310 - Align Your Mind - Britt Frank
01:12:55 Share

Under Biden, Americans' cost of living skyrocketed. Food, housing, auto insurance. Lawsuit abuse is a big reason everything's more expensive today. Frivolous lawsuits cost working Americans over $4,000 a year in hidden taxes. President Trump understands the problem. That's why he supports loser pays legislation to stop lawsuit abuse and put thousands back in the pockets of hardworking Americans.

It's time to make America affordable again. It's time to support the President's plan. You can go to kitted.shop and use the code SMART50, S-M-A-R-T-5-0 at checkout, and you will get half off a set of thinking superpowers in a box. If you want to know more about what I'm talking about, check it out, middle of the show. Hey, hold on down and go.

Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, episode 310. Welcome to the You Are Not So Smart Podcast, episode 310.

You wouldn't even listen to a podcast if there wasn't at least one part of you that thought, perhaps I can learn my way out of this, or perhaps there's a nugget of information that will make this make sense.

That was the voice of psychologist, therapist, trauma expert, author, speaker, science advocate, and science communicator, Britt Frank, who you may remember as

From her first appearance on this show, in that appearance, we discussed her book, The Science of Stuck. And in that episode, we talked all about her therapeutic approach and, as the title suggests, the science behind what gets people stuck and unstuck in life. I highly recommend that episode. It's number 230, and I highly recommend that book, The Science of Stuck.

I received an incredible amount of positive feedback about that episode. It's definitely one of the all-time You Are Not So Smart favorites. And in her second appearance, we discussed the psychological science behind procrastination, what it is, why we do it, and how to navigate around our propensity to procrastinate, which is also one of the most downloaded episodes of the podcast. In this episode...

Britt returns to discuss her latest book, which at the time of this recording just became available for purchase. It's called Align Your Mind. And as she puts it, it's a rogue punk down in the dirt exploration workbook, textbook and guide to something known in therapy circles and in psychology nerddom as parts work.

What is parts work? Well, first of all, that's not its technical name. It's very commonly referred to as parts work, but technically it's a form of psychotherapy known as internal family systems. And even more technically, this is a systems thinking and systems psychology approach to therapy.

Psychologists, client behaviors, problem solutions, but in a framework developed in the 1980s and popularized in the 1990s by psychologist Richard C. Schwartz at Purdue University. IFS imagines the mind a lot like the inside out animated movies imagine the mind as the

Parts as characters with individual specialized functions that interact and at times have competing goals. In hardcore psychology, these are considered individual systems. And when things are going well, these systems cooperate and are managed by something we might call a self, which would be yet another system.

In internal family systems, Schwartz called these systems families, hence the name, which was the big insight of his work, that there are lots and lots and lots of subunits of cognition, and these units cluster around shared goals for the organism that is you.

And getting them to work together instead of attempting to silence them or ignore them was a better way to become an ordered, functional person. I think of them more as departments than families, but the important part here is to create strategies for coordination and cooperation of people.

these entities within yourself that want to pursue things that feel good and avoid things that feel bad, both in the real physical world and also in the thinking emotional world. Schwartz imagined that there were three big systems. There were the managers. These are the subunits of cognition that proactively resist and set up sort of ramparts against things that might be bad and

Then firefighters, which react to bad things that are happening, things that you would rather not be happening. And then exiles. These are parts of you that would like to express themselves, but feel when they are exposed, vulnerable to harm.

So that's his way of looking at it. And if you've ever had an argument with yourself, then you have an idea of what Schwartz was basing all of this on. If you've ever hit the snooze button and later berated yourself for doing so, or reached for a bag of chips and told yourself, hey, don't

do that. And then you did do that. And then you felt bad about it. And then you said you wouldn't do it again. And then you did. If you've ever wondered why you keep doing things, you know, you should not do and would prefer not to do that.

That's really the origin of parts work. Or if you've ever had a conversation with yourself where you imagine some part of you doing the talking and another part doing the listening, like, I am so lazy. I really wish I wasn't so damn lazy. Or, okay, get it together. You can do this. Or, ugh, why did I say that? You're so stupid. Why do you do that? You have some notion of these foundations of IFS.

And you may have some skepticism about all of this. I know I did. I just thought it seemed so metaphorical when I first learned about these things. And sometimes it just seems so mystical or woo-ish that sometimes

Initially, I wasn't sure what I thought about it, but it has so much support and there's a lot of evidence. There's a lot of research showing that the outcomes of using this in therapy are very positive that I wanted to know more. So it was neat to see that Britt had written a book about it. So before we get into what all of this means, I think it's important to note that

that this is in many ways a philosophical framework. It's a language for discussing the mind so that both therapists and clients can create and commit to behaviors, to managing emotions and attitudes and actions and plans of action.

In psychology, there are many silos. You have theoretical psychology, clinical psychology, applied psychology, neuropsychology. And these silos conduct evidence-based research whose findings get shared back and forth across those silos. Then there's counseling and clinical psychology, where all of these silos inform different therapeutic frameworks between therapists and clients.

Different therapists use different therapies based on all of this, and Parts work is one of those therapies. One that Britt Frank says, in her experience, is the most effective of them all. While acknowledging, yes, this is a collection of metaphors for concepts that we've been contemplating philosophically, poetically, artistically for millennia.

As Walt Whitman mused in 1855, do I contradict myself? Very well. Then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes. More recently, all of this reminds me of the work of early AI researchers and modern AI researchers, LLMs, the whole thing. But early AI researchers like cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky said,

They spoke of this sort of thing all the time. He wrote a great book titled Society of Mind. I have a signed copy of it, which described human intelligence as a collection of simple subunits, which he called agents. And these agents could work together to build up into more complex processes and different processes could share simpler agents with other more complex processes and even higher order biological processes.

parallel processing. In Minsky's model, there is no central controller. Intelligence is emergent and so is consciousness. As Minsky put it, quote, minds are what brains do.

And there are a lot of these models. Jerry Fodor's modular mind, Stanislaus Duane's global workspace theory, Eric Byrne's transactional analysis model, Helen Sidra Stone's voice dialogue framework, Timothy Wilson's adaptive unconscious theory, and there are many others.

All of these models start by recognizing the brain as a collection of biological organic structures that have different specialized functions that all work together to generate energy.

Your mind, but not just your mind, the limbic system, the basal ganglia, the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, all of these are collections of units of neurons whose action potentials generate your sense of balance, your drives, hunger and sexual attraction and feeling hot or cold or depressed.

Pain, joy, melancholy, awe, anxiety, and so on. Similarly, up here in truly complex collections of action potentials, the mind is also a collection of what we might call mental structures. Your sense of self, your values, your beliefs, your attitudes, your wants and your not-wants.

And as we ascend higher and higher from the neuronal source code of molecules crossing membranes and the electric meatball inside your skull, we will at some point need to start talking in metaphors. And in a way, that's already what we're doing. We're almost always speaking in metaphors and abstractions, symbols and similes, beliefs, attitudes, values, etc.

These are categorical boundaries around the mental output of a complex system, but we can't extract a belief with a scalpel and place that belief under a slide.

You can put the organic material generating belief under a slide, sure, but you won't quote unquote see the belief. And as neuroscientist David Eagleman once said, even if you could become so self-aware that you could deep dive into the unconscious mind, the thoughts and emotions down there might look like machine language. As he put it,

It would be like monitoring a transistor in a computer to better understand why a YouTube video was funny. So when I use a single word like anxiety or a single term like disappointed or overjoyed,

What I am describing is the downstream output of an immense conglomeration of interacting neural structures so complex that we are still decades, maybe centuries away from truly understanding what is being expressed and how. So I can...

casually refer to a dense interplay of neurochemical splendor with a short sound made with lungs, teeth, and lips, or represented with marks on paper or indentations in stone. Yet, when I tell you I am livid, for example, I'm expecting you to take that collection of phonemes, that sound,

or series of symbols represented as a word and allow it to trigger a thunderstorm of associations in your neural network based on your priors and your experiences and your understanding so as to get the gist of what I'm attempting to communicate. So when it comes to something like

Parts work, or anything in psychology, really. The metaphors, the terms, the labels, the abstractions, the language we use to discuss the mind, it has immense power as long as we accept these as tools, and only as tools. When we discuss your psychological shadow or your inner critic,

We are not literally discussing a shadow in your hypothalamus or a standalone entity wearing a hat living in your medulla oblongata. You might prefer imagining the mind as programs running on an operating system and those programs as well as the operating system all running on hardware, which itself is a collection of hardware systems.

The gist of what we are discussing is what's important here. It's what's important in therapy. A shared language of gists so that the therapist can work with the client toward a shared goal. And according to this episode's guest, psychologist Britt Frank,

The shared language of parts work is very effective when it comes to improving lives, changing unwanted behaviors, becoming more productive, and so on. That is what we're going to discuss. That is what we're going to explore after this commercial break. Get my gist.

Under Biden, Americans' cost of living skyrocketed. Food, housing, auto insurance. Lawsuit abuse is a big reason everything's more expensive today. Frivolous lawsuits cost working Americans over $4,000 a year in hidden taxes. President Trump understands the problem. That's why he supports loser pays legislation to stop lawsuit abuse and put thousands back in the pockets of hardworking Americans.

It's time to make America affordable again. It's time to support the president's plan. I know for sure that most studies show that new habits fail simply because you don't have a plan. And without a plan, it's really hard to stick with a new habit or routine. That's why Prolon's five-day program is better than any trend out there. It's a real actionable plan that

for real results. Prolon. It was researched and developed for decades at USC's Longevity Institute. It's backed by leading U.S. medical experts. Prolon by El Nutra is the only patented fasting mimicking diet. Yes, fasting mimicking

You're going to trick your body and your brain into believing that you are fasting. And when combined with proper diet and exercise, it works on a cellular level to deliver potential benefits like targeted fat loss, radiant skin, sustained weight loss, and cellular rejuvenation.

So I received a five-day kit from Prolon. And let me tell you, right away, I knew this was going to be fun and fascinating. The kit comes in this very nice box with this very satisfying Velcro latch. They did a great job with this

presentation packaging. And inside, on the underside of the lid, you get this message often attributed to Hippocrates about letting food be thy medicine. And below that, a QR code that takes you to your personal page for guidance, tips, and tracking. And then under all that, each day's food, snacks, vitamins, and supplements packaged within its own separate box. Each day has its own box. And

When you get in there, right away, it looks like it's going to be easy and fun. And it was, both of those things. I was totally willing for all this food to taste bland and boring in service of the concept, in service of the mimicking of a fasting experience. But it turns out, it all tasted great. And day one,

is all set up to prepare your body for the program. And they give you everything you need to stick to it. It's very clearly designed by people who know what they're doing. And Prolon tricks your body into thinking you aren't eating. But here's the thing. It works without being painful because you do get to eat.

You eat all sorts of little bits and bobbles that are like minestrone soup and these crunch bars and olives. There's so much stuff in each day's kale. I've got one right here. Almond and kale crackers and a Choco Crisp bar, an intermittent fasting bar, minestrone soup, algal oil. I love how right away I was like, oh, I can't wait to try this stuff out. And yes, you do get hungry, but not nearly as hungry as I thought you would get.

it. And most importantly, by day three, I noticeably felt great. I had this, oh, I'm in on a secret feeling. And when it comes to hunger, by day five, I didn't feel like I was missing out on anything at all. The hunger was very minimal. And by the end of all this, my skin looked noticeably glowy and healthy and

And yeah, I lost six pounds. Six. It was easy to follow and I felt reset afterwards, like I had rebooted my system. To help you kickstart a health plan that truly works, Prolon is offering You're Not So Smart listeners 15% off site-wide, plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their five-day nutrition program. Just visit

ProlonLife.com slash Y-A-N-S-S. That's P-R-O-L-O-N-L-I-F-E dot com slash Y-A-N-S-S to claim your 15% discount and your bonus gift. ProlonLife.com slash Y-A-N-S-S.

The School of Thought. I love this place. I've been a fan of the School of Thought for years. It's a non-profit organization. They provide free creative commons, critical thinking resources to more than 30 million people worldwide. And their mission is to help popularize critical thinking, reason, media literacy, scientific literacy, and a desire to understand things deeply via intellectual humility.

So you can see why I would totally be into something like this. The founders of the school of thought have just launched something new called kitted thinking tools, K I T T E D thinking tools. And the way this works is you go to the website, you pick out the kit that you want and

There's tons of them. And the School of Thought will send you a kit of very nice, beautifully designed, well-curated, high-quality, each one about double the size of a playing card, Matt Cello 400 GSM Stock Prompt Cards.

and a nice magnetically latching box that you can use to facilitate workshops, level up brainstorming and creative thinking sessions, optimize user and customer experience and design, elevate strategic planning and decision-making, mitigate risks and liabilities, and much, much more. And each kit can, if you want to use it this way, interact with this crazy cool app.

Each card has a corresponding digital version with examples and templates and videos and step-by-step instructions and more. You even get PowerPoint and Keynote templates.

There's so many ways you could use this. Here's some ideas. If you're a venture capital investor, you could get the Investor's Critical Thinking Kit and use it to stress test and evaluate different startups for Series A funding. If you're a user experience designer, you can get the User Design Kit to put together a workshop with internal stockholders for a software product. Or if you're an HR professional, you could mix and match these kits to create a complete professional development learning program tailored specifically for your team over the course of the next decade.

So if you're the kind of person who is fascinated with critical thinking and motivated reasoning and intellectual humility and biases, fallacies, and heuristics, you know, the sort of person who listens to podcasts like you are not so smart, you're probably the kind of person who would love these decks. If you're curious, you can get a special 50% off offer. That's right. Have a look.

Half off offer right here. You can get half off of one of these kits by heading to kitted.shop, K-I-T-T-E-D.shop and using the code SMART50 at checkout. That's SMART50 at checkout. 5% of the profits will go back to the school of thought. So you're supporting a good cause that distributes free critical thinking tools all over the world on top of receiving a set of thinking superpowers in a box.

Check all of this out at kitted.shop or just click the link in the show notes. And now we return to our program. I'm David McRaney. This is the You Are Not So Smart podcast. And we are now going to listen to my interview with psychologist, therapist, trauma expert, author, speaker, science advocate, science communicator, and

Britt Frank about her new book, Align Your Mind. I'm Britt Frank. I'm a licensed neuropsychotherapist, trauma specialist, recovering hot mess, and author. You've got more than 10,000 hours with clients. You've done this for a long time. You sit down with people who need help and help those people, right? Am I correct?

That is, I actually clocked it. I hit about 12,000 plus client hours with me in the therapist chair. I don't know how many of me being in the client's chair, but yeah, I have done over 10,000 hours of therapy. So this is not a, I took a class for an hour and now I'm an Insta expert. This makes me feel better about asking you these questions about what it means to be a person. I love all of your work. And then I was astonished like, Oh my God, she's already has another book. What is this book? And yeah,

Align Your Mind is the title of this thing. For people who are not familiar with parts work, that's what this focuses on with shadow work and all sorts of other cool stuff in there. You say in the book that nothing in the therapeutic model is as effective as parts work. What do you mean? How can that be so? You

You really, truly believe this, Britt Frank? It's a big statement to say that of all the therapeutic frameworks and models and peer-reviewed double-blind placebo studies that have been done, this anecdotally parts work. And I'll explain what that means.

is the thing that I have seen move the needle personally and professionally, not in isolation. We need all the things. We need protein and we need sleep and we need, some people need psych meds. Great, I take them. But parts work as a way of life, a way of approaching how we think

Does unlock a whole bunch of stuff that things don't seem to get to thinking positive and chanting and affirmations are great. But there's a reason why the best wellness advice isn't effective for everyone all of the time. And so parts work is the thing that I have found. If I was stuck on an island with one tool left in my toolbox, psychologically speaking, it would be this one. It would be parts work. Okay.

Okay. And one of the things I love about parts work is that whichever expert is talking about it, whether that's you or some of the founders of this stuff, because it's been around for a while, they acknowledge these are helpful terms for things that we are probably a long way away from understanding at the super microscopic granular level.

But having a framework like this gives you the ability to work in a way that gets results. Okay. All right. I think you quote Neil deGrasse Tyson in the book that like past hard core physics, it gets blurrier and blurrier as we get out here. Still, there's the Jungian quote, until you make the unconscious conscious, it'll direct your life and you'll call it fate.

The world of psychology and the world, especially of therapy from many different modalities of therapy, these language frameworks for describing what's, what's happening at a deeper and deeper level, we're going to get down to molecules interacting with one another. But these appear at these higher levels, we're discussing how things are operating and how you can,

change your behavior and change your inner monologue and things it works is the thing it like this language that we're using is strange and blurry but the outcome of this therapeutic model parts therapy is tangible if you want to find evidence of that there's been plenty of research into that that shows that it is effective and worthwhile so let me just get this one thing out of the way before we get deeper what is the mind so and i say it like this because

The mind as a term is this nebulous, intangible abstraction, and it's useful as a reference point. If you're in neuroscience, it's one thing. If you're a proctologist, it's one thing. If you're a psychologist, it's one thing. If you're a philosopher, it's one thing. So I'm wondering for you, Britt Frank, in the context of this book, Align Your Mind, and in your work in general, what is quote-unquote mind?

It's so hard. And it's hard for me too, because my first book, the science of stuck did focus on science object, you know, things that you can study. If you cut open someone's head, you could see a brain. You can poke different areas and see what happens. If we poke this, the brain,

The mind is something that you can't put it in a test tube. You can't put it in a lab. And so I'm not going to sit here and say that I have solved the age old question of what is consciousness. What I can say is in my experience as a human and helping other people, human, it seems to be that the mind is the thing inside us that talks.

that has opinions. And I'm not talking about like audio hallucinations where you're hearing things externally. I'm talking about hearing what you're thinking. Some people don't have that. Some people genuinely have zero inner monologue. They don't hear their thoughts. And this framework is not super helpful. If you don't hear your thoughts, this is not the book for you. But all

But all of the people that come to my practice and all of the people for whom my work is helpful have some sense of hearing themselves think things like part of me knows don't do drugs.

But this other part of me seems to be hell bent on going in this direction. It's baked into our language. Part of me knows part of me doesn't. Do you realize how profound of a statement that is to say that there are two parts of me who both want different things, who are competing for the resources of time and energy? That's a big deal. And we say it like it's nothing. To think that you're arguing with yourself is a weird concept in Western thought.

I love that it took a minute for this to sort of get into our purview. But if you've ever said, why did I do that? Or what was I thinking? Here's mine that I say a lot. Why are you like this? I'll say that out of my mouth, like into the air, like with my actual teeth and gums. Why are you like this?

And then like, so who, who am I talking to? Who is listening? Who's the, what, which part of me is saying, why am I like this? And which part of me is hearing that? And I'm expecting to answer back.

If you've ever done anything like that, you already are a little bit down the line of understanding what we're doing here, right? That's a big part of it, right? It's absolutely bananas. And there's a comedian I love, Pete Holmes, and he does the most hilarious bits about the brain. And he does a thing where he said, all right, everyone in the room, sing happy birthday in your head. What the what is that? Because you...

you did it. I just did it. I'm hearing it. So who's the me that's singing and who's the me that's listening to the singing and how come that guy can tell me a thing and now I'm going through that song in my head. Brains are weird and minds are even weirder. So I'm

The framework of our mind is made of different parts. Like the movie Inside Out, Pixar is the closest thing I've ever seen to that's how our minds work. If you can talk to yourself and we all do it, we think to ourselves, we talk to ourselves. Parts work simply suggests making it a conversation, a dialogue instead of a monologue.

You have a most asked question in therapy, you say in the book. And you have had clients that are mega CEOs and troubled teenagers and everything in between. And the most asked question you say in the book is, how come part of me knows exactly what I need to do, but it's this other part of me that seems to take over and I don't seem to be able to get it done?

I would say that is the most the why. Why am I like this is sort of it runs concurrent. But why am I like this means why is it that part of me knows drink the water, hug the puppy, phone a friend. And this other part of me is binge watching White Lotus and doom scrolling till four in the morning. And so I stand by that. Why is it that I know the thing?

A lot of what makes us healthy and happy is not rocket science. We know what to do. We're drowning in information. Yes, we're more unhappy. We're more unhealthy. We're more depressed, quote. So Alan Watts says, problems that remain unsolvable are questions that ask the wrong way. And so if the question is, why is part of me going this way and part of me going that way? Why?

wouldn't it be reasonable to infer that we need to understand what the parts are? How are you supposed to solve a parts problem without a working framework of what parts are, how they work, how to work with them, and what this mess we call our mind is? We can all agree there's an electrified meatball thing going on here, but that electrified meatball invented tiramisu and went to the moon, so I'm okay with that. But to go to the moon, you have to, like,

have some sort of discipline when it comes to tiramisu, which is part of what parts work is all about. The, you have to say, yes, I want that, but I need to do this. And the best thing about parts work, and this was a total, I didn't know any of this till reading your book was I used to think that the part of me that wanted tiramisu instead of whatever else, or the part of me that wanted to do X instead of whatever else, or didn't want to eat right or exercise or, uh,

communicate or do the hard things i thought you had to like kill that part of you they did strangle it you had to lock it up in a cage and that that until that was handled in that way i was bad i was lesser than and sort of like i guess the question is what is parts work and what what are some of the big misconceptions that it immediately wipes off the board

Yeah, well, the whole kill your ego and banish your inner critic and take that part of you that likes to do the bad thing and lock it up in the closet and send it away. That doesn't work because if it worked, it would have. And you cannot get rid of parts of your own mind. You can't amputate consciousness like you can a physical body part.

And so and then here's the science where the science meets sort of the esoteric. If you think the enemy of your well-being lives inside your head and I have to kill something or banish something or tell something, you're a liar. Shut up. Well, your brain is really literal. Your brain is really smart, but it's also really simple in some ways.

Okay. If we are being attacked and we have to fight and kill and strangle, well, we better release cortisol because we got to get you ready to fight or to strangle or to attack, which is going to have very real physiological consequences. So this idea that our mind is made of parts and all of them when properly trained have a role to play, isn't this saccharine sweet, just being

nice to yourself, just accept yourself. There are real physiological implications of approaching the different parts of us, not with the war metaphor. So that was a really long-winded sidebar. What is parts work? Parts work is the idea that your mind, just like your body, just like any complex system that you've ever seen, is made by

of many moving parts and each part has a different job. Your endocrine system does a different job than your elbow and each thing needs a different intervention. You don't care for your kidneys the same way you do for your teeth.

And so we treat our minds like it's this one evil empire that's out to get us, that's out to sabotage us. And our job is to destroy it or to silence it. Now we wonder why are we anxious and depressed and burnt out and whatnot. Parts work is the idea that your mind, just like your physical body, if you know how to work it out, how to train it, how to nourish it, then things tend to work better. Okay. All right. And with you, there are probably...

Billions. There are hundreds and thousands of operating units. I have a great book from Marvin Minsky from back in the day, signed by Marvin Minsky, just want everybody to know, called Society of Mind, talking about this modular system of individual units. It's very GPT, LLM coded for these little operators that work up into more complex operators that interact with one another.

In parts work, we can make it much simpler by referring to them in different people who talk about this in different ways. We'll have different terms for the most active and largest operating parts that will be discussed in a therapeutic system. You have your own, and I dig them very much. You have protectors, reactors, story keepers, and weirdos. What are these parts and what do they do, Britt Frank?

So parts work is this umbrella idea that you're multiple, I'm multiple, our minds are a multiplicity. It's a multiverse.

I use the internal family systems framework, which was developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. And he's been studying this and doing this. He created this beautiful model. It's been his life's work. And I just took it and went rogue with it. And I'm like, this is the scrappy cousin of what's called IFS therapy. I wanted to take it out of the therapy room and make it in my way. Just really, really here, take this. Even if you never set foot in a therapist's office, you can work with your mind in this way. And he very,

generously blurb the book. I was terrified to send it to him. Hey, buddy, here's your life's work. Totally bastardized. So...

What I call the parts you can boil down to, we have protective parts, we have reactive parts, and then we have parts that need protecting. If you think of the sacred service, you've got the bodyguards and then the thing that they are protecting. And so inside your mind, your protector parts are the ones who try to prevent bad feelings or bad things. Your reactors are the ones who show up when that doesn't work.

And so both of them have the same objective, protect the brain from pain, even though like as a drug addict, you could argue rightly so that I was creating more pain by doing crystal meth is not a healthy coping skill for a trauma history. But if the objective is avoid the trauma history, then.

Then crystal meth is actually a quite useful. If we're just objectively going with, if the object of the game is avoid the trauma speed will help you to do that. It'll kill you in the process. That's why this idea of good and bad, there are good and bad behaviors, but this binary morality that we were taught, the good guys and the bad guys, drugs, bad sobriety, good. That model doesn't work for the complexity of our humanness. And so like,

Drugs are bad, yes. But if you don't know the function of what those reactors are trying to accomplish, then you're going to be fighting with yourself. And if you're fighting with yourself, you're kind of screwed.

So let me talk about these parts. So protector parts. So if I'm hearing you correctly, they're functional entities being generated by the brain in the thing we call the mind that are concerned with affecting your behavior in ways that will prevent you from feeling pain or prevent you from being harmed in some way. Is this sort of on the right track there?

Yeah. And people who are protector part dominant are the ones who are really controlling and try to manage everything and are anxious and try to anticipate every scenario ahead of time. And we all have all the parts. You know, we have a full set of characters in our heads. And because of life and genetics and trauma and whatever, some people are more protector parts dominant.

Other people have reactors who are addicts or who doom scroll, or it doesn't have to be high level bad things. Anything that you do that feels reactive. If I, every time I get frustrated, pop off on someone that is one of my reactors trying to prevent whatever it thinks is going to be bad. You can categorize them. And I know when I'm in my preventer, when I'm trying to anticipate every which and

neither is bad. Nothing is, you know, in this, in this framework, we have to take the morality out of it because if you don't get curious about function and you get focused on good versus bad, you're not going to be able to work with a complex system. The protectors are sort of anticipating future harm and the reactors are dealing with current, a current thing that's happening that can, can be dealt with in some way. Uh, as it seems like, and one is preventing pains when stopping pain, the, the,

And this already just with two parts, they can have competing agendas and there's already going to be like a cacophony in here. In the pursuit of their goals, they can be cross goal and they can make it harder for one thing to function than the other. And now the protector is protecting you from the reactor and the reactor is reacting to the protector and we're already in some complexity. Okay. What does the story keeper do?

And then it's who's in charge of all. So to concretize this and make it less abstract, I

I had a hard day at work and now I'm on my fourth glass of wine. Right there is the example of a reactor part showing up to try to calm you down. So I had a terrible day at work when you're optimized and your inner person that's in charge is fully doing its thing. You go for a walk or you read or you journal or whatever. But when we get home from a hard day and do our quote bad habits, that is a reactive system that is showing up.

And knowing that these, again, it's unexcused. People don't ever get to say, well, my parts made me do it. That's crap. But understanding what's going on is the antecedent to changing it because you're not going to be able to change a system. So we've got the protectors. We've got the protectees. The protectors are both preventer and reactor. And I lost track of your question. The story keepers, the story keepers. The story keepers, right.

So this is where humans are sort of, unfortunately, the gift and the curse of consciousness, right? If something happens, technically, it doesn't have a meaning until one of my story keepers goes through my file. So if you cross your eyes at me, it wouldn't make a difference to me. I don't have a file of when I was in seventh grade, someone crossed their eyes at me, and then something fell on my head.

And so anything that happens has to get filed through, what's my story about this? Do I have a story about this? And that's when our little thinker, in its effort to help, will assign a meaning to the thing. And that's where feelings come from. Feelings are the product of your story keeper taking a thing and assigning a meaning to it. And then you have this fourth category. I renamed it a little bit. I just call them the weirdos. I like that. So what are the weirdos up to? Yeah.

This is why I have such a huge problem with the idea of personality being the singular static fixed thing that is either normal or disordered. I have multiple personalities and so do you and so does everyone else. The weirdos are the ways in which we do weird things when no one's watching. I'm not talking about OCD behaviors that are unwanted, but we all do weird stuff. I'm not the

I'm not the only one who likes to clip my toenails and make them a little, a little pile and watch that pile build up. And you laugh because it's a thing. So, or you're just like, okay, Brit, you're a weirdo. Fine. It's just me. But we have weird food habits. You might be a stand in front of the fridge with a spoon, just eating things out of the container. We all do weird stuff when we're home and we think it makes us broken, but

Or just weird. But what if you just have a team of parts that like to pick at scabs or pop pimples or play with Nerf guns or whatever? Can that be okay for functional, intelligent adults to have weirdo parts? I get the sense that these weirdo parts are things you do that you're aware could create...

If there's another person watching, I might feel the emotion of shame. And that takes you down that whole pathway of, I would rather not be ostracized. I would rather not, I would rather not be gossiped about in a very particular way. So you have all these aspects of your behavior that are,

regulated and modulated for the purpose of avoiding shame. And if you're in a relationship, there can be a period of time where you get more and more comfortable doing certain things in front of the other person. But you might, you probably likely have this relationship

final, the final category, like this final stage of like, but I ain't ever doing that in front of them, but I, but, but I'm glad they're going on a work vacation because I get to do this. Right. I'm just kidding. Clearly we're where we contain multitudes. We're complex. These are sort of large umbrella categories that get more and more complicated as you go through them. But I dig the framework that you've created here. It introduces a question that,

in my mind, that is, so where is the self in all of this? My first thoughts here are, okay, does this suggest the self is completely an illusion? It's just the self is just some story I'm telling. Or is the self an amalgamation of many parts, but there's no self external to the parts? It's got to be a combination of parts.

Or is the self some sort of other type of entity that's more of like a orchestra conductor or the boss of all these things? Or are all these just attempts to make sense of something that's very difficult to articulate? Where are we at in all this? Well, you talked about the difficulty with trying to put words to things that are not explainable. And self is one of those things. So the answer to your musing is all of the above. Yeah.

Oh, great. I like the conductor. I like the inner CEO, if you like that framework. It's the observer. There's a way of framing. I think it's in a mindfulness training. I don't know who did it. That you're the river, not the fish. All right. So this brings us to the big question. And I want everyone listening to know, I love the way this book is written. You can jump in and out if you want to do it that way. You can take it at any speed. It's written in such a way so that if you want to get...

meticulous and dive deep, that's available to you. If you just want some bullet point lists to follow, those have been provided for you. If you would like to just know, yeah, what's the, what point are you driving at? You have sections where like, here's the point that I'm driving at. You, you have it set up so that you can,

Use this as a workbook, a textbook, or a nonfiction book that deep dives into a topic that you'd like to know more about. And that's really well done. Thank you for writing it in that way. You did actually make it very usable and readable, and I think that's awesome. So the main idea that we're getting to with all this parts work stuff, now that we have an idea of what we're talking about, is alignment.

And you've got a couple of different things in there. You've got alignment. You've got shadow work and relationship stuff. And you've got the mindfulness. There's all sorts of things. And we only have time for a couple of those. But one of the things we need to actually talk about before we run out of time is, okay, but also, but what is this alignment thing? What are we actually getting at? So what do you mean by aligned, Britt Frank?

That was, well, thank you. That was a nice setup there. So,

So this idea that we can smush our parts into this one blob and call that a whole self is just not possible. So when you align your spine, when you align your tires, it doesn't mean you get rid of them. It doesn't mean you mush them all into one entity. It means they're all working together. And so the parts of me that are critical,

The parts of me that want to do drugs, the parts of me that want to write books and do great things and help people, the parts of me that are really not altruistic at all and don't particularly like people. What if there's room at the table for all of them? The idea of alignment is that you don't have to, nor can you, even if you wanted to get rid of your parts, but you can like an orchestra. If you have a conductor, right?

Get it to a place where you're making music instead of noise. Even the most high level athletes have a coach and we treat our minds just like, oh, it's just going to do its thing. No coaching required. We need, if you look to the outside world, it does seem like someone needs to be in charge of a system for the system to operate efficiently. Alignment is the same idea taken inside. Like in the book, you mentioned a person who had a really, what seems like they have a really good job, but,

And they have this feeling they're walking around with like, I should be happy. I am not happy. And yeah,

What was going on there, if you remember? Yeah, I think it's tough for people who don't have high level trauma or any debilitating addiction or mental illness. People who are fine almost have it harder because objectively, this person and this is lots of people who I've treated have this. What's wrong with me? Right. I have a good job. My family's fine. Nothing bad is happening. Nothing really bad has happened. Yet I am really still not OK. I'm not super.

so unhappy as to feel miserable, but I'm just not feeling like this is my life. I feel like I'm in someone else's life. Something is not clicking. I mean, really what we call work-life balance should be called work-life alignment. Alignment is, are your choices in the external making sense with what you actually value, the things that are important to you, what you prioritize? Someone who really values lots and lots of community time

Like community is important. I'm an introvert. I don't need a lot of it to fill my tank. But someone who needs a lot of that living in a computer all day, every day is not going to be in alignment and they're going to burn out really fast because I'm an introvert. Put me in a cave for a month writing a book and not talking to anyone. I'm good. I need to come out because I'm still a mammal and I still need connection. But writing is very aligned with what I value, which is quite important.

and silence and slowness. So you can't live a life that's aligned with your values if you don't know what they are. And you can't know what they are if you don't know how to listen to your own thoughts. If we're trying to wrestle everyone to the ground, how are you supposed to know who you are, what you want, what you're about? You can't. You just kind of go on autopilot and get married and have the kids and do the job and pay the bills. And then before you know it, you're in my office going, what's wrong with me? Yes. And this particular client you write about in the book, they

They had this job that had no creative outlet with it. So they had no way to express themselves. They were wondering, should I have done that with my life? And they found an art class that they started going to. And this whole wing of their life opened up where they could express themselves artistically and keep the job. There's another client you had who she...

kept seeking partners who were a very specific sort of type, this very particular unavailable kind of person. And, uh,

You help them learn, well, how is this happening? What's going on in here to create that situation? And I love in each one of these, it's not about deleting that part of you. It's about how do I create a life in which all these parts are working together toward a shared goal instead of being in conflict in a way where I'm doing weird stuff to pretend like I can keep one of these quiet or whatever. It's a real epiphany for me to think of it this way.

I honestly, until reading this book did not think of, uh, I thought that, yeah, you just strangle these parts you don't like, or you, are you, you, you, they don't get to come, uh, you know, they're in the trunk of the car while you're going across country and your trip or whatever. That's the,

way I was like imagining it did how to deal with the aspects of me. I didn't like, or the, why are you like this? The question would, the answer would be because you fucking suck, man. That's why, like you got to stop sucking so much. That would, that would be the answer. A better question than why is who?

Why are you like this? All right. Whose thought is that? Which part? And so I really like reframing the why questions to the who questions, because which part of me is it that thinks that I suck? Because it's not all of it. It's very, very rare where I have seen someone systemically every part altogether reframing

in unison say you suck there's almost always a little part that's like well maybe we don't you wouldn't be in therapy if that weren't true right you wouldn't even listen to a podcast if there wasn't at least one part of you that thought perhaps i can learn my way out of this or perhaps there's a nugget of information that will make this make sense and so again life works better and you don't have to be worried about being good or bad again doing things is different but

But everything in your head doesn't count until it's acted out in a behavior. So if you don't have to worry about being a good person or a bad person internally, there's room. I have some really wild thoughts that go through my mind. And they're not things I would share because it's like, oof. If I held a microphone to your mind 24-7, I bet the same is true for all of us. For all of us. Yes. Yes. I can't.

Can confirm. Can confirm. And it's not just like that's more, this is unacceptable on my own terms in lots of ways. So which means based off this parts work framework, what parts of me are feeling that towards the other parts of me? Like the meta question is the part that's going to get you farther down the line of living the life that you're keeping yourself from living. And I think the part of the book that I love

Just couldn't get enough of the part that, that maybe it made sense to me in a way that it had never really made sense to me before was you have a whole chapter on shadow work. And with the time we have left, I would like to do a little deep dive on this shadow work thing. I think anyone who's taken psychology one-on-one has probably heard about this whole shadow stuff. And it seems like something from the early days of psychology before it seems like from the days we were still doing like frontal lobotomies and stuff that it just seems a little too, uh,

mystical to be applicable to modern practice. But that's not what this is about. It actually was sort of anticipating a lot of things that would take a lot of research for us to finally lay a foundation for. It was anticipating concepts of how the brain generates a mind that engages in behaviors and feels feelings, does that. So let me open with what is the shadow of

And what do you mean shadow work? Yeah, let's demystify and de-woo the whole thing. And the first time I came in contact with that idea, it was studying Jung, but I'm sure he didn't come up with it. But if you look on your website,

Look on your wall right behind you. You've got shadows on your wall. There's nothing weird, mystical or woo about the fact that there are shadows on your wall. It's when an object blocks the light, it casts a shadow. Boom, done there. Nailed it. Psychological shadows are anytime your awareness is blocked. That's going to create a shadow. A psychological shadow, simply put, is anything about yourself that you are not connected with.

And people think that shadows are bad. Oh, well, my jealousy and my gossip and my whatever. But shadows are anything that you're not connected with, including your power, your strength, your creativity, whatever the thing. Celebrity culture is very much shadow work played out because if you look at people who worship celebrities, it's because they've shadowed whatever quality they most admire about that celebrity in themselves.

I love this side of psychology. I love that this is a real illustration of what I was describing earlier. This is clearly a metaphor. We're clearly using, we're bending language to try to talk about something that's very difficult to talk about. And if we were able to look at the source code of all the stuff that we're describing, it wouldn't make any sense to us at all. I love this idea of the distance between your authentic self and the person you believe you should be.

is sort of the measure of the length of the shadow. And the brain is only, it just wants to keep you alive. And it's not necessarily concerned with keeping you happy or anything else.

And one of the deepest fears, the deepest fear, according to my previous investigations of all this is the, is social death is the most frightening thing ever. The ostracism and rejection and everything that goes along with it, loss of reputation, loss of status, and the idea that you are going to be shamed publicly and ridiculed and been eventually ostracized from your group that in the previous incarnation of the human experience was straight up death and

And the brain anticipates this could happen. How do these shadows form? You talk about all these things that create this anticipation within you of, that's a bad thing to do because that will lead to the type of shame that I do not want to experience.

One example would just be children should be seen and not heard. And at some point, that's how you understand the world works. The only person you can ever trust is a member of your family, nobody outside your family, stuff like that. Tell me a little bit more about how these shadows form and how they become incorporated into the way we make sense of the world.

I mean, thinking is hard and creating a personality or multiple personalities is hard. But all of the thoughts that we think did not originate fully baked inside our head. So to do shadow work again, sounds so woo. It's simply saying, where did this belief come from? And if you don't know the answer, that's fine. A better question than where did it come from is how's that working for me? Yeah.

Like, how's it working? Do you really want to? I remember I have a financial planner who I met in a parts work training and an IFS training. He's great. And he because people make financial decisions from the most irrational, illogical places in their minds. So he figured I should learn parts work if I'm going to be working with money.

And we had to undo all of my money stories because they were so ingrained in me from the culture I grew up in. I didn't even know I could question them. Like, did you know you can, I know you know this, that's why I love your work. Did you know you can change your mind about anything?

any time. It's okay. In fact, it's part of what makes life really good that we can shift gears and not be stuck. You know, a piece of music that's one note played sustained is torture, but the ability to shift between dissonance and resolution and the space between the notes, that's what makes life really rich and beautiful. So it's okay to question your beliefs and change them. Yes. This is, to me, this is like all the

I love all of the motivational interviewing, all the technique rebuttal stuff that I talk about all the time. They're all frameworks to help a person

arrive at the true motivations of their behavior, right? So much of the story you tell yourself is going to be justification or rationalization and just sort of stopping when you feel like you got it and you don't have to go any deeper. Robert Sapolsky likes to talk about how far back do we want to go? Like, why did I do X? Or why am I engaging in this behavior? Why did I respond that way? Like, you can start...

Well, let's discuss what contributed to that over the last 15 seconds. And then what contributed that over the last 15 minutes, 15 days, 15 months, 15 years, like

the motivations that build up to this, some of them are going to be things that happened in your childhood. And some of these are going to be things that happened over the course of the last few million years, as we evolved into the form that we are in right now. And our basal ganglia got more complicated than, you know, a cod, but the, the, and we just got a basal ganglia, like not all the animals got that. Like, like the, the only the bilateral, uh, bilaterally symmetrical animals went that way. The, the,

the radial symmetry stuff, they don't even have one. So like all that stuff contributes to why you are a doom scrolling or why you did not answer that text message from that person that you really ought to have answered that text message from, or why you dated that person you ought not have dated. All these things contribute, right? The fascinating thing is like in one of these conversations in which another person is engaging in helping a person get at all that is how they

it can be astonishing, but it's in there. It can be astonishing to you yet. You could still arrive at it if you were like work at it a bit, but that's the part that always astonished me. Like the ability to arrive at what is the true motivation for my behavior is possible and accessible if I do the work. And once I have that in front of me, I have a whole new power over what's going to happen next. That's,

Shadow work to me. You list all these things that we, shadow work, the shadow stuff usually clogs up. Personal stuff, family, cultural trauma, relationships, family. In the what to do aspect of our conversation, I'd like to spend a little time on what to do. And you have this nice framework, which is regulate, excavate, activate.

What are we talking about here, Britt Frank? What is regulate? What is excavate? What is activate? I'll start with regulate. Basically, regulating means before we can do parts work or shadow work or cognitive anything, we have to make sure that our brain is not on fire. So fight, flight, freeze physiology is, I don't say the enemy, but it does not play nicely with plans or goals or dreams or efforts.

efforts to align or anything like that. So before you get into the why am I like this? First thing is what's my body doing? If I was a car, am I grinding my gears? Am I in fifth? Am I stuck in first? Where is my body right now? Am I shut down and freeze? Am I like ready to punch someone in the face? You cannot do any type of good work if you are not emotionally regulated. So your nervous system is out of fight, flight, freeze or fawn if we want to get technical and go with all of the Fs. So

So if you're not in a people-pleasing trauma response or fight-flight-freeze, that's regulate. That work has to come before any of this other stuff happens. Otherwise, you're not going to be able to observe. You can't observe your mind while it's on fire, or it's really hard to. So the next step is to excavate. I love this. You get to become a private detective for...

What is motivating my behavior? And this is where you, people are so great. We are all great at being dishonest. Like this is where you have to be honest. It's where you have to get honest with yourself. And if you, if you ever have seen someone craftily deny and get, and like have that denial taken away from them and sort of like a courtroom type setting and how they like will work, what they'll like move one layer down and get that will,

Like, why'd you do that? Well, I was, I was, uh, I, I had a lot of work to do that week and I wasn't able to be there because I had other obligations. Well, it says right here on the calendar that you didn't have any obligations that day. Well, yeah, but it wasn't that. And you can hear them like you could just hear it. Oh, they're about to come up with a secondary. And then you'll have to work them out of every one of these until there there's no, nothing, no justification around rationalization available. And they'll have to actually be honest. Um,

There's a sort of some of that in the excavate part of this where they're trying to figure out why is this happening? You list things like really good clues. You were talking about people you admire, whether it's a person in your private life or a celebrity, that there's a certain sort of what is it about that person that's a really good clue as to where some of the shadow stuff is at. What else is in there if anything comes to mind?

Yeah. And jealousy is a good one, too. We talk about these qualities like they're good or bad. And you can't excavate if you've got a lot invested in being right.

Because that guy that's making all those excuses is doubling down because if he's wrong, then he's shamed and shunned because now he's a quote bad person. So if we can take good and bad off the table and know you're good, you're bad, you're kind, you're mean, all of the things. Great. Now we can excavate without fear because we're not invested in what we find. If I go inside and I find a really jealous, catty, gossipy 16 year old,

Great. That doesn't mean that's who I am. We've already established the self, the I is not the parts. So I can go in and find even the most pleasant, not happy, not collaborative parts of me and not take that on as my identity. And so regulate is required to be able to excavate. Who do we admire? Who are we jealous of? You're not going to get jealous of people that are doing things you don't want to do. Like all the homesteading people on Instagram. I'm not, I don't

I don't want chickens. I want to eat. I don't, I have no desire to have chickens. Like I want you to do it because I do value those eggs, but I'm not jealous of homesteader people who have chickens. I don't want them, but I'm incredibly jealous of people who are writing awesome books and giving amazing talks and going to cool places and,

The jealousy is a cue. It's a clue. So if we take all of these impulses that we have, and instead of saying, now this means I'm a bad person and go, oh, it's a clue. What do you do with clues? You don't sit on them. You follow them. And so excavate is simply taking the clues that are lying everywhere. They're all over their inner triggers. They're in the thing. That's why I really don't like this idea that we should avoid triggers.

or somehow coddle or walk around them because triggers are maps to all of the good stuff. Like it's unpleasant. I don't like being triggered. I have,

have PTSD and complex PTSD and being triggered is unpleasant. It's objectively uncomfortable. And if you never get triggered, how are you supposed to know who's in there who might need your attention? It's the same thing. Like if you have an injury, the inflammation is a sign that it needs attention without the inflammation. How are you going to know to pay attention?

Well, there's two, you have too many great lines like that. I like we're almost out of time and I'll never get to everything. I love every little great line that's in here doing the same thing over and over. It isn't a sign of insanity. It's a sign of pain. Addiction is what happens when our desire to avoid pain outweighs our capacity to endure it. It's nonstop stuff like that. There's a third part in this though, which is, uh, after excavate is activate.

What does that mean? Right. What is this nonsense? So activate basically means you got to do a thing. We have to do things. Nothing changes if we don't do things. Muscles don't grow if you don't rip them apart and brains don't grow if you don't challenge them. I don't like the design, but I didn't design it in order to change anything, your mind, a habit to make something better, to fix a relationship or whatever. We're going to have to do things. But the

But the problem is, like you said, our brains aren't wired for success. Our brains are wired for survival. So from a pattern prediction point of view, our brains don't want us to do things. Doing things involves risk and rejection and getting eaten by lions.

So in order to activate our let's do the things system and capacity, we have to make them so small you feel stupid doing it. And I call these micro yeses. And so a micro yes, think of a baby step cut into 20 pieces.

A micro yes is so small that you actually feel like an idiot doing it. If you don't feel silly doing it, it's not small enough. And the reason micro yeses create activation energy is because they don't freak out your brain. It's sort of like the Mission Impossible and maneuvering under the laser beam situation. Mm-hmm.

or entrapment where Catherine Zeta-Jones is doing her thing. So a micro yes allows you to then break inertia and change a pattern. And so to change a pattern, you don't have to have a big giant moonshot. You just need enough activation energy in a different direction. And then those micro, so a micro yes for a fitness goal isn't take a walk. It's throw your left sneaker by the door. And that's all you do today. And then tomorrow you throw the other one. That's dumb. I know.

And it will allow you to bypass your brain's protective system. So then you build momentum. So then by the time your brain's protective system detects a change, you've already acclimated it. And it knows, oh, well, this is what we do now. So, okay, no problem. I'm not going to shut it down with fight, flight, freeze. I'm not going to deploy protectors or reactors. Micro yeses are not sexy, but they get the job done. So

I want to ask one last question. That question is, you say in the book, your inner critic is your ally. That's a quote. That's a quote from Britt Frank.

What do you, what do you, what could you possibly mean? My inner critic is my ally. Isn't that so just hot take counterintuitive? Yes, it is right now in this moment, it's still a hot take for me. I want to know, I want to hear you explain it.

Well, process of elimination. You can't kill it. You can't banish it. You can't silence it. You can't listen to it literally or else you'll never do anything and you'll feel terrible. So if we've exhausted all of these ideas about it, what if we started with the assumption that the inner critic was, in fact, an ally? What would change? What would change? Everything changes. I'm not saying it's a skillful ally when that little voice tells me, Brit, you suck. No one's going to read your stupid book.

book, you should just burn it all. And then at least you'll be useful by creating fire. Like I

Like, I'm not going to take that literally. But if I can start with the assumption that the critic is an ally, then I go, okay, decoded. What is that part afraid of? Oh, that part's afraid of rejection. Check. Got it. That part is afraid that if I write something or if I put something out into the world and it doesn't work, that I will lose social esteem and then I will be left out of the tribe and then all of the wild animals will come eat me.

That's a protective impulse. That is not an aggressive hostile. It's not trying to hurt me. And I really I don't even think I put this in the book. But a really interesting thing to check in with yourself about is how old do you think your inner critic is? We assume that it's an angry parent or a teacher. But what if your inner critic was a terrified toddler? I hate you. You stink.

From a toddler generally means I need a nap, a hug, or a snack. Often it's the same with us. So we have to decode our critics' voice and not take the messages so literally. I don't want to stop talking to you. I have a million more things to talk about. I maybe got through a third of what I wanted to discuss. I want everyone listening to know the book is...

such an actionable item. Like it's not just, Oh, that's neat. I'm glad I knew about that. You will come away from it with, well, what, okay. If that's true, then what do I do? And then you just tell us what to do. It's amazing in that way. So I really appreciate you writing a book in that form. And I always enjoy talking to you about whatever it is you're up to. This is a really cool thing to be up to. I truly feel like I've got some advantages I didn't have before. Thanks to this. And yeah,

I want people to read this book. I do want people to actually read this book. I will receive no, like, I'm not going to get any kind of like financial, like payoff for this. I want you to read the damn book. It's a great book. It's called Align Your Mind. Britt Frank, with the one minute you have left, how do people find you? How do people find what you're up to? And what are you about to be up to? Thank you so much. This is so fun. So find me on Instagram at Britt Frank, my website, BrittFrank.com. You can buy Align Your Mind everywhere you buy books.

Cool. And like what weird ass stuff are you about to do? I'm about to do a circus solo at a big theater downtown hanging upside down at a height. I'm very uncomfortable spinning at a speed that makes me want to puke in sequence. It'll be super rad. That's awesome. And you've done, you recently did standup comedy and doing circus stuff. You're helping people get their brain working for. I appreciate all of your work. And I thank you for giving me all this time. Thank you so much, Britt Freck. Thanks for having me on.

That is it for this episode of the You Are Not So Smart podcast. For links to everything that we talked about, head to youarenotsosmart.com or check out the show notes right there. Inside your podcast player, you can find my book, How Minds Change, wherever they put books on shelves and ship them in trucks.

Details are at davidmcraney.com. And I'll have all that in the show notes as well, right there in your podcast player.

Britt Frank. Just go to BrittFrank.com. Find Britt Frank on all the social media sites as Britt Frank. Her book is Align Your Mind. On the David McCraney homepage, you can find a roundtable video with a group of persuasion experts featured in the book, How Minds Change. And you can read a sample chapter, download a discussion guide, sign up for a newsletter, read reviews and more. For all the past episodes, go to

Go to Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, Audible, Spotify, or youarenotsosmart.com. Follow me on Twitter and threads and Instagram and blue sky at David McRaney. Follow the show at NotSmartBlog on Twitter. We are also on Facebook slash youarenotsosmart. And if you'd really like to support this one person operation, no editors, no staff, no writers, just me,

me go to patreon.com slash you are not so smart pitching in at any amount we'll get you the show ad free but at the higher amounts you get posters t-shirts signed books and other things the opening music that's clash by caravan palace and the easiest way and it's very helpful to support this show this project this whole thing is just tell somebody about it tell everyone about it

Tell someone about the episode that you really, really liked. Give them a link and check back in about two weeks for a fresh new episode of the You Are Not So Smart podcast.

Under Biden, Americans' cost of living skyrocketed. Food, housing, auto insurance. Lawsuit abuse is a big reason everything's more expensive today. Frivolous lawsuits cost working Americans over $4,000 a year in hidden taxes. President Trump understands the problem. That's why he supports loser pays legislation to stop lawsuit abuse and put thousands back in the pockets of hardworking Americans.

It's time to make America affordable again. It's time to support the President's plan.