671 Getting Unstuck with Britt Frank
Update: 2024-12-12
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Today, I’m sharing a chat with my new-old friend Britt Frank– We met so recently, but it feels like we’ve known each other forever!
We talk about getting unstuck, the importance of mind-body connection in personal growth, and how anxiety can act as a map for navigating stuckness.
Plus, Britt shares some tips and tools for overcoming fear and doubt from her new Getting Unstuck Workbook.
Read the show notes for today's episode at terricole.com/671
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Transcript
00:00:00
Well, hello there, and welcome to this episode of The Terry Cole Show.
00:00:05
I really think you guys are going to love this episode with my friend, Britt Frank, who is an MSW and LCSW.
00:00:15
She's a clinician speaker, trauma specialist, and she's the author of The Science of Stuck.
00:00:20
She got her BA at Duke University and her MSW from University of Kansas.
00:00:25
She's an award-winning adjunct professor.
00:00:28
She speaks and writes widely about emotional wellness and healing, her work has been featured in a million places.
00:00:34
I love Britt's work.
00:00:36
You've probably seen her on Instagram.
00:00:38
She talks so much about neuroscience and the brain and psychological wellness, and she has this new beautiful workbook out, which is called The Getting Unstuck Workbook Practicals Fools for Overcoming Fear and Doubt,
00:00:53
and moving forward with your life.
00:00:56
And we talk about all the ways to get unstuck.
00:00:59
We talk about addiction.
00:01:00
She shares her story, I share my story.
00:01:03
I really was so inspired by this interview with Britt Frank.
00:01:06
I hope that you guys enjoyed it as much as I did.
00:01:19
This is The Terry Cole Show, and as you might have guessed, I'm your host, Terry Cole.
00:01:24
For over two decades, I've been a licensed psychotherapist, love and boundaries expert, and I'm also the founder of The Real of Revolution and Boundary Bootcamp.
00:01:33
On this show, I'll bring you simple strategies based on practical psychology, inspiring expert interviews, and my own insights and observations from my time on the front lines in the fascinating world of entertainment,
00:01:45
empowerment, and mental health.
00:01:48
Now, let's get going with today's episode.
00:01:56
I'm so excited to welcome my new old friend, Britt Frank, to The Terry Cole Show.
00:02:03
It's like we're new friends, but we feel like we're old friends.
00:02:06
So not that she's old, just that the friendship feels old, right?
00:02:10
Exactly.
00:02:11
We don't age at all, just in wisdom.
00:02:14
That is correct.
00:02:15
Oh, Britt, so many things to discuss.
00:02:18
There's so much stuff that I'm enthralled by you and your work, I must say.
00:02:23
And as I like to say on social media, I love you, big, beautiful brain, because I do.
00:02:28
So I want to talk about everything relationally about getting unstuck, right?
00:02:35
So you're actually an expert on a lot of things, but I love the brain body connection, the mind body connection, the neurological connection, take it from the beginning.
00:02:45
What brought you here?
00:02:47
Why are you doing the work that you're doing if this were a Marvel movie, what's your origin story?
00:02:53
I got good by a radioactive narcissist, and now I am a super human.
00:02:58
I think like many people, I came to the work via my own work.
00:03:03
I certainly did not hop out into adulthood fully functional and ready to human.
00:03:07
It was a hot train wreck of codependency drug addiction, eating disorders, crazy making relationships, bad habits.
00:03:17
I really thought, and again, I didn't know then what I know now, which is there's no such thing as crazy.
00:03:22
That's a moral judgment, not a biological reality.
00:03:25
Having a mental illness doesn't make someone crazy.
00:03:28
That's not a thing.
00:03:29
But I thought that I was.
00:03:30
And so I was very fortunate that I found a somatic trauma informed somatic body-based therapist early, early on, and then of course ignored everything she said and went about my own stubborn way,
00:03:41
being, you know, doing my thing and ignoring myself and not doing the work.
00:03:47
But when I finally got myself together, what we did in that early somatic practice really stuck with me.
00:03:54
And it made so much sense.
00:03:55
It's like, oh yeah, I am not just a floating head.
00:03:59
I am in a meat suit, and it does things.
00:04:01
And it largely informs my state of mind, my state of being the stories I'm telling myself.
00:04:07
So I want to learn this.
00:04:09
So I didn't get into the work to help people.
00:04:11
The fact that it's helpful is a bonus.
00:04:13
I got into it because I just fell in love with it.
00:04:15
It's so interesting.
00:04:18
It is so interesting.
00:04:20
And the thing is, when we, if we were to take all the questions that people ask us online and in our practice and all the things, people are endlessly asking the question, how do I get unstuck?
00:04:33
So whether I am helping a client see inside into why they're stuck to begin with, whether it's addiction issues, whatever it is,
00:04:43
it's so you've hit on this topic that I think is so incredibly universal.
00:04:48
It doesn't matter your gender identification or expression.
00:04:51
It doesn't matter your age at every age and stage of life.
00:04:57
We get two points where we are stuck.
00:05:02
So why did you choose this as the thing that you were going to focus on to help people?
00:05:08
So when I was, you know, I've always wanted to write a book.
00:05:11
I think all of us that have books in the world that's been in there for a very, very early time.
00:05:16
I wrote this book because I realized after I had accumulated all of this amazing knowledge, wouldn't it have been nice if someone could just bottom line all the stuff for me?
00:05:27
Because when I was neck nose deep in my own stuff, I didn't want to sit there and figure out which of the books on this and which of the books on boundaries and which of the books on this.
00:05:37
Couldn't someone have just bottom lined all of the book, not all of them.
00:05:40
But couldn't someone have bottom lined a big stack of books so I could have a cliff snow sky to my brain and that book didn't exist.
00:05:47
And so I call it the science of stuck because like you said, not everyone identifies as having a mental illness or trauma or childhood stuff, but show me a person who doesn't know what it's like to be stuck.
00:05:59
And I will show you someone who's not very honest.
00:06:01
Be all of it stuff.
00:06:02
Yeah.
00:06:03
Absolutely.
00:06:04
Okay.
00:06:05
So you talk about anxiety as a map that can sort of lead you out of stuck.
00:06:13
So let's say more about that, please.
00:06:16
And like to be clear, yes, anxiety is our ally.
00:06:19
It's a map.
00:06:20
We need it.
00:06:21
It's great.
00:06:22
I tell particularly care for it.
00:06:24
It's awful.
00:06:25
That pan, and I've had panic stuff my whole life.
00:06:27
So that like I'm going to die, heart is racing, ponds are sweating, going to puke.
00:06:32
When I get panic, I go very cerebral and it's, I'm going to go crazy and I'm just going to rip my clothes off in the middle of the strive OCD.
00:06:40
So my thoughts skew to very dark places.
00:06:43
So I'm not saying, yay, anxiety feels good.
00:06:46
I am saying, yay anxiety is good, you know, like leg day doesn't feel good, cocaine feels great.
00:06:53
Just because something feels bad doesn't mean it is bad.
00:06:57
And when I learned, you know, like I grew up in New York in a very neurotic home, but when I learned what anxiety actually is, that it's an indicator light that tells us when we're reviewing off court,
00:07:07
like in my car, I have a thing that beeps if I'm about to hit someone.
00:07:10
You know, I can't, I don't know how I learned parallel park, pre GPS and pre cameras.
00:07:15
How do we do that?
00:07:16
But anxiety is that beeping, you're about to hit something or you're not quite aligned.
00:07:21
And when I learn that anxiety, if you speak the language of anxiety, it's an incredible cheat code to understanding who you are, what you want, what you're about, and when you're reviewing off course from your own inner North Star.
00:07:34
I don't like it, but it's very effective.
00:07:37
Yeah, I love that.
00:07:38
And I love the lens to look at it this way, because first of all, if you're experiencing anxiety, it's there.
00:07:45
So we can either just say, well, that sucks.
00:07:49
Or we can say, that sucks end.
00:07:52
What is in it for me?
00:07:54
Is there something?
00:07:55
Is there a pivot that I can make?
00:07:56
Is there a change that I can make?
00:07:57
Is there something that needs to be honored that I'm not honoring?
00:08:02
You know, because I do think there's something really valuable in being able to self reflect.
00:08:08
Like, can we look at our feelings?
00:08:11
You know, Deepak talks about, or he used to at least talk about the highest level of, you know, evolution is becoming the observer without judgment of our own reactions and behaviors.
00:08:22
And like, how valuable it is to be able to go into that space.
00:08:26
And this feels very much like that to me, where you're like, what is good about it?
00:08:31
It's interesting.
00:08:32
I'm not naturally an anxious person.
00:08:35
And I had some really severe anxiety writing this latest book over a short period of time, but it was so incredibly painful waking up at 3 in the morning,
00:08:45
couldn't go back to sleep.
00:08:47
My heart is racing.
00:08:48
I'm sweating.
00:08:49
It's like full-blown panic attacks, but it was more anxiety than this very chill system is used to having.
00:08:57
And I really could not believe how much it sucked and how scary it is to have your feelings happen to you like getting run over by a bus,
00:09:09
where in my past experience, it's not like I've never had fear or negative feelings, it's just anxiety is a specific experience.
00:09:18
I would always go into action.
00:09:20
I would have anxiety, but I wouldn't feel it for very long, because I would always do something to not feel it anymore.
00:09:25
And with this, that didn't work, which really brought me to a place of exactly what you're saying.
00:09:31
Like, I really mean, I got back into therapy, actually, and I was like, okay, what is the actual problem?
00:09:38
I know more.
00:09:39
Yeah.
00:09:40
What was underneath that?
00:09:41
Tell me, tell me more, Terry.
00:09:42
What was underneath?
00:09:43
What was going on?
00:09:44
Because I know you generally skew very regulated.
00:09:46
So that was a whole thing.
00:09:49
Yes.
00:09:50
It was really it all comes back to for me personally, fear of failure.
00:09:57
Even though I can tell you all day, I've written books.
00:10:01
I could tell you all day about how failure is like not a thing, it doesn't have to be a thing.
00:10:07
And there are so many ways that the things I've experienced in my life, I, some people may skew them as failure, and I always just saw them as life.
00:10:15
Like sometimes shit work, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes you're great at something, sometimes you're not.
00:10:21
But I'm always willing to, you know, stick my hand in that crap stew to grab that jam of wisdom, right?
00:10:28
I'm always willing after to go, let's debrief.
00:10:32
Let's look at it.
00:10:33
So when I was doing it with this, with my therapist, I was really like, wow, that is so deep.
00:10:40
Because I think my first book was different because I wasn't.
00:10:46
I was so happy to get it out there that I don't think I knew how scared I should have been.
00:10:56
Like you don't want to mean like when you don't have the experience and then the workbook is a little bit different because it's sort of on the back of that book that's already been successful and writing a book on a terminology that I created is also,
00:11:12
I think that's part of what it is.
00:11:15
Because it's funny.
00:11:16
I'm not afraid.
00:11:17
I know the general, I know the general public is going to get it, right?
00:11:20
I think for me, it's more about the imposter syndrome that my peers, what are they going to say?
00:11:26
You know, so anyway, that that's what so far has come up about it.
00:11:30
So I'm not feeling that anxiety anymore.
00:11:33
And I've also, you know, you work it all through, but there's something for those of you who do suffer from anxiety in the way that Britt is sharing that she does and has in her life.
00:11:44
There is something, can be something in it for you.
00:11:47
And again, she's not glorifying and saying, yeah, it's great.
00:11:50
But if you have it, you might as well listen to whatever wisdom is got for you, you know?
00:11:56
Which is a, you know, a double-edged sword because if you start or always myself, I'll use an eye statement.
00:12:02
When I started paying attention to these cues, I realized that yes, I was legitimately stuck in certain areas because of lack of this or that.
00:12:12
But sometimes I'm stuck is code for I don't like my choices.
00:12:19
And if stuck is actually I don't like my choices, we need a different tool than I'm stuck because I legitimately have no choices.
00:12:28
I have this illness or I have this situation or I have whatever the thing is that cannot be altered.
00:12:34
That's a different thing.
00:12:35
That's, that requires grief and accommodation and other things.
00:12:39
This one is, I don't like my choices.
00:12:41
I don't like any of them.
00:12:43
And I had to really sit and contend with, well, these are the choices.
00:12:47
I can sit sort of like when you open the fridge 20 times, like, it's not going to match the snack you want.
00:12:53
What's in there is in there.
00:12:54
And at some point, you either go to store and fill it up or you eat what's in there.
00:12:58
And it's very much, am I stuck or do I not like my menu of options?
00:13:03
And if I don't, sometimes I have to say yes to the stuff I don't want to get to better menu options.
00:13:09
But there's almost always something to choose.
00:13:12
Stuckness is, yeah, it's not always what it seems.
00:13:15
Yes.
00:13:16
All right.
00:13:17
There's something that you have clients do that I love so much.
00:13:19
So when you have clients who are dealing with addiction, you have them write a letter to their addiction, thanking it for keeping them alive.
00:13:28
Can you tell us more about this?
00:13:30
That one tends to, especially for people that have never struggled with a chemical addiction.
00:13:35
Like, wait a minute.
00:13:36
This thing is killing this person.
00:13:39
It's awful.
00:13:40
And we treat addiction as if it's this monster demon that we must, and it's in our language, we battle addiction.
00:13:45
I'm losing the fight and the war.
00:13:48
But that all fail.
00:13:49
And again, I'm not saying it's not devastating.
00:13:52
My life can ravage by addiction personally, relationally, all of the above, right?
00:13:56
So I'm not saying it's great.
00:13:58
I am saying addiction is functional.
00:14:01
It is doing a job.
00:14:03
And no one in the history of anyone has shamed their way into sobriety and health and happiness.
00:14:08
Or someone who's a partner of a recovering addict, you don't need to thank their addiction.
00:14:13
It's not for you.
00:14:14
It's not about you.
00:14:15
This is not your work to do.
00:14:17
If for someone who's in the throngs of addiction, the very first step is not, I'm a terrible person.
00:14:23
I am flawed.
00:14:24
I am broken.
00:14:25
The very first step is, if I'm alive, that means my addiction has done its job and it deserves thank you.
00:14:33
Again, I'm not saying it's good.
00:14:34
And yes, sometimes it does cause horrible tragedies, including death.
00:14:39
And if you are alive at the stage of recovery, it's because that addiction has served its purpose, which is to protect you from pain and granted causing other pain along the way.
00:14:51
But all addiction is functional.
00:14:54
And the thank you letter sets our course for, I am not a house divided against myself.
00:14:59
I'm not bad.
00:15:00
Like the demon is not inside my mind.
00:15:02
If the demon is inside our mind, we're screwed because where are you going to go?
00:15:06
So I am not out to get myself.
00:15:09
I'm not self-sabotaging.
00:15:10
Every part of me, they may not be very well trained employees, but every part of me, is trying to do a job.
00:15:17
And if you can set the course in that direction, the recovery process and the grossness of the recovery process, let's move.
00:15:25
Oh, that's so true.
00:15:28
When you think about adaptive behaviors and think about, I stopped drinking when I was in college, actually.
00:15:35
My senior year, three months left at my senior year of college, which is like the weirdest time in the world.
00:15:40
Who the hell would stop then?
00:15:41
Why?
00:15:42
Why don't you wait until June?
00:15:43
But I just figured I could, you know, my therapist was like, "PS, you're an alcoholic."
00:15:49
But, and I was like, "Well, then everyone I know is an alcoholic," and she was like, "Well, I don't really care because I'm only treating you," so that might be true.
00:15:56
But all I'm saying is that if you don't get it together and go to a 12 step program, I will stop seeing you.
00:16:01
And I was like, holy, I mean, I was, how, I was 21, I think.
00:16:06
And I was like, "Can your therapist just like break up with you?"
00:16:09
Like, I didn't even know that it was possible, because she just ditched me if I don't do it, she says.
00:16:13
But I was very beautiful and very coachable, and I was like, "Oh, I better go to a 12 step program," which I did.
00:16:19
And in realizing what, what did the drinking protect me from?
00:16:25
What was happening at home?
00:16:26
The painful stuff I was experiencing in my young life.
00:16:29
And yet, I'm so grateful that I stopped when I did.
00:16:32
And I think that you're right, the, I love the idea of writing a letter and sort of giving credit where credit is due.
00:16:38
It also changes the polarization around our actual relationship to addiction.
00:16:47
Because the outside relationship is one thing, what people think and say, especially people who do not have addictive natures, it's one thing.
00:16:55
But if you are any kind of an addict in recovery, you know that we all have, we all have a secret room in our mind that literally no other mother efforts are allowed in,
00:17:08
we know what we think like.
00:17:11
It's amazing how crafty.
00:17:14
I was when I was drinking and how, I mean, denial is just, they say, "Oh, it's not just a river in Egypt.
00:17:21
You're not kidding."
00:17:22
But how crafty to get what you want done and how high functioning.
00:17:28
It's so scary too, coming from a long line of high functioning alcoholics.
00:17:32
Dude, you could just keep going, right, because nothing terrible happens.
00:17:37
So I love that, I love that advice.
00:17:42
This shame thing is just so not pleasant.
00:17:45
And the binary of addiction bad, drugs bad, sobriety good, that's not untrue and it's not nuanced enough for anybody that's struggling to just tell someone,
00:17:55
"Well, just stop.
00:17:56
Just stop doing it."
00:17:57
And you know, because you've gone through this, that stopping the thing is only the beginning of the thing.
00:18:03
Stopping the thing is, I'm not going to say it's easy, but it was easier than now.
00:18:08
Your one was stopped doing the thing.
00:18:10
Your two was, now you get to feel all the feelings that that thing has been.
00:18:13
Your one, I was busy, just don't do the thing and just keep myself occupied, so I'm not doing the thing.
00:18:19
Your two is, guess what?
00:18:21
Here's all of that stuff that that thing was covering up, oh my, it's why your two is, whatever your thing is, your two is very, very difficult.
00:18:30
I thought the heart was quitting.
00:18:33
No, it's funny, one of my really close friends is like a really brilliant sober coach, her name is Patti Powers, and she talks all about the timing basically.
00:18:43
She's been in recovery from heroin addiction for 30 something years, like she's amazing.
00:18:47
And talks about the thawing process and like, what are the main, the most dangerous times in recovery?
00:18:54
Because it's like three months, you know, three weeks, three months, three years, it's like where you forget, right, it's like the addiction wants you to forget how bad it was and wants you to remember all of the,
00:19:09
what was so great about it, how much fun you were when you were drinking, all of the pink cloud stuff where you're like, it was so great, you know, where you're just remassing the shit out of the high.
00:19:19
And the reality is, it really wasn't that great.
00:19:23
And there were always something bad that happened that if you go a little further on that memory, you're like, oh, right.
00:19:29
And then I made out with someone who wasn't my boyfriend directly in front of my boyfriend because I was wasted and didn't remember it.
00:19:35
That was super nice in this small college.
00:19:37
Great.
00:19:38
That was fun.
00:19:39
And the pink cloud, and I've experienced it, and it's particularly like sticky when it comes to codependency and relationships because I don't need to smoke crystal meth on a day to day ever.
00:19:51
I can put that down and never pick it up, but relationships we have, it's like eating.
00:19:55
You can't not eat.
00:19:56
You can't not relate.
00:19:57
So you have to find a way through and the addictive process and the withdrawal cycle and the detox that comes with coming, I mean, I've withdrawn off of hard drugs and behaviors and people.
00:20:10
And the people shaped substances are very, very hard to get off of because it's so easy that pink cloud, which again is protective, right?
00:20:19
Think about how great it was so we don't have to think about the like a bit of emotional pain we're about to go digging into.
00:20:27
So it's helpful.
00:20:28
The 12 steps, they say the myth is that there's an easy softer way.
00:20:32
There's no easy way.
00:20:33
There's two hard ways.
00:20:34
There's the hard way of denial and repetition and continuing the same.
00:20:38
That's hard for the hard way of let's dig in and figure out what this addiction was doing on your behalf.
00:20:43
So it doesn't have to do that job anymore because that's a crappy job.
00:20:47
And correct.
00:20:48
You encourage people to write down basically a cost-benefit analysis around behaviors.
00:20:54
And you tell us, just give us a little bit of how we would do that.
00:20:58
I wish that the business world and the wellness world would join forces a little bit more because there's so many tools from each of our spheres that would be really useful and a cost-benefit analysis is one of the most powerful things,
00:21:11
not just with addiction but with any bad habit.
00:21:14
Most people can count the cost.
00:21:16
I'm not going to the gym and my energy is draining and I don't feel well and I'm sluggish or whatever the thing is.
00:21:23
The costs we can count easily.
00:21:26
The cost of this habit is costing me my health and my sanity and my finances and my fitness or whatever.
00:21:31
Great.
00:21:32
Your cost column check.
00:21:34
What's the benefit?
00:21:35
And if you ask yourself that, you'll legitimately kind of stop and go, wait, what?
00:21:40
There's no benefit.
00:21:41
How could something that's this bad for me be beneficial?
00:21:44
All behaviors functional, all behavior comes with benefits or wouldn't be there.
00:21:48
That's how human brains brain.
00:21:50
So in order to sustainably change a habit, we need to know what job is it doing.
00:21:55
So we can find, I call it reorgging the system, like a company will reorg and then kind of move people around in different roles.
00:22:02
We need to do that with all the different parts of ourselves.
00:22:05
But if you don't and the thing with the benefit column, we have to do it without shaming ourselves or justifying.
00:22:12
See?
00:22:13
This is what it's doing.
00:22:14
So I'm okay to do it.
00:22:15
No, no, no.
00:22:16
It's not about justification.
00:22:17
It's not about shame.
00:22:18
It's just what objectively is true.
00:22:20
What's it doing?
00:22:21
So we can find a better way to get that done.
00:22:23
Yes.
00:22:24
It's this frame I love.
00:22:25
I talk about it in the frame of secondary gain where it's like the unobvious gain we get for staying stuck.
00:22:34
And when we can ask the questions, what do I get to not face, not feel, not experience by staying stuck here?
00:22:41
We get to go, oh, because again, people will be like, gain, what gain?
00:22:45
I don't want to stay in this pattern.
00:22:46
I'm like, trust me, I 100% agree, obviously, with what you're saying, any unwanted pattern or behavior.
00:22:53
Oh, there's an adaptive something or other that is happening, which is why we're basically doing it.
00:23:01
So I love that idea of getting unstuck in that way.
00:23:02
I'm really understanding what we're gaining because then we can do other things to we can really get to the source of what the problem actually is because we're creating only these referral pain or,
00:23:17
you know, as I like to say, we're like, lighting fires and being like, why so many fires?
00:23:22
And till you look down, you're like, oh, my God, look, it's me.
00:23:25
I've got the lighter.
00:23:26
I'm the pyro.
00:23:27
Holy shit.
00:23:28
No one even told me.
00:23:30
I have the problem.
00:23:31
It is me.
00:23:32
Yeah.
00:23:33
Okay.
00:23:34
I want to talk about in the workbook, you discuss seven chess moves.
00:23:40
Can you talk to us a little bit about those?
00:23:43
Yeah, I'm really big on analogies, just because I don't like sitting and reading through lots of clinical jargon and I don't play chess, but I wrote the book when Queen's Gambit was on Netflix,
00:23:53
which is just about addiction and triumph.
00:23:56
Oh, God, it's the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen on TV.
00:24:00
Love.
00:24:01
So I'm like, chess is awesome.
00:24:02
I don't want to play it because I don't quite have a head for the math of it, but okay.
00:24:06
If you think of stuckness like chess and you look at a chess board, it's really important to know which are the pieces that you can move.
00:24:14
Like if your opponent has you blocked in, you can stare at that piece all day.
00:24:19
You can ruminate on that piece all day.
00:24:20
You can chant positive affirmations about that piece all day.
00:24:24
That piece can't be moved right now.
00:24:26
That is not a move available to you.
00:24:28
And so we need to look for the easy moves.
00:24:31
I think especially in our hustle and grind culture, things that are easy get devalued.
00:24:37
The low hanging fruit, what are the easy things that you can move because making those smaller easy moves will likely free up the board where eventually those big, hard, scary,
00:24:47
sticky things become doable.
00:24:50
So rather than like, let's focus on what we can't change.
00:24:53
Where can you get some momentum in some area?
00:24:55
If your finances are a mess, let's look at fitness.
00:24:58
If your fitness is just stagnant and going nowhere, let's look at your relationships.
00:25:02
Get a win, which then generates dopamine, which then generates the, yes, brain says, do that again.
00:25:09
And then once you get momentum, it compounds in all of the areas.
00:25:12
So the idea, and I have seven specific ways to do that.
00:25:16
Look for the easy move, celebrate the wins.
00:25:18
That's another one.
00:25:20
Celebrating doesn't mean get annihilated with chemicals and abandon yourself.
00:25:24
Celebrating means recognize and honor yourself that you did a thing, no matter how small.
00:25:29
And it's very systematic and it's very doable and none of it requires feeling like it.
00:25:34
That's important to me because I didn't feel like doing a lot of the things I had to do early on in my path.
00:25:40
So motivation is the thing we have to wait for or we're screwed.
00:25:43
Fortunately, you don't need motivation to do easy moves.
00:25:47
I love the idea of doing the thing that's most, most available to you because in the, in the getting unstuck, obviously, no shit, you're an expert on this, but it's just hitting me how doing a small thing makes a big difference.
00:26:01
It's just, you know, and I always write about that, you know, it's basically consistent little steps that creates transformation.
00:26:07
Sometimes we have like a massive epiphany, but most of the time it's what we're doing for most of our days.
00:26:13
It's how we're going to bed at night.
00:26:15
It's what we're doing the most consistently that matters, but having that accessibility, where is the easy win?
00:26:22
And I love, love, love celebrate everything because I'm a big celebrator and feeling that even small things can be hard to do.
00:26:33
So give yourself credit because what I find in my therapy clients is that they are so quick to be mean to themselves and to point out what they, you know, the 2% of the thing that didn't go exactly as they wanted or the thing that they,
00:26:47
you know, really messed something up because they should have done whatever and I'm like, dude, you know, there's so much, so harsh, the criticism,
00:26:57
the self-criticism, and where does that come in for you with people getting unstuck?
00:27:02
And I see it too, and I get out a big whiteboard and I'm like, here's why celebrating is not just this, I love woo, I'm not anti-woo.
00:27:11
But to convince people that celebrating is not only allowed, but it's the most efficient path to get unstuck, because celebrating generates the brain chemicals that make us do the things we want and beating ourselves up releases all of those stress hormones that put us in that fight like freeze,
00:27:29
which generates more of the things that we don't want.
00:27:32
So correct.
00:27:33
It's really, really important to celebrate all of the things without shame, because you can't get unstuck while you're, you know, stuck in a free, stuck physiologically is when we're in that fight like freeze,
00:27:45
it's shut down, it's not a mindset.
00:27:47
It's a very real physical state.
00:27:50
So if we're yelling at ourselves and being mean to ourselves, we're reinforcing the state, we're trying to get out of it.
00:27:56
And so we've got to do something, doing something different is a really good hack to, like whatever your routine, I call it snow globe in your brain.
00:28:03
If your routine is you wake up, you brush your teeth, you do the thing, well, wake up, do the thing, then brush your teeth.
00:28:08
Any time you're breaking autopilot, you're creating space for wins and successes, and yeah, I lost the original question, but yes, it doesn't matter.
00:28:18
We're celebrating.
00:28:19
Correct.
00:28:20
So good.
00:28:21
But what you're saying though about, you know, like pattern interruption and, you know, not doing the same things.
00:28:27
I was listening to something this like six months ago about just brushing your teeth with your left hand.
00:28:34
And I was like, that was so friggin hard.
00:28:36
And I, you know, Vic is still doing it.
00:28:37
He's so dedicated.
00:28:38
I think I did it like for two weeks.
00:28:40
And then I was like, no, I don't feel like I'm doing a good enough job brushing my teeth.
00:28:43
So I started doing that, but just sort of breaking the habit of mastery to a degree and breaking the habit of habits of just what happens if we do something different.
00:28:55
And from a neurological perspective, what is the benefit of snow globing our brains?
00:29:01
So and this is, you know, the function of our brain that lets us go on autopilot is very useful.
00:29:07
If I had to think about how to pick up my water and how to drink it and drive a car, we wouldn't get anything done.
00:29:13
Brains are not wired for success.
00:29:16
Brains are not wired for productivity.
00:29:18
Brains are wired for energy conservation.
00:29:20
How can we automate everything?
00:29:22
Because once it's on auto, that's why habits are so hard to break because your brain puts it in autopilot.
00:29:29
And so when you do pattern interruption by changing the order of your day or using your non-dominant hand or spinning around counterclockwise three times when you're in the thought loop or whatever,
00:29:40
what that does is that interrupts autopilot.
00:29:43
And it gives you just a few seconds where you can now make a choice.
00:29:47
You know, the space in between stimulus and response, Victor Brinkle talks about that.
00:29:52
We need to create space for choice.
00:29:54
Anywhere choices are present, your stuckness is going to become less intense.
00:29:59
So to create space for choice, we have to snow globe our brains.
00:30:03
And it's silly and it's easy.
00:30:04
And my husband now understands what's going on when I do weird stuff around the house, but it works.
00:30:10
Oh, I love it.
00:30:12
So just counterclockwise spinning is helpful.
00:30:16
It's just such a weird thing to do.
00:30:18
Like if I told you spin around three times, most likely you're going to go clockwise just because again, Brinkle, you know, like, oh, I'd spin clockwise.
00:30:25
So do the opposite of whatever it is that you think you're hop on one foot and pat your head and rub your stump.
00:30:31
Again, this doesn't fix anything.
00:30:33
It doesn't solve anything.
00:30:34
We're not solving for world crises.
00:30:37
We're creating space in your brain, for your amygdala, your panic button to turn off, your light's in the front to come on.
00:30:44
And for you to feel a sense of, oh, I'm choosing my life instead of reacting to the things around me.
00:30:50
Yes, it's so exhausting being in that binary space, it's just so tiresome and frustrating and angering.
00:30:58
It's like, it just feels bad.
00:31:02
Hence why you wrote this book and this workbook.
00:31:04
All right, I have a question for you that's not about getting stuck.
00:31:06
It's about boundaries.
00:31:08
So personally, what has been your most challenging boundary struggle and how have you overcome it if you have?
00:31:15
Oh, how much time you had?
00:31:18
My boundary struggle is like a scroll.
00:31:21
I'll speak of currently, my current boundary struggle, like within the last five years, has been contending with the loss of friendships.
00:31:31
That was an unexpected part of the healing, wellness, up level, make my life awesome.
00:31:37
The person I came here to be stuffed, I wasn't told that comes with a lot of relationships completely crashing or dissipating and looking around and going, where did my people go?
00:31:48
Because they were my people when I was in this shape.
00:31:52
And now that I'm in a different shape, earth body, it doesn't always work.
00:31:57
Friendships are not always forever.
00:31:59
I, someone who didn't have any friends growing up, having friends and being willing to let them go when they're no longer healthy or functional.
00:32:07
That's been, like my instinct to just go small people, please, codify, I'm sorry, I love you, there's not a few.
00:32:15
It's keeping my hands off the wheel and letting relationships come in and come out and go and grow.
00:32:22
I don't like that.
00:32:24
I don't like it at all.
00:32:25
I don't blame you and yet it is such an important part of the process and I see it so often I've had my own experiences.
00:32:34
Of course, I call them historical handcuffs, those friendships where we're just sort of bound to people that we feel like we are because of history and yet I totally respect this as a boundary that is important to have in your life that if we outgrow people,
00:32:52
we have to let ourselves and that doesn't mean we think we're better than them or different, we're not above them, we're not below them, it just doesn't work and definitely,
00:33:04
I find with my high function and co-dependent clients and myself, like we're like loyal to a, you know, just ridiculous, like you can never change your mind.
00:33:11
You're best friends of this person in kindergarten, you're going to be best friends forever.
00:33:15
Now sometimes that works, I do have the same friends since Nixon was in office but, you know, you're like I wasn't even born yet probably, I do so many,
00:33:26
three, but I do think giving yourself permission to allow them to go away is or to allow them to fade.
00:33:35
So with those friendships, did you have to make a hard boundary or was it more like they just faded into obscurity?
00:33:41
There were a few that required the hard conversation, which I just, like I don't care how much I know, it's an awful conversation to have, I've had to do that a few times,
00:33:51
but more often than not, there's nothing to do, there's no closure, there's no conflict, there's no big to do, it's just letting it dissipate and to me that feels just wrong.
00:34:03
It's like no, we have to ends with something, you know, eventually I learned that closure is an internal process, not a relational process and if you have it externally cool, but you don't need it.
00:34:16
And so the dissipation, I've normalized it now, but I don't like it.
00:34:18
I watch it like blow away and it's like, oh, okay, I mean I trust ebb and flow and it's fine, but I don't particularly like watching relationships because I'm a control freak and a co-dependent.
00:34:31
I want to keep it.
00:34:32
I want to grab it and control it.
00:34:34
Hold on to it.
00:34:35
That's, I'm with you sister.
00:34:37
You guys, you guys, the book, The Getting Unstuck workbook is practical tools for overcoming fear and doubt moving forward with your life by Britt Frank, who from this interview, you can tell how amazing this workbook is that you absolutely need to go get it immediately if not sooner.
00:34:54
And where else can people find you, Britt?
00:34:56
Speaking of boundaries, find me on Instagram where I have poor boundaries.
00:34:59
So I'm there.
00:35:00
Come say hi.
00:35:00
Let's chat.
00:35:01
It's @brit Frank or my website scienceofstuck.com.
00:35:05
Yay, I love you.
00:35:08
I so appreciate you being here.
00:35:11
Thanks for coming, Britt.
00:35:15
Thank you.
00:35:17
Hey, if you like this episode or you're a fan on the show and you want more, please follow me on social media, sign up for my weekly love note, or check out my website for all the news that's fit to print at Terry Cole.com.
00:35:29
Thank you so much for listening.
00:35:30
I hope you have an amazing week.
00:35:32
And as always, take care of you.
00:35:35
[Music]
00:35:45
