Episode 384: End Emotional Outsourcing with Beatriz Victoria Albina, NP

There was a stretch of my life where I could not be alone. Not because I loved being social so much, but because without someone else in the room, I did not know who I was. No plans for the night meant a full blown panic attack. What was I supposed to do with myself? More importantly, who even was I?

Turns out that is not just a me thing. It has a name, emotional outsourcing, and it is exactly what I dig into with my guest Beatriz (Béa) Victoria Albina, author of End Emotional Outsourcing: How to Overcome Your Codependent, Perfectionist, and People-Pleasing Habits. She also hosts the Feminist Wellness Podcast, and from the first minute we hit record, it was clear this was going to be one of those conversations we could have kept going all day.

We get into emotional outsourcing, the term Béa uses for the codependent, people-pleasing, and perfectionist habits so many of us learned as survival strategies. We also talk about how somatic work actually changes us, instead of just helping us understand our patterns intellectually. And if you are Gen X or a Xennial, this is your bonus round. Somewhere around the Mac LE2 and Saved by the Bell, we take a short detour into nostalgia.

What you'll hear about in this episode:

• What emotional outsourcing actually is, and why Béa uses it as the catch-all term underneath codependency, people-pleasing, and perfectionism (5:19)

• Using TV and movies as a mirror for healthy relating, and why even a show as savage as Veep can retrain your brain to recognize what it's missing (10:52)

• How Béa defines the differences between codependency, people-pleasing, and perfectionism, and why they are survival habits, not character flaws (23:50)

• Why knowing your patterns intellectually isn't the same as changing them, and how somatic experiencing helps your body believe a new story (20:24)

• The reticular activating system and the default mode network, the two brain regions that keep us running the same old stories until we interrupt them (25:47)

• Béa's "kitten steps" approach to rebuilding trust with yourself, starting as small as actually letting yourself pee when you have to pee (30:52)

Learn more about Beatriz (Béa) Victoria Albina, NP, MPH, SEP:

Beatriz (Béa) Victoria Albina, NP, MPH, SEP (she/her) is a UCSF-trained Family Nurse Practitioner, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, Master Certified Somatic Life Coach, author of the bestselling "End Emotional Outsourcing: How to Overcoming Your Codependent, Perfectionist and People Pleasing Habits" and Breathwork Meditation Guide with a passion for helping humans socialized as women to reconnect with their bodies, regulate their nervous systems and rewire their minds, so they can break free from codependency, perfectionism and people pleasing and reclaim their joy.