Why Knowing What to Do Isn’t Enough w/ Arlina Allen
Knowing what to do usually isn't the problem. Most of us already know what would help. The harder part is actually doing it. Today I'm back with Arlena Allen to talk about why that gap exists even when motivation is high. We get into why habits alone don't stick, what's really underneath resistance, and why struggling with self care isn't a failure of willpower.
Speaker 1:If you've ever felt stuck or frustrated with yourself for not following through, this conversation will feel familiar.
Speaker 2:We didn't
Speaker 1:So I wanna talk about something when it comes to self care because you touched on that. Yeah. And this kinda kinda segue into a little bit shift in what we're talking about. So you hear this all the time. I know what I should do, but I just don't do it.
Speaker 1:So when you hear that, what's usually going on on underneath the surface?
Speaker 2:What's going on underneath the surface are I I like to study something called internal family systems and talk about parts, and everybody gets it. Like, it's like, I have a part of me that wants to work out and exercise and be fit, and then I have a part of me that wants to watch Netflix all night and eat pizza. Right? It's like we have these competing parts. And in IFS terms, they call that polarized parts.
Speaker 2:And it's so interesting because we can want to, like, not drink or whatever, but a part of us wants to distract or wants to do the thing. And so it just creates this internal tension. And it's so interesting because in the framework of parts work is that both the part that wants to, like, make you do the healthy thing and the part that is trying to distract you with the negative thing, let's say drinking or whatever, they both have a good intention. The intention is to protect the system. And when people are stressed out, then the distraction comes.
Speaker 2:It's like, oh and and in my mind, I probably should've preface this, but in my mind, the purpose of addiction is distraction, and it's typically distraction from feelings we don't wanna feel. It's all really about self avoidance, feeling avoiding feeling that we don't feel. Right? So even the the part that's like, oh, you know, it's been a hard day. You deserve a treat.
Speaker 2:You know, you can have just one. It's like that part. It's really trying to protect you from the discomfort that maybe you don't know how to process to resolution, that maybe it's just too intense to sit with. Right? That like, our feelings can be so intense sometimes that they trigger cravings.
Speaker 2:And so if you can sort of objectify this as a different part and put a little space between you and the feeling, it's like, oh, I get it. This part is trying to protect me. And if and then I she kinda talk, learn to talk to your different parts. Right? You talk to your parts and and you appreciate you recognize that this is a part that's trying to help you.
Speaker 2:You send appreciation towards that part. And we can all relate to this idea that when we feel appreciated, we relax a little bit. When we feel seen, heard, and understood, we kinda relax a little bit. And that's what happens with this part, the the distractor part that is trying to distract you from your negative feelings. When you relearn to relate to it differently, like, disidentify with it, you're not identified with that feeling.
Speaker 2:Like, it's not me. I'm not having a craving. It's like there is a craving. Right? So you sort of put a little and it's so interesting.
Speaker 2:A simple practice like that can deescalate a craving. It can deescalate a trigger. It can help you get back to feeling grounded so that you can make different choices. And, really, that is all emotion management. It's all self regulation.
Speaker 2:It's all personal responsibility. And from that place, then we can make choices that, help us to thrive and really kinda have the experiences that we do wanna have.
Speaker 1:Talk to me a little bit about the internal family systems. What is that exactly for anybody listening that isn't familiar?
Speaker 2:Yes. So it's a, healing modality, a therapy modality, and it was, developed by Richard Schwartz. And the premise is that we all have internal family systems is a little, is kind of a misnomer because you think about your family externally. Right? But, really, it's like we have a bunch of parts within us.
Speaker 2:They have protector parts, like, you
Speaker 1:have
Speaker 2:managers. You know, those are the shoulds. Oh, I should do this. I should do that. And then there's the firefighter parts who step in when we're dysregulated.
Speaker 2:And if you think about what a firefighter does, it's like if your house is on fire, they come and they pour water on the house, puts out the fire, but it actually destroys the house. Right? And so that's what addiction is like or whatever however you wanna think of addiction, bad behaviors.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:It's like, I'm emotionally dysregulated. I'm in deep the pain is so intense, so uncomfortable that, you know, people say, screw it. I'm just gonna have a drink. And then some of us can't have just one. And, like, for me, when I drink, there was, like, some sort of switch that got flipped, and I just wanted more.
Speaker 2:So that's how I drink. And, so that would lead that's the analogy of the fire destroying the house. You know? It just led to really bad results for me. So the idea is that, these protector parts, even the firefighter, are covering something even deeper, which is an exile.
Speaker 2:An exile is a part of us that's typically very young, that's frozen in time. If when you were growing up and you had a bad negative experience and that little part that little six year old inside you didn't know how to process rejection, trauma, that little person kinda gets frozen in time, and they adopt certain beliefs. Like, certain kinds of people are bad. Certain situations are bad. I'm responsible for everything.
Speaker 2:Hyper I need to be hypervigilant. These are ideas and beliefs that they adopt, But we dissociate. We exile them, we push them down. And we aren't really even aware that they're there, but then something happens. We they get triggered, afraid, and then that's when the protector parts come out.
Speaker 2:It's like, I'm never gonna drink again. I'm gonna change my life or screw it. I'm just gonna drink and, you you know, and they get out of out of whack. And so the process of internal family systems is a deescalation. It's self compassion.
Speaker 2:It's resolving root cause, which has been really powerful. And so that you can sort of operate from your higher self. And it I have seen it do amazing things in other people's lives. I have a facilitator. I still prac it's like a practice.
Speaker 2:And, yeah, it's it's you know, I hate to say, oh, it was life changing. It's really been life changing. I think
Speaker 1:it's okay to say that. You know, you feel hokey when you say it. Like, there's, like, certain things you read or certain things you come across in your life, and you're like, it literally changed my life. Like, one thing for me was journaling, and it sound it sounded so stupid when I'd say it. Journey journaling changed my life.
Speaker 1:Like, it sounds so dumb, but You're there are things that you just gotta say that it impacted you that way.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because other other people will it might have the same effect.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It it was one of those. And listen. Many things have changed my life, but it was it's the practicing of the things that I know to do that has created, like, this longevity and consistency and peak relationship experiences. Like, you know, I've been married to my husband a long time.
Speaker 2:We have a great or at least my favorite person still after all these years. We have a very loving, peaceful household. My relationship with my kids are good. My you know what I mean? So it's like these are practices that are sort of, designed to get to root cause and ultimately allow for emotion management, creativity, like the cultivation of the experiences that you do wanna have.
Speaker 1:So I wanna dig into the internal family systems a little bit. So I think a lot of people, they see that resistance, in different lights. Right? And Yeah. So how do you help somebody understand that their resistance isn't looked at as self sabotage, but actually part of them that's trying to keep them safe?
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's it's part of the process. Like, you actually talk to so funny. You literally kinda talk to yourself, and you get to what is the intention of this part. And as it's an experience.
Speaker 2:Right? As you go through the experience, you have, like, these realizations. It's like, oh, there is that pain deep down that I dissociated from. It actually is there. And, oh, this part is really trying to help me, but it's going about it in a way that is not it's not helpful for the entire system.
Speaker 2:Right? So just going through the process with a facilitator allows you to sorta have, like, realizations and to have like, there's nothing like experience. Nothing teaches like experience. So when you have these experiences with your parts and you learn to disidentify with your feelings, like, I am not I am not, an alcoholic. It's like, oh, there is alcoholism maybe.
Speaker 2:Like, it's like just like or or are like, I'm not anxious. There is anxiety. Right? It puts a little space between me, the self, and the feeling. And just relating to our feelings differently changes how we respond.
Speaker 1:For sure. And also observing them without necessarily attaching or reacting to them. And it feels like a lot of this because I'm not super familiar with it, although I really want to be with this system. Like, for one thing, like, lot of people walk in, I really want it for moderation. I really wanna have a drink or I really need that drink or but do you really want that drink?
Speaker 1:And what are you really actually looking for? Are you looking for a way to shut down your mind? Are you looking for a way to mark the end of the day? Are you looking to maybe you just you wanna be happy or remove some pain. It is that is that a little bit of that process without the the part definition that you're talking about here?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I mean, listen. Alcohol is really a tool. People use it as medicine, and it's mostly
Speaker 1:And it's very effective. It's very immediate, and it's a 100% likelihood, you know, to get you there. It's gonna change your state a 100% of the time. Whereas, like, meditation might be 80%. You know, breath work might be 70%.
Speaker 1:Like, exercise might be this percent. But alcohol will absolutely not for you know, many times for the worst, but initially get you to that point, and your brain learns that the likelihood the outcome is, like, a 100% most cases on the short term without thinking long term of all the consequences, of course. So it's really, like, an effective tool.
Speaker 2:Super effective, But it has a price tag.
Speaker 1:Effective in in the way that the brain calculates it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're totally in alignment, and the idea here is that everything has a price tag. Right?
Speaker 2:So you and it's so funny. If you pay the price upfront, like, let's take exercise for example, it's like you have to pay the price upfront in terms of, like, discomfort and pain and inconvenience and all
Speaker 1:that stuff.
Speaker 2:But then when you're done, like, you get like, you feel great. You start looking better, and there's so many benefits that but it comes afterwards, so you pay the price up front.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:With alcohol, you pay the price later. You don't always know how much you're gonna pay. For me, I could never predict. Like, I had two alter egos. It was, like, either wimpy Wendy or badass Betsy when I was drinking.
Speaker 2:Like, I never knew which alter ego can come out. Some crazy version of Arlino was gonna come out, and we just didn't know who it was. And there was always a price tag to pay at the end of that. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So
Speaker 2:so in life, it's it's like easy choices make a hard life. Hard choices make an easy life.
Speaker 1:Yes. I don't
Speaker 2:even know if that answered your question. I got on a rant.
Speaker 1:I liked it either way.
Speaker 2:Oh, Well, whoever you're ever to ask me. You
Speaker 1:know, so we talked a little bit about habits, and Jane was clear. And, you know, a lot of advice and a lot of people wanna focus on habits and discipline. But from your experience, why do habit strategies alone often fall short when it comes to changing drinking or if we're just talking about self care in general?
Speaker 2:Yeah. I am so glad you asked that because my other favorite obsession is the unwinding anxiety book by doctor Judson Brewer. I was just on a call with him this morning. He's amazing. A lot of this is about habit loops and mental habit loops.
Speaker 2:So you can have the strategies and tactics and accountability. But if you are not also addressing the root cause, which is emotion, then you're missing a big piece. That's why people aren't able to execute on what they already know because it's typically an avoidance of some sort of discomfort, an avoidance of pain. And and so being able to have practices that address feelings, fear, anxiety, all that stuff. There's something about human nature.
Speaker 2:Like I said before, people wanna be seen, heard, and understood. There's something about sharing the truth about what you're really afraid of, like, being able to say the thing that you don't wanna say. I used to have a mentor who used to ask me at the end of that conversation, is there anything you don't wanna say? And that was I would often kick off another twenty minutes of confession and be like, actually. But when I would say the thing I didn't wanna say, I felt so much she always met me with kindness and compassion.
Speaker 2:And what she was doing was she was allowing me to address the feeling I was avoiding. And it was like magic because and that's what the power of support is. It's being able to like, there's something about expressing it, which means, like, you're a little literally getting it out of you. So it's sort of isn't it sort of ironic? It's like we don't wanna say the thing.
Speaker 2:We're holding it in. But when you express it, you're, like, literally getting rid of it by actually talking about the thing that you don't wanna talk about.
Speaker 1:Yes. So that actually leads into a lot of the question that I was gonna ask, which is, you know, how does somebody recognizes the part of them that isn't necessarily the enemy that's there to help them approach self care and change?
Speaker 2:I mean, listen. At the end of the day, I look at everything through the lens of self compassion because we take actions based on information that we have. And if you talk about limiting beliefs, a limiting belief is either missing information or incorrect information. And oftentimes we are sort of blind to our we all have blind spots. Right?
Speaker 2:And so there is an error in our presupposition, and sometimes that comes from, like, basic feelings. Right? And so the way to identify this is a fun little journaling exercise. It's like, ask answer the question, why don't you have what you want? And, typically, her brain will come up with some examples.
Speaker 2:And if you look at those other examples, those are clues to your limiting beliefs. So you're either missing information or your information is incorrect, and that's the whole process of recovery is about a self examination process. And so you break down your thinking. You you break down like, you get open minded. You get new information, and it changes the way how you operate in the world.
Speaker 2:It changes how you make decisions. And then when you take a different action, you get a different result. That's a law of cause and effect. So it's just so interesting just by sort of examining your limiting beliefs. You sort of go to the next level of, well, then what is the information that would be helpful here?
Speaker 2:And then you take a different action. You get a different result.
Speaker 1:Well, speaking of limiting beliefs, there's actually a way to, like, flip that on the other side. So some people are free are afraid that if they took care of themselves the way they should with sleep, with stress, with boundaries, with alcohol, that they might not actually need alcohol anymore. And for some people, that scares them. And for some people, that actually causes self sabotage. What do you say to that?
Speaker 2:I I'm curious about the fear of needing not needing alcohol. Like, what is maybe you can explain that to like like, if you don't need something that's bad for you, like, why is that scary?
Speaker 1:I think it's that people will identify they've placed identity alongside alcohol. Oh, I'm this person that does this. So I'm the life of the party that has drinks and is fun. I am you know? So I think there's an identity based to it that all of a sudden, have to redefine themselves in a new way Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because they've always done it the other way.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I I thought of myself as the party girl. Like, that was really my identity. I was a fun crazy party girl. And then when I stopped drinking, I was like, oh my god.
Speaker 2:Am I just gonna be boring for the rest of my life? Sounds terrible.
Speaker 1:Which is hilarious because people think that that would be boring, you know, without something that's external because it's not you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And the only way to know for sure is to run little experiments, you know, to see, like, who am I in this situation without alcohol? Is it okay? Like, can I feel this?
Speaker 2:And most of the time, like, that's one of my mantras. It's like, it's okay. I can feel this. Like, it's not gonna kill me. Like, it's okay.
Speaker 2:You know, it's a little a little self talk I do even today, you know, because we are always growing and evolving. And I'm always trying to push the envelope and go to the next level. And and it leads me to this place of imposter syndrome or discomfort. But if you're not in that place, you're actually not growing. So that's actually a good sign, and it is identity evolving.
Speaker 2:But as you go through all your changes, there is no state where you're not already good enough. Right? Like, you're okay at every stage. Like, when you look at an oak tree, like a young oak tree, it it's still growing, but you would never say, oh, it's not perfect the way it is. It's, like, right where it's supposed to be.
Speaker 2:So I kinda I don't know if that's a helpful analogy, but it's like, this is just you're you're never going to be the same anyway. Like, the you today at forty seven is very different from the you at probably forty five. Right? So which one's better? Like, you know, there's I
Speaker 1:I agree. It's like So, like, to me, it's always like, well, what's the worst that could happen? Go try it. Run the experiment. And if it fails, you're right back exactly where you are.
Speaker 1:Nothing's lost. Like, maybe the little bit of effort. I mean, my wife always makes fun of me. She's like, I can't believe you asked for that. Like, you know, I could come across push, but I'm like, well, I gotta tell people what I want if I'm gonna you know, they can say no, and then all I am is right back where I am here anyways.
Speaker 1:You probably understand that as a salesperson.
Speaker 2:Yeah. My husband's the same way. It's like, oh, I just wanna ask like, somebody asked me for something recently, and I had a clarifying question to ask. He's like, don't ask. You'll make him feel bad.
Speaker 2:And I was like, but I have a question. I'm like, can I just even know? And so, of course, you you know, whatever. But it's like, yeah. I I'm gonna ask questions.
Speaker 2:I can't help it.
Speaker 1:You gotta go for it sometimes.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Why not? If listen. I'm a sales girl. Right?
Speaker 2:If you don't ask, the answer is no.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, we we both kinda come from that sales world, so I know we're speaking the same language. So This has been awesome. We talked about a bunch of stunks, so I'm gonna, like, kinda pull everything in here and hit you with a question that you can just go free for all in any direction that you want. So if somebody wanted to run an experiment since we're talking about experiments, one thing this week, maybe not trying to fix themselves, just do something, where would you suggest they start?
Speaker 2:I would start with adding one little baby self care thing to your morning routine. Just and, using the James Clear methodology, he talks about habit stacking. So if you get coffee in the morning or tea or whatever, do put a a notepad next to the coffee machine so make it obvious, make it easy to write down five things you're grateful for. Just five things. I have a I had somebody out challenge me to do five to 12, so I'm a overachiever.
Speaker 2:So I was like, okay. I'm gonna do 15. But but let's just like, even we just kept it small. A gratitude practice is really impactful.
Speaker 1:It's
Speaker 2:super easy. And if you just add it on to your morning beverage, that would be an easy way to start implementing a self care practice to set the intention for the day.
Speaker 1:I think that's a great starting point. Anybody listening can do that. It is really impactful. If you doubt it, go try it. And then if it doesn't work, you can write me and complain to me.
Speaker 1:So
Speaker 2:Run the experiment.
Speaker 1:Don't take care it. The experiment. But I think anybody listening that isn't doing it will be surprised. So I think that's a great piece of advice to leave with. Arlena, tell us a little bit about what you're working on, where people can find more information.
Speaker 1:I know you have some great resources, so I want to give you a chance to talk about those.
Speaker 2:Thanks. I I did write a book out of 12 step guide for skeptics. So it's clearing up common misconceptions of a path to sobriety. So this is sort of a bridge to, like, there is no way I'm ever gonna do this to maybe. Maybe.
Speaker 2:I also host the one day at a time recovery podcast. I've been doing that almost ten years. And currently, I'm coaching people. So I it's really just a place to support people with their current goals. And I have a lot of people that are, like, in in management.
Speaker 2:For some reason, have a bunch of salespeople coming to me because we're so fail. You know? So a lot of it is about, stress management really at the end of the day. It's about stress management. What is keeping me from taking action on the things that I know will get me to the goal that I say that I want?
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I do a lot of that. So people can find me at arlenaallen.com. That's probably the best place to find me.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks so much for coming. I really enjoyed this conversation, and, I appreciate it. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me. It was super fun.
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