This is Feminist Wellness, and I’m your host, Nurse Practitioner, Functional Medicine Expert, and Life Coach, Victoria Albina. I’ll show you how to get unstuck, drop the anxiety, perfectionism, and codependency so you can live from your beautiful heart. Welcome my love, let’s get started.

Hello, hello my love. I hope this finds you doing so well. It is a beautiful day here today and I’m so happy to be in it and to be here sharing my thoughts with you all, as always, each and every week.

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So let’s dive in. For years, I was told as a matter of fact that I had a broken picker, that I picked the “wrong people” very much in quotes, to date, picked the wrong friends, the wrong jobs and confidants because my picker was broken.

And I believed it. I was in a challenging place in my life, a vulnerable feeling place when I first heard this, and I believed what I was told. That something was inherently wrong with me. A part of me that should be operating better, clearly was just a factory installed defective part.

And I would spend the rest of my life trying to counteract this defect in my very being. And to be really honest, this way of thinking kind of F’ed me up. I was walking around with this chronic distrust of myself, born from this thought, thinking I had to be on guard against my own mind, lest I made the kind of terrible decisions that apparently was just the fact of being me.

That my picker was broken, which means my mind was broken, which clearly extrapolates out to me being broken. I had been pathologized in the name of self-growth, healing, and recovery, and it seriously felt like crap.

I didn’t trust myself to make friends. What if I was picking wrong? To date? What if I was picking wrong? To have an opinion or own my own thoughts, because this lack of trust in myself and my intuition and my deepest inner knowing had been so ingrained in me and validated by a room full of people I had grown to trust who all concurred, our collective pickers were broken and we were fully F’ed.

Flash forward, I don’t believe that anymore. Not at all. The work I do now is the exact opposite of pathologizing ourselves, of labeling ourselves as codependent, perfectionist, people pleasing. The opposite of saying anything is inherently wrong with us and the opposite of inherently broken is to recognize that your brilliant mind and body and mine developed the thought habits, the survival skills, the mindset, and somatic experience of our lives that you and I currently have because you are phenomenal, amazing, incredible, truly and deeply shenius, which is a genius who uses she pronouns. Shenius.

Whatever you are doing now that doesn’t serve you once did or you wouldn’t be doing it, right? I have more love and belief in you than to ever think that any part of you is broken or defective. But rather, I believe that you do what you do because it was the smartest way to get through whatever situation you found yourself in. Pure shenius.

And that is such a more feminist, empowering way for me to think about myself and the people I love. That we are all just managing our lives, our minds, our anxiety best we can. Nothing wrong with us at all. Just using the skills we currently have to the best of our ability and being open to learning more, shifting, changing, growing as we go. But not because we are inherently broken.

For me, well, overall I picked partners who provided a place for me to act out my wounding. To try to get the external validation I didn’t yet know how to give myself. Sometimes I picked people who I thought I could fix, which was my favorite job title ever. That of the fixer, savior, martyr, saint.

Sometimes I pick people who wanted no part in being fixed, which then validated my story that I was less than. My suggestions just don’t matter, I was right to be in self-doubt. And all of that was super painful. Absolutely. And none of those unintentional subconscious motivations mean anything wrong or bad about me. Nope. Not at all.

Sure, I took some actions that I’m not proud of. I messed up and I had some apologies to dole out. I’ve absolutely caused harm in relationship so I take responsibility for my impact, regardless of my intention, which was never to be anything but kind. But I went about it in some less than awesome ways.

And I do that, I look at my life, my past, my present, my future that way because I don’t think there’s anything at all to gain ever from beating ourselves up, from pathologizing ourselves or labeling ourselves as deficient or broken.

I was just and am still working it all out the way we all are. Metabolizing what I have learned in this lifetime and sorting out what does and doesn’t serve me now. Getting into ever better alignment with my own integrity each and every day. No better, do better.

Not because I was broken but because I learned to think, feel, and act in ways I don’t want to anymore that I can honor as having served me once upon a time. And those patterns or habits of relating did in fact serve me then.

They absolutely did and now that I can see them, now that I know how to be my own watcher and to manage my own adult mind using thought work, now that I know how to show up as my own most loving parent for myself, my inner children, I don’t need to act for those habitual thoughts anymore.

It’s like how I learned to drive stick. But now that I drive an automatic, I don’t need to manually change gears anymore. That skill served me once, got me where I needed to go, to learn what I needed to learn, and it’s just not what I’m doing anymore.

It’s not wrong to have learned how to drive stick. I’m just doing something different now. And now I get to ask myself why. Why I kept picking the people I did, what I wanted to gain, what was going on inside of me. And I get to bring that consciousness into all of my life, to ask myself why I’m thinking what I’m thinking now, feeling what I’m feeling now, taking the actions I’m taking now.

And all of that comes from getting clear on my own reasons why. For the choices I made in the past and make now. And that is so powerful, my beauty. Because it means that I am the boss of my own mind and my own life.

By dropping that story that there was something inherently wrong with me, that my picker was broken, I’ve been able to be more honest with myself about my motivations, versus just writing them off, which is what that kind of thinking can do.

Because you’re not really responsible for your actions if they’re caused by a defect in you, right? And also, I just got to say it. How yuck to believe you’re defective or broken. The whole concept gives me the yuckies. It’s victim-y and it just feels gross in my body. It makes my belly kind of queasy.

I know that I am perfect and have plenty of habits and thought patterns I want to continue to change. And so are you. And you’re doing it, my love. You’re doing that growing and changing right now by listening to this show, by learning how to honor your tender heart more and more each and every day by dropping the story that you are a label like codependent, perfectionist, people pleasing, that you are defective, broken, or anything less than perfection.

Whole, wonderful, and here on this planet in this moment to be of service to yourself and the collective. To learn new ways of relating to the world and you day by day. Kitten-sized step by kitten-sized step. So don’t you go letting anyone tell you any differently. You heard, my love? You are not broken.

And neither am I. We’re just mammals mammaling along, doing the best we can each and every day. Thank you for listening. Let’s take a moment and do what we do. Hand on your heart if that is supportive, attune to your beautiful breath, and remember, you are safe, you are held, you are loved. And when one of us heals, we help heal the world. Be well, my beauty. I’ll talk to you soon.

If you’ve been enjoying the show and learning a ton, it’s time to apply it with my expert guidance so you can live life with intention, without the anxiety, overwhelm, and resentment, so you can get unstuck. You’re not going to want to miss the opportunity to join my exclusive intimate group coaching program, so head on over to victoriaalbina.com/masterclass to grab your seat now. See you there. It’s going to be a good one.