The Sabrina Zohar Show - 141: How BPD Impacts your Relationships with Neuropsychotherapist Britt Frank

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

What if your “crazy” behavior isn’t crazy at all—but a perfectly logical response to trauma, fear, and unmet needs? In this raw and powerful episode, I sit down with licensed psychotherapist and trauma expert Britt Frank to unpack the truth about what we often mislabel as sabotage, emotional instability, and being "too much." We dive into parts work, BPD misdiagnosis, and why your self-critic isn’t your enemy—it’s actually trying to protect you. If you’ve ever felt like you’re your own worst enemy, this conversation is your invitation to pause and reframe. You’ll learn why we spiral, why your nervous system matters more than any diagnosis, and how to start building self-trust without bypassing the mess. Plus, we’re sharing tools from our brand-new Self Love Course—because healing doesn’t require perfection, just permission to start. The Self Love Course is available for presale now! Get the lowest price we'll offer this course for, $100 off regular pricing, and the first 50 people to sign up get a free copy of Britt's new book 'Align Your Mind: Tame Your Inner Critic and Make Peace with Your Shadow Using the Power of Parts Work' Stuck After the Podcast? Master Implementation in 8 Weeks with Sabrina's Foundation Course HERE! Do you feel like your emotions run the show and react in ways you can’t control? Join the Nervous System 101: Navigating the Unknowns In Early Dating from Sabrina and Masha Kay HERE! Struggling with a breakup? Join the Make It Make Sense: Getting Through a Breakup course from Sabrina and Britt Frank HERE! Get Ad free HERE! Want to work with Sabrina? HERE! Get merch for The Sabrina Zohar Show HERE! Don't forget to follow Sabrina and The Sabrina Zohar Show on Instagram and Sabrina on TikTok! Video now available on YOUTUBE! Disclaimer: The Sabrina Zohar Show, formerly known as Do The Work, is not affiliated with A.Z & associates LLC in any capacity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Oh, hey, Britt. Oh, hey, Sabrina. Oh, my God. So good to be here again. Welcome to the studio. Thank you. Dude, I'm so stoked to have you back. So first off, let's just give you a big congratulations. Somebody has a book that's out. Yes. Thank you so much. And it's my favorite topic in the entire world. I'm so stoked. Oh, my God, dude. Well, first of all, the science is stuck has been revolutionary for me. And for everybody that I've ever recommended it to, they're like, do this book is incredible. The workbook is another amazing book. So I'm really stoked. And obviously, proud of you. But I'm just. I'm here. Oh, I'm so excited. And the fun news for everybody that's watching, you love me and Britt, right? Well, we have a new course that just came out. And that's actually why we created today's episode about specific things that if this resonates with you and you're like, hey, whoa, I really want to learn more. We got you. We have a self-love course that just came out. It doesn't matter if you're single, if you're in a relationship, if you're married, this is for you to come back home to yourself and really learn what it actually means to love yourself. So I'm getting stoked. So Brett, for anybody, who may have not heard you on a past episode or anything like that. Let's just start off. Could you reintroduce yourself for our audience? Oh, yes. Hello. My name is Britt Frank. So I'm a licensed psychotherapist. I'm a trauma specialist. And then I have all the, you know, my professional front-facing

stuff and total train wreck, hot mess of a human being behind the scenes. So I did not become a therapist to be a person of help to other people. It was I had to learn how to human or I was going to die. And that's not being dramatic. That is very literal. And in doing so fell in love with the work. And then went to school in my 30s and said, I'm going to be a therapist now that I'm almost grown up. And here we are. What I love about that is the unconventional story, right? Because like you're, I mean, even if you, whatever you're willing, you're open to sharing, but like your past is colorful in the sense where like, you were in a relationship that wasn't healthy. You were in a really unhealthy dynamic, right? And I know that you were out of that and you met your partner, right? Later, like you're in your later 30s. This

wasn't like, oh my God, Brits been married for 25 years to her amazing husband now. Like, oh, no. My point of bringing that up was I wanted to share that you can become this incredible human being despite what you go through. Like nobody's on a timeline. It doesn't mean that you had to graduate from your psychology degree at 22 and become all of that. You can find your passions a little bit later. You can find your amazing partner. You can find yourself a little bit later in life. And I'm just, I'm really excited to have you here so that we can talk about how you could do that a little bit more. It would have been nice to know what I know now at 22. And I'm glad that this. This information will help other people not have to wait until their late 30s to go, oh, no, life is a mess. Let's do something different.

But it is really nice to know that no matter where you are, the brain can change. It is not stuck. That's what's so wild to me when I really start to understand the brain now because I know, like, you brain, brain all day. And like, you give me, how many times I'm like, well, so Brit Franco, I says. Because so many of your tidbits, right, like reframing why questions into how what, right, into just asking it a different way, all the tools on the workbook that I love. all of these different, the micro yeses, right? Like I'm naming a lot of things that Britt can, of course, will go further into. But all of these little tools really add up. And I think you're such a

beautiful testament that your brain's not working against you. It is trying to keep you safe. But if we can work with it, which is why I'm so excited about today's episode, if we can work with the inner critic, if we can stop looking at it as, oh my God, I hate this and I'm so angry at myself and why do we keep doing this and I'm, right? If we can strip that away, then I actually think we might be able to get a little bit deeper and start to change our brain and at least, at the very least, create new neural pathways. For sure, create new neural pathways and like ourselves more. Life's really short and it's hard to go through life feeling like the biggest enemy of your well-being lives inside your head. Because then it's banish your inner critic and it's kill your ego.

And it's like you can't get rid of your brain and you can't get rid of anything in there. So we have to work with it. And it's not actually, I mean, it's not easy. life's not easy, but the tools are not complicated, and you don't need 10 years of therapy or an advanced neuroscience degree to do them, which is so nice. I'm actually, can me really quickly hit on that, that whole ego thing, right? You hear that all the time. Can you maybe even, because I love that you do parts work. Like, that is such, it's one of my favorite things, right? Even if anybody doesn't know what parts work, it's like inside out, right? The movie was like the perfect way of understanding that we have different parts. But I am curious, because we hear that all the time, like kill the ego and your ego is not your amigo.

What are the benefits of it, though, right? and like the hiss is so real. Share me more about the upsets. Your ego is not your amigo. I haven't heard that one. You haven't? Oh, my God. Well, that's the Southern Florida girl. Wow. Okay, so this idea that the ego is the thing that makes you narcissistic and interrupts your, the ego is just a filtering system. We need our egos. And if you think of all the information coming at us all day, the ego is just one part of our entire set of personality parts. And without it, like, I'm not going to sit here the way I'm sitting in this podcast when I'm home later with other people. And we need our ego to help us to human with other people. You don't need to kill it. You need to train it so it's not running out

of control. But I love the movie Inside Out because it is. You've got this cast of characters in your head. Your ego's one of them. And it's really important to know how it works and why it's important. And can I ask you a clarifying question on emotions? Because this is actually something I personally have been trying to understand a little bit more. I watch my mama sent me something. I love when I'm like, I studied this. And it's like, no, no, no, it was a real. It was a real. Somebody sent me. And it was they were saying that they were like all, you know, there's only four primary emotions. And they were like, that's it. Right. And anxiety is not one. And I was curious your thoughts when we look at parts work. Is that how it works? Are there is, if you could explain a little bit more, maybe for anybody who doesn't really understand parts work. Yeah. And the movie inside out, obviously is simplified. So in the movie, your emotions are your part. So you have your fear part and your anger part and your disgust part and all of that. But obviously it's a movie and it's cartoon. It's simplified. So the emotions, and some people say there's four, some people say there's eight, but however many there are, your parts are like all of those different ages that you've ever been. So the five-year-old

inner child part of me can be angry and sad and mad and disgusted. My 13-year-old parts are mostly mad, but they could be sad and angry and needy and clingy and defiance. And so every part of you, every age that you've ever been, can also have all of the emotions. So it gets very busy and very complicated up in here. And I love the manager and the firefighter. And I'm probably going to botch it because this is not my specialty, but I do love. Because sometimes even when I'm doing my own work, it's like, oh, who's that manager right now coming to try to figure this out? Who's the firefighter that's like freaking out right now that if there's a fire in the building when there's nothing?

And I was curious because this kind of segues us into, you know, I think for so long, at least me personally, I genuinely and fundamentally at a core belief thought there was something wrong with me. I really believed like no one else feels this, right? Because like you said, on the average day to day when you're walking around, I don't know that you've got 300 parts in your brain activating and firing off. I'm just looking and going, oh, you seem really calm and collected. I'm the one who's fucking neurotic and psychotic in my brain. And my journey, and again, everything I want to just preface, everything we're talking about in this episode. I can speak for both of us. And Britt will also clarify, this does not replace medical advice. This is purely Brit, maybe her. personal experience or her clinical experience and my personal experience, I would never poo-poo medication or therapy or any type of modalities. I feel like you work, but I do want to share my journey of what did not work for me because early on, I had all these parts. I had my anxiety that was so palpable that now when I meet people who have what I'm like, oh, I see how this impacted other people, right? I didn't get it. And for me, I was going from therapist to therapist and everybody had a different diagnosis until I landed on you have borderline personality

disorder. I had that one too. Yeah. And I remember just being like, oh, and the shame that came with it, right? And there should be zero shame in any of these diagnoses, but culturally, right? I was like, borderline personality disorder. So you mean I'm, I am fucked up. Oh, my God.

Even in the therapy world. And that's one of those secrets that no one will tell you that borderline specifically is the diagnosis, if you tell a group of therapists that that's what's going to be walking in the door. you'll get eyes down, avert your gaze. There's a lot of stigma with that specific diagnosis. It's wild. And it's kind of probably like everything out, right?

There's all so many misuses. And for me, I, when they diagnosed me as that, all of a sudden, it was great. Now we're going to hop you up. And I was on an antidepressant, anti-anxiety, a mood stabilizer, as well as I had clonopin and Xanax in my bag at all time. So I was on quite a cocktail. Again, for anybody that's on this, if it works for you, fuck yes. Like, we are here for that.

I found out later that I have an MTHFR gene mutative. patient and that serotonin, what was I getting. That's why it made me very negative thoughts, we'll just say, because I didn't need more of it. My brain wasn't processing it. Brain is braining, right? But if we could, I'd love to understand because people ask every fucking day about BPD. And for me, I'm like, I don't have the expertise here because I was misdiagnosed. I'd love if we could just explain what the fuck is it. And why do you think it's so misdiagnosed? Okay, so buckle up. We're having the BPD conversation, which sidebar, I don't. like to have because it's such a sticky, full of landmines kind of topic. It's so misunderstood.

And it's a very, very, you know, when people hear anyone talking about borderline, it's like, okay, I'm getting ready to fight. And I get why. So let's just start with the definition and why I don't like it. So borderline personality disorder. First of all, the entire DSM, the big Bible of mental disorders, was first created in like the 50s and 60s. And there's only been five versions. Five. Think about if you were only on the fifth version of your phone. Like five, five, five, one, two, three, four, five, and we're done.

And the brain science has been out a lot longer and the DSM hasn't caught up to the brain science. And there's so much. And again, we need the DSM to have access to insurance coverage. I'm not saying it's bad. But borderline personality disorder assumes that you only have one personality. Okay. So this is important. So I'm going to break it down just a little bit. The idea that you only have one personality is called the mono mind theory. Mono, like monogamous, one. Right. So like if you only have one personality, it can either be healthy or unhealthy, securely attached or insecurely attached, disordered or normal. But anybody who has ever had any experience being a human knows. Well, part of me knows don't smoke the meth. I'm speaking for myself. And, And this other part of me is sitting in the bathroom with a broken light bulb, McGivering, I'm dating myself there, you know, like a meth pipe out of a broken light bulb. So our personality is so much more complicated than this idea that you only have one thing and it's either good or bad, healthy or unhealthy. Borderline personality disorder, in my opinion, both personally and clinically is the wrong name for the dilemma. Now again, the symptoms are real. And you and I both know, oh my God, the highs, the lows, the going back and forth between.

I hate myself and I hate you and I hate you more than I hate me and please love me. Now go away. Now F you. Now come back. Now give me a hug. Now I want to punch you. That's all very real. Sorry, were you in my apartment in my 20s? It's a thing. It's a thing. But borderline used to mean you're on the border of neuroses and psychosis. And that is just not accurate. It also means you have one personality, which in my opinion also not accurate. We have lots of personalities. Everyone has multiplicity up there. You know, you have your good girl parts and your pleaser parts and your selfish part. We have a whole set of characters up there. So to call borderline personality disorder its own thing. If you even, I think I sent you. Oh, I have it. I'm ready. From the DSM, the definition and the criteria, aka the checklist you have to hit to get it, is so infuriating.

It makes my brain bleed. Would you like to share? I would let me read it for everybody to hear. Okay. So the criteria for borderline personality disorder are outlined in the DSM-5 as the following. And to your point, 100% the DSM-5, I'm here for, but it's the same as kind of like our laws still being in the 90s and we haven't caught up with technology. And you're like, oh, baby, we are evolving too quickly at this point. So the first one, unstable relationship, a pattern of intense unstable relationships characterized by idealization and devaluation.

I pause right there. Unstable relationships means that you could now have a personality disorder. I think that's all of us now. I was like, that sounds like limerance, right? That's puberty. Yeah. That's your brain doesn't finish growing until you're 28. And even then, it's a mess.

And she's still frittata. But to your point, I'm like, I wouldn't say that there would anything be about like, ooh, your personality. It's like, no, you might just have trauma, right? You might just have, like, for me, it was I had a lot of anxiety from unhealed stuff I wasn't willing to look at. And as you read that list, notice where trauma is conspicuously absent. Go ahead.

Okay. Next, identity disturbance, a persistently unstable sense of self or self image. I have that to you. I sure do. Welcome to being human. Yeah. I was like, if anybody thinks, even the most beautiful people have it, it's like, don't matter. Okay. Impulsivity. Oh, that was me. Impulsive behavior in at least two areas that could be

self-damaging, such as substance abuse, reckless driving, or binge eating. Check, check, check. Not to mention, too, those are also very specific. It's like, well, what if I don't have those specific things, right? Effective instability, intense mood reactivity that can last from hours to a few days. Now, that could be caused by hormonal imbalance. That could be caused by a glucose crash. That could be caused by too much meth and not enough dopamine. It could be caused by too much dopamine. Like, said you didn't need more serotonin. Too much, we talk about dopamine, dopamine, but too much dopamine is psychosis. So, yeah. The pendulum swings. This morning, Ryan was in a bad mood and it's like, but the instability of a mood and him lasting for a day. It's like, what I say and be like,

whof, you've got it. It's like, now he just sounds like he got a really shitty night's sleep and just needs to have his alone time. Okay, the next one. Chronic feelings of emptiness, a feeling of emptiness that can lead to harmful behaviors. Yeah, definitely have that. being lonely, unloved, disconnected, isolated, over inundated with social media. But nope, this is your personality. That's the problem. Go on. Yeah, nothing else. Anger. Inappropriate or intense anger, difficulty controlling anger. I know a lot of people with that. That I don't think is their personality disorder. It's a problem. But does that mean that it's now, again, personality disorder means you are the problem. The problem is you. Keep going. Paranoid ideation or disassociative symptoms.

Oh, disassociation is classic with trauma. Transient paranoid ideation or severe disassociation symptoms, including suicide or self-mutilating behavior. Of course. Nobody, we don't want that for anybody. And where's trauma on that list? No, yep. It's just a specialty and personality disorders is the only person that's going to be able to give you the assessment. And of course, and I think the biggest issue I have is a couple of things. After reading that as somebody who was diagnosed about that, no wonder I was hopped up on medicine because I was so ashamed that of this, I was like, oh, so just fix this. If you fix this, right? If you just fix this thing in my head that you can't Right? Like you said, what are you going to fix? You can heal, but there's no, you're not going to go in and re-sow it.

Right. If you just fix this, if you just give me, okay, great, then I'll be fine. And then we all wonder why we don't feel better. Right. And the thing about borderline, we'll still call it that because that's what it's called, that if you keep reading the DSM, there's barely a mention of trauma as a possibility of a thing that could be happening as well. But all of those symptoms are symptoms of complex trauma. Now, people will push back and say, well, I never had any trauma and I have borderline. Okay, well, then what definition of trauma are you going with? Because trauma isn't necessarily something huge happened to you. Our brains are complicated. And from birth to right now, There's a lot that can overwhelm your nervous system. Little paper cuts. Anything could overwhelm your nervous system. So it doesn't have to be classic capital T assault war, those types of things. So I would question if someone said, I have every symptom of borderline, but nothing bad ever happened to me. I mean, maybe.

But that might be worth exploring because nothing bad may have ever happens. But how is your nervous system interpreting good or bad? So all of those symptoms are a manifestation of complex trauma. complex PTSD. Now, I did a post once that borderline should be called complex PTSD and I got a whole bunch of very, very angry messaging saying, those are not the same thing and you should have your education taken from you and blah, blah, blah, blah. So are they exactly the same? Of course not. But complex trauma symptoms recognize the problem is not your personality. The problem is your environment did a thing or a lot of things and your brain adapted because it was trying to keep you alive. disclaimer. I'm not saying the symptoms aren't real. And again, we know that the self-harm, the self-sabotage, all the things that we do to interrupt our lives, very real. The pain of borderline also very real. But it's not a problem with your personality. I really think that this particular disorder should be recategorized as a process addiction. Okay, well, what does that mean? What does that mean? So there are two types of addictions. There are chemical addictions. And so that's drugs, alcohol, people, even sex is a type of chemical. Yeah. Then there are process addictions where there's no chemical transaction. That would be like gambling. That would be gaming, video gaming, anything where you're not actually ingesting a chemical. So borderline personality disorder mimics addiction. What's addiction? A pattern of behavior that keeps going even though bad things are happening and you're not stopping despite feeling bad, wanting to stop and you can't stop. That's the definition of addiction. So I like to categorize the dilemma as my brain got looped on an addiction cycle that I need to get off of, but you can't get off of a cycle if you don't know you're on it. And I think, you know, here's a thing. For anybody, if you're like, I was diagnosed as this and it

worked out for me and it's like, okay, again, if you're like, nope, nope, I don't agree. You're allowed to disagree. You don't have to agree with anything we're saying. It's just different perspectives of two people for me who went through five fucking years of every time I went to the doctor, they hired my meds, every time because I kept telling them I don't feel better. Like, my moods don't feel stable. Okay, we're going to give you more. Did they tell you that there is no medication for borderline specific. You can treat symptoms, but there is no medication for it. And I'm not a doctor. So that's my disclaimer. But if you go to the literature, they will say you can medicate symptoms, but borderline has no specific medication to treat it. Because to your point, I think it's a very muddy water.

And so for them, they gave me depa coat and depocotes for bipolar. Well, that's why it didn't work on me, because I don't have that. And like we said, it's not that I had a personality disorder. I had a fuck ton of stuff I needed to work through. I will say right now, after looking at this, if I can pull that fucking list back up, I had every single one, unstable relationships, I had limerence up the goddamn ads, obsessive and idealization. Yeah, you want to know why? Putting them on the pedestal made me piece of shit. Putting them on the pedestal made me the bad guy. Putting them on the pedestal meant that I had to work harder to get them similar to my father. I had identity disturbance. I didn't know who the fuck I was. I used my body to connect with people because that was the

only way I could get people to like me. Spoiler alert, that didn't work. So, okay, cool. Didn't have self-image, right? Because all my life, I was told 10 different things in my household of how I love you, but you're a piece of shit. You're amazing, but get the fuck away from me, right? Very polarizing duality. What is it called? Narcissistic double bind. Just learned about that.

Impulsivity. My mama used to say that to me. She was like, your impulsivity is going to be what's your demise. All of these. Instability, feeling emptiness. I lived for dating. Anger. Always angry.

It was reactive and disassociative. All of these led to me to discover, oh, I have. inner children that are screaming because I'm not paying attention to them and I'm doing what my father did to me. I discredit myself. I devalue myself. I put myself down. Even last night, I said something. Ryan goes, I love that photo that I posted of you. And I was like, ugh, have you seen my wrinkles? And he looks at me and he goes, you self-critical bitch. Can you accept a compliment? And I chuckled because it was like, he's not wrong, right? But that doesn't mean that my personality has a problem. That just meant that I didn't have the tools that I needed to navigate this.

And I love what you just said, because you just said inner children. That's one of the reasons. I love you so because you get it's not just, we talk about the inner child, like it's this one angelic being of just joy and light and the innocence. But we have lots of inner children. There's an inner toddler and an inner infant and all the parts of you that we're forming in utero. And it's a busy, busy cast. And the problem isn't that they're there. And the problem isn't even that they're in pain. The problem is we don't know they're there and we have no tools to cope with it. We're not taught how to do family therapy in our own system. internal family systems, which is the parts work with the managers and the firefighters and inside out is so, so good for that. But any type of therapy that recognizes that you're complex, you're not just this one thing, is going to be useful in the feeling better from all the borderline stuff. I'm curious too for anybody. I hear this a lot. A lot of people are like, I don't know how to connect with my inner child. And I get that. It's so fucking valid because it's not easy. Like it took me ketamine treatments to understand now. I could do it, no problem. But prior to that, I didn't understand it. And I was curious what your, like if you have tools,

or modalities, you know, for me, at least personally, I'm a big fan of, like, the question I'll ask myself often is like, where do I feel this in my body? How old do I feel? What does this feel like? Especially like, how many times I'll be like, they don't like me and they don't choose me. And I'm like, oh, you sound emo. There she is. She's middle school. And I'm like, oh, God, she sees, I almost in her name. But this one girl that made my fucking life hell. I see her and I'm like, oh, she's the one I'm talking to. Right. Or like, sometimes I'll have these moments where I'm like, you can't take this away from me. And I'm like, who am I saying that to? I may not have actually said that to my father, but I wanted to. So I'm curious for people who are maybe like, dude, what the fuck you're talking about? How do I even access this? What are some ways or some tools that we can actually give them to help? So here's the dilemma, especially when it comes to borderline. When you have borderline, imagine all of your parts, that entire cast of characters in your head, they're all smushed together. And you can't actually identify.

It's not I have a child part who feels scared. It's I am scared. It's not I have an angry teenager. it's I am my rage. And so before you can connect with any part, whether it's a child part, a teenage part, it doesn't matter. First, we have to separate everybody out. And you can't do that from the same state. So if I am my rage, I'm not going to be able to connect with my inner child because I don't know I have one.

Because right now everyone is just me. I call that mind fusion. So my husband is a nuclear engineer and he'll get mad that I'm taking such liberty with the physics. But generally speaking, uh-huh. He's like, well, the physics says, did it. I love him. But generally speaking, fusion is you get a bunch of atoms and then they combine and that combination creates instability, which then creates a cabloy. That's my high, very technical explanation.

That's that degree right there coming out. I don't have a nuclear engineering degree. Fusion is everything combines and then cabloy. Technically, it could also implode. But that's another podcast episode. So when your mind fused, that means all of your personalities have now come together creating instability, which is. is then the cabloy. So before you connect with your inner child, first we have to separate. I am noticing a part of me who feels, not I am feeling. And that language really matters. It's not,

oh my God, I'm so anxious. It's which part of you? No, it's not a part. It's just me. Okay, that's a sign of being mind fused. So the first task is we have to defuse. And I love giving people lots and lots of tools, lots of mindfulness things, slowing down, noticing, using that separation language. There's a part of me who's really anxious. There's a part of me who's really angry. Both of them seem to want different things. And I feel like I'm stuck in the middle of a tug of war. But defusing is step one before connecting. Okay. And I was going to say, I would love to also look at, like, how do you navigate that during conflict or during a trigger, right? Especially when you're in the shit. Because I know for me, and like sometimes I have to stop and just really take a conscious

moment. And again, like, I think Masha gave me that a fun fact. And I've said on the show before that, like, it takes us like 3,000 repetitions for our brain to start creating like a new neural pathway. Like you have to do it so many times before it becomes natural, right? The when, how many times we think of like when you go to grab your toothbrush and you grab the toothpaste, right? You just naturally do both. You don't even think about it. And I love that like you've even given the tool like habit stacking, right? Like if you're really trying to.

James Clear came up with that. But yeah. But we went through segue through you of like, yes, that habit stacking. Right. If I'm going to grab the toothbrush, then maybe I'm going to take an extra deep breath in that moment. if I'm automatically going to do what I do. But I was curious when we're talking about this mind fusion component, how do you deal with it when you're triggered, when you're in the moment?

Is it like just having a safe word or going for a walk? Like, what would you recommend? So I actually have in the new book an acronym, and it's defuse, and that's how you can defuse. And it's all the tools that we see with the nervous system regulation stuff, D describe the sensations. Okay, I'm noticed. And this is a lot of work, but I would say it takes more work to fight when you're mind fused.

And then if you're mind fused and I'm mind fused and we're both. fighting, that is going to be a waste of time and energy. So if I can't describe my sensations, exhale, take a breath, feel the sensations that are happening and notice, am I in control right now, or do I feel too fused to keep control? Use your senses. What can I see here, taste or smell? I think this is the acronym. I wrote it like a year ago. I'm no, no, we're here. Yeah, now we're at S and E. E is exit. E is fine the exit. And S is shift. So move your body. Because when you're fused, you get very, very stuck in a position. So even just stretching or shaking or taking a lap or whatever, all of those things can help you defuse.

If you're not defused, don't have the conversation. Don't have the conflict. It's not going to go. No, get the book too, though. This book is phenomenal. I'm fucking obsessed with this book because you make it digestible where I'm like, oh, that's all I needed to know. Because I'm even thinking about like when I first started my journey, I'll never forget I had like this. I was always looking for something new, right?

I was like, I need something different. I need something new. And it's funny because I automatically defaulted to going for a walk. Like it just, I didn't know that what I was doing. And my mom, we found it recently that I was like, oh, humming, right? Like, and growing up, all my mom did was sing around the house. I always remember her. She would make up lyrics and I always thought those were the lyrics, fly me to the moon. I thought the lyrics to the moon and don't forget to bring me back because she just made that up. And so I was like, oh, that's the Frank Sinatra song. And then I heard it and I was like, that's not it. And it's a couple of things. But all these subtle natural things. And I think for so long and I hear anybody that's like, I'm doing it. It's not working. It's not working. And it's like it's a couple of things. Rome wasn't built in a day, right? You have however old you are right now, that's how many years of parts that you have that are like, uh-uh, bitch, we don't know what this is. So it's going to take a minute, but really simplifying it, right? Like, even understanding, like, I love the acrimand and diffuse because, you know what, sometimes it's true. Sometimes I'm like, I just need to take a really

deep breath. I need to go outside for five minutes. I need to maybe listen to a song and shake it out and I can come back and have a conversation with my partner. Or I need to go upstairs, right? Like, it doesn't have to be this grandiose thing. But I think so many of us forget that, like, when you have the anxiety when you get the text, like you don't know someone to response immediately. You don't have to answer someone's text in that second and deal with the moment. It's okay. And every time now, I don't need the big tools. I'll go for a walk. I'll like how many times I've got a troll that will say something and I'll feel it in my body and I'm like, Sabrina, and I'll like respond and then I'll delete it immediately because I'm like, that's not

the response you want to give. That's the reaction you're having. That's not the response you want give. This type of mindfulness, I was not hurt. Let me clarify. Because somebody said the other day, like, oh, you were from New York. You must have always had great boundaries. And I'm like, I was, no, right. I was like, I learned time. No, I said fuck a lot, but that's it. And I was like, I learned this along the way. Because after over a while, you're like, yeah, meditating. It's not, you don't meditate when you're super anxious and you can't sit still. Your brain's like, girl, you ain't safe. But maybe going for, compounding it, right? Going for a walk, taking a deep breath, having some water, because your girl is like a plant. I need sun and water. Basic needs, eating something. So minute and simple. Taking a

second to go, where is this in my body? Okay, I can sit with this, right? Like, this is sitting in the discomfort. That amalgamation of things then after 20 minutes, right? Like, I'll do a note thing. I'll write it out 20, 100 times. Then after that, that's when I'll decide after an hour if I want to send that or if maybe now I'm seeing it differently. Because now you're defused. And with borderline, what happens? And it's such a cluster fuck. If you've never experienced it, it's hard to describe. But anyone who can late, we'll get, when you are, quote, borderline, you mind fuse really quickly with different parts. So I'm going to mind fuse with an angry part. I hate you. Now I'm going to mind fuse with a younger part. I need you. Now it's I hate you. I need you. What? And then it's now I'm going to mind fuse with an impulsive part. Okay, now I'm doing drugs. Now I'm going to mine fuse with a shamy part. Oh, now I feel bad for doing drugs. Now I'm going to mine fuse with a projection part. It's your fault that I'm doing drugs. And then that fusion state makes you feel crazy. But you know, and you said this to me, earlier when I told you I was feeling off. You're like, Brit, you say there's no such thing as crazy. And I do. It is not craziness. It's mind fusion. And it makes sense in context. And you don't need to know why you got mind fused. And you don't need to know what trauma caused which fusion. It doesn't matter. It's what's available to me now, taking the walk, doing those breaking autopilot, really. It's like if we were fighting and I'd say a thing, then you'd say a thing. And then I'd say a thing. And we'd just be off to the races. We have to break autopilot in order to get unstuck and defused. And take whatever tool.

help, right? Like, if that's reading a book, right? If that's getting Brits book, get Brits book. If that is listening to another Sabrina Zohar Show podcast, like, right? Or that's just fucking calling your friend, right? Whatever you need, there are tools that are available. But I want us to also normalize, right? It doesn't need to be that like, I need 1,200 therapy sessions and I have to just like, please, please, go to therapy, don't stop doing, don't stop talking to somebody. Please have a safe environment that you feel like you can unload and unpack with somebody. This is what a lot of therapists either don't know or don't share is that trauma work is a lot of people don't realize. Even some therapists don't realize this.

Trauma work and telling your trauma stories is not safe if you do not know how to defuse. So I was fortunate that I had a trauma informed therapist when I was like, I'm borderline. I need help. She said, we can't do trauma work, right? Your system is on fire right now. We can't even begin to start trauma work until you have some basic coping skills. that you have practiced. Like until you practice going for a walk for 20 minutes every time you're triggered, there's no trauma work to be had here. We got to pack that box up and put it on the shelf.

I didn't know that. And I think all the trauma, you know, how trendy trauma and nervous system regulation stuff is. Like I get it. Yay, we're talking about it. But trauma work is not safe if you are fused because now I'm telling you my trauma story from the part that had the trauma. And that's going to re-traumatize me. Even though it's like, well, I should tell you you you're my therapist. me tell you my trauma story. As a therapist, I do not let people unpack their trauma stories until we have a base of tools and skills first. It's similar to like with me with the dating stuff where I'm like, no, no, no, we're not going to talk about anybody. We got to talk about you, right? Like if I hear one more time, they, they, they, and it's like, hmm, they certainly did a lot to you.

And I get it, right? Talk about mind fusion. I can even see it. They did this. They did this. And it's like, so first I hear the little girl that feels like she doesn't get a choice, right? That little girl that's saying, but I have to choose you, but I want you, right? But I love them and they're amazing, but they're so inconsistent. Okay, it sounds like you're talking to your parent, right? It sounds like my dad, to be honest. And for me, I'm like, we can't put them aside, right? It's kind of like to you. Like, put all that stuff aside. Let's get down to the bare bones of like, okay, talk to me where you feel that in your body? And I'll get clear. No, no, no, I'm just want to keep talking about the other person. I'm like, yeah, yeah. So talk to me. Again, where was that

in your body? I don't know that body part. The other person is that genitalia that's new, right? Like, talk to me about basics before we start to add on. And I kind of wanted to like even use this moment to segue into something that I think is really fucking important that we touched on earlier of like, how can we utilize our self-critic to help us, right? We hear so many of these fucking things. And I'm so like we said, the e-goes on your ming and get rid of it and the self-critit, how to shut it off, how to stop it. And it's like, right? I will say personally, it's not necessarily the worst thing in the world because, don't get me wrong. The pendulum came. swing, right? I can't have all self-critic and all self-love. Like, that's not, even you're just, like,

either super negative or super, like, overtly, toxicly positive. But for me, sometimes that critic that's like, no, girl, get the fuck up. Like, don't be a lazy sack of shit. Go do the workout. I'm like, thank you. You don't have to be mean to me, but thank you. Thank you for go. Right. How could we learn how to work with this? Because I think for everyone listening, our self-critic does a really great job keeping us down. But how can we use that to help us elevate up? and the banish your inner critic and kick the inner critic to the curb and tell her to shut the fuck up. It's like that just makes my eyes just rar roll back in my head because again you can't get rid of these parts of you. And I'm not saying you should beat yourself up and just be mean to yourself.

But the idea of a critic gets really black and white as it's bad. And that, you know, Brunet Brown quoted that Theodore Roosevelt, it's not the critic who counts. You know, it's the man in the arena who counts. And I love that quote and I love her and that's all great. But criticism is intended when it's constructive to help us and to help us grow and to, like, I want you as my friend to tell me, hey, you know, maybe don't do that or maybe we could have done that a little bit better. Without constructive, skillful criticism, we stay in our patterns and then that becomes enabling. And that's not great. So the trick with your inner critic is to train it to be more constructive.

And how do you train anything? First, you have to build a relationship with it. So get out of bed. You suck. You're a piece of shit. Okay. I'm not going to just say to it, thank you for your help. Now be quiet. And then have it say, okay, bye. We have to build a relationship. So I would actually sit and journal like with my dominant hand. I'm left handed. And then answer as the critic with my right hand. Like, hey, hey. Take me an hour and a half just to write one fucking letter. Uh-huh. Yeah. So, you know, you have a lot of opinions. Where did you get those from? And you have to build. This sounds again like a lot of work. But what's the alternative? The alternative is to keep doing things the way they've been. But you can turn your inner. critic into a coach and a good coach is tough when they need to be and doesn't coddle and isn't,

oh, poor you all of the time, right? Yes. So we want to turn the critic into a coach and that way we can use it to help us keep ourselves accountable. You can't keep me accountable because you're not, I'm not little and you're not a parent. So the only person, hot take, who can actually keep us accountable is us. We need our inner critic. We just need them to be retrained and re-related. It's sort of like doing couples therapy on yourself with yourself. Yeah, someone had asked. I forgot audience questions. Hi. I totally forgot we had a few. So we will backtrack into a couple of them. But since we're on this, someone asked, how do I make my inner critic talk to me in a nicer tone? So it sounds like what you're trying to, correct me if I'm wrong, you can't force them to do that. But how could you work with it? Is it any different than what you were just describing? If you were really pissed off, what would you want more than anything? Like if you and your partner were getting into it and you were super angry and I pulled you aside and I was like, okay, you're really angry. I got you. Check. What would you need to? more than anything in that moment. For me personally, for me personally, I think the safety and

space for me to express myself. Yes. And the inner critic actually needs that too. So our inner critic actually needs validation. And we're also busy trying to tell it to shut the fuck up and go away. What if we listen to it? What if we said, okay, listen, like I don't totally love your choice of words. Right. Like mine. Right. But I really want to understand where you're coming from. What is your biggest fear? What is your biggest need? And what is your biggest goal? If you can ask your inner critic, their biggest fear, their biggest need, and their biggest goal that's going to give you so much information. And then you're going to go, oh, that makes sense. And then you start to understand each other. And that's where a more peaceful relationship can be built. Oh, I love that. Okay. The other one was how do you interrupt the thought pattern when you're spiraling? Right? And I get it. Like, I've been there. And as a girl that like, I remember when I first started having self-awareness, what my friends were like, cool, you have self-awareness? Now what are you going to do with it? So even prior to that. But spiraling and room. I'd love if we could even just maybe take a minute to talk about how do you constructively like process versus spiral and ruminate of like, I'm a piece of them. They don't want me. Right. We talk about pulling on the sweater of the string when the guy doesn't text the girl they, right, the person doesn't text back or they didn't say it. They didn't say it how you want. They sit up. Sorry, I'm busy tonight. And they didn't make another plan. And you're now on this fucking loop. What can we do? So I have, this is my clinical tool that I call follow your drunk friends around the bar. I don't think I've ever talked. I don't think I've ever talked. about this on the podcast. Not on the show. You and I have Friday. We talked about this. So, okay, when

think about like just stereotypical college party scene, you're at a bar and you have a really good friend and they are just shick-can't. And they're not going to be logical. You're not going to have a conversation. Nothing is going to get solved. But if you're a good friend, you're going to kind of just follow them around to make sure they don't get into too much trouble, maybe put them in the Uber at the end of the night or take them home and get them into bed. So follow your drunk friend around the bar is what you do for yourself when you're spiraling. Like, it still happens to me. I'm a trauma therapist. And it happens to me more regularly than I would like to admit. But when that happens, I can defuse not enough to be logical, but enough to recognize I have a part of

me who is just out of control. My drunk friend, I need to just make sure she doesn't do anything too impulsive. So I might be laying in bed crying, but I can have a little tiny part of me that goes, all right, I know I'm still in here. And we're not going to fix this. I'm not going to stop this and I'm not going to solve this, but I am going to stay with you. I'm not going to leave you until this is done. And if you could see me, you would think I was having a psychotic episode because I'll be like rocking myself being like, I know, I know baby girl. We're going to get through this.

I'm not going anywhere. I know this sucks while sobbing while whatever my impulsive thing is. I don't do drugs anymore. But we all have our impulsive self-soothing things that we do, whatever your thing is. And so if you can stay with. yourself in that moments, that will help without beating the shit out of yourself. That will get you through to a moment where then you can defuse and process. Yeah. And even as you're talking, I'm like, what do I do? I was like, okay, I have a self-critic, right? To your point, all of us have

this narrative, right? Like, I'm in the process of writing a book. Don't worry. It's not coming out for a minute. Don't get too excited. But it's coming. And even as I'm- Your parts are showing. My parts are showing. And like my parts are starting to come out. It's like, there's the one part of me that's like, Oh my God. Oh my God. We did it. Oh, my God. We're so proud of ourselves. Yay. And then the other part's like, girl, get the fuck down. You're not going to be able to do it. And then there's another part that's like, oh, girl, this is going to be so much work. You're not going to be able to do it. Right. And for me, it's like, cool. Could I spiral and be like, oh, my God, my dad was right? I am a fucking idiot. I'm not going to be able to do this. Oh, my God. No one's going to buy this book.

Right. And go into this whole like, woe is me. Oh, my God. This isn't going to work. Right. And before I've gotten out the gate, I've already stopped it. Right. I'm not even opening the gate. I'm not even allowing myself to run the race. For me personally, what I try to notice is sometimes, and like, you know, I'm painfully self-aware so I can pick up on it. I'm like, oh, I'm on a loop. But for me, I always just get curious with that part. And I'm like, hey, so what is this serving us? How is this serving us? And when I go to the critic, they're like, well, because the fall is not going to be as great, because I'm protecting you. And I'm like, cool, what are you protecting me from? Well, you're going to get ridiculed. And I'm like, cool, by who? Does it have to be by me?

Right. And I just start to pull the string and get curious. And then I'm like, oh, how is this serving me? Oh, it's allowing me to stay in the fact that my core beliefs want to be right, right? That, oh, see, there's something wrong with me. I'm not good enough. No one's going to listen to me. The newest core belief that started to come out is no one wants to pay for me. No one's going to invest in me. Well, my career has shown otherwise, but I still, and this is the only reason I share this with everybody isn't because I'm asking for anything from you guys. I'm only sharing this for two reasons. One, I'm not dating, so it's hard for me to relate on that level, but to also show you're fucking human and this is so normal to be scared and fearful. and unsure about yourself, but it's what you do with it. Especially with money.

Everyone's parts come out with ask any financial planner or realtor. And they'll tell you, people make big financial decisions from the most illogical parts of themselves. That's because we have parts. And with money stories, oh, my God, parts come raging out. Raging. And it's like, and for me with my childhood and everything I went through with my dad withholding money. And I was like, oh, I'm not worth anything, right? No one would invest in me.

And that's okay, right? It's just part of the world. work. And I think just having some tools, again, guys, if this resonates with you, the course is going to be fucking phenomenal. And you guys, well, the first two months of it, you guys get the free copy of the book. But after this, you guys can just buy the book. But I just think it's really important to have a space that you can go to. So if you guys resonate with us, great, you can go to a course where you're going to have tools. You're going to have Brits fucking brilliant tools in there and all of her writing and you're going to have my babble. And if not, right, like, you don't

have to do that. Maybe it's a safe friend. Maybe it's just you. Maybe it's whatever it is. find something that at the very least you can at least touch base with yourself of like when I get that. Anytime I look, I'm like, oh, it's right here. Oh, that's where the vagus nerve is. Okay, so I'm disregulated. It's okay. I don't have shaven blame, but I am aware. I love that so much. And again, people are trying to do work and it's not the wrong work. But if you don't know who you're dealing with, then you're going to try to do a self-love self-care tool for like a self-care tool for a six-year-olds. So we need to know. I always tell people if you're interested in parts work and you don't know where to start, make a cast list. Like think of your head like a movie and think of all of the different characters in there. The parts of me who love dating. The parts of me who hate dating.

The parts of me who want to be loved. The parts of me who are like, avoid in as all get up. Make a list and ask yourself, how would I describe them? How old are they? What do they look like? You know, what's their story? You can go as nerdy with this as you want. And then when you're triggered, you have a menu of who is this right now.

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Self love is a skill. It's not a feeling, right? And so I'm like, if you could go a little bit more, like, what does that look like in practice? Like, is that kind of what we're describing here? Because I am tired of, like, it's not bubble bass and face masks. It's not, you know, this is how you love yourself and stop sabotaging all of these things. And I think I'd love to kind of round out this episode kind of hitting on the sabotage versus what is actually fucking happening.

Like, how do you genuinely love yourself without it? being fake and contrived. And I just keep telling myself affirmations in the mirror while I'm crying putting on makeup. All right. We've seen that. So to make that stick, you have to match your self-care tool to the part who's needing it. Think of your body parts. Like if you bust it open your knee and I gave you like a cough drop, that's not going to make any sense. It's like, why are you giving me a cough drop? I've got like guts hanging out of my knee. So self-care and self-love is often the same thing. If I have a three-year-old toddler part that's flipping out, a kale smoothie and a good run isn't going to get the job done. That's not what a three-year-old needs.

And so we have to match the self-care tool to the part who is needing the care. And there are so many ways of working with this. And I love that we're going to be able to share all of that in the course, too, because again, the tools are, life's not easy, but the tools are not complicated. They are simple, simple science. Just have to do them. Right. It's a consistency of showing up. And that's why I hate the whole like self-sabotage, that word. Because it's like, okay, like, I remember. I remember once I made a video, I was like, self-abotage and self-protection and people were like, really? So my ex, like, hit me because he was trying to protect himself? And I was like, first of all, no one talked about abuse. Like, that doesn't have a place here. But I was like, even if you're saying, well, my ex screamed at me. It's like, yeah, because he might be seeing you as a threat. And that's him actually trying to protect himself. No, absolutely. I'm like, but that doesn't mean we need to shame it by saying that that person's doing it intentionally to hurt themselves, right? And I think I look at self-sabotage as, right, I'm not doing this. I'm not freaking out because the person didn't text me back because I'm trying to hurt. hurt myself intentionally. I'm doing that because a part of me feels like I'm out safe and a part of me is freaking out. And I think a lot of people get really hung up on the self-sabotage thing. And I'd love to hear your thoughts if there's anything that you want to share on that because I find it really muddied, especially in our right, like you said, it's kind of like trauma. It's all these buzzwords of like, oh, you're self-sabotaging. But how do we actually cut through

that noise and understand how to work with that versus against it? Especially with borderline because one of the Hallmark characteristics of quote, I'm always do this because you know how I feel about that particular, the way we word it, is, you know, self-sabotage. Oh, my gosh, I'm always ruining a good thing. I'm always stopping myself right before I do something good or date someone healthy or make a new habit. What's wrong with me? And it's not what's wrong with me. Again, this isn't about justifying behavior and it's not about what they're doing. It's about what we're doing. It's not my job to figure out your parts. It's not my job to figure out my partner's parts. And my partner never gets to say to me, oh, well, my protective parts were triggered.

that's why I was an asshole. Like he would never say that. But like, parts don't justify bad behavior. The idea of parts work is to understand our own. Self-sabotage is, and you know I say this all the time, too, self-sabotage is self-protective. That doesn't mean and seen that we're done. It means great. Well, which part of you thinks you need to be protected by doing that? And then where did they learn that? And then what is the repair that's needed? And that gets into the weeds with other stuff. But self-sabotage isn't a thing. I would say, I won't say all, but most self-sabotage, if you dig deep enough, you'll find a scared part who's trying to help. Doesn't make it okay. But that does explain, does not mean excuse. Well, someone had even asked, like, how do I unlearn my ex-husband's patterns? It'll be a year with my new kind boyfriend.

And to me, that was the exact aspect of the self-sabotage of like, oh, well, I'm so used to that. And it's like, I would never attack this person and be like, well, because you're a fucking idiot and you keep doing the same things. It's like, like you said, there's no crazy. It's repeated behavior because that's what we know. And I think if we can maybe strip away self-sadage and start to understand, okay, I'm not, like I hear this every day of, well, I text them too many times. I sabotaged it. And it's like, okay. What part of you felt that this is how you were going to get somebody to pay attention to you?

What part of you was screaming trying to get this person to validate or choose you or love you? Sure. Again, like we said, it's not an excuse. It's not like a, oh, well, you know, oh, I say. sabotage myself again. Here I go again. I'm such a bad person. It's like, oh, no, maybe we can strip away the narrative and the story that comes with it and start to look at, oh, okay, I'm repeating patterns. I'm doing the same thing. I'm consistently showing up the same. What part of me feels like this is the only way I'm going to achieve love. And how can I work with that, her, they, she, he,

I don't give a fuck. It's a you. How can I work with that part to understand myself a little bit better. So I stopped making sabotage behavioral choices and instead I start making adult fucking regulated choices to say, sure, I could, right? Like, I used to be that girl. I think everybody needs to know this if you don't already, which you probably do if you listen to me enough. I used to be a hot fucking mess, right? Britt did too. But I was in a different way. I was the girl that was like so palpably anxious that it was hard to sit with me. It would be hard to have a conversation with me because I was dirting around. It was very impulsive. If I, if like somebody didn't text me, I would send them the fucking soliloquy and the narrative and then I would be so embarrassed. Oh my God, I used to do,

I'm so curious if anybody has ever done this. I would like ask a guy to hang out. And if I didn't hear back in like 20 minutes, I'd write back and go, well, guess not or suppose not. And how many guys were back and were like, whoa, I wasn't by my phone. Or whoa, dude, I actually thought we had a good time, but I'm not interested anymore. And at first I was like, what the other than I sabotaged again. And it was like, no. You were fused. I was fused, right? Like, there was a little part of me that was like, hey, this doesn't feel safe.

And I look at her now and I give her a big hug because I'm like, I genuinely feel bad for how I behaved. But I also know I didn't know any better. Right. And anytime you're thinking, I'm self-sabotaging, I'm such a failure. I suck. Or they suck. They this. That is a sign of being mind fused.

So we want to defuse before making decisions. Oh, Brent. As always, this is one of my favorite conversations. No, I'm curious. I'd love to encourage everybody. Leave a comment, whether it be on Spotify, YouTube, it doesn't matter. Leave a comment for us and let us know what's a behavior that you want to either get to know a little bit better or that you feel you want to let go of, right? Like, is there something? Is there a part of you that you want to explore? And if maybe it's just, you know what? Yeah, I've realized what's a pattern that you create? Like, let's start this conversation together. And the reason I say this is because it makes you feel less alone. When you read through and you're like, oh shit, wait, you do that too. It's not just me. Our little. parts friends are like, oh, hey, I'm accepted. I'm not like such an outlier and an outcast. So I highly encourage that. Guys, if you need anything, there's the course. We and Britt have it. It is out. It is live. It is going. You guys get a free copy of the book. Go fucking pick up Brit's

book. It is incredible. And Britt, as always, thank you for bestowing your wisdom and having just a really honest and candid conversation to help people. Thanks for having me out.