If you’ve ever felt behind in love or life, this episode is for you. On pub day for her new book, End Emotional Outsourcing: A Guide to Overcoming Codependent, Perfectionist and People Pleasing Habits, Beatriz Victoria Albina joins me to talk about how to stop centering everyone else’s needs at the expense of your own—and start dating with self-worth.

We unpack:

💎 What “emotional outsourcing” is and why it keeps you stuck in people-pleasing, perfectionism, and codependency

💎 How to reclaim your agency and desire without guilt

💎 The BRAVE framework for building self-loyalty, step by step

💎 Why being a late bloomer is often an act of brilliance—not failure

Her book is out today! Go grab “End Emotional Outsourcing” wherever books are sold and start building the love life (and LIFE) that puts you back at the center.

Order your copy → https://beatrizalbina.com/book/

💥 Work with Lily:

→ Main Character Dating: datebrazen.com/waitlist

→ Free Essence-Based Preferences workbook: datebrazen.com/workbook

→ Read Thank You More Please: datebrazen.com/book

Follow Lily everywhere:
📲 Tiktok
📸 Instagram
📺 YouTube Channel

---

Show transcript:

Lily Womble (00:37)

Hello, gorgeous friends. Welcome to another episode of The Late Bloomer Show. I’m so glad that you’re here. Today we are joined by somebody who is gonna change your life, who’s going to give you so much permission that you didn’t even know you needed, whose book literally came out today. Aren’t we lucky that we have her on book release day?

Today I’m talking to Beatrice, or Bea, Victoria Albina. She is a UCSF-trained family nurse practitioner, somatic experience practitioner, master certified somatic life coach, and author of the book End Emotional Outsourcing: A Guide to Overcoming Codependent, Perfectionistic, and People-Pleasing Habits, which comes out today with Hachette Balance. So you can go anywhere you buy your books and order Bea’s book right now called End Emotional Outsourcing.

And you’re gonna hear about the book in this conversation and how it’s gonna help you if you feel like a behind late bloomer and you’re facing some fear about starting dating or, you know, really stepping out of old patterns of people-pleasing and perfectionism.

A little more about Bea before we get into it: Bea is the host of the Feminist Wellness Podcast, holds a master’s degree in public health from Boston University School of Public Health, and a BA in Latin American Studies from Oberlin. Bea has been working in health and wellness for over 20 years and lives with her wife, Billy, and their handsome all-black cat, Wade.

Bea, welcome.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (02:02)

Lily, I am so grateful to be here.

Lily Womble (02:06)

On Pub Day.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (02:08)

On Pub Day! I mean, you’ve been in my corner since before day one around this. I remember when we first met at Kara Loewenthal’s and you were like, “Oh, I’m writing a book.” I was like, “I’m writing a book!” And we just sat and gabbed about books for many hours. You’ve been such a support.

Lily Womble (02:13)

Yeah. Well, it’s such a creative, hard, weird, great, awesome, weird process. And so I’m just so grateful to have your book in the world. I’ve read it. I love it. I blurbed it. I was lucky enough to blurb it. And I really can’t recommend it highly enough.

For people that don’t know yet—what is emotional outsourcing?

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (02:38)

Mmm. I never thought you’d ask. Or wait—what do Americans say? I’m so bad at sayings in English. “I thought you’d never ask.” Yes, I thought you’d never ask.

Lily Womble (02:57)

“I thought you’d never ask,” yeah. Just one little word in there. Yeah, yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (03:00)

I know, but it made a huge difference! Right, so—emotional outsourcing is the term I coined as an umbrella term for our codependent, perfectionist, and people-pleasing habits. It’s the Venn diagram of those three survival skills for getting through life.

And it’s when we chronically and habitually source our sense of the three most vital human needs—safety, belonging, and worth—from everyone and everything outside of ourselves instead of from within, at a great cost to self.

Lily Womble (03:32)

Yeah. And I’m just thinking about—I was coaching earlier today on the subject of identity and how, you know, I’ll speak from my own experience being bullied as a child, being rejected as a child, and then into adulthood, feeling like a late bloomer myself and perceiving and receiving rejection throughout life, like it’s very human to do.

It’s very easy now as an adult to have my identity—

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (03:39)

Mmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Lily Womble (04:02)

—and those listening would imagine it’s a similar thing: have your identity surround those who didn’t want you, didn’t choose you, and let your identity really be shaped by those experiences of rejection. And I’m hearing in you describing that that’s a form of emotional outsourcing, like defining myself by other people’s actions.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (04:13)

Yeah. For sure, for sure. It’s any time that the locus of our life—the location, the source, the core of our life—is not in us, about us, with us. It’s about all of them.

And so yeah, whether it’s the mean girls, or your parents (sometimes your parents are the mean girls), or your date, or who you’re not dating, or who you swiped on… we can play it out. Or work, right?

Anytime someone or something matters more than you, you are outsourcing your sense of self to that person or thing.

Lily Womble (04:59)

Now, okay, devil’s avocado—as Tracy Morgan says in 30 Rock—devil’s avocado. I hear people saying to me, “But Lily, or but Bea,” like this is a common thought that a lot of listeners I know have, I used to have it, which is: If people haven’t chosen me as a romantic partner by now, then that must mean something about me, right?

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (05:02)

Huh. Yeah.

Lily Womble (05:25)

That must mean that I’m broken or unlovable in some way, right? A lot of people struggle with this thought error, and I’d love to hear your response to that in the context of your work.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (05:35)

Yeah, I mean, think—whatever we are choosing to beat ourselves up about, we can tell that story about.

I mean, doesn’t the fact that I’m not an airplane pilot mean that there’s something wrong with me? Doesn’t the fact that I don’t know how to work an excavator to make holes in the concrete—doesn’t that mean there’s something wrong with me?

My own taxes—I actually wouldn’t know where to start. Lily, is there something wrong with me? No.

Lily Womble (05:58)

I mean, I know the answer is no. And I know for my clients, there’s nothing wrong with you for not having been in a romantic relationship before. And go with me here, if you will: you’re 40, you’ve not been in a relationship before, you feel like everybody else did it so easily.

This can go for anything that you perceive other people have ease around, something that you struggle with. How do you redefine around self—

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (06:01)

Sure. Right. Okay. Emotional—yeah. Sure. Right.

Lily Womble (06:28)

—in this case?

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (06:30)

Well, I think we need to pause and realize that emotional outsourcing wires us to measure our worth by how much we meet other people’s needs. And so when you grow up in a household rife with codependent, perfectionist, and people-pleasing habits—in a family where there are substance abuse issues, where there’s a needy sibling, where there’s trauma, where there’s… on and on, right? The multiple impacts of living under systems of oppression, namely the patriarchy, white settler colonialism, and late-stage capitalism.

And so emotional outsourcing—you’re trained up in it, right? It’s how you grow up to be, to look at the world. It’s what’s modeled. And so you’re focused on everyone else and meeting their needs and making sure there’s no conflict, making sure they’re happy, making sure everything’s copacetic.

So what happens to you? Your milestones, your rest, your growth, your wants, your needs—back burner.

Lily Womble (07:03)

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (07:22)

Back, back, back, back, back burner, right? They are deferred and deferred and deferred and deferred. So while your peers are building towards their goals, whether it’s dating or career or whatever, you’re stuck in reactive mode, right? You’re managing other people’s moods. You’re over-functioning. You’re cleaning up their messes emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially.

So your energy, your focus, and your time for your own life is not spent on your own life.

Of course you haven’t had a relationship. You’ve been busy cleaning up for everyone else. You’ve been busy keeping everyone else happy. You haven’t been your protagonist.

Of course you haven’t been in a relationship. Add to that: if growing up, being in a relationship meant losing yourself, would it not be completely and utterly brilliant of you to not do that until you have the skills and tools to not lose yourself?

I wouldn’t jump into a dark, murky ocean if I wasn’t tied to the boat, if I wasn’t anchored to the shore. Don’t do that. That’s not a great choice, right?

Lily Womble (08:20)

Huge. Yeah. Yeah, this makes so much sense. And I think the permissiveness beneath this is so powerful.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (08:44)

Right, right. I mean, we need to really—so here’s how my framework of talking about these habits, particularly codependent thinking, is so different than what we’ve seen before: because I praise these habits.

Like, I think if you are six and you realize, “All right, these fools that are in charge of feeding me, they’re not happy if I don’t get an A+, if I’m not the gold star, if I’m not head of the class, if I’m not the right kind of thin, the right kind of athletic, the right kind of…” yeah.

Perfectionist people-pleaser? Let’s go. Let’s keep the ones who feed me very happy. Genius. That kid’s a genius.

If you realize, “Oh, I hear Dad’s footsteps and they sound like that—that means he’s angry, or whatever. I’m gonna go be the little clown.” Genius. Genius.

So however your little self figured out to literally or figuratively—right, emotionally, spiritually—survive, must be praised if we are to move past it. Must be celebrated, lauded. What a survival skill you have, kitten!

Wow.

And so of course you haven’t dated. You’ve been working on processing and integrating the lessons of that survival skill. Smarty pants, smarty pants.

Because would you rather be in 10 lousy relationships by the time you’re 40, or wait till you’re 40 and do it right? Just saying.

Lily Womble (10:15)

Yeah. Well, I was thinking—I tell people that I work with all the time: this is life work. Coming home to yourself, re-centering your identity around you, on your terms. You know, ending emotional outsourcing, to borrow the title of your book, right?

Like that’s life work that everybody, if they are paying attention, will come around to—or not, and feel miserable about it.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (10:26)

Yeah. Yep. Yeah, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, or not, right.

Lily Womble (10:45)

You know, and there’s no wrong time to come around to this work. And if you’re single and wanting to date and coming around to this work, then there’s an opportunity on the table to date more joyfully and powerfully after this coming home to self. And do anything.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (10:45)

Correct, yeah.

Exactly… Sure, for sure. And what I’ll add is like… ⁓

Stay with me? Who cares? Right, like if there was something broken about you, okay fine. I broke my foot once. It’s healed now, so you’re healing right now. So who cares if you were broken for 20, 30, 40 years?

Lily Womble (11:11)

Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (11:25)

Right? So when we can really focus our energy not on castigating ourselves and beating ourselves up for what we think is wrong with us, but in focusing on the capacity that we have as humans for resilience and change, then we can actually embody what we want to embody, which is growth, which is healing, which is we can call in more love. But what are you calling in when you’re focused on, ⁓ I’m broken. ⁓ there’s something wrong with me.

Lily Womble (11:31)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, for sure.

Well…

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (11:53)

And so just want to bring a little compassion. Yeah, baby.

Lily Womble (11:53)

I also think that

I also wanted to bring up this concept of desire and how women and people socialized as women have been taught to relate to desire as something that means that you’re—

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (12:01)

Yes.

Mm-hmm.

Lily Womble (12:08)

Wanting something means you don’t have something now, means you’re less than, right? Like I have a desire for the right relationship, let’s say, and wanting that feels like a denial of my wholeness and humanity right now. I think that desire is just desire. It’s neutral. It doesn’t mean anything about you that you want something that’s not here yet, no?

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (12:12)

Huh. Sure. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right, I mean, like, yeah, I want chocolate.

Lily Womble (12:34)

Right. And so

I just wanted to bring this up to validate like, if you don’t want to date, if you feel great being single and you don’t have this desire, we’re not talking to you. We’re talking to people who like have this desire. It’s not here yet. And they’re making it mean something about them.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (12:45)

Yeah. Yeah.

And I think what you can make it—if you are insisting on making it mean something about you—let’s pick things that are great or at the very least neutral.

Lily Womble (12:58)

Mmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (12:59)

So if you’re like, I’m—

Lily Womble (13:00)

Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (13:00)

Gonna insist on telling this narrative about this, great, let’s shape it. It means you were doing all the important work you came to this planet to do before dating. It means you were coming to terms with the things you needed to come to terms with. And sure, if you wanna make it mean that you have a lack, it’s for whatever magic that one particular person brings because you’ve got your magic, which is not their magic. Like, you are not Chris.

Lily Womble (13:08)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (13:25)

Your husband is amazing, different than you’re amazing. You’re both 10 out of 10 amazing, but in different flavors. Right? And so yeah, you needed his magic. He needs yours, but not because you’re incomplete or he’s incomplete. Let me—can I go to one of my favorite metaphors? I love your face so much. ⁓ Be the cake.

Lily Womble (13:29)

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Say more.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (13:49)

So the work,

⁓ I shall, ⁓ the work of ending emotional outsourcing, getting to the other side, is to realize that you in and of yourself are a completely delicious, incredible cake. Cake is outstanding. If you need to make it gluten-free, dairy-free, you do you, but cake—moist and delicious and just sumptuous. Is icing nice? Sure.

I love icing. Who doesn’t love icing? Let the world be the icing. Know that you are the cake. Be the cake. Stand in your power. Stand in what’s magical about you. What’s amazing about you. Right? And focus on that and then attract people who see you as cake and just want to be your icing. Just want to add to your magic. Not because you’re lacking anything. Because cake, like Lily, is inherently perfect. Right?

Lily Womble (14:24)

Hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (14:48)

And Chris is your icing.

Lily Womble (14:49)

Now,

absolutely, I would amend for myself because to me, it depends on the cake. If you’re about pound cake, doesn’t need anything. You know what I’m saying? Maybe somebody’s bringing a glaze to my party and that’s great, I’ll welcome it. But pound cake, eat it raw all day long. Now, regular cake, cheesecake, regular cake, I do think that buttercream frosting is something that comes with my cake. It’s on my cake alone.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (14:57)

Sure. There we go. Exactly.

Listen.

Cheesecake? ⁓

Yeah, fair, fair. But you—

Lily Womble (15:18)

And Chris—

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (15:18)

—are.

Lily Womble (15:19)

—is bringing the sprinkles, the cherry topping, the little candle. Like, I don’t, I love him. I adore him. He makes my cake so much better. And, like you’re saying, like, I still have everything I need.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (15:21)

Aww, little walnuts, yeah.

Yeah.

That’s my girl. That’s it.

Lily Womble (15:37)

And that’s, I think, the structure is what you’re talking about, of like, just stand in that ownership. What kind of cake are you?

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (15:41)

Yeah, yes, in your cakiness.

Listen, today, what kind of cake? I was at carrot cake the other day. ⁓ my God, this delicious flourless chocolate gateau that we had at Chez Denis in Paris. I was telling you, freaking delicious. It’s like a chocolate soufflé. It’s like a heartburn bomb. And you know what? I’m here for it. And it does. Yeah,

Lily Womble (15:53)

What?

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Amazing.

Oh, I’m going to Paris. I’m bringing my whole jumbo Tums.

So let’s, let’s talk about self-worth and particularly those who struggle with lower self-worth patterns of behavior who might come to you, maybe they’re your client or a friend or somebody who listens to your podcast or a lot of folks in this audience as well who struggle with this and say like, just,

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (16:10)

Prepared. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

Lily Womble (16:30)

Don’t think good things about myself. You know, if they have that awareness, what would you say?

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (16:33)

Yeah. Yes.

So we use the hold please, no thank you, which is similar to your title, but the opposite. So ⁓ when we hear the meanie pants voice, we say, hold please, like you’re putting them on hold. ⁓ And then we do two really important things from a nervous system framework. One, we orient.

So when we get activated in our nervous system, either ramped up into sympathetic activation or crashed down into dorsal disconnect, we’ve left ventral vagal, which is the safe and social part of the nervous system where we can connect the way I feel right now. Right. I’m in ventral vagal. I’m talking to my gal. I’m talking about things I love. I’m happy. I have all my cognitive function. My lunch is digesting nicely. Ventral vagal. When you get ramped up and anxious, you’re in sympathetic. When you get, wait, what? I got super overwhelmed. What? Dorsal.

Great, either one of those dysregulated states means that we’re time traveling. So our nervous system isn’t here and now in the here and now. We’re in the past, right, when the mean girls were mean girling. Or we’re projecting into the future when the mean girls might mean girl in the future. We’re not sure yet, but maybe, but probably, but who knows? But let’s panic about it right now or shut down about it right now. So what do we need? We need a simple reminder.

Lily Womble (17:35)

Mmmmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (17:54)

To come back to now. How do we do that? We orient to our surroundings. I love this because it’s easy and it’s free and everyone can do it. I often teach it to little kids. Billy has taught it—my wife at the Alzheimer’s Center. We can, yeah, no, it’s cradle to grave, it’s great. You literally look around.

So if you’re low-grade freaking out or low-grade mean to yourself, just looking around, okay, I’m orienting, I’m orienting, that might be enough. If you’re like, mm, definitely not enough, start naming the things you see. Lamp, picture, thermos, bottle, ⁓ door, frame, whatever, Lily, window, cat, plant.

Lily Womble (18:31)

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (18:34)

If that’s still not enough, go for categories. Rectangles—door, painting, Lily, window. And then bring your senses in. You got them for a reason, right? What do you smell? Right, I can smell my mate. I can feel the heat of the cup, the weight of the cup. You can feel your own skin, the texture of your clothing, your perfect hair. ⁓ Use your senses to come back into the moment and that will help you stop time traveling.

Lily Womble (19:03)

Hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (19:03)

Once you’re there, we find our feet, find the ground. Find our feet, find the ground. Find our feet, find the ground. I repeat it like every five minutes in my program so it gets Pavlov’d in there. Connect to the earth.

Find the soles of your feet. Also, just from a trauma-informed moment aside, especially for coaches listening: when you tell people to find their body, if your body’s been the site of trauma that can re-trigger the hell out of someone. So I’m not here for it. Rarely have I found that people have significant trauma with connecting their feet to the earth. If someone does, I’ll find another exercise, but it’s a good general audience thing to do. So find your feet, find the ground, push your weight into the earth.

And so that pushing back and feeling that proprioceptive response of the earth pushing back helps to ground the nervous system. So we’ve oriented and grounded the nervous system, yeah? So you’ve told the meanie voice, “hold please,” you do those two things, and then you check if the voice is still there. Usually it’s gone. But if it is still there, that’s when we gently use, “no thank you.” And it’s…

Lily Womble (19:56)

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (20:11)

We don’t want to fight mean voices, because what are they going to do? They’re going to come back louder.

Right? We certainly don’t want to agree with them because then we’re just strengthening that neural groove that says mean, bad thing. Instead, in my world, well, I employ silliness every time I can. Right? Like the science of silly really works for me. It’s also just who I am. But just, “no, thank you.” And so what we’re trying to do here is get back into ventral vagal, into the safe and social part of the nervous system while staying present to the meanie pants voice so that we can start to create a track in our mind that says that voice does not equal panic.

Lily Womble (20:15)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (20:45)

That voice is not per se a problem. It’s just a voice. It’s just a voice. Like when you’re taking the ACE and something in your brain says, “should I take the 2-3?” And you’re like, oh no. Who cares? “Should I get popcorn or a Milky Way?” Both. Right, like they’re just voices. So if you make the mean one heavier, oh, it’s gonna get heavy. Because science, right? You’re strengthening that neural groove and if you just casually, “no thank you…”

Lily Womble (20:58)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (21:15)

You know, like a “gave at the office” kind of vibe. Over time, it starts to allow that voice less, it privileges it less, it prioritizes it less. And your brain’s smart, it’ll stop offering you something that’s a waste of its time, right?

Lily Womble (21:18)

Yeah.

Hmm. Hmm.

Yeah. How—so good. And how would you build more self-esteem drenched beliefs then? Like, okay, so we’ve resourced, we’ve acknowledged, we’ve said, “hold please, no thank you.” Then what?

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (21:42)

Yeah. Yeah.

Kitten steps. So we have to realize that baby steps are way too big. What is that? Two and a half, three inches? That’s a very big foot. Do not take baby steps, my angels. They are too big for us, especially when it comes to core beliefs, like whether it’s okay for you to exist, which is what self-esteem is. Is it okay for me to exist? So instead, in my world, we take teeny tiny newborn kitten baby steps.

Lily Womble (22:06)

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (22:12)

The tiniest step. So instead of lying to ourselves and trying to practice a new thought like, “I believe that I am amazing, and of course people want to date me because I’m incredible.” Your whole mind-body-spirit is going to give you the New York salute in about two seconds. And then you’re actually eroding self-trust.

Lily Womble (22:12)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (22:31)

So what is the tiniest thing that you can begin to believe? We call this a bridge thought. And in my world, because my work is largely somatic—based on the body and the nervous system—we bring in a body bridge. So what’s the smallest thought? “I believe that it’s possible that maybe it’s okay for me to be alive.”

Lily Womble (22:56)

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (22:57)

And you put about 16,000 miles between you and the belief, knowing that there’s a river of doubt between you and that belief, and you need to cross it plank by plank. And so you write that down and you practice that thought. You orient and ground, ⁓ orient and ground, and then practice the thought, right? And then orient and ground after and then put it away. And you come back the next day and you try it again. And once you’re like, “yeah, you know, I do believe that maybe it’s possible that it’s okay for me to love myself…”

Lily Womble (23:02)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (23:27)

…or even like exist, you start taking out some adjectives. And I really recommend we do this in writing so you can see it like Bart Simpson at the chalkboard, but it’s actually just getting smaller and smaller until eventually you’re like, “I believe that I’m okay.” How did that sneak up on me? Right?

Lily Womble (23:29)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, because you practiced.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (23:53)

You practice,

Lily Womble (23:54)

Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (23:54)

You put the time in, you know, how’d you get to Carnegie Hall? Right. So there’s that. But we got to start slowly and we have to understand that all the protector parts in our mind, in our body that believe that it’s dangerous for us to love ourselves—right, because then we’re going to get called out, then we’re going to get told we’re not important and we don’t like, for all those very smart reasons—they need us to be tenderoni.

Lily Womble (23:56)

Yeah.

So good.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (24:22)

They need us to be compassionate and sweet and gentle because we cannot change mindset beliefs unless our nervous system is in ventral vagal. It’s just how it works. And so we have to be sweet and soft with us in order to get ourselves to there.

Lily Womble (24:22)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I think what people do sort of as a default, because I don’t think we’re taught any different, is like, hear the voice say, “you’re wrong. I don’t like you. I don’t want to believe this. This is not who I am.” Yeah. Like, you know, like very mean to that version of yourself who just wants to be safe.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (24:49)

Yeah. Get out of here. Yeah. Yep. Yeah.

Just wants to protect you. So that’s why we use gentle language, gentle tones. If it feels really hard to come up with that gentle tone on your own, borrow mine.

I hear this from clients all the time, that they hear me in their head. You know, like they’ll do something, drop something, and they’ll hear me go, “you silly goose. You silly goose.” Because honestly, like, if being mean to you was gonna work, it would have worked by now. It would have worked by now. You’d have everything on your list of life perfection. Right? But it doesn’t work. Yeah.

Lily Womble (25:12)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Silly goose, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I do.

No, I agree. And I think I’m thinking about a couple of clients of mine who really deeply struggle with a relationship as tender self-compassion. And of course, and that it feels like cringe, because of the way they were taught to hustle and to panic, to respond to.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (25:49)

Of course. Of course.

Right. Yep. Yep.

Lily Womble (26:04)

Care gift for the adults around them who wanted them to perform a certain way,

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (26:04)

Yep. Yep. Yep.

Lily Womble (26:09)

À la emotional outsourcing. So yes, borrow your voice. And what about the people who are listening who want to do this, but they’re having trouble feeling like the tender voice is true?

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (26:23)

So I think we need to start with the brain first for them. Some people need top down, bottom up. So if your brain is saying, F this BS, like absolutely frickin’-lutely not, I shan’t have it, then we need to work with your brain. And I think the best way to do that is to show it, quite frankly—gently though—how it’s wrong. So like, write down: when I was mean to me,

Lily Womble (26:47)

Mmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (26:52)

What did I create? And write down the literal things you created in your life. How about GERD? How about heartburn? How about that time you were running for the train, even though there was one three minutes later, and you slipped and broke your ankle and then you were in a boot for six months.

Lily Womble (26:53)

Hmmmm.

You—

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (27:06)

And you missed that career opportunity or that day. You know what I’m saying? Like, get very—if your brain wants to play “I’m not having it,” then don’t have it, right? Like, write it out: I did this, X created Y. Get mathy with it, right? I created anxiety and then that created meow. And show yourself, yeah.

Lily Womble (27:18)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I’m thinking about—and I also think a way in for those folks, for me at least, is maybe there was one adult when you were a child, maybe a teacher who was super kind to you. For me, it was Miss Taylor, my art teacher. And you think about that one adult—maybe, hopefully, you had one adult who was—

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (27:33)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. Right, got it. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah.

Lily Womble (27:55)

Maybe you didn’t, maybe that’s a privilege that you don’t have, but maybe you can think about—was there one teacher, one coach, one person who got down on your level and said, “What’s going on? How are you doing?” Who attuned, and how life-changing that probably felt, because you still remember them today.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (28:03)

Right?

Yeah. Yeah. We’re attuned. Right?

So the science—let me back you up with a study, with like quite a longitudinal study, which is the ACEs study, the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, which followed folks for decades. And it’s adverse childhood experiences—so lousy stuff that went wrong when you were a kid. And it studies trauma, stress, distress, and trauma in childhood and adult impact.

Diabetes, hypertension, strokes, cancer, etc.—secondary to the number of ACEs in your life. And what they found longitudinally, across a lot of people—the N was statistically quite significant on this—one adult, having one adult,

changed your outcome significantly. And like you said, it could be the librarian, the bus driver, the crossing guard, your bodega guy. Like, it doesn’t have to be somebody up in your—like an auntie or someone in your house all the time. Like, seriously, your bodega guy being like, “Hey kiddo, zip your coat, zip your coat, it’s cold out.” Like, that is enough to change the outcome of your life. Like, it chokes me up, right?

Lily Womble (29:22)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (29:31)

And so yeah,

so the evidence base points at kindness actually changing our outcomes. And I don’t have a single white paper—as an epidemiology nerd, I can’t point at anything—that says that being mean produces a statistically significant outcome. If you know what I’m saying? So if your brain’s trying to brain, let’s brain. Let’s go. Let’s brain. Let’s go on PubMed.

Lily Womble (29:34)

Yeah.

Let’s brain. How about that 2014 study out of Stanford that showed that self-compassion practice reduced cortisol and increased resilience in participants? It’s like, I think that it’s time to try something new, listening. And I hear there’s a great resistance and fear about trying something new because maybe you fear that you don’t want to be proven that it is really hopeless. You don’t want to be proven that it is over. But nothing is over.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (30:01)

Ahem.

Yeah, listen.

Yeah, sure.

But you can always go back to being mean. It’s not a permanent condition. It’s not an amputation. It’s just a shift for a hot minute. So you give yourself three months, six months of being kinder to you. If it doesn’t do no kind of nothing, go back to being mean. Great. Go forth. But why not give yourself an unfighting chance?

Lily Womble (30:23)

You can always, you can always—right. Right.

Yes.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

There you go, unfighting chance is so good, so good. I want to point out something that you wrote in your book and I was like, people need to hear this, this is really interesting. I want like hot take vibes, which I love. This is what you said: after a decade plus of research, self-study, study with master teachers, and work with thousands of women on this topic—

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (30:46)

You’re so good.

Lily Womble (31:09)

I do not believe that people are born lacking self-worth, destined to believe that everyone’s feelings, wants, experiences, needs, and general wellbeing matter more than their own. Here’s the deal. You didn’t say that, I said it. Here’s the part I want everybody to really pay attention to: unlike the old paradigm, I do not believe that anyone is inherently codependent, and I do not believe that adopting that label as an identity serves us in any way. This is pretty different—

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (31:32)

Mm-mm.

Mm-hmm.

Lily Womble (31:36)

Than a lot of prevailing advice and wisdom that I’ve heard out on the self-development streets and therapy-ing streets. So I would love to hear from you about your hot takes on co-dependence and that as a label or identity that people have adopted.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (31:39)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, I think they are survival skills. I think that each and every perfect little baby is born perfect and with the capacity to relate from their full open heart. Right. And if they’re simply given an environment where they’re attuned to, met with love, met with kindness, trusted to be interdependent—

Lily Womble (32:16)

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (32:17)

—and don’t have these habits modeled for them or imposed by prevailing systems of oppression, we’re just not gonna do this stuff. To wit: doing this stuff sucks. I mean, having codependent, perfectionist, and people-pleasing habits is not nice. Like, it’s not a nice way to live. I did it for a really long time. I don’t think anyone’s out here trying to do this.

Lily Womble (32:37)

Hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (32:45)

Right, we do it for survival.

And so what we understand is that if the inverse is true, your hypothesis doesn’t work. Meaning, I no longer relate codependently. I don’t do that. So how could it be inherent to who I am? Right? Like, I am a brunette, I have brown eyes. Right. Like, okay, the brunette is changing every minute, but I have brown eyes. That’s just who I am. Being codependent—

Lily Womble (33:02)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (33:17)

It’s not who I am. It’s a set of habits I had to get through my family of origin, right, to get through life. And I untrained it. I rewired it. I did the somatic and mental cognitive work to live life really differently. So how could it be who I am? I’m getting—

Lily Womble (33:22)

Mm-hmm.

How did you rewire yourself to live outside of those patterns of codependency?

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (33:46)

I use the BRAVE protocol, which is my nervous-system-insanity-saving approach to start healing emotional outsourcing. Would you like me to go through it, Lily Womble?

Lily Womble (33:53)

I would love the BRAVE system—from your book Emotional Outsourcing, available everywhere books are sold right now on September 30th.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (33:58)

Today, go buy it right now. My gosh, Lily Womble. Hey, so we gotta come back into the body first. So we talked about this: orient and ground, orient and ground. For many of us, that first step is—that’s the last step for quite a while. And that’s fine. And if that’s where you’re at, well done you, well done. So: find your feet, find the ground, orient your nervous system. B: body first. R: recognize the outsourcing.

So when you’re looking to move from codependent thinking to interdependent living, we gotta know what we’re talking about here. So I want to invite you with gentleness, and having oriented, to make a list of your top codependent thought habits. So if you tell someone how you feel, do you scan their face to see if you’re okay? If you have to make a decision for a group or the family, like where to go to dinner,

do you outsource it so you don’t disappoint others? Do you reread every text message 20 times before you send it because you’re so scared you might offend someone or cause conflict? What do you do? What are you up to? What are your top habits?

So treat this as more information, not something that’s wrong with you. No judgies, please. But make a list so you know what to keep an eye out for. And here’s where we play Where’s Waldo, right? Keep an eye out for when you’re doing the habits, and when you find yourself doing them, I wanna invite you to really celebrate yourself, like, “I caught myself.” Not “caught yourself,” you found yourself, you noticed yourself, you like—

Right? No more carceral thinking, right? “I noticed. Where’s Waldo at? Look at me noticing.” So once you’ve noticed, “I’m doing that old codependent habit, that old perfectionist or people-pleasing thing,” A: ask, “What do I actually want? Not what they want, right? Not what’ll keep me out of trouble or keep things chill or not upset the apple cart. What do I want, need, prefer right now?” Now, nine out of ten of us are gonna say, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Lily Womble (35:40)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (36:06)

“I don’t know, I don’t know.” Cool. We come into the BRAVE protocol expecting that. Expecting “I don’t know,” because how could you know? You’ve spent 20, 30, 40, 50, 80 years not knowing. How could you just know out of nowhere? So we go into this practice not expecting an answer. We do this practice because we want ourself to hear us prioritizing self. You see what I’m saying?

Lily Womble (36:32)

Mm-hm, mm-hm, yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (36:33)

So we ask for the asking and whatever you hear, go, okay, great. Now, we honor the “I don’t know,” and then once you’re comfortable with that, I’ve got another tip for you, which is one of my favorite coaching tools. I bet you use this one too. You go, “Okay, brain, you don’t know, fine, I appreciate that, thank you very much, protector part. But if you did know, what would you know?” And it like sidesteps the protector. Just in case—if you did know—what would you know?

Lily Womble (36:56)

Yeah, just in case. Yeah. Huh.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (37:02)

Try it out, you’re probably gonna get an answer. V: voice a small act of self-loyalty. So this is where we do the thing that we actually want to do, right? Not the thing that makes others happy, not the thing that the PTA will like or that will keep up with the Joneses. What do you wanna do? Right? And so we’re gonna get a kitten step in. So when you get asked to make 48 cupcakes for the PTA by tomorrow—gluten-free, dairy-free of course—you don’t expect yourself to just say no, because please, that’s a bit much to expect of yourself, right?

Or like in a dating context, would you expect yourself to go on all these apps or like go on 20 first dates tomorrow? Honey, take a breath. You know what I’m saying? Kitten step. So in the PTA example, what I recommend you ask of yourself is to say, “Let me get back to you,” instead of the automatic yes. We aim for that. We aim for “Order what you want for dinner.” Pause and check in with yourself before you reach out for reassurance.

And we do this—we practice around really banal things, again, that are unlikely to trigger or activate the nervous system. So if you’re working on trusting yourself, ask yourself, “Hey, do I like my shoes?” You know you like your shoes. You bought them, you wear them every day. But again, that Pavlovian experience of, “Yeah, I sure do. You’re looking really cute in those,” and start to rewrite that as that voice in your head.

And then E is encourage yourself like you would a sweet friend. So like, seriously celebrate every kitten step. “I heard myself do that thing, that passive-aggressive thing. I heard myself communicate indirectly. I heard myself put my wants last. Way to go, me.”

Lily Womble (38:30)

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (38:53)

Or, “I paused,” or, “I didn’t automatically say yes,” or whatever. And this is slow work, but the more we do each of these things, they’re cumulative, they add up. And eventually they create this new sense of self where we actually are prioritizing ourself. And then we can go find a partner who recognizes that we are a gorgeous, perfect piece of cheesecake and that icing is just addition.

Lily Womble (39:21)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. Well, and do anything you want to do.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (39:23)

Right? Yeah. Sure. Listen, yeah, go for the C-suite. Get that. Go become a dental hygienist. Go do whatever you want to do. Sure.

Lily Womble (39:30)

Anything! Yeah. I wonder about the experience that I’ve had after doing something brave, or after saying, “I’ll get back to you,” instead of immediately saying, “Sure, I’ll make all the cupcakes that you ever want and need,” right? So maybe you do the thing, you celebrate the thing, and then there’s the vulnerability hangover or the intense experience in one’s brain. I’m speaking from my own experience of self-blame, overthinking, like…

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (39:51)

Right, of course. Yeah.

Lily Womble (40:07)

Like that trap of like, did the thing and now I’m back in the sort of hell of a spiral. Okay, so say more on what to do there.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (40:12)

The self-abandonment cycle. Yes, yeah. Self-abandonment cycle, chapter 10. Yes. We are so habituated to putting others ahead of ourselves, right? We do it, we do it, we do it, we do it till we break—either because we finally say no or we throw a plate, physically or hypothetically, verbally. And then we feel so guilty, we go back into overdoing, overfunctioning, overdoing, overfunctioning. So we’re gonna put that on our list.

Lily Womble (40:39)

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (40:41)

On our list of our emotional outsourcing habits. I self-abandon, go into resentment, lash out, feel guilt, and self-abandon twice as hard. It’s a common enough cycle, it’s in a fricking book. Don’t worry, you’re not broken, there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s a super common cycle, I see it all day. I’ve maybe thrown a few psychological plates myself. Who hasn’t, right? But just expect it. And so you can make a plan.

Lily Womble (40:51)

Mm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (41:10)

I love to have my clients make 901 cards. So, I love that. Yeah, that’s gonna be in the next book. It’s very exciting. So make your list of things you habitually do, and then what’s the remedy? How are you gonna show up for yourself? What’s your 901 card? “I said mean thing to husband.” Flip through your cards. It’s in the notes section on your phone these days, but flip through your cards and find that one. Right? What do you do?

Lily Womble (41:14)

Say more on that. Yeah. Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (41:39)

What are the seven things you need to do? Right? Put on X song—it’s a recipe. Put on this song that makes me cry. Jump on the trampoline. Write an apology note. Apologize to my inner child. I know I’m making it up, but like have your recipe written down. Have it at the ready. That’s what this is. It’s all about getting to know ourselves and the habits that don’t serve us so we can love them up and be prepared, because of course you’re going to do them again.

Lily Womble (41:42)

So good. It’s your recipe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (42:09)

Of course you are. There’s nothing wrong with you. But it’s understanding the neuroscience, right? Your neural networks have heuristics. They have shortcuts. Right? It’s like—I remember as a kid, sometimes my mom, if she was like spacing out, would drive us to school on a Saturday when she was trying to go to the grocery store. But if she was spaced out, her brain was just like boop-be-doo, and we’re at MLK Junior, and it’s Saturday morning, and we need Eggo. You know what I mean? Your brain just goes. So where does your brain just go?

Lily Womble (42:35)

Yeah. Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (42:40)

And what is the map from the elementary school to the grocery store? Easy peasy.

Lily Womble (42:45)

Yeah, so good. And it’s so neutral that way. It’s like literally nothing has gone really wrong. Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (42:49)

That’s the whole thing. Who cares? Listen, if there’s one thing I say every day as a coach, it’s, “What if it’s not a problem? What if? What if it’s just not a freaking problem?” Okay. You went on a date with a schmuck. Well, okay. But today’s a new day, baby.

Lily Womble (42:59)

Yeah, 100%. What if nothing was wrong? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That’s how I feel about people who DM me or, you know, we coach about like, “I’ve never been in a relationship,” and the feeling that they experience with that—they think, there’s something wrong with me that I haven’t been in a relationship, and the feeling is shame. Something’s wrong with me.

I’m so unbothered. And I’m so unbothered. I’m like, okay, who the fuck cares? Like, who cares for multiple reasons? I know you want something, it’s not here yet. So like, that’s why I’m here to help you. But who cares? Let’s go.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (43:23)

Right. Yeah, okay. Who cares? I mean, sure. Right. It really is about making—not to go all like Buddhist on us again—but it really is about present moment consciousness. And really deciding, right? Like an activated, triggered nervous system is in the past or the future, not this present moment. And when we are in worry, we’re in the past or the future, we’re not here. Because when you’re here in this moment, on this Tuesday, September 30th, my publication day…

Lily Womble (43:53)

Hmm. Mm-mm-mm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (44:11)

The past is not really relevant. It’s just what was. Right? This is the one day that I am currently promised. Who knows? And so it’s really about understanding that, of course, your human brain—like your amygdala is getting activated, the fear center in your brain, the emotion center in your limbic system, right, that reptile brain—it’s binary. It’s yes or no. Because it’s about lions or tabby cats. It’s got to know the difference.

Lily Womble (44:15)

Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (44:39)

Which one’s gonna snack you, which one’s gonna make you lunch, right? So it needs to be on the know for that, right? And we’re not lizards. We have prefrontal cortices, right? We can have higher order thought and we can bring ourselves back to the moment, back into present, into an oriented, grounded nervous system when the brain starts doing what it’s legit supposed to. And you just say, “Brain, look at you braining.”

Lily Womble (45:01)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (45:09)

Look at you. Look at you, cutie pie, with your little limbic thoughts. Come on home. Come on home. Where are your feet? Find them. Where are your paws? Look at you with two hands. What a privilege. Look at you with little nails. You know, like look at you with elbows, and like come back to this human animal where you get to decide.

Lily Womble (45:09)

Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (45:36)

You get to decide what matters. Okay, you’ve never been in a relationship. I’m divorced. And listen, if I could trade you a little bit of that schmuck for your no relish, you know what I’m saying? Everyone’s got a story and you can make it mean whatever you want it to mean about you. Why pick the thing that sucks, my beauty? Right? You’re a cake.

Lily Womble (45:49)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, this is just such a—the BRAVE framework and the feet, find your feet, find your feet—I mean, it’s all so practical and so concrete. I don’t hear—I mean, what I love about you and your work and what I aim to do with my own is like no toxic positivity, no pretending. Like, all of this that you’re teaching is very realized, authentic, honest shit.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (46:20)

No. Nah. Thank you.

Lily Womble (46:29)

And that helps people and really helps rewire their identity toward a more loving and true version of like our soft, squishy human selves than like, must be perfect, must be exactly this in this box and in this right way. Like, this is just so much more true.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/ella) (46:42)

Yeah. Yeah, thank you. I mean, your girl’s a nurse, right? And I was a hospice nurse. So let me tell you what, Mittens—at the end of this all, nobody cares. And it doesn’t matter. And some kind lady like me is gonna give you morphine all night and then we’re gonna box your stuff up and donate it. Right? So like, how do you wanna do this? What do you want it to be like?

Lily Womble (46:52)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (47:17)

Right? You know, I think a lot about Andrea Gibson. I did before they died. I do now. Two weeks ago, August 13th, would have been their 50th birthday. And on their deathbed, they said—I’ll paraphrase—“I have absolutely loved this life. I’ve lived a life I love.”

And that’s all I think we can ask for on our deathbed: I have lived a life I’ve loved. And so, do you want to let what you have not done yet get in the way of what you may do now? So you haven’t been in a relationship. Okay, well, it’s Tuesday. You could be in one tomorrow. Okay, or you could never end up in one. What do you want to make that mean?

Lily Womble (48:07)

Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (48:13)

How about that you have more time for your friends? How about embroidery? Have you tried making useless things with your hands? I try to do it as often as I can, right? So that my productivity isn’t my focus. Anything external isn’t my focus. My focus is being. Being.

Lily Womble (48:30)

Yeah. Yeah. I also do think I want to acknowledge the magic that happens with co-creation when you end emotional outsourcing—again, to borrow from your book title. You really don’t yet know what is possible, what’s going to happen for you, those listening, and for ourselves when we live in alignment this way. And so I think that—

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (48:45)

Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah! Yeah.

Lily Womble (49:00)

—giving air to your desires and letting them breathe a little bit outside of that limbic, fearful space is an act of agency and aliveness. And we don’t know what’s gonna happen, and so let’s live a fuller life.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (49:07)

Yeah! I mean, listen, why not?

Lily Womble (49:21)

—and co-create magic. And I really am over here believing that when you give air to that desire and when you really step into your agency with the tools that you’re teaching right now, that your desire gets to be evidence that what you want exists in your life and that you don’t know what’s gonna happen, you know?

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (49:36)

Yes. Yeah. And you don’t—yeah, that’s exactly it.

I met my wife because this voice—I was talking to my best friend Suni, it was a Sunday morning, and I was cleaning the house and we were on hour three. You know those girlfriends where you have the epic? And it was like hour three, I’m still in pajamas, and this voice in my head goes, “Go to the meditation.”

And I didn’t really like this meditation group, I kind of found it boring, I didn’t like it. But this voice in my head was like—And I was like, “Why is Edward James Olmos in my brain?”

Lily Womble (49:53)

Yeah, so fun. Wow.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (50:13)

Okay, I’m open to the magic. I don’t know this voice. I’ve never heard it before. I don’t know what’s going on. But it’s not gonna freaking kill me to drive 12 minutes and go into some meditation space and see what’s possible. And I walk in and there are sexy butches there. And my whole body was like—

Lily Womble (50:36)

Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (50:37)

And I chased her out. That’s a whole story for another time. We’ve been inseparable since. Years.

Lily Womble (50:44)

Yeah, I love Billy and you. Such a beautiful, glamorous couple, I feel. No, but I think that that availability to magic is the point of—it’s just availability to magic.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (50:48)

Thanks. We’re pretty alright. Thank you. Thank you. Leo and Sag. Yeah. Yes.

It’s the point. It’s the point. Because why cut yourself off at the knees?

Lily Womble (51:11)

Yeah, 100%.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (51:14)

And again, if you’re listening and you’re like, “But, but…” Okay, this is the whole thing we keep talking about. Honor the protector part. So the part that’s saying, “But, but I don’t know what’s on the other side.” Okay, great. Write it down. Give that voice voice. But don’t just let it spin in your head, ‘cause then it’s endless misery. Pen and paper. And if there’s an ability need, you need to use a computer, fine, fine, fine. But if you can use a pen, pen to paper.

Lily Womble (51:27)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (51:42)

Kinesthetics, right? So somatically connected to what we’re writing. Here’s what could happen if I believe in magic. And tell that part to write out the worst-case scenario. Worst case! And then have it write out the best-case scenario. And by best case, I mean I believe in magic.

Lily Womble (51:52)

Mm-hmm.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (52:04)

On my way to the meeting, to the meditation group, I find $20 million on the street—you know what I mean? Go buck wild. Right? And so on the worst-case scenario, I go to the meditation thing and Godzilla comes down and eats the whole ashram. You know what I mean? Go wild. And then orient and ground and write down what’s likely. Best, worst, likely.

Lily Womble (52:12)

Yeah, ridiculous fun, yeah. Mmm, so cool.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (52:33)

It’s so great because it lets your protectors feel heard, feel seen, feel loved. And then in that, you’re kind of saying, thank you. No thank you. But you let them get heard, you know what I mean? Because that’s all they want.

Lily Womble (52:37)

Yeah, so good. Yeah, good boundary. But yeah, I love that.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (52:52)

Like, we had this ancient Chihuahua and every time we were frequently in danger—because, you know, a squirrel would walk by the house or UPS would come, really dangerous things—he’d go to the front door and scream at the top of his idiot lungs. And if you screamed at him, what happens? He barks louder. Yeah, of course. But if you go sit down next to him, you go, “Oh honey, you’re scared, huh? You’re trying to protect mama from squirrel. Good boy.” He would just stop barking.

Lily Womble (53:09)

Heightening. Yeah.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (53:20)

So treat your protector parts like an angry ancient Chihuahua. May that be the takeaway on pub day.

Lily Womble (53:29)

I love it, pub day. Béa, your book is out in the world. Congratulations. And it’s going to help so many people. Yes. Look at how beautiful that colorful book is. So beautiful. End Emotional Outsourcing by Béa Victoria Albina is out everywhere books are sold right now. And you can go get your copy in the show notes or in the description of this episode.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (53:33)

Yes, my love. Oh my gosh. Can I snuggle one?

Lily Womble (53:56)

And thank you for coming on. You’re brilliant. And I know that your book is going to change so many lives.

Béa Victoria Albina (she/her) (53:58)

Okay. Thank you. I am so grateful to know you. Thanks for having me.

Lily Womble (54:03)

Absolutely. Talk to you all next week.