Ep #332: You Don’t Need a Crisis to Grow

This is Feminist Wellness, and I’m your host, Nurse Practitioner, somatics and nervous system nerd, 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. Speaking of doing well, or not really, you know that moment when someone asks how you're doing, and you say, "Fine," but something in your voice gives it away. Fine. Like your body knows that what you're really feeling is flat or foggy or just a little too quiet inside. You're not fine, but you're telling the world you are. And that's who this episode is for. And that said, if you don't do that, I'm sure you know and love someone who does, so keep listening.

This episode is for the folks who look like they've got it together, who've checked most of the boxes: the career, the home, the relationships, all the things. You're productive, responsible, kind. Maybe you're even the one people come to for help. The strong one, the one no one checks in on because you're fine, right? 

And still, despite checking all the boxes, when it's quiet, really quiet, there's a weight or a hum, that persistent low buzz of disconnection. Somatic self-disconnection is my term for it. It's a kind of overwhelm. It's functional freeze. You're going through the motions of your life instead of living it.

And with all of that said, there's no big crisis. There's not really a crisis at all. There's no betrayal, no dramatic collapse, just this nagging knowing that something isn't quite right, that you're not as present, not as in your life as you want to be, as you know you can be.

And maybe you don't even feel like you get to complain about it because there's so much good in your life to be grateful for, because nothing is wrong, right? So you should be grateful? So you push it down, and you wait for a clearer sign, for an actual crisis so that you get to say, "I want my life to be different. I want things to change. I'm ready, willing, and able, but I don't know that I have permission. I don't know that it's okay. I don't want to seem ungrateful."

And all of that is what I want to talk about today, because one of the most dangerous ideas patriarchy has sold us, especially if you're a human socialized as a woman, is that you need to earn your healing, earn your joy, earn your pleasure. That when it comes to healing, you need to be falling apart before you're allowed to change, to spend time, money, energy, hope on yourself. That unless you're completely broken down, you don't really deserve support, right? Right. And that, my beauty, my love, my darling, is an old and yucky lie.

If you're new here, emotional outsourcing is the term I coined, and of course, trademarked, to describe the habit of giving away your emotional life to the people around you, relying on their validation, approval, moods, needs, and stories to determine how you feel, what you do, how you show up. It's my umbrella term to talk about our codependent, perfectionist, and people-pleasing habits, especially if you're like me and all those words just don't exactly fit, but you're doing all of the things that fit the definition.

A lot of folks with emotional outsourcing habits, especially the high-functioning ones, don't even realize they're doing it because it doesn't always look like chaos. It can look like selflessness, overgiving, over-functioning, always being the calm one, the fixer, the capable one, the one that gets called when everyone else's life goes to pot. Until one day, you realize you're burnt out, not just from work or caregiving or the news cycle, but from constantly abandoning yourself in small, invisible, insidious, painful ways.

You're tired because you've never been with yourself. You're disconnected because you've been busy managing everyone else's nervous system while never tending to your own. You've been wearing a mask for so long, you forgot it was a mask and that there's someone else under there. And because the world keeps spinning and your calendar stays full, you tell yourself, "I'll deal with it later. It's not that bad yet. It's not that bad yet. It's not that bad yet." And then a decade goes by.

So let's pause here. Because your nervous system likely believes it's not that bad yet. The vagus nerve, your body's highway of neuroception, is always scanning for cues of safety or threat. When you're in functional freeze, when you've got one foot on the gas of sympathetic activation (adrenaline, worry, stress, go, go, go), but you've got one foot on the dorsal disconnect (detached, shut down, deer in the headlights, can't feel your own feelings, numb inside)... wait, what?

That's functional freeze. You're getting the dishes done, you're responding to emails, you're picking up the kids, getting another grad degree, getting another certification, showing up at work, nodding and smiling at brunch, volunteering, and volunteering to volunteer and volunteer. Your nervous system gets tricked into thinking, "Oh, I guess this is fine. This must be fine. It must be fine. She keeps doing so much. She keeps adding things. So I guess we're surviving, so it's fine."

I hear you. But my love, surviving isn't thriving. And functional freeze, what looks calm on the outside, is actually a maelstrom on the inside. Sure, you're not panicking, you're not in chaos, but you're not really here, present in your life. And over time, that state of not-quite-hereness starts to shape your identity. I know it really did for me. You stop asking big questions. You stop checking in with your desires because you stopped dreaming a long time ago. You stop expecting life to feel vibrant, alive, pleasurable. There's this little part of you that doesn't even miss those feelings because your body forgets they're possible. Out of sight, out of mind, right?

Until something happens. Maybe a health scare or a relationship rupture, or the grief hits sideways one day while you're loading the dishwasher. You don't have to wait for the crash. You don't have to hit a breaking point. You don't need to prove your pain with wreckage. You're allowed to grow just because you want more: more presence, more peace, more pleasure, more time spent in your body, not just hovering above it, more relationships that actually feed you, more days that feel like yours.

And when we're stuck in emotional outsourcing patterns, we're often cycling through sympathetic activation and dorsal collapse: fight, flight, freeze, fight, flight, freeze, functional freeze. And without somatic tools and nervous system regulation, those cycles just repeat. You might feel a jolt of motivation, "I'm going to fix this," and then crash right back down. "What's the point?"

And so the answer is not about willpower because willpower doesn't really work. It doesn't really last. Eventually, you're white-knuckling, and that just sucks. No, no, no. The growth, it comes with capacity. Capacity lives in the body. It's about your nervous system's ability to stay present, to feel a hard feeling without fleeing, to hear your own truth and not immediately shut it down. That's not something you think your way into; it's something you practice inside of a group or a container that supports you, scaffolds you, and gently expands your window of tolerance or your capacity to be with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to be with life when it's lifey over time.

And my beauty, that's what we do in Anchored. It's not crisis response work. No, no. It's reclamation work. It's nervous system healing, somatic practice, thought work, and community care that helps you move from functioning to flourishing, from default to desire. Not because everything's burning down, but because you're finally ready to stop waiting for it to.

So let this episode be your permission slip to want more, to move towards aliveness, to stop gaslighting your own longing. You don't need a crisis to have permission to grow.

But if you're listening and something in your chest is stirring, some ache of recognition, some flicker of, "This is me," then I want you to know you're not alone. You don't have to figure this out alone. You don't have to grow alone. When you're ready to come back to yourself, I'd love to walk with you. You can learn more about how we can work together at BeatrizAlbina.com/getanchored. Applications are open now, and I cannot wait to share this life-changing program with you.

My beauty, I'll say it again. You don't need a crisis. You don't need to break down. You don't need to be wildly burned out or in the hospital with fatigue before you decide to let yourself change. Just wanting a life you love more, that's enough. It's truly enough. And I'd be honored and grateful to get to be your guide.

Thank you for joining me. 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. Ciao, ciao. I'll talk to you soon.

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 BeatrizAlbina.com/somaticswebinar for a free webinar all about it. Have a beautiful day, my darling, and I'll see you next week. Ciao.