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310 - Align Your Mind - Britt Frank - You Are Not So Smart | Wave AI Podcast Notes

310 - Align Your Mind - Britt Frank

Mon Mar 31 2025

Therapist, teacher, speaker, and trauma specialist Britt Frank tells us all about her new book, Align Your Mind, an all-access pass to understanding, befriending, and leading the multiple voices within yourself.

Summary

You Are Not So Smart — Episode 310: Align Your Mind (with Britt Frank)

Release Date: March 31, 2025
Host: David McRaney
Guest: Britt Frank, licensed neuropsychotherapist and author of Align Your Mind

Episode Overview

In this compelling episode, David McRaney hosts Britt Frank—therapist, trauma specialist, and author of the new book Align Your Mind. The discussion dives deep into the concept of "parts work," a framework for understanding the multiplicity within our minds, drawn from Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy. Together, they examine why our minds often feel divided, how conflicting impulses can be understood (rather than battled), and the actionable methods for turning inner chaos into cooperation. The episode is a practical, science-informed, and highly relatable exploration of psychological self-alignment, parts work, and shadow work.

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. What Is "Parts Work"?

[02:35–07:38]

Definition & Origins: "Parts work" is an umbrella term for therapeutic models (notably Internal Family Systems, or IFS) that conceptualize the mind as made up of many sub-parts, each with its own motives and roles.
Explanation by Host:

“If you've ever had an argument with yourself... if you’ve ever wondered why you keep doing things you know you should not do... that’s really the origin of parts work.” —David McRaney [05:55]
Historical Context:
Many traditions, from Walt Whitman (“I am large, I contain multitudes”) to AI theorist Marvin Minsky, have described minds as societies or systems, not monoliths.
Therapeutic Philosophy:
Using this framework, instead of trying to silence or exile unwanted thoughts, we learn to get “departments” (or “families”) within us to cooperate.

2. The Power of Metaphor, Language, and Models

[07:38–16:50]

Models like parts work rely on useful metaphors, not literal descriptions.

“When we discuss your psychological shadow or your inner critic, we are not literally discussing a shadow in your hypothalamus or a standalone entity wearing a hat living in your medulla oblongata.” —David McRaney [12:54]
Britt Frank and David emphasize the value in shared therapeutic language for navigating complex internal experiences, even if the language is imprecise.

3. Introducing Britt Frank & Her Perspective

[21:20–22:29]

Britt’s Credentials:
Over 12,000 hours in the therapist’s chair; approaches therapy with both personal and professional experience.
Central Claim:

"Parts work as a way of life... does unlock a whole bunch of stuff that things [like positive thinking or affirmations] don’t seem to get to. If I was stuck on an island with one tool left in my toolbox, psychologically speaking, it would be this one." —Britt Frank [22:29]

4. How the Mind Is Understood in Parts Work

[25:35–27:57]

Frank’s Definition:
The mind is “the thing inside us that talks, that has opinions... if you can talk to yourself, and we all do it, we think to ourselves, we talk to ourselves. Parts work simply suggests making it a conversation, a dialogue instead of a monologue.” —Britt Frank [27:57]
Self-Dialogue:
The phenomenon of arguing with oneself is evidence of distinct internal parts; language like "part of me knows X" is profound and meaningful.
- Not all people have an inner monologue; the framework is most useful for those who do.

5. The Four Main Types of "Parts"

[34:37–41:58]

Britt Frank simplifies the traditional IFS parts into:

Protectors: Try to prevent pain/harm (anticipate, control, manage anxieties).
Reactors: Respond to current pain/harm, often through 'bad' habits (e.g., drinking after a hard day).
Story Keepers: Assign meaning to events; generate the stories and beliefs that shape emotions.

“Feelings are the product of your story keeper taking a thing and assigning a meaning to it.” —Britt Frank [39:57]
Weirdos: Parts that drive idiosyncratic, quirky behaviors; things we do when no one's watching (e.g., odd eating habits, private rituals).
- These are often shameful only when exposed to others, but every person contains them.

6. Alignment: What It Really Means

[45:46–47:14]

Definition:
Alignment isn’t merging all parts into one; it’s getting them to cooperate, like instruments in an orchestra.

“The idea of alignment is that you don’t have to, nor can you even if you wanted to, get rid of your parts. But you can, like an orchestra if you have a conductor, get it to a place where you’re making music instead of noise.” —Britt Frank [46:59]
Real-Life Application:
The absence of alignment can explain why people who ‘should’ feel happy or successful often don’t.

“I feel like I’m in someone else’s life. Something is not clicking... Are your choices in the external making sense with what you actually value?” —Britt Frank [47:14]

7. Shadow Work Demystified

[53:13–54:15]

What is the "Shadow"?

“A psychological shadow simply put, is anything about yourself that you are not connected with... including your power, your strength, your creativity.” —Britt Frank [53:13]
Why It Matters:
Shadow work is not just about confronting negative traits; it’s about recognizing any parts of yourself blocked from awareness—including positive aspects.
- Celebrity worship often reflects shadowing of positive qualities.

8. How Shadows (and Blockages) Form

[54:52–56:01]

The fear of social death (ostracism, shame) is biologically hardwired and creates internal blockages.
“Good” and “bad” beliefs or behaviors are largely inherited from families, culture, traumatic events, or social survival strategies—we can (and should!) challenge their origins.

9. The Practical Framework: Regulate, Excavate, Activate

[59:43–67:40]

Step 1: Regulate

Ensure you’re not in fight/flight/freeze—emotional regulation is necessary before any deep psychological work.

“You cannot do any type of good work if you are not emotionally regulated.” —Britt Frank [60:07]

Step 2: Excavate

Investigate what’s really going on; become a "private detective" for your own motivations (e.g., track what you admire, what makes you jealous, what you find shameful).
- Remove morality (“good/bad”) from self-inquiry to avoid shutting down curiosity.
“If I go inside and I find a really jealous, catty, gossipy 16 year old—great... The I is not the parts.” —Britt Frank [62:37]

Step 3: Activate

Take tiny, “micro-yes” actions that are so small they don’t trip internal resistance mechanisms.

“A micro yes is so small that you actually feel like an idiot doing it. If you don’t feel silly doing it, it’s not small enough.” —Britt Frank [65:21]
Build momentum via incremental changes—“muscles don’t grow if you don’t rip them apart, and brains don’t grow if you don’t challenge them.”

10. The Inner Critic as Ally

[67:40–69:41]

Reframing the Inner Critic:
“What if we started with the assumption that the inner critic was, in fact, an ally? ...I’m not saying it’s a skillful ally... but if I can start with the assumption that the critic is an ally, then I go, okay, decoded. What is that part afraid of? Oh, that part’s afraid of rejection.” —Britt Frank [68:07]
Often, the voice of the inner critic is not a hateful parent or teacher, but a terrified, protective younger part.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“Problems that remain unsolvable are questions asked the wrong way.” —Britt Frank quoting Alan Watts [29:32]
“You cannot get rid of parts of your own mind. You can’t amputate consciousness like you can a physical body part.” —Britt Frank [31:42]
“Doing the same thing over and over isn’t a sign of insanity, it’s a sign of pain. Addiction is what happens when our desire to avoid pain outweighs our capacity to endure it.” —Britt Frank [65:07]
“If you look to the outside world, it does seem like someone needs to be in charge of a system for the system to operate efficiently. Alignment is the same idea taken inside.” —Britt Frank [46:59]
“Which part of me is it that thinks I suck? Because it's not all of it.” —Britt Frank [50:31]
“Triggers are maps to all of the good stuff... If you never get triggered, how are you supposed to know who’s in there, who might need your attention?” —Britt Frank [63:01]

Timestamps for Major Segments

[01:36] — Why we turn to psychology podcasts: Seeking a sense-making nugget
[05:55] — Parts work origins: Self-conflict and self-sabotage
[21:20] — Britt Frank’s introduction & experience
[25:35] — Defining “the mind” in therapy
[34:37] — The four main types of parts (Protectors, Reactors, Story Keepers, Weirdos)
[45:46] — Defining and achieving "alignment"
[53:13] — Demystifying shadow work
[59:43] — The practical process: Regulate, Excavate, Activate
[67:40] — Inner critic as ally
[70:42] — Where to find Britt Frank and her work

Conclusion

This episode delivers both a fascinating model of how our minds function in “parts” and actionable advice for working with inner conflict, self-criticism, and emotional blockages. Britt Frank underscores that transformation doesn’t come from battling or exiling parts of ourselves, but from understanding, aligning, and gently activating them with practical steps. Shadow work, regulation, and micro-steps form a system for making meaningful change.

Find Britt Frank:

Instagram: @BrittFrank
Website: brittfrank.com
Book: Align Your Mind – available wherever books are sold

Highly recommended for anyone interested in self-inquiry, mental health, or simply feeling "stuck." This conversation brings deep psychological concepts down to earth in a compassionate, science-forward, and humorous way.

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Transcript

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Podcast Host (Interviewer) (0:45)

If you want to know more about what I'm talking about, check it out.

David McRaney (0:48)

Middle of the show welcome to the you are not so smart podcast, episode 310.

Britt Frank (1:36)

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

David McRaney (1:53)

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

Podcast Host (Interviewer) (2:04)

Remember from her first appearance on this show.

David McRaney (2:07)

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

Podcast Host (Interviewer) (2:35)

I received an incredible amount of positive.

David McRaney (2:38)

Feedback about that episode. It's definitely one of the all time youe are not so Spark favorites. And in her second appearance we discussed the psychological science behind procrastination, what it is, why we do it, and how to navigate around our propensity to procrastinate, which is also one of the most downloaded episodes of the podcast. In this episode, Britt returns to discuss her latest book, which at the time of this recording, just became available for purchase. It's called Align your Mind and as she puts it, it's a rogue punk down in the dirt exploration workbook textbook and guideline to something known in therapy circles and in psychology nerdom as parts work. What is parts work? Well, first of all, that's not its technical name. It's very commonly referred to as parts work. But technically it's a form of psychotherapy known as internal family Systems. And even more technically, this is a systems thinking and systems psychology approach to therapy. Psychologists, client behaviors, problem solutions. But in a framework Developed in the 1980s and popularized in the 1990s by psychologist Richard C. Schwartz at Purdue University, IFS imagines the mind a lot like the inside out animated movies imagined in the mind as parts, as characters with individual specialized functions that interact and at times have competing goals. In hardcore psychology, these are considered individual systems, and when things are going well, these systems cooperate and are managed by something we might call a self, which would be yet another system in internal family systems. Schwartz called these systems families, hence the name, which was the big insight of his work, that there are lots and lots and lots of subunits of cognition, and these units cluster around shared goals for the organism, that is you, and getting them to work together instead of attempting to silence them or ignore them, was a better way to become an ordered, functional person. I think of them more as departments than families, but the important part here is to create strategies for coordination and cooperation of these entities within yourself that want to pursue things that feel good and avoid things that feel bad, both in the real physical world and also in the thinking, emotional world. Schwartz imagined that there were three big systems. There were the managers. These are the subunits of cognition that proactively resist and set up sort of ramparts against things that might be bad. Then firefighters, which react to bad things that are happening, things that you would rather not be happening. And then exiles. These are parts of you that would like to express themselves but feel, when they are exposed, vulnerable to harm. So that's his way of looking at it. And if you've ever had an argument with yourself, then you have an idea of what Schwartz was basing all of this on. If you've ever hit the snooze button and later berated yourself for doing so, or reached for a bag of dark chips and told yourself, hey, don't do that, and then you did do that, and then you felt bad about it, and then you said you wouldn't do it again, and then you did. If you've ever wondered why you keep doing things you know you should not do and would prefer not to do, that's really the origin of parts work. Or if you've ever had a conversation with yourself where you imagine some part of you doing the talking and another part doing the listening, like, I am so lazy. I really wish I wasn't so damn lazy. Or, okay, get it together, you can do this. Or, why did I say that? You're so stupid. Why do you do that? You have some notion of these foundations of ifs. And you may have some skepticism about all of this. I know I did. I. I just thought it seemed so metaphorical when I first learned about these things. And sometimes it just seems so mystical or wooish that initially I wasn't sure.

David McRaney (7:40)

But it has so much support and there's a lot of evidence, there's a lot of research showing that the outcomes of using this in therapy are very positive that I wanted to know more. So it was neat to see that Britt had written a book about it. So before we get into what all of this means, I think it's important to note that this is in many ways a philosophical framework. It's a language for discussing the mind so that both therapists and clients can create and commit to behaviors, to managing emotions and attitudes and actions and plans of action. In psychology, there are many silos. You have theoretical psychology, clinical psychology, applied psychology, neuropsychology. And these silos conduct evidence based research whose findings get shared back and forth across those silos. Then there's counseling and clinical psychology, where all of these silos inform different therapeutic frameworks between therapists and clients. Different therapists use different therapies based on all of this. And Parts work is one of those therapies, one that Britt Frank says in her experience is the most effective of them all, while acknowledging, yes, this is a collection of metaphors for concepts that we've been contemplating philosophically, poetically, artistically. For millennia. As Walt Whitman mused in 1855, Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes. More recently, all of this reminds me of the work of early AI researchers and modern AI researchers LLMs the whole thing. But early AI researchers like cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky, they spoke of this sort of thing all the time. He wrote a great book titled Society of Mind. I have a signed copy of it which described human intelligence as a collection of simple subunits which he called agents. And these agents could work together to build up into more complex processes. And different processes could share simpler agents with other more complex processes and even more higher order biological parallel processing. In Minsky's model, there is no central controller. Intelligence is emergent and so is consciousness. As Minsky put it, minds are what brains do. And there are a lot of these models. Jerry Fodor's modular mind, Stanislaus Duane's global workspace theory, Eric Burns transactional analysis model, Hallen Sidra Stone's voice dialogue framework, Timothy Wilson's Adaptive unconscious theory, and there are many others. All of these models start by recognizing the brain as a collection of biological organic structures that have different specialized functions that all work together to generate your mind. But not just your mind. The limbic system, the basal ganglia, the prefrontal cortex, the amygdala, all of these are collections of units of neurons whose action potentials generate your sense of balance, your drives, hunger and sexual attraction, and feeling hot or cold or pain, joy, melancholy, awe, anxiety, and so on. Similarly, up here, in truly complex collections of action potentials, the mind is also a collection of what we might call mental structures. Your sense of self, your values, your beliefs, your attitudes, your wants and your not wants. And as we ascend higher and higher from the neuronal source code of molecules crossing the membranes in the electric meatball inside your skull, we will at some point need to start talking in metaphors. And in a way, that's already what we're doing. We're almost always speaking in metaphors and abstractions, symbols and similes, beliefs, attitudes, values, these are categorical boundaries around the mental output of a complex system. But we can't extract a belief with a scalpel and place that belief under a slide. You can put the organic material generating belief under a slide, sure, but you won't see the belief. And as neuroscientist David Eagleman once said, even if you could become so self aware that you could deep dive into into the unconscious mind, the thoughts and emotions down there might look like machine language. As he put would be like monitoring a transistor in a computer to better understand why a YouTube video was funny. So when I use a single word like anxiety, or a single term like disappointed or overjoyed, what I am describing is the downstream output of an immense conglomeration of interacting neural structures so complex that we are still decades, maybe centuries, away from truly understanding what is being expressed and how. So I can casually refer to a dense interplay of neurochemical splendor with a short sound made with lungs, teeth and lips, or represented with marks on paper or indentations in stone. Yet when I tell you I am livid, for example, I'm expecting you to take that collection of phonemes, that sound or series of symbols represented as a word, and allow it to trigger a thunderstorm of associations in your neural network based on your priors and your experiences and your understanding, so as to get the gist of what I'm attempting to communicate. So when it comes to something like parts, work or anything in psychology, really, the metaphors, the terms, the labels, the abstractions, the language we use to discuss the mind. It has immense power as long as we accept these as tools and only as tools. When we discuss your psychological shadow or your inner critic, we are not literally discussing a shadow in your hypothalamus or a standalone entity wearing a hat living in your medulla oblongata. You might prefer imagining the mind as programs running on an operating system, and those programs as well as the operating system, all running on hardware, which itself is a collection of hardware systems. The gist of what we are discussing is what's important here. It's what's important in therapy, a shared language of gists so that the therapist can work with the client toward a shared goal. And according to this episode's guest psychologist, Britt Frank, the shared language of parts work is very effective when it comes to improving lives, changing unwanted behaviors, becoming more productive, and so on. That is what we are going to discuss. That is what we are going to explore after this Commercial break if you get my gist foreign.

Britt Frank (31:42)

Yeah, well, the whole kill your ego and banish your inner critic and take that part of you that likes to do the bad thing and lock it up in the closet and send it away. That doesn't work because if it worked, it would have. And you cannot get rid of parts of your own mind. You can't amputate consciousness like you can a physical body part. And so, and then here's the science where the science meets sort of the esoteric. If you think the enemy of your well being lives inside your head and I have to kill something or banish something or tell something, you're a liar. Shut up. Well, your brain is really literal. Your brain is really smart. But it's also really simple in some ways. Okay, if we are being attacked and we have to fight and kill and strangle, well, we better release cortisol because we got to get you ready to fight or to strangle or to attack, which is going to have very real physiological consequences. So this idea that our mind is made of parts and all of them, when properly trained, have a role to play. Isn't the saccharine sweet? Just be nice to yourself. Just accept yourself. There are real physiological implications of approaching the different parts of us. Not with the war metaphor. So that was a really long winded sidebar. What is parts work? Parts work is the idea that your mind, just like your body, just like any complex system that you've ever seen, is made of many moving parts and each part has a different job. Your endocrine system does a different job than your elbow. And each thing needs a different intervention. You don't care for your kidneys the same way you do for your teeth. And so we treat our minds like it's this one evil empire that's out to get us, that's out to sabotage us. And our job is to destroy it or to save us, silence it. Then we wonder why are we anxious and depressed and burned down and whatnot? Parts work is the Idea that your mind, just like your physical body, if you know how to work it out, how to train it, how to nourish it, then things tend to work better.

Britt Frank (34:37)

So parts work is this umbrella idea that you're multiple. I'm multiple. Our minds are a multiplicity. It's a multiverse. I use the internal family systems framework, which was developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. And he's been studying this and doing this. He created the same beautiful model. It's been his life's work. And I just took it and went rogue with it. And I'm like, this is the scrappy cousin of what's called ifs therapy. I wanted to take it out of the therapy room and make it in my way. Just really, really. Here, take this. Even if you never set foot in a therapist's office, you can work with your mind in this way. And he very generously blurbed the book. I was terrified to send it to him. Hey, buddy, here's your life's work. Totally bastardized. So what I call the parts you can boil down to, we have protective parts, we have reactive parts, and then we have parts that need protecting. If you think of the sacred service, you've got the bodyguards and then the thing that they are protecting. And so inside your mind, your protector parts are the ones who try to prevent bad feelings or bad things. Your reactors are the ones who show up when that doesn't work. And so both of them have the same objective, protect the brain from pain. Even though, like, as a drug addict, you could argue, rightly so, that I was creating more pain by doing crystal meth is not a healthy coping skill for a trauma history. But if the objective is avoid the trauma history, then crystal meth is actually quite Useful if we're just objectively going with. If the object of the game is avoid the trauma, speed will help you to do that. It'll kill you in the process us. That's why this idea of good and bad, there are good and bad behaviors. But this binary morality that we were taught, the good guys and the bad guys, drugs bad, sobriety good. That model doesn't work for the complexity of our humanness. And so drugs are bad. Yes. But if you don't know the function of what those reactors are trying to accomplish, then you're going to be fighting with yourself. And if you're fighting with yourself, you're kind of screwed.

Britt Frank (62:37)

Yeah, and jealousy is a good one too. We talk about these qualities like they're good or bad. And you can't excavate if you've got a lot invested in being right. Because that guy that's making all those Excuses is doubling down because if he's wrong, then he's shamed and shunned because now he's a quote, bad person. So if we can take good and bad off the table and know you're good, you're bad, you're kind, you're mean, all of the things, great. Now we can excavate without fear because we're not invested in what we find. If I go inside and I find a really jealous, catty, gossipy 16 year old, great. That doesn't mean that's who I am. We've already established the self. The I is not the parts. So I can go in and find even the most unpleasant, not happy, not collaborative parts of me and not take that on as my identity and so regulate is required to be able to excavate. Who do we admire? Who are we jealous of? You're not going to get jealous of people that are doing things you don't want to do. Like all the homesteading people on Instagram. I, I'm not. I don't want chickens. I want to eat. I don't. I have no desire to have chickens. Like, I want you to do it because I do value those eggs. But I'm not jealous of homesteader people who have chickens. I don't want them, but I'm incredibly jealous of people who are writing awesome books and giving amazing talks and going to cool places. The jealousy is a cue. It's a clue. So if we take all of these impulses that we have and instead of saying, now this means I'm a bad person and go, oh, it's a clue. What do you do with clues? You don't sit on them, you follow them. And so excavate is simply taking the clues that are lying everywhere. They're all over. They're in our triggers, they're in the thing. That's why I really don't like this idea that we should avoid triggers or somehow coddle or walk around them. Because triggers are maps to all of the good stuff. Like, it's unpleasant. I don't like being triggered. I have PTSD and complex ptsd. And being triggered is unpleasant. It's objectively uncomfortable. And if you never get triggered, how are you supposed to know who's in there, who might need your attention? It's the same thing. Like if you have an injury, the inflammation is a sign that it needs attention. Without the inflammation, how are you going to know to pay attention?

Britt Frank (65:21)

Brett, what is this nonsense? So activate basically means you got to do a thing, we have to do things. Nothing changes if we don't do things. Muscles don't grow if you don't rip them apart, and brains don't grow if you don't challenge them. I don't like the design, but I didn't design it in order to change anything. Your mind, a habit, to make something better, to fix a relationship or whatever, we're gonna have to do things. But the problem is, like you said, our brains aren't wired for success. Our brains are wired for survival. So from a pattern prediction point of view, our brains don't want us to do things. Doing things involves risk and rejection and getting eaten by lions. So in order to activate our let's do the things system and capacity, we have to make them so small you feel stupid doing it. And I call these micro yeses. And so a micro yes think of a baby step cut into 20 pieces. A micro yes is so small that you actually feel like an idiot doing it. If. If you don't feel silly doing it, it's not small enough. And the reason micro yeses create activation energy is because they don't freak out your brain. It's sort of like the Mission Impossible I'm maneuvering under the laser beam situation, or entrapment, where Catherine Zeta Jones is doing her thing. So a micro yes allows you to then break inertia and change a pattern. And so to change a pattern, you don't have to have a big giant moonshot. You just need enough activation energy in a different direction, and then those micro. So a micro yes for a fitness goal isn't take a walk, it's throw your left sneaker by the door, and that's all you do today. And then tomorrow you throw the other one. That's dumb. I know. And it will allow you to bypass your brain's protective system, so then you build momentum. So then by the time your brain's protective system detects a change, you've already acclimated it and it knows, oh well, this is what we do. Now. So, okay, no problem. I'm not going to shut it down with Fight Flight Freeze. I'm not going to deploy protectors or reactors. Micro yeses are not sexy, but they get the job done.