Britt Frank - Motivation, Anxiety, And The Science Of Stuck

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Team. Welcome back to the Man Talk Show. I am Connor Beaton and joining me today is a wonderful guest that wrote a phenomenal book called the Science of Stuck, Britt Frank, who received her undergraduate degree from Duke University and her master's degree from the University of Kansas. She is a licensed psychotherapist and a trauma expert who is trained in ifs, or internal family systems and se? Or somatic experiencing. In addition to her private practice, Britt is also a speaker and award winning adjunct instructor at the University of Kansas where she resides and where she has taught classes on ethics, diction and clinical social work. Now, as you can imagine, with the title of her book, the Science of Stuck, this subtitle is Breaking Through Inertia to find you'd path forward. We are going to talk about the research and the science of getting unstuck, of creating change, of being able to push through the classic barriers and obstacles. And I really love the approach that Britt takes in this. There's some really phenomenal research and the way that she has structured this book is great. So we talk a little bit about anxiety, we talk about the kind of hidden benefits of staying stuck, we talk about the myth of motivation, we get into motivation, how it functions, how to sort of leverage it in your favor, and a few other pieces that I think are vital that are instrumental to helping the everyday person get unstuck. And Britt also has a very phenomenal story, as you'll hear in this, but she was part of the Mormon Church for a very long time. She was an addict for a number of years and so she shares a little bit of her story and what led her down the path that she was on and then the life shift that she had into science research and psychology. So with all that said, please share this episode, man it forward, share it with somebody that you know is going to enjoy. This podcast is really committed and dedicated to the betterment of you and helping you to become the best version of yourself. The best man, the best father, the best husband, the best business leader that you possibly can. And for my female listeners, to help you better understand the men in your lives, your husbands, boyfriends, partners, brothers, fathers, there's the whole gamut. So thank you so much for tuning in. Again, if there's somebody that you know could use this episode or if you find value in this episode, what I do with my friends, with the men in my life is I share an episode with them and I say, hey man, I would love for you to check this out and I would love to talk to you about this. And so sometimes I find just having a 10, 15 minute follow up call on a podcast on a specific idea can be wildly helpful to integrating some of the concepts and ideas that are presented to get a sense of where the people in our lives stand on certain subjects and to help expand ourselves, our minds, and more specifically our relationships. So with all that said, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for sharing the show. And without further delay, please welcome Britt Frank. All right, Britt, welcome to the Man Talk Show. How you doing?

Hi. Thanks for having me on.

Yeah, well, thanks for, thanks for being here. My wife raved about you and put us in touch. And so I'm looking forward to this conversation and I'm looking forward to what we're going to talk about because I feel like it's a very, very important topic. A lot of people especially like post pandemic, there's a lot of stuckness. And so I think this is a very interesting topic at a very needed time. You know, how like some books just land at a time where the culture and the conversation within society really needs it. And so I feel like this is an important one. But I digress. Before we get into any of that, the question, the big question, which is tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Such a great question. Okay, so I could do a shiny one. What made me. Yay. I'll do the. I just. I'm from New York, born and raised. And throughout my travels after college, I decided to join a fundamentalist religious cults and move to Northern California and then to Kansas City, Missouri, and did that for a while and then didn't. But that was a defining moment. Deciding to make the jump from like Long Island Jewish girl to I am now a fundamentalist, like fringy fundamentalist kind of person. That was defining. It wasn't all bad, but I, I wouldn't recommend.

When you say fringy fundamentalist, you mean like Kansas fundamentalists? Like, tell me more about that.

Not Westboro Baptist, not protesting, you know, people's funerals. Hate speech. It wasn't like a murder cult, but it was very, very culty by every single definition of a cult. It met the criteria. I didn't figure that out till afterwards, but it was very appealing. Here's a. I'm lost in space, I have no idea who I am. And then it's do this, think this, wear this, read this, say this, and we will love you. I was like, sign. And I Don't. And anything that's wrong with me, I can pray away. Like, I can bypass all of it. Sweet. Sign me up. Where do I sign? And so I did that for years, and it was. I'm sad. Nope, not sad. Pray it away. I have trauma. Nope, no trauma. Pray it away. No problem. Again, 10 out of 10 don't recommend, but it was very effective as a bypassing strategy for a while, till it wasn't.

I actually wanted to have somebody on the show years ago about cults. She was like a. An expert in studying cults, and I wanted to have. Have her on the show. And it was so interesting because when I reached out, she was like, well, how do you know that you're not a cult? And I was like, well, I mean, maybe. Maybe we are. I mean, you know, I was like. I was like, I don't think Man Talks is a cult by any means. I mean, we have, like, a podcast when there's no Bible. I'm not indoctrinating anybody into anything. People have free choice. You know, there's no Kool Aid at the end of this journey. And so I was like, I don't think we are a cult. But I was like, you know, if you want to come on the show and tell me how I might be, I was like, by all means. But she wasn't. She wasn't open to it. But I've always been fascinated with the draw of cults, and I feel like you just did a good job of summarizing what that is we get. And maybe I'll. I'll paraphrase my own words, and you tell me if this feels true, but we get a sense of feeling like we belong so long as we belong under the doctrine. Right? So as long as we conform to what is expected of us, then we belong. But as soon as we have individuality, then we no longer belong. Right. Authenticity has no real place in cults, so it's not.

Neither does critical thinking. That's exactly. And for the record, I do not experience your work as in any way cult, like, in any capacity, by any criteria. It is very appealing. And, you know, there's the cult of religion, but there's also the cult of wellness and the cult of fitness and the cult of spirituality and the cult of self help. Any group that clusters around the promise of if you do this, you will feel better and belong has the potential. Not every group is a cult, but any group that promises you're going to feel better if you do this has the potential to spew and cults are really a continuum onto which a lot of groups fall. And that's. That's important to know. It's not just the fringes. It's, you know, are you in a cult? Criteria. Do you have the ability to be authentic? Question and critically think, and if the answer is no, buyer beware.

I like that. Good. I like that good warning on it. And I think it's interesting because we have, you know, what is it now? Like, I can't remember what the exact stat is. Like, 38% of Americans identify as spiritual but not religious. And, you know, so there's this huge growing population of people that don't have a spiritual or religious home and they feel spiritual, but there's no sort of gathering place, there's no quote, unquote church for them to go to. And I think that that is, you know, I don't want to get too off topic because this isn't necessarily what we're going to talk about today. But, you know, I think that it's wildly problematic, you know, because I think what we saw over the pandemic in some ways was people who are spiritual but not religious coming together in these, like, little subgroups under, you know, different. What did I call it? It was like medical cultism, you know, and. And sort of subdividing themselves and subjugating themselves into these very small groups that had hyper, almost like cultish religious feelings to it of, well, if you do this, then I won't talk to you, and you're not allowed in my house. And if you don't do this, I won't talk to you, and you're not at my house. And it's like, holy shit, what is going on? And so it's really interesting to see how the power of. What is it? Mass formation, right? The ability to sort of control large groups of people can form, and it shows how much we all want to belong, I think. So. Appreciate you bringing that up. One quick question. Why Kansas? You said to me, you said to me before we started this call, which I absolutely love, you prefaced it, you said, I. I moved to Kansas by choice. I live in Kansas by choice. And I was like, that's a very interesting way of putting that.

I'm from New York and I live in Kansas on purpose. So I was in my little cult world in Northern California for a while, and these cults have their little sister communities, and I went to a conference in the Midwest and of course was swept up in the cathartic nature and the feeling of love. And connection, and it's basically being high. And I'm also recovering drug addicts, so the cult of religion and meth are not that dissimilar physiologically. And so I was like, whatever this is, I want it. And so, you know, I didn't have a whole lot going on. So I just picked up and dropped myself down here. And then when I got out of that and sort of burnt down my life and rebuilt it was, where do I want to rebuild? And Kansas City is actually a great place to live. It's an easy place to live. It's not what people think it is, which is fine with me. I don't want everyone moving here. And so I built my regular person life here after I was done with my not regular person life.

That's awesome. I love that. I love that. And I mean, Vienna and I live two hours north of the city in upstate New York. You know, we're 15 to 20 minutes from any kind of town or village, you know, on a five acre plot of land out in the middle of nowhere. And many people are like, why did you do that? And I was like, well, because if you live in Manhattan long enough, you just miss nature or you sort of get sucked into the addiction of the energy. And I'm kind of done with addictions in this lifetime. I've run the gamut. Yeah, I've run the gamut. I feel like I'm good on that front. Okay. The Science of Stuck. I love the title of this book, and I feel like so many people get stuck, feel stuck, and then there's just. No. I actually haven't heard many people write about the science of getting unstuck, you know, and how we actually deal with this. And I love that you opened the book talking about anxiety. But first, I just want to sort of broach the question, why did you write this book? And maybe what was some of the most fascinating parts of your journey in writing this? Because I would imagine that as you went through some of the science and literature and research that's out there, that you came across some pretty interesting things.

Well, it was really wild because I started the Science of Stuck before the pandemic, and like you said, it sort of became a literal thing where everybody suddenly was stuck. So whether you identify as a trauma survivor or someone with mental health challenges, we all know what it's like to be stuck. And I called it that because again, if I called it the science of trauma, well, I don't have trauma. That's for those people. Or if I called it the science of mental illness that, that's very exclusionary. We all, if you're human at some point you're going to get stuck. And so I wrote the book because the one that I needed when I was going through drug addiction, sex addiction, cult addiction, all of the things didn't exist. Which was I don't want a deep dive. I want to Cliff's notes. I want a driver's ed manual with just some bullet points. Because you can't get from stuck to awesome. You can't get from stuck to life goals. You have to get from stuck to step one, to step two, to step 2.1 and so forth. And so I wrote the book cause it's the one I wish I had had when I was bouncing around life in my 20s and 30s and it didn't exist. So it was fun for me to write the book for my younger self.

Yeah, I think what you just described there, I want to just pinpoint that for a moment. This notion that I think that part of what keeps us stuck is this illusion that massive action needs to happen, you know, or that you're going to go from that feeling stuck to massive action or to having big goals or to having big achievements. And I love what you're just saying of just this reminder that it's how we get unstuck is just one step, you know, and then the next one. And it's a small action. It took me a really long time to figure that out. A really, really long time. And still sometimes I get, I get hooked back into that notion of I got to do like a big thing, you know. Let's start by talking about anxiety and being stuck and maybe a little bit about what did you discover about anxiety and its relationship to how we can sometimes get stuck either in relationships or in our life. And can we leverage it? Maybe that's not the right term, but can we leverage it and sort of reshape our relationship to it to help project us out of our stuckness.

I love it. And leverage is a great word. The biggest, most frustrating part of my whole journey, professionally and clinically, is how our pain is complex. But like the biggest discovery was how not complex the basics are and how none of us. I wasn't taught what anxiety was. I wasn't taught that I had a central nervous system. I don't know about you, but I was never taught. Here's your brain and here's how. It's sort of like if you gave a 10 year old a car and said, okay, now go drive in LA and then wonder why everything is going completely haywire. We have these brains and these bodies that we walk around in and no one teaches us. I can give a talk to any group of people and if I say, what's anxiety? Everyone will say the same thing. Oh, it's that feeling of, you know, impending doom. It's the, those are the symptoms. But if I say what is anxiety? It's blank faces because we're not taught what it is. Fundamentally, anxiety is the check engine light of the brain's dashboard. It's a smoke alarm. It is not the, it's a problem. And I've had chronic anxiety my whole life. I get how debilitating it is and how awful it is. And it's a signal pointing towards a problem, it's not the problem itself. Like I could disable my smoke detector in my house and I could disable the check engine light on my car, but the light's not the problem. I don't like it when those lights go off either. But we get so focused on how uncomfortable and terrifying and debilitating the symptom is, we forget that the function of anxiety is to warn us of either a threat or warn us that something is off in our relationships or in our lives. If we don't have anxiety, how are we going to know if we're off course with either our relationships, with our, the way we treat our bodies, with our businesses? We, I hate it, but we need it in order to thrive and succeed and to stay alive. It's fundamentally, if we didn't have anxiety, we would have all been eaten by tigers.

That's a very good point and I love the distinction, that sort of defining anxiety as the check engine light on the dashboard, right? It's just a signaling of something happening with the engine or with the body, with the nervous system or the brain. A few things about anxiety, I can't remember who said it, but it's like depression is a past based experience, right? Where we're focused in on the past, something about the past. And anxiety is a future based experience where we're fixated on the future. Something that's going to happen, something that's going to transpire, something that we'll never be able to get out of, et cetera. So when you talk about it being a check engine light pointing to something, what's it pointing to in our brains, in our bodies and in our lives.

If only it was as simple as, okay, here's the check engine light on your brain. Now do a diagnostic. And here's the exact point. That and our brains are very smart and they're also very stupid because they can't pinpoint with precision the exact location. It's just like, hey, something's bad now everything feels like it's going to explode. So I don't like to start with why. I love a good why question. I love to analyze and dig and all of that. But when you're experiencing anxiety, why is the number one. Do not start with the why question, because why is just going to spin you out. Instead of why am I anxious? Or why is this thing happening? Or even what's the problem? Let's start with anxiety means my brain feels unsafe. So fine, we'll figure out why and how and who later. Let's start with what are three people, places, or things that will help me feel a little less in danger, less in peril, even if I don't know why. Who are my three safe people, places and things? Let's get your nervous system down out of the rafters, and then once your logic brain flips back on, we can figure out the why. But everyone, when they're panicking is, why is this happening? Why is this happening? And that why question is going to release more cortisol, which is going to cause more anxiety, and it's going to create a spin and then you're going to get stuck. So just assume that there's a problem somewhere. We'll figure it out later. Change your whys to what and what are the choices? And then pick one and do it and then do another one, no matter how small.

What would you say you talked about in the. I think in the beginning of the book about how there are certain myths about anxiety. I would love for you to talk about that because there's, I think, in our, our sort of like New age culture with everybody hanging a shingle on being a coach on social media and providing mental health commentary, there's a lot of I hate the word, but misinformation.

I was like, God damn it, I have to use that word. But there's a lot of misinformation and there's a lot of myths about anxiety, depression, the brain, the nervous system, et cetera. So what, what are some of the myths that culturally we hold about anxiety that you sort of dispel in the book?

Sure. Well, the first one is that it's bad. Again, I don't like it. It's not pleasant. But I don't like my muscles tearing down when I work out either, because it's unpleasant. But Just because something feels uncomfortable doesn't make it bad. And so the first myth about anxiety is that it's a bad thing. It's not fun, but it's needed. The second myth is that you can talk your way out of it. And I, I love thought work. I love working with mindset, and that's great. And anxiety is not a mindset issue. It's a physiological issue. So if we're approaching anxiety as it's just a problem with your thoughts, so just change your thoughts and your anxiety will go away. Tell yourself anxiety is not real. It's like, yeah, but that's like looking at my dashboard and being like, I'm not out of gas. I'm not out of gas. I am a great driver. My car is not broken. It's not in need of. It's like, yeah, it is. So you can't think your way out of a physiological nervous system response.

So you can't. You can't secret what? You know the book, the Secret. You can't secret your way out of anxiety? Is that what you're trying to say?

You can't manifest a non anxious nervous system. And again, no shade to that. Those practices, there's really good things in almost every body of work, but you can't affirm your way. You can't spiritually bypass your way. You can't. Yes, I can. You can't love yourself in the mirror out of anxiety because it's not a thinking problem, it's a body problem. And so that's. That's the real big myth that I'm passionate about dispelling. Because if you know it's physiological first, then you're gonna be more likely to work with it successfully instead of beating yourself up with, why is my work not working? I'm doing the inner work and the inner work's not working. It's like, well, your inner work can't work if your nervous system's on fire.

Yeah. And I think, you know, it's. It's interesting because from my understanding, and I could, I could be wrong on this, but from my understanding, there is almost zero difference between anxiety and stress in the body. Like, we code them the same. And I've heard a number of people talk about this, that stress and anxiety physically in the body are quite similar. And then neurologically, what's happening in the brain when we feel anxious and when we feel excited is almost identical, which I find wildly fascinating, you know, that there's almost no differentiation between the sense of, oh, I'm really excited about Whatever it is, you know, taking my kids to the water park or Disneyland or going to see that movie or going on this date and feeling a sense of anxiousness about, I don't know what's going to happen, you know. And so because I've heard people like Sam Harris talk about, you know, the difference between anxiety and excitement is just a mind state, I'm like, well, like, you know, anxiety happens in the body first and then in the mind second. And so I do think that that's an incredibly important thing. So what does it look like for the individual who's dealing with high levels of stress, who's dealing with high levels of anxiety, and they're. They're wanting to begin to work with that in the body? What. Where do we. Where do we even begin?

Well, it helps to start by giving context, because you're so right. It's not a mindset issue if you're being attacked by a lion or if you're about to be fired or if you have five kids, you're homeschooling, or if you're locked down and you have no idea what's going to happen to your family. That is not a. Just change the story you're telling yourself and you'll feel better. So step one is figure out, am I actually in danger? Are there any things in my environment that would be reasonable to cause anxiety or stress? And if the answer is yes, that's going to need a whole different set of interventions. Then, okay, logically, we've assessed everything. Logically looks safe. So now what do we do? And again, anxiety does feel like excitement, which also feels like arousal. So when I was recovering from my drug addiction, I went from I'm high all the time to I'm numb all the time to now I'm bored. And as soon as I started feeling anything, even a good thing, I coded. Ev. My brain coded every single sensation as anxiety because it wasn't used to living in a body. And so it helps to get into the. What are the body sensations? Tight chest, you know, sweaty palms, clenched jaw. Let's take the stories off of them. And let's just start with, what does it feel like to live in your body? I hated doing this. I hated my therapist. Every time she would say, what do you feel in your body? I'm like, I hate you. Like, I don't know.

No, I will cut you.

I will cut you. Like, I do not like this assignment. And nobody does because it's not sexy and it's not big, and you don't but like, what do you feel in your body will help you start in the right place? And then it's what are my choices for people, places and things that'll help bring me down a few degrees. And then let's work with mindset. So body first, safety second story third.

I love what you said. I wasn't used to living in a body, you know, and like, I mean, after, once I got sober, I stopped using any kind of substances, you know, no weed, no alcohol, no porn, you know, no womanizing. None of those things were present. All of a sudden I just, I had to feel and it sucked.

It sucks.

You know, it really fucking sucked.

Yeah.

And still sometimes today I'm like, God damn. Like, I just wish I had a substance to numb out with because I don't want to feel what's happening in my body. And it's a, it's a very real thing, you know, And I think the amount, I mean, I just, I work with so many men and the amount of guys that go through life just living in their head is very high. And, and so we're not used to living in our bodies. So I think when a lot of guys are like going to therapy or they hear therapeutic conversations, what's happening in your body? And most of us are like, I don't know what the you're talking about, you know, because there's a complete disconnection because we have been. And I think part of this. I'm curious to get your thoughts on this. I think part of this is the self help personal development industry has conditioned us to seek these epiphany moments, these AHAs, right? These very like intellectual based, like, oh, that makes sense. And oh my God, I really love that. And so we pursue and chase a different kind of high, which is just this intellectual stimulation of aha. That makes so much sense. And all the while feeling disconnected from our physical and direct felt experience of the body. So I'm curious to get your, your thoughts on that.

I just did a session with one of my male clients yesterday who's so disembodied. And so we had to bring it down out of the rafters into let's go outside in the snow and can't, because he was wearing a T shirt and shorts and it was below freezing and it was snowing where he lives. I'm like, go outside. And he went outside and couldn't even register the sensation of cold on his skin. So then it's all right, I'll sit down in the snow. Eventually, after rolling around in the snow. He's like, ah, shit, I'm cold and wet. Okay, that's cold. Welcome to your body. That is what it feels like to be cold. And a lot of. And this is an incredibly capable, exceptionally intelligent person who just isn't in a body. And so none of us are taught how to do it. And what you were saying about anxiety and stress, those become a secondary type of addiction. Because if you're anxious and stressed, it isn't altered state. Because if you come out of stress and anxiety, what's going to be waiting? Probably some sadness, probably some shame, probably some guilt, probably some fear. And that's not pleasant. So even though we hate anxiety, stress and anxiety have the physiological potential to take us out of our bodies in a different form. And stress is a very culturally sanctioned addiction, but it does create an altered state where we don't have to feel anything.

There's a t shirt. Stress is a culturally. What did you say? Culturally.

Culturally sanctioned addiction.

Ain't that truth. Well, I feel like you're just dropping truth bombs here. Okay, one more thing. On anxiety, you talk about how it's a superpower and why we stay stuck without it. Now, I'm curious if you just unpack that a little bit more and give some insight into what does it mean to get unstuck with anxiety.

And this is where my Bible cult days were actually fairly useful. So some people have heard of the Jesus here's, you know, heals the lepers story. And leprosy is this debilitating disease. And when you think of leprosy, you think of all of this disfiguration. But what leprosy is, is a disease of the nerves where you don't feel any pain. And because you have no pain receptors, you can't tell if the stove hot, is a knife sharp? Do I need to not bend my wrist all of this way? If I'm biting, am I hurting myself? If you don't have pain receptors, you end up disfigured. And leprosy can cause physical death. So anxiety. Without it, we're sort of in emotional leprosy without our pain receptors, without our fear receptors, we're not going to know how to course correct, how to make micro adjustments and macro adjustments and how to make decisions. And if physical leprosy causes death, emotional leprosy causes emotional intrapsychic death. And without it, we're just numb and slowly disintegrating into our lives. We may be function. I mean, I wasn't functional, but a lot of people can be functional. But that does not mean that they are thriving. And so the superpower nature of anxiety is it points us towards where we're out of alignment with our outer reality or our inner reality or whatever. And again, unpleasant, but very necessary if you want to be happy and whole and thrive.

I've also found that for many people when they're dealing with anxiety, it's almost like the process of learning to be with it is a welcoming back home into the body. You know, like, you can not have anxiety and be with anxiety without coming back home into your body and finding safety there and security and grounding. And I've. I've also found that, you know, I was. I was a kid with a ton of. Ton of energy. And I see it in my son. I mean, he's just got so much energy just running around and screaming and, you know, pushing chairs and tossing his Lego thing out all the time. And I think about young kids today who, you know, are constantly being diagnosed with ADHD and, you know, and sort of like this over diagnosing that, in my opinion, is happening. And I think that we, you know, many of us just have a tremendous amount of energy in the body that we're not taught how to navigate. We're not taught that it's okay. We're not taught how to wield it or direct it or be with it. And so anxiety is often this invitation, I've found, to rest more peacefully in the body in a healthy way. And the process of doing that is incredibly potent. Like when I've gone. As I've gone through that process myself, I have had to become more grounded, more stable. My practices, my rituals, my routines have all been dialed in. And I feel a sense of calm and peace. That certainly was not there when I was using substances, you know, when I was using these external things. So are you. Can you make any comment on that? And just this notion of, like, coming back home into the body, the sort of potency of that and what that can. What that can open up for people.

And I agree with that a thousand percent. It's so true. Coming home to the body sounds like, so marvelous and wonderful. And that was really what we want as humans, is to find a sense of home. And the only place that's a permanent sense of home is inside of ourselves. But, oh, my God, is it terrifying? So anxiety is sort of like, those are the dragons at the gate. But, you know, if you start listening to your anxiety, like what you were saying, once you go inside and you listen to the message, the physiology that we are so terrified of will settle very quickly if we're willing to listen. But it's very much. We can't medicate away the dragon. We can't bypass the dragon. We have to face it and listen to it. And then we realize that the dragon is a helper that's very much a part of ourselves that's trying to point us towards our best, whatever. And then we get to make peace. Because most people are at war with their own inner world. I hate the parts of me that get anxious. I just hate this anxiety. This anxiety is ruining my life. I'm like, okay, pause. I get that this is not a good thing, and you can't be at home in yourself if you're at war with yourself all the time. So I love what you said because it completely puts a ceasefire on this war and makes it collaborative again. I don't enjoy it, but if you collaborate with your anxiety versus fight it and all of these war metaphors with our mental health. I fight depression and I'm battling anxiety. It's like, okay, like, you're not at war with your inner world. The war is outside. The war are the things that oppress us or cause trauma or whatever, but the war is not inside of us. So if we can put a stop to that, we can find our way home faster.

So good. So good. I was talking to a group of men yesterday, and I was talking to them about how the majority of men have a civil war happening inside of them. And in that we've been taught to fight. And we're very gifted at it. We're very good. A lot of guys are very good at it. And it's one of the most damaging and detrimental things because there's no peace inside of them. And so they don't know how to create peace in their family, in their relationships at work, in the environments that they. That they inhabit, because we are so prone and conditioned to, like you said, fight the depression. It's like, well, how the fuck is the war on drugs going? Is that going pretty well? It hasn't worked at all. You know, and like, most of us know that. It's like the war on opioids is a catastrophe. It's an absolute clusterfuck. And so when we take these methods of, I'm gonna fight my depression, I'm gonna battle my anxiety. It's like, good luck, man. You know, you're gonna be. You're gonna be slogging it out with that part of you for a very long time that wants acceptance, that wants to be welcomed into you, you know, that wants to be understood and held and accepted in some capacity. And it's like, that's way harder. You know, you can sit and shit, talk your depression and your anxiety all day long, but to welcome this part in, it's like, man, that's hard, you know, but so hard.

Yes. And for especially the men that I work with, they get kind of twitchy at the self compassion, be nice to yourself idea. It's like, okay, all right, bro, like let's get out the whiteboard and let's, let's go to the neuroscience. If you are beating the shit out of your depression, you're going to release cortisol, you're going to be releasing adrenaline, and then that's going to create an inflammation state in your body that's going to create more of the fight flight, fight, freeze thing, which is going to create more of the thing you don't want to be doing. Okay, so the self compassion thing is not the saccharine, mushy, let's all hold hands and not, you know, whatever. It's, you know, if you're nice to yourself, then you stop the flood of stress hormones coursing through your body, which then creates the capacity for logic to be active. And then the gap between what we say we want to do and what we actually do closes because we're not flooding our body with all these stress hormones. So for no other reason, the neuroscience backs up self compassion is a more efficient, energy efficient way of managing whatever your thing is.

Speak to my brain. It's so good. Just give me, give me the data.

Okay, I definitely want to talk about motivation because I feel like this is a big one. But I would be remiss if I didn't stop and pause and ask, why do some of us stay stuck? What's the real benefit? Because I think that there is a benefit to staying stuck. So why do some of us stay in that place and kind of know it and what do we get out of it?

And any recovering addict can attest to this. But people who don't have an addiction have trouble with this notion of you're getting something out of the behavior. It's like, no, how could you say that? Clearly it's destroying my health and my finances. And I'm like, no, I get that. And nevertheless, all behavior is functional. Doesn't mean all behavior is good. But all behavior, even suboptimal behavior, has a function function, which means you're getting something out of it. Are you conserving energy? Are you preserving your, you know, your image? Are you not wanting to disrupt the status quo? I can't tell you how many men I've worked with who have said, I'm scared if I get fit and happy, that I'm going to realize I'm unhappy and need to, like, destroy my family and leave my relationship. I've heard that often enough. That's a thing that no one will say because it's super, super not cool to say that. But the fact is, is there are benefits like relationship preservation and image conservation and comforts. Comfort is a, again, not popular. But it's not that you're not motivated to go to the gym. It's that you're more motivated by physical comfort than you are by your long term goal. So it's not, why am I unmotivated? It's, well, are you more motivate? Are you more motivated by the benefits of the stuckness than you are by the rewards of the unstuckness? It's sort of like in business, do a cost benefit analysis of whatever your thing is. If your cost is really, really low, then you're not going to change. But if your cost of doing the stuck thing is high, that's when change happens. But you won't get to that. Aha. If you don't sit down and get really honest and go, all right, this behavior is benefiting me in some way. What am I getting out of this? And then answer that honestly.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I had a, a neuroscientist that I've been meaning to have back on the show. I had him on the show years ago, like four or five years ago. And I remember him talking about how our brain is, is wired to be a pattern recognition machine, but it's also wired to keep us in the realm of the known. And so it prioritizes what we know. And so I've talked about this with. Actually, again, I talked about this with a group yesterday where, you know, I said, we will prioritize what we know even when what we know is abusive, even when what we know isn't giving us the results that we want because it seems to our brain less threatening than venturing into the unknown. Is that accurate from, from what you found?

Yeah. Our brains are really smart and they're really stupid. So it's like, you know, I am smoking meth and I am destroying my body and my life. And nevertheless, I know this. You know, I know the streets in hell. So I'm just gonna stay put here because I Don't know what's on the other side. Surely what's on the other side is not going to be worse than where I am. Nevertheless, my brain's really smart and it's really stupid. And that's exactly right. We are primed for repetition and for energy conservation. It takes less energy to do the same thing, even if the same thing is bad. So our brains want to keep us alive, which means it's always looking for energy conservation strategies like autopilot, like habit, like dissociation and repetition. And so we have to train ourselves into these higher level things like happiness and health and success and prosperity and abundance. And all the things we say we want are not inherently how our brain was organized to function.

What an interesting framework to be born into. You know, it's like the more I feel like the more that I learn about how the brain and body are designed, the more I'm like, that's kind of a fucked up joke. You know, it's like, I'm gonna put you into this body and this brain and you're gonna have to learn how to use this vehicle. And it's not super efficient. And sometimes it's going to actively try and keep you stuck in things that, you know, cognitively aren't good for you, but that's the way that you're wired. And so you got to go against that. It's like, really, man? Like, come on.

Yeah, the user experience designer I want to have a meeting with and go, what the hell was that? But okay, that's, that's how it is. And we fight against the reality of our brain. It's like, fight it all you want, but this is how your brain is designed. And so we have to work with it, not fight it.

I remember Andrew Huberman talking about on one of his shows, like, I wasn't there in the design phase, but if I was, I'd have some comments.

So true.

Yeah. Well, okay, so let's talk about motivation because I think from, again, from the, just the, the online commentary, having worked with a lot of guys, there's a notion of how I need, how I get unstuck, or what I need to get unstuck is motivation. And so I'm, I'm curious if you can talk about some of the, maybe the myths of motivation, what motivation actually is. Like, how do you define it? Let's just start with those two things.

Sure. And motivation is first, physiological. Again, not a mindset issue. If your nervous system is locked down in a state of freeze for whatever reason, it doesn't matter what they're. And again, it's not an excuse. It's. We have to start with where is your nervous system? Is it anchored in freeze? Is it anchored in fight? Is it anchored in flight? Because again, all the thought, work and mindset stuff in the world isn't going to work. You're not going to outthink your central nervous system. So when we think of the myth of motivation is that it's first a mindset issue. It's not. It's first physiological, then it's a mindset issue. So we have to address the physiology of motivation before we can get into the rah rah. This is what I want to do. Go me. And the other myth is that it's a feeling that you have before you do the thing. And it's great when that happens. But often motivation, the feelings that we want, happen after we start doing the thing. Like, I didn't feel like going to step meetings half the time. I didn't feel like eating half the time I didn't feel like getting up and not doing stupid shit half the time. I didn't feel motivated to do any of those things. I did them because I understand that they're important. And the feeling of motivation sometimes happens and sometimes not. But it doesn't matter. Do the things first, physiology first, then just do the things, and then the motivation feeling will happen later.

Yeah, I think I heard. I think it was Jocko Willinks who said something along the lines of, like, discipline is doing what you need to do when you don't want to do it. And that, that always kind of stuck with me. Cause it's like, oh, yeah, you know, there's, you know, half the time that I go to the gym, like, I don't want to go do that. You know, I want to go chill and like, watch, you know, Netflix. And I joke around that I have like this 500 pound fat man inside of me that just wants to smoke weed and play video games and have sex and like really not do anything else. Eat food and watch Netflix. And so I'm not battling him constantly. I'm not fighting him. I'm just doing the things that I know I need to do even when I don't want to do them. And then I feel the reward afterwards, like after I go to the gym. So I feel like what you're saying is so true. So is it a matter of willpower? Like, how do we start to build motivation in our lives? Because I feel like this is a big question for guys I want to be more motivated to go to the gym, to make more money, to, you know, be better in. In the bedroom or in my relationship. Like, we. I think there's often, and I've fallen into this. There's often this notion like I need to be more motivated in order for my life to change. So I'd love for you to just comment on that a little bit more.

Yeah. And it's like, you don't. We already have all the motivation that we need. Our motivation is baked into the brain. Again, it's not that you're not motivated, it's that you're either motivated to mobilize in the direction of whatever it is that you want. Your finances, your body, your sex life, whatever, or your brain is motivated to protect and preserve and conserve and keep you small. And this is where the self talk really, really matters. Again, a lot of my guys push back on like the inner child, these subparts of our personality stuff. But the way we, you know, you have to talk to yourself when you're feeling, quote, unmotivated like you would to a kid, you know, you can't. Well, again, a loving, competent, skillful parent doesn't say to a kid that doesn't want to go to school like, you piece of shit, get up. Let's rock it. Let's do it. Like, let's go. It's like, hey, bud, I know you don't want to validate and this is important and this is what we're going to do. Shoes on, coat on, bus. And so we need to talk to ourselves in the same way that we would talk to our pets. Or I would never talk to my dog the way I talk to myself when I'm beating myself up. And so if you can change the self talk from a monologue I don't want to, or I need to, to a. A dialogue. I'm talking to the part of myself that doesn't want to do it and letting he. She, they know, hey, this is actually. I know this sucks. This is gonna be super shitty. But like, this is good for us. And here's the, Here are the prizes we get when we do it. And make deals with yourself. I make little bargains with my sub parts of my personality all the time. Okay, I know you don't wanna go to the gym. After you go to the gym, I'm gonna let you take a nap in the middle of the day. And then we're gonna watch four hours of whatever the stupid show is that we're into. And it's like Instead of fighting yourself, talk to yourself in dialogue form instead of monologue form. And that is the most powerful motivation hack I have ever seen, regardless of what the thing is. Because if it's I suck, I suck, I'm lazy. Like, no, lazy is not a biological reality. Parts of you are preserving, protecting, conserving. And we need to work with them and let them know the prizes are on the other side.

How come it's such a hack? Like, why is it that this dialogue with ourselves versus this monologue is so potent?

So I love the internal family systems model. Dr. Dick Schwartz. It's my. It's not the only way, but it's my favorite way. And they've done research on third person self talk. It slows down my impulse and my action. So if you're an addict, you know, it's like, I want the thing, I'm getting the thing, I'm wanting the thing, I'm doing the thing. And to work with addiction, you have to give some space between my impulse, I don't want to go to the thing, and my choice. Third person self talk slows your nervous system down enough that you create a lot of space between impulse and action, and that's where your freedom to choose happens. If there's no space between your impulse and your action, you're not going to be able to think. Third person self talk does that. Like, people way smarter than I am figured that out. I just read the research and went, oh, wow. Third person self talk is a free, easy to do, need no gear hack that you can do right now. That is proven to slow you down so you can make choices.

So I want to, I want to distill that down because that was very well articulated. But I can hear some of my, some of my audience members being like, wait, hold on, this is important. I want to get this. But I'm not too sure that I've that I've got this. So. So rather than saying, I have to go do this or I should go do this, or I am doing this by just simply creating the third person conversation of, hey, like, I think that we should go do this or, or changing that dialogue, right? I think that, all right, we're gonna go to the gym or I'm gonna go to the gym right now and like, kind of having that type of conversation, it slows down what's happening in the brain, slows down what's happening in the body and creates room for choice. Is that accurate so far?

Yes. And it's a really weird, like, my husband was A naval officer. And so when we got together and I'm like, okay, well, we, me and all the bread circuit. And he's just like, what the. What is this lady on? And so again, it's not a natural way of speaking and it's really weird and you're gonna feel crazy. And again, when people say to me, bert, this is stupid way, like, this is the stupidest way of talking I've ever heard. It's like, okay, but how well is your way working? Like, it's not. So you're gonna feel like an idiot, but yay, your thoughts are in your head and no one has to know you're doing it unless you share it. So using your name, like I might use my name. Okay, Brit da da da da da. Or just my first initial be so I can separate I from these parts of me. So using not I using he, she, they using your name using we. Again, we're more compassionate to other people than we are to ourselves universally, usually. So that also helps us access that self compassion because I'm more likely to be self compassionate to someone else than me. So changing I to we does that.

So the beginning of the book, I think it said four little B. And I just got it when you said that. Just wanted to put that in there. But yeah, I mean, I do the same. I started to do the same thing quite a few years ago. My desk here, I have a photo of myself and I'll show you. Hold on. I have a photo of myself.

It's me naked, sitting in a bucket.

I love that so much.

Yes. It's like a cooking pot. You know, that my parents, for whatever reason I was like three or four, they put me in this cooking pot and I'm having a bath because I just, you know, rummaged around. I used to like, you know, get naked or get down in my, in my under underwear and go like dig around in the dirt in the backyard. Like that was me as a kid. And so it's me sitting in this pot with bubbles and like a band aid over my knee. And I have that here. And I started this practice years and years and years ago of, of talking to that part of me. It's like, all right, little dude, like we're going to go do this and. And then sometimes I'll even have conversations with that 500 pound fat man, you know, or the like savage that just wants to go out and get wrecked and fuck around and, you know, be a complete mess. And I have found that to be incredibly powerful because we do have these different parts. We do have these different archetypes. We do have these different, you know, whatever language you want to put on it. We do have these different parts of us that sometimes are at odds, right, that are creating that civil war. And if we can occupy the seat of the self that I think Jung would talk about, or an ifs, they would talk about the capital S self and have some dialogue with those parts, we can create a deeper sense of coherence and we can create a deeper sense of where are we going as an individual. And recognizing that there are different parts within us is incredibly, incredibly powerful. It's like the analogy sometimes I'll give is your Arthur at the round table. You know, you've got all these knights at the round table, and if you try and ignore a bunch of the knights, you know, you try and ignore a bunch of the, a bunch of the warriors that are a part of your kingdom, like they're going to cause havoc sometimes, you know, they're going to work against you, they're going to fight against you. And so you have to be able to enlist them and have conversations with them, even if you don't like them. And sometimes that analogy I found be very helpful. So, okay, so motivation. We need to talk to ourselves, our different parts, enlist them in the process of where we're going and what, what we're doing. Where do you feel like goals fit into this? Like, is having goals really important? Do we need to have like a very clear vision? Is that important for motivation? I'm just, I just want to get some insight on that.

Yes. And it's goals. And so vision, having strategy, having micro goals and, you know, bridge goals and big goals and wildly improbable goals, all of that stuff. And that's Martha Beck's term, all that stuff is important. We need again, how we're wired when our front brain, our logic brain is on. All of that stuff is great. But we skip all of the other stuff, which is in order to set goals, you need to have your logic brain on. Okay, well, in order to have your logic brain on, your nervous system needs to be regulated. So safety first, physiology first.

Wait, wait, wait. Back, back that one up and say that again. Cause I want that to like, really hit home in order to, in order.

To set and achieve goals, in order to get to the vision, you need your logic brain on. Like, you're not going to do strategy and you're not going to be able to do any of those things if your logic brain is not on. If Your body feels unsafe for whatever reason, even if you don't know why, your logic brain is off. So physiology first we've got to get your nervous system regulated. That flips your logic switch on. And then do all the goals work? So all that work is great. It's not don't do that. It's prior to doing that, do this.

I love that. I love that you just made such a good case for getting into your body. If you want to be, if you want to be logical, you have to feel it sucks.

I'm sorry that this is the design, but that's how it. That's just how it is.

That's so good. Okay, I want to be mindful of time. We'll have a few minutes left. I want to just wrap up this conversation of getting unstuck and the sort of the science of stuck by talking about the parts of ourselves that we dislike. And I think in the book you talk about shadow intelligence. I talk about the shadow a lot. A lot, a lot. And I think it's so wildly important because in the shadow I kind of put parts work. I put ifs in there and Gestalt and I couch a lot in there. And I realize that, but it's a good access point, I think for people. So. So tell me a little bit about why. Why do we need these parts of us that we dislike? Because I think most people's approach, I can't tell you how many times it's like, I just, I need to kill that part off. I need to get rid of that part. I fucking hate this part. Right. And so why is that detrimental maybe to our motivation, to our anxiety? How do we begin to shift that? And why do we actually need these parts?

And I can do this quick to de. Woo. Demystify shadow work. In nature, shadows are created when light is blocked. Psychological shadows are created when awareness blocked. So fine. Any parts of ourselves that we don't like or we're ashamed of or afraid of, or we think are bad, those are our shadow parts because we try to keep them out of our awareness. So that's what a shadow, a psychological shadow is. Okay, Shadow intelligence is. Can you find a way to leverage for your word, to leverage the gifts of all the parts in every single part of yourself you don't like is a gift. My drug addict parts behavior bad. But they were very resourceful. And half of the things I do in my business now that make me successful are because my drug addict parts are incredibly resourceful. They will. There's something they want they will find a way to get it. But if I kill those parts of myself, I lose that gift. You cannot cut off parts of yourself without becoming disembodied and then losing access to all of your gifts, every part, no matter how bad their behavior, has a gift or a strength or a skill or something that I promise you that you want. Sort of like really good stuff happen. You know, truffles are made from animal shit and diamonds are made when there's pressure. So all the good things in nature happen under yucky circumstances. So you one, you can't kill the parts of yourself you don't like because you can't do that. So what would it be like to welcome them home, to unburden them of having to do such suboptimal things and to free them to do what they're naturally meant to do, which is give you everything that you need to do your life well?

So good. So good. I have definitely that 500 pound fat man that's inside of me. You know, he's helped me rest. And the addict in me, yeah, you know, the addict in me has helped me become very resourceful as well and accomplished and successful. And it's interesting because we just. I'll end on this. We just held a men's weekend here at my house. We had 25 guys in for the weekend and it was interesting to see how similar some of the guys were. And I was co facilitating with a mentor and colleague of mine who's like 72 and he's been doing gestalt for like 40 plus years. And we were having a conversation like midway through the weekend. He's like, it's amazing how many really truly high functioning men are at this weekend. Like every single man was super, super high functioning but had a lot of pain in their past, you know, a lot of abuse and trauma and stuff like that. I realize this is kind of a reflection of who I am, you know, very high functioning, lots of pain and trauma in my past. And you know, we attract sometimes who we are. That's how we pull into our field. And, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. You know, learning to work with those parts of me have, has allowed me to become who I am today and build who I am today, but trying to sort of murder them, you know, trying to kill off my inner critic. And you know, this part of me that wanted to sleep around a whole bunch and the part of me that just wanted to lay around and smoke weed and play video games, it's like that just wasn't functional. It just didn't work. And so there is this sort of wisdom within our shadow and our pain, if we are willing to welcome it in. So thank you so much for this conversation. This is great. And I hope that people go and buy the book. Where can people find you? Find your work and just sort of follow along with your work and your. Your journey.

Yeah. So I'm on Instagram at Britt Frank. You can buy the Science of Stuck anywhere you buy books. And My website is scienceofstuck.com awesome.

And we'll have the links to all that in the show notes. I sincerely invite you to go check it out because the book is phenomenal and Britt's work is phenomenal. And as always, don't forget to man it forward. Share this podcast with somebody that you know will benefit from it. This would probably be a good episode to listen to with a friend and then discuss or with a partner and then discuss. So share it with somebody. And until next week, this is Connor Beadon signing off.