844 Become a Self-Healer and Break Free of Emotional Cycles with Dr. Nicole LePera

This is episode number 844 with Dr. Nicole Lapera. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. [Speaking of the] Julia Cameron said, what we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon. Negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours. Which do we want more of? I'm very excited about this interview with Dr. Nicole LePera, also known as the Holistic Psychologist, over on Instagram. She's been blowing up on Instagram, growing hundreds of thousands of people a month with her wisdom and unique approach to holistic healing. If you don't know who she is, she is holistic psychologist who founded the Mindful Healing Center in Philadelphia, where she works with individuals, couples, and families talking about gut health, sleep, movement, cellular health, belief, and mindfulness into treatment. She evolved her more traditional training from Cornell University and the New School to one that acknowledges the connection between the mind and body. Dr. Lipara views mental and physical struggles from a whole person perspective and works to identify the underlying physical and emotional causes we all face. This school of therapy differs from the more traditional therapy methods in that it concentrates on the client's relationships and interactions with their environment and how they express these relationships through their feelings, thinking, and being. And this is one of the reasons why she's taking over the Instagram world with her message because she's resonating so deeply with people in their heart and their way of being. And in this episode, we talk about how to become emotionally unstuck when you feel like there's no way out of those emotional tragedies, what interdependence looks like, and why we need to break our patterns to find it. Setting Boundaries and the Important Difference Between Boundaries Versus Ultimatums. Dr. Lapaera's tips on creating a new personal narrative in order to manifest what you want. How to rebuild trust within yourself and become a self healer every day. We talk about re-parenting yourself and creating powerful boundaries with family members and so much more. I think you're gonna really love this one. I really believe this is gonna blow up in a big way. Make sure to share this with a friend right now. If there's someone that you know who might be struggling with self-healing or any type of emotional challenges right now, send them this link, lewishouse.com/844 or just copy and paste the link where you're listening to this podcast over on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere you're listening to this podcast. Very excited about this. Make sure to share with a friend and tag myself, Lewis Howes, and the Holistic Psychologist over on Instagram, as I'm sure Nicole would love to hear your thoughts about what you picked up and learned from this episode. Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. We have Dr. Nicole Lapera in the house. Good to see you. So glad you're here. Found out about you months ago on Instagram and just have been loving your work and the impact you make on people's lives. Thank you for being here. And you'll be moving out here soon, hopefully, right? That's right. That's the goal.

Even though it's not publicly announced yet. That's the, here it is, publicly announcing it. I'm the hell out of Philadelphia.

I mean, I don't know how you can come here and not want to stay. It's pretty amazing.

I travel the world all the time and there's amazing places, but I always.

Want to come back here. That's good, you know, you found your home. I love it. Yeah, the first year I actually hated it, because I came from New York City.

Mm-.

I lived in Ohio, then lived in New York City before I moved here. And I loved the energy in New York. But you've been on the East Coast for a long time, so you're probably ready for like a break and a.

Change of pace, right? Yeah. But it's different energy. It's a shift of energy. I remember when I would travel out here, getting used to the slower pace of things was a test of patience. I didn't like that.

My East Coast, I'm like, Come on, where's my coffee? Let's go! I didn't like it. That's why I moved here. As opposed by the beach, it's even like 10 times slower by the beach where you're staying right now. But in West Hollywood, it had more of a New York walking vibe. So that's why I love it here. A little more energy.

Now you've been doing your work for how long now? Probably by the time my very long program ended. Schooling? Yeah, schooling. About seven years, probably after school.

But my program was about seven years.

Seven years of school. And this is after my undergrad, from the start of grad school till I was... Wow. designated a psychologist and then ultimately able.

To get a license and then open up a practice.

It took seven, eight years to get a license.

To get a, yeah, so it's- that's.

For most therapists too, I mean, all therapists. It's five years of, so the clinical psych, now things have changed. When I first started school, the route to having a practice and essentially getting the license to have a practice was through a PhD, a clinical PhD, or what's called a PsyD. I don't know if you ever heard that, a PSYD, capital D. Anyway, long story short, things have since changed. and now you can go and get a master's level education and then get licensed two years, three years maybe. I'm not sure if there's a thesis involved with that. And then you can get, you have to get enough supervised hours either route, but you can hang a shingle. And that was my ultimate goal. And at the time I was very limited. I had the PsyD or the PhD path. So I chose the PhD. And then seven years later, a nightmare dissertation, some licensure hurdles, so say it mildly and My wet my shingle.

Wow. There you go. I think in another life, I would have loved to be a psychologist.

Yeah, it's a cool thing. The mind has always really fascinated me. And that's honestly, as long as I can remember, you probably would have heard me say, I want to be a psychologist only because of the mind piece. I like helping people, but it's interesting the more I kind of explored my own path in, I realized it was less of, oh, I want to help heal people and more of, wow, the mind's incredibly fascinating. which is cool because I think that's a different route and I think that also kind of evolved me to the way that I'm working now with a really heavy focus on the mind and the power of the mind in a little different way.

Interesting. So are you coming back around to wanting to help people too?

Yeah, I mean, people are all right, you know what I mean?

Or you're fascinated by how messed up we are.

Yeah, I'm just fascinated by the power of the mind on both ends that keeps us stuck and then the power of the mind that can make us well and then beyond well. I mean, I just know myself because I was so limit, I have so many limiting beliefs in my own, passed on from my own upbringing, experiences I've had.

Still you have limiting beliefs?

I've overcome a lot of them and that's what the biggest for you. Big time scarcity mindset.

Like scarcity around relationships.

Everything. It's really, I've noticed food was one of my things. I didn't know until I started to explore some of my patterns and for me, scarcity ran What do you mean around food?

So this idea, and it would come.

Up in my big joke in my relationship a lot would be, you know, we would, we lived together and we'd have items in the food, in the fridge, and we'd shop together and we eat the same diet and I would go in, Where's my half? And became incensed by, Where's my goddamn half of food? And I was like, why is this so upsetting to me? Like, I'm not with going without.

There's, I mean, I live in the.

Grocery store next door. Literally three blocks I live. I can walk to a Whole Foods. Like, there's no reason why when my half goes away, what was that about? And I started to realize the underlying driving thought of this was that scarcity. So my food, my things, lack of money, mindset, things like that. So that was a really big one. I used to think genetically in some ways, I would see the way people and the way their bodies looked and how they were in the world. I was just, you know, not gifted. So I think that a lot of my own healing journey was overcoming that, which is why I'm so passionate now about helping other people, because I think a lot of people are limiting themselves based on, and again, these don't come out of nowhere. These mindsets, the way I see it at least, they all come from an accumulation, as I put it, of our past experiences.

I was talking about this this morning about memories, about how really we have maybe five or six, maybe you tell me differently, you're the psychologist, but I think we have maybe five, six, maybe seven strong positive memories, then we have five or six or seven strong negative memories. that we always kind of reflect back to and think about. And obviously there's filler memories, but I was trying, I was like, I don't really remember much from ages five to 18 in between those five to 10 memories on each side. If I really focus on like, okay, what did I do in third grade when I was like eight years old or whatever it was, every day you kind of forget like the 365 days in between the memories. that we hold on to with these patterns. Is that kind of safe to say in my uneducated- yeah, 100%.

And what I would offer is the reason that you have those really high positives and maybe really low negatives was because of the emotionality attached. So the bigger the emotion, we tend to be able to retain those- those memories. Those memories because our memory center, our emotional center, our limbic system, it's all interconnected. And a lot of the reasons why we encode and then can retrieve, essentially put the memory in and access it later, is because of the emotionality.

Of how strong it was.

How strong it was.

So what were the memories you had, the experiences you had that created the limiting beliefs? The scarcity.

It's interesting you say this because then there's another category and this is where I fall and I actually diagnosed myself with a memory impairment for quite some years.

Memory impairment.

Impairment based on the fact that I had no memories.

I dated a girl that said she didn't remember anything between before 18 one time. And I was like, she was super positive and amazing and loving. And I was like, there's something off if you don't remember anything before 18. Nothing. I was like, how's that possible? There's gotta be some serious trauma that you're-- and later I found out there was incredible trauma.

But I think that's-- We do that as a society. So there is that. So when I realized I had no memory, I had two theories.

Two memories.

Two working theories. Two working theories. One was that, I had such a cataclysmic trauma, you know, that I can't remember and that washed all my memories. And I spent a lot of time thinking and oh gosh, you know, what could it have been? And I keep coming up with I don't. And then the other diagnosis that I gave myself was a memory impairment. So anyway, flashing forward, I've now come to realize that I started to share when I got the Instagram platform. I started to talk a bit more openly about my lack of memories. I started to understand our nervous system and our stress responses a bit more. And I came to realize that more of us than you would realize are like this ex of yours and myself that we don't have memories and it doesn't have to be, you know, biological thing wrong in our brains and it doesn't have to be the big T is like the big T trauma that I think a lot of us talk about the big cataclysmic event.

I feel like you'd remember the trauma.

Right. But right. Yeah. So sometimes it's a low lie or a low level stress, chronic stress and inability to have emotions present in the home. that results in that lack of memory. So anyway, to answer your question though, the way I came to know that I had a lot of my lack-based mindset was because we still remember. So I have people who reach out to me and are like, oh my gosh, if I can't remember, how will I heal? So I don't have a visual memory. I can't go back in time. And when I talk about inner child work and you go back to heal, you don't need the memory to heal the way that I see it because we all are a walking memory, whether it's in my habits, based on our reactions, our triggers, our patterns. the thoughts that we frequently think. So a lot of Maya would orbit around lack based or not having type of things, lack of consideration. So we can see evidence of our past, whether or not we see our past or not. Based on how we're showing it now. Yes.

So you were being, you know, for example, you were like, where's my food? My half is gone. Or you took three fourths and I only have a fourth. And so that's definitely like reflecting a memory of experiences or an experience you had. that you held on to and said, like, I'm not deserving of enough or there's never going to be enough or whatever the story you said to yourself.

Right. A lot of mine was based around this concept of being considered. So for me, it was a bit of emergence between lack. So when I, I attribute that to my dad, he very much was, my parents are much older when they had me. My mom was 42 and my dad was 45.

How old are you now?

So, and I am third. I'll be 37 in September. So same age. so yeah, so my dad very much had a lot of the depression error based thinking. I mean, my garage looks like a fallout shelter with literally twine wrapped up because enough twine put together, you have a rope, I mean, that kind of, so very direct ways and indirect ways, I'm sure my dad's messaging about money and holding and keeping, and then the consideration piece gets wrapped up in there for me.

You- weren't being taken, you weren't being considered.

Not being considered.

You- weren't being seen or not being thought about.

And then that comes to my mother, It was very much emotionally, completely vacant, absent, and so not feeling seen, heard, understood. So for me, when items would go missing, like my brownie that I really wanted, it became not only do I not have enough for me, but the meaning that I had for it. I'm not thinking about meaning. I'm not considered. And that would open up a really deep wound. So when my partner's looking at me like, what the hell is wrong with you? It's a brownie, Nicole. I'll go get you another one. You know what I mean? Inside, I was like a little girl who was not being seen and was being told that there's not enough for me. And I mean, so that's where that pain was coming from when I was tearing around the apartment about my brownie. It wasn't about my brownie. And I think that's the way that, I mean, if we all look at ourself and our patterns, and I'm always talking about developing self-observation to do that, all of our clues are there. Our past is present with us. And that's why we're stuck and that's why we can't, the way I see it, at least that's why a lot of us struggle to move forward. And that's why I hear the word stuck probably more often than I hear any word spoken.

So how do people get unstuck?

First, I think consciousness. We have to become conscious to ourself because we're in our autopilot 95% of the day if we're not conscious. And that's going to be the program. I mean, the computer analogy is, I think, the one that we all understand the most. That's going to be the program that we're running day after day after day. So without consciousness, there is no change. So awareness is consciousness, awareness of our.

Pattern of our triggers of our pain, of the trauma. Does that mean healing the past first and reflecting on all the past? Is that why people do therapy? Talk therapy? Because you're talking about the things that created the pattern today.

I am always a believer, and I explore this within myself a lot, how much is the past necessary? And I keep coming to the conclusion that it's necessary that becoming self-observational understanding, I think that developing through a mindfulness-based meditation practice is incredibly helpful. ful because it actually helps us to fire up our brain in a new way that then allows for self-observation throughout the day. Because I do not think there is no magic cushion, there is no magic anything. The way I see it, we cannot do something once and then expect my day to look different magically because I have meditated in the morning. Yeah, there are some gains and some peace. I mean, a joke you made, oh, I meditate in the morning so I can calm my mind. Yeah, we get a little residual, carry out, carry away from sitting and meditating, but if I'm not watching myself throughout the day, and if I don't train myself to watch myself throughout the day, to watch my patterns, to watch the thoughts that are causing those emotional reactions, especially to see when I'm triggered, just when I'm having a big feeling about a current event. And typically the feeling is really big because it's about the meaning assigned to the event, the similarity of this now event based on my past experiences. And so there's always a reason why things are way bigger than they maybe ought to be logically in that moment. And then that's where we dive in. give ourselves some new either releasing the emotional valve, soothing our own emotional wounds in that moment, not looking outside of anyone or anything else to make us feel better. At least that's the way that I view it.

So you're saying no one else should be determining our happiness.

Yeah. The big promoter. Yeah. Yeah. I talk a lot about interdependence is. Is the kind of term that I've been going back to a lot lately.

What does that mean?

Essentially being, you know, because we are social creatures as humans. We actually benefited quite greatly from having tribes, you know, as we were evolving in terms of safety and division of labor. So as I see it, we all, we need, quote unquote, little n, we little n need relationships. But I think what interdependence means to me is being able to be a self-reliant and resilient, you know, a human meeting all my physical, emotional needs. separately and then having that shared space of relationship.

How does someone become interdependent if they've been so reliant on the needs of other people, especially, you know, under 18, the needs of parents for financial or.

Yeah.

You know, housing.

Yeah. Food. Yeah.

But if we're talking, you know, adults, how do you become interdependent? Well, and you have a lot of trauma or.

Yeah.

Pain or.

Well, I mean, developmentally, Lewis, that is the reality up until a certain At this point, I think unfortunately, because of some of the financial struggles that many people are having, I think even now adults are finding themselves much more compromised and dependent.

College debt, yeah.

Place or living back to live at home to be able to pay for college debt. I mean, it's really, it's a shame, it's sad, because I think we're shifting back into that more just necessary dependence. So wherever you sit on that spectrum, I think it's about breaking those patterns of looking outside of ourself to, show up for others, take care of others, get my needs met by relating with others, whether it's because they make me feel better or they distract me, or I've learned that I come by this really naturally myself. My family was, and a very large reason why I'm not able or I choose now not to have contact with them is they are so meshed and codependent where there's just no boundary and direct and indirect messaging that I got growing up was that I was responsible for other people's feelings in particular. So for me, evolving out of that and starting to separate myself off and just see myself as a self-contained human also meant then showing up differently in my relationships, putting up the word we all love to hate, which is boundaries, and learning how to carve out space, not only physical space, where my needs might be different than another person's needs in that given moment, but more importantly, emotional space. And that's, I think, a struggle that a lot of us have. Yeah.

I feel like there's a lot of people that struggle with family, family and boundaries. I've gone through this challenge myself with different people in my family throughout the years. And on one end, I have a lot of guilt tied to responsibility to make sure my family's taken care of, at least basic needs, right? On the other end, I'm like, okay, we've all come from the same place. we all have certain skills and the capacity to take care of everybody's basic needs. It's not like we were homeless or something like that. Like we all got college degrees. We're all very privileged in certain sense.

Right? Sure.

We all faced a level of trauma and have a level, our own level of limiting beliefs based on experiences and trauma that each one of us felt separately. But I still have this problem, this challenge with, like, okay, do I just make sure everyone's taken care of all the time. And then I feel taken advantage of or abused or not respected or whatever it is. Or do I set boundaries and have people potentially hate me and not want to talk to me? You know, you hear these catchphrases like family is everything. Always be there for your family. Nothing else matters but family. But what about our own emotional well-being? Doesn't that matter?

Yeah. That's a good question.

So how do we manage the guilt and pressure and the feeling responsibility of Need to provide for our family or take care at all costs versus having personal freedom and peace in our own heart.

Yeah, absolutely. It's tough. I made that noise when you said that first one, because family is everything. Might as well have been a plaque in your home. In my home. I mean, that was said as a mantra. Family is everything. Family is everything. Family is everything. It was under the guise of the Italian culture. My dad is very much, you know, kind of 100% Italian.

And if you're not a part of the family is everything motto, you might.

As well not be in the family. Yeah, it was really, so a lot of us, I do know that we get that direct. Some of it's a bit more indirect where you're just kind of not urged or things aren't fostered that take you out of that family unit. So there's a lot of ways that I see it, that these messages are internalized and then we become the adult that begins to believe that ourself on some level. So the thing I will always say first and foremost is boundaries suck. especially when you're creating them with our families. I mean, these are dynamics that have been set in place for as long as some of us have walked the earth. So when we change a dynamic that's already one way, it sucks even more. However, I say that because it's uncomfortable to put up boundaries and to start to define limits of what it will no longer work for you. But what I see that saving ultimately over time, so the immediate discomfort, that's really uncomfortable for some of us.

It might be immediate for years.

It might, yeah, but the way I see it on the other side is a much more sustainable relationship. Because even in the description you said, right, I start to feel resentful, taken advantage of. And the problem there is I then look to these people who are taking advantage of me or not respecting me or not giving me something back, and I get mad at them, and then the relationship suffers. But unfortunately, I have to look at me and the role that I played in continuing to show up in a situation that wasn't working for me.

Wow. So when did you I guess leave talking to your family or connecting with them. How long has it been?

So it's been officially a year. Right when you started Instagram. Right when I started Instagram. Right. But this was, I mean, it was several. I mean, one might say it was a lifetime in the making because- you- tried to make it work.

You tried to make it work.

You tried, you stayed in. Yeah. And so part of the situation with me, and again, I never prescribed my path as for everyone. Sure. We all have different journeys on this planet. So part of the situation that made it in inherently more complicated was the fact that my mom, my dad, and my older sister, who was 15 years older than me, I was a much later in life child, live in the same home.

They all live together.

Live in the same home, yeah, with my nephew as well, my sister.

Your parents are, what, 70?

So my mom will be, she just turned 79. My dad, I think, is 82.

Wow, and your older sister who's- and.

My older sister is 52.

They all live together.

They live together in the home and now my 12 year old nephew. So.

And he lives there.

They're all living the home. Wow. So talk about a living. You don't live there. So I escaped. I've gotten out. I actually got the hell out as soon as I turned to a college agent. I think I was 17 when I flew out of college and I was out of there. But I say that because I tried every version of separate relationships.

What are those versions?

You know, hey, my sister's name is Suzanne. Suzanne, you know, let me try to, you know, have a separate relationship over here with you where we don't talk, my mom is chronically ill. So another bit of my background, my mom is chronically ill. has been my entire life. There's now a bit of a pain pill, not a full-blown addiction. I mean, she just is really numbing. Tolerating. I mean, that's exactly what it is, Lewis, to be honest. But so pretty much my mom is the orbit around that my whole family kind of, you know, kind of shifted. Yeah, she's the nucleus. So mom's health. And my mom has had, when I was in my early twenties, which was probably at the height of my anxiety, where I might as well, I was living in New York, it might as well have been one panic attack after another that I was living, because my mom was actually having a pretty serious heart surgery at the time. So yeah, there's like micro health things, but it's always, how's mom doing? Is mom okay? Mom has this health thing. So one of the versions that I tried was having a separate relationship where we don't talk about mom and health and. Talk about life in general.

Anything.

I mean, I don't talk about the dogs. I mean, you know, what you watched on television. Yeah, anything. And it just couldn't, you know, and then. She couldn't, or she couldn't beyond that. It was always, you know, I was needed to go to this doctor's appointment and that, and it was just this endless search for this cure, this illness, it just got really complicated. Tried separate relationship with my dad. My dad might as well be a million miles away, just always worried about my mom. My mom is just now at this point with the pain pills completely on another planet. So I say it was a year ago when I finally, but I tried every version of direct communication. I would just remove myself, not go over as frequently. Then I would get the goddamned text where are you? Call us back. We're worried about you. So much anxiety. So, Finally, about a year ago.

So what do you say when you create a boundary of separation from your family? Are you saying, I'm choosing not to speak with any of you anymore? If you want to talk to me, feel free, but it's not going to be on your terms. What do you say to them?

So, I mean, the way I suggest is a boundary is an I statement. So if this continues to happen, I will no longer, whatever. So obviously it depends.

What a threat.

So, I mean, you're threatening me. That's what people do.

They make you, they manipulate and guilt.

You and they're like, I think the difference, and it's interesting, I was talking with Melissa Hartwig on her podcast and she asked, what is the difference between weaponizing boundaries and having a boundary? And what is this idea of ultimatum? Because I think that's how it's received. Boundary is an ultimatum. But yeah, I mean, it is, but the way I see the difference is, I'm not saying you, I'm going to do something, this is me. This is my limit. And if that gets crossed, I am now going to take myself away to end the conversation, kindly talk to you when you're a bit calmer. And I think that anytime it's me or I based and not, I think that's when we can shift out of that idea. However, Lois, I mean, of course there's going to be someone on the receiving end of that that might, I mean, say, and so at my meditation yesterday, I met a lot of followers and it was an incredible experience. And they, more often than not, every three mentioned the concept of boundaries, the fact that A, they had no idea what a boundary was until they started to read my work and other people's works. then they started to use boundaries and we're talking about how incredibly difficult it is. I actually put a post up today about a lot of the feedback that one gets, where we're told we're selfish, we're holier than thou, who the hell do we think we are putting up these boundaries? So, I mean, the short of it is they typically aren't received.

Well, no, there's always going to be some type of manipulation or guilting or are you better than me now or you've changed like you wrote in your post today. Man, so what was the reaction like for you with your family when you said, okay, I'm choosing to do this if this continues to happen?

In the beginning, it was kind of just another joke in my family is you might as well talk to this wall right here. So it was heard, it wasn't responded to, but three days later, three texts later, that was the content that I wasn't interested in talking about. Or like I said, I would try to experiment with a little more distance between calls or visits. And then every now and again it would get met with either anger or worry, where am I? Am I dead in a ditch somewhere? I mean, just these crazy- Should you.

Just not respond to their texts anymore? I would just say, please don't message me unless it's something like positive.

Yes, yes, yes. Or if it was direct content that I wasn't interested in discussing, I would say, I've asked us not to talk about this. I don't care to have this conversation.

It sounds like unless you create a boundary, we get what we tolerate in life. So unless we create boundaries or guidelines, we're going to continue to get the things that we tolerate. And if you don't like something, but you tolerate it, you can't expect someone else to change if you continue to tolerate that thing until you make a clear request. This is my request that we only talk about these things or we eliminate this from our relationship or whatever it may be. And moving forward, if that doesn't happen, I want to create a boundary for myself.

Right?

We have to create a request and it can't be an angry, mean request. It needs to be like a calm, loving request. Usually it sounds like it's never going to be a calm response because the person may not want to change, but that's the way it's got to be, it sounds like.

Well, I always define three steps. The first one is to define it for yourself. And for some people, we don't know at first. We never heard of what a boundary is. We don't know that we can. So this is, I always say this is an individual process of looking within, maybe kind of step back and gauge some of your relationships, see the ones that are working and what looks or feels different about those and the ones that aren't working. So that's a process. So defining your boundary, then putting up enacting your boundary where you're communicating it. I love you already very intuitively set at a calm time where both parties are not reactive. You're not going to shout this out in a fight. It's probably not going to be the best time. Objective language, I think, is really great.

Make it about you.

Where you just make it about you, right? And you just, you know, not, no, no, no fingers. It's not you, you know, you guys are crazy, so I'm never coming over. Probably not gonna be the most well received. And then the third step is also our responsibility and only ours is maintaining it. Follow through on it. Is following through on it. Keeping your word. Because the second we don't do that, we do send the message that enough guilt, enough anger can, and I say this too, and I know this can, you know, kind of I don't know, the way people can receive this can be, you know, many different ways. But a lot of times that we're not upholding our boundary because of how we feel, we, I call it the feel-bads, you know, so we take our boundary down so that we don't feel, I call it the feel-bads. You know, so we take our boundary down so that we don't feel, I call it the feel-bads. Why do you think I talk about them? I come by the feel-bads as part of my family. I mean, we love to feel bad, right? But I say that because again, it's our job to tolerate the way we're.

Feeling and it's our job to tolerate.

Our feel-bad and not to do the easy thing that's going to take our feel-bad away.

Keep the peace.

Acquiescing. Yeah.

And then be resentful all over again.

Being angry at that person. And I know that that, that's where some people are. Well, you know, it's so I actually, it's like a self, a lot of the times, and I'll even go a little bit deeper into this, a lot of the times that we struggle with boundaries is because of our own feelings. We don't want to put limits up because of how it makes us feel. Yes. We don't want to hurt people that we love. And a lot of us want to show up as a caring individual in the world. I myself included, I fancy myself a very kind, considerate person, but there. There's a limit. A lot of times, the reason why we don't even initially have boundaries again, because we weren't modeled them, but because we don't like how it feels. We feel bad. Yeah.

You don't want someone else. As a people, please. You don't want to hurt someone else. Even if you need to, for your own sanity, you still don't want to hurt people. Yeah. You don't want someone angry at you because then you're like, oh, they don't like me, right? But that's where manipulation and guilting comes into play. And it's just like, I've learned a lot in the last few years about setting back, like, I used to really care about everyone's opinion about me. Like, really. And want to try to, like, win them over if, like, one negative review, like, how can I win this person over? Even though there's thousands of positive comments or whatever right on something. And I was just like, I'm not gonna be able to change someone's mind necessarily. and me putting energy on one person to try to make them like me more is a waste of time. We've got to, I think we've got to continue to just reflect on like, okay, this person's not resonating with me. Is there something I can do to improve to move forward? But if not, I'm not going to put my energy on trying to save one person's opinion about me.

Right?

So, yeah, I like this. So setting boundaries, define the boundary, creating like a calm communicational request with the boundary and then staying your word and following through on the boundary. Otherwise, I'll never be met.

Yeah.

So how do you feel a year later not talking to your family now?

It's been a year. I mean, coming to the decision to not talk to them was complicated. It was really difficult. And that's why I speak very openly and honestly about it too, because I think I was, I'm very surprised when I get messages of other people that have certain amounts of distance between their family, complete no contact. And I was not aware that there were so many other people that, you know, had had to put or had chosen to put distance in because I did not come by that decision. easily. It was, it was painful for me.

35 years of your life.

To do that.

Yeah.

And, and I don't want to hurt them. And I do love them, and I do want what's best for them. But I also have to love me and want what's best for me. So when I say it's been a hard year, I mean, I have moments, the holidays, and there's the positive, the negative of that. Now, you know, on the one hand, it's like, oh, I can actually choose what I want to do for the holiday. That was completely new. Me and my partner are starting to Life. Traditions because a requirement of family is everything is you better believe you're showing up for the big Italian Christmas gathering. So I was, I was given little flexibility to have space apart around holidays. But obviously the other side of that came sadness knowing that my family was having a holiday without me with my nephew who's young there. I mean, it's, it's, it's complicated on a lot of levels.

We're talking bad about you or what?

I know, I know that it, you know, it's being viewed probably not me. I'm pretty positive. And my partner is very aware of this herself that she's probably been villain nice. It's probably her who's taken me away from the family. I mean, you know, whatever story that are gonna create, they're gonna create.

It's tough, though, because, you know, unfortunately, sometimes if family is only destructive towards you, you. You shouldn't have to stay there and be responsible for their joy and happiness for decades if they're always destructive towards your health. Right. On another end, you could say, well, I'm just not going to allow it to affect me. I'll be around them. I'll still show up. I won't, like, distance myself from the family, but I'm just not going to allow their thoughts or words or actions towards me affect me. Is that something that's healthy, too, though? Just to be in the space while there's manipulation, guilt, shaming or whatever, judgment, whatever it's happening in Family Dynamics, can, should people do that or should they more separate themselves fully from family if it's a constant?

I think if they can, I mean, if they can find the way. So for me, I got really good at being okay with it because what I do. And I didn't, even though I heard this word in my schooling, I did not realize that this is what I was doing is I would dissociate.

Dissociate.

Yeah. So I would, I call it my spaceship where I would go away on. I got. You weren't present. I wasn't present. I mean, I got very Savvy. You would not have any idea having a conversation with me. You know, I would be in that. Looking through me.

Yeah.

So let's.

Yeah.

So let's, let me tie this all together. The reason I could not remember my childhood is because I dissociate it. So I wasn't present enough. to put it in, so there's nothing there to re-access. So that's just to tie that all together. You were physically present, but that was out of, yeah, because of the emotional overwhelm of the family, the anxiety, and no one modeling or helping me to navigate those feelings as we do as children. I will always say this as children, I believe we come to this planet however you think we get here as adaptive, intuitive creatures.

Yeah, of course.

We all have a guidance system and we all are incredibly flexible and adaptive, so I adapt it. I dealt with my own emotions my own way, which was I dissociated. So some people though in adulthood can find the way to show up with their families, not, I talk a lot about depersonalizing, simply meaning not owning it, you know, even if they say something negative to you, if you can see that as more of a reflection of them, you can maybe come and go and leave that interaction and be okay enough, you know what to expect, you're not expecting them to change, you arrive, you deal with it.

You laugh at the situation.

You can maybe, I think humor is incredible and then you leave. I did not find myself able though for that. I did not want to use my old habit of dissociation and then like I said, because of just the living structure and just the in-depth and ingrainedness of their dynamics, it was much harder for me to find that okay space. I don't know honestly what the future brings. I'm doing and I'm using and so part of what would happen I would go back, you know, to visit and then my partner would notice this as well. And I would then become almost regressed. I'd become reactive. So I was trying to heal, but I would only get so far and then I'd be pulled right back down or the next health crisis, I'd be pulled right back in. So my healing was limited. So this year has been incredible for me to be able to actually gain some more full traction to do my own inner healing so that I don't know if a future comes and I can have some version of contact with them, I'm not sure. But I know that I have to be in a different place if I am going to be that person who can come home, let them be them and leave that home intact.

I'm curious. I feel like a lot of people have challenges, right? Whether it be family or limiting beliefs, scarcity, relationships, health, whatever it may be. And a lot of people do talk therapy. But why does it seem like most traditional talk therapy doesn't work and people keep going?

Yeah.

And how can it work better for them? What do they need to do so that it starts to see benefits and results? What's your thoughts?

I'm really happy you asked that. So one of the reasons I think, and this is, this happened in my own life, so anxiety was all I knew. I went to multiple years of talk therapy myself. I was actually in what is called a psychoanalytic training program. So think Freud, the couch, clocking. I mean, these are people that go into treatment hour. I mean, each day of the week, you know, five days a week for an hour. So. I was training in that modality and part of that training was we had to lay on the couch ourselves. And so at some points I was up in therapy two hours a week. I was on medication. I had, you know, my SSRI, my benzo in the back pocket, and I was taking the traditional routes of treatment and I still wasn't getting better. So for me, realizing that we have to look at the whole person, that's why I now work holistically, that there's a body that I'm that my mind that's unwell, if you will, is attached to. So for me, it was exploring the nutritional, the sleep, all of the lifestyle-based stuff because I was so physiologically out of balance that I wasn't able to... A lot of my symptoms, really, of anxiety even, sometimes even of depression or what we think of as depression, are.

The result of this physiological imbalance.

Lack of sleep, anxiety, stress, big time food, gut damage. I mean, we now know that the gut is incredibly important in our health. It's not only where nutrients are absorbed that damage to the gut results in chronic inflammation that can be really, really problematic, you know, in terms of our mental wellness. So for me, without that, I was just contributing and exacerbating my anxiety. So no amount of talking in a room the way I see it or even medication, because we also now know that the medication that we thought all the neurotransmitters were in our brain, like I said, are in our gut. So, yeah.

So we're doing talk therapy, then having a gallon of ice cream. Pizzas afterwards, it's probably not going to help us because we're going to go.

Up, down, up, down, up, down constantly. Yeah. So, and, and I can assure you, I've yet to find a program or meet a clinician, and I now have a whole network of them that I'm connected to that have had any version of, I mean, the nutrition, the gut, the body is not mentioned in any, in any training program. So I think that's a huge limitation. I also know that another big, big problem for a lot of us, whether or not we have the big T of trauma or the little T of trauma, is a dysregulated nervous system. Yeah, that's a fascinating process. Yeah, and now there's an incredible amount of science. Dr. Stephen Porges is amazing. He does polyvagal theory. And so, to put it really simple, unless we start to address that dysregulation in our nervous system that this part most of us have, that's going to limit treatment. So the sympathetic, is that fight or flight? Fight or flight. Most of us are spending most of our time chronically in fight or flight. 60-70% of our time. I mean, from this I mean, I'm looking out at the vast city in the background. I mean, for some of us, the city is enough. My mind has now taken on a whole other capacity to induce stress. So a lot of us humans are living chronically stressed.

You could be in nature, but your mind could be in traffic. Thinking in anxious thoughts.

And then you could have induced a completely in a panic attack. I mean, I've seen it happen in my office, content we're talking about before I know it, the person's having a a complete visceral reaction. Sweating there, yeah. Right. So without regulation of that nervous system, I see that treatment talking about it only goes so far because we had a great session. Thanks, Lois. See you next week. And now I'm out the door with my overactive nervous system, and that next thing is going to activate me, and the next thing is going to activate me. And I'm gonna have a fight with my partner that also speaks to the power of the subconscious. So what therapy is, is talking from the conscious mind. We can have a great insightful therapy session, I can understand, I can even have a great game plan, but then I'm back out the door and if I'm not conscious, I'm back in my subconscious. And then I'm back in those patterns. So then what I would see week after week, me too. I thought I was very insightful. I thought I knew myself, right? And I'd work with people, we had a great session and back the next week and it's the same report. Oh, got in the same fights with my partner. Still stressed out about work. It's like nothing's changing and it's because again, therapy, the way I see it, only addresses that conscious mind. even the best laid plans of what we're going to do that next time we're activated only go as far as me remembering to do.

-Being aware and mindful of the moment when we're triggered, right?

-To do these new things. So I think that those, whether it's the lack of the body attention, the lack of addressing the dysregulated nervous system, or really us not understanding, I mean, the subconscious is as crazy as this might sound, not talked about. in any training program. So unless these clinicians are given these tools, I think that a lot of them are going to... And so part of it, I was nervous. I wasn't sure when I started to go and shout from the rooftops these new holistic methods and how I did, you know, find the traditional model to be limiting. I was nervous about what my peers were going to say, and they've been nothing but receptive and I think a bit relieved. I actually offer professional mentorship sessions now, and I have at least one or two professionals a week that I'll speak to and help to update, help them to update their practices in these ways because they say it, they know it, they're stuck, they're probably stuck in their own life too, and they don't see that, I think their clinical work being as effective as they know on some level it could be.

Yeah. So how do we regulate our nervous system, I guess? Or is that what you're saying?

Yeah, our nervous system. So our goal is, so we are actually structured as humans to be spending all of our time in the other nervous system, the parasympathetic.

Relaxing.

In that relaxed mode. Yeah, one my thing, only to need, right, when we are literally at risk. Like, or needing to go deep. Yeah.

So the tool that I'm talking always.

About is breath work through conscious breathing. This is the easiest one being just retraining the way you naturally breathe. Most of us as humans now have evolved to being a bit of a shallow chest-based breather. So even just, so for me, I couldn't, when I first started doing breath work, I was like gasping for air. I'm laying down trying to get a deep belly breath in and now I've practiced consistently enough that I breathe mainly from my belly, which indicates to me that I'm spending more and more time. There are still times where if I'm feeling particularly stressed, I'll have to remind myself to breathe as crazy as that sounds. I catch myself holding my breath or I catch my breath being a little more shallow. So that's one that when I work with clients, I talk about right off the bat because being able, I don't see anything honestly as empowering as being able to begin to consciously gain control of the way your body is physiologically reacting, especially if you sit on that anxiety spectrum. and definitely if you have panic attacks, because I know that they feel like the most out of control place in the world to be. So to show people that, wait a minute, I can start to... And again, these aren't the magic elixirs. We can't breathe from the belly twice or just use it as needed as a lot of us want to do. It's not that. But if you do practice it, you can start to feel a bit more in control.

And I don't find anything as empowering as that. Yeah. And when we can calm the mind, then we can make a lot better decisions. Yes. War, foreign, constant stress, or fight or flight in the mind and the body. It's hard to be mindful of our reactions. We're just going to go back to our patterns of the past, right?

Yeah. Well, I love that you said that because the mind and body are connected. They're interconnected. So just as much as you, like you and I just said, I sit here, I think stressful thoughts. I'm having a stress body reaction. Our mind is monitoring our body's reaction too. So if my body is having a reaction with, and the stress hormones, they have a longer shelf life. I mean cortisol, adrenaline takes our body a bit to metabolize those. So our mind is going to continue to register that our body is stressed and it's going to try to make sense of it. So then it's going to make it even harder to calm or to redirect our attention from a racing mind. So it's very interconnected. So that's why I talk about attentional control, getting the hell out of those thoughts that are becoming the issue and inducing the body experience, but also calming the body so that we can clip that up message, too.

Yeah. It's working on both, for sure. I try to think about, like, if my mind is a bucket, right? And there's thoughts that I can put in the bucket all day, and there's thoughts that are coming in and leaving the bucket. How do I constantly fill it with positive, peaceful, loving, beautiful thoughts, as opposed to chaotic, stressful thoughts? And I just try to decide every moment to have more beautiful thoughts than. negative thoughts. And a lot of my practice is breath work, meditation and gratitude. Simple things. It's really basic, simple things. And the more I focus on gratitude, I find that my mind is in a peaceful, beautiful state, and there's no room for negativity when it's in a beautiful state. So it's a practice, because when we're in stress mode and we're in scarcity mode, it's hard to think beautiful thoughts. 'Cause you're just like, I'm gonna die. That's how you feel. No one loves me. They're attacking me and this negativity and these negative emotions come up. So I just try to focus on gratitude for what I have and that brings more peace and positive thoughts into the bucket every day.

Yeah, well, you're actually speaking to something that's very real too. Part of the fight or flight response is a shrinking of our perceptual field where we cannot see those expansive areas outside, we only can see the immediate and we're actually primed to see threat. So that's why it's always typically color negative. So those of us that are living, this is why it's also imperatively important to, to get out of fight or flight or to build and practice that over time will shift us a bit more out of fight or flight, because we are. And this also goes into the whole financial climate when you're living under stress, even if it's financially in due stress, I can't pay my bills. you are now dealing with a shrunken perceptual field that makes it hard to lock out of that.

It's funny, but once you start focusing on gratitude in scarcity, you start to create more abundance and opportunities to generate financial income or the right partnership or whatever it may be. So it's hard to get out of that, but if you just focus on, okay, what am I grateful for and how can my energy shift? to be a magnetic force field of good to come to me good and true.

That's what it is. I mean, that's why gratitude, I'm so excited now because it's actually getting studied a bit, that gratitude does shift us vibrationally, energetically, that even a small practice list one, two things a day that you're grateful for does have those effects and it's becoming more and more proven that it does because it's shifting our brain waves to a different frequency.

I always think about you know, people in service at restaurants. When someone's waiting on you and they come with a grateful, positive energy, I guarantee they're making more tips. Then if someone's negative and focused in their own head and just angry or down on themselves, you're attracting less. You're attracting what you're creating in the world. And I always hear these great stories of people that are so positive. It's like, I want to hire these people at restaurants who are so positive and bring gratitude. I'm like, if you're grateful in this situation, I can imagine how you would implement this energy to something else. And I feel like they're attracting more of what they want by being grateful and their way of being their energy. It's not easy. It's a practice. So how did you start to eliminate scarcity in your own life? What did you focus on when you recognized, okay, one of my living beliefs is not being seen or being scarce? so what were the steps that you did? Did you start to do inner child work right away?

Yeah. So first I, I, first I practiced consistent self-observation I watched. Observation. Right. So I developed a consistent now, and I resisted meditating consistently, but I built in a consistent meditation practice so that I could then carry that skill throughout my day because I knew that's where I really needed it. So I practiced that consistent daily self-observation where I was looking at my thoughts. you know, all day long. And, and what?

Journaling them or just being just noticing.

Because the first way, and this kind of ties into something you were saying earlier, the first way that we can start to quiet our mind is we don't battle our thoughts away. We can't obviously hit the mute button on them, but we can start to pay less attention by removing our attention. So each and every time I would see that because my subconscious, our subconscious is what's offering most of our thoughts for us. Right. So My cupcake's gone and oh, my subconscious is gonna assign that. I'm not considered scarcity based meaning, not my conscious mind. So I don't have control over that. That's why I explained that. Subconscious, you don't have control over it. We do not have control over it.

We can- Reprogram it. Reprogram it through consistent repetition of something new.

By being aware of our thoughts consciously and being like, okay, that doesn't support me anymore. Let me have a new thought. So the simplest way I put is.

To change our subconscious, we first need.

To start paying less attention. to those older narratives that are naturally going to be there.

And I say, you- need to pay.

Attention to them first to pay less attention to them. You- need to notice them and then remove your attentional focus back to your breath, back to the current moment. And that is the tool, the muscle, I call it a mindful muscle, that we're building, our attentional muscle. We all have one. Most of ours are just very wimpy because either life that's endlessly distracting is grabbing our attention or a lot of us are spending way too much time looking, if you will, at our thoughts. Noticing our thoughts enough to then redirect my attention away will weaken that narrative. So that is the first layer of work.

-Okay, noticing, watching your thoughts. What is the second layer?

-And then if you want to, the subconscious can be reprogrammed. So then I started to play around with and the future self journal was kind of where I, what I developed for this part of my own healing was to practice, I mean, what an affirmation is a new thought. So then I would start to practice abundance-based affirmations and that's a mental rehearsal in the act of affirming. We're literally lighting up a new neural pathway in our brain. So our brain does not know whether or not I already believe that to be true or not. The goal is to repeat it enough that over time I believe that to be true. So the subconscious can be changed later in life. So the reason.

What was the Mantra you were using for this? I'm. I'm abundant.

Simple Mantra.

Simple one.

Just simple one. Couple of words.

Yeah, just simple one. Yeah. So whenever you'd hear, like, ah, trigger some, like. Cookie's gone, whatever. Like, I'm abundant.

First it was, first it was get out of there and just notice myself. Sometimes I need to take a breath because I always was like, goddamn cookie, you know? And then once I had a second, then I could say, but, you know, and then remind myself that I'm abundant. There's a store up the street. Like, it's not about the lack of, but we first have to pull it away. 'Cause I think a lot of us try to go right in a strong arm and shift it, and it just doesn't work 'cause this is a belief. that we've been practicing. I mean, some of us outside of our conscious awareness for as long as we've been walking the planet. I mean, so this is a really strong network. It's going to take time.

It's a years potentially, decades potentially. Right now, do you associate the thought with a physical feeling or physical motion or just like an abundant movement, or is it just a thought with.

So what met the way I define manifestation is pairing that thought with the, as if it's true. So how would believing me to be abundant? How would that make me feel? Would I feel free? Would I feel, you know, Limitless? It might be different for each of us. So that is part of it. But for me, so the, the, the narrative work is what I just described. Getting out of the old narratives. If you choose to be committed, practicing new ones, it can work. Yeah. The deeper level, because a lot of these narratives, a lot of our subconscious is, is is touching on a wound or an unmet need. So for me, this is where this consideration came. So my deeper work, my inner child work, was now as the adult that I am to find the ways and I had to find them. I did not know them. No one taught me how to consider myself. I did not have parents or caregivers that were modeling, you know, kind of self consideration or self care in any healthy way, if you will. So I didn't know, and I say this because I think a lot of times we become an adult and we think we should know, we should just know how to take care of our emotional myself. But if we were never taught, how would we know? I did not know. So then my deeper Journey was, okay, how can I show up in the world consistently on a daily basis and consider myself, consider my needs, explore what they even might be, how to even give them words, and then what to do? I didn't know how to give myself a feel better. I dissociated. That's all I knew. So now that I was showing up to manage my feelings in a new way, I was I was like a little kid again. I had no idea what to do. And I just had to move toward, okay, does this make me feel better or worse? And then I talk with my clients a lot about this because it can feel really overwhelming when you're trying to navigate your emotions now in a new way. We all have had a way that we've coped and we got really good at it. But chances are that's not the way that's going to get us the relationships that we want, the life that we want. So for me, it was like stabbing around in the dark and just moving toward what felt a little better. And then you start to get a toolkit. You start to say, okay, when I'm feeling down, you know, while I might hate to say it, moving helps me, or, you know, a bath helps me, or a Time Alone helps me. I had to ReDiscover all of those new tools for myself in those moments. So that was the deeper part of the journey is now, because I view it's my responsibility to.

Yeah.

Consider myself, to learn how to navigate my emotions in this. It's not. my partner's job not to eat the cupcake to consider me. It's my job to... And then I realized over time I wasn't assigning through that constant attentional control. I stopped assigning, lack of consideration, meanings, you know... -You stopped after a while. -Yeah. You know, eating food was eating food, dishes on the counter were just dishes on the counter. And then I was building myself up enough and reparenting myself enough that I was feeling overall considered by me. So then when she offered me an active consideration, it was like, oh, great. But it wasn't necessary anymore. So my okayness and our relationship stability didn't depend on her showing up to give me a gesture of consideration anymore.

It was just an added bonus.

It was an added bonus. Then I was able to let it in more. I think some of us become so rigid in exactly what we need from this other person to fit my need in this way, and now I could Accept, maybe it's not the way I would want to be considered, but it's a little gesture and it's consideration and it still fills my cup.

I feel like I've gotten to the point in my life where I'm pretty abundant. I've created a life I want from 11 years ago being the most scarce I could ever be, broke on my sister's couch, no money and no clear vision of how to make money. It's an hour. It's like, okay, I'm not worried about eating for a long time. Unless something drastic happens, like I'm not worried about eating for a long time. I'm not worried about a place, a roof over my head. I can live in a one-bedroom apartment and be fine. Right. Studio. It doesn't matter.

And.

I feel so good being independent that my. My current relationship, my girlfriend is amazing. Like, yesterday I woke up late. It was a Sunday. I woke up late. I was supposed to get up earlier to work out, but I woke up late. to a doorbell ringing because she, and she's in Mexico City, she had sent me Starbucks latte. So I just woke up, opened the door, and it's a latte from her, from Postmates. And I was just like, that just brings me so much joy. There was no expectation that she needed to do that. It's just, I'm allowed, I able to receive it so much better. And I don't have any expectation. I think when we put expectation on our partners so much, sure, there's certain boundaries and rules that we create in every relationship, but it's like, we shouldn't be expecting on the other person to make us happy. That's when we get let down, right?

Absolutely. We shouldn't be expecting that. And part of, I think, a dynamic that unfolds in relationships is we look to recreate what we knew first of relationships and those very early, early relationships that becomes our normal, our familiar in relationship. So whether or not it's expectations, just emotional climate, we tend to look to recreate that which we first knew, because that's our first journey in relationships is the caregiving. You know, the family structure looks different for all of us, but whatever we're deposited in, right, you're seeing relationships happen. Sometimes you're getting direct messages about what's okay or not okay in relationships, and then you're having your own experience being in relationships with these humans, and then that becomes the relationship model that gets stored. The thing gets replicated over time. So for me, My current relationship was a big shift out of my past ones because what I noticed looking back that I was searching for was those familiar feelings. So I felt closest to the people that resented you, that guilted you, that made you put it in some ways, but that were much more surface, that were anxiety I understood. So I had a lot of partners that also were very much relatable in that because that's how my family unit felt. So it felt familiar. what we're seeking most as humans the way I see is familiarity, but, and that comes up a lot in our relationships. So even if logically you can look and say, oh, maybe your friends are even telling you this isn't the partner for you, something feels really comfortable about it. Cause that's what you're used to. It's normal. And I think that happens in terms of what you expect, like you were saying in relationships, but also the feeling in a relationship registers to. And I think sometimes we're just seeking that familiarity, even if it's not logically.

The partner that we necessarily want to be.

Building the life with you mentioned, you.

Learned how to reparent yourself. What does that mean? Parenting yourself?

So whether or not it's so there's a lot of categories of it, I think so some of it's just our physical needs, right? How do we show up and take care of the body that we're in in terms of sleeping and eating and again, reminding each of us or looking at those, those earliest models that we were given, what were we taught about those just very much just our basic needs? How are we? to them being met? What were we told about how they should or shouldn't be met? What do we see? How are they met? You know, in those earliest environments? And then it's our emotional world, I think, is the other major category. So how do I learn my own emotions? How do I come to know what they feel like in the body? How do I come to know what to do with them?

And how do I learn, but also how do I re-talk to myself? Is that part of it, too?

How do you talk to yourself? For some of us, it's teaching. I mean, I had a family who did not talk about emotions. I think a lot of people.

Yeah, most people's families don't.

Don't. So it's learning emotional language might be.

The how do I talk is to talk. Why don't we talk? Why don't. I mean, because it's not on the school's responsibility to teach us emotions necessarily. Although I wish there was a class in school that taught us about emotions growing up. It's kind of what Mr. Rogers was about, right?

Yeah.

It's kind of like was his mission because he saw that no kids, not no kids, but a assistant you just get made fun of.

Yeah. I think there's societal messages. I often think about men a lot because I think you guys have really, really kind of structural messages that are put in place, passed down from society at large, that is quite damaging the way I see it. Family, cultures and climates, it comes back to safety. When we have caregivers that aren't comfortable with their own emotions, they're not going to be comfortable with their children's emotions. So before we know it, we start to shave off the okay or the acceptable emotions in a family. And so either we're left with none being acceptable and we just don't talk about emotions. This was very much my family. Or we're left with only the handful of acceptable emotions, right? Which is anger or. And then we internalize this and then.

We carry that into our adulthood.

So now I'm the person in the relationship who doesn't address anything emotions. And I run from the conversation when I know when the person's across me, I'm like, we gotta talk. You know, I'm like, I'm out of here. Here. Bye-bye. Maybe I'm on my spaceship now because I don't want to talk about emotion. That's scary to me. Or we become only these emotions are okay to talk about. So, and I think this is again, passing off through generations. Likely our caregivers grow up in families where these emotions weren't okay and they were unsafe.

It really, that's what it comes down to. Until you learn how to break the cycle, it's very hard to break the emotional cycle of what you were, how you were raised. for me, I started breaking it because I had a lot of breakdowns in my life. When I turned 30, I had a. A massive breakup breakdown, a business partnership breakdown, break down, breakup. And I just started reacting in every area of my life when I felt I was under attack, when I felt like someone was abusing me, which was kind of my trigger. It was like when I feel abused. So I was sexually abused as a kid, and I was bullied and picked on, and it felt like I was the youngest. to four and just felt like I was always the one who got the abuse. That's the story that I told myself for 30 years. And I got in a fight in a basketball game that meant nothing. The game was like a no stakes game. It was just a pickup game. I got in a really bad fight. And it's kind of like the perfect storm of like, why is all these breakdowns happening? It's when I finally was like, wow, I have a lot to lose here if I keep following this pattern. And I decided, I was like, I need to take a look at my life. I need to start making some changes. I need to start being aware of why I'm doing this and learn how I can break through these triggers. And that was really the game changer for me. But I feel like it's hard for people to want to look for growth and improvement in a life without some type of drastic event or events happening, a near-death situation, a breakup and a long, just long-term relationship, a divorce, a career ending, whatever it may be. why is it so hard for us to want to improve or grow when there's no tragic accident?

Yeah, I often talk about having the kind of cataclysmic events are necessary in a sense. So the way I see it, I mean, it's not the only route. I think people can consciously just evolve and decide to change on their own, but a lot of times you will hear that as part of the journey, you know, the Dark Night of the Soul or, you know, whether it's something objectively ended a loss, things like that. So something I have always said, and I have always noticed about people and change, and then I am going to, I have come to understand why this is the case, but something I have always said is we have to feel like that we have no other option. Like the option of life as we know it now is way more intolerable than the fear that comes along with change in general. And again, back to something I said earlier, we humans are habitual creatures, and to some extent we view change or uncertainty as threatening. And there is a function now that I am very much aware of the power of our subconscious. So the simplest way I describe it, and this is why I will always say change is hard. It is universally hard for all of us. I want to normalize that though. I mean this when I say this because I think a lot of people become really self-deprecating. I am lazy, I am undisciplined. I just can't change. It is hard to change. I am hopeless when they realize, when they live the experience of change being hard. The reason why change is hard is so our subconscious, I I. It's a silly description, but I say we each have a little Avatar. You have a Louis one. I have a Nicole one. So. Because what our subconscious has done, and this blows my mind, it has logged every experience that we've had on this thus far until today, and we'll continue to log every experience we have in life until we're no longer on this planet, which is a lot of. And because we're very habitual, it has. We need our subconscious. So this is me saying thank you, subconscious. We need it to some extent, because without Some things automatize, some things in that program. If I had to wake up every day and remind myself and consciously think about being human, brushing my teeth, how do I walk? How do I walk? I mean, we would be debilitated. So we need this. However, what happens is because we're so habitual, what is in there are our behavioral habits. It more or less knows what we do first thing in the morning, last thing before bed, knows habitual thoughts that we think, it knows how we, those thoughts make us feel. Right. So it has our little avatar. It registers things in a very black and white way. This is a very simplified description. Registers things in a very black and white way. The one end of the spectrum being familiar equals safe, good, unfamiliar equals unsafe, possibly even threatening bad. So logically, you might sit across from me and you might say, you know, I want to start this new habit first thing in the morning. I'm going to start to say new affirmations. I am good enough. Or I want to give myself a feeling of peace. All I know is stress. Tomorrow comes and you give yourself one of those, you make the choice to have one of those new experiences and your subconscious is going to register that as unfamiliar. And then one of two, maybe both things are going to happen. What I call mental chatter, the endless litany of reasons why not to do or never to do this thing again. It sucks, it's terrible, it's bad for you. It's hard. You know, or dangerous. Oh, what are you doing? And or because some of us get this, we'll start to feel whether it's physiological and agitation. Sometimes it'll be described, oh, I'm just crawling on my skin. Sometimes I just won't feel like me. I'll start to feel weird. And again, that is the power of the subconscious. So for both of those reasons, before I know it, I'm right back in that comfort zone. I'm doing back what I'm used to doing, thinking, feeling, because it's familiar. So that's why change is hard.

So how do we stay consistent with the change?

So what I, the language I use is a small daily promise, and I put emphasis on that small because I know, speaking about expectations again, we as humans can tend to, and a lot of us, I'm a perfectionist. We set the bar so high up for ourself that that is so damaging because what we're looking for is consistency. I mean, that's what this means to heal holistically, to create habits. It's not every other day we do it, or maybe this time and then next week I'll try it again. It's doing this each day, but the higher the bar is, if I don't meet that bar, I become so disempowered. I'm not going to show up and try to meet that bar again tomorrow. Hell no, I'd rather do any other.

Thing on the planet.

So setting up those small.

Yeah.

Small exercise.

It's almost like, okay, instead of saying I'm going to work out every day, it's saying I'm going to put on my tennis shoes and I'm going to take one step outside.

Yeah.

One step. Because that's going to ultimately lead you into doing more steps as opposed to saying, okay, I'm going to floss all my teeth every night when I've never flossed. I'm just going to floss one tooth. If you get out the floss and.

Do one tooth, you're going to do another one, right? Yeah. Maybe you stop after four or five. But if you only do that one, this is also what I suggest. notice each and every time you kept that promise. Because that's you get it. What I say, getting past your mind. Because tomorrow when you go to floss that one tooth, and maybe it just was one tooth, right? Your mind is going to tell you all the reasons not to floss that one tooth again. Right? So the more you show yourself that consistency and the way I put is we're rebuilding trust in ourselves. Most of us have, I say, self-betrayal most of us have started to not trust ourselves and not trust our words. We don't keep our word to ourselves because change is hard.

Right?

So this is all interconnected. So we have to, to rebuild trust, we have to show ourselves that we're keeping those promises. And we can't expect our subconscious to get on board. I joke and I say, we can't wait for that cheerleading squad or some of us wait to want to or to feel like we want to. So I'm always on my story saying, I don't want to do this shit, but I'm doing it anyway. Because I've now built a trust in myself that I keep my word and my subconscious still gives me all of the reasons not to do it even years later into this. But Yeah. The more you keep those promises and notice yourself keeping them, you start to trust yourself and you start to get a little bit more empowered, getting beyond that mind.

And self-belief and confidence comes from keeping your word.

Yes, that's why I think trust turns into confidence, turns into empowerment.

You believe you deserve abundance. You believe you deserve great relationships. You deserve better health when you fall through on that. Tell me about the inner child work. Every time I do any inner child work where someone's talking to me and I'm reflecting back and like holding my baby myself as a little boy looking in my eyes as a five-year-old hugging my inner child. Like every time I think about myself as a child, I always get very emotional. And the more work I do it, I'm like, wow, this is really powerful to heal, constant healing. Why is inner child work necessary? And what is it exactly?

Yeah, I think it's necessary because I think we all have a wounded child in us. Again, whether or not some of us have lived through those big T traumas, the abuses, the neglect, the big stuff. Some of us have just lived with an underlying unmet need, a lack of emotional love, not just being. I. I see trauma in and of itself as not being seen just for the heard and understood as just a unique being as being enough without how you're showing up for the. In the world. So I think we all carry a wound, so I think it's necessary. I think it's important because I know what's happening in those moments of reactivity where we're triggered and when we're expressing our, you know, feelings very outwardly, whether we're tantruming or dissociated, those are all those old childhood reactions that we formed at that time. So we need to heal that and need to give ourselves some new options. I actually had someone ask me, though, and I think this is really interesting to think about whether or not we get to that place where that wound is gone. whether or not it goes away. Is that our goal of healing? And I. I don't believe, and I've yet to have any experiences or evidence that we get to the place where our wound is gone. But I think our goal is to navigate life with that wound, knowing when it's being touched, knowing how to make ourselves feel better when it's there, knowing how to, first and foremost, I should have said this, break that habitual way of reacting toward it and giving ourself a bit more new choices, helping our relationships in those moments. and then, like I said, giving ourself those deeper needs to be met on our own. But I think we're always going to retain some hurt. Things are always gonna. Mine's gonna be something deeper, and yours is gonna be something else. And they're always gonna be the event where it's like, oh, that hurt a little bit, but we can still show up as our adult self in that moment and have a new choice or. Yeah.

How do we become a self-healer every day?

Every day. yeah.

How do we become a self-healer every day? What can we do? Is it just simple practices?

I think it's simple practices. I mean, I think it's, you know, depending on what you're struggling first with, you know, if it is something that's, you know, kind of physiologically disregulation, taking a look at the just daily habits. How much are you sleeping? I was shocked about my sleep habits. I always thought I was someone who needed a lot of sleep. I wasn't getting consistently a lot of sleep. My nutrition, now that I became aware of the gut and some of these gut damaging foods. I was eating a lot of things that weren't helping me. So I think some of it's just getting a look on our lifestyle, the choices. I think those of us who live in cities have, you know, endless options of food ordering and food that we're eating a lot of or just the way we're socializing with our friends, you know, so modifying, I think, anything that is lifestyle based is a. And small steps. I mean, you might, you know, you're not going Some people might go clean out the pantry and have a completely different new set of options. Some people might just decide, make one choicey, one less thing that they know is problematic, or eat out one less time, or say no to one rager at the bar. I mean, whatever it is, right? It starts small. And then I always think consciousness, developing some habit of being aware, getting eyes, practicing that self-observation so that you can get clarity into your stuck points, into your subconscious. into those deeper wounds and then you really can start to make those deeper level shifts.

Sure, sure.

But it is daily. So that's what I think it is. I mean, it's picking just one area. I always will say, focus attention, even though a lot of us like to think that we're great multitasking, focus attention on one area and develop some consistency. I know people hate this, but you're not going to do things for three days and have it down and this is your new habit. You're gonna probably, I mean, I don't look into the research. I know people are like, oh, habits take 30 days, 28, whatever. Habits take as long until you're, that's become into your life. You know what I mean? So just focus on one thing, remove one of the problems in your world in a small way for a consistent amount of time, then build on it. I always do what I call a foundational approach with the clients that I work with in my own journey. And I suggest we do that. Just pick one area and you can always build and expand and empowers you on the way.

Yeah, it's powerful. What's your vision for the future now that you've spent the last year building years of work into and sharing it into the world. It sounds like once you set yourself free with these boundaries, you really set your ideas free to create an abundance in your life. So what's the next, what's the vision for you moving forward?

Absolutely. So I'm hoping to release some courses now to give some people a little bit more of a self-directed healing Journey, you know, aside from just the squares. I mean, so all the content that I've always been putting out there was everything I use in sessions with clients. I didn't have a secret arsenal that if you got to work, oh, there's a real magic elixir. I'm gonna tell everyone, you know. So I was always putting it out there, and I always intend to do that, but I want to come up with some coursework so that people can have a bit more of a structure, kind of workshop their way through subconscious re-parenting I want to do some things on partnerships and relationships because I think these are all interconnected. So I'm gonna fold out some courses. I want to, I've shifted away or I stopped taking individual clients about two months ago now. And I'm shifting into a group model. I think humans heal very well in groups. So I want to start to offer some virtual groups again where people can pace themselves through a healing journey. So just very much expand the tools and the, the, I guess, reach of the tools in a way so that any human, I also want to, over time, start to shift into teaching a little bit more in a structured fashion. workshops and things like that for the practitioners. Sure. That's great. Start to update, you know, because again, I'm not trying to change the school system or the school structure and that's just not my time on this planet. But I do want to make sure that clinicians out there are equipped to.

Start to use some of these more holistic methods. Powerful. And you have a thing called the Future Self Journal, right?

So how can people get this? It's free. They can download these templates. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. So the Future Self Journal. So my main hub is the Instagram. wholistic.psychologist.com. you have a website too? Up there I have a link tree so you can get to my website at yourwholisticpsychologist.com and signing up for the email list on that website. But I believe I have that in a link tree in my Instagram that you can also access that and I'm always doing swipe up. So that is what comes upon sign up for the email and it's a template. It takes you through what I call future self journaling which is a bit of spun on good old fashioned journaling where we journal about our past, our daily experiences, our feelings. This was me really starting to make a pivot and explore ways to use a journaling practice to increase consciousness around future change.

So it's powerful.

It's really cool. And people are really getting some pretty good impact with it. But the same thing, like I always say, it's a tool to be used every day to set ourselves up, to be more conscious throughout the day, to make change. It's not a magic journal. I wish, I mean, believe me, if I had the, if I found out the magic journal, I'd be releasing that, but it does not exist. So that's what I often say. It's, but it's, it's definitely, I think, an impactful tool.

I used it myself in healing and it's a cool thing. Powerful. Yeah. So people can get that there. Yourholisticpsychologist.com, they can follow you on Instagram. You could have courses, workshops in the future. You just did your first kind of pop-up workshop in Venice. Hundreds of people came out, moved, inspired.

So you'll be doing more of those. I'm sure you'll have lists of your events and in the future on your website. For sure. Yeah, I'm gonna do one in Philly because I have to represent.

You gotta do it.

I'm actually going to New York in a couple months too, and I'll do.

It while I'm up there. I bet you'll have your least amount of people that show up in your hometown. I'd like to see. For some reason, you always get the least.

Maybe I should prove me wrong, but I always say. I'm actually interested because I have a couple colleagues and things that I know are interconnected, but I do have people randomly like, oh, you're Philly. I'm Philly too. I'm New Jersey. So I'm interested to see. I'm actually have to figure out where the hell I'm going to do it in Philly. The beach was beautiful here. I was like, oh, it's a beach. Nice. It's nice and big, but I'll figure it out. But I want to make that a habit of pretty much everywhere I travel. My goal is to be able to provide part. I mean, for me to meet people and to have that interface, because I love meeting the humans behind the incredibly supportive accounts that are on the other side of the Instagram, but also to have, it was beautiful yesterday. I was watching humans connecting and exchanging numbers and It's amazing. You know, maybe if you can get some support, it can be really lonely is something that I've lived to myself as I started to evolve out of some relationships. I was looking around. I'm like, oh shit, I don't know how many people left, you know? So when I went on Instagram, part of it was a little bit of, you know, I wanted to find other people out there that were, whether or not struggling or healing in the same way that I was, because I was start to make, because I was doing, shifting the way I was living. That meant that I maybe wasn't at all the happy hours or I'm not out with my friends doing what they're doing. So I was looking around and I don't really have that many people. so I think it's a beautiful way. And the community that has really been created, I'm mind blown every day. They're incredibly supportive.

It's amazing. Incredible. You're doing amazing work.

Thank you.

Why want to acknowledge you for, geez, you just serve a lot of people, Nicole, and it's really inspiring. I think a lot of people are healing for the first time on Instagram, of all places. They're able to find wisdom that you're creating, whether it be through your Instagram TV, guided breathing meditations or just the images you put out are so simple. You make complicated things so easy to digest where it's like, oh yeah, why didn't I think about this? And so I acknowledge you for putting yourself out there for creating boundaries in your life and relationships that probably you felt very conflicted and guilty for years to decide that, but creating freedom for yourself is now healing the world. and I think I'm really, I'm really inspired by your decisions and your consistency and showing up for all of us. So I acknowledge your gift.

Yeah, that means a lot. And one of my goals was always to make, because I think, or I know, put it this way, that a lot of this material can feel overwhelming and confusing in the way that it's talked about in some traditional ways. You know, it's not understandable. It's not like, and if it is understandable, it's, okay, well, now what? Yeah. So hearing that I'm able, and I'll tell you those Those cute little memes that now I can do very much efficiently, or the bane of my existence. Took a lot of time before hours. About three hours, a goddamn little square. When I first got on Instagram, I was like, oh, I can't sustain. I made a promise to myself. I was going to post, I think it was like two or three. I might have started out with three times a day. And I was holding myself up to that promise, but my eyes were bleeding trying to figure out the program and how to present the con. Now I'm in a flow.

So, you're in a flow. Thank you for making it look very much much easier than it was behind the scenes. I was like, yeah, that's crazy. This question is called the three truths. So imagine it's your last day on Earth. Many years away from now, you get to pick the day. You can be a hundred, 200 years old. Doesn't matter. But someday you gotta go. You've created everything you want to create in your life. Your future self has been manifested. You've healed everything. You've traveled, done what you want to do. But for whatever reason, you got to take it all with. So all your work, all your messages, your Instagram account, books, everything you create, it's got to go with you. So no one has access to any of your content anymore. But you get to leave behind three lessons that you would share with us. What would you say are the three things that you'd want to share behind what I like to call three truths?

Yeah, absolutely. I love this question. So the first one that comes to mind most intuitively is how life in this moment is life. That was something that was really impactful for me when I first discovered the concept of mindfulness with this idea of just being present. I think that's an incredibly powerful truth. And the more we can each Embrace that, I think that that speaks kind of to life, really.

Sure.

So now the present moment, I think that's definitely one of my truths. Another truth is that we're each unique, amazing, good enough, intuitive humans. I think a lot of us don't have come to be conditioned out of that belief. Me included as well. I thought I was a million things based on what I was told or the experiences that I've had that aren't what this concept, elusive concept of authentic self. I don't. I don't believe that was my authentic self. So I think a truth is that we all have an authentic. self beneath it all. And then I guess healing takes work. Life takes work. Effort. Consistent effort. I'm always the speaker of this truth. And. And I think that's a hard one. And honestly, this was not one that I came by easily. I. Whether it's messaging that I've heard, my mom's voice in my ear, I had all the reasons and. And a lifetime of things coming easy. I'm gonna be honest. I. School came easy for me. Sports came. For me, I didn't have to work so hard in some areas. So this truth was a hard one for me to swallow, was that things are hard and I know how to show up for hard things and to make a consistent effort. And it is incredibly valuable to do that. And I think that's the truth again of healing and of life, really.

Yeah. So great. Love those. Final question. What's your definition of greatness?

Yeah. Yeah. So as, as per the end of this conversation, My definition of greatness is healing. I think our older wounds and being able to show up daily to consciously create our self. I think that's incredible. That's empowerment. I think that's what the purpose of this journey is. And I would definitely call that greatness.

Love it. Dr. Nicole, thank you so much. Appreciate you.

Amazing, Lois. Thank you for having me.

Appreciate it. My friends, I hope you feel more at peace in your heart. I hope you've learned how to heal yourself and break free of your emotional cycles, the boundaries, the other challenges that you've been facing in your life. And now I hope you have some tools and practices so that you can move forward and recover much quicker in your emotional life and in your relationships. If you enjoyed this, do me a favor. and share it on your Instagram story. Tag me @LewisHowes and tag the holistic psychologist. Let Nicole know what you thought about this. Share your thoughts by leaving a couple comments on the page as well. And send this to one friend, one friend you think this could help and support in their emotional day-to-day or mental challenges they might be facing. This is all about self-love, self-healing, creating boundaries and waking up from the things that are holding you back, that are keeping you from the life that you want to live. So take this link, lewishouse.com/844 or the link on the Apple podcast or Spotify, wherever you're listening to this, and just text one friend. Text one friend and say, Hey, I was thinking about you today. I think you'd enjoy this episode. Let me know what you think. What was the biggest takeaway for you? send that text and connect with someone. Be a giver today to someone. You can be a champion in someone's life. You can be the person that gives them a tool to help them improve their life. So be a giver today and share this with one friend. Also, if you enjoyed this specific episode, please go to Apple podcast and leave a review. Leave your comments. Let me know what we can do to make this better and how we can improve. It doesn't matter if you leave a one star review or you five star review like most people. I just want to hear from you. I want to learn how we can improve and how we can make it better for your life. We're constantly looking to grow. We're constantly looking to help more people. So thank you for your reviews and your comments and for sharing this with your friends and on social media. Big thank you again to Nicole. She continues to blow up and she is going to make a massive impact on the world. world. I know it. So make sure to share this with your friends so she gets a lot of love as well. This week we've got the Summit of Greatness happening in Columbus, Ohio. So if you are coming, I am so excited to see you there. If you haven't got your ticket yet, it's not too late. You can sign up, you can make it to Columbus and be there for the weekend for all the celebration, surprises, the incredible people that you're going to meet who will be lifelong friends, the speakers, the workout leaders, the workshop Leaders, the closing party, it's going to be a celebration. I hope to see you there, summitofgreatness.com, get your ticket for this week or get your ticket for next year. You can sign up there for next year as well. And to bring it back to the beginning, Julia Cameron said, what we focus on, we empower and enlarge. Good multiplies when focused upon, negativity multiplies when focused upon. The choice is ours. which do we want more of? If you want more healing, focus on peace and love. If you want more chaos, then focus on the negative things in your life and keep thinking about them. Your mind is the answer. What you put in your mind, negative thoughts or positive thoughts, will dictate the environment and the results in your life. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Know that I love you so very much and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.