Dr. Britt Frank: On Personal Transformation With Parts Work

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Christine Gindi: Hi Britt.

Britt Frank: Hi Christine. So good to see you.

Christine Gindi: So good to see you too. Thank you for being here.

Britt Frank: Absolutely. Hello to everyone with us tonight.

Christine Gindi: Hello. Hello everyone. Thank you all for being here. And Britt, thank you for writing this book. It is so filled with wisdom. You write like a friend. You're a seasoned clinician. My friends and I, we cannot stop talking about your book. Thank you.

Britt: Thank you so much. It's important to me when I write to write the way I speak, because there's no merit in making things sound more complicated than they need to be. So why? Why do it?

Christine: Yeah. And you write with such a sense of humor and warmth. And we appreciate that. And you also share about your life. And it makes me curious, because you didn't have to share about your life and you share very personal stories here. I'm curious, why did you share, with such vulnerability, in this book?

Britt: Oh boy. Okay. So we're getting right into it.

Christine: We're going to get right in it.

Britt: Okay. I love it. Let’s go. My nervous system likes you, so we're good. Let's do this.

Christine: Okay.

Britt: So I intentionally kept the books less case study and more, this is me. I am not the shiny, you know, like the bio, that was read was accurate. It was not a lie, but it was incomplete. And we all have our forward facing credentials and we all have a backstory. My backstory is a little bit more intense than I hope the average bear, because I have things like crystal meth and all other manners of shenanigans. So I put my own personal stories in there in lieu of extensive case studies. One because I hadn't seen a therapist or clinician really do that. And I wanted to. And two, because I don't know any other way to do it. It would feel really disingenuous to just say, well, a client of mine, you know, had this thing and then after 30 sessions with me, the problem was solved. That's not how it works. It's messy and it's not linear. And I wanted people reading it not to think, well, great, let me just snap my fingers and everything will be great. So I do like to write as I live, which is this is me, not perfect, not linear and it's a yes ands. So that's a long winded answer to, I don't know any other way to write books other than to put my own stuff in there.

Christine: Well, I really appreciate it. And you're so human. It's so human. You know, you're not on a pedestal. You're not, you know, you're just, I mean, it's very moving. It's very moving. Thank you.

Britt: I appreciate that. Because parts of me are like, no, we want to be on the pedestal. But that's not a really good place to live. We have to live our human lives and human bodies and pedestals are either so far away, they can't connect or they come crashing down. I don't like either of those.

Christine: Me too. Me too. So, you know, let's start at the beginning for listeners who may be brand new to this. What is Parts Work and how do you define it in your own words?

Britt: I'm so excited to be able to nerd out about nothing but Parts Work in this book. For people who are unfamiliar, Parts Work is simply the idea that your mind, rather than being this single thing, this horrible evil thing that's out to sabotage your plans and ruin your life, your mind, just like your body, is made of parts. And it's baked into our language unconsciously. Most people, and I've heard it for years and years and years, people on the street, part of me knows, I should go to the gym. And this other part of me is doom scrolling for hour six on TikTok. And well you have part of you wanting one thing and part of you wanting another thing, that is everything. And we say it so casually. But what are these parts? And who's the part that's talking and who's the part that's listening? And Parts Work is a broad umbrella term under which a lot of different modalities fall. So I'm trained in internal family systems, which is Dr. Richard Schwartz's model. But there's voice dialogue, there's psychodrama. There's a lot of different therapeutic modalities that work with the idea that, most simply put, everybody has multiple personalities. Parts Work helps them all get along better with each other.

Christine: That's something I really appreciated about your book is you talk about befriending your parts. How does this self compassionate stance ripple out into how we relate to ourselves and other people?

Britt: Self-compassion has such bad PR because it sounds like this fluffy, just be nice to yourself and just be nice to other people. But it's not. Self-compassion is really gritty work because you can't be compassionate on a part of yourself if you're not willing to get to know who they are. And all of these parts of ourselves that historically we've been trained to either hate or fear, ego being one. There are plenty of spiritual traditions that say kill the ego. Now on a very, very high level scale, sure. But as long as you have a human body and a human mind, our ego is necessary to filter out stuff. We need a functional ego. We don't need to kill it. We need to train it. Your inner critic, we're told to banish it and tell it to shut up. Well, if you're telling yourself to shut up, then that's not going to go very well because your brain's going to be like, well, she's yelling at me. So we might as well release cortisol because if we're being yelled at, we have to prepare to fight. So banishing the inner critic doesn't work. Where's she going to go anyway? It's my own mind. There's nowhere for her to go. And things like, you know, tell your anxiety it's a liar. Well, great. But again, I have to live my life inside this head and I could yell at parts, try to kill them, try to banish them. But those are very violent ways of approaching this internal world. And from a very practical standpoint, it just doesn't work. Self-compassion requires us to sit down with the inner critic and go, all right, listen, I want to understand. Let's call a ceasefire. What is going on for you? If you look at the division that happens in a culture where you have people really polarized on either side, we live like that often in our own minds. And we might not be able to control what's happening in the world. But when we are not living in these polarized minds with parts of us wanting this way and parts of us wanting that way, it's a lot easier to meet people where they are. So self-compassion isn't about enabling bad behavior. It's not about lowering our standards. Self-compassion is about creating the conditions where we can raise to meet our own standards.

Christine: And why do you believe self-awareness through Parts Work can be so life-changing?

Britt: Well, anecdotally, I've seen it. So I was a hot mess of a human and just walking around the world, spinning, causing chaos, having chaos inflicted on me, reacting in chaos in response to the chaos. It was just a mess. And I really felt and I think a lot of people would agree. I felt like there was something wrong with me. Like, why is it that I know what to do, but I'm not doing the thing I know to do? The information that we, the basic information that we need is not complicated, right? Assuming that we've solved for relative safety, access to our basic needs, which is a big if. But assuming those things are solved for, we know, get sleep, drink water, phone a friend, hug a puppy, go see trees, and yet we're not doing it. And so the answer can't be that all of us are just crazy and broken and irreparably damaged. Something else is going on. And so I think Parts Work is the thing that I've seen move people forward fastest because it does quiet these voices inside you that are screaming at you. You know, they're screaming at you all manners of things. And I have OCD and I have complex PTSD and I take meds. I go to therapy. I'm very acutely aware of how unpleasant it can get inside a human mind. And I've never seen sitting down with even the shadowiest of parts results in anything other than I understand myself a little bit better. And with this understanding, I can make better choices that better align with how I want to be in the world. Just because I can sit on this conversation with you and speak, doesn't mean I don't have a part of me that's going, Donuts, we want to watch our show. We are watching like an old Project Runway episode. We want to sit on the couch, eat donuts and watch Project Runway. That can be happening in the backgrounds. But clinically, I would be told, you know, there's something wrong with me because I have all of these different things happening within a span of 30 seconds. Within the span of three seconds, I can be giving and generous and loving and altruistic and selfish and cranky and bingey and just not about being human. All of that can exist under the umbrella of Parts Work. And I think we could all use a little less, What's wrong with me, and a little more, OK, you know, I might not agree with all the things that my parts are saying, but I get why they're there.

Christine: How did Parts Work change your life?

Britt: OK, so real talk, I shared this in my first book, The Science of Stuck. For a while, I was involved in a very, very fundamentalist cult like place. I mean, it was a cult. I don't know why I'm mincing words. It was not a murder cult or the type of cult you might see on Netflix, but it was a cult nonetheless. And we were supposed to read only cult approved literature and do cult approved things. And I had stumbled upon the book, Internal Family Systems by Dr. Richard Schwartz. This was back, I don't even know, early 2000s. And I was supposed to be reading my cult book, but I had the Internal Family Systems book inside that book and I just sat and read it. And when he was describing this entire cast of characters inside the human mind and how they operate, I felt like he was taking notes on me my whole life. I was like, how does he know that that's happening? And it was the first thing I had really encountered that made my stuff make sense. And once I understood a little bit about how my brain was structured, it became not easy, but a lot easier. Because if we can put the story of you're broken, there's something wrong with you. If we can put that story to rest, there's so much more room that becomes open and available for new stories and new neural pathways and new interests. You can't really branch out and build a life if you're operating under a program that says you'll never, why bother? No one will ever like you. And so that model really put that narrative on the shelf long enough for me to construct an actual life versus the cult approved, just add water and stir type of life I was searching for at the time.

Christine: That is profound. I mean, that is unbelievable, just life changing that you're reading this book in the cult and you feel so witnessed and so seen. And this is it. This isn't the pathology, what's broken, what's wrong with you. But this is affirming the complexity of what's inside you.

Britt: And complexity and nuance is not popular, unfortunately. But it's such a binary black and white either or state that we've been trained in, in the traditional mental health models that many of us have come up in, which is symptoms are signs of disorder, diagnoses are the definitions of humans. And I'm not anti diagnosis, but I'm a big fan of diagnoses should be the starting point, not end game. They're just there to help you understand how to take care of yourself better. But just because I meet criteria for any number of disorders does not honor the functionality of each symptom. Symptoms are storytellers, they're signals, they are problematic, but symptoms are not the problem, they're signs of a problem.

Christine: Why do you think people become so over identified with their diagnosis or their symptoms or the label? You meet people and instead of helping somebody grow and transform, it heals, it puts them in an even smaller box.

Britt: OK, so I won't speak for people, I'll speak for me. So and if you are listening and you can relate, then yay, people. So I had what the mental health world would call borderline personality disorder for many, many, many years. And I had pretty severe addictions for many, many, many years. I loved those diagnoses. I love those labels so much because then instead of using that as great, here's a cluster of symptoms that I can identify with. And now I have better information to help myself. I was told this is who you are. This is just who you are. This is how it has to be. Most clinicians will tell you borderline personality disorder is forever. And I don't like the healed versus unhealed because that's not complex or nuanced. But this idea that you will always struggle, once an addict, always an addict. I did the 12 step program. Many, many gifts of that program. One thing that was not helpful was identifying with my symptom, rather than parts of me are using addiction to cope with life and pain. And that framework wasn't helpful. And so I loved my identity diagnoses, though, for a while because I didn't have to do anything. If this is just who I am, then there is no responsibility for me to change. This is just who I am. This is how it's going to be. I'm triggered. You need to manage my triggers. I have big feelings. Your job is to manage my big feelings because I have CPTSD and BPD and OCD. And I mean, I do. I did struggle with all of those things. Am I healed? No, but I can say I no longer meet criteria for any of those diagnoses, I probably still meet criteria for OCD and CPTSD a little bit, but not BPD. And again, humans are complex and they're messy. And again, often symptoms don't heal, not because it's a problem or because it's a diagnosis. But often we don't have the structural support in our environment or the money or the access to train providers. If we don't have the structural support to endure the change process, we're not going to be able to participate in the change process. But that's not a personal issue. That's not a diagnostic issue. That's a systemic issue. And I don't think that gets spoken about enough.

Christine: Well, I'm glad you're speaking about it now and you speak about it in your book as well. And there's a shift now from this binary of, you know, traumatized healed to post-traumatic growth. And it sounds like that's what you're speaking to.

Britt: So, OK, I'm not anti post-traumatic growth. So…

Christine: OK

Britt: …if you’re listening, don't cancel me. But I do think even this idea of post-traumatic growth is still.. And there was a time for me to emphasize the trauma, the trauma was real, and I needed to be in it and witness it and slog through it. I tried to bypass it with spirituality. It doesn't work. But even post-traumatic growth puts the focus on the trauma, versus, you know, in the context of a human life, some people have more stuff than others. Some people have more of a thing that another person doesn't, whether good or bad. And so, I don't know. I like, yes, post-traumatic growth. I'm here for it. It's a thing. Yay, neuroplasticity. I just don't like emphasize, I don't like giving my trauma that much air time.

Christine: Do you think there's an issue with language in general and meaning? Because, you know, we're like, I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday who's using Parts Work with her daughter. Her nine year old daughter says, I am anxious. Right. And she'll say, well, what part of you is anxious? And does it have a color or shape? Is it an animal? And how do we tend to that part? And so, I'm thinking about the English language and this whole lexicon around meaning of I am. And we were talking about that, you know, with diagnosis, with pathology and how can we change it up a bit where it's not, the emphasis isn't on trauma, the emphasis isn't on I am. There's more flexibility to dance with meaning and complexity and nuance in our lives and in each other's.

Britt: Oh, I, so when I'm working with clients, I get really obnoxious when they’re, I am anxious, part of you is anxious. I'm depressed. Part of you is depressed. I am feeling, part of you is feeling. Britt, stop it. But the language that we use really matters. And this is not me just being nitpicky to be nitpicky. It's our brains are exceptional. Human brains are exceptional, but they're also like exceptionally literal. And they're listening to all of the words that we are telling ourselves. And there are very real physiological implications of saying things like I am anxious. I am panicking. OK, well, if my brain hears me say, I'm having a panic attack, I am panicked. It's going to go she's panicked. So now we have to prepare the body to fight or flight or freeze. And then we must deploy stress hormones that will then create conditions where you'll feel even more of the thing. When you use the language part of me, part of me thinks, part of me feels, it does several jobs, one of which is, it creates just a little bit of psychological distance between you and the distress. So if I am anxious, that is a global high activation, as they would say, in somatic experiencing. There's, you're now fully activated in your anxiety and there's nothing to be done, versus part of me is feeling so anxious that she wants to pass out. Part of me is so depressed that she wants to just crawl into a hole and not come out. Part of me language creates just a little bit of distance, in that distance is awareness and curiosity and choice. You know, Victor Frankl talks about this and he says, he wrote, you know, in between stimulus and response is a space. And in that space, I'm paraphrasing here, lies our ability to choose. And in that choice is our freedom. If I am anxious, there's nothing to do. If a part of me is anxious. OK, well now I have a set of choice points. Well, part of me is anxious. What are my options? What can I do to help support this part? And you were saying with your friends and her kiddo, I worked with children as a play therapist for years. Kids love Parts Language because instead of I did a bad thing, I am bad. It's oh, part of me knew, don't hit my sister. But the other part of me did. And now I've got a mess to clean up. But if I can partner with the part of me who wants to do the bad thing, I then get to become the hero of the story and an agent of change instead of I am the problem. It is me, shame. And so Parts Language does a lot of jobs and it's not that hard. It's a bad habit to say I am, versus a part of me thinks, feels. But that super, super tiny micro shift can give us so many extra moments of choice in our day.

Christine: Absolutely, absolutely. So what are some simple prompts or questions we can ask ourselves when we notice anxiety or a strong emotional reaction?

Britt: So I can give you the, Here's the number one thing not to do. And no one is going to like this. I get a lot of people angry at me for this. But I'll stand by it. The worst thing to do when you are feeling away, is to say, why am I feeling this way? Like I'm a psychotherapist. My job is to understand the Why of human behavior. Why is importance? Why is not helpful as a starting gate question? Why is like a mile seven on a road trip question? Not a we're leaving the driveway question. When I say why am I getting anxious? I am now because of confirmation bias, asking my brain to scan every bad thing that's been happening so I can locate the precise thing that is causing this anxiety. The world's kind of on fire. Even if your life is relatively peaceful and quiet, it's not hard to take in a piece of news or a piece of whatever and then have your brain react. Why am I feeling depressed, anxious, angry? Not helpful as a starting gate, instead of Why do I feel this way? A better question is one, notice part of me is feeling this way, two What are three options available to me in this moment right now? So let's say that you're, I'll give a silly example. You're scrolling on social media. You see someone that you know, and suddenly you are filled with jealousy and rage. Like someone's on a fabulous vacation with amazing people and you're just like, ah, what's wrong with me? Everything is terrible. OK, well, part of me is having a feeling. Options, I can stop my scroll right now and maybe go do something else. Maybe I need some food or maybe this, because this is let's say this is the 10th time this has happened to you. Maybe this is a thing that needs a little more attention. Not every feeling and thought needs a full set of our attention on it. But if something is habitually coming up, a good choice might be, Hah maybe I find someone to talk to about that, or maybe I do any number of coping skills to help myself manage it or whatever. But what are three, step one ditch the Why. Step two, identify what are three choices that are available to me? Just three. We don't like too many choices. And then the third step is, I call these micro  Yeses. It's taking a step so small you feel silly doing it. Like if you can't bring yourself to walk 20 minutes after your day, maybe put your shoes on after work and that's it. Maybe like walk to your front door and then go back to your couch and those little micro  Yeses over time create momentum. And an up vortex that allows you to get momentum even when you have no motivation, you don't need motivation.

Christine: And that sounds like a good way to get people who, you know, out of feeling stuck, out of being avoidant, out of procrastinating this, they just have one micro yes at a time. It allows them to really build up to what they can do, what they really, really want to do, that feels too big.

Britt: It's so, brains don't like big. Like I didn't know this before I knew this, but brains don't like change. Brains are not wired for health and productivity. They're wired to keep you alive. They're wired for pattern recognition. They're wired to conserve energy and to be on autopilot as much as humanly possible. Micro Yeses do break that inertia. And so you don't need a big change, but anything that you do that changes the pattern is going to be very, very powerful. And I'll share a story. This is, I shared this in the book and just, ugh, I'll have a vulnerability hangover after I share it. I always do. But, you know, I had been on a meth bender, a crystal meth bender for a couple of days. I hadn't eaten, I hadn’t slept. I was tweaking, which is this delightful combination of insomnia and paranoia and bordering on psychosis. And I have, this was the last night I had ever done it. And I got myself to a safe place and I was like, what do I do? I haven't slept. I haven't eaten. I'm seeing crazy things. I'm thinking very, very suboptimal thoughts, let's just say. And I called a friend and I'm just like, what do I do? And I had all these questions. And why am I like this? And why did this happen? And she's like, Brit, when was the last time you ate any food? And she talked to, she had me go to my fridge. She's like, what's in the fridge? I'm like, there's a sandwich with cigarette butts in it. There's a can of Mountain Dew. Yeah, it was not a good site. And there was a blueberry Yoplait in there. And she sat with me on the phone for an hour eating that yogurt, spoonful by spoonful. That is a micro Yes. You don't have to wait till New Year's Day or Monday morning or, to be sober. You can be tweaking and still find a way to get a micro Yes under your belt. That little bit of blueberry yogurt gave me enough calories and sugar in order to then take a shower, which then enabled me to then do a thing. And then another thing, micro Yeses don't look like much, but they build on each other. And before you know it, those micro Yeses build a life.

Christine: And I'm so glad that that friend was there for you.

Britt: Me too.

Christine: Yeah. Yeah. And stayed on the phone with you and made sure that you ate.

Britt: It was a 12 step friend. So as much as I rant and rave about the principles in there, there, I don't think I would be alive had it not been for those rooms.

Christine: Mm-hmm. So earlier, um, earlier you said that you don't need motivation. Can you say more about that? Cause that's so antithetical to what most of us had been told our whole lives.

Britt: No, but we were told it was wrong. You don't need to feel like it to do it. Like this was revolutionary to me. You don't need to feel anything to do things, like feeling motivated is not a prerequisite to get anything accomplished. I don't always feel like sitting down and writing words when I write my books. It's not like, Oh, the inspiration is just constantly flowing and the muses are with me. It's great when those mornings happen, but there are plenty of mornings where it's, I don't want to, I don't feel like it. I got nothing and I show up anyway. And so rather than motivation, what we need to do is get out of the freeze state, out of the functional freeze, out of the procrastination, micro Yeses do that. Micro Yeses, they compound and then they build momentum. Momentum is going to get you where you want to go a lot further, a lot faster than motivation. Motivation is awesome. I love feeling motivated and sometimes I do, but if I waited till I felt like it to do things, nothing would get done.

Christine: Right. Right. Right. And that's one thing. I, another thing I really appreciate about your book is you, you have these suggestions and you have them, okay, if you've got no time, do this. If you've got five to 10 minutes, do this. And if you've got plenty of time, do this. And I was like, Oh, that's so thoughtful. You know, like you're, you're scaffolding the micro Yeses within your book.

Britt: It's so wild to me, like, the feedback that makes me the happiest, that I've gotten the most often from the book, is what you shared, how it's structured. It's structured in a choose your own adventure kind of way. So if you want a deep dive, it's there. If you want just the highlights, just the headlines, that's there. That's how I read books. I very rarely will sit down and read a book from cover to cover. And if a book tells me you must start at the beginning and read through to the end, a nonfiction book. Fiction, I understand why you have to read it from start to finish. Nonfiction books don't need to be read chronologically. You don't need to do that. I've never done that. And I didn't know that people really believe that you have to read a book in order. You don't. And so…

Christine: And you say that in your book.

Britt: Yes. Skip around, you don’t have to read every chapter. That's not a thing.

Christine: Yes. And I think that's one of the reasons why you feel like such a friend, you know, your, your voice really comes through of like, and you can do, you can skim this. And, you know, and I don't read books this way and it's, it's just so real.

Britt: I'm glad it resonated because that's how I do it. And you don't have to do it my way, but my way is available and I find it quite useful.

Christine: So how do you, how do you apply this lens to family relationships, especially, you know, what changes in how you navigate conflicts or misunderstandings that often happen, you know, in families?

Britt: There's a reason I don't practice family therapy as a clinician or couples therapy. There's a lot of nervous systems to navigate. There's a lot of people's parts. When you and your family of origin or whomever you call family are together, you've got probably 150 more people in the room than you realize. So Parts Work does not make people who are unwilling to hold or set boundaries or honor boundaries any better. Parts Work does not change other people. Parts Work does allow you to see what's going on, in a way that takes you out of the action, reaction, action, reaction, circular, you know, to going nowhere types of arguments. And so Parts Work allows you to observe your family members, which is a lot better than being engulfed or enmeshed in a dynamic that doesn't work. It doesn't make the grieving process any easier. You know, the grief that is required when you start learning this stuff and you so badly want your family to come on board. I remember, I think I was 22, when I first heard the word boundaries and I was so excited because I'm like, this is a thing. This boundaries thing is going to save us. And if we, because my family had no boundaries, if we can all get on board with this boundaries thing, it's going to be so great. I was shut down and shamed hard for using that word. Like, how dare you use this word with your family? This is not a word that we use in our family. Like, oh, OK.

Christine: Oh.

Britt: That's going to be griefy. And so Parts Work doesn't make the grief or the pain any less. Parts Work does give you a framework for how to navigate yourself through the grief process in a way that allows you to keep going forward, which is sadly sometimes the only option available.

Christine: Yeah, and that happens to so many people where they discover this profound life changing healing and they wish it so much for their family, their friends, their loved ones, and it falls flat and it's like, oh, yeah.

Britt: But assuming that your family is not at the level where no contact boundaries are the only thing left, Parts Work does allow you to respond to them instead of reacting with them.

Christine: Mm hmm. So what have you seen change most dramatically for people who integrate Parts Work into their lives over time?

Britt: I mean, we can talk the external. I've seen people, all the things that social media algorithms love. Optimize your life or peak performance and make a million dollars and find your passion. But really, Parts Work helps people like themselves better and people who like themselves don't act like... I won't swear on here, but people who like themselves don't cause the type of damage that we see in a world of people who clearly do not like themselves very much. And it's a little counterintuitive because our language, right, they're so full of themselves, right? They are narcissists. They just love themselves. Well, people who are full of Self capital S Self Energy, which is defined by I.F.S. as compassion and connection and courage and creativity. People who are full of that, don't cause the type of chaos. People who like themselves don't create damaging conditions and damaging situations. And so I think liking ourselves a little bit better at the end of the day and being happy to wake up in our minds and our body at the beginning of the day, is a lot more important than we give it credit for.

Christine: I completely agree. And do you feel like this work is part of a peace activism in terms of cultivating inner peace for oneself and it rippling out into society?

Britt: I think so. I mean, I was, again on my, in my way, I wasn't seeking out to destroy people, but I know I caused harm. And as part of my 12 steps, I had to do a lot of repair work and a lot of amends for the harm that I had caused. As I began to develop a relationship with my own internal worlds, I no longer needed those symptoms to tell those stories because I was now listening. And I say this in the book, Align Your Mind, when we sort of sit around the campfire with even the scary parts of ourselves and we let them tell us their stories and they feel seen. Parts who feel seen will settle. And that effect on us is going to be a little bit more internal peace, a little bit less of the storm, a little bit less of the impulsive ways that we try to soothe away our feelings or avoid what's in our minds. But yeah, I've never sat around the fire with my parts and after listening went, well, I don't get why you'd feel that way. That's stupid. It's like, oh, you make sense. Like, that doesn't mean everything that my parts have done is OK. It does mean, my job is to understand and care for them. It's not your job to manage my parts, but it's, it is, there is a peace that comes with it. And life's still life. Humans are still complicated and I don't live in this like blissed out internal peace place all the time. But I don't hate myself anymore.

Christine: Oh, that's huge. That's huge.

Britt: It is.

Christine: That's huge. And for people who do, for people who tend to be very self critical, what's the first step that you suggest that they could take to relate differently to that voice, that very critical self-loathing voice.

Britt: Is to stop using I and me and start using your pronouns, your own name. You know, this part of, Brit is saying this critical thing. And if you listen and you observe the critic, you're going to start to see patterns and those patterns likely are going to have a pretty strong echo to what you heard growing up, because often our critical parts don't even belong to us. It's like, wait, I don't actually believe that about myself or other people. Where did that voice come from? Sometimes the voices are just conditioning from society. But if you start listening to the critic, you might be surprised. A starting place is to recognize your inner critic is a part of you. It is not the totality of you. And not every single thing your critic says is literal truth. I think of the inner critic kind of like dreams. And Jung talked about dreams being symbolic. These are symbols. These are metaphors. And so if you can find the story underneath the metaphor or the story under the symbol, the symbol is not really the thing to focus on. It's what is this trying to say? What's the story here? Our critical voices are often the same and the metaphor is often fear. Don't do the thing, because if you do, you'll be humiliated and it won't work and people won't like you and everyone will discover you're a fraud. And that's our brain trying to keep us safe. It's like, Thank you brain, I got this, it's OK. Before I came on this, before I do keynote speaking, I usually have a voice that's going, we're going to pass out on stage and everyone is going to laugh and then our career is over and then that's just it. I say to that voice, I don't say shut up. I don't say go away. I say, thank you so much. I appreciate you. And I'm good. I'm actually grown and I got this. But you can hang on for the ride. You can sit on my shoulder and watch what we do or you can stay in the hotel room and watch TV. But thank you. And that type of self-compassion has been studied and shown to reduce all of the, you know, psychological inflammation that we experience as a result of fighting with ourselves.

Christine: And here you are, teaching, writing, podcasts, like, you know I, it's very moving to me.

Britt: Thank you. I still have all the voices to imposter syndrome makes me a little bananas because it's like, it's not a syndrome just because we don't like it doesn't make it a syndrome. Everyone has an impos.., and I've worked with people from every level, from wildly successful to starting out to children, to impatient, to everywhere. We all have parts of us who feel like we have no idea what we're doing and everyone's going to find out that we have no idea what we're doing. That's not imposter syndrome. That's human.

Christine: And you're so human.

Britt: I've worked really hard to be able to human. So I appreciate that feedback. Thank you. I'm fine. You know, being in the seventh dimensional realms, I've spent my whole life dissociating into these fantastical imagined realities. Learning to live in this one has been a challenge, but I'm really glad I'm here now. And so I'm having a good time.

Christine: Me too. Me too. And I appreciate your humaning. I do.

Britt: Likewise. Likewise.

Christine: Yeah. So for someone doing this work with others, like in group therapy or a workshop or a partner or with a partner, what boundaries or agreements would help keep this Parts Work safe and effective? Because I imagine people could get a little bit reactive. I'm like, that's your part. You know, getting a little defensive of that's your part. And, you know.

Britt: Which would be their part, reacting to their parts.

Christine: It would be their part, protecting their part, you know.

Britt: It's sort of like, you know, the idea of keep your eyes on your own work, you know, keep your eyes on your own parts. You know, it's not your job to manage what other people's parts are doing in a group therapy session, unless you're the therapist. And one of the parameters of a group setting is, I speak on behalf of my parts. I do not give your parts advice or tell them how to feel or what to do or how to think. In my primary relationship, my husband is not in this world and he's fluent enough in Parts Work language now because of the work I do, which he's very supportive of. But if he ever said to me, oh, Britt, your parts are showing. You better go deal with them. I would not react well. I would have a parts flare up. Instead, what he'll do is, if he sees me in a parts swirl, he's not going to tell me, go deal with your parts. He might say, you know what? I'm going to go to the gym or I'm going to go out with the guys tonight. And that's totally appropriate. He might say, do you need to talk? You seem off, but he doesn't try to manage my parts. And I think in a group setting, the same sort of level of respects also is appropriate, with the caveat that if your parts are causing harm, you don't get to say, well, my parts did it because they were activated. It's like, mmh yeah, but that's still you. You don't get to say my parts made me do it. That is not valid.

Christine: So what would you say to somebody who's reading your book or listening to this interview right now and think that this is just too impossible for them to do? This Parts Work is just still too big of a reach.

Britt: Yeah. Well, I would say I feel you and it can feel really overwhelming. And sometimes what's needed is not internal work. It's systemic safety. You know, Parts Work is inappropriate if you're actively in a crisis or, you know, I've been in, trigger warning for people listening. I've been in domestic violence situations. There were times where psychological inquiry was not really what was needed. What I needed was a safe place to sleep or I needed to take a shower somewhere safe. And so I would say if it feels impossible, I'm not here to tell you that you're wrong. It might be. And so that goes back to, if it feels impossible, let's find a micro Yes. What are your micro Yeses? Anybody can start using Parts Work language, even if you're not able or willing or have the capacity to do a deep dive on Parts Work, just start switching from I am to part of me is, that's a micro Yes that anybody can do no matter how overwhelmed.

Christine: You also write about spirituality in your book.

Britt: I do. I veer out of my lane a little bit.

Christine: I don't consider that veering out of your lane. No, no, nobody has like, you know, a hold on spirituality. So could you talk more about that? Because I feel like your work, Parts Work, it's inherently spiritual. We're so much more than than all of all of these parts.

Britt: You know, I love, what I love, one thing I do love a lot about Parts Work is that every major spiritual tradition or orientation, there's room in it for Parts and Parts language and Parts Work, it does not in any way counter, you know, I don't know every single text, but I do know in the Bible, there's a person who says, part of me knows not to do the thing and part of me hates what I'm doing and part of me is doing it anyway. It's like that's Parts Language. And that's from who knows when forever ago. And so spirituality to me is anything that makes me feel connected. And that includes to ourself. It doesn't have to be connected out. Prayer doesn't have to be out. Meditation doesn't have to be out. It can be that the most sacred thing you do all day is sit down and have a conversation with a part of you. And that to me does fall under spirituality.

Christine: Mm hmm. Mm hmm. How did you recover from the spiritual abuse in the cult to evolving into this perspective?

Britt: I don't think I have yet. So I haven't recovered. I don't daily, you know, it's not a struggle for me to do that, but I still find myself going, Oh no, I'm going to hell or, uh-oh, I'm doing, you know, I'm lighting, I'm using a tarot card. I'm doing an Oracle deck reading something that will happen, you know, it's still there. So I think the deconstruction has, is going to take probably a lifetime between the family of origin messages and the spiritual programming. There's a lot of undoing, but I, ironically, it was one of the cult things that they would say that I stick to, which is, you know, a bad tree doesn't bear good fruit. It's like, which they use that in a very weaponizing way, but I'm like, I'm doing all these weird practices and I'm happier and I'm healthier and my relationships are getting better. So if, if the net output of what I'm doing seems to be good, it's probably good what I'm doing. And so like, I'm a lot less of a jerk doing these things than I was doing those things. So we're going to clock those as good. And that's how I've reconstructed a spirituality. First, it was just, am I in trouble all of the time? And I didn't do anything. And then it was like, maybe I can try this little practice and see, can I light a candle in the morning and sit and journal with nothing bad happening? Okay. That seems to be okay. And then slowly I've constructed a spirituality that changes on any given notice. I think Madeline L’Engle said, you know, my beliefs are, are steady, but my religion is subject to change without notice or something like that. I'm butchering it. Apologies if you're watching, the idea of being the rituals and the practices, they can change, they can be subject to change, but the core belief that there is something greater than us, that we are a part of and belong to that's in us and of us, and we have access to it. Um, that's not going anywhere anytime soon, I hope.

Christine: And so, you know, after all the reading, the writing, the research, the teaching that you've done on this book, Align Your Mind, what's the, what's the single most important takeaway that you want readers of Align Your Mind to walk away with?

Britt: Your brain is on your side. Your mind is on your side. It doesn't seem like it and it doesn't feel like it, but your mind and your brain are your team and they really love you and they're trying, they’re, we're all trying. But if they had a voice, it would be, we don't know what to do, but we love you and we want to help. This is all we know what to do. And yeah, your brain is on your side would be the takeaway.

Christine: Can you say more about that, Britt? I mean, you've written a whole book about it and I want to ask you a thousand questions and…

Britt: You know, the, and again, I'm not minimizing the severity of pain and the severity of trauma and the symptoms and the ways in which our brains can truly cause, you know, people die as a result of listening to what goes on inside their head and people are injured as a result of other people listening to what goes on inside their head. So none of this is saying, just be friends with parts of you that tell you to do bad things and go for it. But it's at the end of the day, the thing that I think that we fear the most that if we go inside, we'll discover that we're worthless, that the thing we are most scared of will come true. It's the opposite. I've never seen anyone go inside to connect with their parts, not emerge from that cave really, really, like, expanded and better for the journey. And it stinks. I don't like doing it either. Like anytime I see my therapist, I'm like, Oh, Bob, do we have to?

Christine: Do we have to?

Britt: It’s hard, I don't like it.

Christine: And you thank Bob, you thank Bob in the acknowledgments at the end of the book.

Britt: Thanks, Bob.

Christine: So is there anything that you wish you had included in the book? Because it's so comprehensive. I mean, you cover attachment, you cover shadow work, you cover inner child work. You cover so much.

Britt: So I don't think it's a perfect book. There are no perfect books that I know of, but I wouldn't change it. I was very, very satisfied when I, and again, are there mistakes in it? Probably. Will some things in there be proven totally not true by science? Maybe. But I wrote the book I was hoping to write and I don't think I would change anything.

Christine: Okay. Wonderful. Wonderful. So, um, in terms of, you know, the helping profession in terms of therapists, coaches, social workers, how can this framework of Parts Work be adapted for them, for people who are working with clients?

Britt: Okay. Well, my answer is not going to be popular, but the biggest advantage, if you're in the helping profession of knowing about Parts Work, is recognizing when your own parts show up in the room, because a lot of times as helpers, we have parts that have agendas. We want to help. We want to fix. We want to solve. We want our clients to like us. We want to be useful. If our parts are in charge of a therapy session or coaching session, that is setting you up for a power dynamic that you're not going to win, um, because people's parts don't like being told what to do, and if they do, that's a whole nother set of problems, but understanding what we would call counter-transference in the context of Parts Work does make the very heavy lifting of sitting in the sea of humanity a lot more manageable, and there's a lot more endurance that's available when you understand, oh, these are my parts that are getting activated by this. I am hearing someone share a thing and my parts are going, ding, ding, danger, danger, danger. That's important information to know. So before you're going to be able to help anyone with their parts, it's sort of the, put your own mask on first idea. It's, you know, therapists tend to your own parts first and watch how much easier those sessions get and watch how much more movement you're likely to see in the room. What we call therapeutic resistance or treatment resistant depression or treatment resistant whatever, is often there because it's the wise response to being controlled. And so if a therapist has an agenda set of parts that's out to achieve a specific outcome, your client's parts are going to resist that and that's the right move on their part.

Christine: I agree. I agree. Thank you. Thank you. So you've talked about befriending your parts, but what's the difference between being hard on yourself versus actually confronting the parts of yourself that might be holding you back?

Britt: Uh, so I put in the book, this is sort of the difference between a good coach who's really hard on the players and an abusive coach who's just out of control. And if you go on YouTube, you can watch. Fiction is generally the best place to get the really good locker room speeches. And it's like, if you watch those, a good coach is not coddling going, Oh, poor you, you're tired and injured and you don't feel like it and it's hard. You should just sit down and rest. That's not what's happening. A good coach is, I, we're doing the thing. Like you don't want to, we're doing it. Suit up, show up, throw down. This is what's going on. Um, but there are coaches who are throwing things and breaking things and being just out of control, like tantruming toddlers. And we want our inner world to feel similar, where a good coach is going to get the best performance out of the player while building them up, not enabling them or tearing them down. And so if we can transform our internal leader into more of a coach voice and less of a mean angry parent voice, life's going to work better. Like I said, I don't always want to do the things that I do. I do have a voice inside me that goes, yeah, I know you don't want to, get up. We're going, this isn't up for discussion. This is what we're doing. Let's go. And, and there's a subtle quality that's important to differentiate between an abusive controlling voice that says that and an empowering, encouraging and tough coach that says that.

Christine: Yeah. And I think for many of us, we just grew up in a very punitive society with punitive families and it was reward, punishment and having that encouraging, you know, uh, empowering voices. It's, it's, you know, working a muscle. It's really growing that voice internally because it's so different from the, I am this, you know.

Britt: Right. And then you're not alone. If you have a coach inside you and all these other players inside you, then you realize you're never really alone. It's really hard to be lonely when you're familiar with your parts because there's always someone to talk to.

Christine: Yeah, and, and hopefully it's a loving, encouraging, empowering voice, that's really cultivated inside.

Britt: Sometimes it's a silly child. Sometimes when I'm alone I do ridiculous things. Um, like I am really bad at crafts, but I love craft supplies. So I'll just get craft supplies and make really messy things that I'll never share with anyone because it's fun. And that's just as valid too. So sometimes doing the work isn't about the depths of pain and witnessing and holding space, sometimes it's whimsy and being silly and being willing to just follow interesting impulses just because that sounds fun and then changing your mind and deciding, no, I'm really not a crocheter, even though I'm determined to finish this project that I started. And that's okay too.

Christine: And you talk about play in your book. Why do you think adults lose a sense of play, of whimsy?

Britt: I think it's trained out of us by adolescence and we forget to pick that back up. It's a gift we get as children, assuming that you have relative, I mean, even kids who don't have relative safety, will still play. I do think that there is a spirit of play in every child that even the worst trauma I have yet to see totally knock it out. And again, there are caveats and disclaimers on all of that, speaking broadly. Adolescence knocks it out of us, but then adults, we want to go back and get those gifts because they were given to us. Our inner children, as cringy as they may feel sometimes, are carrying some of the most valuable gifts that we would ever hope to have as adults.

Christine: How do you reparent your inner child?

Britt: It starts beginning to know them. And people say this to me, like, you know, I don't want to have a kid. I'm like, I know, but like you're every, you're every age you've ever been. So you may not want to parent your inner child, but the alternative to parenting your inner child is to not do it. And that doesn't go well. And so it's again, it starts really small. How would you start any relationship? Hey, I'm Brit. What's your name? Yeah. And you go from there.

Christine: Right. Sometimes it's just so simple. People are like, well, how do I do this?

Britt: And it's complicated and it's, it's a muscle and it's a practice. And so I would say, don't expect yourself to be able to do deep level inner childwork. If you've never so much as encountered your inside voices, maybe start with an easy one. If you're really comfortable with the part of you that knows how to help other people, start there. You don't have to start with your traumas. You don't have to start with your inner children. Start with something easy that doesn't freak you out about yourself.

Christine: And again, that sounds like the micro Yes scaffolding that you're doing.

Britt: Exactly.

Christine: Do you have a framework for micro Noes in terms of people who have problems setting boundaries and who are the ones who are quick to volunteer for everything and you know, do everything and self abandon.

Britt: So it's, it's interesting. I like the, you know, no is a complete sentence saying, it's Anne Lamott who said that. And it's true. No, has a somatic association to a lot of people, which is you're being bad or you're being mean or you're being unkind. Yes, has this open expansive quality. So I would say you don't need a micro No, because the flip side of saying no to that person is saying yes to something else. And so rather than affirming the no, think of setting boundaries, not as saying no to them, but as saying yes to you. And so it is easier somatically to say yes than to say no. And so find the yes in the no, and that will solve that problem.

Christine: Find the yes in the no. So there, there's so many gems in this interview. I really appreciate you, Britt. Something you mentioned early on in our conversation was symptoms are storytellers. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Britt: Yeah. Like if you think about a car, the check engine light comes on because you have a problem. The light's not the problem. But if I take my car to a mechanic and I say my check engine light is on, they're not going to say, well, your check engine light is on, therefore you have check engine light disorder. So let's get some duct tape and put it over the light so you don't have to deal with it. I used to do that.

Christine: Okay

Britt: But we do that with anxiety, right? It's I have anxiety. I go to the doctor and the doctor says, well, you have anxiety, so you have an anxiety disorder. Here is your medication to make it go away. Yes, meds if needed. Yes to all the tools. But the symptom is a signal. And when people say I'm just anxious for no reason, I'm going no, that's just not true. There are infinite reasons and your body is very, very smart. I have not seen it clinically, anecdotally or personally where symptoms are just there for absolutely no reason. I have OCD. I do not enjoy the intrusive thoughts that sort of dart across my consciousness. They're not pleasant and they're scary. And before I understood them, they freaked me out and I still don't exactly enjoy when my thoughts go to that place. But it never comes out of nowhere. It's you, it's not literal, it's you know, you should do the thing. It's OK. That part of me doesn't actually want me to do the thing. It wants me to know I'm tired or I'm hungry or I'm burnt out or there's a boundary that needs to be set or there's a relationship that needs to end or there is a change that I need to make. And I think people get really freaked out by that, I don't know why! You don't need to know why. But it's helpful to know the Why we'll get to. Let's start with what are the choices. But the symptoms are not the problem. Jim Carrey, of all people, has spoken the most eloquently on depression that I've ever heard. And he said, depression is your body's way of saying, I don't want to be this character anymore. I've never seen that not true. As a clinician, I'm co-signing on that assessment. It's a problem. It's dangerous and it can be life debilitating and people are in real pain. And the symptom of depression is a signal to be understood. It's not a sign that you're broken.

Christine: Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you for that. I love your book. Love, love, love your book.

Britt: Thank you so much. Thank you.

Christine: Thank you for being here and such an expansive conversation. You've really got me to think about all these conditions and limitations I didn't really know I had. And you're such a real human. You really bring yourself. You're so authentic. And I so appreciate you.

Britt: Thank you. I appreciate you. I'm so glad to be here. And thank you, everybody watching and listening. And if you're going to do Parts Work, do it and then like DM me and tell me how it's going. I love hearing about people doing their Parts Work. It makes me really happy to see that shift happening.

Christine: Okay. Thanks. Take care. Bye.

Britt: Bye.

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

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