Overcoming Codependency, Perfectionism + People Pleasing with Victoria Albina

Do you ever wonder why we keep saying yes to the behaviours that hold us back from the things we deeply desire?

Why do we continue to say yes to the work, clients, pay rates, busywork, pushing and hustling that doesn’t actually fulfill us OR change our lives in the way we say we want?

We all have a part of our inner world that developed survival tendencies that used to work for us at younger ages, but that can feel like it’s getting in the way as we strive towards growth as adults.

If you’re familiar with the term codependency but are still working to fully grasp what this term and set of behaviours really mean in your own life—and you’re wondering how you can STOP being codependent, or a people pleaser, or some kind of avoidant of the changes you know need to happen to evolve…. This week’s episode of the Creative Magic Club is for you!

Join me with the brilliant Victoria Albina for a deep and clarifying discussion on how to understand our inner world of resistance and self-sabotage – and learn what it really takes to recondition ourselves so that we can reach our full creative potential.

We discuss the magic power of somatic experiencing and how you can work with your body and nervous system to create more ease in money, business and life, including:

1. How to overcome emotional outsourcing
2. What is codependency rea

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Chapters

• 1:43 Discovering Dreams
• 8:22 Embracing Emotional Independence
• 16:48 Exploring Somatic Healing and Presence

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:43

What's up, this is Sarah Mack, and welcome to Creative Magic Club. Together, we'll discover inspirational stories of creative entrepreneurs living out their dreams, doing the work they are most passionate about and building wealth in magical and fun ways, while building a six-figure income. As a writer and coach, helping other women to launch their dream businesses, I've connected with so many incredible people and seen it proven again and again that you can thrive financially doing whatever it is you are passionate about. I am here to share life-changing strategies for mindset, making money and reaching more people with your work in a business and life filled with creativity, freedom and fun. Hi everyone, welcome. I'm so excited to introduce my guest. Today. We have with us Victoria Albina, and she is a master certified somatic life coach, a UCSF trained family nurse practitioner and breathwork meditation guide with a passion for helping humans, socialized as women, reconnect with their bodies and minds so they can break free from codependency, perfectionism and people pleasing and reclaim their joy. Hi, victoria, thank you so much for joining us.

Speaker 2: 2:58

Hi Sarah.

Speaker 1: 2:58

Thanks for having me so yeah, so excited to dive into these topics. That's something I am talking about all the time in my life and how to stop doing it with the codependency, the perfectionism and the people-pleasing. So really excited to hear your wisdom around that. But before we dive in, how did you come about doing this work in the first place?

Speaker 2: 3:20

Yeah, so I come from medicine, as you shared, and I um. My brain, for so many beautiful reasons, really sees patterns. Okay, I'll brag, I have ADHD. I didn't want to brag like right out the gate, but why not Um? And so I really see patterns and I kept seeing. I was working at a gastroenterology functional medicine clinic in New York City and I just kept seeing the same pattern over and over right when my patients would physiologically get better, like we'd kill the parasite or rebalance the bacteria, like things would get better on paper, and then they'd go visit their family of origin. All of a sudden they had two weeks of problem poops, or like wicked bloating or bellyache, like something would go really awry thanks to interpersonal interactions.

Speaker 1: 4:09

Right, that's so interesting.

Speaker 2: 4:10

It's so fascinating, yeah, yeah. And so now you know, having spent so much time studying the nervous system, somatic experiencing, um before, it was cool, by the way. Thank you, I really appreciate it. Um, yeah, it just makes so much science now because the autonomic nervous system ventral, the vagus nerve, it all manages our digestion and our sense of self and our sense of safety and our sense of belonging. It all overlaps and so what I was seeing clinically just makes sense in terms of people's real lives, and I liked all the clinical stuff and the labs and the medications. But at at a certain point I just could tell that my gifts were to be here for the talking part and the somatic experiencing part, and so I shut down my clinic and fully shifted my practice and I haven't looked back.

Speaker 1: 5:07

It's been amazing that's so cool that you mentioned that, because I went through five years of chronic fatigue, depression, like it was complex PTSD. I didn't realize that at the time.

Speaker 2: 5:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 5:19

And I eventually surfaced memories of childhood sexual trauma.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Yeah, but when I had a lot of gut stuff, that was you know, that was like the first thing, that kind of came to my attention that I started learning about and learn about the whole concept of autoimmune Yep and learn about the whole concept of autoimmune yep. And then when I discovered mindset work that like obviously doing all of the lifestyle changes and like you know, I went to see a nutritionist and got all the supplements and like healed my gut from the inside I but the mindset stuff made such a huge impact on my energy and my health and I got so much better really, really quickly that I made that connection and I was like, oh, an autoimmune disorder is like the body self-rejecting, right, right.

Speaker 1: 6:02

and I was like, and that's what we're doing, that's like the culture rejects us right and then we internalize those in those narratives and then we are self-rejecting, right, and I was like, oh, that's why yeah, right, once you see the parallel, it's you can't, it's a bell that can't be unrung.

Speaker 2: 6:18

You know what I mean. And so, yeah, you know, in functional medicine, we talk so much about root cause medicine and yet this massive root cause of the information superhighway within our bodies is so often ignored. In lieu of, like, green pharmacology and just more supplements, more supplements, more supplements. And I think we need, in the holistic medicine world, to slow our role on the unregulated supplements that we're just throwing at people in lieu of a drug, and, like, really talk about what's really going on in the autonomic nervous system, in the limbic system.

Speaker 1: 6:57

We can talk about social determinants of health, which you alluded to, which, like, we could do a whole other show on that, but really getting back to basics and really simplifying it in a lot of ways, right, right yeah, because that's one thing I discovered too in looking for answers for myself is it always came back to the same things, which was just like just take care of yourself, you know, like sleep and drink water and eat healthy food and like relax. Yeah, do things that you love and be with people that you love you know, it's like the simple foundations of life right

Speaker 1: 7:32

you know, it's like when you give, when we give ourselves and our bodies and our minds and our souls what it is that they need on a daily basis, like they'll figure it out, you know. Like they'll they'll course correct. But yeah, obviously it's easier said than done in the world that we live in, right, and, and I think, a lot of the time, yeah, we're very conditioned to just go for the quick fix and like look for the pill and put the power outside of us and be like hello specialist. You tell me what I need to do, instead of looking inside and listening and doing the deep work. That takes longer and is harder. But I think it's harder because there's not it's not as talked about as much and you kind of have to dig a little bit more and there's more resistance. And I mean obviously, thank goodness, all of those things are changing because of amazing people like you.

Speaker 1: 8:17

Things are changing because of amazing people like you, um so tell us like okay, let's talk about codependency let's. It's my favorite topic ever. Yeah, no, I've been studying it for years and it's still, it's a con. It's so complex it's, I feel like it's difficult to define and like may I define it for you yeah, can you define it and can you?

Speaker 1: 8:37

also talk about like what? Because we are interdependent, right, like we can't just live as like a one person and alone in a forest with no other humans. So like, how do you define healthy and unhealthy levels of like, codependence and interdependence?

Speaker 2: 8:55

I, I love that. I can feel my brain buzzing right now and it makes me so happy. This is like my. My favorite nervous system state is like. This is like talking to someone who's energy. I love about something super nerdy that I know is going to help people live better, like it's. Ah, my nervous system is so happy right now. It's so great, right, yeah, it's the best, yay. So I don't like the term codependency.

Speaker 2: 9:19

I really, really, really don't like the disease model you know so codependency as a concept came out of the war on drugs, came out of the 1970s and 80s. It has really been posited as this disease, right Like the countervalent disease state to alcoholism. Oh, interesting, we can problematize the term alcoholism later right.

Speaker 2: 9:41

Folks who use alcohol, really people last language there, and so, like I am a codependent, I think is one of the worst things we can say, because we're just setting ourselves up to have that. First of all, agree that it's a disease, that it's, you know, suffering a sickness, that we're defective because we live this way and that it's a label, it's who we are and I'm buying 0.0% of that a set of absolutely brilliant survival skills from both childhood, moving through whatever came for us in our family blueprint, white settler, colonialism, late stage capitalism and the patriarchy, All of these systems, like you so perfectly said, that push us to not be ourselves. Right To show up and sort of scramble through it, right, and so I don't like the term codependency and I don't really love perfectionism and I definitely don't like people pleasing because I was doing all of them and identifying with none of them. So I wasn't a perfectionist, I messed everything up.

Speaker 2: 10:48

Like I got a 99 on a test once, evidence that I was not a perfectionist. Come on, sarah, people pleasing people were always displeased with me. Actually, sarah, are you mad at me right now? Are you mad at me? Is it okay? Am I? Are you mad at me? Did I mess up, right? Yeah, not a people pleaser. And so, too, with codependency. I wasn't fitting the cliche, stereotypical norm of the woman married to the alcoholic man, like whatever the narrative you've heard is, and so I realized I was living these three ways and I needed a new term to reach a new audience, like people who are aged and younger, who needed a new way to think about it. So I came up with emotional outsourcing, and I define emotional outsourcing as chronically and habitually sourcing our sense of the three most essential human needs safety, belonging and worth from everyone and everything outside of ourselves instead of from within, to our own detriment.

Speaker 1: 11:52

So good, I love it. Tell us more, thank you, yeah. Detriment so good, I love it.

Speaker 2: 11:55

Tell us more. Thank you, yeah. And so it's really about saying I don't believe, like at this very core part of me, that I'm okay, that it's okay for me to take up space. I believe that I'm in charge of everyone's emotions, because if you're upset with me, everyone's emotions, because if you're upset with me, that's really dangerous for me because my locus of safety is not internal, right, it's external, it's outsourced, it's everyone else is in charge of whether I feel safe in my body, safe in the room, safe emotionally, and it's, in many ways, an emotionally stunted place to be right. It's emotionally immature place to be, usually because we were raised by emotionally immature adults and so we never had proper modeling right. We didn't know what being emotionally present, having facility to have really hard conversations or really simple conversations. We didn't know what emotional management looks like. No one showed us, and so there's nothing wrong with us.

Speaker 2: 13:07

We developed the absolutely most perfect responses to growing up in effed up situations. And here's the important caveat. If you're sitting here listening, you're like, yeah, but my parents did their absolute best. Important caveat. If you're sitting here listening, you're like, yeah, but my parents did their absolute best. I hear you and your parents didn't have to be jerks or mean or actually abusive to have shown you how to live codependently. Right, your parents could have, like, taken you to karate and ballet and there was always food on the table and nobody ever hit me. But did anybody listen to you? Did anybody care about your feelings? Did anybody actually attune to you as an animal Not just here's my daughter, but her interests are and I really care. Her feelings are right.

Speaker 2: 13:50

The lack of attunement is enough for our nervous systems to say, oh gosh, maybe I don't matter here, maybe you know. What I should do is I should do the things that make my parents happy, because they've been fighting a lot and I just I want them to be, because if they're okay, then I'll be okay, because I'm small and I don't know how else to live, right. So when we can pull back and really contextualize these habits, we can see that they were absolutely brilliant. We can come into a place of compassion, empathy, love and care for our younger selves, and then our nervous system will go with us as we work to make change, as opposed to fighting us, which is what mine did when I was like I guess I'm just a codependent person. My nervous system, gave me the two-handed New York City salute and was like forget about you. No way, absolutely not, right. So this is a gentler, kinder, softer way that in my experience, really, really works. So clearly articulated, You're good at that.

Speaker 1: 14:50

Well, I thank you, thank you. It may or may not be. Really works so clearly articulated. You're good at that. Well, I thank you, thank you.

Speaker 2: 14:54

It may or may not be my entire job, so.

Speaker 1: 14:58

That's so powerful. Okay, so I want to know what are, like, the biggest needle movers for anyone listening who's like I want to get better at sourcing safety, belonging and worth from within myself presence.

Speaker 2: 15:14

We gotta start with presence, and presence is, of all possible things I could have said. It is in the top 10 most annoying things to say, because it means slowing down right.

Speaker 1: 15:25

It's like so annoying that she said I mean I have to put my phone down.

Speaker 2: 15:29

Yeah, yeah, you, yeah, you might, for like 10 seconds at a time. You can go back to doom scrolling. Give me 10 seconds. Yeah, you have to put your phone down, turn the TV off and put the wine down for like two minutes and just come into awareness.

Speaker 2: 15:45

So when we are emotional outsourcing, we are not living in intentionality, right, we're not really present in our lives because we're living by what we believe somebody else wants for us. It is like you alluded to it being really complicated. It's very simple, but the way we enact it's so complicated. You know what I mean. Like, I think that you think that you want me to think that, right, and so I'm going to live this way and be this person. Oof, how exhausting. And so one of the most important remedies is to come back into intentionality, right, to leave habit aside and change our default. Yeah, and so, luckily, neuroplasticity is all about this, right? So I'm sure you and I know you talk to your people about neuroplasticity, the fact that our brains and our neural pathways in our mind are literally actually changeable at any age, which, like that's amazing.

Speaker 1: 18:43

Thank goodness.

Speaker 2: 18:44

Thank freaking goodness right, We'd be really stuck. So the more we can step into presence, the more we can find a pause, and every millisecond of pause is additive and helps us to start asking questions like do I actually want to say yes? Do I actually want to take on being room mom this year? Do I actually want to say yes to dinner with my in-laws after on a Friday night? Do I actually want to eat that thing that gives me a tummy ache but my dad's insisting I eat it? I saw that one in clinics. So much people like with that 27 months pregnant gluten belly and they're like, yeah, my mother-in-law insisted I ate whatever her brownies. And here I am and I'm like, oh baby so it's real.

Speaker 1: 19:36

It's real.

Speaker 2: 19:37

The social food pressure is such a cultural drink food pressure, yeah, like, yeah, I mean especially like New York and LA like, oh, we're going out for drinks, oh my god, you're not drinking. Have a drink, have a drink, have a drink, have a drink. Yeah, yeah, or but like the pressure to say yes to things we don't want to say yes to, to not have boundaries, to not have limits. The antidote is really in cultivating quiet moment where you can actually begin to hear yourself again.

Speaker 1: 20:11

And what are your words of wisdom for people who are starting to like step into this more and more and what they're encountering is like high levels of emotional discomfort and like those you know, those emotional patterns raising and being very loud and very uncomfortable tips to get through that and like hope that there's light at the end of the tunnel where it's not always gonna feel so like arousing to go against your conditioned responses.

Speaker 2: 20:39

So that discomfort is on a biochemical level. That's how you know it's working right. So discomfort when you look at like the open a neuroscience textbook, that discomfort is the proof that you need, that you're on the right track.

Speaker 2: 20:56

So again, top 10 most annoying things anyone on this side of the microphone could say is that one, but really take heart that it means you're you're doing right by yourself and I guess the light at the end of the tunnel is part of why I talk so much about my own experience. I'm sitting here in a wildly interdependent marriage, having left an abusive one some years ago, really feeling grounded, safe, present, belonging. 10, 15 years ago I would have believed you that this was possible. So look for the role models, right? It's like Mr Rogers told us to look for the helpers. Look for the role models of people who are showing you in their own lived experience that another way is possible, because it really is.

Speaker 2: 21:46

And take heart with the tiny moments of presence that yes, there's that discomfort, but but when you stay with it and breathe through it and you're with it instead of pushing it away or doing like a hashtag, somatic practice to calm your nervous system, to like make it go away, but when you stay with it, it eventually melts, it eventually disapparates and if you can really be present in your body, that moment's pretty delicious.

Speaker 2: 22:20

Like that moment's like actually quite lovely to be in when your body's like hey, I'm not angry anymore. And I wanted to do murders about 12 minutes ago. I was contemplative of all the ways to do this particular murder. And now it's just, it doesn't have a grip on me anymore and I think maybe that's the thing to look towards, like how frigging beautiful to live a life where your emotions don't like. Take you by the hair and tell you how to be where your emotions can just. You know, pema Chodron, the Buddhist nun, invites us to see our minds like clouds, like a bright blue sky, and our emotions like clouds just moving across right, incredible right, and then you start to make that association of like discomfort is the gateway to like really good things that feel really really good yeah, for sure, for sure, yeah, yeah, what you're kind of describing also in that moment of being present and just purely experiencing sensation.

Speaker 1: 23:29

I learned this from the very small amount of somatic experiencing therapy that I did, where I learned, just with sitting, with sensations in the body, that anytime there's like an uncomfortable or like unpleasant experience sensation, you can also equally find a pleasant one, and that was the first time that I actually you know, I was like sitting with whatever anger or sadness intensity. That was like coming up in my body and then really being with it. I got to a place where I was like, oh, like this actually feels good, just being with it when it's not attached to a story.

Speaker 1: 24:02

You're not like putting meaning on it, yep, so can you just kind of talk about somatic experiencing therapy, like what is it and you know why is it so, so valuable to learn as a skill? Because this is a skill that we're talking about, really.

Speaker 2: 24:17

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, so it's the work of Dr Peter Levine. He's a PhD psychologist super interesting, weirdo guy and it pretty much is the practice of yeah, just like you were explaining recognizing that any trauma that happened in the body leaves its mark and we can find the nervous system response that is of an equal but opposite intensity. So, for you know, an eight out of eight terrible, we can find an eight out of, or eight out of 10 terrible, we can find an eight out of 10 ease or nourishing, or soft right, and that we can use these countervailing forces to help the nervous system to repattern the emotions related to a traumatic moment. Did that make?

Speaker 1: 25:10

English. Yeah, I didn't actually know that. That's really cool.

Speaker 2: 25:14

Yeah. So let's say so. What the brain does is it? Our brain is just running on a bunch of heuristics, on a bunch of shortcuts, which which makes sense If you had to think about like how do I drive every time you need groceries, particularly in LA, you'd be effed Like there's, it's impossible, right, like not going to happen. So the brain just has these, really this procedural memory, these shortcuts, and so the brain can miscouple experiences in our minds and bodies.

Speaker 2: 25:41

So let's say you are 10 and you get in the car with your parents and you're driving to the supermarket and it's raining outside and you get in a car accident and it's really scary and you don't get the kind of trauma-informed care you need right afterwards to ground your nervous system. Your nervous system might correlate rain and scary. And then 30, 40 years later, I don't know, I don't know it's like raining out and I just I just get kind of anxious when it's raining out, I don't know, whatever. It's weird, I'm just weird, I don't know. But your body is like listen, kiddo, rain is that time we almost died. Rain is the first time you saw your dad cry. You know what I mean. It starts telling these stories and this emotional charge gets attached to something that needn't have that emotional charge. Yeah, and so through the somatic experiencing process, that pendulation you were talking to, talking about where we go from what was really stressful into a very pleasant place and back and forth and it's less about pleasant, actually.

Speaker 2: 26:46

I'll retract that and say a very resourcing, grounding place for the nervous system. We start to show the nervous system that you can think about that car accident and we can't erase the memory. Frankly, I wouldn't want to right that car accident and we can't erase the memory. Frankly I wouldn't want to right. But we can. We can change the emotional charge and the nervous system charge that's correlated with it, right, and so we can, instead of feeling like that 10 year old that, like your parents, were dealing with the car or whatever but and you weren't getting care, you can actually attune to that part of you that didn't get care in that moment and you can regulate your nervous system. Uh, as a way to decouple, in this example, rain and almost dying. Yeah, so good, thank you for explaining that oh, my pleasure it's.

Speaker 1: 27:36

I'm super nerdy for it because it's just such cool science um and yeah, and I feel like you know, like I recommend all of the, the therapies that have helped me. Yeah, but, it's. I feel like I don't know. It's. Obviously sometimes you don't need to understand how, why it works, but it's really helpful. Yeah, it's really helpful because I love Essie yeah, and you can know, like, what to pick and choose, you know yeah, from what?

Speaker 2: 28:03

yeah, essie's a really good one, if you don't know why. So if you're like, yeah, I don't know, I like love dogs, but if one's barking I like lose it. Or here's one I, for a while, I would like, if I was in a room of, like, women of a certain age being way too exuberantly joyful, I would like freak out. And so I took that to SC and figured it out pretty easily and quickly and it was absolutely the right modality. Um, if you know what happened, emdr can kind eye movement, desensitization, reprogramming is an incredible modality. But yeah, and SC is also really great for the somatic stuff. So, like the chronic IBS, the Hashimoto's thyroiditis, as an adjuvant obviously adjuvant care to actual licensed clinical medical care. It's a beautiful way to get to the what's under the what is under the what and reprogram our automatic trauma responses. So they're not so right, just knee jerk and instead we've got a moment to breathe.

Speaker 1: 29:16

Yeah, and you know for everyone listening like I'm always recommend anyone doing money work is engaged in some type of somatic support, because it's another. You know it's a relationship in our life. That is just so. It's complex in all of the traumatic associations that we've developed around it.

Speaker 2: 29:38

Yeah, for sure I. I do so much work with my clients around um codependent thinking and money because we can get into codependent relationships with money. We get into emotional outsourcing with it, where we make it mean something about our worth, safety and belonging, which like to be real. The more money you have, the safer you are. Yeah, duh, but it's not on that level right. It's like on this energetic level where it's like, oh, I don't feel safe to spend money, invest in myself, not, you know, we. There's all sorts of unsafety that comes to the fore. I love doing that work.

Speaker 1: 30:18

Yeah, I'm actually publishing my book, uploading my book today. That's money and how I discovered all of this work through healing my relationship with money.

Speaker 2: 30:28

That's amazing. Congratulations, that's it. I just wrote a book too. It goes. It gets released in October of of 2025. It's such a long process yeah yeah, maybe I can come back and talk about the book in the spring, please. I would love that.

Speaker 1: 30:46

I'm putting together um a resources page to go with the book, so I'm definitely going to put you on there and I'm going to put this podcast episode on there. No, this has been amazing. Obviously, you're a wealth of knowledge and I could continue talking to you for 10 months, but we have to wrap it up, so can you tell everybody like what have you got going on? How do you support clients? Where can people find you?

Speaker 2: 31:08

Yeah, so you can. My program is called Anchored. It's a six month program where we dive into somatic experiencing the nervous system, obviously emotional outsourcing, and we dive deep in an interdependent community. Because all of this started in relationship, we need to heal it in relationship right.

Speaker 2: 31:28

You can learn more at victorialbinocom slash anchored. My podcast is called Feminist Wellness. You can find it in all of the places I give good gram at Victoria Albina Wellness on the Instagram and I've made your listeners a special treat, isn't that so fun. So if you go to victorialbinacom slash, creative magic club little on the nose with that one you can download a set of nervous system regulating exercises, inner child exercises, meditations, all sorts of treats.

Speaker 2: 32:02

They're yours, they're free to download. Just to say thanks for listening to this podcast, oh my god, thank you so much.

Speaker 1: 32:10

A pleasure such a pleasure thank you for sharing your wealth of wisdom. Definitely, everyone. Go and check her out, go and get those treats, do some somatic work, do it, do it, do it. It will change your life forever and ever. And please come back when you are ready with your book. We would love to hear about that thank you thank you, I'd be thrilled to great.

Speaker 1: 32:30

Thank you so much, everybody, for listening. Please share this episode with anyone who you know would love it and benefit from it, and we will see you next week. Bye, for more inspirational content, head over to my website with sarah maccom and please support the show by liking, commenting and subscribing.