. And it’s yeah, it’s a very u it’s easy to feel a kind of, you know, compassion.
(50:59) And I I love what you’re pointing out about process addiction because there are so I’ve heard you say, you know, you could have like a a people-shaped substance, you know, like right like Right. And you know, there are so many of us who have, you know, walked the welltrodden path of codependency who would attest to the highly addictive nature of relational drama, right? and the insistence that we can help change, improve, guide, you know, and otherwise uh externalize our control to our partners so that we can finally feel loved.
(51:38) And I know for myself like the uh the arousal of conflict and the experience of conflict, you know, once I was in entered into a celibate window, I would pursue it. I mean, I would drum up conflict with the guy fixing the roof or the and it was never sort of like angry stuff.
(51:55) It was just like I would like subconsciously manifest some reason to have like an issue with the bill or whatever. And being a a CEO, it’s like there’s so it’s like a playground for disappointment and resentment. And so if the the meta addiction is to the arousal of conflict and that victim field of warfare that we were talking about earlier, then you’ll find some other way, you know, to be a dry drunk even in your, you know, your sobriety process.
(52:28) So yeah, I’ve I’ve looked at sobriety in these past couple of years for me as being a very multifold uh landscape, you know, that’s encompassed every dimension of things that I, you know, put in substances I put into my body and also dynamics that I engage. And I would say the hardest work I’ve done in my self-development journey has been to come into stability and peace and harmony.
(52:53) I mean, my my life now could even be characterized as boring and it’s right and it’s been there’s been a kind of a sense of like a nihilistic part that comes up and says like, well, is this it? You know, I miss the the highs and the lows. Yeah. And I, you know, I know you I know you can relate.
(53:16) You’ve called it the snow globe effect, right? like you you call it sort of like when you when you engage in the disruption that ends a certain pattern of stuckness and opens up a new vista and as somebody who’s been yeah veritably obsessed with pattern disruption I mean even my my uh health program Vital Mind reset I’ve literally described it that way as like a pattern disruptor that lays new snow on the mountain and what I’ve dissected around it because I have been trying to analyze like why does it have this effect is that you just through the mundane choices that you commit to for a month, you understand that you have more choices than you thought you had. That’s
(53:51) literally all that’s that’s happening. So, I’d love to sort of close with just a a little bit about this concept of pattern disruption and how because I know you talk about from the like very almost weird and mundane to the, you know, the big picture, but how people can start to interact with pattern disruption as a means to resolve the perceived experience of of stuckness.
(54:15) So, to bring this down to simple actionable, here’s a thing you can do. Pattern disruption does not require intelligence, creativity, skill, or passion. All it requires is to do something that your brain’s not expecting. And this is why I call it snow globing the brain. So citrus is my favorite way.
(54:35) Biting into a really sour lemon when you’re procrastinating will disrupt your autopilot settings for probably about 2 to 3 seconds. Just long enough for a choice window to open for you to do something else. Like keep a bowl of lemons or hot peppers if you enjoy lemons or some aggressively uncomfortable that’s non-harmful sensory stimulus. Wasabi will get it done. A warhead. Whatever.
(54:59) Stick that in your mouth when you’re dating yourself with that reference. I so am. I know. So yeah, I’m 45. I’m fully like ex I’m on the edge of XY. I’m not an elder millennial. I’m like a geriatric millennial looking in the millennial window. Let me in. So, like, put a really aggressive sensory input in your path when you’re procrastinating.
(55:22) Like, if you lay on your couch, have it on your coffee table or when you’re procrastinating on your computer, don’t try to force yourself to do something. Just like pat yourself on the head 12 times, anything that jump up and down on one foot, put your head on the other side of the bed. These are ridiculous.
(55:41) People said to me like, Brit, this is stupid. And I know, but our brains also are really simple and literal. So, it’s not going to expect you to bite into a lemon. So, when you do that, your choice window opens. And it only takes two to three seconds between deadly choice that’s going to ruin my life and non-deadly choice that might lead me on a path towards wholeness and freedom. And so, we’ve got to open up the choice window, snow globing your brain.
(56:06) Just stick your head in a bucket of cold water. You don’t need a cold plunge to do this. like ice cubes down your back will do it with your consent. Don’t do that to someone else. Nudge, nudge. See, I’m changing your tolerance. And I’m opening up your change window. Don’t do that.
(56:24) But anything you do, sensory stuff works the fastest that disrupts the pattern of autopilot is going to create a change window and a choice window. And so, you don’t need to spend money. This stuff is free and available and takes no time at all. There’s no reason not to do it. It’s easier to do it than not to do it. So, people do want to spend money.
(56:42) How can they find support through your resources? I’d love for you to just share what you’ve amassed in terms of resources and you know what you’ve put together for folks who are who are interested and curious and have started to engage that sense of wonder like I wonder what it might be like if what do you got going on? I love it. Thank you.
(57:02) So, my first book, The Science of Stuck, and the workbook. I wrote a workbook to go with it, and it’s a choose your own adventure little path through. It’s very self-led. You don’t have to start it, go start to finish. I designed it so you can dip in and out. I designed it for busy for I was a former meth like if you’re like a go person, it’ll work.
(57:21) And if you’re I don’t want to do any of the things person, it’ll help. And then my new book is called Align Your Mind, and it’s my take on parts work. heavily drawn from IFS but in my own my own style and it’s really demystifying and taking parts work out of the therapeutic arena into the here’s just a way you can approach everything in your life from how you get dressed in the morning to what you eat for breakfast to whatever and that is available for pre-order now amazing I am super excited for that because there are not a lot of folks that I feel have asked enough questions
(57:55) when it comes to the mental health arena in the parts work world and you are such you’re such a gift to this this mission and this exploration and I’m so grateful to have you as an ally. So, thank you Brit. Thank you. [Music] [Music]
