Learning to Feel Instead of Manage with Mollie Birney

What happens when thinking becomes the place you go to avoid feeling?

In this episode, Ailey Jolie sits down with clinical life coach and former therapist Mollie Birney to explore embodiment as the practice of being present with ourselves rather than constantly trying to manage our experience. Together, they consider how overthinking and control can become ways of creating safety, even when they ultimately keep us disconnected from the body.

Drawing from her own recovery and clinical work, Mollie shares what it means to change our relationship with the inner voice that tells us how we should behave. Rather than waiting for that voice to disappear, she explores the possibility of loosening its authority and making room for what we actually feel.

The conversation also examines the difference between thinking about an emotion and allowing ourselves to experience it. Mollie offers a simple but powerful perspective: thoughts can give us somewhere to stay, while feelings can show us where to go.

Ailey and Mollie ultimately return to what it means to live with greater authenticity, finding the courage to trust your own voice without reshaping yourself to be more acceptable to others.

Please note that this episode includes discussion of eating disorder recovery. We encourage you to take care of yourself and listen in whatever way feels supportive.

In this episode:

• 4:14 Presence As The Core Of Embodiment
• 8:16 Patriarchy, Recovery, And The Inner Voice
• 13:34 Isolation, Grief, And Outgrowing Safety
• 21:53 Coaching Versus Therapy And Fit
• 26:52 Psychodynamic Training And Nervous Systems
• 32:02 Free Fall And Feeling Versus Thinking
• 38:58 Resonance, Voice, And Taking Up Space
• 47:49 Reflections, Clarifications, And Next Steps

You can read the full transcript here.

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Transcript

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Ailey Jolie 0:49

Welcome to In This Body a podcast where we dive deep into the pulp power of embodiment. I'm your host, Aile Shalee, a psychotherapist deeply passionate about living life free from the wisdom within your very own body. The podcast In This Body is a love letter to embodiment, a podcast dedicated to asking important questions like how does connecting to your body change your life? How does connecting to your body enhance your capacity to love more deeply and live more authentically? And how can collective embodiment alter the course of our share role? Join me for consciously curated conversations with leading experts. Each episode is intended to support you in reconnecting to your very own body. This podcast will be available for free wherever you get your podcast, making it easy for you to stay connected to In This Body, the podcast with me, Aile Jolie. Welcome back to another episode of How to Be in This Body with me, Ailey Jolie. Today our guest is Molly Brnie. Molly is a clinical life coach and a former therapist, and her path into this work began somewhere that I wasn't expecting her to say. It started with standing in front of a choir. Her first master's degree was in choral conducting, and it was her own coach at the time who eventually asked whether she was done pretending to be a conductor and ready to move into human behavior. Molly obviously did say yes. She went on to train in clinical psychology at Antioch University in Los Angeles. She went on to spend time working in eating disorder and addiction treatment centers before realizing that for her, the role of being a therapist asked her to cut out parts of herself that made her feel most alive. That's when Molly decided to shift from therapist into clinical coach. Molly speaks openly in this conversation about her choice to leave the title of therapist behind, the difference between coaching and therapy, but also the different styles of therapy that exist. During our time together, we also talk about internalized misogyny and how that stops us from being authentic and real in our professions, but also in our personal lives too. Molly also gives us a little glimpse into her upcoming book, Free Fall. I hope that you enjoy listening to Molly as much as I enjoyed spending time with her, and that you gain more awareness of your body by listening to this episode of how to be in this body with me a Jolie. Before we begin, a few things I want you to know. Molly speaks in this episode about her recovery from an eating disorder, including some of the behaviors that were part of it. If that's tender ground for you, please take care in how and when you listen and know that you can step away and come back, press pause, or fast forward whenever you want. I also want you to know that there's some strong language used in this conversation, which we've chosen to keep because the freedom to speak in our own register is quite literally what this episode dives into. And lastly, there's one clarification that I always make whenever I sit down with a coach. Coaching is not therapy, and it's not regulated the way therapy is either. Molly is explicitly clear about this herself, and I want to be too. If you're in acute season with your mental health or in an active experience of an eating disorder, the stabilizing care of a licensed professional comes first, always.

Presence As The Core Of Embodiment

Ailey Jolie 4:15

What does being in your body mean to you?

Mollie Birney 4:20

Oh, to me being in my body first means that I'm present. Meaning I'm I'm operating in the here and now I'm in relationship then with the present moment, with uh the sensations in my body, with the thoughts and awarenesses, and it also puts me in relationship with, for example, you here. If I'm in my body, that also includes the fact that I'm uh I'm connecting with someone right now. Yeah, I think it's a function of presence for me.

Ailey Jolie 4:53

I would love to hear from you if you feel comfortable sharing for the listener who's new a little bit about your background and how your background maybe has led you to tie being in your body to presence. Sure.

Mollie Birney 5:06

Um Well, I I began as a therapist. Um, well, actually, that's not entirely true. My very first master's was in choral conducting, of all things. I was the one waving my arms in front of choirs and orchestras. Um, but my coach had said to me, Are you done pretending to be a conductor? Are you ready to move into human behavior? Um, and ironically, I had a very disembodied experience in conducting. I was so in my head that I it it took me a long time to land, really. And I was excited to move into human behavior because it felt so much more natural to me. And so then I trained as a therapist, I got a master's in clinical psychology, I worked as a therapist for uh quite some time, and then I made the pivot into coaching because I wanted to have a more directive, irreverent, playful conversation that allowed me to be in my body. Again, as a therapist, I was very much in my head, like maintaining the clinical mask, um, uh being the blank slate for you to project upon. And that required an awful lot of muzzling of myself, a lot of uh is this clinically appropriate and don't say this and don't reveal too much and maintain this composure. And I wanted to work in a way that allowed me to be in my body for me, organically, authentically. Not that there aren't therapists who can't work that way. I'm saying I couldn't work that way as a therapist. And so changing the role I was playing and moving into a coaching conversation allowed me to approach this work with my whole self. Hell, including my body.

Ailey Jolie 6:35

What were some of the the practices, or maybe even some of the people that really helped you bring that sense of embodiment into the work that you offer today?

Mollie Birney 6:44

Sure. I I have a about a 20-year um yoga practice and uh meditation practice, mindfulness practice. Um boy, enough time on the mat and the cushion will really force anyone to be in the meat suit and get curious about your relationship to the meat suit, to be really crass about it. Um and I've had some some really remarkable teachers over the years, including uh my own coach, and then of course yoga teachers, meditation teachers, and and folks who who asked me to surrender my critical linear thinking mind, which for me felt terrifying. I I uh was much more trusting in my thought process than in whatever my body was telling me. I was suspicious about that. Took me a while to discover how much internalized misogyny and how the patriarchy had really shaped um my resistance to being in relationship with my body. Because I um yeah, I think I was I was distrustful, I was suspicious, and much more comfortable with the language of linear thought. One of the things I say to clients all the time, you know, when they're talking about feeling their feelings, it's like if you're hearing English, that's a thought, that's not a feeling. If you're in your narrative, then we are one step removed from what's happening in your body. Um, and it it's a scary thing, I think, to drop from our narrative into a quality of presence that isn't analyzing something. I think that feels quite dangerous in some ways. And yet that was certainly part of my own process, learning how to do that.

Patriarchy, Recovery, And The Inner Voice

Ailey Jolie 8:16

There are a few things that you gave in your answer quite generously that I would like to go back to. But one that I really appreciated, which is my own bias, is you named how internalized misogyny and also patriarchy were in the relationship that you have with your body, which is something that I'm very passionate about. And I would love, if you feel comfortable, sharing a little bit more about what that process was like for you to first recognize, reconcile, rewrite, unwrite, and also then, at least for me, and this may not be true for you, I've just kind of accepted some of that's always gonna be there. And I like always have to kind of be in relationship with it and also hold. I'm gonna have big blind spots because it's the soup that we're all in. So if you feel comfortable, I would love to hear more on this topic from you.

Mollie Birney 9:04

I love that you're speaking to the patriarchal soup. Um there's that great quote. Um forgive me, I'm gonna butcher this, but it's like the great mysteries are water to the fish, air to the bird, and man to himself, and I would argue the patriarchy to women. That um our own experience of like, oh, this is the conversation, here's the infrastructure and the priorities that we were we were trained with. Um and so yeah, discovering discovering how much that's dictating our behavior and influencing our decision-making in real time is quite horrifying and illuminating and ultimately liberating. But it starts with horrifying. I mean, I'm 41, it's been it's been quite a journey here and and more to go. I can say I I'm in recovery from an ass-kicking eating disorder, uh, to not put it lightly. When I was, I spent about a decade between my teens and my 20s in treatment and trying to figure out how to control this thing, how to run this thing, because there were there were so many messages I had absorbed about what made me valuable and for me, credibility, what made me credible, what made me uh a woman worth listening to. I had a dad who did not listen to women, and so I one of the things I learned early on is if I was smart and if I was attractive, I might have a chance. And only, you know, I could I could control uh both of those only, you know, in so much as I could restrict myself to either only say intelligent things and only eat things that would allow me to hold on to some version of attraction or attractiveness that I thought gave me some cachet or power. And I wasn't, I wasn't just a restrictor, I was a binger, I was a perger because I had and still have a voracious appetite, a voracious ambition. Um and yet I really I think I lived those probably the first 20, 25 years of my life with a muzzle, tugging my own reins. The self-management, the self-policing was constant. And the interesting thing was, even when I got into recovery, you know, and my relationship with my body started to shift, my relationship to food and started to bet on what if I can trust myself, just starting with hunger and fullness. What if I can trust myself? Which was a bet I had to make. Starting to realize that even when I was no longer taking direction from the eating disorder thoughts or behavior, that there were thoughts in play that were still dictating the self-policing. What I couldn't, could I couldn't say, who I couldn't, couldn't be, uh, the sense that I was going to be too much or inadequate all the time, too much or too little, was so loud. And it took me a while to recognize, wait a second, that is not my value system. This is not my thinking. I would never consciously speak to myself this way. But really having to ask myself, who the fuck's voice is this? And letting myself get angry about it, letting myself uh have some fury and healthy rage about what a hostage I've been. And you're absolutely right that that voice is still there. Like I'm I'm 20 years in recovery at this point, but you know, that doesn't mean that there isn't noise about it, whether it's about, you know, food or body or comparison or too much. I had mentioned to you when we were first talking, I have this book coming out in January. And you better bet I'm a professional, a mental health professional who absolutely still has noise. Is this too much? Is that not enough? And who do I think I am? And the game for me is kind of change my relationship to that noise so it's no longer some credible. I used to picture it as like a professor with this jacket. And now it's more like the madman on the corner with the megaphone. When I change who is speaking, when I change my reference point, that I don't actually want this voice to be right. I don't want to endorse this voice, which feels very risky because it's a protective voice, it's an instructive voice. That's the game changer. You know, when the first step to getting out of prison is agreeing, it's prison. You can't get out if you think you're free. And a lot of what the patriarchy has trained us to do is go, here's what's going to get you free. Here are the rules to follow. We're going to get you free, baby. You're going to be okay. And then discovering years later, this is a hostage situation. This isn't freedom. This is, I am in bondage here. And starting to look at that bondage and realize, okay, but what's my how am I participating in maintaining this? And my role is to get curious about what I'm telling myself is true at any given moment. That's what leads me back down when the penny drops from my head to my heart, back into my body.

Isolation, Grief, And Outgrowing Safety

Ailey Jolie 13:34

If you feel comfortable again, I would love to hear a little bit more around maybe, if it's true for your experience, some of the isolation of that process or what that can look like, because I've definitely gone through it myself. It can be extremely isolating when you're in a world that's upholding patriarchal values. I've heard it in my clients as well. So just if you feel comfortable sharing a little bit more of your personal journey of making that leap and how you kind of stay out of the noise even today with the sounds that are not just inside but genuinely all around us.

Mollie Birney 14:12

I don't know how any of us can have a relationship with either social media or the news or um, you know, I have a husband I love, but in many cases, even men or or women who are upholding the patriarchy. It's hard to be in the world and not be in relationship with that and and have, you know, hear things that are in some ways upholding the infrastructure of the very thing that I'm looking to dismantle. So I don't get to get free of the noise. I do get to change my relationship with it. And it is, it is lonely, it is isolating. Um there's a um one of my dearest coaches and mentors, I had to outgrow um because I was realizing how much of how much of myself still had to say small in order to stay in relationship with him, that that was required. And that was not, no one said that. That was not a conscious agreement. He didn't ask me to sign paperwork to keep myself small, but realizing that that was the underlying contract in the work, that was heartbreaking, you know, that there's grief in that. Even even grief in like trading out some of the thought systems that we think keep us safe, of like I can wear this or I can't wear that, or I can eat this or I can't wear that. There's the illusion of safety in that rigidity. Just like there's an illusion of safety in an abusive relationship. Well, at least it's not a relationship. At least I'm not alone. At least I'm so there is a sense of isolation in leaving the well, like it's an existential trek across the desert to leave the well that has dirty water in it or not enough water to go in search of something else, to go, this isn't actually enough for me. I'm hungry for something else. But man, it really requires outgrowing some relationships. I think it also required outgrowing some versions of myself, like in relationships to this coach in particular. Um, and again, a dear mentor that I've had, I'm working on shifting my relationship to. Um I got a lot of value out of seeing myself as a good student, a good girl. Uh, I'm gonna learn from you, I'm gonna sit at your feet, I'm gonna take notes, I'm and in that process, I'm gonna magnify you. Yes, I'm gonna learn, yes, I'm gonna get what I need to do, I'm gonna get lots of pat on the pats on the head, but the cost is that I have to stay at your feet in order to feel safe. And there was a point at which I was just not ready to make that sacrifice anymore. In fact, in order to write this book, in order to build my career in the way I wanted to, I had to let it go. And that is scary, that is terrifying. Um yeah, and I I I did something similar with my dad where I had to take some space for years going, I could I couldn't sit at the table with him and hold my own self at the same time. That to sit with him required a sacrifice. And it was very terrifying and to your point, isolating to decide that something else was more important than that safety. It's like it's a real existential threat, but man, I had to make that bet.

Ailey Jolie 17:12

I really appreciated that you use the word existential. So there was a quick moment where I was in a doctorate program. This was in the United Kingdom, and it was a doctorate in counseling psychology, but with an existential lens. Uh-huh. And I've been in many doctorates, so I just, I'm very picky. I keep leaving. Anyways, the reason why I ended up there is because my frame of lens, specifically with internalized misogyny or patriarchy, is that it really does lead you to grapple with existentialism and these really hard questions on reality and autonomy and free will. And if you actually go to that bottom of the barrel, it's not even really cultural analysis anymore. It is this existential reckoning. And so if you feel comfortable, I would love to just hear a little bit more about this from you because we actually haven't had anyone on the podcast kind of talk about the existential crisis that can happen when you start to go, oh my goodness, I have years of internalized misogyny in my relationship with my body, or oh my goodness, I am a fish swimming in the water of patriarchy. Like, what do I do with this? So any wisdom or life experience here would be greatly appreciated with the listener, I'm sure.

Mollie Birney 18:29

Oh boy, I gotta say, this is not uh, I'm not used to talking about this so so openly. I'm certainly game for it, but I want to be very clear. This is not uh this is not like the this is not what my what I've written about, and so I'm gonna be finding my way as we go. I hope that's alright. I think it's been a process in a in a very like I I want to make it granular, I want to make it accessible. For me, it's really been a process of uh of noticing the noise at any given moment. Like the patriarchy in me, where I'm responsible for still upholding that. If I come back to that question again, what am I telling myself is true? And most of what I'm telling myself is true at any given moment, including like coming on this podcast today, I was noticing, oh my anxiety is up. Okay. Um, and what I'm telling myself is true about that is this has to go well, like this has to fulfill in some way, or it has to get me somewhere. Even that is a patriarchal concept that this is a I there's a problem to solve here, and somehow, what, this conversation's gonna solve it? Or it's gonna this uh uh something's gonna happen? Like it's oh, the need to make something happen to insert myself into the world. Uh, that's that's an example of a patriarchal value, which I gotta get curious about, which is why before I sat uh I even sat down in this chair, I had to sit on the cushion, I had to breathe, I had to sit and be in my body. I had to be aware of what I was feeling, I had to get still enough to get curious. Is there really a problem? Are you sure are you sure there's a problem to solve here? Can you just sit down and have a conversation? Here's where I come back to presence rather than I have to make something happen or do something. You know, the noise in my head, another piece instilled by the patriarchy, is God, I gotta be smart, I gotta be smart, which I don't know, if you've listened to podcasts with smart people, they're fucking boring, exclusively smart. Doesn't give us you anywhere to go, it doesn't give you anything to relate to, it doesn't give you any juice. If all I can be is smart, I have to amputate most of the rest of my humanity in order to market that perspective. That's my internalized misogyny, that's my patriarchy in my body, in my narrative. So can I risk showing up here and I don't know, be foolish, be clumsy, be authentic, be vulnerable, be silly, be witty, be I don't know if I've been any of those things yet, but my hope is that I can I can allow for the full spectrum of myself rather than here are the two versions of me that are acceptable, and everything else has to be masked. And that's that's scary, you know? It's scary, especially if you've gotten a lot of pats on the head for being those two things, to start to expand our value system. It's not that I'm throwing smart out the window and I don't want to be smart, but I want to include everything else that I bring to the table, which I hope is a full spectrum of humanity at best. And the patriarchy would rather have me whittled, my patriarchy, my internal patriarch, would rather me whittle down to what I know is gonna market me really well. And I'm so much more interested in a different conversation now, even though I default to like better sound smart. I'm so interested in being moving beyond that and going somewhere else.

Coaching Versus Therapy And Fit

Ailey Jolie 21:53

Thank you for sharing. And because I have listened to you on past podcasts, I know a little bit of your journey from become being a therapist and then moving into clinical coaching. And you gave it a little bit at the start, but I am holding the knowledge that I know that that a lot of it was motivated by being authentic, which ties into some of what you just shared there. But I would love to hear a little bit more about what that process was like for you, what were some of the deciding factors and how you find the two to be really different, not only in your experience with the client, but also in your body.

Mollie Birney 22:28

Well, simply put, if I'm coaching, I get to have a body, I get to be in my body. Um, at least the way I was trained clinically, it was it was very much can you be a blank slate? And the client needs to come to their own realizations, their own interpretations. Um And I'm not knocking the value of that. There is essential value in that. I will also argue there is essential value in someone pointing out some of these patterns and collapsing some of that to get you very quickly to, hey, here's what it sounds like the belief that you're operating on here. Do you really want to be true? Is that true for everybody, or is that true just for you? These are questions I wouldn't have asked as a therapist. I don't mean that therapists can't ask that. I'm saying I couldn't ask that as a therapist, right? That I get to be a lot more provocative. I get to argue with my client, you know, often oftentimes of like I'm hearing a client argue for why they're inadequate, right? Like I can hear the belief system, I can hear the infrastructure there, and they're making a case for what's not possible. I'm not here to convince them that they're adequate. I'm here to get them curious about the infrastructure that's driving a belief that they don't want to be right about in the first place. And that requires me to have a body, that requires me to have an opinion, that requires me to have a perspective, that requires me to have a hell of a lot of tools in my arsenal, including my playfulness and my irreverence and kind of my surgical nature and my own history, my own story. I want to be able to share that if that's going to be of service. Of like, here's an example of where I believed I was inadequate, and then I got to prove myself right about it. And then I get to live my life being right about that, and here's what that feels like. Um, because I think that's a relatable thing for us, and I want to, I want to access that relatability. I couldn't do that from a clinical perspective. I couldn't be as honest as I as I wanted to be. And again, that's not this is not the right approach for everybody. Not everyone is right for for uh for coaching. I think therapy is is an incredible tool, and I am a product of that too. Um, but boy, I like a conversation that can move in a lot of different directions as well. And this this allows me to do that.

Ailey Jolie 24:38

Do you find that the clients that you see now as a coach are quite different than the ones that were coming for therapy? And also if you feel comfortable speaking to kind of like the differences of when one approach may be better than the other or better suited for someone.

Mollie Birney 24:53

Yeah, part of why I wanted to move into coaching um is I is realizing the uh I don't want to say this. I'm gonna say this. What's going on in me? Oh, I'm not wanting to offend anyone. That's what's happening. That's what that's the self-policing that's happening. Um I did a lot of my clinical training in treatment centers, in addiction treatment centers, in eating disorder treatment centers. Um, and when we're I I know this very personally, when we are in treatment, when we are in the active hold of an addiction or compulsive behavior or a mental illness, there's a deep fragility there. And there's there's only so much challenge and existential threat that we can handle. Um, and so in the pivot, I wanted to work with people who were at a different phase in their journey, who could handle a little pushback, who could handle a little playfulness and irreverence. It's not even fair to say handle it. It's more to say that they were in the place where that was the appropriate tool. That's the tool I wanted to use. And so I needed to work with clients who were in the place to be able to work with that, to be met that way. I suppose the word I would use is a an a solid enough ego structure in place for folks to be challenged, to be provoked, to be knocked around a little bit, because my job is to shake up the infrastructure. If you're in treatment for an active uh mental health situation, you're you're there to be stabilized. You are not there to be shaken. Um, and that's that's appropriate to be stabilized. And so I wanted to make sure that the folks I was working with were appropriate for this conversation. So yeah, if you're if you have active uh trauma responses that you're looking to regulate your way through or express in your body uh and and find safety, yeah, coaching is not the right conversation for you. But if you're looking, if you're if you have, if you could write a dissertation on why you are the way you are and you're interested in how do I do it differently now, that's the coaching conversation. That's someone who's ready for a little more disruption in the work.

Psychodynamic Training And Nervous Systems

Ailey Jolie 26:52

And just to circle back, for those who don't know, you are trained in a psychodynamic way, which is very different than I will just use the example of like young yin analyst work, where the whole first part of treatment is really building that ego strength. So then the next three fourths of treatment, they can break it down, shake you up, and and challenge you on every single way that you can do things differently. That's right. So I would love to spend some time just exploring like the psychodynamic approach, what that really means, because it is very different. You are very blank slate, you're not bringing your body in the room. It's it is very heady. I think it gets a bit of a bad rep, but also gets a bit of a bad rep, and then also sometimes just gets painted as all therapy is. It's it's kind of like an interesting one. That's right. So if if you feel comfortable, I um am not trained in a psychodynamic approach. I've done a few little things here and there, but it's not my um not my foundation. So I'm not an expert on it.

Mollie Birney 27:48

Well, I gotta say, it's been about 10 years since I had a psychodynamic conversation, so I'm about to step in it, is my prediction. Um, but the if the idea is that it's a relational model, but as uh in the therapist role, one isn't showing up as a human being in that relationship. One is sort of an amorphous uh screen for someone to project their own relationships on or their history or their their interpretation on what's happening. And my job as a therapist to go, oh, this is interesting, um, and be able to respond in a corrective way, hopefully. And I, while I well, there's a huge amount of relationship in what I do. Like I need to have a relationship with the client to say, hold on, this thought isn't even credible, or there's so much shame and fear driving this thought that I'm suspicious. Um, we need to have a relationship for me to be able to say that and for that to hold any water for you. Um, but I can't be a projection in order for that to land. That in the psychodynamic model, there's a lot of dependence on I'm not adding anything new to this. I am letting the client have their own process, and I am here to contain, to validate, to allow, and to nurture. But I am not here to tell you the insight that I see, connect the dots, or make suggestions about, hey, when you have this particular sticky thought, here's what I want to suggest. Here are some processes, or here's what you might try in relationship to your body, or the next time this issue comes up with your partner, here's the here's the pattern that I look, let's experiment with this. That is not appropriate for a psychodynamic model. Um and I'm I'm in so many ways relieved to be out of it because I just get to work with what my brain wants to do. Now I hold that psychodynamic model where appropriate because I want to be aware, with like there are clients who who will do, you know, that projection still happens in this relationship. Uh, and this is where I have to do adequate screening to make sure that I'm I'm clear who I'm working with, and enough education for clients about here's how this is different. Here's the conversation that I'm gonna come at you with, here's what I'm gonna offer that you wouldn't have heard before. Um, because that can be quite disruptive even to the nervous system, you know.

Ailey Jolie 30:07

Totally. Doing most of my training in Canada in the States, it was a real shock to my system when I went to the UK. And therapy is predominantly, more than predominantly, just psychodynamic led, and finding myself in trainings. Like I did a diploma that has a psychodynamic background, and being like, oh my goodness, this is so radically different than how I have been trained, how I understand therapy, how I approach anything. And then realizing, like retrospectively going back into the work, you know, after while doing that diploma, thinking of clients I had worked with when I first got to the UK and being like, oh my goodness, I probably felt like a bull in the China shop. I was there, like, you know, be with my humanness, bringing insights and being like, oh wow, that's why their nervous system was probably a bit startled and we and we had that little rocky period. And so I loved what you said there. It can be a bit like unsettling to the nervous system if to go into an environment with a clinical coach or a therapist who's not psychodynamically oriented because we're there to offer things, not just receive. Um, I saw you.

Mollie Birney 31:18

But I actually think that's like that there's that there's merit in like in the psychodynamic model that this is not emphasized or that wasn't emphasized in my training. The co-regulation with someone in the room is still happening, right? But part of what I like about the coaching process is that you know who you're co-regulating with, that I'm bringing my personality and there's a sense of of um of recognition there. And I often felt both with when I worked with psychodynamic therapists and when I was being a psychodynamic therapist, um, and I I get that this is the the point that you you can co-regulate and you're actually actually discovering your own internal resources. But to me, I the the relational element, if that if you don't know who you're having a relationship with, was missing

Free Fall And Feeling Versus Thinking

Mollie Birney 32:02

something.

Ailey Jolie 32:03

Now that we've explored a little bit of your background and kind of what led you to clinical coaching and how it's different, I would love to hear a little bit more about the work that you're doing right now. You shared with me that you have a book coming out in January. Um I would love to hear a little bit more and what the reader, what the listener can upcomingly receive from you.

Mollie Birney 32:22

Oh boy. Uh well the book came out of a workshop that I was really enjoying teaching. Um, and I was I casually called the workshop how to sit with your feelings or what your narrat what your therapist means when they say sit with your feelings. Uh, because I tend to work with a lot of overthinkers, a lot of intellectualizers, and those who are doing the self-policing, right? You you treat who you are. So this is who I'm uh this is who I work with. And oftentimes when it came to the process of making room for your feelings, I would watch clients routinely bypass their feelings with an intellectual interpretation. And so the amount of times I was noticing, hey, you're I get that you think you're feeling your feelings. What you're doing is thinking your thoughts about your feelings, which has this quality of emotional masturbation to it. And no shame with that, but that's what we do. We end up solidifying our interpretation of things, which doesn't give us anywhere to go. That's that's the premise of the book, is that our our thoughts give us somewhere to stay, our feelings give us somewhere to go. And there's a rich education available for us in our feelings if we're willing to feel them. One of the defenses that shows up against our feelings is our thinking, our meaning-making, our interpretation. So to say, I feel abandoned, first of all, no feeling wheel has abandoned as a feeling. That's the interpretation. I'm not saying you haven't been abandoned. I'm saying that interpretation doesn't give you anywhere to go. It allows you to remain in your victimhood, and then you nail the other person to the wall with you've abandoned me and I'm at the mercy of this, and here we are. Great, you get to be right about that. We have that kind of calcified interpretation and the suffering that comes from that, as opposed to being with, oh, I feel afraid, I feel angry. You know, anger lets us know where our boundaries lie. If we stay in the interpretation, I feel abandoned, we don't get the education anger has for us, or our fear, or our heartbreak. And there's a lot of juicy education our emotional curriculum has to offer us that we end up bypassing with our thinking mind. So that's the gist of the book. And I'm also talking about the noise in our head, our survival system, how that keeps us safe. There's a few nods to the patriarchy in there as well. Um, you know, it's a lot to talk about. But the book is called How to Free Fall because it's about uh it's feeling for overthinkers, anxious perfectionists, and high achievers. Um, for those of us that have internalized the patriarchy to neatly bypass our human experience.

Ailey Jolie 34:48

I would love, if you feel comfortable, just even sharing a little bit more around the feeling wheel and how we actually start to discern, okay, what is a feeling versus a thought. I know that it sounds so simple, but it's actually like very complicated because the mind loves to jump in there. So if you have like a little practice or an exercise that maybe you could guide the listener through or something for them to stay with to start to kind of apply what you're writing about.

Mollie Birney 35:15

Well, the practice that I point to in the end, uh, I mean, there are two meditations in there. And I think the meditation is useful for getting to see what we're telling ourselves is true. You know, we're often thinking our thoughts to discover what's true. No, we want to think, we want to be aware of our thoughts to discover what we are telling ourselves is true. What is the narrative? What's my interpretation here? Um, so for example, you know, my kid was making noise at the beginning of this podcast. I'd said, hey, my to my husband, hey, I have this podcast, could you take him in the other room? I'd said that before. You could still hear him humming, right? So if I go to my interpretation, my interpretation is like, hey, you could still hear him humming. He didn't, he didn't take care of my kid, he didn't protect this time for us to speak. I feel disrespected, right? I could land right there. Now, disrespected is an interpretation, not a feeling. It's a thought. My thought, uh, my feelings there, if I actually go a little bit further, is oh, I feel scared. I feel scared that this noise is gonna disrupt the conversation we're gonna have. I feel scared that maybe he didn't take my boundary seriously. That brings up fear for me, that also brings up some anger. And so I have a feeling. And I want to go with the reason I go with instead of English, is because is closer to the language of what my body is communicating than the interpretation. As soon as I tell him I feel disrespected, I have now labeled him as disrespectful. I've I've become the victim of his disrespect, and now neither of us can escape those roles. That's all that's true, which means we then have to have a fight about is he disrespectful or not, which doesn't give us anywhere to go. It gives us these same roles. But if I get to communicate to him later, which you know, we will, we've been married 10 years, like there's there's a lot of a lot of juice and a lot of trust and a lot of goodwill there. I might say, you know, I this is tricky because I don't actually feel upset about this, but as an example, I might say, hey, I felt a little angry when you didn't take West to the park, our son, uh, when I was doing that podcast interview. It would mean a lot to me if you do that in the future. That anger that I'm expressing lets me get to the boundary. Anger lets us know when our boundaries have been violated. So now I can actually speak to the feeling and the medicine for it, what it's leading me towards. That's what I mean by the education our feelings have for us. And I can also speak to the fear. Like I'm a fear, fear points to our relationship to loss. It's always predicting loss. I'm afraid I'm gonna lose something, whether I'm I'm losing your respect or how seriously you take my boundary, I'm afraid I'm gonna lose how this interview goes, etc. And I get to share that with him and connect with him in that fear, which gives us a hell of a lot more intimacy than I feel disrespected. So that's what I mean by our thoughts give us somewhere to stay, our feelings give us somewhere to go. The magic question there that I like is what am I telling myself is true about this? And often we need some stillness before we can hear an honest answer to that. Because we're so allied. I am so allied, I'm so addicted to my interpretation. Why wouldn't I be? My thoughts have been very organizing, they've helped me stay safe, they've helped me navigate the world. But the point is, the point of the book is we got other tools in our arsenal other than our thinking minds. And this is why I like stillness. This is I also like movement, you know, not everyone's body is suited towards stillness. Movement is more appropriate for some people. So whatever you have to do, whether that's move or be still or some combination thereof, and then playing with the question, what am I telling myself is true here? Those are the two exercises I would pair together.

Resonance, Voice, And Taking Up Space

Ailey Jolie 38:59

Thank you so much for that. As you were speaking, my mind was going back to something you shared right at the start around how your first master's degree was in, I will not say the in conducting, but it has a fancier name, doesn't it?

Mollie Birney 39:12

Uh choral just means uh conducting choirs. Yeah. Cool. Thank you.

Ailey Jolie 39:16

And I was curious about how that has influenced not only the relationship that you have with your body, but your understanding of how the body communicates because I'm projecting that you have a very astute ear for sound.

Mollie Birney 39:33

I was not a great choral conductor. I'll say that right off the bat. I I was I'm I'm a I'm a decent musician. Um, but conducting itself required me to be more in relationship with my because you're you are a conduit. You are translating the music. And my experience was that I was so stuck in my head, all I could do was react. So if anything, the music was leading me. I was not leading it. I would get feedback from colleagues sometimes, because of the in that master's program, the choir you're conducting is all conductors, which what a mindfuck for a perfectionist. They know I'm failing, and do they know I know how bad I'm failing? All that noise. Um, but the feedback I often got from my colleagues is Molly, it's like you're not even in the room. And what that meant was you're not in your body to translate what you're to what you're hopefully audiating, what I'm hearing in my head to be able to communicate that in in my hands to elicit that sound from the choir. So instead it was more like the choir was happening and I was reacting to the sound and the noise in my head, more or less, like the the communication. I I think it's less about sound specifically and more about resonance, the felt resonance. Uh, one of the things I learned in the conducting master's program is that I am, I mean, I I I completed the courses, but I I am not a conductor. I am primarily a singer, a vocalist. I'm an ensemble member. I uh what that resonance is in my body, that's what moves me. And when you're conducting, we're not singing. We're not creating the sound. We're creating the sound through gesture, but I don't get to feel that same resonance. I don't get to feel as grounded in my body, which is I think one of the reasons I'm a little dissociated in my head when I was doing it. With clients today, I find that resonance is often simply about being in their voice, allowing themselves to speak clearly, not just articulate themselves, but own the space, own their range, own their vocal expressive range. And allowing themselves, you know, that that also has bigger implications, allowing themselves to express everywhere in their lives. You know, we often look at there are some relationships where we can speak freely and somewhere we cannot. And we're interested in disrupting that. Can you find that resonance elsewhere? Or else we want to get the hell out of a relationship that chokes your resonance. That this is an essential part of our vitality, our voice, our ability to express and sing.

Ailey Jolie 42:15

I would love to hear a little bit more from you because it's something I'm quite passionate about about the relationship between voice and embodiment or voice and authenticity, either one or both.

Mollie Birney 42:24

Boy, I fantasized about putting together a workshop about that for quite some time. Um clients who joke, one day we're gonna come in and you're gonna be at the piano and we're gonna be screwed, we're gonna be scared. Um, and because that would that would indicate like I'm about to ask you to sing, right? The uh the relationship between voice and resonance, is that what she said?

Ailey Jolie 42:45

Voice and embodiment or voice and authenticity.

Mollie Birney 42:51

As soon as I need you, as soon as I need you to think something about me, as soon as I am managing your perception of me, I don't get to speak freely. As soon as there are particular adjectives I want you to list off about me, and particular adjectives you're not allowed to list off about me, I don't get to speak or occur or express as a full human being, because now I'm trying to target those few adjectives. And to I've in my in my my line of work in the coaching conversation, I call that an identity, a way you have to be seen or can't be seen by others. And as soon as I have to be seen in a particular way, I rob myself of my authentic voice because there's too much management going on there. So kind of like I was saying earlier, if I need to be seen as smart, man, there are things I can't tell you about. I can't tell you I don't know an answer. I can't pause to really think about this. I can't start a sentence and then be like, nope, didn't know how to end that one. I gotta let it go. Uh I can't be a real human being. I can only be those two adjectives. And in order to access our true voice, we have to have the freedom for anyone to think anything about us. Uh and that's that's terrifying. That's a practice I'm I'm in on a daily basis, and you would you know this as someone who has an online presence. Um, it's it's pretty terrifying to go public with who you really are, to stand for your own voice, to stand for your own perspectives, to speak in your own authentic register too. There are, I can't tell you how many women I've had come into a coaching session that have a particularly high, managed, inauthentic voice that takes a while to drop down into their authentic, not that everyone's an alto, that's not my claim, but that to fully take up the space of your body means not pitching yourself in a particular Way. You know, that that that higher girlish voice is often meant to not offend anybody, to not take up too much space, to be palatable, to be sweet. I don't mean to mock it as I'm imitating it. I have a lot of compassion for where that comes from. It comes from fear. It's driven by shame. And I don't mean that everyone's authentic voice is that low, but everyone's authentic voice takes up some fucking space. And we want to have room for that. We want to have our the courage to throw our hat over the wall and go chase it and see what the real voice is that we stand for. And that you can't do that if you are in your head or if you're image policing.

Ailey Jolie 45:28

Thank you so much. This is again another topic I'm quite secretly passionate about just because I know how much my voice has shifted over the past decade because it used to be very high and it just actually sounded totally different. But it kind of goes with the whole, you know, time in my life where I was in Miss Canada and did pageants and I don't know what else was going on there, but the voice was very, very different, and it's really quite beautiful. I find it quite beautiful when working with a client to notice that shift in them as well as they get more comfortable, or the managing stops to notice how the voice changes. So thank you for sharing a little bit on that topic. I wanted to ask you, is there anything today that we maybe briefly touched on that you would like to circle back before we begin to end our time together today?

Mollie Birney 46:22

I really just want to emphasize how that in a culture that would that trains us that only a particular version of yourself is valuable or even acceptable, it is heroic to show up whole. It is heroic to show up in a body. It will feel I promise I'll finish that sentence. It will feel dangerous to a nervous system that is trained in capitalism, in patriarchy, to show up whole. That's why it's heroic to do it.

Ailey Jolie 46:56

Thank you so much. I know that you mentioned the book that's coming out in January. Is there anything else that you are offering or will be offering that you would like the listener to know about? We'll have all your information in the show notes, but if there's anything in specific you'd like to leave them with.

Mollie Birney 47:11

Sure. I how to freefall is available for pre-order right now at Mollybernie.com. So you can go there to uh um to get your copy. Um gosh, I always have groups and workshops right now. I I have a an in-person small coaching group starting in Portland, Oregon in October. Um, and I have uh monthly free community coaching offerings on usually the last Wednesday of every month. Um so you can drop by that and ask me your questions. Bring me what you got.

Ailey Jolie 47:40

Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time today.

Mollie Birney 47:43

My pleasure, Eileen. Thanks so much.

Reflections, Clarifications, And Next Steps

Ailey Jolie 47:50

What I keep sitting with after this conversation is the moment Molly described realizing that the voice in her head was still giving orders long after the behavior stopped. And because I'm a clinician, I know that her experience isn't rare or unique, but actually sadly, very, very common. And this is because the self-policing can change and hide, and we can develop new maths so people don't see the way that we are still controlling our bodies. So if any of this resonated with you or started to make you think about how your obsession with food may be transferred into exercise or aesthetic, I will invite you to explore that with a licensed professional. Another thing that Molly said that I really wanted to slow down because it holds so much information in it is that is the statement that if you're hearing English, it's a thought. There can be so much conflation between thought and sensation, feeling and thought, feeling, thought, sensation. So I loved how Molly broke this down. I loved how clear she was that the body does not speak in sentences, that it speaks in sensations, in temperature, in the tightening of a jaw, and the drop of a stomach. The reality is that by the time an experience has become language, it's already passed through the interpreter of the mind. And this is why so many of us who are fluent in therapy can narrate our feelings beautifully, and we still really can't sink into the sensation. And I want to be super clear that I'm not saying narrating is a failure or bad or wrong or less than narrating and knowing our narrative allows the mind to be stable, it allows us to have ego stability, allows us to have a sense of coherence so that we actually can be in the body and feel sensation. If we do not have a narrative around ourselves or our lives that feels consistent with reality and where we are, there's too much destabilization for us to actually be in the body because being in the body and being with sensations is destabilizing. So if you are someone who has a lot of therapeutic language but still struggles to feel a sensation, there's nothing absolutely wrong with that. You have built enough safety through the mind to finally surrender into sensation and begin to feel. This conversation is what Molly wrote about in her upcoming book, Free Fall, that will be available in January. If you want to dive into this topic a little bit more, there's a few more things that I want to circle back to that we spoke about in this episode. In this episode, I also spoke about my own voice, and I told Molly that mine used to live somewhere much higher when I was doing pageants. And I wanted to just clarify women's voices are policed in every direction, too high and we're decorative, and too low and we're cold. And the same culture that mocks the girlish voice turns around and diagnoses vocal fry in the woman who has a dropped voice. So please hear that there is no correct pitch for a liberated, embodied, awakened woman. It just doesn't exist. What does exist is the authentic sound of your voice, and only you know what that is. And the way that you know the authentic sound of your voice is not through your ears, it's through the felt sense of your body. I'm sure that you've spent time with people that when they speak, yes, you're hearing through your ears, but you're also feeling something through your body. There's a resonance. So if you don't know the authentic kind of feeling of your voice and your body, I'll invite you to go through your own mind and your own history and recall people that maybe you've heard their voice and felt something inside you. When you connect to your authentic voice, you will feel it deep deep in your own belly. Lastly, I have a little piece of housekeeping from my clinical corner because Molly and I both spoke about the psychodynamic tradition as it was taught to us. Many contemporary psychodynamic and relational therapists work with far more mutuality and presence than that classical picture suggests. And I just wanted to make that explicit. Both containers are medicine and important and helpful in different seasons for different people. The room that stabilizes you is not lesser than the room that disrupts you or challenges you. I know as a client, there have been times in my life when I absolutely needed someone to just stabilize me and validate me and contain me. And there have been other times in my life where I've really needed to be pushed and challenged and disrupted so that I had the change and the growth that I wanted for myself. So there is no hierarchy of one being better than the other. They are two different therapeutic approaches. They are oftentimes two very different types of therapists with different personalities and dispositions. Sometimes they do intersect, and ideally the therapist can adapt to the client that's in front of them. But as clinicians, we all do have our own personalities that influence how we show up in that room and if we offer stabilization or a little bit of that shaking that Molly said she likes to offer clients. If this conversation stirred something in you, I would love for you to stay close to me and my community. My Substack is where my writing lives. It's where I publish my thoughts, my experiences, ideas that I'm chewing on. You can access the most recent material by becoming a free subscriber, or you can access the whole archive of essays and podcast episodes and in conversation episodes by becoming a paid subscriber. Either way, you'll find access to this at ailejolie.substack.com. If Substack isn't enough for you and you want to spend even more time with me, you can join my online embodiment course, Embody. This September will be the last embody offering as a 14-week course. So if you have been thinking about joining, it's not too late. You can still sign up and join us for 14 weeks of embodiment practice, guest teachers, live community calls, meditation practices, journal questions. I mean, there's so much going on in that course. And if you want to spend time in person with me, you can join me this November at Blue Spirit, which is a retreat center in Nosara, Costa Rica. We will be spending a week together going through the seven modules that are part of Embody. Each module will be taught over one day. And unlike all of my other offerings, we'll be in person together, body to body. And I couldn't be more excited. Thank you again for listening and for being in the tender, ongoing process of coming home to your body and allowing this podcast, our guest, and me, Ailey Jolie, to be a part of that process for you. If you found value in this episode, it would mean so much to me for you to share the podcast with friends, a loved one, or on your social platforms. If you have the time, please rate and review the podcast so that this podcast reaches a larger audience and can inspire more and more humans to connect to their bodies too. Thank you for being here and nurturing the relationship you have with your very own body.