The Unmistakable Creative Podcast

Life of Purpose: Britt Frank | The Science of Stuck: Breaking Through Inertia to Find Your Path Forward

Join us for our Life of Purpose series this month as we revisit some of our most impactful episodes. Dive deep into expert insights and practical strategies on health, performance, and community, helping you achieve personal and professional fulfillment.

In this episode of the Unmistakable Creative Podcast, we delve into a profound conversation with Britt Frank, a renowned therapist, teacher, and speaker. Britt's unique insights into the nature of trauma and anxiety provide listeners with a fresh perspective on these complex issues. She explains that trauma is not merely the result of horrific events but can stem from any experience that our brain fails to process, leading to emotional and sometimes physical symptoms.

Britt also discusses the concept of 'trauma-inducing events,' which are seemingly ordinary situations that can trigger traumatic responses in those with unresolved issues. This enlightening discussion challenges conventional wisdom and encourages us to reevaluate our understanding of trauma and anxiety.

Furthermore, Britt explores the intriguing concept of hidden rewards in our behaviors. She posits that all behaviors, even those we view as suboptimal, serve a functional purpose and offer hidden rewards. By acknowledging these rewards, we can begin to understand our actions better and make meaningful changes.

Join us as Britt Frank shares her wealth of knowledge, empowering listeners to navigate their emotional landscapes more effectively. Whether you're a therapist, a person struggling with trauma or anxiety, or simply someone interested in personal growth, this episode is a must-listen.

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Duration:: 1h 12m
Broadcast on:: 08 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

As you've probably noticed this month, we're bringing you our Life of Purpose series and revisiting some of our most transformative episodes, tune in to explore expert insights and practical strategies on help, performance, and community well-being, all aimed at helping you achieve personal and professional fulfillment. If you sign up for the newsletter, you'll not only get recaps of the key ideas in each interview, but at the end of the series, you'll receive our free Life of Purpose e-book. What you have to do is go to UnmistakeableCreative.com/LifePurpose again. That's UnmistakeableCreative.com/LifePurpose. So anxiety is physiology with no known origin. You can't intervene on something that doesn't have an origin point. And so when people say, "I struggle with anxiety," that will actually amplify the problem. So I have this funneling filter system. So it's like, "Okay, you're anxious about work. What does that mean?" Well, if I mess up this presentation, I'm going to get fired. Okay, cool. So that's not anxiety. That's a fear. I feel fear that I'm going to mess up this presentation. That feels a lot different in your body than I'm just anxious about work. Now we've created a fear. So then how do we distill the fear down into a worry? So you're fearful that you'll mess up the presentation. I'm worried that I won't have enough slides and I'm going to run out of content and this 30-minute presentation will be five minutes. Okay, now we've taken this very large amorphous, I'm anxious about work. We've distilled it into a fear. We've distilled the fear down into a worry. Now the worry is I'm worried I won't have enough content. I can intervene on that, like that we can do something about. And once you distill that worry down into solvable problems, may not solve the whole thing, but it's going to dial down that, quote, anxiety from a 10-to-a-4. I'm Sreeny Rao and this is the Unmistakable Creative Podcast where you get a window into the stories and insights of the most innovative and creative minds who've started movements built driving businesses, written best-selling books and created insanely interesting art. For more, check out our 500 episode archive at UnmistakableCreative.com. Britt, welcome to The Unmistakable Creative. Thanks so much for taking the time to join us. Thanks for having me on. It is my pleasure to have you here. So I actually stumbled on your book on Amazon and Amazon must think I have some serious issues because all the books that are recommended to me are about being single and happy getting unstuck. So based either on my purchasing history or, you know, my mental health, Amazon probably thinks I'm insane, but you have a book called The Science of Stuck, which one of our former guests, Sacha Heinz wrote the forum for. And I remember picking it up. I think I read the preview on Kindle and I ordered it right away and I couldn't put it down. I thought, this is amazing. So I am absolutely thrilled to have you here. But before we get into your work and the book, I want to do start by asking you what social group are you a part of in high school and what impact did that end up having on what you've ended up doing with your life? Let's start with the trauma question. Well, for me, that's a trauma question. Hey, me too. So I was part of the floater group in high school. I was, you know, not so outcast that I was outcast, but I wasn't cool enough to be considered in. So I was too much, not enough. I floated around and I did not have a group. I was a lone wolf flyer and it was very difficult and very lonely and frustrating. So I smoked a lot of cigarettes and watched a lot of infomercials. All right. Well, through parents listening to this, who have kids who are either floaters or loners given your work, what would you tell them to tell their kids other than to smoke a lot of cigarettes and watch a lot of infomercials? I loved the ones about cat litter boxes and I didn't own a cat. So that tells you a little bit about my own pathology, but I think it's really different now with social media. I think getting a TV in my room at 16 was the biggest deal in the world. I think having social media and having access to a world outside my long island mid 90s bubble would have been incredibly useful. So I would tell parents listening, do you not use the removal of devices as a long-term punishment because you are removing the social supports that are necessary in order to occur or whatever the behavior is that you're trying to stop. Okay. It's funny you say that because I just finished reading Gloria Marks in a book, Attention Span, and this feels like a double-edged sword to me because on the one hand, particularly in adolescence when you're dealing with a developing brain and you're so prone to social comparison, excessive use of this stuff can be really detrimental, I think, to yourself image on the flip side, she actually wrote about the fact that we don't live in a world where technology is separate from our social structures and society. And so how do you find the balance between those two things? I mean, as a teenager, I'd imagine it would be very hard to not just be drawn into it constantly because I see these kids at the Starbucks where I go to get my coffee in the morning and there's a high school right by there and they're literally texting each other from in the same room. It is absolutely, I grew up sort of in the last analogie era and so I grew up without technology and the internet came about when I entered high school. Early in my career, I studied child development and I was a play therapist and so it was very strange for me to witness a two-year-old knowing how to work an iPad. That was like, "What is this world we're living in?" And it needs to be, number one, I think the balance is careful and conscious curation while still parenting young people because if you are mindful and conscious at the types of media, the types of groups, the types of social networking, and if you're a parent these days, you sort of need to be tech informed because you need to be able to know how to curate and how to monitor and how to tell the difference between, "Wow, social media is an on-ramp to feeling connected versus, "Wow, social media is an on-ramp to all of the shenanigans that I see in my private practice." Well, okay, since you mentioned you started by studying child development earlier in career, I have to ask you this first because my sister just had a baby, he's turned four months old. What is happening in the brain in those first four months? So I have no idea because my child development expertise begins around the age of five. I started working with children four to five who could speak and who had mobility and who were able to interact on at least the basic level. The world of the infant and the baby is a total mystery. So if you can answer that question, give me a call back and let me know because I do not know. Fair enough. I feel like no matter how many books I've tried to find on this, it seems like this just black box that very few people seem to know about. One thing I do know though is that our nervous systems can encode every last piece of information coming at us from in utero to whenever. So it's not a true statement that, oh, they're infants, so it's not like they're going to remember what we know now about trauma. And this was helpful for my own personal journey, journey, trying to understand why did I turn out the way I did was that infants encode intrinsically all of the things happening around them. So it is important to monitor language and to monitor media and to not assume because someone doesn't have the brain structure to develop narrative explicit memory that what's happening around them isn't going to severely impact them later in life. So as of right now, then my nephew will basically be a 90s hip hop junkie, which is awesome. And the flip side of that, and I tell parents, I don't have children. I'm a child free by choice person, which is why I had the time to sit and study children and how they interact with themselves and each other in the world is you don't have to do it perfectly. It's not, oh my gosh, I hope I don't mess up my child. It's okay, so to what degree are you going to because you're guaranteed to because all humans are imperfect, which means all parents are imperfect, which means everyone will mess up their child. But the research shows by and large, you don't have to get it perfect. You need to be good enough. It's really amazing how much good enough parenting can save off a whole lot of problems later in life. So you don't need to be perfect. It needs to be good enough. And then it's not about whether you will mess up. It's about how do you attune to your child after a mess up and are you able to repair a relational breach without getting defensive, without flipping out, without making it about, oh my God, I'm such a terrible parent. A parent spinning around and oh my God, I suck is not trying to be narcissistic, but that is in fact a narcissistic orientation because oh my God, I'm a bad parent is still about the parent versus oh, let me see, let me witness how this choice is impacting my child. Well, it's funny because I remember asking Sarah Peck about parenting and she said parenting is a giant shit show basically it's, you know, you get this kid and you say, we're going to screw you up and your job is to go to therapy and fix all the things we screwed up. And I remember for the longest time, I thought there was this idea of some sort of parent that is, you know, infallible. And then I remember at the end of the TV show, Parenthood, Craig T Nelson turns to his daughter and he says, you know what parents screw their kids up, that's just what we do. And it made me have a lot more empathy for the things that I thought were mistakes that my parents did. And it's a spectrum, right? I was watching this random movie, Man of the House, where Tommy Lee Jones has to shack up with a bunch of cheerleaders who witnessed a crime is hilarious. And in that, in watching that, I'm like, wow, two hours where Tommy Lee Jones is with these very, very hot half naked cheerleaders and he does not sexualize or objectify them in the slightest. I'm like, wow, look at that. It's a grown man who can hold space for these really unboundary young ladies without making it really creepier growth. So there's a degree to which you can be a good enough parent to which you could be a terrible parent, but the whole I hope I don't screw up my child is not the question because you will. It's how much to what degree and will you be attuned enough to notice when it happens so you can repair it and not have to retrofit an attachment system 20 years later. Yeah. Walk me through the trajectory from being a floater in high school to studying the science of being stuck. Like, what in the world led you down this path? So when I was little, this was way before I was a floater in high school. When I was really little, I didn't have friends. I was bullied a lot. I was sort of the weird kid who just like to have their nose in a book. And I always was fascinated by humans humanning because I felt like I was sent out of the factory missing a few pieces of software and hardware. And so it wasn't a I want to help people. It was not that altruistic from very, very young. It was, wow, that's that's what those people sort of like an anthropologist of humanity. What is going on? How are these people do it? They have groups and they sit at lunch together and it's very strange to me. And so the studying of stuckness really came out of my own personal. I don't know how to be forget about adulting. I didn't know how to human period. I didn't know how to adolescent. I didn't know how to teenage. I didn't know how to college. I did it. I made it through it. And because school was not difficult, I was able to skate by unnoticed. And I didn't have these huge behavioral issues that needed prompted. I mean, I was an addict, but I was a functional drug addict that could be a drug addict without it costing me legal or medical ramifications. But I really wanted to understand why we do things the way we do and surely it can't just be that I'm crazy. I really did believe and I have a long history of mental illness on both sides of my family, stretching as far as the eye can see, but surely it can't just be that I am crazy. There has to be something going on that makes us tick, that makes us do these things. And so I graduated college and entered the media production world. And then later on, after I got some of my, you know, I was able to walk a little bit without falling every two seconds. And I got better from being in therapy. That's when I made a midlife switch and became full time doing what I do know, what I do know. Well, well, you know, of all the books that you could write, what made you choose this subject in particular, like this whole idea of being stuck, because I think part of why this book resonated with me so much was I just kind of felt myself, you know, nodding along saying, Hey, that's me. That's me. I was like, wait, do you just wrote my life story in this book? It's really amazing how universal the phenomenon of stuckness actually is. And I have worked in a very large variety of settings. Now I work in private practice with really high functioning, high achieving people. I've worked in the foster care system. I've worked in patient psychiatric. I've worked with kids. I've worked with teens. Every single category across demographics, across every, you know, measurable category, one uses the word stuck and everyone experiences a degree of stuckness to some, we're not all the same. I'm not equating, but it's amazing how this I am stuck between this intention action gap is what the social scientists like to call it. I know I'm supposed to do the thing. Nevertheless, I'm not doing the thing. And even though there's no logical reason why I can't do what I say I wanted, I mean, for some people, that's oppression or systemic issues or poverty or medical issues. I'm not talking about that. And for me, the stuck factor of there's no logical reason why I can't get for me to be nevertheless, I'm stuck. It was amazing to me that that impacts everybody to a degree. Not everyone identifies as having a severe mental illness or a severe addiction, but everyone knows what it's like to get stuck relationships, career, money, sex, body, name it. We all feel it to some degree in some area. Yeah. I mean, I think like I'm just, you know, thinking about this idea, I was like, do you ever not feel unstuck at a point in your life like when all your problems are solved? Because I had a mentor who says your problems will never go away. All that changes is your capacity to deal with them. Yes. And I think that's true. And largely, I think recovery and, you know, people are always like, what does it mean to heal trauma? It's like that is such a meta cognition question, like whatever it means to you. But for me, it's not that we'll always have problems. It's for me, the goal is, can we change the nature of the problems? I accept that part of the human experience is to always have something that you need to surf on top of or you're going to get tossed. But it would be nice. It's nice now at 42, not to have the same problems that completely be fuddled me at 20, at 30, when you use SAP Concur solutions to automate your business finances, you'll be ready for anything except the new office dog running off with your lunch. With SAP Concur, you can be ready for almost anything. With control of your business finances today at concur.com. 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Yeah, trust me, I know the feeling, you know, we're migrating a website and we're having some issues with the transfer. And I think if this had been three or four years ago, I would have just been losing my shit. And I just remember this thing that Tim Ferris said to me in an interview about Matt Mullenweg, the founder of Atomic, which created WordPress. The guy is like as stoic as it gets, and he's like one of your data centers is down, isn't that a big deal? He's like, no, there's nothing I can do. There's nothing to point worrying about it. And he had this acronym, what would Matt Mullenweg do? And I remember just, I was like, wow, I'm actually saying that to myself now. And even five years ago, that would have freaked me out, but oh my God, the things that were problems when I was 20 or like, you know, basically a speeding ticket now. Which, you know, in the 12 step world, and this is why I wish that the whole mental healthy world wasn't so isolated from the quote mentally healthy, which I don't see them as separate. But there's a saying in the 12 steps of AA that, you know, we will, if you do the work long enough and you stick to it, eventually we will, the quote is, we will intuitively know how to handle problems that used to baffle us. And I find that is really, really true. The more about human thing that I know, it's like, same thing when, you know, I learned to drive a car. Every little noise would freak me out. And I've got my hands at 10 at two and I'm focused and then it was like, okay, I could be driving a car on the phone listening to the radio while eating a sandwich and you develop muscle memory. And then if I hear that little noise, I now know the difference between a whatever noise and a pullover noise. And it's really true that we don't want to solve all the problems. Living in this blissed out Zen state sounds terrible to me. All the good things that we want in life are not in the center of this perfect balance. We're on the edges, but it's nice to have new problems and not the same ones. Yeah. Well, let's get into the book. You actually say the mental health, pharmaceutical, wellness, beauty and fitness industries are largely built on the idea that anxiety is your fault and improving yourself is your solution. Every time you hear an ad promising freedom, joy, bliss or peace up on a purchase of a product or service, you've just fallen prey to the cultural mythology that directs you to look outside of yourself for answers. The solutions to many of your problems can be discovered only by journeying within your mind. I think that all of us intuitively know that, but our actions don't reflect that. I mean, let's think about it. People are listening to this podcast as a way of looking for answers outside of their mind. I read books. I read your book looking for answers out of my own mind. So why is that and how do we find a balance? Because I think there's value to external influence, but I realize there's also a diminishing return to it. Sure. And I am certainly not saying you shouldn't read books and everything you need is within you and you don't need people and you don't need resources like, no, I am saying, there is, like you just said, there is a limit to which information. There comes a point where lack of knowledge is not the problem. There comes a point where you don't need another book telling you the same thing on another, you just from another framework, but it emit and it no shame here. I was, I smoked meth. I did coke. I did pills. Understands the very, very high temptation to flee from who we are, what we know and what's true about us. Now I have a very peaceful relationship with my mind. But again, you don't need to have a mental illness to be terrified of your own thoughts. I mean, every single person sitting on Sunday night with the quote, Sunday scaries knows the world is about to smack me in the face when I get out of bed on Monday morning and off we go. But this attempt to escape who we are and what we know, specifically the icky things about ourselves that we wish were not true, you know, young calls that shadow. I mean, a lot of people call it shadow work, but young sort of popularized it as you need to face the shadow because if you don't, it will bite you. That's pretty true and thoughts can't hurt us. And that sounds so reductive and simple. But I remember one of my therapists was like, it's your mind. If you go in it, there's nothing in it that can hurt you, but we people die every day in their efforts to avoid what's inside their minds. Like that's the tragedy. And so, but it is. Scary when you go inside your head and you start to look at under the carpets and, you know, like, I know where all my bodies are buried now because I had a lot of help making it safe to look. But self knowledge sounds so wonderful, but it is a messy scary, very scary prospect. Yeah. Well, we talked about the drug addiction phase because I have done my fair share of experimentation. My joke is often I'm doing this as research for my listeners, you know, when it comes to things like psychedelics, although I haven't really like, you know, done an episode on it, even though I should, but that somebody joke me, says, like, you're doing this for science. I was like, yeah, absolutely. Even though I'm, you know, probably doing it to your point to escape from something. Sure. So, you know, the, the impulse to use, and I tried lots of things. Drugs were not available to me when I was young. So I was addicted to porn when I was young through the, you know, the rabbit ears on the TV with all the scram, you know, you can look, if you look hard enough, you can see I see a naked person through the static. And then it was drugs. And then when that didn't work as it said, you know, as it tends not to, I joined a fundamentalist religious cult. And that was a wonderful resting place for a while because fundamentalism is by its nature, a different type of addiction. It's not chemical, but it's a process addiction. And anytime we have these dysregulated bodies that don't know how to feel what we feel. We're not taught how to, you know, know what we know. If I asked someone what does anger feel like in your body, I usually get blank stares. I know I wanted to smack my therapist when she was like, the telly bread, where do you feel that in your body? I'm like, I don't know we were talking about, I live in a floating head because we're not taught that feelings are physiological. And here's how to drive your physiology and all of that. So addiction provides a very, very loud distraction from the icky things about ourselves, whether they're things we did to ourselves, whether they're things that happened to us, whether it's bad choices that we made in reaction to the bad things that happened to us. It doesn't matter. Addiction is a very compelling distraction from the pain of our reality. Now, again, the pain of our reality is temporal. If you face it, it tends to get better and the pain of addiction, you know, gets amplified until it destroys everything about you. But you know, from the religious cult thing to smoking meth, I understand the appeal. Yeah. Well, one thing that you say early on in the book is that the human brain is powerful, beautiful, and mysterious current research indicates that we're wired for survival, not happiness. We're wired to seek safety, not serenity. This means your brain is constantly scanning your environment in search of threats and opportunities. So with that in mind, how does a human being navigate the world without losing their fucking mind? Well, have you looked around lately, I think by and large, it's not working. You know, we're taught, you know, use your mind mindset is everything, mind over mood, everything positive, and I'm not anti-mindwork, obviously, there is a large degree to which how we talk to ourselves, how we think about thought, how we speak to ourselves and other people, that stuff largely matters. But if you don't know that your brain's first objective is to find a way to go on autopilot to conserve energy, it's not to get you out of bed to launch the business to start the fitness routine or whatever insert thing that you're going to feel crazy. There's, you know, this whole, I'm so lazy, what's wrong with me and these narratives that we attach to these physiological states and people get so mad at me when I talk about this. They're like, are you saying it's okay to lay on the couch binge watching, whatever. No, I'm not saying that. I am saying that the explanation for inertia is not laziness or some sort of character defect. The explanation for a lot of our inertia is physiological because our brains are not designed to get up and be productive and go into, you know, like, human being is hard, thinking is hard, doing is hard. So our brains, if they think that not doing, will keep us safer and conserve more energy, it's not going to want to do it. Now that said, you can train yourself out of basic survival physiology, but you can't train yourself out of a physiological state if you don't know that that's what's happening. So I get very, I get really, like, amped up about, no, your brain has a gas pedal and a brake pedal. It's like driving a car. If I put a five-year-old in a car, they're going to drive off the road because they don't know how to drive. But that is not a problem with the car, nor is it a problem with them. It's that five-year-olds don't have the tools, the knowledge, and the skill set to drive. And that's why the car is crashing. It's not that dissimilar with our lives. Well, let's get into the concepts of, you know, getting unstuck and you start out by talking about anxiety, fear and worry, you make these distinctions, you say that anxiety is a series of uncomfortable physical sensations in your body without an identifiable source. It's a trail that leads to unaddressed emotional injuries and the fear shows up in the body with the same physical sensations as anxiety, shallow breathing, rapid heart rates, sweaty palms, dry mouth, and tension. So talk to me about the distinction between anxiety, fear, and worry because I think they all kind of feel the same. They feel the same and our culture uses them interchangeably. But again, I'm really militant about the semantics, not because I want to be so smart, but because the words that we use largely matter if we're trying to make changes to our physiology. So if someone says to me, "I'm really anxious about work," okay, that is so broad. That tells me nothing about the nature of the problem. That tells me nothing about, "Are we talking perceived threat? Are we talking actual threat? Are we talking a boss who's sexually harassing you? Are we talking six kids at home that if you do something wrong, you're going to get fired?" I'm anxious about work is just I know this person is feeling uncomfortable body sensations, but there's no definable origin. So anxiety is physiology with no known origin. You can't intervene on something that doesn't have an origin point. And so when people say, "I struggle with anxiety," that will actually amplify the problem because we're not defining a problem. You can't solve a problem if you're not defining it. So I have this like funneling filter system. So it's like, "Okay, you're anxious about work. What does that mean?" Well, if I mess up this presentation, I'm going to get fired. Okay, cool. So that's not anxiety. That's a fear. I feel fear that I'm going to mess up this presentation. That feels a lot different in your body than I'm just anxious about work. Now we've created a fear. So then how do we distill the fear down into a worry? So you're fearful that you'll mess up the presentation. Well, I'm worried that I won't have enough slides and I'm just making some of that. I'm worried that I won't have enough slides and I'm going to run out of content and this 30-minute presentation will be five minutes. Okay. Now we've taken this very large amorphous, I'm anxious about work. We've distilled it into a fear. We've distilled the fear down into a worry. Now the worry is I'm worried I won't have enough content. I can intervene on that. Like that we can do something about. And once you distill that worry down into solvable problems, may not solve the whole thing, but it's going to dial down that "anxiety" from a 10 to a 4. Let's get into the concept of rewards and behavior for being stuck. You say here's the truth. If you dig under most unhealthy behaviors, you'll find hidden rewards. In order to get unstuck, you must take an honest inventory of your behaviors, even the ones that I know you genuinely wish to change, shaming yourself and be moaning your choices more for. Now, let's just take an example of something like making more money or wanting to be in a relationship. Sometimes when I looked at that, I was like, okay, I was trying to think about this. Like where's the hidden reward to being in this situation where my mom is basically constantly stressed that I'm a 40 plus unmarried Indian son? I'm like, I have to deal with my mom. That's not a reward. We'll file that the cost column of the cost benefit analysis, that's the cost. But just as an absurd example, talk to me about that. How do you actually find the hidden reward? Because I remember I had Kerry Cole here as well to talk about boundaries and she said the same thing. She said, you know, there's some hidden sort of second order benefit that you're getting from the other thing you say you don't want. How do you figure out what that is? Because I was thinking about that. I was like, I can't find it. So you've come up with nothing. Oh, this will be fun. I'm not going to therapist you, but is your benefit column legit blank, like nothing's on there? Well, no, not nothing is on there. I mean, like, what's the upside of, you know, being single? I can just do whatever I want. I don't have to report to anybody. I don't have any, you know, I'm not accountable to anybody. I guess is a big deal, like that's a big deal. That is something no one wants to say, but everyone has this association that once you pair up that you lose your freedom, you lose your autonomy, you know, I, I'm mayor. I've been married now for two years and I go on solo vacations. I go on vacations with my friends. My husband takes solo trips. We both really value our autonomy and are independent from each other lives. But we also got married later in life. Most people assume, like really associate partnership with loss of freedom. If your system thinks that once you pick a person, then it's over for you, it's going to be highly incented to either not find someone or to pick a series of unavailable people. Because if that's the story, that's a, that's a big story. So how do you change the story? Well, you can't change unless you first name it. So the first order of business is no one wants to admit that there are benefits because all behavior, even suboptimal behavior is functional, otherwise the behavior wouldn't be there, whether it's not making money, not getting fit, doing drugs. It doesn't matter. I'm not saying it's good. I'm saying there are benefits. So again, let's start by assuming there are benefits. Step one, step two. Okay, let's start listing them. You just named a very, very clear one and you said, again, not to get personal. Like if your mom is super, like super concerned with the fact that her unmarried son is this age and blah, blah, blah, then like there's going to be a lot of pressure on whoever you bring home. Like that is not going to be a small thing. There is going to be eyes on you, eyes on your partner. There's going to be pressure. You're going to be grilled. Your partner is going to be grilled. And to your brain, well, your brain's immediately going to go, no, don't want to do that. We can train your brain out of that because we can take that anxiety and distillative fear and to worry and all of, you know, using my secret formula. But you have to start by admitting there is a lot of pressure on you now because all eyes are on you. You don't have the freedom to just explore and see what's happening. It's like, this is my potential mates. And then that's going to be a problem. And that's where what you said, your conversation about boundaries is going to be really helpful. Because if you put enough boundaries in place, then you can boundary moms. So to her opinion is less impactful. And trust me, I was on a reality TV dating show that hit the top 10 of Netflix. People descended on my parents like vultures and to the point where I had to basically call them and say, look, this is ridiculous. You guys are basically giving me, you know, like prospects that I would get more information from a sperm bank about a potential donor than the information you guys are giving me. And I put my cousin in the way I was like, I want you to run anything through her. I'm only going to deal with her. But yeah, I mean, it's exactly what you're talking about. Like that was, you know, scrutiny at a level that I had never experienced before. Which on a neurological level is going to register is very threatening because not only are you faced with the prospect of scrutiny and pressure, but you're also faced if you're close with your family at the prospect of loss of connection with people who are important to you. If you make the wrong choice, if you don't make a choice, if you do it improperly or however your family deems it to be, you could lose these connections. And from an attachment level, that's very threatening to your central nervous system and will very, very much incense your unconscious to not find available people. Well, let's talk about feelings versus emotions. You say that feelings are a series of body sensations and emotions are body sensations with stories attached to them. So basically feelings plus stories minus emotions, it's the stories we attach to our body sensations that create emotions. So let's say you're feeling terrible, maybe, you know, just as an example, maybe you're depressed, maybe you're sad, whatever it is, where do you change this in this equation and how? Mm hmm. And again, it seems like I'm just being a word nerd for the sake of being a word nerd and I'm not in all of the time that I have sat across from people in my office being able to specifically, you know, speaking in metaphor is really great as part of the human experience and I really love that consciousness allows us to speak in metaphor, but when you're feeling like shit, metaphors are not your friends. You want to really be able to say things in as specific language as possible so you can intervene on them. So if someone comes in and we'll just use a couple who's fighting and one of the partners is like, I just really feel like you're not listening to me. Well, there's so much embedded in that because I feel like you're not listening to me. It's not a feeling. That's a thought. So and I've done workshops like this and people get so mad. They're like, Brit, this is stupid. This is not how people talk. I'm like, great, but that your way is not working. So like, okay, I go do it your way, but I feel like you're not listening to me has mixed up and mushed together all of the factors. So the person who's mad, you know, sweaty palms, clenched jaw, their stomach is cramping and blood is flowing to their extremities and they feel like they're ready to just come apart at the seams. Those are the feelings. Those are the physiological cues. Those are the somatic markers. Okay. So those are the feelings. The emotion is anger, right? The same body sensations could just as easily be you're having really good sex or you're on a roller coaster, but because they're having a fight, the feelings are physiological. The emotion is anger. And so if you can separate that, like, hi, let's say the same person instead of saying, I feel like you're not listening to me, let's say that person could stop themselves long enough to tune in to their body sensations, which will inherently slow them down. Okay. I'm noticing this and noticing that. Okay. I am feeling the emotion of anger. When you do that, which is essentially a mindfulness practice, you're slowing yourself down enough that you can maintain the neocortical activity necessary to not say or do something stupid in order to fight skillfully and fairly and effectively. You can't be just boughting off from the physiology that you're in. You have to tease it out from this physiology, these are the emotions, these are the thoughts. And that allows for healthy communication, because if you've ever fought with someone and you've gone in circles for hours and hours and hours, that's largely because your brains are offline. I'm going to Farley speaking. Well, trust me, I've done that with my mom. I've probably done that with friends, but yeah. One other thing you say about this is that the myth is there is an easy way, this truth is that there are only two ways, the hard way that goes around and around in circles and the hard way that has a beginning, middle and end. The pain of facing feelings is often easier to navigate than the pain of avoiding them. And yet, I think people in a lot of cases avoid them and suppress them. Sure, because they believe there's an easier way. It would be, and this is right out of the 12 step handbook also, the myth is that there's an easier, softer way. There's not, there are two hard paths. Dealing with your stuff is hard, not dealing with your stuff is hard. Getting fit is hard, not being fit is hard, and there's this whole choose your heart. I didn't come up with the whole choose your hard philosophy, but it's gotten fairly trendy. The limits of the choose your hard come, again, to the degree that you have safety and choice is the degree to which you can implement changes. If you are in an abusive environment, or if you're a child, or if you are in a war torn country, none of this information applies. But to the degree that you have choices, you can make changes. Hmm. Wow. Well, speaking of war torn countries, let's talk about trauma. You make this distinction between trauma, traumatic events, trauma inducing events, and trauma responses. Can you explain those and break those down for people? Oh my God, yes, because I mean, I'm glad that trauma has gotten trendy because I'd rather we all be talking too much about it than not talking about it at all. I mean, most people don't realize that you can become a fully licensed therapist and never once take a class about trauma or the brain, which is just bananas to me. That's absurd. But that is absurd. And that is facts. You do not have to ever sit in the class about the brain or the body. You never hear the word trauma in graduate school unless you specialize in it, which is like absurd. And nevertheless, it is what it is. The DSM has just recently begun to identify, you know, non combat PTSD as trauma, but I can rant about that. That's another thread. So trauma has now in the zeitgeist become synonymous with something is uncomfortable. Oh, that traumatized me. I sat in traffic. Oh, that traumatized me. You know, I got into a fight with my boyfriend or whatever. So okay, well, we need to differentiate between a trauma, a traumatic event, a trauma inducing event. So trauma, the definition that I use comes from Dr. Peter Levine, and he created somatic experiencing, which is a modality that I am trained in. And he defines trauma as anything that's too much too fast or too soon. It's an internal process. It's not defined by the events. It's defined by how your body processes it. And I can distilled all that clinical, you know, jargon down to its brain indigestion. Trauma is an internal process where for whatever reason, your brain didn't metabolize an experience. It couldn't process it for whatever reason. It could be genetics. It could be family. It doesn't matter. That experience has now gotten stuck in your nervous system. And now you're experiencing symptoms, emotional symptoms, sometimes physical symptoms. That's trauma. A traumatic events are the things we can all universally agree are bad. Like assault is bad and sexual trauma is bad and natural disasters are bad. But traumatic events don't always create trauma, which is really important to note. You can survive a really horrific traumatic event and not sustain any long-term symptoms. Why? Why? Because bodies are weird. Because brains are weird. Maybe you have a really resource nervous system and you had an amazing set of caregivers and life has been so good to you that after you survived a bad event, you had enough people in your community to surround you and take care of you. I don't know what, I don't know why. But a traumatic event doesn't necessarily cause trauma. Now a trauma-inducing events, those are things that people get mad at me about because they shouldn't be trauma. Like getting stuck in traffic shouldn't cause trauma. Going to the dentist shouldn't cause trauma. Nevertheless, if you have sexual trauma, going to the dentist is a very, very big deal. And there are reasons why those two things are linked, but people will come into my office all the time. Like I don't understand I was at the dentist and all of a sudden I'm shaking and sweating and crying. I couldn't get through a cleaning. This shouldn't be so traumatic. It's not that deep. What's the problem? Well, okay. So going to the dentist isn't a traumatic inherently events. But that for you was a trauma-inducing events. Does that make sense? It's so important to use the right language. So non-bad events can cause trauma. Bad events don't necessarily cause trauma and trauma is brain indigestion. Hi, it's Mark Bitman from Food with Mark Bitman. Friends a word from the folks at Whole Foods Market. Customers love shopping at Whole Foods Market on holidays like Thanksgiving and Mother's Day. 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No, and there's a point to which it can become emotional self-harm to just constantly ruminate on the sad things and look at the sad photos and watch the sad videos and listen to the sad music. So again, I trust that when people read my work and listen to me speak, that they know how to nuance, that I'm not saying go dive around in pain and be sad all of the time. I am saying to the degree that you have actual sadness that you're not dealing with, there are going to be problems. So you don't have to live there, but our efforts to escape uncomfortable feelings usually result in some sort of addictive or compulsive or problematic behavior. Again, it doesn't always have to be, you know, code red types of things. Sometimes it's insomnia. Sometimes it's, I date the same person over and over again and I don't know what's wrong with me. Sometimes it's, I just can't seem to power down and relax. But this idea that you should only feel the positive feelings. I don't even like the words positive and negative. I have a real beef with that because one implies good and one implies bad. I much prefer there are comfortable feelings and somatic states and there are uncomfortable feelings. But neither is good. This binary of only have good thoughts and feelings sets us up for a lot of really bad things. So if you have uncomfortable, like legitimately uncomfortable stories, sensations, memories, experiences, promise you, you can't just move on because past is a construct. It's not like you can leave your history and not take it with you. I just want to leave the past in the past. Well, that's a great metaphor, but physiologically, that is not the reality of how bodies work. Your body takes all of your experiences with you wherever you go. So it doesn't mean you have to dumpster dive in every bad thing that's happened. But if you're noticing that you have some problems in an area, I would venture to guess there's probably some uncomfortable stuff we should probably examine. Yeah. Well, speaking of which, Dan Pink had something really interesting to say about negative emotions when we had him here. And I wanted to bring back a clip to listen. We are over-indexed on positive emotions. And we've been taught somehow that you should always be positive, you should always think positive. And you should vanish, then you should vanish the negative that you should always look forward and never look backward. And here's the thing, that's a really bad idea, but it comes from a decent place because what we know is that positive emotions are enormously important. You want to have positive emotions. There are benefits to optimism. You want to have more positive emotions than negative emotions. But the thing is we've gone too far in saying that you should only have positive emotions and that negative emotions, particularly our most common negative emotion regret, is somehow dangerous, that it weakens you. I wanted to hear your take on that, given what you just said. If I didn't have a mic in front of me, I'd be screaming like, "Yeah, for the land this works so much." And it's true, it's getting rid of the positive and the negative altogether, let's just look at what's true. Because if you're rah-rah positive at the expense of your pain, then you're lying to yourself. If you're, "Oh, I'm an E-or and I'm spinning in the negative," then you're ignoring the reality of your resources, which is also bad. So rather than even trying to focus on positive or on negative, I like to just look at it as what's true, like what is true? And if you look at the context of your life, the container, if you look at it from a bird's eye view, it is really unlikely for most people, especially people who are listening to this podcast, that you're only going to find good things and it is equally unlikely that you are only going to find bad things. And confirmation bias, we know we're going to seek out what we believe and then attach our stories to that. But if you can look at what is true, you're going to find things like sadness and pain and regret and you're going to find things like feeling connected and feeling awe and inspired and feeling passionate and creative and joyful is really unlikely if you take an honest inventory of your life that you're going to come up with just one thing. So I love his work so much, so I fully two thumbs up to that. The other thing you said in this section was that the goal of therapy or any inner work is not to change yourself, it's to know yourself and then to conduct your inner orchestra with skill and compassion. We often think of soft compassion as the practice saying nice. It's funny because I feel like so many of us go to therapy with this idea that we need to fix something. I think that was one of the reasons that I like Sasha so much and now it makes complete sense as to why you had her write the forward to your book because I remember something that she said that really said to me, she said, you know, my job is not to fix you. She's like, you're already good. My job is to make you great. I love that. And yeah, I mean, we both come from a similar framework. We approach our work differently, but I love her work because she also sees humans as inherently capable and inherently not good. It's not a good bad thing. If you know how to know yourself, that means you're not going to be driven by your unconscious. Like Jung said, until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it faith. So you can go from good to great when you're not tripped up by all these unconscious forces. You can go from great to super great when you know how to contain uncomfortable feelings without running away from them. And so I really, and I think therapists largely get seduced by this idea that their job is to fix people. You know, people ask me all the time, how do you listen to, you know, all this pain and all this stuff without, you know, going crazy? And it's like, my job isn't to fix people because I don't see them as broken. My job is to help them organize these pieces, give them information, and then they can do or not do with the information, whatever they choose. And so people don't need to be fixed. They need to be assisted and helped and encouraged, but I don't fundamentally believe people are broken. And I say this as someone who was diagnosed with severe mental illness, and I still take meds. None of this is a call to stop meds are great. I take meds the same reason I wear shoes because life is easier to walk around in when I'm wearing shoes or when my brain is medicated. So fine. But that does not mean that I'm broken. It just means, you know, this particular pathway is going left when I want it to go right. That's, you know, obviously metaphorical. People aren't broken and I need to be fixed if someone is coming into my office and that's their orientation. The entire therapy is screwed from the jump because they've already lost track and completely lost connection with their inherent capacity, you know, like not all people do good things and not all people might, the whole nature of goodness and evil, like I don't even touch that. But generally for the most part, you know, with outliers taken out of the equation, people are capable of a lot more than they give themselves credit for and are capable of a lot more than we give themselves credit for. I've had parents come to me with their adult children and they're like, I don't understand the failure to launch syndrome and whatever. And I'm like, because you treat them like they're broken. When you pay all their bills and you take them on your vacations and you have a 30 year old who can't hold a job and can't do this or that, it's because you continue to see into them as broken versus looking into them as whole people who may need a little help or information or encouragement or assistance. But we don't need to fix people. I am not in the fixing people business. Well, let's talk about boundaries, speaking of parents, you know, I really love the way that you broke down the idea of boundaries, conflict language and conflict contracts. And then I thought to myself, yeah, I have no idea how this would ever work with my mom. In her world, it's either her way or no way. So that's our conflict contract with my mom is to avoid it is what my dad and I have decided. I come from a very, very long Island Jewishy family and when I learned about boundaries, this is so funny. I was so excited. I was like, Oh my gosh, I have discovered the secret sauce to relationships. And I was so excited. At that point, I was still very enmeshed with them and I said, I learned about this boundary thing. And my father says to me, Britt boundary is the most disgusting word a child can ever say to a parent. I was like, okay, and see this. These are. Nope. Okay. Got it. Noted. So yeah, you need to have a willing partner for conflict contracts and conflict language. Those are a relational strategy assuming two people are consenting. If you don't have a consenting partner for conversation, then it'll be on you to figure out where your lines are and how to set and enforce them. Yeah. Well, I had a friend. I was talking to India once about this. We were having dinner and we're talking about boundaries and I, you know, we were talking about previous relationships. And I said, you know, like if I found one common pattern between all my relationships, it was a lack of boundaries. And we both had this sort of moment of yet, but the first time you ever express a boundary, it's like the most terrifying thing because especially if it blows up in your face, you know, where the other person gets pissed off. So how do you do this in a way that, you know, you hold your ground? I mean, like, I, I remember, I finally got to the point where I was like, okay, this is a boundary. Like I had this goal. I was dating who was just really mean to me on the phone and like I didn't talk to the next day. And then, you know, when she called on Sunday, I was like, you know what, we need a boundary here. None of what you said the other night is acceptable and it's not, you know, that's not okay. Yeah, I mean, ultimately didn't work out, but whatever, that that's for a whole host of other reasons. But, you know, with that in mind, like, you know, how do you do this in a way that doesn't just feel, you know, like it's going to, I think we're all afraid because particularly in relationships, I think there's always this feeling that if I set this boundary, express this boundary of the relationship will end. And real talk, sometimes that happens. And this goes back to what we were saying about contending with the unpleasant and uncomfortable realities of our lives. There are many times where once you set a boundary, a relationship is going to ends. And that is unfathomable for some people, particularly when we're talking about things like parents or spouses or siblings. It's really, really tragic. And that's where I'm really big on grief work being a very necessary part of whatever changed you're trying to make, whether it's relationally or whatever else. But the reality is, is for some times, with some people, setting a boundary, no matter how gentle, no matter how appropriate, no matter how skillfully you execute it, is going to create a state where the relationship is no longer available in any form. And that's sad. And that's reality. So the answer to your question is, how can you do this and preserve the relationship? The, the, hit the answer is, you just need to hope that the person that you're, you know, people who are safe who genuinely want the relationship to work might be hurt by your boundaries, but they'll understand them, particularly if you're setting a boundary from a, you know, boundary, I say this in the book, boundaries are not about dominating a person. They're about preserving the relationship. And so your intent with it isn't to shame them or, or control them or force them to do something. A boundary is a way of saying, I care about you enough that I really want this relationship, but here's my line where I'm no longer willing to cross it because I can't betray myself and abandon myself and hope this relationship continues to work. But the loss of relationship is one of the reasons that it's one of the hidden benefits that keep people stuck because if you set boundaries, you are guaranteed to lose relationships. Now that said, once you learn how to set boundaries with healthy people, they're beautiful for preserving relationships because that's boundaries, stave off resentments, they stave off a lot of things because when you know who you are and what you're about and what hurts you and what you're okay with, then you can stand your ground. And boundaries also don't have to be a hammer. I was a little resultless with my boundaries when I learned them. I'm like, this is my boundary. And sometimes you can use like a match to light a candle. You don't need to use a blowtorch to light a candle. But you can ask yourself when you're setting them, you know, what, how strong are the boundaries needed here and be ready to contend with the reality that, yeah, it could end the relationship. And that is unfortunate. Well, speaking of relationships, let's talk about love and friendships and then finish this up by talking about family. I think the thing that I really appreciated was you said that, you know, projection bonding is the thing that happens when you're attracted to the qualities other people have, but you think you lack. And you go into these three Ds of, you know, friend finding where, you know, you say differentiating between movie relationships and real relationships, defining the roles we want our partners to play and deconstructing toxic fairy tales that keep us stuck. And that fairy tale thing is something that I have probably come across in damn near every book that mentions anything about relationships. And I remember, I think it was in Emily Fletcher's book, how to stress lesson accomplishments. He said the three most toxic words to ever come out of Hollywood. Are you complete me? Yeah, I'm so bad. Yeah. It's so bad. And it's so true. And again, I'm not a downer. I love a good love story. I love a good fantasy. But the problem is is that these relational things that we see portrayed in fiction are in no way reflective of reality. I call it relational porn. I'm like, yeah, that looks great, doesn't it? Like that looks awesome. But like that's not actually how it works in real life. One of the things being you complete me like that one just makes my blood boil or like, you know, Romeo and Juliet were 13 and Beauty and the Beast is a Stockholm syndrome situation. And you can diagnose almost every fairy tale romance with a real pathological problem. But the reality of intimacy in our current human state is it doesn't look anything like that. And that's okay. And that does like a very simple example is my husband and I don't sleep in the same room. Because we don't like each other. It's because both of us being half unconscious together being pissy because I steal the covers and he snores and that means we both wake up, unrested and resentful. And so we sleep in separate rooms and that horrifies people when they learn that like it is truly disrupted like I have I can't even tell you how many people clutch at their pearls and they're like, you don't sleep in the same room. Like no, and our relationship works really well with that particular product. I'm not saying everyone needs to do that, but I don't share well with others at night. So you know, why should we we shouldn't have to? But pop culture tells us that it's even called sleep divorce, which is a terrible way to describe it. It's not that deep. It's we sleep in separate rooms because good night's sleep is important for relationships and we don't get a good night's sleep in the same bed. Okay, but all the fairy tale romances don't actually portray that or if you want to be cheeky, sex on the beach is always portrayed in movies as this romantic thing. But if you've ever done it, it's like really unpleasant, you know, like you can separate and differentiate the fantasy from the reality by not feeling bad when the reality doesn't mirror the fantasy because not only will it not, it shouldn't. Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that was like such an issue for me for a long time. Like, I thought things would play out the way they do in the movies. And then I was like, you know what, if you stand outside of some girl's window with a boombox playing Peter Gabriel, you're going to get arrested. She's not going to fall in love with you. Yeah. For anybody listening who doesn't get the reference, yeah, you're too young. It's such a good movie, though, but it's true. And this idea of infatuation, Twilight, forget you complete me. The whole Twilight series, like that one just makes me clot. I face a little bit because that's infatuation and boundaries cannot coexist. You cannot have infatuation and also maintain healthy boundaries. And so this, I want these marathon dates that people go on and I did it too. And I get it because the marathon dates feel really good and they're fun, but like cocaine feels really good and it's really fun too until it's not. So your brain can only handle like an hour and a half on a first date. And we're not taught that. It should be set. We talked on the phone all night and we watched the sunrise. I'm like, that's infatuation and that's like turning your brain into spring break cocktail party mode. And that's not good. Yeah. No, I, you know, I completely relate because I remember we had Daniel Lieberman who wrote the molecule of more and he's talking about dopamine and he made this distinction between compassionate love and companion love. And he's like, you know, that that butterfly feeling that you have at the beginning relationship, that's inevitably going to go away. And a lot of people don't realize that. Well, and the butterfly feeling is like your body diverting blood to your extremities to prepare it to get away from a lot like sometimes the butterfly thing is a sign from your nervous system that this person is not good for you. But when we mistake intensity for attraction and intimacy, then we wonder why we wake up the next morning in bed with a lion. It's like, no, just because you feel attraction and butterflies, that could mean that your nervous system is in a state of disarray, not in a state of, I have now found my person. It's tricky. It's very tricky. Well, let's finish up by talking about two final things. You say that we all come from dysfunctional families, dysfunctional family is not a category. It's a continuum. I appreciated that so much. I thought to myself, yeah, you know, I realized it was like every family is dysfunctional to varying degrees. It's not a it's not I'm not shaming people and I'm not equating people, but there's just no way that there's such a thing as a quote normal or healthy or fully functional family system. Every family has their stuff every single one. That's why I love the Adams family because they are weird, but their dynamics are spot on like they nailed it on every single level. Yeah. Well, this final line, I think, was one of the things that was probably I would say my favorite line of the book, you said, you don't need readiness. You only need willingness as you shift out of stuff, expect to encounter discomfort. And the reason I think this struck me so much is I see this with people who say they want to do some sort of creative project. They want to write a book. They want to do this other thing. And they have this sort of like mythical date in the future when they think they're going to be ready to do this thing. Why is that and how do they stop believing in that mythical date when they'll supposedly be ready? So, I'm going to start when is a very tempting fantasy because we know that when you're fantasizing about a future outcome, you get a little bit of a dopamine rush from doing it. It's sort of like, you know, I'm thinking about it and I'm talking about it. So my brain thinks it's happening and that gets me just high enough that I can continue putting off the thing because again, there are the benefits to not doing the thing and there are the stories and the narratives, but this, I must take a big step and I will do this project when that's a narrative that keeps everybody stuck. You don't need to be ready, you don't need to feel like it, you don't need to be motivated, you just need to start doing it and I'm a big fan of the, I call it the micro yes. It's sort of like in the same zone as the atomic habits ideology. If you're going to start writing your novel next Tuesday, what's a micro yes you can do today? It might be you get out a notebook and put it on your night side table. If you want to launch a business next month, what's a micro yes you can say yes to today? Because as long as you keep giant outcomes and goals in your mind, you're not going to start saying yes to things and saying yes is what gets the momentum for these things to get completed. Thinking about it, feeling like it, being ready to do it is not, not only is that not necessary, but that idea is completely counterproductive. So instead of what do I want to do when it's what can I say yes to today? No matter how small. Like the teeniest, tiniest, yes, is still a yes and those compounds. You know, it's funny. Ryan Holiday told me that he never talks about a book until he's finished with it. And if you look at his Instagram feed, you'll notice when it comes to his books, the only thing you ever see about his books are the finished manuscripts when he splits them. Now you've given me the scientific explanation for why. It's very, very smart because when you're talking about the thing and you're fantasizing about the thing, you are going to use up all your brain bandwidth that you need to actually do the thing. So yes, sick goals, but then, you know, put the goal on the shelf, forget about it and find where are your yeses because those little and then don't talk about your yeses. Keep it close to your chest. Because again, when people have well-meaning feedback, they could be discouraging accidentally. It's like you don't want to share these little brain seeds until they can stand on their own, so to speak. Amazing. Well, this has been awesome. You've packed this with so many valuable nuggets and insights. So I have one final question for you, which is how we finish all of our interviews at The Unmistakeable Creative. What do you think it is that makes somebody or something unmistakable? What do I think? That's a good question. What do I think it is that makes someone unmistakable, self-knowledge without shame? Mm. Beautiful. Amazing. Well, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to join us and share your story. Your wisdom and your insights with our listeners. Where can people find out more about you, your work, the book, and everything else they're up to? Thank you so much. So my website is scienceofstuck.com. I am unboundary on Instagram, so come say hi to me there. It's just @britfrank and Brit has two T's and you can buy the book The Science of Stuck wherever books are sold. Amazing. And for everybody listening, we will wrap the show with that. 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