141: How BPD Impacts your Relationships with Neuropsychotherapist Britt Frank

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 megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Born in Texas, made in America. That's Valero. Keeping America moving, rain or shine, day or night, 365 days a year. Giving back to our communities and helping businesses thrive. We're proud to fuel the people who keep this country moving. So whether you're exploring new roads or heading down ones you know, we're here, fueling drives coast to coast. Proudly American, proudly getting you where you need to be. Right now, Valero.

• 0:30Speaker 01

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• 0:59Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, hey, Britt.

• 1:00Speaker 03

  Oh, hey, Sabrina.

• 1:01Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, my God.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  So good to be here again.

• 1:03Sabrina Zohar?

  Welcome to the studio.

• 1:04Speaker 03

  Thank you.

• 1:05Sabrina Zohar?

  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.

• 1:11Speaker 03

  Yes, thank you so much. And this is my favorite topic in the entire world. I'm so stoked.

• 1:16Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, my God, dude. Well, first of all, The Scientist's Stuck has been revolutionary for me and for everybody that I've ever recommended it to. They're like, dude, 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.

• 1:36Speaker 03

  Yay.

• 1:37Sabrina Zohar?

  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 fucking stoked. So Britt, 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?

• 2:05Speaker 03

  Oh, yes. Hello, my name is Britt Frank. So I'm a licensed psychotherapist. I'm a trauma specialist. And then I have- Of 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 gonna 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 gonna be a therapist now that I'm almost grown up. And here we are.

• 2:33Sabrina Zohar?

  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, Brit's been married for 25 years to her amazing husband now. Like,

• 2:57Speaker 03

  Oh, no.

• 2:57Sabrina Zohar?

  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.

• 3:22Speaker 03

  It would have been nice to know what I know now at 22. And I'm glad that 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.

• 3:40Sabrina Zohar?

  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 are, you give me, how many times? I'm like, well, so Brit Franco 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 in the workbook that I love, all of these different, the micro yeses, right? Like, I'm naming a lot of things that Brit 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.

• 4:22Sabrina Zohar?

  And why do I 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.

• 4:34Speaker 03

  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.

• 5:05Sabrina Zohar?

  Actually, can we really quickly hit on that, that whole ego thing, right? And you hear that all the time. Can you maybe even, because I love that you do parts work. Like that is such, is 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's not your amigo. What are the benefits of it though, right? And like the hiss is so real. Share me more about the upsets.

• 5:31Speaker 03

  Your ego's not your amigo? I haven't heard that one.

• 5:33Sabrina Zohar?

  You haven't?

• 5:33Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 5:34Sabrina Zohar?

  Well, that's the Southern Florida girl.

• 5:36Speaker 03

  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 or 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.

• 6:14Sabrina Zohar?

  And can I ask you a clarifying question on emotions? Because this is actually something I personally have, I've been trying to understand a little bit more. I watched, my mama sent me something. I love when I'm like, I studied this and I was 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, there's, 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?

• 6:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, and the movie Inside Out, obviously is Simplified. So in the movie, your emotions are your parts. 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 eights, 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 can be sad and angry and needy and clingy and defiant. 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.

• 7:26Sabrina Zohar?

  And I love the like the manager and the firefighter. And I'm probably gonna botch it because this is not my specialty, but I do love. Cause 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 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.

• 8:09Sabrina Zohar?

  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 Britt, 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.

• 8:53Speaker 03

  I had that one too.

• 8:53Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah. 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. So, so you mean I'm, I am fucked up?

• 9:06Speaker 03

  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.

• 9:22Sabrina Zohar?

  It's wild and it's kind of, probably like everything else, 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 Klonopin and Xanax in my bag at all times. 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 mutation and that serotonin, what I was 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.

• 10:05Sabrina Zohar?

  I'd love if we could just explain what the fuck is it? And why do you think it's so misdiagnosed?

• 10:14Speaker 00

  Born in Texas, made in America, that's Valero. Keeping America moving, rain or shine, day or night, 365 days a year. Giving back to our communities and helping businesses thrive. We're proud to fuel the people who keep this country moving. So whether you're exploring new roads or heading down ones you know, we're here, fueling drives coast to coast. Proudly American, proudly getting you where you need to be. Right now, Valero.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  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, one, two, three, four, five, and we're done.

• 11:27Speaker 03

  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 gonna 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.

• 11:55Sabrina Zohar?

  One.

• 11:55Speaker 03

  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 this other part of me is sitting in the bathroom with a broken lightbulb, MacGyver-ing, I'm dating myself there. You know, like a meth pipe out of a broken lightbulb. 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.

• 12:39Speaker 03

  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 wanna punch you. That's all very real.

• 12:55Sabrina Zohar?

  Sorry, were you in my apartment in my 20s?

• 12:57Speaker 03

  It's a thing. It's a thing, but borderline used to mean you're on the border of neurosis 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-

• 13:27Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, I have it. I'm ready.

• 13:28Speaker 03

  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?

• 13:38Sabrina Zohar?

  Well, let me read it for everybody to hear. Okay, so the criteria for borderline personality disorder are outlined in the DSM V as the following. And to your point, 100%, the DSM V, I'm here for it, 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.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Pause right there. Unstable relationships means that you could now have a personality disorder? I think that's all of us now.

• 14:09Sabrina Zohar?

  I was like, that sounds like limerence, right? Like-

• 14:11Speaker 03

  That's puberty.

• 14:12Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah.

• 14:12Speaker 03

  That's, your brain doesn't finish growing till you're 28, and even then, it's a mess.

• 14:16Sabrina Zohar?

  And she's still for Tada. 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.

• 14:28Speaker 03

  And as you read that list, notice where trauma is conspicuously absent. Go ahead.

• 14:33Sabrina Zohar?

  Okay, next, identity disturbance. A persistently unstable sense of self or self-image.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  I have that. Do you?

• 14:39Sabrina Zohar?

  I sure do.

• 14:40Speaker 03

  Welcome to being human.

• 14:41Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah, I was like, if anybody thinks, even the most beautiful people have it. It's like, don't matter. Okay, impulsivity. Ooh, that was me. Impulsive behavior in at least two areas that could be self-damaging, such as substance abuse, reckless driving, or binge eating.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  Check, check, check.

• 14:54Sabrina Zohar?

  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.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Now, that could be caused by hormonal imbalance. That could be caused by a glu- Coz crash that could be caused by too much meth and not enough dopamine. It could be caused by too much dopamine. Like you said, you didn't need more serotonin. Too much dope. We talk about dopamine, dopamine, but too much dopamine is psychosis.

• 15:22Sabrina Zohar?

  Right.

• 15:22Speaker 03

  So, yeah.

• 15:23Sabrina Zohar?

  The pendulum swings.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 15:24Sabrina Zohar?

  This morning Ryan was in a bad mood and it's like, but that of the instability of a mood and him lasting for a day. It's like, would I say, be like, oof, you've got it. It's like, no, 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, I've definitely had that many times.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  Lonely, unloved, disconnected, isolated, over inundated with social media, but nope, this is your personality. That's the problem. Go on.

• 15:48Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah, nothing else. Anger, inappropriate or intense anger, difficulty in controlling anger. I know a lot of people with that. That I don't think is their personality disorder.

• 15:56Speaker 03

  It's a problem, but does that mean that it's not, again, personality disorder means you are the problem. The problem is you. Keep going.

• 16:03Sabrina Zohar?

  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.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  And where's trauma on that list?

• 16:17Sabrina Zohar?

  No, it's just a specialty in 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 resew it.

• 16:46Speaker 03

  Right.

• 16:46Sabrina Zohar?

  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.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  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? Cause 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.

• 17:24Sabrina Zohar?

  Little paper cuts.

• 17:25Speaker 03

  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?

• 18:09Speaker 03

  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, the, 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 re-categorized as a process addiction. Okay. Well, what does that mean?

• 18:42Sabrina Zohar?

  Go on.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  What does that mean? All right. 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.

• 18:51Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah.

• 18:52Speaker 03

  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.

• 19:25Sabrina Zohar?

  And I think, you know, here's the thing, for anybody, if you're like, 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 gonna give you more.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  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.

• 20:05Sabrina Zohar?

  Because to your point, I think it's a very muddy water. And so for them, they gave me Depakote and Depakotes 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?

• 20:50Sabrina Zohar?

  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 gonna be what's your demise. All of these instability, feeling emptiness. I lived for dating. Anger, always angry. I 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?

• 21:36Sabrina Zohar?

  And I chuckled because I 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.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 21:44Sabrina Zohar?

  To navigate this.

• 21:45Speaker 03

  And I love what you just said, because you just said inner children. That's one of the reasons I love you so much. 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 innocence. But we have lots of inner children. There's an inner toddler and an inner infant and all the parts of you that were 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

• 22:29Speaker 03

  thing, is going to be useful in the feeling better from all the borderline stuff.

• 22:36Speaker 00

  Born in Texas, made in America, that's Valero. Keeping America moving, rain or shine, day or night, 365 days a year. Giving back to our communities and helping businesses thrive. We're proud to fuel the people who keep this country moving. So whether you're exploring new roads or heading down ones you know, we're here, fueling drives coast to coast. Proudly American, proudly getting you where you need to be. Right now, Valero.

• 23:04Sabrina Zohar?

  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 well 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 said 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?

• 23:49Sabrina Zohar?

  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 talking about? How do I even access this? What are some ways or some tools that we can actually give them to help?

• 24:00Speaker 03

  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, doesn't matter. First, we have to separate everybody out. And you can't do that from the same state. You know, 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.

• 24:45Speaker 03

  He's like, well, the physics says that. 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 kablooey. That's my high, very technical explanation.

• 24:59Sabrina Zohar?

  That's that degree right there coming out.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  I don't have a nuclear engineering degree. Fusion is everything combines and then kablooey. Technically, it could also implode, but that's another podcast episode. So when your mind fuse, that means all of your personalities have now come together, creating instability, which is then the kablooey. 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.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  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 diffusing is step one before connecting.

• 25:56Sabrina Zohar?

  Okay, and I was gonna 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, Again, like I think Masha gave me that 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-

• 26:32Speaker 03

  James Clear came up with that, but yeah.

• 26:33Sabrina Zohar?

  But we through segwayed 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?

• 26:53Speaker 03

  So I actually have in the new book, an acronym and it's D-Fuse. 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 notice, 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.

• 27:29Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, no, it's not. No, no, we're here. Yeah, now we're at S and E.

• 27:33Speaker 03

  E is exit. E is find the exit. And S is shift. So move your body. Cause 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.

• 27:51Sabrina Zohar?

  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. Cause 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 I just, I didn't know that what I was doing and my mom, we found out recently, 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 were fly me to the moon and don't forget to bring me back. Cause 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. But all these subtle, natural things.

• 28:33Sabrina Zohar?

  And I think for so long, and I so 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. One, 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 gonna take a minute, but really simplifying it, right? Like even understanding, like I love the acronym, defuse, 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 owe someone a response immediately. You don't have to answer someone's text in that second and deal with the moment.

• 29:18Sabrina Zohar?

  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 get 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 to give. This type of mindfulness, I was not her. 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-

• 29:46Speaker 03

  That's not a thing.

• 29:47Sabrina Zohar?

  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.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Because now you're defused. And with borderline, what happens? And it's such a clusterfuck. If you've never experienced it, it's hard to describe, but anyone who can relate will get when you are, quote, borderline, you mind fuse really quickly with- Different parts. So I'm gonna mind fuse with an angry part. I hate you. Now I'm gonna mind fuse with the younger part. I need you.

• 30:46Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah.

• 30:47Speaker 03

  Now it's I hate you. I need you. What? And then it's now I'm gonna mind fuse with an impulsive part. Okay, now I'm doing drugs. Now I'm gonna mind fuse with the shamy part. Oh, now I feel bad for doing drugs. Now I'm gonna mind 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, Britt, 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, then I'd say a thing. And we'd just be off to the races.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  We have to break autopilot in order to get unstuck and defused.

• 31:33Sabrina Zohar?

  And take whatever tools help, right? Like if that's reading a book, right? If that's getting Britt's book, get Britt's book. If that is listening to another Sabrina's O'Hara 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 do this. 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.

• 32:03Speaker 04

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• 32:33Speaker 03

  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 gotta pack that box up and put it on the shelf. I didn't know that. And I think all of the trauma, you know, how trendy trauma and nervous system regulation stuff is,

• 33:17Speaker 03

  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're my therapist. Let 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.

• 33:38Sabrina Zohar?

  It's similar to, like, with me with the dating stuff where I'm like, "No, no, no, we're not gonna talk about anybody else. We gotta 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, well, it sounds like you're talking to your parent. Right, it sounds like my dad, well, 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, they're like, "No, no, no, I just wanna keep talking about the other person." I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, so talk to me, again, where was that in your body?

• 34:23Sabrina Zohar?

  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 eagle's on your meego and get it." Get rid of it and the self critic, 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 can't swing, right? I can't have all self critic and all self love. Like that's not, then you're just like either a super negative or super like overtly toxically positive.

• 35:05Sabrina Zohar?

  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 going, 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?

• 35:27Speaker 03

  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 rawr 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, Brene 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 it'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.

• 36:09Speaker 03

  Without constructive, skillful criticism, we stay in our patterns and then it 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.

• 36:42Sabrina Zohar?

  It'd take me an hour and a half just to write one fucking letter.

• 36:44Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 36:45Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah.

• 36:45Speaker 03

  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. 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 to sort of like doing couples therapy on yourself with yourself.

• 37:25Sabrina Zohar?

  Yes, 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, now, 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?

• 37:45Speaker 03

  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 more than anything in that moment?

• 37:58Sabrina Zohar?

  For me personally? For me personally, I think the safety and space for me to express myself.

• 38:03Speaker 03

  Yes. And the inner critic actually needs that too. So our inner critic actually needs validation and we're all so 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.

• 38:17Sabrina Zohar?

  Right, like mine?

• 38:18Speaker 03

  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.

• 38:40Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, I love that. Okay, the other one was how do you interrupt the thought pattern when you're spiraling?

• 38:44Speaker 03

  Ooh.

• 38:45Sabrina Zohar?

  Right? Because I, and I get it, like, I've been there. And as a girl that like, I, for so long, I remember when I first started having self-awareness, what my friends were like, cool, you have self-awareness and now what are you going to do with it? So even prior to that, but spiraling and ruminating, I'd love if we could even just maybe take a minute to talk about, how do you constructively like process versus spiral and ruminative like, I'm appeased and they don't want me, right? We, 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 said, I'm sorry, I'm busy tonight. And they didn't make another plan and you're now on this fucking loop. What can we do?

• 39:21Speaker 03

  So I have, this is my clinical tool that I call follow your drunk friend around the bar. This, I don't think I've ever talked about this.

• 39:27Sabrina Zohar?

  Not on the show, you and I have privately.

• 39:28Speaker 03

  We have 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 shit canned. 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

• 40:10Speaker 03

  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 I'm, 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. Cause 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

• 40:54Speaker 03

  moment, 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.

• 41:01Sabrina Zohar?

  Yeah. And even as you're talking, I'm like, what do I do? I was like, okay, cause 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. So don't get too excited, but it's coming. And even as I'm-

• 41:15Speaker 03

  Your parts are showing.

• 41:16Sabrina Zohar?

  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. And then there's another part that's like, oh girl, this is going to be so- You're not gonna 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 gonna be able to do this. Oh, my God, no one's gonna buy this book, right? And go into this whole like, woe is me. Oh, my God, this isn't gonna 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?

• 42:02Sabrina Zohar?

  And when I go to the critic, they're like, well, because the fall is not gonna be as great because I'm protecting you. And I'm like, cool, what are you protecting me from? Well, you're gonna 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 wanna be right, right? That, oh, see, there's something wrong with me. I'm not good enough. No one's gonna listen to me. The newest core belief that started to come out is no one wants to pay for me. No one's gonna 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.

• 42:42Sabrina Zohar?

  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.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  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.

• 43:07Sabrina Zohar?

  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 work. And I think just having some tools, again, guys, if this resonates with you, the course is gonna 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 could 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 gonna have tools. You're gonna have Brits fucking brilliant tools in there. All of her writing and you're gonna 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,

• 43:52Sabrina Zohar?

  when I get that, anytime I look, I'm like, oop, it's right here. Oh, that's where the vagus nerve is. Okay, so I am dysregulated. It's okay. I don't have shaven blame, but I am aware.

• 44:00Speaker 03

  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 gonna try to do a self-love, self-care tool for like, a self-care tool for a grown up is not gonna work the same as a self-care tool for a six-year-old. 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 wanna be loved, the parts of me who are like, avoid in is 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?

• 44:44Speaker 03

  And that's how you, no one has ever fought themselves into feeling healthy and happy. That is not a thing. You're not gonna beat yourself into inner peace.

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• 45:25Sabrina Zohar?

  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? Cause I am tired of like, it's not bubble baths 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.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  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 busted open your knee and I gave you like a cough drop, that's not gonna 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 gonna 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 gonna 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.

• 46:41Sabrina Zohar?

  Just have to do them, right?

• 46:42Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 46:42Sabrina Zohar?

  It's the 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 once I made a video, I was like, self-sabotage is 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.

• 47:05Speaker 03

  Which doesn't justify it.

• 47:06Sabrina Zohar?

  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 myself intentionally. I'm doing that because a part of me feels like I'm not 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?

• 47:43Speaker 03

  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, self stab. 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. And 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.

• 48:27Speaker 03

  Self sabotage is, and you know, I say this all the time, too. Self sabotage is self protective. That doesn't mean, and seeing 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 most, 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.

• 48:59Sabrina Zohar?

  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, oh, 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 sabotage 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.

• 49:44Sabrina Zohar?

  It's not like a, oh, well, you know, oh, I sabotaged 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, they, 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.

• 50:29Sabrina Zohar?

  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 darting around. I 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, I sabotaged again? And it was like, no.

• 51:07Speaker 03

  You were fused.

• 51:08Sabrina Zohar?

  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.

• 51:18Speaker 03

  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.

• 51:31Sabrina Zohar?

  Oh, Britt, as always, this is one of my favorite conversations. Now, 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, me and Britt have it.

• 52:15Sabrina Zohar?

  It is out, it is live, it is going. You guys get a free copy of the book. Go fucking pick up Britt'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.

• 52:27Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me.