Ep 116: Understanding Your Nervous System and Feeling ALL the Big Feels with Victoria Albina

Why does your body feel the way it does when you’re working through big emotions? It all has to do with your nervous system. In this episode, I am joined by Master Certified Somatic Life Coach Victoria Albina. We go over the basics of the nervous system and discuss why listening to your body is crucial to your overall well-being. 

The nervous system affects our ability to be present and show up as our favorite version of ourselves. Most of us have been socialized and conditioned NOT to listen to our bodies. In this episode, Victoria offers solutions and strategies to help you listen to what you truly want and understand that stepping out of habit and into intentionality will bring the benefits of being connected to your body.

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Transcript

Hey, this is Melissa Parsons, and you are listening to the Your Favorite You Podcast. I'm a certified life coach with an advanced certification in deep dive coaching. The purpose of this podcast is to help brilliant women like you with beautiful brains create the life you've been dreaming of with intentions. My goal is to help you find your favorite version of you by teaching you how to treat yourself as your own best friend.

If this sounds incredible to you and you want practical tips on changing up how you treat yourself, then you're in the right place. Just so you know, I'm a huge fan of using all of the words available to me in the English language, so please proceed with caution if young ears are around.

Melissa

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Your Favorite You. 

I am very grateful to have an amazing guest today. She is Victoria Albina. A master certified somatic life coach, a UCSF trained family nurse practitioner and breathwork meditation guide.

She has a passion for helping humans socialized as women reconnect with their bodies and minds so that they can break free from codependency, perfectionism and people pleasing and reclaim their joy.

Does that sound familiar to anyone?

Victoria is the host of her own podcast called The Feminist Wellness Podcast, which I have been binging ever since I became aware of her through my friend Sarah. She is trained in somatic experiencing. She holds a master's degree in public health from Boston University School of Public Health and a BA in Latin American Studies from Oberlin College, which I find very interesting because I grew up in Elyria, Ohio. So that's pretty crazy.

So Victoria's been working in health and Wellness for over the past 20 years and lives on occupied Munsee Lenape territory in New York. Did I say that correctly?

Victoria

You sure did.

Melissa

Amazing. So thank you, Victoria. Thank you so much for joining us today. It's an honor to host you here on the podcast.

Victoria

It's such a delight. It's such a delight. It's funny, you know, sometimes when folks read the my bio, I'm like, why are we talking about Oberlin in the 90s? And then and then we have these amazing moments. Folks who don't know Illyria, like, I grew up in the great state of Rhode Island, greatest state in the union. And if you sneeze while crossing Rhode Island, you miss it. But like, you miss Illyria like 40 times, right?

It's a tiny little wee town. I actually ran a Girl Scout troop there when I was in college.

Melissa

Oh, how fun.

Victoria

Yeah in the Section 8 housing in Elyria.

Melissa

That's awesome. I just was in Oberlin. I was home a couple weekends ago, and there's not a lot of great places to eat in Elyria, but there are some cute places in Oberlin. So my mom and I went and had lunch. And it was very nice.

So Victoria and I have been going back and forth about her coming on the pod and what we're going to talk about to bring you guys value and entertainment and, you know, trying to get to know ourselves better, right. And then November 6th happened and I was like, this is what we must talk about, so. I emailed Sweet Victoria saying, Hey, are you in a space yet where we could talk about what to do with all this rage that I'm feeling? And I know that a lot of people are feeling lots of big feelings after the emotional election. Thankfully, Victoria said, yes, I'd love to talk about how we work with all the big feels. So here we are.

Victoria

Here we are. Yeah, Big Feels is actually my legal middle name is Super Duper Big Feels, Victoria Super Duper Big Feels Albina. So I am. I'm here for it.

Melissa

I love it. So I want to kind of really start with the basics because I realize that not all of my listeners know why their bodies feel the way that they do when they're dealing and working through big emotions. And I know from listening to your podcast that you are a true nervous system nerd like me.

Victoria

Why thank you. Why thank you.

Melissa

So for my audience, what are the different nervous system states? Why do they show up for us like they do in general? And how do each of them feel in our bodies?

I have a funny story. I was coaching a woman in one of my groups and she didn't have it. It was early on in our coaching and we hadn't really discussed the nervous system that much. And I said, it sounds to me like you were appropriately in sympathetic activation.

And she said, no, I wasn't. I was really pissed. There was no sympathy in me whatsoever. And I was like, oh, wait, let's back up. 

Victoria

These terms are really dumb. Yeah, the terms themselves. I mean, I have been creating my own nomenclature because like, right, sympathetic sounds like you have sympathy for someone when you actually want to punch them in the nose. So let's use the agreed upon nervous system nomenclature like good little nerds, and then we talk about some alternatives, yeah?

Melissa

Works for me.

Victoria

So the questions were, what is the nervous system? What are the states? What does each one feel like? And from there, maybe we can move into why do we care?

Melissa

I love it, yeah.

Victoria

Okay, great. Actually, I think I'm gonna start with, if you don't mind, why do we care? We care because your nervous system is running you if you're not running it. Right? It's like your digestive system. Either you're giving it the fiber and water it needs, or you're not, and you're feeling the impacts on the other end, all puns always, always intended. But if you don't know what your system needs, are you gonna know what to give it? Right?

So you're still either pooping or not. Your digestive system's happy to run your life. So the more you understand what's going on and what inputs are needed to create the outputs you want, the more better. And that system is more clear ins and outs, 'cause, you know, ins and outs, but let's get into the nervous system, 'cause it's, it's running ya. Now art being runneth.

So when people are talking about like hashtag nervous system, we're talking about the autonomic or automatic nervous system. This is the nervous system that does things below your level of conscious awareness all day long, every day long, without your awareness. This is an annoying gift. The autonomic nervous system in its automatic mess runs your heart rate, your breathing, your guts, your bits, all the things in the middle of you doing what you want them to do or not. This system is in many ways in charge.

The brain, the spinal cord, your neurons, the space between the neurons, the synaptic cleft, all this stuff is part of the nervous system. And the nervous system is constantly scanning the environment. With one goal and one goal only, which is survival of the species. 

Melissa

Yeah. Am I safe or am I not safe?

Victoria

Am I safe or am I not safe? And so the autonomic nervous system is constantly asking, wait, is that a lion? Is that a lion? Oh, no, wait, that's a tabby cat. But it was better that I freaked out just in case, right? Oh, it's a cobra. Hold on, hold on. Cobra. Cobra. Cob- Stick. OK, that's a stick. But it's a good thing I freaked out. Because on the third time, is that a is that a stone? Oh snap, it was a scorpion. And what are you? Dead.

So always better, says the autonomic nervous system, to freak out and ask questions later. Yeah, freak out machine is run by the sympathetic nervous system, right? So we've got autonomic nervous system. It's got two branches, sympathetic or the active nervous system and the parasympathetic. The resting nervous system. We're going to complicate that. 

In the middle, sympathetic, running around, fight or flighting, everything's a lion, everything's going to do murders. I'm full of adrenaline. I'm full of norepinephrine. Holy manoly. Stress, stress, stress. So instead of sympathetic, we can say stress, right? Stress nervous system. Speed and stress, speed and stress.

When the nervous system thinks something's dangerous, it activates that but it can't activate it for that long. Here, let's do this. Let's say you're a mama and someone, let's not name any names, but somebody you recently met is pulling on your legs going, Mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. What happens on the 248th time that you're like, Yes, my love, yes, my love, yes, my love. Do you have energy to hit the 249th time? No, you emotionally, physically, energetically collapse. And that's what happens in our nervous system. The sympathetic screams, that is a lion! And on the 249th time of screaming, that's a lion, and so you start running, you say, you know what? That's fine, I'm just gonna be lunch. I can't anymore. You know what? You know what? I'm done. Me? Done. You just, I'll be a snack, that's cool. That's cool, 'cause I can't energetically get it up to like run. Yeah, I can't run. I can't fight. I mean, I can't.

And so when the nervous system has done all that it can for your survival, in this you know example, we're going to make it more tangible in a second. But you've run as far as you can run. You can't run anymore. You collapse on the ground and you do what any smart mammal would do. And you play dead.

Melissa

Yeah, pretend to be dead.

Victoria

Yeah. Exactly. You're a possum playing possum. You're a deer in the headlights. You know when you shine your flashlight on a bunny when you're camping and they're like, I'm a stone rabbit. I'm not a real rabbit. And you're like, you almost had me there, buddy. That's us. Right? You just collapse on the proverbial floor and play dead. And that's called dorsal vagal.

Dorsal vagal is part of the parasympathetic system. And it's feigned death. It's the nervous system response of a last resort when you've done everything you can to make nice with an attacker, to outrun or out-fight an attacker, and you just are spent.

So we've got sympathetic freakout, we've got dorsal collapse, and then in the middle we've got ventral vagal, which is the safe and social part of the nervous system. That's where I feel right now. I'm talking to a delightful nerd about things that we're both very nerdy about. I'm very happy. I love to nerd. I love to share and educate folks. And my nervous system's in ventral vagal with a little bit of sympathetic activation because I'm also excited. I'm also very happy to be talking about this.

And if this were my sixth interview of the day, talking about the same thing, I might have a little bit of dorsal as well, just from sheer fatigue. Right?

I bring that up to say, the way you hear about this on the interwebs, right, on Instagram, it feels like anybody took a four-minute course called Somatics for Instagram posting would have you believe that your nervous system is set, and I'm doing air quotes if you're not watching the video, is set to one place or another, that it's this sort of monolithic setting. Do you know what I'm saying?

Melissa

Yeah, on/off switch type of thing.

Victoria

Right, on/off switch, yeah. Binary, yes, 'cause I've had clients start to say like, oh, I'm just like so insympathetic all the time and I'm like, oh no, baby, you're not.

So. Let me back up and slow down. What do these things look like in the human animal? Well, if you and I are sitting here and I'm really into this conversation, I'm super focused and someone were to knock on my office door. I am 5'3 and home alone in a city, right? If someone were to knock, not just on the door of the house, but my office, ah, sympathetic. Who I got to fight, who do I got to flight from? I mean, there's actually no way to get out of this room if I can't get out. I'm just realizing that you saw that across my face.

So that's fight or flight. Fight or flight is also provoked by the past, right? So it's not just someone knocking or someone, a dog barking, right? So actually let's go to a dog barking. If a dog were to bark at me and it's on a leash and the parents got it, I'm like, okay, dog's gonna bark, that's the dog's job. If I had had a violent dog attack in childhood, my autonomic automatic nervous system would link dog, it's called coupling, and the nervous system link dog bark and doom really tightly.

My nervous system says, look at that sweet baby doing her job, doing a good barking for her mama. But that other nervous system would say, ah, panic. And you might get a, I think we've all gotten that jolt of adrenaline. Like when you have like a close call in the car or a big dog barks at you or whatever it is. Those are those moments of acute sympathetic.

The more chronic sympathetic is, you know, talk about New Yorkers. OK, chronic sympathetic is New Yorkers. I think of all my patients when I was primary care in the city who, you know, work on Wall Street or work in tech or work in these big firms. And it's just like go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go all day long, right? There is no break and there's constant anxiety and there's no like the deadlines are never ending or like my friend Lisa, who's a mom of five and works full time. And like, holy manoly. I feel like I don't understand how her head hasn't fallen off her body because it's like this chronic stress, all day long, chronic sympathetic. Someone's always sick, someone always this, someone always that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

So much like the possum thing, possum, when we've had too much stress, our nervous system goes into that, wait, what? Oh, sorry, I was in dorsal. I didn't, sorry, yeah, I just got overwhelmed and I I felt anxious, but I had no idea what was going on. I walked into this room really anxious, trying to get, what? I don't know why I walked into this room. I don't know. I don't know because I'm just so stressed.

I'm not present because dorsal has gotten ramped up now. Yeah, and so when both sympathetic and dorsal are like, that's called freeze. That's a mixed state when we're like super anxious and that high, that sympathetic with what's called high tone dorsal. And if you're not a nerd for this stuff, forget about it. But we can be in a state where we're so jacked up that we're frozen. Is that bananas? We're flooded with sympathetic chemicals, which are terrible for our blood vessels, right? The vascular endothelium. They're terrible for our hearts, for our brain, for our spirit. For our digestion, for our thyroid, for our liver, our hormone balance.

Melissa

Inflammation, all the inflammation.

Victoria

Inflammation, right, cytokine storm. So, that's why this matters. Because if we're not, if our nervous systems feel stuck on and sympathetic, or we're so freaking checked out, we are just not present. We're just, wait, what, dorsal? Checked out. I'm not here. Or the state I was in for a very long time is called functional freeze. The functional refers to the fact that we're not in a panic attack and we're not catatomic, right? We're not like fully fit to be tied. We're just like somewhere in the middle, functioning, I don't know, getting medical degrees or whatever from the best program in the country or whatever, but not present to our emotions. The freeze is internal, the functional is external.

Melissa

Yeah, anybody looking from the outside would be like, look at what a badass she is.

Victoria

Oh my God, she's so amazing. Supermom, superwoman, super business, oh man, she's so incredible. The lights are on, but nobody's home. Right?

So she'll get everyone a birthday present and a really thoughtful card, and she's just like there, she's got the, she's like, does all the things about her birthday, she's like, oh no no no no no attention on me. Next. Let's go. Come on. Hey, don't you. It's you. It's somehow not me. Deflect, deflect, deflect. Because having the big feelings is just way too much for our nervous system. 

Yeah, often because lots of complexities in childhood. You know, a lot of us were raised by boomers, so we didn't get attunement, you know, whether you were Gen X or you're an elder millennial or… Pretty much any kind of millennial at this point. Most of us were the feral kids drinking from the from the hose out back, right? No one knew where we were all summer long. We raised ourselves, right? We were a really feral generation, for better and worse. I'll take being feral. I'm like, whatever that is, that's the Gen X millennial cusp, right? Like, there's kids, '79. I'll take that over my whole life being on Instagram, but another conversation, right?

Melissa

Right. Same.

Victoria

We mostly didn't get attunement from our grown-ups. We didn't feel safe having feelings because we didn't have any modeling of feelings. We didn't have any adults showing us, for the most part, that it was okay to have feelings, that our authentic selves were okay, that it was acceptable for us to be us.

Melissa

Well, and they were raised by, you know, people who lived through the Great Depression, they didn't have time for feelings. And like it totally makes sense when you think about it.

Victoria

Yeah, the epigenetics are bonkers. It makes perfect sense. It justsucks when you don't ever learn how to feel your feels or that feels are acceptable or okay or safe. So then what I'm flipping over to here because you started us off by saying we're gonna talk about big feels. And so we don't feel safe in our bodies and our nervous systems to have big feelings, acknowledge big feelings, be there for hours, our partners, our kids, our employees, like anybody because our autonomic nervous system is like, that smells like a big feeling. I'm panic, right? And all of a sudden we're- We're out in dorsal, right?

And we're just like, no, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. I always joke that, but not joke, that my clients have a case of the chronic I'm fines, right? Because I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine. What about you? How was your day? Tell me about you. Because being with our own feels is way too much.

Now, my passion is to support human socialized as women to overcome codependent, perfectionist, and people-pleasing habits. I invented a really great new term. It's called emotional outsourcing.

Melissa

I love it.

Victoria

Thank you. It's so good because I've had people say, oh, you're so kind of kinda forever. And I was like, your mom. Like, what are you, I don't even know what you mean. Like that term means nothing to me, right? And what it used to mean was like, not me. That was somebody else. I'm too cool for that. I like went to Oberlin. I'm like, right, too cool for that. But like I so was doing all of the things that check all of the boxes of codependent, perfectionist, and people pleasing habits, right?

And so those habits are born from dysregulated nervous system in a family structure, in a society and a culture where, and in my focus is women, where we are put last and told to put ourselves last.

Melissa

If we're even on the list at all.

Victoria

Actually, let me check the list. Ohh I'm sorry. I actually don't have your reservation to be one of your own priorities. I'm so sorry. Did you want, do you want me to put you on the list? It's quite a wait list, but sometime in like 3042, I think we could get to you. Did you want?

Melissa

That's about right.

Victoria

OK, great. Just gonna put you down. So we're gonna text you when it's your turn to matter.

But that's how it is for most of us, right? Our career, our patients, our everything, our parents, our dog, our kids, our partner, like everything comes first. And at the end of the day, we're like the dead lastestest. Right?

Melissa

Yeah, it sounds like we work with a lot of the same people, Victoria.

Victoria

Yeah, I think so. I think so. I mean, it's just… Yeah, and so it is impossible to feel safe enough in our bodies to be able to prioritize ourselves if we don't know how to regulate our nervous system. And regulate our nervous system means support our nervous system so that we can feel all the feels in sympathetic or dorsal or a combination and to feel them all the way through so that we can come back into ventral vagal, which is that safe and social.

Sometimes I remember ventral bagel or central bagel because what's, as a New Yorker, what's safer and better than just being with the central bagel? It is the most important of all bagels. And I did get double cream cheese, a chive double cream cheese and lox on that.

Melissa

That sounds amazing.

Victoria

It is. It's an everything bagel because it's the central. It's the most important bagel.

Melissa

I'm with you.

Victoria

Thank you. We need the monics, right? But yeah, in Central Bagel, Ventral Vagal is where we can make new choices. And there's no way to stop living in emotional outsourcing until we can make new choices.

Melissa

Yeah, what do you think is the like smallest, teeniest, practical step that someone can take in order to get out of being stuck in any one of these or combination of these states to get back to central bagel?

Victoria

Yep, mindfulness. I did a reel on this that got like over a million views because we all are so enamored at this stage of capitalism with the super complicated 27 step six that like is like a two year program. And you know what I mean? Like we want it to be super complicated. It's not. Your nervous system wants your attention like any other toddler, right? So I talk about and that we are taller toddlers term for like a decade because we forget that we need the basics, right? Our nervous system needs to know we're paying attention so that it doesn't have to freak the F out.

Here's my favorite metaphor is our Chihuahua Ziggy Stardog. If he starts barking. So I don't know if you've heard of that the devil is incarnate in the form of UPS:. Are you aware of this, Melissa?

Melissa

UPS. Yeah, a leaf going past the window.

Victoria

Those evil squirrels. Have you heard? They are the devil. And they're coming to murder us all.

Melissa

Yes.

Victoria

Good. I'm glad. It would have been embarrassing for you if you didn’t know. I'm glad we're there together. It's a beautiful thing. So Ziggy is in charge of preventing all of these murders.

Melissa

Death and destruction.

Victoria

Yeah, of course. Yeah, he's the chief death and destruction officer here at the Albina household. And so when he starts at a squirrel, if I start screaming, “Ziggy Stardog!” What's gonna happen? He barks more. He's no fucking fool. He's a jerk. He's no fool.

Meanwhile, if I go up to him and I say, yeah, baby, what is it? And I sit quietly next to him and I look out the window. He looks at me and stops barking every time. Every time I go, good boy, good boy.

This is how I want us to relate to our nervous system. We are living in amazing amounts of stress and being reactive to that stress. We're continuing to live in codependent, perfectionist and people pleasing habits. Because we're yelling at our nervous system. What is wrong with me? Why do I keep acting this way? I'm smart enough to know better. It's nothing to do with smarts. That's why the original definition was automatic nervous system. Right, right, rightIt's the under smarts. Yeah, you're super smart. Cool, cool, cool your nervous system doesn't care. It's still a lie until proven otherwise.

So the more we can sit next to that barking nervous system and say, oh, sweet baby, listen, look, it's just a little squirrel. It's not bad. It did not kill me. It's okay. The more nervous system can start to get rewired and reset, I can start to understand, oh, right, it's not a squirrel. Or rather, it is a squirrel. But squirrels are not doom machines.

Melissa

Yeah, they're not gonna hurt us.

Victoria

Right, they're not zombie squirrels, it's just regular squirrel. And so the way we do that is by, is just through basic awareness and mindfulness, which again, I know sounds too simplistic to work, but the complicated things haven't worked, have they?

So what does that look like on the daily? It looks like following our biological impulses, which how many healthcare providers or moms or teachers or social workers do you know, Melissa, who pee when they have to pee, I'll wait for the answer.

000.0 The P value on that is .0000001 and the R is not your business. So yeah, nobody pees, nobody eats, nobody rests, nobody nothing right from kindergarten on. You do what you're told to do when you're told to do it. And then if you're an entrepreneur working alone at home, you're still not doing the thing. One more e-mail, one more spreadsheet, one more memo, one more, one more, one more. Then all of the sudden it’s 8:00 PM and you had four cups of coffee and you're like wired. You're not eating, you're not moving. Yeah, it's just a series of knots where again, you're not even on your own reservation list. There's no dinner prepared for you. Because you're at the end again. So you need to begin by actually listening to our physiology and reminding our body when you ask me to pee, I'm going to go do it right.

Melissa

Yeah, you have to listen and actually take action, like when you tell your body you're going to do that. You can't lie to yourself because that, I think, makes it even worse.

Victoria

Yeah, and I would caution against words like lie too, just 'cause they're so charged in this like puritanical Judeo-Christian US of A, right? It's so heavy, like you sinned against self. And I just, 'cause then we get into this self-flagellation thing where we're yelling at the Chihuahua. No yelling at the Chihuahua. You are the Chihuahua, your nervous system is the Chihuahua.

Melissa

Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Victoria

Right? Yeah, so it's not that we lie to ourselves, it's that we don't have the capacity to stay with ourselves because at some point we learned staying with ourselves was really dumb. Right?

And so maybe that was from watching your own mom run around like a chicken with her head cut off all the time or you know, your most important person was some school teacher who told you if you started, you got to finish. Like whatever it is that's in your nervous system, right?

Melissa

I have so many examples from my personal life that I'm happy to share. Like even being told that, I mean, I spent years, decades detached only up in my head and it affects us so much over time. And I can remember the first time being disconnected from my body.  I was nine years old. I was early to puberty. I started my menses around then. I had boobs and body hair like nobody else had these things. And my little Catholic, you know, and my gym teacher, we'll call her Mrs. Boron because that's her name. Had a meeting with my mom and wanted my mom to bind me on gym days. Because my breasts were a distraction to the boys in gym class.

Victoria

Oh, honey.

Melissa

Yeah, we would have a lawsuit in this day and age. 

Victoria

I'm so sorry.

Melissa

Yeah, I mean, a lot of my body hating and shaming started then because of course it did. And I was basically told that it was not safe to have a body.

Victoria

Of course not.

Melissa

And then, of course, that made it even easier for me to disconnect when I was in Med school and residency and early in my career as a pediatrician. It was much safer to stay in my brain, which I knew was valuable without, you know, I had been given that message over and over again. And of course I didn't start realizing this until I got coaching when I was like 47 years old. tAnd it's just like, oh, like yeah, no wonder, of course I was disconnected. Of course I never went to the bathroom when it was time to go and to the point of like literally having accidents as an adult, you know. And of course I'm telling everyone on my podcast this, but like, this is the degree to which it can get, right?

Victoria

And I think it's really important for incredibly intelligent women like ourselves who are very, like, “successful” out in the world to be talking about not listening to our own biological imperatives. Right? Like, y'all, we're at, you're listening to us, so you're incredibly smart. We are, by every book, like the smartest gals in town, right? And we don't, we didn't pee when we had to because we were socialized and conditioned not to. So, and I make this point not to just brag about how smart we are, but to say there's no point in shaming, blaming and guilting yourself and berating yourself and judging yourself for not listening to your body because we attract ourselves as our clients and patients, right? And so I attract real smarty pants who are really hard on themselves because they should have known better, right? And then also, like, should have known better than to date him. Honey, you couldn't listen to your body because you were trained not to. How could you have dated anyone other than the schmuck?

Riddle me that. You know what I mean? Like, of course you married the jerk. Of course. You didn't go poop when you had to. 

Melissa

It's all connected.

Victoria

It is so profoundly connected. So profoundly. And we haven't even talked about the enteric nervous system, right? Like on the most basic, huge, like the most basic of basic science. Like, of course this all rippled outward. And the most important thing we can do is learn to how to rebuild that safety in our nervous system, in our body, to be with all of the big feels.

Melissa

To trust that we can handle it.

Victoria

Right, we can't today. I mean, you and I can, but we've spent the last decade working on this, but most animals, most of us cannot. So if you're listening, you're like, Oh no, I cannot. That's correct, yes, you could, you just got an A plus. Gold star. We'll put it in your chart. It's official. Melissa, are you going to make note? She got an A plus.

Melissa

Yep. A plus plus.

Victoria

You write down the A plus. I'm going to write down the gold star. OK, great. So now it's noted in both of our systems. It's on your permanent record. You're perfect.

Now, how do you start to beyond the like peeing when you got to pee, eating when you got to eat, that alone, that's a year. Do you know what I'm saying?

Melissa

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Victoria

That's going to take quite a while, especially the resting when you got to rest. Yeah, that one's a lot.

Melissa

God, but it's so fucking worth it. Like, it's so worth it.

Victoria

Oh, my God. It's the most worth it.

You know what's so funny? My old mentor, Ian, he was probably for about 3-4 years. He was like, you work too much. You work too much. Take a day off. The rest of your week will be so much easier. Just take Mondays off. And I'm like, oh, well, you're on my, you take a day off. And I started doing it and my whole week was so much easier. Jerk. What does he love me or something? Rude. That's just rude. How dare he be right.

But point being like when our nervous systems have come to equate busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, and safe or shut down and operating at the speed of light and safe, overreacting and safe. Everything I teach about slowing down, umm proverbially, but also literally peeing when you got to pee, not yelling at the Chihuahua. These things are really challenging.

And so in my work, I talk about kitten steps. I got a metaphor for everything. I'm Argentine, we are a people of many metaphors. If you know an Argentine, tell them how perfect they are today, they don't need to hear it, we know, but we like to hear it. And kitten steps are the antidote to our go, go, go capitalist society that demands we take baby steps. I'm not having it. Melissa, I'm not having it. You're a pediatrician. How big are those feet? What, two and a half, three inches? Get out of here with that crap. It's too much. We take kitten paw, newborn kitten paw sized steps.

Melissa

Yeah, like a sonometer.

Victoria

Yeah, and if, and if you can do a New York accent, just say poi like that, like you're from Long Island. I am not, but it's so much better. Kitten paw.

Melissa

I can't do it with my Cleveland accent. Kitten paw.

Victoria

That was really good. Because we got to laugh. A little ventral, you're laughing if you're in ventral vagal, you're ventral vagal, you're laughing. We bring a little laughter. Right? And do the teeniest, tiniest thing we possibly can do towards our growth.

Here's another favorite, tap your fingers. This is so simple. Well let's do coffee and then tap your fingers. One, what do nine out of 10 people drink first thing in the morning before thinking? Coffee. Yeah, you don't think about it. You just wake up. It's pot's already made because past you was a fricking genius. And before she went to bed, she made the coffee. Very smart.

Problem B, do you like coffee? How do you know if you like coffee? How do you know if you like it with cream and two sugars? How do you know if you like that block? How do you know what your body wants to drink today? Right? Because we're not asking.

Melissa

Yeah, we're just automatically doing it. Interesting.

Victoria

So, codependent, perfectionist, and people-pleasing habits, emotional outsourcing are the product of unintentional living and create unintentional living. They are habitual life states where we are just parroting what we saw from our parents. We can talk about mirror neurons the next time I'm on, but monkeys are seeing, and so monkeys are doing. That's how monkey works. Pretty simple math on that one.

Problem is, we keep living in ways that suck, in ways that are really painful, in ways that don't serve us, or quite frankly, our partnerships, our parents, our kids, et cetera, et cetera. How do we intervene? We step out of habit and into intentionality. How do we do that right in ways that don't explode our brain? We start with the most innocuous, the least potentially triggering, the who gives a crappest possible question. So if you have a deep emotional connection to coffee, don't start there. Ask yourself, do you want to stir your coffee with the big spoon or the little spoon? And I'm being quite serious. I know it sounds, you're making, I'm not. Start asking yourself these really tiny, super dumb, doesn't matter at all questions, because they too are below the level of consciousness, right? They're unimportant to the nervous system, so you're going to be able to stay chill while you ask yourself. Oh I always just grab like that little sugar spoon but like would it be fun to use like the big soup spoon? Who cares? I care because you're asking yourself something. You're getting into the habit of questioning your reality.

Melissa

What do I want?

Victoria

Bada bing, bada boom, that's it. What do I want? You said it perfectly. What do I need? What's my preference? What works for me? What's gonna make my day the best? And then you start asking throughout your day. 

And all of a sudden, it's an hour passed when your shift ended, but you're still at the hospital because of course you are. And somebody says, ohh can you just cover for me? Because I just got a meow, meow, meow, meow, meow. And can you just, I'm on the NICU for the next couple of hours, can you cover? You're in the habit of listening to you, are you gonna automatically without thinking people please them? No.

Melissa

Hell no, yeah.

Victoria

Hell no, you're going to pause. Old you? Oh my gosh, she was people pleasing. She was hopping right into that habit of saying yes without meaning it, right? 

Melissa

And then beating herself up.

Victoria

Beating herself up, right. And then when your mom says, ugh, you're really not going to help me after everything I've done for you. And then you say, you know what, fine, mom, I'll be there on Saturday, I'll cancel my plans. And then you're full of resentment, you're full of irritation, you're full of anger, and you're in that codependent spiral with her. Instead, you ask yourself about the coffee, you ask yourself about the spoon, you ask yourself if you want a soup or a sandwich for lunch instead of just getting the sandwich. You ask yourself all day long. And so when she lays the guilt trip on from her codependent habits.

Melissa

You get to choose.

Victoria

Yeah, you get to choose and you get to say, Mom, I hear you, you're having some big feelings. And I honor that those are your feelings and I'm pretty clear I'm not available on Saturday. Umm I'm happy to come over on Sunday to help you, but I'm not available Saturday. I hear you that you feel you've done a lot for me and I've never been anything but grateful, but it's actually not relevant to whether I come fix your printer on Saturday or Sunday. So I'm gonna come Sunday or you know I can help you call the Geek Squad if that's even still a thing, right? Yeah, I can help you in a way that works for me 'cause I'm a loving, caring person in the world, but I'm not self-sacrificing anymore. I'm not self-abandoning. I'm not people pleasing without pausing.

Melissa

So fucking good.

Victoria

So fucking good, man. Shit, yeah. And this is how we build a more interdependent world, a more loving, kind, just, equitable, interdependent world where we are, where we take care of the people in our community, but without resentment, anger, annoyance, irritability. We say yes so much because we're given from our overflow because we've filled our own cup. We're not emptying our cup and wasting our energy on BS. We're filling our cup.

And so your neighbor needs help, your neighbor, elderly neighbor broke her arm and needs help to clean her house. Your fuck yes, Mildred, I will be right over is from a big open heart because you didn't, you didn't waste your energy on BS that you're resentful of 'cause the resentment takes up about, what would you say statistically, about three times as much energy as actually doing the thing anyway?

Melissa

Yeah, I would say at least three times, yeah.

Victoria

Resentment is so fucking exhausting. So is irritation, so is frustration, so is anger. When a nice clean no mom brings you up to say 12 other yeses. Of service in your community.

Melissa

So many people don't think about the unintentional yes. Like how it keeps us from being able to say yes to the things we actually do want to do and do want to help with and how we can best be of service to ourselves and then therefore to others.

Victoria

Yeah, it's true.

Melissa

So just so that we're clear. You're saying the simplest, easiest, tiniest thing that people can do to reconnect to their bodies is to ask before having any automatic response, ask, wait a moment, what do I want?

Victoria

Yeah, and I'd recommend at first you actually do keep it binary. If you want to really simplify this. So if you say to your body, what beverage do I want? And you've never asked it before, like you're inviting in the potential for some panic. But if you say to your body, baby, do you want coffee or not coffee? And really keep it algorithmically, like decision tree, that simple, yes coffee, no coffee. Okay, if no coffee, water or not water, right? Tea or not, but like keep it really simple. And start to learn your yes and no, right?

Like what is the felt sensation of yes and no in your body?

Melissa

For me, yes feels warm and open and no feels cold and contracted.

Victoria

Right. And maybe that slips if the no is the expansion. So if like, no, I can't come to that party, right, is the self-care, then like maybe that feels expansive. So like really feeling into it and recognizing the way your body talks to you is different than the way mine talks to me and Melissa talks to hers. It's gonna be different, different days.

Let me, quick note on being a taller toddler, you are one that means the way you wouldn't make an actual toddler go hours and hours without snacks, with water or snuggles or a break to watch a little teeny show or snuggle an animal or take a little nap. Don't do that to you. Or Parsons and I are coming for you. We're the defenders of the small toddlers and the large.

Melissa

Yes, that's what I always used to tell people in my practice, the parents, like, your toddler has it right by having the tantrum, feeling their feelings, and then they're like ready to move on and do the next fun thing.

Victoria

Yeah, they're little smart potatoes, those little ones, right?

Melissa

Yeah. Until we socialize it straight out of them, which I'm not about, not about at all anymore.

Well, thank you so much for sharing your beautiful brain and your wisdom and your nerdiness with us today. I just know we're going to help so many people. And I so appreciate you have generously offered my listeners links to meditations that you've done for us about codependency and perfectionism. And of course, I'm going to link those in the show notes for everybody. So thanks so much for providing that to me and to my listeners.

Victoria

And I'll let them know if you where to find those in case they can't find that. I find that people can't find the show notes sometimes. So if you go to victorialbina.com/yourfavoriteyou, you can download this suite of meditations, nervous system exercises, and you can find my podcast, Feminist Wellness, wherever you get your podcasts.

Melissa

Amazing. So yeah, if people want to learn more about you, if they want to follow you, if they want to hear more about you, probably your website and the podcast or best places. Thank you, Victoria.

Victoria

Thank you so much.

Melissa

Appreciate you so much. All right, guys, come back next week.

I think I'm going to have Victoria come back on and talk about boundaries at some point in the future, so you can all look forward to that.

Hey, y'all, it's still me. I am encouraging you to book a consult to discuss joining my next group coaching program, which starts on January 9th. It would never be possible for me to list all the benefits and value that you will get when you join our group, but that does not mean I'm not going to try.

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