We Are All... ON THE SPECTRUM | with Bianca Thomas

Key Takeaways:

- Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) helps reshape thoughts and beliefs.

- Personal trauma can significantly impact mental health and relationships. Your past and your trauma only defines you to the degree that you allow it to. 

- Acknowledging your pain is the first step to healing.

Licensed mental health counselor Bianca Thomas, blends cognitive behavioural therapy with warmth, humor, and lived experience, showing how honest self-examination can move you from pretending to be okay to actually building a life that feels stable, meaningful, and yours. Bianca opens up about growing up in a strict, image-driven environment, and the relationship that compounded her pain. She explains how she recognized patterns consistent with borderline personality disorder and what changed when a business partner challenged her to do the real inner work.

Bianca speaks to the need for awareness, personal responsibility and getting the help we need. She emphasizes that we've all at one point fallen on the spectrum of various mental health disorders, due to the symptoms we generally tend to experience while dealing with life's challenges. We dig into stigma, speaking on why asking for help still feels risky, how shame keeps people stuck, and why labels describe clusters of human experiences rather than moral flaws. We conclude with a final takeaway that, you can’t control where you started, but you can choose the meaning you make from it and the behaviours you practice next. 

All links to our guest's work and official site

Website ➡️ https://evolveventurestech.com 

YouTube ➡️ @EvolvewithBianca 

TikTok ➡️ https://www.tiktok.com/@evolvewithbianca

Instagram ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/evolvewithbianca/

Books Mentioned: The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic Culture, Dr. Gabor Maté with Daniel Maté

Chapters

• 0:00 Warm Welcome And Laughter
• 8:20 Naming The Unease We Avoid
• 10:55 Meet Bianca: CBT And Mission
• 17:00 Bianca’s Story Of Breaking And Growth
• 27:40 What CBT Is And Isn’t
• 35:20 Spotting When Life Isn’t Working
• 44:10 “Too Broken To Change” Challenged
• 53:10 Stigma, Judgment, And Asking For Help
• 1:00:20 Borderline Personality Disorder Explained

Transcript

Kertia: 0:00

Hello everyone. Welcome back to the other side of fear. I'm your host, Kertia Johnson. In this conversation, I must say it was so much fun. I had a blast speaking to my guest, Bianca Thomas. Now, for the first three to four minutes, we were just laughing it up. We were being really silly. But yeah, it was all in good fun. So Bianca, she is a licensed mental health counselor who specializes in cognitive behavioral therapy. She's very passionate about trauma recovery and helping others to build that inner love and confidence for themselves. Now, coming off of this conversation, one thing I'd say is that too many of us, for far too long, we know we're not okay. At some point, a lot of us come to experience this deep feeling or sense of unease within our bodies, within our lives, with how we feel. And sometimes we often don't have the words to explain what that feeling is, but we can acknowledge that it's there. And what a lot of us tend to do is we try to explain that feeling away with all sorts of things, like maybe you're just tired and need a break, or maybe it's time for another vacation, right? And some of us even try to numb this feeling, of course, with alcohol, drugs, sex, or any other type of numbing agent that's out there, because there are many now. But the thing is, we we hide from this feeling, we distract ourselves from these things that seeps into ourselves, into every aspect of ourselves, and it eats away at us. And we insist, we insist on carrying on and pushing through, pretending to be okay, when we're really not. But the signs are all there. The signs are always there in our day-to-day thoughts when we look around our immediate environment. What do you see? How regulated is your life? How regulated are your emotions? How healthy are your relationships? The conversations that you're having every day. What do they sound like? How healthy is your relationship with yourself? How do you speak about yourself or to yourself when no one is looking? And what are you doing each day to feed your soul? What are you doing to give back to yourself? What are you consuming? How are you loving yourself? And as Bianca said, not the fluffy concept of love, not the concept of love that relies on some type of external product or thing or validation, but real deep love for yourself internally, you know, because we've all been through something, some of which at one point may have seemed impossible to get through. But it's not just about surviving, it's not just about surviving the things that we've been through. We must also attend to the wounds that were created from those experiences to recognize that healing is our responsibility. Our healing rests on no one else but us. So with that being said, let's get into this beautiful conversation that I had with Bianca. Oh, what was it before?

Bianca: 4:53

So when I first started um like podcasting and my mission partner and I started our business together, do you know those like um oh my god, what are they called? Like the little leaves that you can buy, like from Amazon. It was just randomly draped in my background with like I just I set it up so badly, it's not even funny. And then I just started putting more random stuff on my wall, and it was like this looks low-key ratchet as hell. So let me not do this. So as I like when I moved into this new place, I was like, I need to actually set this up, make it look professional, and make it not look like a toddler came and like tried to do a school project. It was a real fun time.

Kertia: 5:42

That was actually so funny.

Bianca: 5:45

I I am not creative in that sense. I I do want to put the uh like wall paneling, like the wood paneling eventually, but yeah, eventually. I'm not doing that myself. I'll destroy the wall. Like, let someone else do it. I'll break it. You gotta know yourself, you know what I mean?

Kertia: 6:08

Exactly. Know your strands.

Bianca: 6:11

Yeah, that's not one of mine, not even remotely.

Kertia: 6:16

Oh, that's hilarious. Oh gosh. I mean, the wall looks good though. So it doesn't look ratchet. There we go.

Bianca: 6:24

So the way that I set it up was ratchet as hell. I'm like standing on this chair and it's like swiveling around. I have like a hammer in my hand. I'm like trying to hammer it into the wall. I'm like, I shouldn't be allowed to use heavy machinery. And in my case, a hammer is heavy machinery.

Speaker 3: 6:41

It was just ridiculous.

Kertia: 6:46

It's the heavy machinery for me. Oh man, that is too funny. That is too funny.

Bianca: 7:02

Listen, you know your strengths, you know your weaknesses, you play on them accordingly. That is not mine.

Kertia: 7:09

Yes, yes, yeah, I agree. Oh gosh, that was a good laugh. Oh, that was so funny. I love it though. I love it. It's the hammer though. The hammer. Oh gosh. No more machines for you.

Bianca: 7:57

Yeah, seriously.

Kertia: 8:10

Oh gosh, okay, okay. Let me settle myself. Oh man, all right. So I guess we'll jump into mental health, I think. It is. Laughter is the best part of mental health, yeah.

Bianca: 8:38

I'll be sitting in sessions with clients, and I'll just say some of the dumbest things ever, and they'll start dying laughing. That happened yesterday. One of my clients is going through, like, she's about to enter into like a pretty bad breakup. And I don't remember what I said, but I just cracked the dumbest joke because she and I just have that rapport. It's like she knows. She just looked at me like, what the hell is wrong with you? And then just started dying laughing. And then I made a lesson out of it, so it worked out, but I love that.

Kertia: 9:17

I love that.

Bianca: 9:18

That's definitely the the approach that I take with therapy is just being a real person. Yeah. You know, like nobody wants to sit in front of a therapist who they feel is a stiff and who's judging them, and it's just ultra professional. Like I've never, I've never taken that route with it. And I and I sincerely believe it's made such a difference with the clients that I work with because they're like, oh, this is a real person sitting in front of me. Like, it's not like me just sitting there taking notes, going, hmm, the entire time. It's like if like it feels real.

Kertia: 9:59

That is beautiful. That makes all the difference for real, though. I love that. So tell me more about your practice and how you help people.

Bianca: 10:11

So I got my degree in cognitive behavioral therapy. So I'm a licensed mental health counselor. Technically, I I got my degree in clinical counseling psychology. And the specialty that I do is CBT. And I've been doing it for about five, six years now. I think I started my program in yeah, I we started in 2019. So I've been doing this for six years. And what drew me so deeply to it was my life like as a child and the things that I had gone through and going through life feeling broken. And so when I heard about this program, it was like, oh, that doesn't have to be what life is. Like, there is another to this, there is something else, there's more. And then I started learning more about CBT and about um how our thoughts and our beliefs really shape everything. And it just fascinated me. So going through that and then being very into personal development and growth, I really combine those two things in my therapy practice, and then obviously my humor and low-key insanity, but it makes it a really good blend and mix. So, like I work with a lot of trauma survivors, I work with a lot of people who've struggled with severe clinical depression, anxiety, relationship challenges, um, family of origin issues. And part of what I do, and honestly, the biggest part of what I do is really helping people to see that there's another side to what life could be. That life doesn't just have to be low self-worth and hating yourself and fear and misery. Like there's so much more that life can be if you're willing to put in the work. And because that's exactly what I had to do. Like that was the exact journey that I had to take for myself. And it made all the difference for me. And it's the only reason why I can now do this for other people.

Kertia: 12:31

Amazing. Tell me more about your own journey and why it was important for you because you know, like that kind of leading you to get that, be interested in the work that you're doing right now. What were some of the things that you also had to work through? And how did CBT help you? And did you also use um any other healing modalities to help you along the way? Yeah, for sure.

Bianca: 12:59

Growing up, I was in a very, very old school Middle Eastern family. So they had very, very strong and strict beliefs about who a child was supposed to be, who the daughter was supposed to be. It was very family-centered and very image-centered. So everything was about appearance, everything was about what you look like and making sure that you looked good for everyone else in the culture. And my parents, I love them to death, but they were very emotionally unintelligent and very emotionally dysfunctional. My entire culture was, and my entire family was. But growing up in that, it was really hard for me. I struggled at a really, really young age. I rebelled from a really, really young age. Now I know looking back, I had borderline personality disorder. And I didn't, nobody knew what it was, and nobody knew that that's what it was, but it developed over the years from years and years and years of basically being told I was a problem and consistently being invalidated, and chaos was ensuing in the house, but we nobody was allowed to talk about it. And I was basically the siren being told, keep quiet, keep quiet, don't talk about it. So obviously I rebelled, and I was like, I'm gonna cause mayhem because something needs to happen. Like, it's not okay. It's not okay that we're fighting all the time. It's not okay, all of these things that are happening. And I rebelled so hard that I ended up in a relationship with someone for four years where I was being mentally, emotionally, and sexually abused. And I didn't want anyone to know, and I didn't want my family to be right. So I didn't tell them. I didn't tell anybody what was actually going on behind the scenes. I didn't tell anyone how he was blackmailing me and manipulating me to stay with him. And it broke me. Like I had already I had already felt broken. I already felt like I was this worthless, broken, unlovable human being. But being in that relationship, and when I finally got out of it, it was like I'm so lost, and I am so broken, and I don't know who I am, and I don't know. I was naive. I didn't know anything. Yeah. So I'm like stumbling through life, trying to figure out who I am and what everything is. And eventually I meet these mentors of mine who introduced me to personal development and growth, and they were the first people to ever sincerely believe in me. And they were like, there's so much more for you. There's so much more that you could be, but like you're getting in your own way. And I was in school for psychology at the time, so it's not like I was ignorant to these concepts, but I think there's a difference between cognitively understanding it and then actually embodying it and actually being behind the scenes doing the work of it. So they're the first people to ever see anything in me. And then I meet my business partner, Emilia. We actually met doing uh Muay Thai. I don't know if you know what that is. It's M M A basically. That's so cool. She beat the living hell out of me and we became best friends from it. Because apparently I was the only one that could take a punch. So she's like, I like you. I was like, hey, I like you too. And then we basically, it just was off to the races from there. That's so cool. So we started our podcast in 2020, right when the pandemic was happening. So we were gonna do everything in person. The pandemic happened. It's like, oh, cool, we can do everything online. So we started building this online podcast, this online business. We are growing, we started developing a team. I graduated from my master's degree, and I moved out. And after that, everything kind of started tumbling down because all of the inner work that I had never actually done, all of the challenges that I had basically been running away from and all of the responsibility that was being put on me basically became so much that it just all caught up and I couldn't handle it. And I was basically pretending and making it seem like I was so confident and I knew what I was talking about because I was basically trying to put on a show, trying to prove to everybody and really trying to prove to myself that no, no, no, no, I can do this. I can do this, I'm not broken. So my business partner and I end up having a conversation and she's like, B, I care about you so much. I care about you so much, but like, we can't do this anymore. You have so much growth you have to do. You, you're you're still struggling from your past, you're struggling from the relationship that you had with your family, the abuse and the trauma that you never processed through this is hurting us. And she's like, I don't want this to end, but we need to change something. So she's like, here's what we do. We can either go our separate ways and I will love you from afar. So we'll basically liquidate everything, you'll take your half, I'll take mine, and we'll go our separate ways and I'll do my own thing. Or really take some time and do the work. Do the work, work on yourself, go to therapy again, heal your trauma, and we'll continue everything, but you're not gonna be in the same space you were in. And I really had to take some time and think about it because it was like, holy hell, my deepest fear just came true. I just got found out. Everyone's deepest fear of imposter syndrome, it just happened to me. I was found out for being an imposter. Yeah, and I was like, okay, what do I want to do here? And I was like, I can't let this be the story of my life. That I had an opportunity to really become something, to become more than the broken little girl who never thought she was enough, who was pretending to be confident and pretending to be more than she was, but deep down she felt broken and insecure. And it was like, I'll do whatever I have to do. So I started going to therapy. I was already doing coaching, so I ramped up the coaching that I was doing, I ramped up the therapy that I was doing, and I really just started doing the work. I was building that scaffolding that was never there before, like really building that innermost part of me that I was terrified of and really taking the time to become this woman that I never felt I could be. And I gave up basically my entire past, I gave up the good that I had to become better and to become something greater, and to really make something of myself, and really having to challenge and dive into the deepest fear that I wasn't enough and that I was unwanted and that I was alone. Yeah. And doing that, it is the only reason why I am where I am today. Getting to teach other people basically how to do the exact same thing through CBT, through inner work, and through really learning how to love yourself and not in like the fluffy feel-good way, but real, true, deep-seated self-love. Yeah. And uh teaching people to do that now through podcasts like this, through our own podcast, through the business, through therapy, through speaking engagements. It was basically going from this broken little girl to this woman who gets to teach all of these people how to do the same. And that's what really inspired me into CBT because it was like, I did it. I know it works, and now let's help you.

Kertia: 22:07

Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing that, Bianca. I love um, you know, like how you just gave us the transition from where you were to where you are now and what it took for you to get there. I love for you to dive into because there's different um types of therapy. And I think a lot of times when people think about the field of psychology or think about psychologists in general, I think a lot of people are kind of unaware that there are different types of therapy and healing modalities under that umbrella. So I'd love for you to talk about CBT and what that entails and how that kind of like differs a little bit, but we can't go through all the different types. There's so many, but like how that would differ from like another one, for example.

Bianca: 23:03

Yeah, for sure. So CBT is the primary modality that I use, but I also use a lot of other ones because I'm I don't believe that the best therapy is to be a one-trick pony. I I believe that every modality has its value, but you have to be grounded in one of them. Like you have to have at least a deep understanding of one.

Speaker 1: 23:23

Yeah.

Bianca: 23:23

And then, you know, over time you can build the skills of the other ones because they all really feed into each other.

Speaker 1: 23:30

Yeah, they do.

Bianca: 23:31

Like you can't you can't isolate them. You have to look at the whole person. And I really believe that all of the different therapy modalities give you an opportunity to look at one version. And when you can put them all together and you can be really skillful in using them, then you get to actually help the whole person, which is what I really aim to do as a therapist and you know, the work that people actually need. So, what CBT does is CBT basically looks at how your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors shape your world. So CBT has the idea that over the span of our life, we develop these core beliefs, we develop these ideas and we develop these notions of ourself, of the world and other people from the experiences that we have. And when you mix that with genetics and like epigenetics and the brain, and you mix all these things together, that ultimately shapes the person that you're gonna be in the way you see the world. And it frames the way that you perceive life. And so, what CBT looks to do is to really understand okay, what is that lens through which you are seeing the world? How are you seeing yourself? How are you seeing others? How are you seeing the way it all works? Is it serving you or is it not serving you? And then let's kind of pull it apart and modify it so that you can see things more clearly, so that you can see it not through the distorted lens of a broken childhood like me. My entire belief structure was I'm broken. So every interaction and every experience was through the lens of, well, I'm broken and nobody wants me, and I'm a problem and I'm a bad person. And I have this diagnosis, and that makes something terrible of me. And I didn't know what it was. I actually only recently realized that that's what it was, and I've done so much work to heal it. I'm very low on the spectrum now. But because everything is a spectrum, right? So, like I'm very low on the spectrum now, but it used to be a lot higher when you know my life was very dysregulated. Yeah. And CBT was one of the primary things that allowed for me to really understand why I do think about myself the way that I do. Why is it that when I'm going into a situation, I really assume everybody hates me or something is deeply wrong with me. And then why am I reacting based on that? So I CBT is the primary one that I'll use. I also adore internal family systems. I'm not sure if you've ever heard of it.

Speaker 1: 26:27

I've heard of it, yeah.

Bianca: 26:28

So for those listening, Richard Schwartz came up with this when he was working with um, he was a family counselor originally, and I think he did psychoanalysis. And he was like, I don't think this actually works. So he started working with women struggling with anorexia, and he started noticing these patterns of the way that these women were speaking. And they were kind of talking about themselves, like they had these different voices in their heads. And he's like, Are they schizophrenic? Like, are they having auditory hallucinations? Are they having delusions? And what he ended up finding out was no, we actually all have these. We have this subsystem of parts, these little, these personalities, these components of us. So these different parts of our mind that developed throughout our life to keep us safe and to protect us, and that we're built out of fear, or that we're built out of trauma or challenge or joy or whatever. Very similar to the movie Um Oh my god, I'm blanking so hard. The kids' movie, the one with all Inside Out? Inside Out, thank you. It it's basically like that, or very similar. It's not necessarily emotions, but it's these sub-personalities. Yeah. And it blends perfectly with CBT because what I'll do as a CBT therapist is I want to identify the core of who you are and understand it so you can understand it. And then what are all of your parts? And how are the ways that you and this little family that you have within you? How are you guys all interacting with each other? What are the beliefs that you have? How is that shaping your experience of life and your existence? And how can we help them to all get more grounded and centered and stable and connected so that you can then have the best life possible?

Kertia: 28:26

Yeah, thank you. That was a beautiful explanation. When you talk about, um, there's so many questions that I could ask you, so many places that we could go with this. Um, but you know, when you talk about the different components in our brain and how we've developed these things to protect ourselves and then how our own self-concept develops and how we interact with the world in accordance to that self-concept and how we perceive ourselves, how we perceive the world. How can we begin to recognize that there is something that I guess how we are perceiving things, how we are perceiving ourselves, how we are perceiving life, that is not working because I think it takes I mean, from my own personal experience, even it took me a while to recognize that something was wrong. You know, like we I think most of us go through this spiral for a while before we recognize that something isn't working, and thankfully for you, you had someone that loved you so much to point that out to you to let you know like this isn't working, like something here needs to be looked at. So, how can we begin to recognize that for ourselves? Because we don't all Have someone that is so attentive or is caring enough to have that conversation with us, you know, like your friend could have done that for you. So, how can we begin to do that for ourselves? That's a really good question.

Bianca: 30:19

I think the truth was I did know. I did know. I knew that things weren't okay. I knew that I wasn't feeling okay. I knew that I knew that things were harder than they should have been. And I felt the pull all the time, but I was too afraid to admit it to myself. And I don't know if that's what the case was for you, but for the majority of the clients that come to see me, they say deep down, I knew I knew that things weren't right. I knew I felt this discord within me. It was like I was fighting myself all the time, and I knew it, but I wasn't ready to acknowledge it yet. Most of us run away from ourselves our entire life. I mean, that is exactly what I did. I ran away from my family to this relationship. I ran from this relationship to other relationships. Then from that relationship, I dive-bombed into personal growth, but actually not actually growing. I was, but I was using growth as a crutch to avoid doing the real inner work. And I got really good at pretending so much so I had myself fooled. But you ever have that moment where you're laying down in bed and it's this you feel that buzzing in your body of like, oh my God, something isn't right. We all get moments like that, but we just get really good at avoiding it or numbing it or suppressing it or justifying it away. And what I had to do, because I mean, even before Amelia said something to me, it was like, I knew. I knew I was pretending, I knew I was hiding, I knew that I felt terrible, but I was trying to prove myself wrong.

Speaker 1: 32:25

Yeah.

Bianca: 32:26

Rather than acknowledging, B, something isn't right here. And I know you're scared, and I know you don't want to be found out, and I know you don't want to like quote unquote prove that you're not good enough. But what if you actually admitting that is the thing that's gonna allow you to become good enough? What if you actually acknowledging your deepest fear is the thing that allows you to get to the other side of it and to change and to evolve and to become this greater version of yourself? Yeah. I mean, to the premise of your show, the other side of fear. The other side of fear for me was everything I ever dreamed of, but you kind of gotta go through the muck and through my uh Amelia, my mission partner, calls it lonely land. Yeah, it's like that middle part of the journey where like everything blows and it's so hard, and you're like, I don't know who I am, and I don't know where I'm going, but I'm just I'm just doing it. I'm in the middle of it.

Speaker 1: 33:35

Yeah.

Bianca: 33:37

When you can go through that, the other side of that sincerely is such a better life. But it does start with the acknowledgement of the pain that you've been running away from. We might not know exactly what it is, we might not be able to pinpoint it, we might not be able to specifically identify it, but just start with the awareness of okay, something feels off. And then you take the next step. And hopefully, for a lot of people, what that next step would be is maybe going and seeing a therapist or starting journaling or starting, you know, YouTube and reading books. Like, I know not everybody has access to a therapist and they don't have access to the friends that I had. I'm so blessed to have had the people in my life that I did. But you don't need that. There's so many resources out in the world that are free that you can start there.

Kertia: 34:45

Yeah. So much truth. What do you say, you know, thinking about all of this? Because this is something I've heard people say before, unfortunately, and it breaks my heart. Like, I've literally heard people say, you know, I'm too broken to be fixed. Like, like, and I understand, I get it, I get it, because when you kind of hear their story, you're just like, oh my god, you know, how how did you even survive that? But they truly deeply feel like they're too broken, they're too far gone, you know. It like you'd suggest therapy and suggest all the things, and they're like, no, I'm too far gone. Like, what do you say to someone who that is where they are? Like, well, none of us can really get there until we're ready, right? There's that aspect whereby you're not gonna get that healing unless you're truly ready to be healed. There's that aspect that we have to acknowledge, yeah. But then when someone is situated in that headspace for so long, and you as a friend or a family member, all you want to do is to help them and embrace them and help them find a way, and you're like, no, I'm too broken, I'm too forgone. How like how do you what do you say to that?

Bianca: 36:42

There's a few people I'm thinking of that in my personal life, I love them so much, and I see how badly they are suffering, more than they even know, because not not to sound arrogant, but like they don't have the awareness that I do about the consequences of what they're doing, because I've studied this for almost a decade now. And I remember one of these people, they've caused so much suffering to themselves and other people because of how deeply broken they are, and how much they need help, and how traumatized they've been from their own life, but they won't acknowledge it. And I remember this person saying, I would never go to therapy. Like, I don't need that. And there was like this contempt in their voice, and they were like disgusted by the idea of it of like, I don't need that.

Speaker 1: 37:47

Yeah.

Bianca: 37:50

And it took everything in me not to break down and be like, you are causing yourself and everyone in your life so much pain and suffering because you are refusing to see how much you do need help. And I since that has been the hardest part of this mission for me and this journey for me, like with the business that we have, Evolve, right? Our business is literally called Evolve. We are deeply grounded and rooted in the concept that everybody is capable of change. Every single person is capable of growth and change. Maybe not the same amount, maybe not in the same degree, maybe not even in the same way, but we all have the potential to be better than we are and to heal and to grow in a way that is meaningful for us. And the hardest part of this journey for me has been the realization of how few people are ever actually going to do that because of exactly what you're saying. They cannot get out of their own way. And the limiting beliefs, the core beliefs that they have to reference CBT again, the deeply held beliefs that they have about themselves is it is not possible for me. So, what do we do when we do that? When we sincerely have that belief? Number one, it's an unconscious belief. We don't understand that that's really what's driving our behavior. But when you have a deeply held belief, it's not possible for me. I'm too broken. We distort ourselves. We convince ourselves of stories that no, I'm fine, and you guys are just being dramatic, and it's not that bad, and whatever. And that's what caused a lot of the pain in my own childhood. A lot of the people that I was surrounded with, they could not see the truth of their own pain. They couldn't see the consequences of their actions, and they were deluding themselves and lying to themselves into not seeing the reality and not seeing the truth and not seeing the consequences of their behaviors.

Speaker 1: 40:07

Yeah.

Bianca: 40:08

And the impact it had on them, too. Because it's not just about what we do to other people, it's about the pain that we're causing ourselves. So, what would I say? That belief has carried you for a really long time. And for a really long time, it served a purpose, it kept you safe, it kept you protected, it helped you to feel a semblance of safety in this world. But is that belief actually helping you anymore? And what is that belief doing to you and what is it keeping you from? Because I was right there. I mean, borderline personality disorder is one of like the top five most misunderstood and stigmatized mental health disorders. You hear someone has borderline and you're like, oh, they're crazy. It's like it's like schizophrenia, right? People just have this really deep misunderstanding of it and what it is. And I knew for a long time that that's what it was, but I didn't want to admit it to myself because I had the same belief. It's like I'm not crazy.

unknown: 41:30

Yeah.

Bianca: 41:30

I didn't want to acknowledge it. I didn't want to believe it. I didn't want to, I didn't want anyone to weaponize it against me either, because people do.

Speaker 1: 41:39

Yeah.

Bianca: 41:40

Like I only recently started talking about it because I've I've healed the narrative within me that I sincerely felt like I was broken. But it took a lot of effort and it took a lot of work. And as someone who did have that belief of I'm too broken to change, it is possible to get to the other side of that, whatever that is for you. But it does have to start with vulnerability and the acknowledgement that I'm not okay, and it's not okay.

Kertia: 42:22

Yeah. Thank you for that. That that was um yeah, that was, I think, what you said kind of like really addressed that so well, so well, because um there's no judgment or criticism, it's just like you know, being situated in that mindset for so long, you know, how is that working for you? You know, how is that working for you right now? Does it still work? Is there something else that you could try? Is there something else that you could do? Right, and it kind of just points towards that direction. There's just no judgment, never any judgment or criticism.

Bianca: 43:16

So well, I think the truth is there is a lot of judgment and criticism in this world, and I think people know that. Like, there's so many of my clients come to therapy and they're terrified because they don't want people to think that they're broken. They don't want people to hurt them, they don't want people to think that there's something wrong with them because there is a lot of people that will. True. There's a lot of people that are gonna judge, there's a lot of people that are gonna criticize, there's a lot of people that do think that if you go to therapy and if you need help, it's because you're weak and there's something morally wrong with you. And that belief has been there for years and years and years and years. And luckily, it's starting to flip in the opposite direction. Yeah. But hundreds of years, decades of people sincerely believing that therapy was this shameful thing that only the crazies went to, and this fear of, oh my God, they're gonna institutionalize me and they're gonna put me in a mental hospital with all the crazy people. Nobody wants to feel out of control, and nobody wants to be judged for it. And I sincerely believe it's another really big reason why people won't ask for help. Because what does it mean about me if I need someone else to tell me how to live life? But who taught us how to actually do it? My parents weren't emotionally stable enough to be able to help me regulate my emotions in a safe way. It's part it's one of the biggest reasons why I ended up developing BPD. There was so much emotional dysregulation in my home, and nobody taught me how to handle it because they were causing it. Because they were suffering and they were in pain. So they didn't teach me. And going through life, teachers don't teach this. You don't learn that in school, and you don't learn that from extended family. And it's not until you're an adult where you're having to make your own choices and you're reaping the consequences of your own actions where it's like, oh, something isn't okay here. But what does it mean if you admit that? Yeah, you're broken. Oh, you can't regulate yourself. Oh, you need to go talk about your problems to another person.

Speaker 1: 45:38

Yeah.

Bianca: 45:38

There is so much criticism, but that criticism comes from deep pain because the people who judge are usually the people who also need help, but they're ashamed of their own need for help. And so they're gonna shame you to validate to themselves that I don't need it either.

Kertia: 45:55

Yeah. Yeah. Everything you said, Dear Bianca, you know, let's get into um borderline personality disorder for a bit because you know, you mentioned that it can be so stigmatized, um, which is so true. So, so true. I think it's really important that we kind of address it as well. And I'd love for you to kind of walk us through what that can look like for children and for someone who has worked through healing and self-regulating, what that can look like on the other side of the spectrum as well. I'd love for you to address that.

Bianca: 46:38

Yeah. So borderline personality disorder, just like any mental health disorder, it's a set of symptoms. It's a set of symptoms that typically come on from the experiences that you grow up in. So if you experience a major trauma, your reaction to that trauma is a subset of symptoms, which is categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder. If your life feels really empty and worthless and despairing, you develop a subset of symptoms that is then depression. If your life feels chaotic and scary and you feel uncertain, you develop a subset of symptoms that is anxiety. And borderline personality disorder is the same thing. So any mental health challenges, it's really a set of experiences that are just on the on the farther end of the spectrum. If you, if you were to look at the diagnostic manual, so it's called the DSM. If you look at the diagnostic and statistical manual, it's basically like this mega book of all of the mental health disorders and their symptoms and what causes them. They all kind of look the same. That is so true. They all look the same. Why? Because it is common core human experiences that just end up crossing a threshold. Yeah. But we've labeled them and we've villainized them so much that there's so much shame around them. Even if you look at something as extreme as BPD, it's a set of symptoms that every person experiences. I could diagnose everyone and their mother with BPD if I really wanted to, and if I looked hard enough at it. That's why everybody now is a narcissist, right?

Kertia: 48:32

That's so true.

Bianca: 48:33

It's a subset of symptoms. It's just where on the spectrum of those symptoms are you? And so with me, it showed up as this deep lack of a sense of self. So I had no idea who I was. Yeah. This chronic feeling of emptiness, relationship issues, obviously. I was in and out of toxic relationships literally up until last year, and significant emotional dysregulation. I couldn't handle my emotions. And as a child, they were very externalizing. So they came out on the people around me, on my siblings, they came out on my parents, um, on family members, on the way that I acted out into the world. And over the years, my shame got so bad that it actually just became internalized. So I was self-harming. I had severe suicidal ideation. I never attempted, but I made a lot of threats and gestures because I was screaming for someone to just see me because I felt so invalidated. And that's where that's one of the core features and the core components of borderline personality disorder. It's growing up in a childhood where you feel deeply and like systemically invalidated. Your entire reality is basically it feels like you're being lied to. And it's like you're at the center of this, of this story, and everybody has one belief, but you have another. And you're seeing these things, but it's like everyone is telling you you're wrong. And that's exactly what my childhood was. We all had to pretend and play the game like nothing is wrong because that was culturally appropriate. You don't talk about what's going on inside the house. Nobody knows what goes on inside the house. You don't talk about those things. Oh, we just got into a massive screaming match that basically led into a fist fight, but we're not gonna talk about it and go put your makeup on and let's go pretend like nothing happened. It's like, what the hell? Yeah. So you go through that for years and years and years, and no sense of emotional safety, no sense of deep emotional connection with people. And you start to react to the world based on that. And that's what my experience was. So over the years, the behaviors stopped being externalizing as I grew up, but that deep sense of I don't know who the hell I am, and not understanding my feelings and feeling like I don't have a place in the world, and feeling dread and isolation and loneliness, that persisted for a really, really long time. And through, you know, CBT and DBT techniques like emotion regulation, learning how to identify what I'm feeling, understanding what I'm thinking, learning how to build relationships, learning how to interact with other people, learning why people are the way that they are and my place in the world. All of that work really helped me, excuse me, to feel grounded in myself and to understand who I am and my place in the world and for the symptoms to subside. Again, it's a spectrum. We all have these experiences. If I were to pull up the DSM and show the criteria, every one of us has experienced at least one of those at one time in our life.

Speaker 1: 52:26

Yeah.

Bianca: 52:26

And usually we experienced multiple of them multiple times. So who's to say not everybody has it? It's a spectrum. It's how much, it's how often, it's how intense. And if we can look at everything that way, then why would there be any stigma? We all have it. Yeah. Let's let's heal it, let's work on it, let's help everyone to feel safe and deserving of being loved. And that's really what I do with clients because that's what I deeply needed. Like I needed someone to tell me that I was okay and that I wasn't bad and that it made sense why I did what I did because I felt so unloved. And my parents did the best that they could. And most people, most parents, they're doing the best that they can, and that also doesn't mean that it's enough. So I don't villainize my parents. I adore them and I understand why they did what they did. They were suffering. You know, you can't do well to a child if you're not well. Yeah. And so I couldn't rely on somebody else to fix me. So I had to. And for anyone who has BPD or depression or trauma or anxiety or obsessive-compulsive disorder or whatever the case may be, wherever you are on the spectrum, label or no label, there is a way to reduce the symptoms and to have a way better experience of life. Yeah.

Kertia: 54:03

Yeah. What would you say to um, because I know like this is uh becoming more widespread now. People combining um plant medicine with their mental health work. What do you think about it? I know one of the common ones is psilocybin, right? What do you think about that?

Bianca: 54:29

If I'm being honest, I don't know enough about it to be able to speak on it. Like I haven't done enough research to really understand it, but there is a lot of data and a lot of studies to show that if it's done appropriately and under the proper care of a physician who's studied this and who knows what they're doing, it can be incredibly effective in certain circumstances. So, like, I think it was, I think Gebor Mate has like an entire chapter written about this in his book, The Myth of Normal, where he talks about the um positive effects of psilocybin and some of these other um plant-based medicines for treating things like PTSD. But again, I don't I don't know enough about it, but I do know that there have been studies to demonstrate its efficacy. So there have been studies that show it works. Um, but obviously, again, you gotta do it correctly and under proper supervision. And we're not saying go like eat a ton of shrooms and trip out because that's not effective either. Like a bad trip can destroy your sense of being and your sense of self. So obviously that's not what I'm recommending, but there has been data to show that if it's done properly and correctly and in the appropriate setting combined with these therapy treatments, it can be effective.

Kertia: 56:02

Okay, that's cool. Yeah, I've heard I've had people um on the podcast that has spoken about their experience with it and um they've had like very positive things to say. Um, I I just posed the question because I wasn't sure if that's something that you yourself have experience with, or if you have clients that have experience with it too, for you to give your own input on that. But yeah, I've had um people on that has had very positive things to say. I haven't tried it myself, but um yeah, it's definitely something that um I've been looking into as well. So yeah, that's that's pretty cool though. Is there anything that you'd like to cover that we haven't yet spoken about? I know with this topic we can go so far, but we only have so much time. But I'd love for you to just speak to anything else that we haven't mentioned yet.

Bianca: 57:09

I guess just a sentiment that I'll say is your past and your trauma only defines you to the degree that you hold on to it. Yeah, you don't have to stay who you are, and you don't have to stay who you used to be. And I know that's a nice thing to hear, and so many people don't believe that that's actually true, but I've done it for myself and I've seen it with clients and I've seen it with other people. The quality of your life is 100% in your hands. Now, are there things that are outside of our control? Absolutely. Did I control growing up in the home that I did? No. Did I control where I was born? No. Did I control how people abused me and treated me? No. But I did have control over my response to it and what I did in the aftermath of it and the meanings that I assigned to it, and therefore what I did, and that's where the real growth lies. If you give yourself permission to acknowledge, yes, the world can be very dark and scary, and also acknowledge and I can do something about it for me, that can make all the difference.

Kertia: 58:38

That's beautifully said, Bianca. Thank you so much. This was a lovely conversation. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right, can you tell us um where we can find you, your work, and anything else that you're working on currently?

Bianca: 58:55

Yeah. So, best place to find me is on social media. So Instagram, TikTok. It's Evolve with Bianca. Um, I'm pretty active on those. And then our website, evolveventurestech.com. We have all of our podcasts on there. We have our one-on-one therapy and coaching services. We're actually launching a group coaching program um at the end of the month. It's a nine-week program, um, or it's a it's a three-month program. There's nine sessions, and we meet every other week and we basically do like basically everything that I just talked about. It's a really cool experience. We only allow 10 people into the program each year. We only do it once a year. So we have a bunch of different offerings and programs and whatnot, but those are the best places to find me. So Instagram, evolve with Bianca, or through our website, evolveventurestech.com.

Kertia: 59:52

Perfect. Thank you so much, Bianca. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. I hope. You found something of value within this conversation, or some takeaway, or something for you to think about, maybe. But again, I am so grateful for you tuning in, for you listening, for you engaging with this work. And just a heads up that this recording is also available on our YouTube channel. The video was actually posted right before this audio, so you can head over there and take a look at that and please comment. Comment, subscribe, tell us what you think, tell us how you feel, tell us what takeaway you had from this conversation. I'd very much appreciate it. It definitely helps with our visibility. And of course, to reach out to Bianca for her program or for therapy or anything else, any questions that you may have for her, her links are in the show notes. Alright, until next time.