271 Dr. Alessandra Wall | Speak Your Truth

Great. So I know we started this conversation talking about my favorite context for speaking up, which is kind of women and helping women speak up and articulate their value and get their needs met. When I talk to people about speaking up, I say, speaking up is what you do when you say what you mean and you mean what you say. If I could teach every woman in the world to say what she means and mean what she says, that conversation, what's wrong? Nothing, honey. Would never happen again. And by the way, if you're with somebody who consistently doesn't care what you need or want, the answer is walk away from that relationship. You're always going to be resentful. You're always going to be unhappy.

That's Dr. Alessandra Wall, and this is episode 271 of Wellness Force Radio, where we discover the physical and emotional intelligence to live life well. Hello. What is up? Welcome back to the podcast. It's your friend and host, Josh Trent. In this episode, we're talking with Dr. Alessandra Wall, who is a clinical psychologist, a coach, and an international speaker that has been traveling the world for 20 years, helping women and men break through filters, overcome roadblocks, and essentially build a thriving personal and professional life. Which the timing of this show is perfect because we've been talking a lot about the external tools to go internal on the past few shows about breath work and plant medicine. But in this episode, we're talking about the psychological approach. Whether you are looking to gain more confidence, overcome large stressors in your life, or maybe just achieve the next benchmark. Everything that Dr. Alessandra Wall does really leans on her thousands of hours of clinical time with people where she's helped them bridge the gap. This concept of bridging the gap is huge because there are certain solutions and strategies than in our reductionistic personal development industry. People like to create these little heuristics in the brain that one solution is right for everyone. But Dr. Alessandra believes in something different. The right solution is only right for you. And it's really cool because I first heard about Dr. Alessandra through Rob Wolf almost five years ago when they were talking about successful parenting strategies. And then just months ago, I got the coolest email from Alessandra where she wrote to me. She's been seeing this narrative with the WeToo and MeToo movements both on the rise, that a lot of women right now are feeling disenfranchised, they're feeling undervalued, and really complaining about not being able to trust one another. At the core of this we find that it's about speaking our truth, both women and men. But let's talk about the women right now. A lot of these millions of women out there that struggle to find their voice, they actually are just searching for what they need from an internal strength barometer to, to finally speak their truth. And I believe this is in part of the pain body, the ripple that Eckhart Tolle talks about that for a long time women were owned like property for millennia. This really fast pendulum shift that we're experiencing now is where women can actually step up to speaking their truth. We're gonna explore this unconscious bias training that Alessandro guides us through as well as introvert, extrovert, and my favorite phrase ever, ambivert, which I think I'm an ambivert. Are you an ambivert? Well, we'll understand which one of these catego all may have a tendency to fall into and how we can lean into our strengths. You know, so many people in self help development, they're all about pushing you to fix your weakness. Fix your weakness. Focus on fixing your weakness. Well, in my opinion, and I think you're gonna feel the same energy from Alessandra. The more we focus on what we don't want, the more of what we don't want appears. So this refreshing approach with her work@lifeinfocussd.com this is what you're gonna get out of today's powerhouse podcast. How to actually get your life in focus by summoning the emotional intelligence and resilience, really the wherewithal to speak your truth. By the way, it's hard to speak your truth sometimes. The voice is going to shake. It might feel like there's a throw up coming out of your stomach for a moment. Like speaking your truth is not always sexy and easy, but it is a choice and the same choice when it comes to eating healthy foods. We know this on some kind of logical level, but it's about stacking our environment in our favor. This is why when it comes to foods and micronutrients, healthy foods, I double down with my organifi. This has been a supporter of the show for a year and a half now. I've been using the organifi products for two years plus I've been focusing on the green, the green juice go packs. I'm traveling. It's so easy to throw em in my bag. They deliver energy from the inside out of the mitochondria. With ashwagandha and these adaptogenic superfoods, it's a lot more challenging to get these fresh adaptogens and if you're purchasing fresh produce which let's be real, can have a tendency to go bad in the back of the fridge. So do yourself a massive and a really easy favor. It's a no brainer. Go to Organifi.com WellnessForce use code WellnessForce to get 20% off at checkout. This is the deepest discount you'll find online. So if you've been hearing about organifi or if you've been curious about giving this a test drive, go over to Organifi.com WellnessForce give it a shot. They'll be happy to send you some product at that discount. Just use code WellnessForce. Now let's get onto the show. A lot of what we talked about is gonna be found in the M21 guide. A lot of these tools and mental strategies, these frameworks. The 21 minute guide is available to you, the Wellnessware family, absolutely free. It's just my gift. I just wanna give to you. The community that we have is such a tight bond between these men and women. I've seen so many people experience increase their frequency for the entire day, increase their positive energy. You're gonna get six science backed practices that is truly guaranteed by science, by academia, with resources listed in the guide to help you let go of old weight so that you can have energy and vice versa. I know this because I created the guide personally. It took me multiple tries to get it just right. Just go to wellnessforce.com m21 if you're the person that wants to start their morning the most energized and with the highest frequency possible. That's wellnessforce.comm21 now let's get in focus and learn how to speak our truth. No matter who we are, where we are, how much we might be afraid, Dr. Alessandra Wall is taking us through this bridging of the gap between our head and our heart and what comes out of our mouths. Now let's drop in. When you had reached out, I thought, okay, here's a woman that I respect. She's articulate, she has something powerful to say and oh, by the way, she has the academia background to actually say it from a gravitas point of view. And I'll tell you, like, there's been a shifting role of energies between men and women. And what you reached out to me about was women struggling to find their voice, which we hadn't done a show like that yet. And we have so many women that come on the show as leaders and Guests. But we haven't touched on this topic of women finding their voice. I'm curious for you, like, this whole finding the voice, do you think that's unique to women compared to men, the finding of the voice?

No, it's not unique, but it presents differently. Does that make sense?

Yep.

So very often when I bring this topic up, guys will say, well, hold on. I have these issues too, like imposter complex or not knowing exactly how to build confidence around other people, especially professionally. But my point is that as women, we are both socialized to not speak up. And there are a lot of. For better or worse, I'm not pointing fingers. There are a lot of systems in place that support that socialization. So I have this presentation I'm actually working on right now for two companies, and it's called Speak Up. And I talk about these three roadblocks that keep women from speaking up. Based on. I've been a psychologist for a long time. I've been practicing for 15 years. And a coach, not practicing for as long as a psychologist, as a coach. And so I've seen hundreds of people come through. And when I started comparing the women I was seeing in coaching with the women I was seeing in therapy, I realized, listen, there are many reasons that are beyond their control, why they might not be able to make the impact they want to make. And then there's some things that are totally within their control.

And.

And one of them is a lot of these women were saying, I want this, I need that, I need this. But they weren't articulating those needs to anyone else. And when you dig and you try to figure out why they're not articulating their needs, there are these, I call them filters. But beliefs, assumptions, things you've heard about, right. That hold us back. And an example for women that we're raised with, since we're teeny, teeny girls, probably in diapers, is be a nice girl, right? So nice girls don't brag. Nice girls don't argue back. Nice girls share. Nice girls are team players. Nice girls don't make other people uncomfortable. Nice girls don't say they like. They don't like people. Right? All of those things we teach little girls very early on. And I have two little boys, so I'm very conscious of what I try to teach them, but also the differences in how I'm raising them and the way I was raised then. Whether we like it or not, we hold on to all those teachings as we grow up. So I have met countless women who won't tell a friend that the friend pissed them off. Why? Because they don't want to be mean, and they don't want to hurt their feelings, and they don't want to make them uncomfortable. Except that over time, this inability to speak up actually ruins the relationship. So they end up in the place where they didn't want to end up because they weren't able to speak up. Because they were trying to be good girls. They were trying to be nice.

This aspect of nice, too. I've. I've heard this phrase before. I. I'd rather be kind than be nice. Because niceties are something where in a social construct, you know, a nice person opens the door. A nice woman does this. A nice man does this. What does this phrase nice even mean? Like, at what point during our human evolution did we say that being nice was being the best?

I don't know. But there's an inner kid getting patted in the head, and right until they did a good job.

This is why I was so excited to talk with you. Because there's so many things that our society deems as normal or acceptable, but it's a narrative that I know I don't personally believe in as far as someone being always nice or a woman acting a certain way. And plus, there's so much fluidity and so much massive change going on with men and women right now. I love on your Facebook page, Actually, I saw this yesterday at the top of your Facebook page. It says, being a woman in the 21st century. Like, what does that even mean? Why'd you put that up there?

I'm working on this project which is called In Her Shoes, which the goal is to define what it means to be a woman in the 21st century. Because I agree with you, it is changing now. The problem is. I'm with you. I think a lot of us right now say these old constructs and these old ways of seeing things, they don't make sense, and we don't buy into them. And consciously we believe that. Right. The problem is, whether we realize it or not, we've all been socialized. And there's centuries of socialization to view and perceive and expect people to behave in a certain way. And whether we mean to or not, when people break that dynamic, we judge them. So I wanted to shrink the other day because I was talking to a friend of mine about this woman I'd met, and I described her as abrasive. And abrasive is one of those keywords. They're like keywords that are used to describe Women that kind of box them, some of them are in marriages and relationships, like, never tell a woman you're dating that she's irrational or she's being too emotional. That's keyword for here's my way of dismissing you. And we might be being emotional, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. And rational isn't always the only way to get to someplace. But abrasive is one of those words that we collectively use to describe a woman who's being forceful without using any padded language, which is exactly what this woman was doing. But I'm not saying that neutrally. She was being really forceful without using any padded language to describe her discontent with something or how unhappy she was with something. I said she was abrasive, and immediately there's this negative association with it. Right. When I say an abrasive woman, what do you picture?

I feel like a Brillo pad rubbing into my skin.

Right?

Yeah.

And so I don't mean to impose that label on her. I'm actively working against those labels in my professional life and everything I do. And yet immediately she behaved in a way that was inconsistent with what our expectations are for how women should deal with uncomfortable or unpleasant situations. And my brain went for that word. And with that word comes that association. Right. And then there's a whole slew of consequences. And I know you have guests who've talked about this. Right. The connection between what we believe becomes our reality, the things we tell ourselves, the constructs we have in our head completely determine how we feel and therefore how we act.

The interesting part for me in hearing this is that I don't necessarily believe. I'd love to play devil's advocate, because putting a label on something doesn't always mean that that label will stick forever. It's just maybe one human being's representation of their. Of who the person is making them feel like. In other words, if someone's being abrasive, maybe a better reframe could say, you know what? I feel uncomfortable, and it feels as if this person's energy is abrasive towards mine. How would you reframe that so that it wasn't maybe just an abrasive label?

Let me think about this one. That's a good question.

From the. From the brain of a psychologist.

Well, the problem with labels is, and I'm going to try to answer your question as I think through this, because I don't have all the answers off the bat, the problem with labels is, I agree with you, our labels for people can change. But some of the labels we have have very kind of enduring assumptions and behavior patterns associated with them. And so with this specific label, if I throw it, I'm much more likely to be less forgiving with her in the future or to approach her as being somebody who's much more conflict driven than she actually is because in my mind she's abrasive. Labels are super useful. One of the points that I make often when I talk is these filters that we have. For the most part they're really useful. They're an evolution of the brain. There's something that we have evolved to do so that we could process really, really complex situations in a minimal amount of time and that's useful. You don't want to sit and every time you encounter somebody have to go through this whole process of figuring out who they are. So we have these filters, these assumptions that help us navigate the world. It's just that. And what we're seeing right now with all the gender stuff or with any of the diversity stuff, honestly. Right. Is that sometimes when these filters get distorted, they create real problems in how we relate with one another.

Do you feel like this is a symptom of the over saturation of distractions in our world? Because I've heard both dan Parker and Dr. Kairo Bobinet talk about heuristics in the brain, these shortcuts that we make and we only have so many decisions. Right. The concept of decision fatigue in the world. Do you feel like the way that people maybe over label others is a symptom of how distracted they are in our modern world?

The short answer is no. So I think that we've been doing this since human beings have been trying to make sense of the world. What I do think is a consequence or a result of the fact that we're overstimulated on a conscious basis is whereas before we might have had a label and then stopped and done what you're talking about, which is to evaluate whether or not that label was accurate and spent a little bit more time doing some analytical work. Now we very lazily stick with the label. Have you read Gosh, I can't remember the name of the author. Thinking fast, thinking slow.

No, but it sounds fun.

I don't know that it's fun. It's a huge book. I feel like it's written in nine point font and that the sheets are paper thin and.

Okay, well this isn't very sexy sounding now.

No, no. But when I read it, I looked at my husband, I'm like, who's this Guy's audience, my husband's like the. The Nobel Prize judge team. That's who his audience was. But the author, whose name I can't remember, is an economist. And he was just talking about these two patterns in the brain that you have, type one thinking and type two thinking. And one is this fast judgment, instinctual thinking, and the other one is the type of thinking that has you analyzing, processing that analytical thinking. One of the arguments he makes is, we're really lazy. System 2 doesn't want to get engaged very often. We'd rather just go off of system one. And so once we form these filters or these assumptions, once we self identify as nice girls or the rest of the world identifies women as fitting within this box, then that's going to prevail because mentally we're just lazy. Our brains don't want to do that much work. That energy needs to be conserved to do other things.

Yeah. So then what's the solution? If our brains are so lazy, what do we do then to consciously. That's the key phrase, isn't it? Consciously use these labels, knowing that the adhesive isn't permanent.

There are a couple things. A lot of the magic word right now in diversity and inclusion in companies is unconscious bias training.

Wow.

It's a long one, but it's everywhere. Unconscious bias training was supposed to be the solution to all these problems. It meant teaching people that we have all these unconscious biases that affect how we interact with one another, how we hire, how we view, how we promote. The hope was by teaching people that they had these biases, they would be able to become aware and shift them. And the reality of all that training is it's actually not yielding much of a result. And part of the reason is because insight, although necessary to change, is not sufficient. Right. So you can't change without understanding why you're doing what you're doing. But simply understanding why you're doing what you're doing will not lead you to change. And people know this all the time. Think of all the people you work with for health reasons, all the people we talk to. I used to do nutritional coaching when I first started Paleo, like 10 years ago. And all the people we talk to about their eating patterns, and a lot of them can say, oh, I eat when I'm stressed. Oh, I know I go for that kind of food because that's what my mom gave me when I was having a really bad day. Oh, I realized that, hey, when I'm bored, and that my worst eating patterns tend to be right before going to bed, they have all the awareness in the world for what they're doing and yet they're still repeating those patterns every single day. So the key is you start by building that awareness. You start by teaching people, hey, I know you think you're really open minded individual. I think I am too. But the truth is I am riddled with judgment, discrimination and assumptions about people. And if you want to change that, then start by becoming aware of who those assumptions are directed towards. And then this is difficult. This isn't an ideal world. Every time you come in contact with one of those people, you stop and ask yourself, am I being fair? Now that's in an ideal world because the reality of it is none of us are going to do that. But if we start by gaining insight as to these assumptions, then we can start deciding in specific situations how we want to apply that insight. The talks I give, I teach women and men about these three filters. And then I say, well, before you walk out, let's specifically figure out when those filters show up for you, right? And we're just going to pick one situation and we're going to figure out before you leave what you're going to do differently in this situation.

This is the real work. This is the real work too. Is like in those moments of inflection where like you said, in a perfect world, somebody would be able to take a breath, pause, and ask that powerful question, is this fair? I love that. I've never thought about that before. Is this fair? Because the golden rule applies whether you read the Bible or not, right? This isn't a religious show, but this moment where we can actually practice this, I guess you could say emotional resilience tool or emotional intelligence tool. How do we sharpen our skills so that we're in that moment, we can actually ask that question.

I would say again, practicing awareness is a big thing. You talked about being busy. I think in order for us to get to a place where we can even make any change, we gotta slow down. So if you and I had been doing this, having this conversation four years ago, what I would have been talking to you about is the art of nothing. It would have been entirely about how you create micro breaks in your day so that you can slow down so that you can reconnect with yourself. And I would have said, hey, this is the first step to any change you need to make, right? You got to stop and ask yourself, how am I feeling? What's going on? Did this conversation go well? Yes. No. Why? Like why does this person Buck the shit out of me. Right. Why is this person rubbing me the wrong way?

Why am I so triggered?

Fair. Fair. With this other person. I should have asked you whether cussing was okay on your show.

No, you can totally go there.

Yeah, okay, sweet. Because I do. And that would be the first thing. And then, because we can't attend to everything all at once, usually with both my patients and my clients, I'll say, let's start with what's easy. So you find a situation that's fairly significant, and you say if in this context, you really know that you repeat this pattern that you don't like, then let's just work on it in this context, because change generalizes. So if we come back to eating and healthy choices. With eating, you can have somebody who knows that they eat when they're really bored, Right? And then you can teach them what it feels like when you're going to eat out of boredom. And I don't know if you do this. I used to do this. I call it the tiger pacing in the cage. That thing where you walk into your kitchen at nighttime and you're not really hungry, but you're walking around and you're opening all your cabinets and your fridge and you're looking, and because you're not physically hungry, nothing sounds good. And at the same time, you really want something, which is just nerve stimulation. We're just trying to stimulate our brains and our bodies. A little bit of dopamine and some serotonin is really what we're looking for. And so if you can teach somebody to say, listen, all we're going to do is we're going to work on this one specific behavior. We're going to help you not eat out of boredom. And what I want you to notice is that this happens between this time and this time. So we have a very specific situation. And this is how it feels for you. You're going to feel like you're a caged tiger. And then all I want you to do is to look at your watch and not give in to that inner beast for about 15 minutes. If after 15 minutes you still really want to, that's fine. But what you're doing in that 15 minutes is what you were talking about earlier. You're building emotional resilience. You're learning to sit with distress. Now, I could tell the person, what we're going to do is we're going to teach you to sit with distress so that you don't. Whatever, it doesn't matter. That's what you're Teaching the person to do, to sit with that uncomfortable feeling, to have a little bit of self awareness and to not react, but to choose an action. So it's the same thing with these labels. If I know, if I know that I have a tendency not to speak up with my friends because I don't want to hurt their feelings, and maybe I identify that that's really, really strong with one of my friends, then maybe my goal is simply in that friendship with that one individual, to be very conscious of the things I'm not saying and to just try to practice saying them out loud. And the fact is, practicing that assertiveness, that ability to speak up in that friendship, will allow you to become more assertive in other friendships, which will then allow you to do that in your professional life and in your community and in your support groups and so on and so forth. It builds out off of itself.

You know, what I love so much about what you're mentioning is it's an often overlooked part. And this is why we always focus on physical and emotional intelligence on the show. It's because we, we live in an industry. We, we operate, you and I, in industry, where people will say, I'm gonna go to the gym, I'm gonna lift weights. But what about lifting weights for our emotions? Like this is, especially with men, something that's not talked about enough. Which is why I'm so excited to talk to you about this. The skill set of building emotional strength, emotional intelligence. It really comes down to these moments where when a woman or a man with their friends doesn't feel like they can speak up, there is ways to grow that strength in that moment. I'd love to explore those ways.

So it's a skill set and I, when I talk to people about this, and I don't mean to repeat myself, but it literally comes down to what I was saying before. You gotta think about what are the relationships in your life or the specific situations that are causing you distress. I was gonna use the word pain, but sometimes it's not pain. It's. People talk about being irritated or frustrated or they'll realize that suddenly they don't wanna hang out. Right. They don't wanna go out with a certain group of people anymore. And then stopping and asking yourself what's going on?

Yes.

Right. And oftentimes if you're feeling resentment, I can tell you this. Think of emotions. Emotions are knee jerk reactions to thoughts. Emotions are the physical manifestation of what's going on in your head. Right. So certain emotions are associated with very specific categories of thoughts. For example, fear is associated with the thought, oh, shit, there's a danger right here in front of me and I can't completely avoid it. Right. Whereas anxiety is an emotion that's associated with the thought of, there's a possible danger coming up, and I'm not sure I can avoid it. Resentment is always the byproduct of feeling like or believing. The English language is not really great with this because we say feel and then we're actually speaking about a thought, but believing or realizing that we are not meeting our own needs. So anytime you're in a relationship with somebody and you start feeling resentful, whether it's your boss, a colleague, your spouse, a friend, a parent, you can stop right there and go, huh? I've not been setting good boundaries. I've not been speaking up. I've not been asking for what I need. And you can use that to go back and go, what are all the situations, big or small, where I'm doing this? When I talk to people about speaking up, I say, speaking up is what you do when you say what you mean and you mean what you say. If I could teach every woman in the world to say what she means and mean what she says, that conversation, what's wrong? Nothing, honey. Would never happen again.

Well, it's been my experience in relationship where a woman understands how she feels by actually talking it out sometimes. A lot of times when I've understood that what a woman really wants, she had to figure it out by verbalizing it.

Well, there's that and there's the fact that oftentimes we do know what's pissing us off, but we don't feel like we can say it right because it wouldn't be nice or it would result in conflict or we don't think we're going to be heard. All of these assumptions, all these filters, I don't think I'm going to be heard. So I don't put it out there. Well, then I guarantee I'm not going to be heard because I never put it out into the world. At least if I put it out there, maybe I find out that either I'm not communicating clearly, the person doesn't understand what I'm saying, or the person doesn't care about what I want and what I need. In which case I've got this great piece of information to allow me to decide how I want, what I want to do with this relationship. Right? And by the way, if you're with somebody who consistently, again, whether we're talking About a friend, a family member, or a partner who consistently doesn't care what you need or want. The answer is, walk away from that relationship. You're always going to be resentful. You're always going to be unhappy.

Yeah. And there's. There's a barometer for this over time, of course. Yeah.

I mean, I've been with my husband. Okay. I'm going to be 42 this year, so it'll be 22 years at the end in this fall. And, you know, nothing's perfect there. There are a lot of times where I'm like, why do you not get this? Why do you not understand this? Or I'll present things to him. And he goes, I don't care about this, and you care about this, and you're trying to impose this on me. Stupid stuff like wanting him to put his shoes in the shoe bin instead of just dumping them in front. And so most communications and relationships are imperfect. What you're looking for is somebody who cares enough to consider what you want and need and who cares enough to dialogue with you when that happens. And a dialogue doesn't have to be peaceful.

Yeah. This is so great. This morning, actually, before we got on the show, I was having a conversation about business with a friend. And it got to this point where we both got emotional because there was a confusion and a misunderstanding. And I literally took a deep breath, and five minutes later, I messaged the person. I said, hey. My emotions got the best of me. I want to apologize. What happened in our interaction brought up old stories of something that happened five years ago. And I just want to apologize for projecting that onto you. And that was my moment to just be authentic and clear. Yet I'm curious for you, from a psychological perspective, does that still. Does that still have the same weight of true, authentic communication and vulnerability as it would if we're in the moment? I could have done it before I left the call.

No, I think it absolutely has the same weight. Right. We have to stop thinking that if we don't have the insight or the presence of mind or the courage to speak up at the time, something happens that suddenly we failed. Right. For a lot of us, myself included. And I specialize in this. Right. Insight and awareness and then the patience to speak up. Those things come later. Like, we need to calm down in order to think clearly, and it's okay to have conversations hours later. If you ask my husband, he would say, days later, I'm the worst person at apologizing. Like, the worst. It will take me 24 to 48 hours to get calm enough to go back and say, you're right. Whereas he. He will get mad really fast and then he'll come back within the next 20 minutes and go, I'm really sorry, I shouldn't have said this. This is where you're right. And I'm like, I can't go there. Right. And. And it's okay as long as I get there at some point in time.

Yeah, right.

Preferably not 20 years later.

I want to go back because something I find fascinating about you is that you've said in your media that you're an introvert, yet you're also coaching people on how to speak their truth. How do you manage the two?

Have you read Susan Cain's Quiet?

No, go ahead. This is a good book. We'll put this in the link in the show notes.

This is a great book. Susan Cain's Quiet is a great book and I read it maybe a year and a half ago or two years ago. And she talks about the difference between introversion and extroversion. Our assumption about the world, first of all, is that being an extrovert is better. And. And second of all, that introverts are socially anxious, shy, quiet, reclusive people. I am clearly not socially shy. I am not quiet. I'm not reclusive. I actually love meeting people. What defines an introvert versus an extrovert? @ least the way she defines it, which I love, is if you picture a human being as a battery, extroverts recharge around people. So if you put an extrovert and you isolate them for a long enough period of time, they start becoming very tired. It makes them feel very uncomfortable. It creates distress. If you take an introvert and you put them around people, being around people drains their battery. So I had a call before talking to you today and I had this. And after this, I'm not talking to another human being until a 4pm call because I'm going to need it. And so I can be an introvert insofar as I recognize that when I travel abroad, I rarely, if ever, take people up on their offers to stay at their place. I get an Airbnb, right? I get my own place because I want to be able to remove myself from the world and to exist in silence in order to be able to go back out and socialize with these friends I've created or these businesses, relationships after. So that is what makes me an introvert. And it is difficult in my field because I spent all day long talking to people but it has nothing to do with my ability to speak up or with my ability to teach somebody else why it's worth it for them to speak up and then to help them get to that place. That makes.

Sense. Yeah, it makes sense because it seems like these are not in the same silo, like, but they can be connected through this bridge of awareness. So on one side there's the ability to speak truth, and on the other side there's, hey, I just know who I am. I like being alone when I travel. I like having certain time where I charge myself. And I love how you talked about, you know, the extroverted people, they actually get the charge, like a battery from being around other human beings. And the introverts, they need that alone time. I feel like myself, I'm 50, 50. I enjoy both of those aspects, but if I spend too long in either one, I'll feel magnetized and pulled towards the other. I'm curious from a psychological perspective what that means about.

Me. There's a name for it. It's a pop psychology name, but it's called being an ambivert. On that introversion extroversion spectrum, you lie in the middle. So just depending on what's going on, you'll balance between one or the other. You're probably like 51% some days and 49 the other. Like, it just moves back and forth. Yeah, right. Versus, some people are really on that extra version spectrum where they need truly enjoy and thrive being around people a lot and all the time. And then you have other people like me who are more towards the introverted space, but I'm not quite towards, like the far end of the spectrum. The far, far end of the spectrum is probably what most people think of when they think of introverts. So I'm just really good at this point. I tell people pretty often and I can have like an hour and a half or two hour meeting with somebody and then I'll look at them and go, so now I'm done. Like, my brain isn't working anymore. It was wonderful talking to you. And let's pick this up some other.

Time. Why is this so challenging for us as human beings, men and women both, to speak our truth in these moments? Even if it's something as casual as, you know what, Jane or Bob. I'm actually done with our coffee date. I'm super tired, I'm withdrawn. There is going back to our initial conversation when we started. There's this like, we want to be kind, we want to be nice. What is it about the human brain and our ways of interacting that block us from just speaking even our most minute truth in.

Conversation. I'm going to answer that question. Before that, I just want to point out that you made a really, really good point, which is that speaking up is that simple for. Right? So I know we started this conversation talking about my favorite context for speaking up, which is kind of women and helping women speak up and articulate their value and get their needs met. But really, speaking up is simply about being in that space where you are okay with who you are and you can put it out into the world and you're not constantly walking in the space where you're worried that if you admit that you have two versions of Vanilla Ice is Ice Ice Baby on your itunes playlist that other people will judge you for it. I never remastered 2000. I couldn't help.

Myself. It's a good.

Jam. It is. But, you know, I used to have friends in college who are real music snobs. And at the time, I didn't have this skill. And I would have never admitted that. And now I'm just kind of like, no, yeah, I totally dig that. But I also dig listening to mmm Bop every once in a while. And then I'm also listening to Dinah Washington and, like, old jazz at the same time. So then to answer the question, why is it so hard for us to admit those things? I think it goes back to something that's primordial and evolutionary. We're social animals, human beings. We don't have claws, we don't have. We're not super big. We're not massively strong. We have brains, and we have the ability to connect and empathize with one another. And in order to survive as an individual and as a species, we absolutely need to come together. And the individual who is rejected by his tribe or his group of people or his pot of people is going to die. And we might say, well, we're super modern at this point in time, and that's not true anymore. But we didn't evolve over the last couple of hundred of years. We've evolved over millennia and over millennia. This is within us the need to be liked, the need to be accepted, the need to be seen as part of and without that, we are vulnerable and we die. And I think that really is what plays in today to our inability sometimes to speak up and say things, worry are going to upset other people or are going to point to our being different.

Than. Yeah. And I think for me, I can thank you for bringing up this Powerful point because I can flashback to moments in childhood where and this recently came through with plant medicine training that I did where when I was young, if I didn't speak my truth, it was almost like a paralyzing feeling in my body where my physical body, what didn't feel capable of speaking my truth. And it was only in my adult life that I've really understood the work around this. And that is feel the fear and do it anyway. It's one thing to conceptualize this, it's another thing to embody it, right? How do we embody that feeling the fear and doing it.

Anyways? My favorite expression is act despite, right? So a lot of people think that in order to take action, they have to get to this place where they've conquered all their fears and they've moved beyond them. It's like believing that you need to have all the motivation in the world in order to do the things that will eventually build.

Motivation. I feel like it doesn't work that.

Way. It.

Doesn'T. It just doesn't work. It's not.

Real. So the idea is to recognize and admit to yourself that fear's always going to be there. Anytime you're in a space where there is any form of uncertainty, as in, I don't know what he's going to think of me for liking, you know, ice, ice baby, that within that space there's going to be fear. And if I can just accept that fear is part of, it's part of what goes on in my world, then my choice or my goal is to act despite the fear being present, not wait for fear to disappear before I act. And that's that thing I tell people. I'm like, just when I work with people with social anxiety, I tell them, you know, in the beginning this is going to suck. Like, there's no way this is ever going to feel good. You are not going to walk into that coffee shop or an exercise that people do is talk to the cashier when they're standing in line. I'm like, there's no way this is happening without you feeling like you want to throw up. So just accept that you're going to feel like you want to throw up. And all I want you to do is give them a two liner right when they say, what's up? Don't say I'm good or I'm fine. Say one thing about yourself. Oh, like I'm doing great today. I just had this awesome cup of coffee, period. It doesn't have to be anything big. Act despite fear And I really like the idea of forcing yourself to speak up, because it removes. It actually challenges and removes all the fear eventually. Like, I don't need to sit here and pretend to be one person in public and another person in private and one person to my friends and another person to my patients. I am me, and I'm just going to say it, and I'm just going to be honest about what I think, what I feel. And eventually I stop feeling anxious about presenting because my interactions continue proving to me that I still have friends, I'm still turning people down in my business. I'm still, you know, recording podcasts, so it can't be that.

Bad. Yeah, I love this reminder, too. I. I think about the phrase just do it, which is like the Nike. People forget about this, though. Alessandra people forget, like, Nike was the winged goddess of victory. Okay? This is. This is the archetype, the embodiment of people being in their power, actually doing the thing. Ralph Waldo Emerson, my favorite quote, which we talked about earlier. But in our modern world, without the social back and forth, like doing what you and I are doing, which is talking to one another, we're losing that tribal element. It's in danger right.

Now.

Yes. Social media is beautiful because it allows our messages to be shared. Yet from that psychological perspective, us being in tribes, that was where we actually grew the strength. That was where men and women went through the lessons. That was when men, by the way, were able to go and go to these rites of passages. That was when women were able to understand and trust one another. In some of your work you've talked about, the paradigm of women trusting and relating to one another has changed. Do you think it's because of technology or is it something.

Else? I think technology exacerbates things. And I would agree with you. Social media is wonderful. Look, you and I wouldn't know each other without social.

Media. Exactly.

Right. And at the same time, if all your relationships are really conducted from the anonymity of your keyboard, then there's no space to challenge your fears. There's no space to really be yourself. And I would argue that when we live in a world where small disagreements turn into flame wars really rapidly, and those flame wars can be preserved on the cloud forever, right? Then we have created a tool that, instead of helping us, is making us more and more careful about how we present ourselves. And there's this paradox, right? Because on the one hand, people, when they communicate anonymously via their keyboards, can be really awful. I mean, they will say things that they would never ever say or say them rather in ways that would be absolutely socially unacceptable. So from a survival perspective, unacceptable if you were facing someone else because you forget that you're speaking to another human being. So on the one hand you have one group of people who are far more caustic and rude and divisive and just awful online. And on the other hand you have the people who curate everything they say. So nothing's natural. Yeah, you write a sentence and then you think about the words and you come back and it's not who you are because you're just presenting this single version. It's very flat and bland version of who you.

Are. It's the perfect highlight reel version that honestly, I think we all can kind of tell, but people still go along with it. People still believe that that's actually the true message coming from the influencer. And I've understood in my body and my nervous system, like that's not true. That's not actually true, how they're being and what they're saying. So there's this like tacit approval almost where people will then jump on a thread and It'll be like 50 comments. And then when someone's actually speaking their truth, when it's maybe not perfect, when their voice is shaky, when it doesn't actually look as sexy as the perfect one, I think that one's way more powerful and it always will.

Be. Well, I think you're right. And you see that again in the kind of engagement that those posts get. They get really, really high engagement when somebody comes and says, I've been having a really shitty day and I feel awful about myself. And did you know that despite being this huge social media influencer, which I am not, but I suffer of massive imposter complex. And you'll see this outpouring thousands of messages. Yes, yes, yes, thank you so much for sharing that. And what you're talking about goes back to what we were mentioning at the very beginning of our conversation, which is insight does not create change. All of us are sitting there and we know that that picture that somebody posted of themselves first thing in the morning where they write no filter, what they're not putting is shot number 256, right? So there might have been no filter, but they sat there walking around the room to make sure the light hit their face properly. And we know this. And yet we still buy into the ideal that's created by these people. And for better, for worse, because we're social creatures, we hold ourselves to this standard that is now Complet. Completely.

Unrealistic. I'd love to talk with you about the mental health aspect of this because I remember reading a book, I'm spacing on the name of it now, but it was the control of social media on both men and women and how there's young women, specifically young girls that are like pre high school, that are going into deep spirals of depression. You know, we, we've talked in the show about men's depression rates rising, but women's depression rates in the way that these young, young ladies are being trained by social media. Their brains are so malleable at that age. They're so open and raw and tender to the outside influences of what society teaches them or what their neighborhood teaches them about being pretty, being accepted. I'd love for us to talk about from a psychological perspective, the influence of social media on mental health for young women and what that's doing to then those women that grow up to be mothers.

Themselves. I don't know exactly for depression, although I can totally see how that would be the case. Right. My area of specialty is anxiety. And I can definitely tell you we are seeing an increase, a rise in anxiety, a massive rise in anxiety. And sometimes that anxiety is paired with depression. So if anxiety is all about insecurities and worrying and feeling like there are all these unknowns that potentially could have a negative impact on me or my life, Dangers. Right. And I'm not equipped to control all of that, then depression is the belief that there's something fundamentally wrong with me. Right. It comes down to a very internal sense of things being wrong versus anxiety is more external. And again, I don't know the numbers with depression, but I could definitely see how we have created this standard that's completely unattainable. And for kids who aren't, who've known, who've never known anything else, let's just start with that. And then who don't have maybe the cognitive capacity or the emotional capacity to realize that this is a created image, then what they're internalizing is they're absolutely defective. And then that's going to lead to depression. I am less than there is something wrong with me. Right. And then to anxiety, because if there's something wrong with me, then bad things are going to happen and how can I avoid those bad things? And then it's impossible because the flaw is fundamental to who I.

Am. I don't know if you have a higher power belief or religious belief at all, but there is something to be said about this is a universal human Lesson for us to have worthiness. Really, our conversation starts at what is going on with social media? How is it affecting young women? At the base of it all, it's love or fear. At the base of it.

All.

Yep. What is this in the human experience from your perspective, either personal or psychological, that we all deal with when it comes to.

Worthiness? Is your question why is it that we all struggle with.

It? I think so. Why is this a universal lesson in your vantage point for all of.

Us? I know that when you learn psychological theory and when you look at it, you're absolutely on point. Right. That all the questions we have about the world and ourselves, all the issues that people bring to us in the therapy room really boil down to two issues. Am I lovable? That's your worthiness. Am I capable? Right. Depression. Am I lovable? Am I capable? Anxiety. But it all boils down to that. And then there are these different versions. I argue again that a lot of that comes back down to that, to that evolutionary principle. We need to be lovable. We need to be lovable in order to be part of the pack. We need to be lovable in order to survive. And there's this constant internal anxiety about whether or not we are enough to sustain that kind of attention. I wonder sometimes, and I don't know the data on this, I don't think anybody does, whether people struggled with this quite as much like 300 years.

Ago.

Yeah. And part of it has to do with we have the time. Our days aren't spent trying to figure out for most of us, luckily, how to survive. So we have all this time to worry about the next thing. I think it has certainly gotten much worse. And I can see it with the advent of social media. And again, social media is not evil. It's just that we unleash this massive technology and like many things humans do, we didn't understand it or we thought that we could control it without fully understanding it. It's our hubris. Right. We assume too much of ourselves. I also think that, honestly, media reinforces this idea that if you're not lovable, then you will be destroyed. Watch any celebrity who makes a mistake, who slips, who falters, who is human, and they get destroyed and they get blasted. So we see that from the outside. We then, as parents, very worried about making sure that our children are okay and don't suffer. We perpetrate that message without meaning to make sure you're liked, be kind, be nice, make sure you share. Calm down, you're talking too loud. You're too aggressive, right? So we're constantly telling them, you have to be better, you have to be different, you have to be better, you have to be.

Different. Be nice, be liked. Right? Be nice, be.

Nice. And then we carry those things around as adults. And the thing is, studies bear this out, right? Being nice. Well, not being nice, being light is really, really important. It might be more important to professional success than the ability and the knowledge base you bring to your job. So then that's again, reconfirmed so it gets reinforced and we have to find a different way of doing this and telling people like, I'm getting to this place where people realize like, you can be you and that's good enough. And good enough is actually great. So you don't have to be this ideal version of yourself for those things to be true, for you to be liked, for you to be accepted, for you to be safe, for you to be worthy. But right now, between the airbrushed people online and the Instagram filtered lives and the fact that we showcase nearly entirely only the uber successful, the uber wealthy, the uber talented, we're all trying to live up to these extreme standards that, I mean, most of us are just average and that's.

Okay. Yeah. We're human beings and we're in a meat suit. We're a spirit embodying a meat suit on a rock in the middle of the freaking outer space. So let's just like take a deep breath together. You know, the book we were talking about earlier, by the way, is called Irresistible. The author is is Adam Alter. And it's the rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked. We'll link that in the show notes. I have a few.

More. I'm gonna read.

It. Yeah, and I have a few more powerful questions for you. And this is a big one. So if you need to take a breath, that's fine. What do you think your role is in this age of distraction, in this understanding of how to get our life in focus? What's your role for women.

Specifically? Now, do you wanna tell your audience that I have this like shhh, eating grin on my face when you ask that question? That is actually not a hard question for me because it's something I've thought about a lot. As far as I'm concerned, my role is to help as many people as possible realize that the choices they make, that they have ownership basically of their choices and their life and that if they start taking ownership of those choices, that they can build the life that they want. So in Less like general speak. I just want people to realize that their lives aren't determined by their circumstances so much as they're determined by the choices that they make. And so if you don't like the way your life is going, you gotta do something differently, speak up. And speaking up is just one way in which I do that. It happens to be something I'm really passionate about. All my friends will tell you this. People who don't say what they mean and mean what they say, it's a pet peeve of mine. It pisses me off. The only people I really tolerate that in are my clients and patients, because I know we're going to change that. But it's not something I tolerate in my friends. If I'm not talking to you for a while, it's not because I'm angry, it's because I'm busy. If I'm angry with you, I'm going to come and tell you that I'm angry, right? And it's small. So speaking up happens to be very near and dear to me. But that's just one example of really owning your choices so that you can build the kind of life you want. And I, through personal life circumstances, through the work that I've done, have seen what the effect is in people's lives when they start ascribing too much power to circumstances and they let their circumstances dictate their lives, rather than circumstances just being things that influence their path. That's my goal. If I can get people to really get it to go, you know, maybe your circumstances are great, maybe they're really awful, but you get to choose right? And through your choices you construct the kind of life you want. If I can do that, I will have considered it a success. If I can do that, specifically with women, because as I said, I think we really are socialized from a very early age to just to be meek. And even most of the women I work with who are super strong women, there are areas in their lives in which they just give up that power and that.

Agency. Where's one of the areas in your life where that's shown up for you as a professional? That aspect of which you speak.

Very early on in my career. And then I'll try to think of an area now, very early on in my career, I used to try to play Dr. Wall, and I was 25 or 26 when I started, which is pretty young, right? I'd work with people and I was half their age. And so I try to pretend to be this person and it was really tiring to be Dr. Wall. And I was trying to do what I was taught to do by my supervisors, trying to please them. Right. To do therapy in the way that was modeled as the right way of doing things. And eventually I realized that's not the way I am. I am totally the type of therapist who will hug her patients. If I see somebody walking out of my office and they've just had a really hard day, I will look at them and go, do you need a hug? And I will give a bear hug. None of this patting on the back, brake connection.

Whatever. Bring it.

In.

Right?

Yeah. I am totally the type of therapist who, when asked, how are you doing? Will say, oh, my goodness, my kids were driving me nuts this morning. I cannot believe it. And I am me in those interactions. And I will answer questions and I will push people. Every time I do that, I know somewhere one of my supervisors heads is about to explode. Like my graduate school supervisors. But owning that piece, choosing to be me, knowing that type of interaction would be criticized or deemed not as professional. Certainly not Dr. Wall. Like, it's made me such a happier person. I have the kind of practice and the kind of relationship, and I attract the kind of people for whom that.

Works.

Yes.

Right. My biggest question for someone in your professional viewpoint is how do you create the buffer? How do you create a healthy boundary to not take on the emotions of your clients? Because some of them are dealing with literally the biggest challenges that someone could ever deal with. Are you empathic? And how have you created a filter around that empathetic.

Barrier? I'm totally empathic. Sometimes I cry. Sometimes I cry out of joy. I don't cry. I tear up. Yeah. And that's also something I learned, like, for many years, I would tear up. Sometimes I tear up because I'm really excited because somebody's talking about something. And I'm just. I'm so moved by the progress and the work they've done and the impact it's had. Right. And I used to feel really bad about that, and now I just look at people, I'm like, listen, I'm gonna. I'm about to cheer up. And don't worry, I'm not gonna lose it. You should continue talking. I've not been able to get over this. So for me, I think, first of all, it's something you learn to do. There were definitely, in the early years, certain people I worked with who the weight of what they were going through was overwhelming. I remember one session talking with somebody, closing the door, sitting on the ground and just bawling my eyes out. And it was everything I could do not to break down in session because of what they were describing and their pain and their sadness. So I think over time, you practice doing that and you learn to distance yourself. I think the other thing that really helps is human beings are pretty universal. So although your issues and your pain and your sorrow and your emotions are your own and your own individual experience, once you've seen 100, 200, 500 people, there are these categories, and you get to see this person is a little bit like this person is a little bit like this person, and that allows you to take a step back from getting caught up in their emotional piece. There's certainly times where I work with people who I think are awesome, and that's probably the hardest. I've been really good now at attracting, and I closely scan who wants to come in to make sure they're a good fit for me. So I don't tend to see people who I really don't like, which, let's be honest, some therapists, it just happens. People are people, right? But sometimes you meet somebody and they're like, awesome. And you start to think, if I weren't your therapist, I would love to be your friend. And that's probably the most difficult. You have to really step back from that and acknowledge and kind of enjoy how awesome that person is and your connection is, and then also keep that line and saying, like, we're not friends and we're not buddies, because the second I shift into that, I can't be objective and I can't help.

You. Oh, wow. I. I feel like there's been moments of that in this podcast because I respect what you do. I think you're a powerful voice for women and for men, and there is a part of me that would love to have you on the show back again. To talk about the more nuances of the interplay between men and women. We explored a lot of concepts today. We covered a lot of ground. Is there anything you think we missed when it comes to women speaking their truth or men being in those moments of paralyzation where someone maybe feels like they can't speak their truth? Could you talk to someone right now who's maybe feeling like when they leave this podcast, maybe their biggest lesson in life is to speak their truth, to speak.

Up? One thing I want to remember, remind you is simply this. If you don't speak up, if you don't say what you mean and you don't mean what you say, Then you are being the most dishonest, shallow, and like, untrue version of yourself. And you might think that in doing that, you're preserving your relationships with people, but really what you're doing is you're making them very superficial. So the kindest thing you can do to someone is be honest with them about what you think, about what you feel, about how they make you feel, about what you need from them. And that's what's going to create the best, the strongest types of relationships. Even if that means that every once in a while you argue. If this feels ridiculously daunting, start small. So the next time a bunch of friends are going out and trying to figure out what to eat, if everybody wants to go grab Chinese and you have a hankering for Italian, just start by saying, you know, I mean, if everyone wants to go eat Chinese, I'll eat Chinese, but if it were up to me, I'd love to grab Italian. Start with those small, small moments of just making the time to say what it is you want or you need and start teeny like that, right? Don't be the person who's always going with the flow. Throw your two cents in. Even if you then choose to do what everybody else is doing, practice just throwing your two cents in verbally, and that will translate more and more. The other thing I would just tell people is what really helped me make the transition is as a graduate student, I was seeing a therapist and my best friend was also a graduate student at the time. And she pissed me off. I can't remember what happened, and I wouldn't talk to her. And so my therapist goes, so you don't trust her? I'm like, what do you mean, of course I trust her? She has a set of my keys. She's the first person I would call if something bad happens. Of course it feels really good. Goes, well, no, you don't, because you won't talk to her. And that struck me because of course I trusted her. He's like, you don't trust that if you make her unhappy, she'll still be your friend. And I'm like, but I do. He said, but if you did, you would talk to her. And that for me was a huge switch. I just went up to her and I said, I realize I've been really unfair with you. I've been treating you like you aren't trustworthy when you're one of the people I trust the most. So I need to let you know, when you did X the other day, it really pissed Me off. That was it. And Crouching Everything in terms of trust really, really helped for.

Me. Thank you for this beautiful reminder that natural human conflict is not something to be feared. It's just something that we all get to collectively do and be our work on. It's like, I think conflict gets demonized. It's like, be nice, be a certain way. And I'd rather just be me. I'd rather just be my damn self. And this is a call for everyone, men and women, listening to just be ourselves. This permission to be ourselves. I'd love for you to answer this last question. And it's at this intersection of everything we've been talking about today. The concept of who we are, the concept of being ourselves, to live our life in focus. But it's a question of wellness with. With wellness being the physical and the emotional, how would you define it? How do you define wellness in your.

Life? Okay, I'm going to throw out that word that everybody hates, but it's balance. And the idea of balance is not making all areas of your life equal. For me, wellness is about having really clear sense of what it is you need and doing your best to attend to those needs as you can and realizing that you can't do it all well all the time. So you kind of have to balance and put your energy where you can at any one given point in.

Time. Mic drop. I've loved this conversation. Life in Focus sd, that's San Diego. Life In Focus SD is the website, and people can get in contact with you on social. Where are you the most active? Where do you have the most.

Fun? Well, right now it's LinkedIn. And really, this is sad, but LinkedIn's kind of fun when you start getting into it and have these, like, deeper conversations about things. For purely social, social, it would be instagram and it's Dr. Alessandra Wall. So Dr. Alessandra Wall, 1L, 2S's. And then if you want to connect and talk about, like, probably deeper stuff, if you have a company where you want people to start talking to each other a little bit more, figure out how to speak up and kind of show up better for themselves and for you, that would be LinkedIn. And that's Alessandra Wall.

PhD. Dr. Alessandra Wall, thank you for being on the show. Appreciate your work. Deep bow. Big breath in. Deep.

Bow. For what you do as an introvert, this was. This was a good.

Conversation. We'll have you back on the show, too. Thanks for coming.

On.

Thanks. Hey, my friend. Thank you for hanging out and growing with me today. Everything you learn on this podcast starts with your morning practices. So from over 200 world class guests and counting, we've distilled the gems, the best of the best science backed practices down into a 21 minute morning system guaranteed to increase the positive flow in your day. Get this free and powerful 21 minute life changing system over@wellnessforce.com if you enjoyed this episode, tap your phone, share it with someone you care about because that is how we all get better together. Supporting the show is easy. Leave us a five star review right now from your phone. It helps us reach other smart and conscious people like you. Either tap your phone and hit the link in purple that says review this podcast or go to wellnessforce.com review and this show doesn't stop here. We're continuing the discovering process and our priority private Facebook group. You can be a part of it. All you have to do is go to wellnessforce.com group and I'll welcome you at the door. Okay, now you get to go out into your world and live your life well. So until I see you again real soon, I'm wishing you love and.