Ep #325: The Antidote to Emotional Outsourcing with Abbie Attwood

This is Feminist Wellness, and I’m your host, Nurse Practitioner, Functional Medicine expert, and life coach Béa Victoria Albina. I’ll show you how to get unstuck, drop the anxiety, perfectionism, and codependency so you can live from your beautiful heart. Welcome, my love, let’s get started.

Hello, hello, my love. I hope this finds you doing so well. This week, I am sharing an interview, a conversation I recently had with Abbie Attwood. Abbie is an anti-diet, fat positive, weight inclusive nutritionist. Her practice is grounded in self-compassion and an intuitive approach to help you heal your relationship with food, movement, and your body. Those are her words, and they're really great words. 

Abbie is really frigging awesome and she's the kind of voice we need right now in the health, wellness, and nutrition space because she's based in logic and science and evidence and being really kind. And so it was an absolute delight to be on her show, and we had such a profound conversation that I wanted to share it with you here.

She makes an absolutely incredible point at the end of our conversation, so make sure you listen all the way through so you don't miss it. I could ramble on for quite a while, but I shan't. I'll just hand it over to past me and past Abbie. Take it away.

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Abbie Attwood: I had to hit record real fast just now because we're having some tech problems and we had a moment where we could both hear each other.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It was a magical moment. It was awesome. We both got to put perfectionism behind, right?

Abbie Attwood: Yeah, we said fuck perfectionism because that's what we're here to talk about today.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: To hell with it today. That's right. I'll stop interrupting you though. God, I’m being such a New Englander. Go on.

Abbie Attwood: Hey, but I understand. I've had to really address that in myself as a podcast host because it's really inappropriate on a podcast and I do it all the time, but it's just because I get so excited. It's a New England thing.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It's a New England thing. As a Latina, it's very much we all talk over each other, and I know your people are Armenian. I can imagine y'all talk over each other. Oh, and you're Italian. We were built to talk over each other.

Abbie Attwood: We were built to talk over each other. I'm Armenian and Italian. We just shout at each other.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Yeah, 100,000%. So, what are you going to do?

Abbie Attwood: I don’t know. I'm doing my best. I'm doing my best here. Throwing perfectionism out the window.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: That's all there is.

Abbie Attwood: Should I tell everyone who I'm talking to?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Listen. I suppose. They might they might like it. I don't know. Try it? See if they like it? It's your show.

Abbie Attwood: So, I am here with Béatriz Albina. How did I do? How did I do?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Well done. You did such a great job.

Abbie Attwood: Okay. Let me read your bio real quick before we dive in because I have a feeling this conversation could just go in seven billion directions. You, Béatriz Albina, are a master certified somatic life coach, UCSF trained family nurse practitioner, and breathwork meditation guide with a passion for helping humans socialized as women reconnect with their bodies and minds so they can break free from codependency, perfectionism, ding, ding, ding, and people pleasing and reclaim their joy. 

You're the host of the Feminist Wellness podcast, trained in somatic experiencing, hold a master's degree in public health from Boston University School of Public Health and a BA in Latin American Studies from Oberlin College. Béatriz has been working in health and wellness for over twenty years and lives on occupied Munsee Lenape territory in New York. Did I pronounce that last thing right?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Yeah.

Abbie Attwood: How do you say it?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: People say Munsee Lenape.

Abbie Attwood: Munsee Lenape. Okay. We have a weird amount of like, we were talking about this geographically, a weird amount of things in common. Boston, San Francisco, New England. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It's pretty great. 

Abbie Attwood: It’s amazing. I felt like as soon as I saw you, I was like, oh, we get each other.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: We get each other. We talk over each other. We get it.

Abbie Attwood: It’s going to annoy everyone, but we're going to have fun. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Listen, and I know Paklava is the better version because I grew up with a lot of Armenian - Paklava with a P, that's the one. Because I grew up with a lot of…

Abbie Attwood: Yes. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: I grew up at the Martesian's house. I was there like every day after school.

Abbie Attwood: Oh yeah. Oh, it's good. God.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It's good stuff. So much honey.

Abbie Attwood: Speaking of food, what's on your plate? Food wise? What's just something you're loving lately?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It's soup season and I am a fool for soups. And so yesterday I made like a lemongrass, garlic, ginger with like these big fat fresh rice noodles I got down the street. That was dope. We made milanesas, which are like, it's actually illegal in Argentina to say they're like schnitzel, so I won't do that. But it's like a pounded steak battered and pan fried, or you can bake them.

Abbie Attwood: Ooh. That sounds amazing. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: And then there's an Argentine bakery up the street that makes empanadas. And I've been loving two beef empanadas for breakfast. In my 40s, really thinking about those protein goals. It really it sets me up for a great day. If I eat a ton of beef first thing in the morning. A more Argentine thing could never be said, huh?

Abbie Attwood: I love that. I love that. You're going real savory in the mornings right now.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: What about you? Do you like a savory breakfast?

Abbie Attwood: I like both, but I tend to be like a sweet breakfast person. You know, I love a cinnamon raisin bagel. That's what I had this morning. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Oh, look at you. 

Abbie Attwood: I do love a bowl of cereal. I love oats. A good yogurt bowl with like fruit and granola and that kind of thing. So yeah, I do tend towards that and then the rest of the day I'm like very savory. But yeah, I know. I appreciate…

Béatriz Victoria Albina: I love bodies. 

Abbie Attwood: Yeah. I know. Yeah. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: I love how different all our bodies are. If I had that much carb in the morning, I would be asleep by like 9:01. Bodies. So amazing.

Abbie Attwood: What about life wise? What's on your plate with life?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: I just finished a book. It's so exciting. It took about 200,000 million bajillion years. 

Abbie Attwood: Oh my God, congratulations. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Thank you. Yeah, writing and editing and then getting it like back and forth with the editors, wow. So it's called End Emotional Outsourcing. It comes out in September of 2025. Maybe I could come back and talk about it a little more when the pre sales go…

Abbie Attwood: Of course.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Thank you. It’s really exciting. Yeah, it's published by Hachette. It's a real labor of love and I'm I can't wait to like meet it and have it meet the world.

Abbie Attwood: Oh, it's a birth of sorts, right? It's going to hurt. You know, labor of love and pain. Oh, I'm really happy for you and that's just like a huge achievement. So I can't - and I know like a lot of what you and I are planning on talking about today is probably a lot of stuff that you've written have written about in that book. So people will get a little taste. Get a little taste. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Yeah, that'd be great. Right on. 

Abbie Attwood: Do you want to tell so speaking of kind of we talked about perfectionism already just a little bit. Just a little bit. And I want to get into that today. I want to get into overfunctioning you mentioned, right? For your book, and really help people understand like what those are from just we can even just like a definition standpoint. But I'm curious what brought you into this work. Like I'm assuming there's some kind of personal story there. A lot of us, when we have experience with something and come through it, we also want to kind of help others.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Be of service for sure.

Abbie Attwood: Yeah. I'm curious about how you got to doing what you're doing now and why you focus on what you focus on.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Yeah, so I definitely have that like hero's journey kind of thing where I - Well, let me back up. I created a new term, which is emotional outsourcing. And it's the term I use as like an umbrella term to talk about our codependent, perfectionist and people pleasing habits. And I came up with this term and I trademarked it. Who's a smarty pants now, right? Because it's so good. 

Because I grew up with all of those habits. I had all of those habits so hard, Abbie. I had like a PhD in those habits. But I never identified with the words. I was not a perfectionist. I was constantly messing up. I was not a people pleaser. People were so displeased with me. And codependent? I wasn't codependent. I mean, unless you think I am. Do you think I am? Haha. 

So the terms kept me and the popular understanding of the terms kept me from getting support, from getting care, from living life in an interdependent way. So I rebranded it. And so I came to this work because my life, my relationships, my relationship with self were just, I'm going to say suboptimal as like a way to be kind to me. I was not living the life the way I wanted to and I was frankly in one crappy relationship after the other with friends, partners, jobs, careers. Those relationships were not what I wanted. 

And I define emotional outsourcing as when we chronically and habitually source our sense of the three most vital human needs, safety, belonging, and worth from everyone and everything outside of ourselves instead of from within to our own detriment. And I was doing that hard. So now I'm here to help others live life in a really different way. And it was also the thread through I saw clinically. I had a functional medicine practice in Manhattan. I was a primary care provider before that. 

And I would see people with IBS belly aches that would get way better on the right supplements, the right nutrition, the right, right, right, right. And then they'd go visit their mom or have a big deadline at work that they made about their entire personality, right? And their digestion would take a nose dive, their thyroid function would go to hell. You know what I'm saying, right? And so here I am combining all these things and it's pretty cool work.

Abbie Attwood: Can you repeat how you defined emotional outsourcing again?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Yeah, it's a good one. When we chronically and habitually, I'm talking to the point that it's not intentional. We've lost our capacity to live intentionally. Right? Because these habits have taken over our neural networks, our nervous system, the way we respond and react to life. So chronically and habitually source our sense of worth, safety, and belonging from everyone and everything outside of ourselves instead of from within to our own detriment.

Abbie Attwood: What's interesting about that is, of course, as human beings, we are going to do that. That's biologically just hardwired in us, but what is important that you added to that is that it is detrimental and also not - it’s like we are going to do that. That's part of being a human.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Totally.

Abbie Attwood: But you're saying we're doing that instead of seeking some information internally and also it's harming us.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Exactly. Exactly. People often ask me like, wait, is it bad to get validation from others? No, girl. I’m Argentine and a New Yorker. Tell me I have beautiful hair. Compliment me, please. But I already know it. Right? So when someone's like, damn, your hair looks great. I'm like, I know. Thank you.

And so the metaphor I use is be the cake. Be the cake. Know that you are a perfect fudgy chocolate tort or the most moist delicious carrot cake or whatever the hell kind of cake you want to be and let the world be your icing. Let the validation, the safety from others, because of course we get safety from others. We co-regulate our nervous systems. The belonging that others offer, let that be icing on your perfection. 

Abbie Attwood: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, no. I mean, and I think this is so important because I think you and I are speaking in January. It's early January right now and you know, I think this comes, you know, into full swing with resolution season. And there's also a lot going on right now in the world, not that there isn't always, but especially in this moment culturally, politically, in the states, it's a really stressful time for people. It's been a really emotional time for people. 

We're coming off the holiday season, but we're also coming off an election. There's a lot of people grieving. There's a lot of people just sitting with a ton of fear, like a ton of fear. And so I think what I would love to talk about with respect to this emotional outsourcing, but also just all of the kind of the habits that start being detrimental to us that are born out of that emotional outsourcing and how that's contributing to just living in a state of a lot of anxiety and catastrophic thinking and how that harms us. 

You know, because I think this podcast I talk a lot about obviously the body and experiencing the world in the body and we talk about disordered eating and divesting from diet culture and basically what that is is divesting from systems of oppression like patriarchy and white supremacy and right? So we're saying, how do we live a life that's authentic to us? Which is part and parcel of not emotionally outsourcing. Is that right? Am I saying…

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Absolutely 100%. Yeah, there's in order to prioritize everyone else, authenticity has to go to the bottom of your list. You cannot be you and be profoundly invested in other people's thoughts as the rule of law around your own worth.

Abbie Attwood: Yeah, yeah. How would you explain then to someone listening? I love, by the way that you said earlier how you never - like it didn't resonate with you that you are perfectionist, like it didn't resonate with you that you were people pleaser.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Totally. Totally.

Abbie Attwood: I particularly relate to not feeling like a people pleaser because I've always been kind of a rebel. And so of course I think, oh no, I fuck everybody, whatever. But in effect, I'm like rebelling and then I'm like, oh my God, but do they like me? 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: But do you think I'm smart enough and good enough and pretty enough and thin enough and good enough? Whatever. 

Abbie Attwood: I’m okay doing my thing over here and I don't care what y'all are doing, but also, please don't judge me. Right? So I think it's just interesting to see ourselves in all of this stuff and how that people pleasing is about, yeah, like we're all doing it in our own way. But I guess I'm curious, how do you see emotional outsourcing leading to anxiety, leading to living from like a fear-based place? Can you talk about that relationship?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: At its core, our young nervous system didn't get what it needed to be able to have the locus of safety be internal. Right? It's always external. Everything's always outside of us. And so anxiety, stress is normal. Just ask any Buddhist suffering is inherent. And the way we react to it, rather the way we respond to it, when we feel safe inside of ourselves, with ourselves, when we trust ourselves, when we're in our authenticity, when we're in our authenticity, we trust our own voice. 

So when that voice inside says, this is not the dark alley into which thou shalt walk tonight, please turn the fuck around and go home, we listen to the voice. And so that dark alley is a career, a relationship, a text message, right? With your ex, a diet, etcetera. You trust the voice that says, oh no, honey. No, no, no, no, not today. 

But when everyone else knows more about you, when everyone else is the arbiter of your worth and your value and whether it's frankly okay for you to be living and breathing, when you hear that voice, you don't trust it. Because that's not one of your core life values, self-trust. Because you've you were divorced from it so early on in order to fit into your family, fit into your culture, your religion, your schooling. You had to leave self behind in order to be appreciated, approved of, fed. Right? In order to feel physically, emotionally, energetically, spiritually safe in the world.

Abbie Attwood: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: And so when the world tells you there's something wrong with your body, there's something wrong with who you are, with how you are, you're buying it. Of course you are. That's your programming, right? Your operating system is, they know more about me than I do.

Abbie Attwood: When we're operating, which most of us are from that place of, you know, really fearing judgment from other people because to your point, like that does feel like a threat to our very survival and safety. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Yeah, existential. Yeah. 

Abbie Attwood: Yeah, it really is. And that's why, you know, we so quickly go to, oh I need to change my body or I need to do this because we actually literally feel like it's our life that's in danger. You know, that's the feeling we get. And how do you then suggest or help people move from that place to a place of more trust and I do this with my clients all the time when it comes to food, when it comes to their body and like working through like why are we afraid of what other people think about these choices, right? Like investigating. If someone's coming up against that though like of this like, well I really but I'm really just so uncomfortable with other people judging my choices or maybe not feeling or maybe misunderstanding me, you know? Like why I'm doing what I'm doing.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Right. That's a big one.

Abbie Attwood: Yeah. I've personally - that was my big thing. I think that was what I was trying to describe to you with the rebel thing of like, I don't care like I'm going to do my own thing, but I what I really hate, a core, core, core fear of mine is when people misunderstand me. I'm okay doing my own thing, but I don't want people to see me doing that and then think I'm doing it for some reason that I'm not. Right? That was a thing in my childhood. 

But yeah, so if someone's really coming up against this and really struggling with like just the fear of other people's opinions of them. How do you help somebody through this? How do we get to a place where we're feeling less threatened by that?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: The issue is multifactorial and so the support, the remedies, of course will be. Some of which include increasing somatic presence, increasing embodiment, understanding the why and addressing the opposite of it. So, to slow it down, if, for example, the issue is if I may, being misunderstood.

Abbie Attwood: Yeah, go ahead.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Working with our inner children, with our parts to bring some of Richard Schwartz's, Dick Schwartz's internal family systems work in, working with the part that holds that fear. And working with that part to help it feel understood by self. Right? So when we understand our motivations, we can stand up and support ourselves again in the face of someone's misunderstanding. Right? When it's clear internally that we've got our own back, it begins to matter less and less what people think. 

Now, that's really cute philosophically, but I we're both practical women, right? With New Englanders, right? So what the hell does that look like? Okay. Here's where I start and I think you're going to like this one. We need to begin to hear our own voice again because obviously in this whole process it was wildly lost. So I start with our morning beverage. 

So most people, we wake up in the morning, you make a cup of coffee and you drink it the way your parents did. Right? The way it was served at home growing up. Most of us don't think it through. We just do the thing we do because it's the thing we've always done. I mean, I don't know, it's just coffee. Whatever, right? So what if we slowed down? And what if the result was still the same? You still had the same black coffee or extra, however you want it, but you paused and you asked your body. Hey body, what would you like to start this day? 

And what if every once in a while you heard, yeah, a really big glass of water. I was mouth breathing all night and I'm freaking patched. Or I don't know cup of tea actually sounds great. Or maybe you just hear black coffee every day, but you asked your body. You asked yourself. And what we're doing is that old neural groove, that neural pathway in the brain that says, I don't matter. What do they want me to do? Right? Neural pathways we're not using start to shrivel after around 28 days. 

So we start to work a new neural pathway instead that says, my voice is the one that matters. What I ingest, what I choose, what I wear, what I think, what I whatever, listen to. My preference is now the one that matters. And so in my practice, I talk a lot about kitten steps. I don't know if you've met a baby, but their feet are really big. It's like two to three inches. I don't know these people who are out here talking about baby steps. I think they've never met a baby. That's very big. That's wild. I'm not going to take a baby step. Are you kidding me? Monstrous. 

Me, I'm taking a newborn kitten step. We're talking centimeters on this. Like teeny weeny, right? Tiny, tiny steps because there's very significant evidence that's how we make lasting, stable, sustainable change. So if you just start to hear your own voice by saying, what's for breakfast and listening? I mean, think back 10 minutes of tape ago, how excited we both got talking about breakfast. Right? You could hear it in our voices. Our nervous systems were grounded, but with that like, I'm doing what's right for me excitement. It's such a great example that we unwittingly provided of just actually asking your body. What do you actually want for breakfast? Do you want oatmeal? Do you want a croissant? Do you want two beef empanadas? 

And listening and then slowly doing the work to heed what you hear. And so this helps reclaim authenticity, reclaim your voice, reclaim self-trust, reclaim embodiment in a wildly, wildly unthreatening way for most animals. And if you have a history of eating disorders and asking your body about breakfast isn't the greatest choice, ask about socks. Ask about how you're going to do your hair. Do you know what I mean? Make it totally unthreatening and add something else that's unthreatening every day slowly to build this internal rapport. What do you think?

Abbie Attwood: Oh, I love. I mean, I think that you described, well, first of all, you described a lot of like the same way that I would approach this with someone in terms of embodiment. I think like that's what's really important is that we actually learn A, how to listen to what's happening inside of us, right? Because a lot of times we don't even like - listen to my body? What? Like what where am I listening? What's happening? But also just rediscovering preferences that are authentic to you. That's such a fun experiment. 

So one of the things that I have clients do sometimes is like go to the grocery store like you're a little kid and like go down aisles that you haven't gone down in a while because your diet always told you to shop the fucking perimeter or whatever it is, right? Go down and actually like look around and say, what do I want to try? What looks good to me? And try it, right? And so I mean, to go back to the example that you were talking about with me with my fear of being misunderstood that I kind of grew up with. 

The way that I have overcome that is actually just cultivating more and more trust in who I am because the more I know who I am, the less I have cared about what other people think because I know the truth and how could anyone else know more than I know about who I am, you know? And so exactly what you're saying is what I've experienced personally and I don't usually like to use myself as a personal example on here, but here we are. 

I mean, I think that perfectionism is kind of this like antidote to showing up authentically. Right? Like the more that we're seeking this illusion of perfection, the more that we're disconnecting from what you're talking about, which is that inner voice. Like if we're chasing after some arbitrary perfectionistic ideal out there, then we're totally just ignoring anything that's going on in our body. Am I hearing you right? Would you say that’s…

Béatriz Victoria Albina: 100%. Yeah. We're saying there's something out there that's better than me and I must strive and strive until I become it. While we could just all be Moira Rose. You know what I mean? We could just wear the ridiculous wig and outfit of our choosing. We could just be us.

Abbie Attwood: Yes. Yeah.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: And big note of compassion and care because like you alluded to, most of us learned that being ourselves was not okay. Of equal importance to learning to trust our own voice is having compassion for the meanie pants voice. Because gremlins don’t feed themselves pizza after dark. Right? White settler colonialism, late stage capitalism, the patriarchy, these systems feed those gremlins pizza. 

Okay, that silence was brought to you by trying not to talk over each other. That was really funny. Both of us had these - we're just being polite. But that was awesome because we both - it’s a podcast, but you we both had these super expectant faces on of like, yeah, what are you going to say? And? It was really cute. Yeah. And so because people often tell me they're not doing healing right. 

Abbie Attwood: Oh my God, I hear that all the time. You know, oh I feel like I took a step backward or whatever. No, no, no. That's part of the process of moving forward. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Ebbs and flows. 

Abbie Attwood: Always, right? And there's no right. And the idea that there's a right way to heal or for folks who relate to the word recovery with an eating disorder, for example, like the idea that there's any right way to do that and that there's any specific singular definition of what that looks like once you've “arrived” or the idea that you can arrive at all in any of this feeds that perfectionistic issue and also leads us to like what I mentioned this earlier that I wanted to touch on, which is like over-functioning, right? Like just really exhausting ourselves in pursuit of somebody else's idea of what this all should look like. Can you describe your definition of over-functioning?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: I thought you’d never ask. 

Abbie Attwood: I had a feeling this community, this pod community here might have a high percentage of over-functioners, lovingly said from a fellow over-functioner.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It’s all mirror work we’re doing here on these microphones. The very basic over-functioning is when we do things for others that they can do for themselves without they're asking towards the subconscious expectation that they will then provide us with the basic essential human needs that we are not able - we do not feel able to give ourselves. Right? It's part and parcel of emotional outsourcing. 

So we over-function to seek safety, to seek belonging, to seek worth, to seek value. Do you like me? Do you like me? Will you keep me? And it's subconscious. We're not out here like actively doing it. But with over-functioning versus generously giving from the heart, there is a cost both to ourselves and to the other person if they do not perform gratitude appropriately. 

And so my favorite example is my ex-mother-in-law who was a lot and she would buy us all sorts of - lived in this small Brooklyn apartment and she would come over with big crystal platters. Do you know what I mean? Like service for 12 that she found on sale somewhere like a yard sale and would be infuriated if we didn't want it. Right? It's the over-giving at a cost to everyone involved.

Abbie Attwood: Expectation of how they should react to that too, right?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: I mean, with all I do for you, you're not grateful? There's that with all I do for you. That's like sort of the theme of that martyrdom that comes with the over-functioning. And over-functioning is part and parcel of what I call the self-abandonment cycle, which is when we do this, we put our, “Sure, I'll drive you to the airport. Sure, I'll do it. Sure.” There's a lot of sure. The first, do you know what the only one diet I put people on? And it's the sure diet. What are you saying sure to me for? That's not consent. Excuse my feminism, but yes and no are consent. Sure, I'm not - we’re not moving forward. It's actually in my coaching. If I'm like, oh, you want coaching? Someone says sure, I say, I'm not coaching you. I don't have consent. I put everyone on a sure diet. It works wonders. What was my point where was I?

Abbie Attwood: Can I ask you a question about 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Stop me. No, please go. 

Abbie Attwood: Okay. So you're talking about over-functioning in this way of like kind of like giving and giving and giving and giving. What about the type of over-functioning that is more about very much about kind of control and controlling other people?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It's all about control.

Abbie Attwood: Yeah. So like just I'm going to do this because I can do it better or you know, that kind of thing where like…

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Sure.

Abbie Attwood: Not sharing responsibility because ultimately like you would rather just control the situation yourself. And so you wind up kind of taking all this on and not allowing other people to help you necessarily.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Which is seen as giving. Right? And so that then leans into that over that self-abandonment cycle, where we do and do too much for others until we hit a natural normal human mammalian expectable breaking point where everything inside us goes basta, no mas. And then what do you do? You throw a plate, you scream. And then oh, with all I do for you turns into with all I do for you. And then what happens? 

The guilt kicks in. The shame kicks in. Right? And so then what's your response to guilt and shame? Sublimate self, step out of authenticity, out of intentionality, shut down and do twice as much to like make up for it. Oh, I'm so sorry. I yelled. Listen, I did your laundry. I folded it. I put it in the drawers. I didn't like how your drawers were organized, so I re-organized everything. But I also didn't like your dresser, so I actually replaced it. And then you go above and beyond again until you explode again. 

And for some of us, it's not an explosion outward. I think for you and me genetically it is mandated that it be. But for some, it's just that like shut down until you're in so much dorsal shutdown in the nervous system that you are effectively dysfunctional to yourself and others. Fine, no, that’s fine, it’s fine, I’ll do it, whatever, fine, fine.

Abbie Attwood: So I think like this is - it feels like a virus.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It's an epidemic for sure.

Abbie Attwood: Yeah. And I think that there's very similar to what we were talking about before, which is just like other people's opinions of us and how that affects the way that we kind of behave. But I think something that's really hard to sit with or was for me, and what I had to work through was like just being bothered by the way something was done if I didn't take control of it and do it myself.

And just sitting in the discomfort of that. Like that's been the practice like over the last decade or something for me, which is like, okay, cool. Like if you don't do this and they do it a different way, and you know, then what? Okay. Like be with that. Like let that happen, Abbie. Let them do it that way and be okay. You got to talk to me about this because for an over-functioner, that is so hard, right? To release control, to not do it all. Like how do you what are, you know, you were talking we you and I were talking about like, okay, how can we be a little practical with this? Like practically how can somebody work through this?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: So I would start with the language we use. The language we use constructs our whole life.

Abbie Attwood: Totally.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: So for an over-functioner, so if you listen to my definitions, I don't talk about codependence. I don't talk about people pleaser, perfectionist. I talk about people with those habits. Right? Because when we are identifying with the label and saying that we are defective in that way, then that's what we are. Right? We're busted. We're broken. We need fixed. I'm not buying it. 

We are people with brilliant, amazing, incredible survival skills who learned to do these things because they were the best way to get through. Right? So it's like your baby sweater that your nana knit for you. It was a gorgeous teeny tiny sweater that fit a 12 pounder, doesn't fit you anymore. Is it a bad sweater? No. And you don't make that tiny sweater your entire personality.

It used to fit. Codependent thinking used to fit, over-functioning used to fit, doesn't fit anymore. So I would start with that, with divorcing ourselves from the very identity or the story that it's possible for it to be an identity. It's a habit I've had. So when it's just a habit, you have consciousness, you have choice, you have agency. 

Again, where is the locus of control? It can be within you to say, let's do this differently. So, in my program Anchored, we have a channel in our in our community that's called Dust Bunny Club and it's a place to brag about your house not being perfect. About leaving a dish in the sink overnight. Like those little things that for so many of us are wildly impossible to even contemplate. What if we could brag about it?

Abbie Attwood: I try to do this on Instagram. I don't know if people notice this, but like I have these plants that are dying all over my house. Like just shit like that, right? Yeah, I can't keep a plant alive. Okay.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Listen. We all have good skills, Abs. You know what I'm saying? Love it.

Abbie Attwood: But I think that matters like sharing more because I mean we live in a world now with social media, with everything. I mean, perfectionism is pushed in our face and we only see the stuff that people have curated in this particular way and then we hold ourselves to that same standard and constantly feel like we're failing.

And then over function, over function, over function, try to protect ourselves from judgment, from shame, from other people's opinions, try to control everybody else's opinions of us, of our house, of our job, of our whatever, of our body. And the reality is like we have no control over perception. And that's where we're like, I think running ourselves into the ground is believing that's the truth. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Right. Absolutely. And one of the tools that I teach is to think of the sort of units of emotional and physical energy that you have for the day. Which for humans who menstruate varies throughout the month, right? Like the whole spoons thing in the chronic illness community. So what if we all did an analysis, right? Sort of ran a check as it were and figured out how much emotional energy you have in the day. 

And when you look at it and you're like, I have after working this long day or spending this day with these screaming children or the cat barfing on the dog, how many units of functionality do I have? Oh, four. Okay, do I want to spend three of those vacuuming? Because I don't know, good housekeeping may drop by tomorrow. But like really, and this is going to sound so banal and so simplistic. I literally remember the day that I realized, it's the second law of thermodynamics, that I couldn’t - if I was doing something I didn't want to do, I was not doing something else. It hadn't sort of hit me that like making the kitchen squeaky clean 

Abbie Attwood: There’s an opportunity cost to that right? 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Well yes, but like I wasn't watching Moira Rose. I wasn't reading a book in a bath.

Abbie Attwood: That's what I mean. That's what I mean. Like by doing that thing, there's the opportunity cost is doing something that…

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Something that's like freaking useless. 

Abbie Attwood: Like joyful, easeful, just pleasurable, but pleasure is demonized, you know, right? Like so we just - and we feel guilty about that. Oh, I'm not doing enough if I'm not doing “anything.”

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Right. Which gets us to the real root cause of emotional outsourcing, which is shame Right? Guilt is I did an ooopsie. Shame is I am inherently broken.

Abbie Attwood: Yeah, I'm lazy, I'm bad, I'm - no one loves me. I'm not lovable. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Which is a huge part of why I totally reject the labels and that whole we're defective model because it propagates itself, right?

Abbie Attwood: Very like individualistic and like…

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Yeah, there's yeah, a sort of social compass is completely lost when you are the individual problem. But it just reifies itself, right? Because you're something for you to be ashamed about. And so really doing again, sort of that Buddhist work of like I am inherently good. And so here's where, if I may, teach a very simple tool that I absolutely love.

Abbie Attwood: Okay.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It's called Bridge Thoughts. So in my work is a combination of a cognitive behavioral theory sort of framework with Internal Family Systems and somatic experiencing and in the sort of CBT realm, I think about how there's a river of doubt running through our lives and we are on one side wanting to change our thoughts, right? To think something different about ourselves and the world, but we have to cross this river of doubt and so we need a bridge. 

Because if you're sitting here on any given Tuesday looking at your “dirty” house, a body you don't like. Like the list of 473 things, especially in January that we're like, everything about me is wrong and bad and must be changed immediately. You want to change your thoughts. In my world, we don't bullshit ourselves. Right? So I would never tell someone to be like, my new thought is I completely love myself and everything about my body is perfect. Because what's your brain going to say to that? 

Abbie Attwood: It’s going to call bullshit. Yeah, that goes back to the baby steps and even just like the case for neutrality. Right? 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Well, yeah, definitely the case for neutrality. And so the way to get to there is by creating some distance between yourself and the new thought by way of a thought you can believe. So let's use body image. I currently believe that it is possible that someday I may possibly believe that my body is not repulsive. And I really encourage folks to start that far away from the thought they want in order to not flood their nervous system, right? Like not freak your nervous system out and not bullshit yourself because your body will be like, oh, you're a liar. Oh, okay, great. Yeah, you love this. Yeah, bullshit. No, I'm not listening to anything you say. 

And so we do that slow work of embodiment and self trust so that we can take one adjective out every couple of weeks. And so from my body's not repulsive to my body's not horrible. To my body's not gross. To my body's right? And like get closer to my body's okay enough, maybe.

Abbie Attwood: Yeah. Or like I just wrote a whole piece on just divesting from even the idea that we're supposed to like what we look like in the first place. Like where did that come from? We don't need to love what our body looks like to treat it with respect, to be kind to it. Like perhaps the idea that we need to love what we look like is just something we've been fed by systems that profit from us feeling like our body isn't good enough ever, right? Like the point of having a body isn't to like its appearance. 

What is the point of a body? The point of a body is that we get to fucking be here on this earth. We get to be in a vessel that allows us to live, to love, to experience, to hold hands, to whatever it is. And it's like when did we first learn that the point of having a body is to look in the mirror and go, I love what I look like. Or we could say maybe that's just not the goal. And maybe making that the goal is the problem. You know? 

Like what if this body is not here to be objectified or looked at by me or by other people? You know, and that the systems are really what, you know, perpetuating that belief. So I don't know. I mean, there's so many angles, especially with the body. It's an interesting one.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Yeah, that's really fascinating. I have not thought about it in that angle. But it makes so much sense, right? When we are objectifying the body, we're not present in it.

Abbie Attwood: Exactly. We can't be present. We’re outside. It's a form of like body outsourcing to use your language of emotional outsourcing, right? It's like we're like living in this little camera outside of our body and like you can't be in your body if you're objectifying it.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: God, that's so good.

Abbie Attwood: And you also can't be in the world because like if we're objectifying ourselves and judging our body, like we're inherently doing that as we move through the world about other bodies around us, right? And so that impedes connection on like multiple levels and also just feeds these other systems that say like, there's a hierarchy of bodies in our society that based on the color of their skin, the size, the weight, the whatever, the ability, their gender, all these things. It's a mess. But it's like a beautiful mess and we're all just supposed to - we're all bodying through the world.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Right. And I think the only hierarchy that does actually matter is who has the most chocolate and can I have some?

Abbie Attwood: That's correct. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: So, science, folks. This comment brought to you by science. 

Abbie Attwood: So I know we are at our time and I want to like…

Béatriz Victoria Albina: No.

Abbie Attwood: I know. We could talk for hours and we didn't get to catastrophic thinking. We didn't give it…

Béatriz Victoria Albina: But okay wait, can I just say it real quick? Catastrophic thinking is just dysregulation in your nervous system. You just have way too much sympathetic overdrive and so you just need to learn how to regulate your nervous system. I have like 4,000 episodes about it. I'll come back. We'll talk more about it.

Abbie Attwood: I love it. We can do another app and we can talk about catastrophic thinking and anxiety. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Okay, I can't wait. Okay, great. Yay.

Abbie Attwood: Because it's a big one. That was a big one in my life and I know it is. And actually goes to the body image stuff a lot. People have a lot of catastrophic thinking about no longer dieting, right? Like what's going to happen. If they stop trying to control their body, then everything's going to go to shit. Their body's going to, whatever. There's all this kind of wild thinking. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Oh I know. I've seen it in clinic a lot. Meanwhile, it’s ridiculous. The type two diabetics in my family are some of the skinniest people I've ever met. Because yeah, your weight doesn't mean you're anything. 

Abbie Attwood: Health and weight not synonymous. We talk about that all the time here. So leave us with a little ray of sunshine hope for someone who's struggling with just the fear of external judgment, who's finding themselves in these like cycles of people pleasing and perfectionistic tendendencies and to use your beautiful term outsourcing their emotions, right? Emotional outsourcing. What's a little like, yeah, ray of hope, sunshiny, rainbow thing you would you would offer somebody who's kind of just in a really hard place with that right now.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: The people who are being meanie pants to you are not your people.

Abbie Attwood: That's true.

Béatriz Victoria Albina: But really, like that's what it comes down to. Humans will judge. I mean, you got to know which berry you're going to eat because one will do murder you and the other's the raspberry. We have to make split second judgments. So people are going to think you're too fat, too thin, too tall, too short, too loud, too quiet. That's going to happen. But the people who are on this earth, in this lifetime to love you as much as I love Abbie already. Those people, they're thinking nice thoughts about you. They really truly are.

Abbie Attwood: Oh my gosh. I could not be happier that you said what you just said. Because Isn't that the truth?

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It's the truth.

Abbie Attwood: Do you want those people to be your people then? No, you don't. You don't. And that's hard, but it's true. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: It gets so much easier once you believe it.

Abbie Attwood: It’s wonderful when you find your people. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: People are awesome. 

Abbie Attwood: And there's plenty of them. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: There's so many of them and they're really kind and they want to be kind to you. 

Abbie Attwood: Oh my God, and it's such a beautiful thing to be held and seen and loved for exactly who you are rather than something that's not you. That's not authenticity. Where can people find more about you? 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: Well, I have a present for your listeners. Isn't it exciting? 

Abbie Attwood: I love presents. Yes. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: I also love presents. So if you go to BeatrizAlbina.com/fullplate, you can download a suite of meditations, inner child exercises, nervous system orienting exercises for you, for free to say thank you. Isn't that fun?

Abbie Attwood: That's super fun. Super fun. We will put that in the show notes because that is very lovely. 

Béatriz Victoria Albina: And I have a podcast, Feminist Wellness and it's free wherever you get your shows. Come check it out. 

—

My love, what a potent conversation, right? And her point at the end about body image really got me thinking. I really appreciated her viewpoint on that and I hope you do too. So, once again, thank you for joining us. Thank you for listening in. Let's do what we do. Gentle hand on your heart should you feel so moved and remember, you are safe. You are held. You are loved. And when one of us heals, we help heal the world. Be well my beauty. I'll talk to you soon. Ciao.

Thank you for listening to this episode of Feminist Wellness. If you want to learn more all about somatics, what the heck that word means, and why it matters for your life, head on over to BéatrizAlbina.com/somaticswebinar for a free webinar all about it. Have a beautiful day, my darling, and I'll see you next week. Ciao.