Kristen
Welcome to the close the chapter podcast. I am Kristen Boice a licenced Marriage and Family Therapist with a private practice pathways to healing counselling. Through conversations, education, strategies and shared stories. We will be closing the chapter on all the thoughts, feelings, people and circumstances that don't serve you anymore. And open the door to possibilities and the real you. You won't want to miss an episode so be sure to subscribe.

Kristen

Welcome to this week's close the chapter podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. It has been such a journey doing this podcast I have loved every minute of it. I truly love doing this podcast and I'm love even more that you're here with me. I know your time is precious, and it matters and you matter. And you just tuning in and spending time listening to these episodes. I mean the world because I'm so excited that you're doing this work, you're expanding, you're growing, you're evolving, you're learning more about yourself. There's no greater price tag that you can put on that it's free. This is exciting stuff. And if you want more free stuff, you can download the free journal at Kristen D boice.com. forward slash free resources and you'll get the free journal healing guide emailed to you right away. And you can follow along on social at Kristen D Boice, on Instagram and Facebook and then tick tock which I am completely learning as I go is Kristen Boice and Pinterest and all the places. So thank you for being here. I'm excited about today's episode because we're talking about codependency it's a topic that I think we can talk more about and look at our own patterns as it relates to codependency and maybe hyper independence and how that is a sign of codependency. So let me introduce you to today's guest, Victoria l Bina is a master certified somatic life coach. You see S F train family nurse practitioner and breathwork meditation guide with a passion for helping humans socialised as women realise that they are their own best healers by reconnecting with their bodies and minds so they can break free from codependency perfectionism people pleasing and reclaim their joy. She is the host of the feminist wellness podcast holds a Master's Degree in Public Health from Boston University, School of Public Health and a BA in Latin American Studies from Oberlin College, Victoria has been working in the health and wellness field for over 20 years. And I really am excited to have you listen to this important conversation because codependency transcends genders, so stay open minded to just receiving what she is sharing. We're transparent and vulnerable about our own journeys with codependency. So join us for today's episode. And without further ado, here's my conversation with Victoria.

Kristen

Welcome to this week's close the chapter podcast. I am thrilled that you're here joining us today for this important conversation. And the reason why I think is so important is because when you can identify parts of what you're going through, it helps to feel less alone you start going oh, there's nothing wrong with me. And that's why this conversation is imperative. So you'll want to stay till the complete total end. And I'm so excited to welcome my guest Victoria Albina to talk to us about codependency I'm seeing this so much right now. And I'm just so thrilled that you're here joining me today Victoria. So welcome to the close the chapter podcast.

Victoria

Oh, thank you, Kristen. I'm so thrilled to be here and this is one of my favourite topics because it is so vital for our joy, our passion, our pleasure in life.

Kristen

How did you get started on this journey of a relationship with codependency?

Victoria

Yeah, well come by it. Honestly. I grew up in a household with codependent perfectionist and people pleasing habits, the constellation of experiences that I call emotional outsourcing, and we can get into that in a little more detail soon. And I came to realise in my early 30s that I was living my life for everyone and everything around me. I was you know, in relationships with friends with partners with work with certifications and licences and degrees. Everything in my life was about the external and not about my internal experience. I'm also a family nurse practitioner by training and I worked with a lot of chronic health issues and functional medicine and I started to see this same pattern in my patients, they would get better and would remit get better than way not better. And the threads through was their mindset, their nervous system, all the polyvagal stuff we love to nerd about right was the way their mind and body was interacting and their mindset. And often when that mindset was codependent it's really hard to heal the body and it's really hard and challenging to reconnect mind and body so true because that's a powerful piece. How do you define codependency for someone's like? Well, I don't know if I'm a Kodak's on me. I'm not dependent on anybody yet about it. I am a rock I am an island. I'm a wild modern and independent woman. Yes, that may be a sign of codependent thinking as well, my darling. It's certainly. Yeah, my friend and I were just joking last night when I was 12. I was like, Alright, I will never have anyone to depend on so it's just me and started working like three jobs, right? Oh, okay, kiddo.

Victoria

She was doing the very best she could with what she had to understand that this world so I have moved away from the labels of I am a codependent person, I feel that it doesn't serve us because it keeps us stuck in this loop of believing that it's just who we are. And there's a defect in our character. And this is just we're after, right? Like it's all over for us. I instead look at these habits as habits. There's ways that we've learned to survive usually from childhood that don't serve us anymore, but once did so I think of codependent perfectionist and people pleasing habits as chronically and habitually sourcing our sense of safety worth and validation from everyone and everything outside of ourselves instead of from within. And so because our sense of safety, worth and validation, those are pretty core things for human mammal, right. And for a nervous system, it has to come from outside or it doesn't count. So internal motivation, forget about it. Right? Doing what you desire, knowing who you are, know what you want for dinner, knowing what degree you want. Knowing if you want to date someone or not like all those things get really muddy and murky. And we lose track of our own intuition and discernment. Because we're always looking outside, it's like, there's a spotlight on our head, saying, Do you think I'm smart enough? Do you think I'm pretty enough? Do you think I'm good enough? Do you think I'm worthy of love, instead of really looking inside and from presence, just knowing it, right. And so we get co dependent on everyone else, meaning we are emotionally dependent on them to tell us, it's okay for us to be alive to be taking up space to have opinions to make decisions, we look to the peanut gallery to tell us how to live or we swim to the other direction. And we become the wildly independent person. Well, I don't need anybody but that too is from I fear being dependent on others for my emotional wellness, but I know I need it, because this is my mindset. Right? And so it's all about coming back into interdependence, which is when you and the other person are autonomous humans who interact with mutuality and reciprocity, instead of demanding that the other do your emotional work for you. Which, by the way, is totally what I was doing. Like let me write I'm the first one to say, girl, this was me 100%. And now on the other side of it, life is so much more beautiful, so much more open and free. And and there's a deep presence and safety that I feel in my body somatically we're so means body and Greek. I work a lot with somatic practices, somatic modalities and trade in somatic experiencing. So it's about coming back to yourself and your body.

Kristen

Beautifully said there's so many nuggets there. The one piece I really liked is it's not like get away from the labels. Yes, because it can almost embody an identity and then we can't shift or open out of that or expand out of that.

Victoria

Yeah, there's not so many religious and spiritual practices going back aeons you know, have this real focus on I am statements. Right? I am. So who are you declaring yourself to be and does it serve you or your relationships with the people you love to say I am codependent I am a perfectionist I am a people pleaser. How can you be anything else? If that's what you're feeding into your nervous system in your brain? Right? Which brings us to neuroplasticity, our brains remarkable capacity to change the story. We all doesn't matter how young or old you are right? You can change the story that comes from I am. So why not have it be. I am a person who developed these amazing and incredible Survival skills in childhood. I am a person whose nervous system got this setting ages zero to seven and I am capable of changing it. Why not?

Kristen

It's so empowering. It's the difference between I'm stuck to I'm empowered. Yes. Yeah. Where the freedom comes when you look at codependency, where in your own life, do you think the birthplace of codependency developed?

Victoria

Oh, definitely in my childhood? Yeah. You know, I'm, you know, on the cusp of Gen X, they'll claim Gen X, mostly because the music is amazing. I'm from 1979. So like, I can barely claim it, but I'm out here for it. Because bring me some grunge and some riot girl jeans and right, yeah, and a good flannel. You know, my parents were boomers, they were doing the absolute best they could and was a different way of communicating and raising children and folks have any and all ages can have this way of thinking. But just speaking to my own story here, it was really about me feeling like I had to prove myself and I had to prove my worth and prove that we are my parents. I'm from Argentina. we immigrated here when I was around three. And so that immigrant story of like, we sacrificed everything for you. Right, we left home, we left everything so you girls could have this beautiful life in America, a lot of those stories were part and parcel of the I am story of my life. And so and I of course, you know, had no way of understanding that or knowing that it was way before any hashtags taught me anything about psychology, and I carry that into every adult relationship, like every relationship, because I didn't know any differently. Right?

Kristen

What did it look like when you say I carried it into every adult relationship just so people get a real sense of how this may look?

Victoria

Yeah, I would start dating someone mostly because they liked me. And it was not about my own agency or volition or being like, Oh, I think that person's really cute and amazing. And it wasn't about intentionality. So I was outside I was living on intentionally because I was unconscious. I wasn't in presence. I wasn't grounded in myself. So somebody liked me from like, my first person I dated in high school was like, Oh, you like me? Oh, you can have me. Like you can have me because you're picking

Kristen

me you're choosing a bid, you're

Victoria

you want me must matter, I must matter, I must be important. I must be worthy of being chosen. And so I settled, right. And a huge part of the somatic work I've been doing particularly in the last five years has been to come into a different place with that part of me that was rhymed to settle was primed in childhood to say this is good enough, because it's something I have your full attention. But oh, you're gonna play video games with the guy. Oh, but I don't. I'm not happy. I'm not this doesn't work. This isn't feeding me. This isn't the communication sucks. Like, I'm not getting what I need, but I'm getting a morsel. Right? Like I'm getting the crumbs. So from that codependent thinking we settle for the crumbs. And in my work, I'm like, Nah, girl, you're the whole Baghdad. You're the full quest songs. Like you don't just get the Chromes right. In friendships. It looked like constantly creating drama. Oh my god, Kristen, I created so much drama. Oh, my God, like a person

Kristen

now at all. That would create drama. That's 0% Your younger inner child self needing? Yeah, something you were had an unmet need. You were looking to fill

Victoria

that was in percent. And that need was attention was attunement. Yeah. Right. my nervous system needed to feel attuned to and so I would create drama, I would be offended. That was a big trope in my life growing up, my mother is constantly she's like perma offended. And like Kristen, how dare you and really making peace with that. And recognising what in the story of I am was not me, right was not my actual story of who I am. It's what was projected onto me. And it taught my mirror neurons. So mirror neurons are this part of our psyche that our brain that monkey see monkey do is the like TLDR on mirror neurons, right? Like, we see our adults behaving in a specific way. And we're like, Well, I guess that's the way and it's everything from how we relate to like, No, I like that kind of peanut butter. I never stopped to ask if I actually liked that kind of peanut butter and peanut butter we had in my house growing up. So like, what's the peanut butter? Never use this metaphor before but it's great. Like, are you using Jiffy just because like that's what you've always done? Are you dating jiffy? Right Or is your marriage iffy? And no dispute if you please don't, don't don't sue us. But come first. No, come for us. No one's just here yet. Right? We're just saying like, is that the way you want to relate? And I hit a point where I was like, No, I'm miserable. Like I'm in all these relationships where I'm grasping for love grasping for care, love bombing others getting love bombed. Right? Like, really in these cycles in which I wasn't seeing me so I wasn't very Hon, so I couldn't be seen. So I didn't feel seen. So Right. And you get into that cycle, and then was self abandoning was doing so much for everyone else. And then was resentful of it because of course I was I was putting myself last, and then in friendships. The second you asked for a story I thought of once, maybe a decade ago, I hadn't heard from a friend of mine in my neighbourhood for maybe like two weeks. And so I wrote her a text. I was like, hey, Mary, Kay, are you mad at me? Because I haven't heard from you in like two weeks. So we used to walk our dogs together all the time. Like I haven't heard from you. And she's like, girl, my grandma died. I'm in Florida. I've been in Boca for like two weeks like chill, but my brain so this is that codependent desire to make ourselves the protagonist in any and every situation. It's all about me. It's all about me, because we're so scared that nothing's about us. We're so scared that we just don't matter, Kristen.

Kristen

That's a powerful story,

Victoria

right? Yeah. What did I do? What?

Kristen

Are you mad at me?

Victoria

Are you mad at me? Oh, no, it was like awkward. Did I do something?

Kristen

Oh, upset you?

Victoria

Oh, and she's like, No, grandma dad, bokeh? No, you don't matter that much. And like the most amazing gift of a way, right? Like, you are not the protagonist in my life. But when you're not the protagonist in your own life, you need to project that onto everyone and everything else.

Kristen

It's good illustrations, because they're practical. This is what it looks like in a practical sense, and how it might be mirroring us mirror neurons back. There's an opening in you to say what was conditioned what was programmed, what was unconscious, what was going along with to try to get some needs met, right? To try to fill this hole in your soul. Right? And when you start awakening to that, it's hard for folks at the beginning. And that's where the opening can come in to start shifting it. When did your shift start taking place?

Victoria

I was 29 When my friend Becca, we were in NP school at UCSF and we were walking I don't remember where and I was talking about dating. And she was like, hi, so I'm gonna go out on a limb here. And this might destroy our friendship. It might strengthen it, but we'll see. And I was like, Oh God, what is she? And she was like, girl, do you? Do you know what codependency is? And I was like, Yeah, I think that's like, I don't know, like Midwest housewives with a bunch of kids in a soccer van who are married to an alcoholic. And she was like, yeah, yes. But also, Mirror Mirror. It's you can and I was like, No, I'm not women. Like I'm not married to an alcohol. I'm not even dating an alcoholic. I don't think I've ever dated that alcohol. And she was like, that's not that's not what this is about. And I was like, oh, okay, well, I trust you and I love you. And if you're seeing this, then maybe it's a thing. And so I did what I've always done, which was I dove deep. I mean, I'm a nerd nerd, Kristen, like, give me a hint at right. You

Kristen

and I are selling on that same level.

Victoria

Yep. Yep. Yep. Souls love the demo nerd. The debt. Oh, water. Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. So I started researching and I started studying and I went to the library, the best place on earth and looked up every book on codep. I read Bradshaw, I read learner I read BD I read Meow, meow, meow read it all. And some of it resonated. And some of the shame you're right, like you are broken, you're, you have a defect. None of that stuff. I knew enough to be like that this isn't working. And so yeah, I started to see it. And I started to see it everywhere in my life. And I started to realise I don't want to keep living this way. It took a solid decade to get myself out of it, which is why I do the work I do because it doesn't have to take our dear listeners a decade right like the TLDR the shortcut is available. But as an autodidact as someone figuring it out on my own back then it took a solid year of meditation and retreats and yoga ins and talk therapy and eventually bringing in somatic practices is what really changed everything, which is why I've spent the last decade training and somatics and body based modalities. One thing is to change our mindset and it's incredible, it's important, it's vital. And if we're not changing the resonance in our bodies, the way our bodies experience self, the world life, then, in my opinion, we cannot find true sustainable change. We just get the quick fix the magic pill, the magic bullet and as a primary care provider of a functional medicine nurse practitioner as a life master certified life coach. There's there's no magic pill here. Right? We need to do that dive deep work and for me it it has to come from and return to the body and presence.

Kristen

So how do you begin? Someone says yes, this is all resonating with me. Yes, I don't I just speaking To me, I don't even know where to begin. Yeah, where would you start

Victoria

by mapping the nervous system by really getting to know your nervous system. And in that practice, so that practice, the prerequisite for that is presence and mindfulness. And that practice builds mindfulness and presence. Right? So it's this beautiful. Instead of that self abandonment cycle, we move into the self reclamation cycle, than the self reclamation cycle that I teach looks like really getting to know ourselves in this profound way, by asking Who am I when I am alone? What does my nervous system do want? It's alone? What do I do? How do I show up? What are the stories I tell about myself and the world when I feel safe? And really grounding ourselves in those stories in that experience? And then from there learning, how am I who am I what do I think what do I believe? How do I show up when I feel a little bit unsafe, like a zero to 10 like a point five, and then a one and then a one point but right when we start taking teeny tiny steps towards that which scares us that which is uncomfortable and bringing ourselves back to safety. So we were talking before we hit record my programmes called anchored to six month journey into these practices into Cymatics. And mindset and breath work around the theme of of emotional outsourcing, which is what I call codependent perfectionist and people pleasing habits. And the real core of the work is coming into that presence and grounding ourselves anchoring ourselves in ventral vagal which is the safe and social part of the nervous system. And understanding that because science like this is not Kristen and Vic making things up right like because science, if you are not safe and sociable with yourself in that safe and social ventral vagal place with yourself you cannot make change in your your neuroplasticity is not available, your cognition, your thinking parts not available, your feeling parts, right, your emotions, your heart not available if we don't feel safe. So we really start with embodied safety and grow from there. So if you're listening, and you're like, Yeah, that's cool. But person asked you to tell me what to do. And you philosophised And welcome to me, but I'm also very practical. I'm still a nurse. So what does that mean? It means when you feel safe in a moment, right? When you're having your cup of tea on your porch, and you're like, oh, wait, I feel calm. Right? prioritising putting your phone away, turning your Apple Watch off and taking like one sip of hot coffee or tea and breathing, market. Feel into your body and ask yourself, What does it feel like? What is the sensation in my body of feeling safe right now. Important to note, you know, both of us are very well trained in trauma. If your body was the site of trauma as mine was going into your body may not be safe or smart. Please do not go to there without a professional, please, please. So instead, what you do is you orient your surroundings. So when I feel safe with myself, self directed safety, what is my experience of my environment, I'm feeling a soft, cool breeze. This blanket on my lap feels so cosy. I love this blue wallpaper. And orient your nervous system to the environment that is supportive and generative of safety for you. And coming into the body will come when it comes. But we do not push it. When we work with the nervous system. We go gentle with slow food. Alright, there's no there's no shift around here. It's slow food. So you oriented the environment, you come home and you come home into your body if that is safe and available.

Kristen

I love how you said that because a lot of people don't feel safe in their body because so I preface that. Yeah. And I think one of the things that are so important when self discovery is the body gives us information. And when there's been trauma we've learned to disconnect from the body to keep safe. We know that's a survival state. And when you start reconnecting the body, it will give you helpful it's a navigational system in going oh, let me sit with that. Let me be with that. Let me just get noticed that and get curious about it. I think especially when you're in a situation where you're seeking, searching, wanting thirsty for love, belonging, validation, acknowledgement, worth value, all the things we talked about to feel enough that your body's going to have like an intensity potentially around. Yeah, dynamic and wanting that. And I think that's one of the signs that I help clients recognise. To tune into because that is where we have to go. And they're like, Oh, what do you mean the body like it's hard? Yeah, right. Yeah, realise that this is if you struggle with some patterns of coding. I did see that the body does help you work through it.

Victoria

Yep. 100% I was coaching this morning, a client who was like went on a date her brain liked him. But her body was just like, No, no. And she was like, oh, no, is there something wrong with me? Am I blocking myself from receiving love? Like she went into all the self help talk of like, oh, what's wrong with me? And the beauty of Cymatics is it reminds us and then shows us like you said so beautifully, that the body knows what's up. Right? And the more we can listen, and then the challenging part is the more we can trust, right, the more we can learn to trust our bodies, which is again, why I steer us, you know, you didn't hear me say go on a date and see if you can trust yourself. Like, oh my god, no. Ask yourself if you want coffee or tea, right? Keep the stakes so low. Keep it so banal and quotidian. And just like, ask yourself dumb questions. Like I really need it like, body. Do you want to wear pants? Or a skirt and tights today? Right? I was

Kristen

getting teary eyed because I was thinking about this experience I recently had with my daughter. Yeah, self doubt that codependency patterns create. And so we're in the car, she's having severe pain as she had an appendectomy, emergency appendectomy, and her self doubt of maybe someone else needs this more than I do. I'm in the car, and I'm going, honey, your body's giving us information, because but what if it's not true? What if it's not real? What if I'm just making it up or making too big of a deal out of it? How many of us can relate to that? We're too much we're over sick. Maybe it is me. Maybe I'm the problem. You know what, that has a lot to do self doubt and codependency Oh, yeah, play such a role in doubting your body like, Well, maybe it's, you know, XYZ,

Victoria

right. And the thing to make note of is the yes and there, and you talk about this, when you talk about trauma, that trauma resonates in our bodies. And so it can be very confusing at first to, to sort of store it out and feel into is this my intuition and my discernment? Where right intuition guides you discernment can tell you yes or no. Or is this trauma, right? So the early on and all those dating experiences for me this loud, anxious voice in my body was like, yes, stay with this person. Stay with them. Stay, stay, stay. No, I know. It's terrible. I know. It's really bad. Like, stay. That was the trauma response. Yeah. Yeah. So your intuition speaks with a personick voice, which is a term from Steve Porges, PhD who authored the polyvagal theory, prosody of voice is that sweet sing song that you and I both naturally have Kristen, right? I think everyone born to be in these helper roles has that it's that calm, everything's fine. Just follow the sun nines, right? Like it's the turn left, don't go down that dark alley, like breathing, right? It's called the Yes. Right. And it can be directive and it gives all your stuff you don't want to hear. Whereas anxiety, worry stress when we're not in the ventral vagal state of our nervous system. When that those voices from stress, distress and trauma past come up. Those voices are anxious, those voices are jangly, right it to me, it feels like spider legs moving quickly. It's just like, Go Go, go, go, go, go, go go. Versus, and for those who grew up, you know, with like, fake niceness, or like that fake, everything's fine, then that personick voice may be extra hard to hear, right? Because that in and of itself might be challenging to your nervous system. So maybe your intuition is more direct. Maybe it sounds more like this. But it doesn't sound like this. Right? It doesn't sound jangly it, there's a smoothness to it. When you finding the smooth pebble that will skirt over the top of the water, right? Just Just dance across the water versus those other voices that just pull up.

Kristen

It's a really important distinction. Because people have a hard time especially walk through lots of trauma, or even a trauma or any trauma to distinguish between the two. And then the self doubt really gets louder. Yeah. And so like how you're distinguishing between the soft not even soft, but direct clear voice versus the like, what if what if, what if and all the different ways that could show up? You didn't say whatever. But that's how I see a lot of times it shows up people.

Victoria

Yeah, well, so if to bring back that nervous system perspective, there are some hints in our language that can help us to map our nervous systems, which is you know, we're talking about what do we do? How do we get started, learn your nervous system, learn your nervous system. So ventral vagal says I can the safe and social part of the nervous system. Everything's available things are possible, right? I'm here I'm in acceptance. I'm calling Um everything's chill you're right you're biochemically chill you got enough dopamine you got enough endorphins maybe oxytocin like you're you're cool biochemically and then sympathetic activation which is fight or flight ruled by adrenaline, norepinephrine eventually cortisol or stress hormones, which is the body says that is a lion. I must run PS lions right now or like your mom texted Right? Like your ex, like your posts on Instagram or didn't your boss wants to talk to you? Those things are modern day lions. The stories of sympathetic or I have to what if, right? They're pushy. They're Whoa, lions. And then dorsal which is the freeze disconnected, disassociated. Depression, right, check it out. I just, I can't with us anymore. Like I just, I'm so sick of the fighting. I'm so sick of not being happy. I just those are I kind of, right, I can't change this relationship. I can't break up with him. I can't move on. From my functional medicine days, I can't change my diet. I can't not drink coffee, I just can't. And that's that adrenal collapse, acetylcholine energy of dorsal Vegas, have checked out not present in your life. So our language gives us these really beautiful hints to what's going on in our nervous system. And so this too, is this initial work of healing from codependent thinking, which comes from listening to the cassette tapes in your own mind listening to your own mindset and write it down pen to paper, write it in the notes section of your phone, if that's what you need to do. But I like pen to paper, right? When life gets lifee What is the story you tell about? I am the world is? What do you need to do? What can you do? And then the next question I always ask my clients is do you want to continue to believe that story? And if you do cool if you want to believe No, I can't give up coffee just going with that because it's easy and adrenal directed, but cool you to you. And just recognise that that means you'll stay in that cycle and no judgement, no shame. And there you are. And if you're ready to begin to make change, connecting in with your body, your intuition and letting your body guide us you so beautifully said.

Kristen

So where would you put people pleasing, perfectionism placating pretending all of the PS where would that in the nervous system language?

Victoria

Really it's variable. It's for most folks. It's the next we're gonna go super nerd here nerds, the mixed state of high activation freeze. So high activation freeze. I call it functional freeze or somatic self disconnection. And this is a huge part of my work because it's where I lived forever. So I'm just going to back up with some nerding and then come forward to your question. So we go we think something's Elian our bodies go push adrenaline, sympathetic fight or flight. If we don't get attunement, if we don't get care, if we don't get attachment, we go from fright, to fear, to terror. To freeze, right to no one's coming I it's over I am lion snacks, or like, I'm in my crib crying, and no one's coming or I fell off my bike and no one's going to, like, actually meet me the way I need to they're either going to tell me to shake it off or suck it up buttercup, or they're going to overreact, but not going to be met with an appropriate attuned nervous system reaction. So then we go into freeze, right? And so freeze is that dorsal checked out fine. I'm not in my body. Right? Oh, my scraped knee doesn't hurt. It's fine that I'm crying my crib just like frozen. And so in that in between state, we're still full of the sympathetic. We're still all jacked up on adrenaline. It's like you had three espressos all at once. But then you checked out in your body. So the espresso the adrenaline is still in you, but you are not present to self. So that's the functional freeze somatic self disconnection. And that's often where perfectionism in people pleasing and fawning so there's a third nervous systems primary state that is getting a lot more attention because it really matters and that's fawning. It's traditionally been thought of as a conditioning state. Right? Not a true nervous system state. It's when we're appeasing. Oh, that's fine. We can go to the restroom. Oh my god, I remember seeing stuff like this. No, no, we can go right to the words. You're gonna hear the resentment in just a second. No, no, it's fine. We can go to the restaurant you want to go to I mean, like there's nothing I can eat there and if I eat anything there I'm just gonna have such a wicked bellyache but it's totally fine we can go there if that's what you want. Right? Oh my god. It's so coded by oh my god so cola. Your girl was so cool passive

Kristen

aggressive peppering of a little we weren't directed clear.

Victoria

Read my mind know my needs because I'm not going to express them directly. But it is your job because I am co dependent on you with or without your consent usually without right you need to know my dietary needs and read my mind and know what's right for me.

Kristen

I should know by now we've been

Victoria

calm. Come on. I

Kristen

told you how many times dare you?

Victoria

Yeah. How dare you have your own desires. I don't have my own. So I'm pissed at you for having your own and wanting pizza tonight you have a gluten give To me the poop. How dare you do it? You what? Yeah, don't we always do what you want, because I never tell you what I want and never state my wants or needs directly or clearly.

Kristen

I love how we just

Victoria

right, Christina, everyone's the word everyone

Kristen

and they just, they're just not getting it,

Victoria

they're gonna get us, but we need to stay with them forever, we can probably get married and have a bunch of babies,

Kristen

right be great because then it'll get better. Right? Right,

Victoria

then that's what's going to change it. We can continue to suffer. And then we can continue to believe the story that we're the worst that we aren't worthy of love and care, because that's the story our nervous system thinks is safe.

Kristen

So we are codependent all that's what's so beautiful about this because we completely get it. That's why it was so easy for us to we seamlessly just went into the lake.

Victoria

Yeah, well, because we see it in our clients and our patients all day every day. And it was 1,000% Every one of my journals until not that long ago, a couple of weeks, a little decade. So where was I going functional freeze, right? And so fawning appeasing that lives in that state. And I was 100% in that I was frozen to myself and my emotions. I wasn't in true empathy, because I felt too much empathy. And so I blocked it. I didn't know how to handle it. I didn't know how to handle healthy reciprocal empathy. I would say the right things of course, like Oh, I'm so sorry. Oh, that sounds really hard. But I wasn't feeling it in my body. And I was functional. I was out there I was getting degrees Christian I have 4000 degrees and certifications and like had licences in like six different states, like your girls out there really thriving. But inside like a total wall brick wall between myself and my feelings, my feelings in the external world, just walled off. And so that's where fawn and appeasement really lives is in that kind of a adrenalized freeze. Oof. And it's

Kristen

time Our time went so fast.

Victoria

Oh my gosh, it's time Oh, wow. I

Kristen

believe this.

Victoria

I'll have to do it again.

Kristen

We will for sure. Okay, the whole episode I did on fawning because I just believe so much getting that information out there. And yeah, explanation was beautiful. Oh, good. So I've loved our conversation. It went so fast that like we the board died. Okay, so where can people find you and learn more about you and your programmes?

Victoria

Yeah, so you can follow me on the gramme. I give good gramme at Victoria Albena wellness, you can head on over I have a special treat for your listeners. So if they head over to Victoria elvina.com/kristin k r i s t e n, you can get a specialist suite of meditations and nervous system oriented exercises, both of them because meditation is not for everyone. So we start with orienting if the body's not a safe place, like As previously mentioned, so if I'm going to mention it, might as well walk you through it right seems polite, and so you can yell victory albina.com/kristin You can download those for free because I love you and you can check out my podcast, feminist wellness, it's free in all of the places and my six month container my coaching somatics breathwork mindset container is called anchored overcoming codependency you can learn more at Victoria albina.com/anchored

Kristen

I love it, you are so helpful and you have such a beautiful way of sharing and educating and that's what I love so, so much. Okay, one or two resources that you think are kind of a game changer when it comes to codependency in this topic like books, whatever you think like what are your top two resources beyond yours because you've got on their website, please go there, go to her grab the programme, podcast. Beyond that, the to what would you say you can throw books out there.

Victoria

Honestly, mindfulness, the thing is we tend to continue to look outside of us to learn these lessons we have to go within. So honestly the best the best resource in the world is your own breath. Your own mindfulness, your own presence. That's really where I want to send people home to themselves. Yes,

Kristen

I feel like the Mic drop. Okay. Awesome. Thank you so much. Grateful for you. What a wonderful conversation. So thank you for your heart, soul and energy.

Kristen

Thank you so much for listening to the close the chapter podcast. My hope is that you took home some actionable steps, along with motivation, inspiration and hope for making sustainable change in your life. If you enjoy this episode, click the subscribe button to be sure to get the updated episodes every week and share with a friend or a family member. For more information about how to get connected visit Kristen k r i s t e n d Boice BO ice.com. Thanks and have a great day.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai