“I hear all the time: I'm 35, 45, 55, 65, 75 years old, and I have no idea who I am. I don't know what I want, I don't know what I need, I've only lived in a role. Good girl, good daughter, good wife, good employee, good grandmother… who am I?” Beatriz Victoria Albina says about the thousands of women she has specialized in over the last decade. “From there, we struggle to make decisions. We take on a role of therapist in relationships, always listening, always supporting, always solving problems, but we don't receive that support in return for many reasons.”
Shelf Help is a wellness column where we interview researchers, thinkers and writers about their latest books, all with the goal of learning how to live a fuller life.
Albina, a certified somatic life coach, respirator, and former nurse practitioner, based in Brooklyn, is the author of “Ending Emotional Subcontracting: How to Overcome Your Codependent, Perfectionist, and People-Pleasing Habits” (in paperback this September), which educates readers about these phenomena and shows them how to live a fuller life. Her book guides readers through techniques such as body-based somatic practices and thought work, developing the ability to use healthy boundaries and direct communication.
Albina is also the host of the popular “Feminist Wellness” podcast. On the podcast, she acts as a loving alternative aunt figure and often addresses her audience with quirky nicknames like “my cute ravioli.” A queer Latina who emigrated from Argentina at age 3 with her family when they fled the dictatorship of the 1980s, she has gained followers for her wise advice, warm sense of humor, and loving voice, as well as for contextualizing how ending emotional subcontracting actively confronts the external systems of oppression that rule our world.
“We learned, often when we were preverbal or very young, that our authentic self is not okay, it is not appreciated, it is not welcome, it is not the right way to be. Whether in our family of origin, in our extended family or in institutions,” says Albina.
With her background in healthcare, Albina also leans into the science behind what she teaches, educating her readers – “my nerds,” as she calls them – on science-backed, trauma-informed techniques to connect with themselves and transform their relationships from codependency to interdependence. Its goal is to divert people from relying on the approval of external people and systems to deepening our relationships with ourselves and our community in ways that are more satisfying.
Albina spoke with us on Zoom from New York. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Beatriz Victoria Albina, author of “End emotional outsourcing.”
(Photo courtesy of the author).
You coined the term “emotional externalization”, why? Do you hope people will adopt it instead of using the other terms that make up the subtitle of your book?
I really wanted to make it clear that they are not who you are. They are verbs. They are what you are doing. They're survival habits, so they're brilliant, laudable ways you learned to ensure safety, belonging, and value outside of yourself when that seemed like the only option. So we really need a radical shift away from “that's who I am.” Instead, let's really talk about, “It's what I was doing, and sometimes it's what I still do out of habit, but it's not inherent to who I am as a mammal.”
Are these three terms in the subtitle: codependent, perfectionist, people?–nice: interchangeable or interconnected? What differentiates them from each other?
Everyone is informed. Codependent habits are actually about managing other people, and people-pleasing is one way to do that. Perfectionism is when we remind ourselves: “I have to control who I am and therefore how I am seen so as not to be rejected.” In reality, it all comes down to the wound of attachment in a very profound way, and the ways in which we seek not to feel so scared when that wound is activated.
How can readers identify if this book is for them?
Minimize our needs, repress our feelings. Not knowing what we want, because we have spent so much time prioritizing others. If you think that if you don't take care of someone, they will leave you or stop loving you. If you accept a treatment that is not optimal because you do not want to be abandoned. If you avoid standing up for yourself because it seems selfish, scary, or bad. Explain too much, apologize too much, justify too much. Without resting. Feeling guilty when you take a break or set a limit. I could go on.
in your book, guides readers topavilion becoming interdependent, rather than codependent or independent. How do you make this distinction in your relationships? What implications does this transition have on everyday life?
The way you know the difference is felt in the body. In a codependent pattern, in a codependent survival habit, we do things, we say things, we are things to try to get another person, to have an emotion, to try to manage or control the way another person thinks about us or relates to us. The choice we are making is not about self. Reciprocity within capitalism and white supremacy is an eye for an eye. In codependency, it is also an eye for an eye.
Meanwhile, interdependence is when we are two autonomous humans, relating from mutuality and reciprocity that flows like water. We are not manipulating or forcing ourselves, we are not manipulating or controlling them. In interdependence, we give from our emotional overflow, and the love and care we receive in that reciprocity, by caring for the people in our lives, is balanced. But we don't push ourselves to the point of living with resentment, because we don't make it mean anything to ourselves, them, or our relationship.
We often hear about the loneliness epidemic we live in. At the end of your book, you talk about how, by ending emotional subcontracting, you have cultivated a successful chosen family and that you have a practice of showing up for community care. What advice could you give to people who recognize that they long for something different than how they currently experience their everyday realities? but I can't see how change it?
Alright, listen up, community care, babies. You have to do the mundane everyday things with your friends. You know, if you want a village, you have to be a villager. Towns are not made on a date for coffee, a date for lunch and a few drinks in a noisy bar where you can't hear anything anyway.
So, my friend and I go to the supermarket together on Mondays and I go with her to pick up her son because I want to spend time with her and that's what she has to do. Go with your friend to the community garden and help him weed his tomatoes. Does your body need a new coat? Go save together. Do the daily nonsense. Help your friends, you know? Not to brag, but I'm very good at doing laundry. The life I want is in doing the things in life. It's having a soup club where we take turns delivering soup to each other's houses. That's what community building is all about.
Could you talk about the connection between thought work and the body-based somatics that you teach?
When we daydream, self-reflect, and mentally travel through time or imagine other people's thoughts, we are not present. Support for the somatic and nervous system helps us enter into presence. When we are truly present in the moment, we are aware and present in our bodies. It's not more complicated than that. This allows us to take a step towards the ability to choose. I can choose meaning creation here. And I can listen to my body and I can make a decision that supports the collective, but that is not self-abandonment. Respect the people around me without disrespecting myself. We immerse ourselves in the present moment and write a new story in real time, hopefully with the whole body on board. And that's how, very slowly, through somatic (body-based) practices, we begin to create a lot more space to actually be a real person in our lives.
Has included journal questions to work on, especially on thinking–work section. What advice would you give to people who want to keep a journal? but we're struggling to add it to our perfectionist-created to-do list. Any advice?
Yes. The kitten step is the community. Text a friend: 'Do you want to do these stupid journals together?' And then, hopefully, she says, “Yes.” And then you meet every other week for an hour on Wednesday, and you do it. And they have a double body, or they read them to each other. You make a plan that involves another person or a group, because we are pack animals. We need to correct. When the book first came out, I had a free book club because we need each other. So, start a book club! Or tell your therapist or coach that you are going to ask these questions and then bring them to the session.
