Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - The Science of Stuck - With Britt Frank

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

For full show notes, resources mentioned, and transcripts, go to: www.drmindypelz.com/ep159/. To enroll in Dr. Mindy's Fasting membership, go to: resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. This episode is all about motivation, leaning into the messy moments, and the science of stuck.  Britt Frank is a licensed psychotherapist, speaker, and author of the new book The Science of Stuck, which was recently released by Penguin Random House. She received her BA from Duke University and her MSW from the University of Kansas, where she later became an award-winning adjunct professor. Britt's work focuses on demystifying the mental health myths that keep us stressed, overwhelmed, and burned out. Please see our medical disclaimer.

If we want to be happy, we have to be whole. But wholeness means the good, the bad, and the ick. And most of us are taught to seek goodness, not wholeness. Hey, Dr. Mindy here. And welcome to season four of the Resetter podcast. Have I got a lineup for you this season? Lots of deep thinkers, a lot of brilliant minds, all with one focus. To move the needle forward.

on your mental and physical health. So please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. And I want you believing in your body. I want you believing in your mind. I want you believing in your spirit. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy.

On this episode of The Resetter podcast, have I got a vibrant conversation for you? I bring you Britt Frank, who is a licensed psychotherapist and trauma specialist. She also is the author of a really cool book called The Science of Stuck. So one of the reasons I wanted to bring her to you all is I really wanted to keep giving you all tools of what do you do when you're on this. incredible health journey. You're on this incredible life journey and you get stuck. Or what do you do when you have a huge health goal and you can't get unstuck to even start the goal? So I wanted to bring a stuck specialist to you and that's what Britt is. But what you're going to hear in this conversation are some incredible tools. So there's a couple of highlights that I have for you.

First, she has a lot of good one-liners that makes your brain kind of go, hmm, I hadn't thought about that, like motivation. She talks about where motivation is helpful for us and how we can access it. She also gives us all permission, especially women who are cycling, to have times when we are not our best selves, and that is okay. So she talks about the power of leaning into the messy moments, leaning into the times that we don't want to be perfect, leaning into those times when we feel. feel spicy and don't want to go and do our workout. She gives us great tools for how do you embrace

those moments and how do you move through those moments. So really fun. We went through so many different aspects of this concept of stuck. We took it from health. We looked at it from relationships. We talked about it in terms of the menstrual cycle. And men don't leave because if there is a woman in your life, you are going to learn more about where the emotional highs and lows are for these women in your lives, especially built around her menstrual cycle. This was such a fun conversation for me. I went into this with this beautiful neuroscience brain that I have thinking, okay, we're going to break down what exactly is going on with the brain when it's stuck.

And what formed from it was just this collaborative conversation. about all the ways we can unstick ourselves. And there are many avenues. I guarantee this will not be a waste of your time. You will walk away from this conversation, having more insight into your own highs and lows of life, knowing how you can accomplish your dreams wherever you are on your path. And most of all,

I hope that you will walk away from this conversation with more compassion for yourself. So Britt Frank, incredible opportunity to go deeper into all the aspects of what it's like to be human. So enjoy. Here's what I want to do is I just want to dive right into your information because you know what? I really, really resonate with the word stuck. So let's start this conversation, Britt with why did you choose the title, the science. of stuck and what is it about that word that is so appropriate when we just are not feeling like

we have any forward momentum? So funny. I mean, that funny, ha-ha, but I started the project, the science of stuck well before the pandemic. And then the pandemic hit and it became literally we are all stuck. So I called it that instead of the science of mental health because snooze, no one's picking that book up. Right. Or the science of trauma, even fewer people are picking that one up. Regardless of where you fall in the spectrum of mental health challenges from I'm fine, okay, whatever, but fine, to severe mental illness, everybody knows what's like to be stuck, either with your medical health, with your finances, relationships, whatever it is,

everybody knows what it's like to be stuck. And the science of mental health is the science of stuck. So I just think you reach a broader audience calling at that. Well, so actually one of my first questions was going to, to be like, how do you know if you're stuck? Because, you know, I'm an internal optimist. And so I'm always thinking, like, I'm just in a little bit of a snag right now. Next week's going to be better. Tomorrow is going to be better. And then you hit a point where you're like, wait, it's not getting better. Are there some telltale signs that we can look at that go, yeah, you're stuck. You're not

moving in the right direction you want to be moving. Yeah. Well, the thing with a snag is you can, like if you snag your sweater on something, you're not. just sitting there now forever with, you know, your sweater attached to the nail or whatever. So a good way to tell if you're stuck is to get really honest with yourself and say of all of the choice. Now, granted, not everyone has the same type of choices. And if you've got medical conditions, you may be limited in your mobility and your choices. And that makes sense. However, assuming that you have some choices, how's life working? If it's not, assume you're There's so much stigma around stuckness.

And if we can just normalize it, like, how do you know if you're stuck? Are you feeling like crap? Are you doing things you say you want to be doing or are you not doing what you say you want to be doing? Are you doing the things that you say you don't want to be doing? Is your intention action gap the size of the Grand Canyon or do you follow through doing what you say? And again, no shame.

We all get stuck. But how can you tell if you're stuck? If we all got honest with ourselves, it's pretty self-defense. Like, are you, are you stuck? Yes, you are. And that's okay. So I get stuck, too. So let's work it out.

And yet, here's what I'm also going to say is that I feel like sometimes in life, like you're like your life is so close to you. You can't even see it. Like you're just, you're like, oh, you don't even, it takes, for at least this is me. I've noticed that it can take a lot to pile up before I go, wait a second. This is not working. So, you know, I think we become blind to our stuckness sometimes. Do you find that? So yes, aunt, yes, with a big and I'll speak for myself. It wasn't that I was blind and I am a

recovering drug addict. I have complex post-traumatic stress. I had obsessive compulsive disorder. I've had a lot of things. It wasn't that I was blind to my stuckness. It was that I really didn't want things to be true that I knew were true. And I really didn't want to go there. Even though a lot of my stuff was unconscious, I didn't know until it was 28 that I had trauma. I'm like, what's that? Never heard of her. But willing to get honest about ourselves with ourselves. And we go to that little small place of how you doing? If the answer's not, I'm awesome. You know, I'm doing all things considered. I'm using my resources and I'm making my choices and I'm doing what it's in front of me to do. If the answer is not that, then let's assume that there are some stuck places that we, and the thing about being stuck

is that we get very myopic on the areas that are not working, and we forget that, yes, you may be very, very stuck in one area, but there's six other areas where you're killing it. And so we won't want to zoom focus just on what's wrong, but take what's wrong in the context of everything that we're doing well, and then stuck is not as scary. Oh, I love that. So my other, the other part of stuck that's so interesting to me and just about happiness in general is that I feel like we think happiness is a destination and once you get there you're going to be like I'm happy I did it I did it and what my experience has been in my own life what I've seen with patients that I've worked with in my community is even the happiest lives lives are messy and have down moments and have stuck

moments. So if we're just looking at a day-to-day period where maybe in the morning, I'm like, I got up, I had my coffee, I went and worked out, I'm like feeling amazing. And then all of a sudden noon hits and I'm not amazing. Something hits me and I'm not amazing. And now I'm not amazing for I'm depressed. I'm anxious for like three hours. And then something else happens the afternoon. And boom, okay, now I'm actually good again. Like how can we give language? to what a happy life looks like because to me, I feel like a really happy person, but I will still tell you that my day-to-day is very messy. I'm very up and down.

And yet, if you ask me, do you have a happy life? I would say, yeah, I have a happy life. Because that's what a happy life looks like. I don't know who coined this phrase. I did not make this up, and I wish I could attribute credit. So if you're listening and you know who said this, please let me know. But, you know, happiness is the ability to hold multiple truths at the same time. or mental health is the ability to hold multiple truths.

I mean, Marshall Lionahan, who created a method of therapy called dialectical behavior therapy talked about that. More than one thing can be true. I am happy and I'm sad and I got my shit together and I'm a hot mess and things are working and things aren't working. So if we can live in the discomfort of contradictory but equally true truths, that's where happiness lies. But we all want it and I get this to be neat and clean.

If this is going wrong, therefore I cannot be happy. If this is going, and it works on the flip side too, right? If this is going right, who am I to feel sad? And we make space for one reality to be true at a time. And that's not how humans are designed. Happiness and health and mental health, specifically, are the ability to hold multiple truths all at the same time. And that's really hard to do because we were never taught how.

So I have a lot of compassion for the dilemma. But the other thing is happiness is you cannot have. happiness without wholeness. And I'm talking about, again, emotional, psychological wholeness. If you weren't physical bodies that get sick and things break and things don't work the way, I'm talking about our heart, mind space. If we want to be happy, we have to be whole. But wholeness means the good, the bad, and the ick. And most of us are taught to seek goodness, not wholeness, because goodness kind of gets rid of the icky parts of ourselves that we don't like and the things that we're not proud of, but a whole human is beautiful and gross and awesome and terrible and

messy and fabulous all at the same time. So do you think we would be happier if we just, every day, we just say, it's, you know, it's just going to be a day of all the things. I'm just going to experience all the things. And if we had a different expectation going into our day or a different expectation of why we're driving ourselves trying to find happiness? Do you think it's in the expectation that we can start to unstick ourselves or start to change ourselves because we now aren't searching for nirvana? We're not searching for perfection. So, and I always put a big disclaimer on my work when I say this because some people genuinely are not able to access happy because of oppression, because of lack of access to things like

clean water and a safe place you live and in a food or if you're living in a war-torn country. There are certain circumstances that make it all but impossible to access at least environmental. You know, people who are like, happiness is a state of mind. I'm like, yeah, but it's really hard to find that when you don't know if tomorrow your whole family is going to be not alive anymore. So assuming you have your basic needs met, assuming you have access to resources, assuming that you have some choices, then happiness is not someplace we find. It is, you know, if you ask people, what does it feel like to be happy, it's, It's being content, it's being grateful, all those things that get sort of shined up. Like you should be happy and you should be grateful.

I find a lot of happiness in my ability to own when I'm pissed off. I find a lot of happiness in the freedom to be sad. I don't have anybody gaslighting me all day, every day anymore, telling me you feel this, you think this, you didn't see that. This is true. That's not true. I think happiness is found in the freedom to own our experience without having other people imposing their wills upon us. us. Oh, that's so well said. So well said. I was just actually talking to a friend this morning saying who was feeling a lot of anger. And I was like, you know, for me, anger can be clarity. When I get

angry, I'm like, ooh, okay, I know exactly what I don't want. I know exactly I want the opposite of this feeling. And I have the clarity to express myself when that anger shows up. And so there's a positive upside of what we perceive as a negative emotion. That's why I don't even like this idea of positive thinking and negative thinking. Like, my thing is let's go to realistic thinking. Because if you're only thinking positive, you're denying the reality of pain. But if you're only thinking negative, you're denying the reality of resources. So I don't like gratitude journals because they ignore the reality of the things that bother you.

So instead of doing a gratitude list, let's just take a truth inventory. Here are some things that are awesome and that are working well. and that I'm grateful for. Here are some things that are really, really messed up and here are some things I'm sad about. That will produce happiness a lot faster than, you know, just be happy, be grateful. Like, it doesn't work. So negative emotions are, they're not bad. They're just uncomfortable. So instead of positive and negative, I like, how about comfortable and less comfortable? Because there's no such thing as a bad emotion. We need, I mean, I don't like shame. I don't think shame has a whole lot of benefit to our lives. But generally, happiness, sadness, fear, even anxiety,

even the things that we don't particularly care for have a function that keep us alive. You know, if we didn't have anxiety, we would have all been eaten by tigers. I don't like it, but we need it. So comfortable and less comfortable is a better framework in my opinion. I love that. That's amazing. So let's put this in context of health because we have a lot of people who listen to this podcast that are on health journeys. And, you know, it's interesting after working with thousands of people over the years on taking them from a very unhealthy place to a place of health. I've learned two things that are very consistent to every healing journey. One, we have to stop looking at health as a noun.

It is not a place you're going to. It is a verb. It is an action you're going to be doing. And then the second thing is you will get stuck. You are just set yourself up now. you're going to have some periods of momentum. You're going to have some periods where all of a sudden you feel like you've completely lost momentum.

So go into your health journey already knowing that. Now, my question to you is when we hit that snag, when we hit that stuck, like we're going along, we're losing weight, we're getting fit, we're like all the things we're doing seem to be working. And then one day they're not working. And we're not, we're not moving forward. And then we start to blame the doctor. We blame the medication.

we blame the diet, we start looking outward. What tools do we have? What can we do in that moment? I would call that stuck. What do we do in that moment to be able to move beyond it? Because what my experience has been, and I've said this to so many patients, like hang in there because on the other side of this is something really, really cool. So let's just work through this snag right now. What tools do we have in that moment? I love that so much. So the first thing is, are you stuck or are you tired? Because we think that we should be maintaining these steady state levels of energy. And I'll speak as a woman who menstruates.

My cycle is going to come with fluctuations in mood, fluctuations in appetite. Like my husband knows I have a pink candle that I light when I'm ludial. So he knows I will cry at everything. So if there's something pressing, perhaps wait five to six days. and then I'll be less irrational and a little bit more present. And so learning to not fight the cycles, but lean into them because we're supposed to have cycles of up and cycles of down. Our central nervous systems are designed with a gas pedal to go and with a brake pedal to stop

and with an emergency break to do hard stop if necessary. But if we treat ourselves as if we're supposed to nail it and hit the goals and keep it at a steady state of rah, rah, we're going to fail because that's not the third. reality of the human brain. I don't understand why we're designed this way, but it's not like, I didn't design the brain, like take it out with whoever did, but you're designed to be cyclical. And often what we call stuckness is just the part of the cycle where we need to rest and slow down and attend to slow. And that's just not sexy or fun or Instagramable. So we got it. Well said, well said. You know, and you and I didn't chat a ton before we just launched into the

podcast. But, you know, that's my passion. My book that's coming out is fast like a girl is all about when to lean into fasting, when to not, when to lean into keto, when to not. Like that ebb and flow. And I will tell you as a 53-year-old woman that the more I've understood my hormones, the more I've given myself permission to feel the whole spectrum because my hormones demand it. You know, if you look at estrogen, estrogen wants you to verbally process. Estrogen wants you, you know, to go out and mix a little estrogen with testosterone. And estrogen wants those two together are going to be like, let's go conquer the world. And progester, when she comes in is like, hey, hey, guys, let's just chill out on the couch.

So I just want to, you know, sit here, watch a movie and eat some ice cream. I love that you light a candle. I love that. I am, that is brilliant. I used to hate having a period. And we are taught, you know, if you identify as a menstruating human, We're taught that this is a terrible thing that's happening to you. And I have a lot of compassion on people for whom the ludial phase is brutal or the,

you know, whatever phase is uncomfortable and painful. But we're not taught that if you lean into, I don't enjoy, and I'm actually ludial right now. So we're going to get off this ball and I'm going to ruminate on how I said things wrong and then I'm going to cry. And then I need to have my top of my top of it. He's in the fridge. And I used to beat myself up for that. But again, there's so much beauty and power. and wisdom into listening to the cyclical needs of our body.

And I can fight it anyway. I can be like, no, I'm going for a run and I'm going to eat a salad. It's like, no, bitch, you're not. You're going to eat a cheeseburger. You're going to eat your moose. You're going to watch your stupid shows. And we might as well enjoy it because you can fight it. But I experience, when I fight the cycle parts of myself, they win anyway.

So why not make peace instead of being at war with our own cyclical nature? And again, you don't have to be a menstruator to relate to this. There are cycles where you have more energy. It's just, I don't know when this is going to air, but right now as we're talking, it's December. The December month is not the time to try to launch a business or like jumpstart your efforts because we're all juggling demands of the holiday season and everyone's fatigue, burnt out and exhausted.

So we want to work with our cycle. Oh, my God. And dare I say, you can enjoy it and light a candle when you're a little off. This is my whole, this is like my whole thing. Like, I really believe if you're a menstruating woman and like the week before your, before your period comes, just freaking enjoy it. It is the, give yourself that chance to sit on the couch and not be a human doer. Just enjoy the fact that progesterone needs cortisol down, that it needs glucose high.

So your cravings for carbs are warranted. Your desire to say no to everything. your aversion to people around you. Like, this is all about who you are as a woman. This is absolutely natural. And there's something kind of like cool about it. This is a totally random thought, but have you been watching the new Netflix series Wednesday?

I binge watch that. Like, I'm so depressed that it's over. I watched that in two days, yes. Oh, my God. So what I love about it is there's a Wednesday in all of us. And she shows up about a week before our period. And she just wants to be like, tell everybody to just back away. And yet we try to be like her roommate, you know, the little cat gal.

And we try to, right? We try to be like all Polly. But that woman, I forget her name. She shows up at the first part of your cycle. She's not necessarily showing up at the end of your cycle. So I love that you saw that show as well and saw it that way as well. It's so important. And again, you know, when I'm ovulating, I am Wonder Woman. Like I will grind 18 hour a day. I will run a marathon. I will build my business and yours while holding

space and I'll shower people floss. But like, you know, the the things that we ignore when we're energized tend to show up during that ludial phase. I know this wasn't really a talk about this, but you know, I know. We're just going here. This is one of my favorite things to work with people on. Because it's, again, I don't like cramps. I don't like feeling depressed. I don't like feeling like the whole world is over and I have no place like the existential blackness of it all. But, you know, anything that I'm not dealing with, any pain.

And again, yes, I'm not a physician. There is a physiological component to this whole game. So I'm not suggesting just lean into your shadow side and you won't have cramps. I'm not saying that. So I don't want to get any DM saying that I said. And, you know, from the psychological side. Any pain points that you're not attending to when you have high levels of energy in your cycle will demand your attention when you're not.

And when we medicate away the symptoms in an effort to stay steady state, we don't listen to the wisdom. Like there are things I'm sad about that I don't want to be sad about. And when I'm ovulating, I don't bother being sad about. But right now, I'm going to be sad about them. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh.

You totally speak my language. The other thing that I would say that we isn't highlighted enough, and I'm just going to go down this path because since we're on that PMS time is the fact that our actual menstrual cycle is like a shedding of the old. It's a detox. And we don't, I mean, I'm almost completely into menopause now. As I have had this awareness, there's this part of me that's like, I wish I'd really realize this in my 20s and 30s. Like that moment in which you bleed, you're shedding not just toxins. you're shedding, you have the ability to shed old thought patterns. You have the ability to shed what's holding you back.

And if you look at that week before, as everything's building, building, building, you're agitated, you're not feeling so good. Embrace it. And then the shed comes and now you get to release it. There is something very cathartic about that for women, don't you think? I could not love where this conversation has detoured into more. because I get super woo with my cycle. Like I go to really weird places, but I'm also a clinician and I'm a trauma specialist

and I recognize that in my lane, my woo-ness is off-putting to some people. So fine, I can make a somatic justification for what we're talking about because anywhere, you know, our central nervous system doesn't speak the language of logic. That's why you can't think your way out of stuck. It needs sensation. It needs movement. It needs visual. We need to touch things and see things and hear things and smell.

things. So what we're talking about is very somatic. You know, when you actually can see the physical release and the physical discharge from your body that cues your brain into, oh, we're on a cycle. We're not lost in space spinning on this rock orbiting the sun. It's very grounding. Again, it's not always pleasant, but unpleasant does not mean unhappy. Like you can be happy and uncomfortable, just like I used to be a drug addict. I was very happy when I smoked meth until I wasn't. So feeling good does not mean the thing is good. Feeling bad does not mean the thing is bad. So you need to get the binary of good, bad off the table altogether and go, what's the function of this? What is this trying to tell me? What is my body trying to communicate? And how can I partner with my system?

I was at war with my body for decades until I understood this. Yeah. So many women are. And if, you know, if I was to give stuck another name, I would give it resistance. And so, and I think that like when I, I've processed a lot of anger in my life. And when anger shows up, I've learned, oh, okay, anger equates clarity. But when I would start to look at anger and be like, no, no, you're supposed to be happy. You're supposed to be happy. You've got to put on a happy face. Now I'm stuck because I'm in that resistance.

Just like if the week before your cycle, you're like, but I'm supposed to go to all these parties. I'm supposed to actually do this incredible workout at the gym. And I've got this Spartan race around the corner. Like if your body is saying no and you're pushing through, there's a resistance and that's where stuck starts. Would you say that stuck and resistance are very synergistic? Oh, yeah. I think they're completely the same. You could also say stuck is incongruence. Stuck is disintegration. I mean, anywhere we're out of alignment with our physical body, we're going to have symptoms. Anywhere we're out of alignment with our emotional truth, we're also going to have

symptoms. And then as someone who struggled with mental health stuff my whole life, again, I have a lot of compassion on the pain. But again, there's wisdom to the symptoms. And they're trying to point towards a problem or towards an injury or to something. And again, I don't enjoy, you know, I didn't enjoy OCD symptoms. I did not enjoy depression. And I didn't enjoy addiction. However, they were all pointing me towards an injury that I had, left untended and neglected because I didn't want it to be true. So when we resist what's true for us about us, then we're going to feel like shit. You're like you might feel like shit anyway, especially if we're talking medical issues. Like you have a chronic illness, you're going to

feel shitty. But then emotionally like dumping on yourself is going to add unnecessary shitty to your shit pile. Like let's just feel the shitty that is ours without adding to it. Right. Which is again, if you look at the cycle, like how many of us just bitch about the week, I feel horrible and there's this and I'm craving chocolate and craving carbs and I shouldn't be. I'm on a diet and I can't even be on a diet anymore because I'm craving all these things. And then we start to internalize that. And that's one of the big things that with my new book I'm trying to do is just break that open and just be like, no, this is who you're supposed to be.

This is why I love the Wednesday character. I'm like, you're supposed to be the Wednesday the week before your period. That's exactly how you're supposed to show up. You just haven't given yourself permission to be her. And to accommodate it. And not everybody can. If you've got five kids and a sick parents and a difficult marriage and financial issues, it's really hard to carve out the space to accommodate the cycle.

So, but to whatever degree you're able, it's like you may not be able to take a week off of work. If it was up to me, you know, the ludial phase, we'd all go away and just sort of be together and just like be running around naked in the woods or whatever. But if you can't do that, what's the next best thing? Can you skip the workout that was going to be the killer? Can you, you know, and again, people get so worried. They're like, well, if I just let myself do whatever I want, I'm going to end up completely addicted to sugar. And I'm going to end up a drug addict and I'm going to destroy my life.

And it's just not true. Wouldn't you listen to the authentic whispers of the body, even if they say and sometimes, and I've had an eating disorder. So even now, the impulse to binge before my period makes parts of me really anxious. Like, uh-oh, like does this mean this is starting up again? If we're listening to the body, it's, I've never. seen it where it takes us down a dark path. Like, yes, a few days ago, I was a monster and I ate every single thing in my kitchen. And I probably consumed 10 times as many calories as a typical day. But then the

next day, I didn't feel shame. I didn't feel the urge to repeat that. I'm like, today's not a, today we're going to take a little walk, just a little one, not out of shame, but just because it felt like I want to move today. I don't want to sit today. So in that point, I think what you did is brilliant. and that's something that I'm really wanting a lot of women to start to see is that if you can give yourself permission, knowing, and this is why knowing your cycle is so important, and for postmenopausal women, knowing your hormones and which hormone is coming in at what time, is that if you give yourself permission to say, this is how I'm feeling today, I'm going to lean into it. I'm actually not going to resist it. I'm not going to have guilt. I'm not going to have shame. And then let's see

what shows up tomorrow, often tomorrow you're like, okay, let's go. I'm fine. I'm better today. I can move, or to your point, there is no better. But, you know, we want to move in a different direction. It's when we create that resistance, when the shame, when the guilt, when we start beating ourselves up, that now you've taken that one day that threw you a lot of turbulence and you've turned it into a turbulent week. You've turned it into a turbulent month. You turn it into a turbulent life. And so much of that is just embracing these moments where we are not the perfect human.

It doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. Do you feel like that will help us overcome it if we are in, just embrace that period of all the yuck? I don't know another way to say it. And a lot of people, myself included, have really profound trust wounds from early childhood or from life or from whatever. And, you know, when I was in my eating disorder, I was always cycling up and down. You know, I would restrict and I would go more the intersex side. And then I lost my period for years. And then I would binge eat and then do that.

And I was up and down and up and down, you know, significantly. And my poor body was just sort of. And I didn't trust that I could feed myself in a way that was. was reasonable. And people don't believe me, but it's been about maybe five, six years that I've had this relationship with my cycle and with food. My body size hasn't changed. You know, even when I, like, there are times where it's like, okay, probably need to, you know, maybe be a little bit more mindful than usual. But we can trust the wisdom of our bodies, but that is so offensive and so on, there's no grid for it if you have a trust wound. So I tell people, you're not going to believe this. I'm like,

maybe try it and see if you try intuitive whatever, intuitive eating or listening to your body's cycle demands or whatever. If it doesn't work, then go back to, I mean, your way clearly doesn't work. But like if you're that distrustful of this, give it a shot in 30 days. You're not going to do that much damage. So it's it's like building a relationship with another human, this relationship between our emotional selves and our physical selves. And it takes time and maybe steps. And a lot of times but we're asking our bodies. You would never expect to drive your car to go cross country on a quarter tank of gas. But we do that to ourselves all the time. Am I setting appropriate expectations for my body? Am I working with it? And it's really hard to trust that that works because culture,

diet culture, pop culture, the wellness industry all tells us you can't trust yourself. You know, you have to weigh yourself every day and you have to count. And there's nothing wrong with that as a tool. I mean, doing things like that is great as a tool while you're relearning. But to be, you know, I got rid of my scale years ago. I have no idea why I did too. Yeah. And the doctors, I've been shamed in medical offices when I'm like, I need you to weigh me backwards.

And they're like, why? I'm like, because I have an eating disorder and it's helpful for me. That's like, what do you mean? Why? How about cool? Yeah. We're taught we can't ourselves. But again, it takes practice and time in relationship building.

But it's amazing how much more. happiness and contentment and peace we have when we're not at war with the things that we walk around experiencing our humanness in. Yeah, the freedom in it for sure. Where does motivation come into this? Because I heard a quote this summer that I was like, oh my God, there has never been a more true statement. And here was the quote, you don't need motivation. You need momentum. And once you get some momentum, then you just are naturally motivated. That was the way that I interpreted the statement was like, and that's just another version of stuck. So where does motivation fit into this?

Especially when we're like, okay, I get I'm supposed to be messy. I get that there's highs and lows, but I still want to fit in my skinny jeans and I still want to look good when I go out on that date on Friday night. Okay. So but I need the motivation to start to lose weight. How do I get there? So I like what you just said because it implies I have to feel like it for it to do it. And that is so not true. Like there's plenty of things I do every day that don't feel like doing.

So if I only did what I felt like doing, I probably wouldn't get a lot of my life done. But so I agree with what you said. The way I like to teach and write and work with motivation is this. You're never not motivated. This idea that sometimes we're motivated and sometimes we're not is a total myth. We're always motivated. It's like your brain is either motivated to do what you wanted to do, work out, meal prep, whatever. or your brain is motivated to conserve energy, to protect your image, to preserve the homeostasis

of your, you know, when you get healthy and fit and you have a partner who's not, that is going to be incredibly disruptive. And I've heard often enough behind closed doors that people are actually worried if I get healthy and fit, I'm going to end up wanting to leave my family and I don't want to leave my family. And that is an icky secret that lots of people think and no one will say. So it's not, why are you so unmotivated? And I'm going to It's not how do I get motivated? The right question is, what's motivating you now? If you don't want to get off your couch to take a walk, it's not because you're unmotivated.

It's because your primary motivation is comfort. Some days, that's appropriate. If you're ludial, that's appropriate. If you're ovulating or if you're in a up phase of whatever cycle you find yourself on, then I would say, is comfort really serving your high as good? Is comfort as motivation? Is that working for you? So maybe we need to find a different motivation.

But the human brain is never not motivated. It's either motivated to go this way or it's motivated to go that way. So if we can switch the way we think, it's like you're motivated, you're plenty motivated. You're motivated by preserving your family because you think you'll leave it if you get happy. You're motivated by saving money because if you don't launch that business, you're not risking financial resources, which again. But you're never, ever not motivated. You're always motivated. So interesting.

Okay, so do you think you can achieve a goal that you might have for yourself and stay comfortable? Comfortable, how? Ah, good question. Comfortable, yeah, just emotionally, like just keeping yourself in a state of, well, let's use fasting as an example, because this is what my community does, is that, you know, let's say you get up and you eat breakfast. and you have heard me talk about how great it is to push breakfast back a couple of hours. So you want to do that because you know that it's going to have this metabolic upside for you, but you get an hour into it and now you're physically uncomfortable and your body's yelling at you. And now you're in a dilemma.

You're like, okay, well, but I want the goal of losing weight because I know that's possible for myself, but I am really uncomfortable right now. So do you have to push through that comfort or discomfort to get to the other side? I mean, that has been the old pattern of me to say, yes, that's what you do. But then there's this new version of thought that I have, which is, I don't know, I think we really make things a lot more difficult for ourselves than we need to make them. I love that so much. And again, it's this myth of comfort.

I was at the gym this morning and I didn't feel like it. I was cold and I was up late. and I really didn't feel like it. And I'm at the gym doing the things. And, you know, I'm like, I am so uncomfortable right now. I would be so much more comfortable at home in bed. Okay. But how true is that?

Because it takes, it's really uncomfortable feeling unfit. It's really uncomfortable feeling unwell. It's really uncomfortable feeling like when I walk up a flight of stairs, I smoked for 20 years. So it was really uncomfortable not doing it. And there's this myth that it's more comfortable. comfortable over there. It's like it's again, if you're willing to get honest with yourself, you have two versions of uncomfortable. Pick one. You know, like not everyone has the choice. Some people genuinely don't have that option, but assuming you can, this is hard,

this is hard. Fasting is hard. Not having your goals met as hard. Choose your hard. Which hard do you want to pick? Me being at the gym doing burpees at seven in the morning was hard, but me feeling like shit all day because I didn't would also be. hard. But as soon as we whisper to ourselves, it's just so much easier not to. It's like, that's not true. Oh, my gosh. Do you know that I, so I used to be an emotional eater. That was my whole life. Like, had a bad day. My mom taught me, you know, cozy up next to me. You'll get some mother's love. You'll get some warm food and everything will be good. So I learned that eating was, was soothing my, my emotions. And then one day I had this realization that,

there was this whole aftermath that happened after I ate the wrong foods that was so traumatizing to my brain. And it was the guilt. It was the shame. It was like, oh, my God, I can't take that back. I already just ate it. It's I don't love living in my body. At that time, I really carried 30 pounds extra weight. And I was like, I just, I don't love this. So I came up with this little phrase that I would call the 30 second rule. And the 32nd rule was when I would look at a piece of food, I would say, okay, so it's going to taste amazing for 30 seconds. You're going to get a hell of a dopamine rush. And then you've got the aftermath. And then you've got to deal with the brain that comes after that. And once I could tag that aftermath to the behavior that looked so

enticing that I wanted to do, it actually totally changed the way that I looked at these hurdles that were showing up for me with specifically nutrition. So, yeah, are there things like that we can do in that moment? Because I love this idea of you choose your heart. But if I'm sitting on the couch and I know I need to go work out, it's like, I don't know. Like, you know, both hearts seem equally uncomfortable. How do you choose your heart? You can only lie to yourself or you can only, like when we lie to ourselves, you can

lie to yourself forever. Like, oh, I'll do it tomorrow. No, you're not. I'll start next week. No, you won't. You can only be radically honest with yourself so many days in a row before you get sick of your own crap. So if you're honestly saying it's hard for me to lay here and not work out, and it's hard for me to work out. And I'm genuinely looking at the reality of both parts, you're not going to stay stuck. The stuck happens when we lie to ourselves about this is easier than that. Like, no, it's not. Ask a heroin addict in the middle of a withdrawal. all how comfortable they feel. I think we could all agree, not being high on heroin is a good thing. But when you're retching and puking and sweating and shaking and having psychological

tormentors plus physical horrors happening, it sure as hell doesn't look very comfortable. But when we understand that that is the cost of this, it's when we lie to ourselves that we get into trouble. Nobody is going to stay stuck on a couch that is getting honest with themselves by saying, I'm more motivated by comfort right now and I understand that the cost of this comfort is this versus this. No one stays stuck when they have that type of self-awareness. Oh, I love that. I love that. Okay, where does dopamine fit into this? So a lot of the behaviors that we do that don't benefit us are because this neurochemical drives us. And one of the things I've learned about dopamine in the last couple of years is it's never satisfied. So just when you get

something. It's like, okay, that was great. Now let's go do something bigger. So where does our neuro, we've talked a lot about hormones, but where does dopamine fit into this in the sense that oftentimes we think we're stuck? We feel like we're not moving in the right direction because the minute we hit a goal, the minute we get an upside, we want more of that upside. So we go searching for more and more and more. How do we work with this neurochemical? It helps to know that That's a thing. You know, like, I didn't understand how the neurochemicals worked. I didn't understand that when you dates and have sex with people, your brain is on spring

break mode and it's having a chemical cocktail party and it's getting drunk as high as fuck. And, like, there's a lot happening there. And your serotonin leaves the party, which is why you upset. Like, I didn't know any of that. Serotonin leaves the party and dopamine's like, I rule this now. Yes. I have a graphic I'm working on. It's really funny.

It's like serotonin's running out the door, which is. is why you obsess, your amygdala is passed out on the floor, which is why you don't have a danger, maybe don't do that again. And like your norophenephyrant and your dopamine are going, woo-hoo! So if you know that that's a thing, then you can tell you yourself when you're like, more, faster, harder, wait a minute, wait a minute. Again, what's true here? What's true here is that my brain is on a reward repeat cycle because that's how it's designed and it really thinks for me doing that line of cocaine or eating that fourth donut or spending that money online or whatever is going to make me happy. Okay, how true is the thought I'm thinking is a great little

stop gap between impulse and behavior. We want to widen the gap between our impulse and our action because we want to shorten the gap between our good intentions and our actions, but we want to widen the gap between our impulses and our actions. And this is where we can remember what's true, the cost, how good is this going to feel? What price am I going to pay if I choose this? And so do you, are you a believer with dopamine that if you achieve a goal that the best thing to do or you hit a new level of like excitement about something you're doing the best thing to do is just to calm for a moment and realize that the higher you go, you know, you're going to have a dopamine hangover the next day. Do you believe in dopamine hangovers? And if not, what can we

do to overcome the dopamine hangover because I'm going to put myself in the category of the dopamine hangover is real often. That's real. Yes. The dopamine hangover is real. However, I don't like the calm when you hit your goal because what happens is we hit the goal. We do not acknowledge it.

We do not celebrate it. We take zero time to install it as a win in our system and we're off to the next thing. So instead of calming down, don't calm down. Don't seek out what's next. make the celebration to the level of absurdity. Like, my husband was a naval officer. And so he's very clean and tidy and he's very buttoned up. And like, I remember he was so confused the first time I celebrated, like, putting my laundry

away the same day that I walked. Like, I made it from the machine to the dryer to the closets and the drawers in the same day. If you've ever had depression, you know that that's a win. I order DoorDash donuts. I put on music. I was having a party. And he's like, what the hell?

You just did your laundry? And he's very supportive. He was just confused. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. I need to install this as a win in my system. Dopamine itself isn't the problem because when I'm celebrating, I'm still getting dopamine. It's the treadmill of I need more and I need more and I need more. That's problematic. Having the dopamine hit of I'm awesome, I did the thing, go me. But what do we do? We hit the goal and we're like, yeah, well, I ran two miles, but it's not like I ran 10. Or, well, yeah, I meal through it. But it's not like I, you know, can manage whole 30. When we minimize our wins, we interrupt the natural feel good chemicals that we actually want. So the dopamine hangover is from higher, higher, higher, higher, higher. But when we encode our wins mindfully, then they have sticking power. Because then I'm not as driven to hit the next thing because I'm too busy celebrating this thing and telling myself, you go, girl. Amazing. And so do you celebrate the little things, too? Hell yes. It's like, I don't know. Something made me think that was a yes. We have the good candles and the good plates. It's like light the good candle. Use the like if I'm going to order pizza, I'm putting it on China and I'm getting a goblet out because I am going to celebrate. And again, it's not just a woo-woo thing. Celebrating is a somatic brain hack that stimulates both our sympathetic activation and our rest and digest. So when you celebrate, you're teaching your brain that it's safe to be in your body. It's safe to be in your life. And so celebrating isn't this woo-woo, rah-rah, just like, you know, saccharine, like la-di-da kind of thing. It's a really powerful physiological way to hack your system. So celebrate all of, I mean, literally, I put my clothes away,

I ordered donuts and I danced. Go me. I love you. Where do you live? Can we be best friends? I just love the way you approach this. This is, this is just amazing. And, you know, there's been so much about dopamine recently. There's been a lot out there because we're living in such a dopamine-rich environment. And I've been really thinking a lot about dopamine because women over 40 as estrogen goes down, estrogen actually satisfies a serotonin and dopamine receptor site. So it will initiate your ability to access dopamine and serotonin. So what does that mean for the menopausal woman?

Like where how is she now if she doesn't have estrogen to activate that she's got to be find other ways to really bring serotonin and dopamine up to the forefront. And I feel like dopamine's gotten a bad rap lately. Yes. Yeah. It's not though dopamine is not bad. First of all, it's one of our brains chemicals. It's right. But you know, if you're online and you're, you know, click, click, click, scroll, scroll, scroll, you're getting these little hints of dopamine that are lying.

to you like oh wait no those are my friends it's like no those are not your friends those are fictional characters on tv so the dopamine is not usually the problem it's the the stories we're telling ourselves about what you know they've done us lots of studies where when you share about what your plans are going to be like here are my health plans and my fitness plans and my new year's goals when you share your plans you get a hit of dopamine but then you use up all your energy talking about it instead of being about it and doing it it. So don't talk about it, be about it, because you need that dopamine to execute, not just to share. So it's sort of like, I don't want to say bad dopamine and good dopamine because that's not true. But if you can think of it, like, are you getting dopamine in a sustainable way that's going to help you? Or are you getting dopamine in a hacky way that's ultimately not going to service you? But dopamine is not the problem. It's a problem. Too much dopamine is a problem. That's been linked to psychosis and schizophrenia. And so dopamine is not. the like the be all end all chemical. It's again, what's really going on here. Do you think as women,

we are, we don't give ourselves permission enough to celebrate and for fear we're going to look like we're bragging. You know, I feel like we often kind of dumb ourselves down, not just around men, but in general, you know, when we see a woman who's like, look at me, look at what I accomplished, she might genuinely be happy for what she's accomplished. And we project, oh, she's conceded. Why is she being so confident? How do we change that for women? So, I mean, you and I would have been burned at the stake as well.

Yeah, we told it. We probably were. Right? I see that. So let's start with we have a patriarchal system that for hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years has punished us for owning our power. there's that. Amen. And culturally, it's the be small, be good, you know, be nice, don't be too loud, don't take it too much space. So there's that. Then there's this culture of narcissism where we

see people that are so overinflated. We're like, uh-oh, if I celebrate my wins, I'm going to become that. Like people who are genuinely full of self-esteem and self-awareness and are not assholes. Like those people actually don't think highly of themselves. They think low of themselves. So we don't give ourselves permission at all. Now, the judging of other women and by far, women are so harsh on other women. When I see someone online who's crushing it, I will admit I have jealous parts that come up. My imposter syndromey parts come up. And it's like, my job is to withdraw my projections and own them. So if I see someone who I'm like, out of fucking bitch, she thinks she is, I'm like, okay, my jealousy is pointing towards a desire. What is it?

about her that reflects what I actually want or a quality that I think I'm deficient in. And then what are my choices? I have girlfriends who are very conscious of their projections. It's so great when we can say to each other, oh my God, I'm so happy for you. And I just want you to know that I have a part of me that is like super jealous. And I am managing that part of me so you don't have to worry that I'm going to vomit it on to you. What a gift. We can give each other when we can withdraw our projections and tend jealous, just like anger points,

towards clarity and injustice, you know, jealousy points towards our authentic desires. Express jealousy is harmful, but the feeling itself is just information. Yeah. Oh, my God. I just love that. One of my visions for women is that we all cheer each other on. Yes. And we have to stop comparing ourselves to each other because when one woman wins, you win.

Like, you need to start to look at every woman's win as your win. And if you don't see it this way, go to Instagram now. Go scroll through your Instagram. And every woman on that page that's winning, you got to, you got to in your head be like, amazing. That is so cool. Because if you want what she has, you got to get into the vibration of where she's at. And the minute that we start to say, oh, my God, well, she's a bitch or she's doing that

and she must have done something wrong to be able to achieve that. Now we pull ourselves out of that vibration. And I also want to point out, I love the. language you used, there is a part of me. You are not saying I am. That is critical. And I think we can all benefit from that. There's a part of me right now that doesn't want to get off the couch. There's a part of me right now that feels jealous of what my friend is able to do. But it is not me. Yeah. Amazing. We learned that we're these monomided beings. And it's like, we all know, part of me knows I should get off the couch and go to the gym. And part of me is like,

no, I want the ice cream and the TV. When we can approach our, I mean, every complex system is made of parts, a tree. One tree is made up of branches and bark and leaves and roots. And somehow we think that as complex human beings, we're just one thing. Our personality is made up of lots of different parts. Part of me is happy. Part of me is sad. Part of me is jealous.

Part of me wants to like kill. And part of me is the good girl that wants the people please. And again, happiness and health, other than having your basic needs met and being safe. requires us to hold multiple truths at once, including the multiple realities inside our own systems. I'm not fully jealous. I have a part of me that's jealous. I'm not fully anything. It's, we are a complex system of parts and subparts and how marvelous. That is incredibly good news. Amazing. Oh my God. Well, Brett, I just love this. You and I asking the next someday. This was such an unexpected surprise for me today. So I'm going to end on two questions.

or yeah, two questions, and then I want you to tell everybody where they can find you. So our theme this year, every season we have a new theme, and our theme this year is self-love. And what I'm trying to do is highlight for women in general, and we bring both men and women on this podcast as guests, like what it looks like to have a healthy feeling of love towards yourself. And part of that is embracing the things that you are really good at. So here's my two questions. One, do you have a self-love practice where you give back to yourself?

And two, what are three of your really kick-ass superpowers that you want to own and you're excited that you have? So I do ridiculous amounts of self-love. And I don't even like to think of it as self-love. I like to think of it as parts love because there's so many parts of me that receive love differently. Like my inner child parts like snacks and hugs and naps. And my teenage parts like loud music and like, you know, retail therapy and hanging out with their friends over long lunches or whatever. So I have a lot of practices that I do very consciously to approach my system as a parent would a competent parent would, a loving parent would to a child. So I have family meetings and I have practices and I have

rituals and I have a therapist and I do a lot of that. And again, you can't do it if you don't give yourself permission. So permission, granted. And then what was the other question? Three superiors. Three superpowers of yours. What are your three top superpowers? So I may have gotten my sense of empathy born in the fires of trauma, be that as it may. I'm pretty empathic and I can meet people. And nothing shocks me because my story is so sorted. So my sorted story is my superpower because bring on whatever you got, it's not going to shock me or ruffle my feathers. That's number one. Number two, I'm good at synthesizing. I hate the whole academic jargony. Let's make this completely. completely inaccessible to everyone who's not us.

So I'm really good at taking complex ideas from very smart people and making them like understandable for the rest of us. And another one of my superpowers is I am a kick ass inner mother to my inner child. Oh my God. That was so good. That was so good. I love the way you phrase things. Amazing.

So, okay, well, I can talk to you for hours. I just am so grateful for you to pop on here. here and where do people find you? This was so unexpected for me, too. And we're talking about PMS and magic and the interchial, like, hell yes. Like if you and I were out, like, you know, having drinks or out like having lunch, these are the kind of conversations I love having with women. We just happen to have a podcast.

Really freaking, like, yes, if we had food here, we would be going for another three hours, guarantee it. So, oh, what I do it here? Oh, yeah, it's a podcast. So my new book, The Science of Stuff. is available wherever books are sold. So buy it, share it, read it, review it. It's a really easy driver's ed manual to what we're talking about, anxiety, depression, burnout, procrastination, addiction. It's like, here are just the bottom line so you don't have to read the entire stack sitting on

your nightstand collecting dust. And my website is scienceofstuck.com. And you can find me on Instagram at Britt Frank and Britt has two teeth. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode, I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.