End Your SELF-SABOTAGING Habits & Start Living The Life YOU DESIRE! | Nicole LePera & Lewis Howes

A lot of us, I think on some level, believe that the goal is not to have emotions or to always be even keel or peaceful or not to let anything ever bother me. And the reality of it is emotions.

I think you gotta have a dream.

The School of Greatness.

Really? Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis Howes.

One of the things I wanna ask you first is about nervous system and healing. I feel like a lot of people sabotage themselves in life with their careers, with their friendships, with their intimate relationships and they lack the courage and the confidence to truly be their authentic selves because of the trauma, the pain, the wounds that is tied to their nervous system. Why do you think we sabotage ourselves so much? And are we even aware of the wounds that we have?

Really, really great question. When we think about trauma, I think naturally we often think about the moments we can remember when life felt overwhelming or something very big and bad happened to us. And the reality of trauma and all of the different experiences that lead to nervous system dysregulation, when we feel overwhelmed and namely under-supported, and it doesn't necessarily have to be a big event. It could be daily stressors. If we don't have that attuned caregiver that our nervous system quite literally needs to co-regulate, those moments really add up and they don't go away. Our body remembers them and I think probably listeners have maybe heard that word used, but what that means is it lives in our habits of how we care for our physical body. Our nervous system is so foundational that it actually directs and often plays a role in how we feel emotionally, how we regulate our feelings and just our entire way of operating or navigating the world around us. So even if this trauma or these overwhelming, under-supported environments for many of us happened in childhood decades ago, it's still living in our mind and in our body. And it does contribute to patterns of self-sabotage, of self-betrayal, of self-harm. And my biggest kind of probably cliched thing I say is, Oftentimes we're worried about how we're showing up to other people and we can really only be a caring, compassionate, loving partner when we're caring for ourselves. That inability to honor ourself and our own needs really does impact our relationships and in my opinion the entire world around us.

So when we sabotage ourselves, when we discount ourselves, when we speak negatively about ourselves to us or to others, when we don't create boundaries for our needs, what happens in all of our relationships when we do that to ourselves.

We essentially translate that to someone else. If we're not able to show up in love and of self-care, even this concept of love, I think so many of us think it's an external thing, right? It's based on kind of how I'm showing up or a transaction, a behavior that I'm gesturing. to someone else. And in my opinion, love is an emotion. It's an embodiment and it's connected to our ability to be connected to our organ of love, right? Our heart. And unless we are connected to ourself, feeling safe enough in our body to be able to be a loving individual, we're not going to be able to honor those around us and that the ability to reconnect with our heart really is contingent on safety on having those needs met. So I think while a lot of us, and I'm really happy, kind of, we're exploring into this, because a lot of us, we oftentimes label these acts of self-care as selfish, as not a priority, as I don't have the time with very real life obligations, right, orbiting around us. And we do think that we're serving others by putting our self last. And again, it's the cliche of filling up my own cup first. And reason being, I can map it onto the physiology. If you're not feeling safe, if you're not, needs aren't being met, and therefore you're not feeling safe, the way you're going to be showing up is not going to be a safe partner and it might not be a loving one.

It could be unhealthy too to the people around you, right? Because you're not getting the love that you need for yourself.

And the reality of it is we've all adapted. So there's some ways that we're trying indirectly to get our needs met or we're attempting to fill those holes or those things that I never got, that feeling of love. So we've lived an adaptation for so long, and the reality that many of us are living into is the choices that we're making as our best attempt to stay connected, to stay with that feeling of neededness or love or support from someone else, or speaking of our authentic self, we're modifying, we're not showing up as truly who we are. We're not speaking our truth, or we're not sharing how we actually feel, or maybe our wants, our desires, those are all getting squashed as a result. the impact is so, so great and is so real for so many of us.

What happens if we never learn to heal the nervous system or just the memories of the past? What happens to us?

We continue to recycle those early best attempts at coping, at soothing, at creating some semblance of safety. And we, more and more, I think we end up feeling not fulfilled. disempowered. A lot of us tend to blame the environment around us, which is very true. Because if we're just relying on that autopilot, there is no real space between what's happening and how we typically react. Even speaking about the nervous system really does highlight how a lot of this is neurobiologically, as I say, wired into us. That autopilot that most of us are repeating, we don't have the space. It is a very reactive place, right? This stimulus happens and I always react the same way to it and I cope the same way to it, and I don't have that space to create that change.

Yeah, it's learning, you know, I used to be a very reactive person in different situations. Some situations in life would have no effect on me, and it would affect other people. Nobody like, why is that triggering you? Other things that seemed inconsequential, I would react so much, right? Especially in my 20s and teens and even early 30s. And it wasn't until really in the last, you know, five, seven years where I started to okay, I'm not as jealous anymore in this situation. And now this doesn't trigger me. And when someone cuts me off, I'm not flipping them off in return, you know? And I think it took a lot of healing work for me to get to that space at this time. And I know I have a long way to go. But if I wasn't willing to take a look in the mirror and say, okay, what are all those different things that triggered me? And how can I mend them? How can I start to heal them? I think I'd still be very reactive. And you talk about how to do the work about emotional maturity. And I think it's learning how to heal and have that emotional maturity, the space in between the event and your response. Would you call that emotional maturity or what is that space in between an event and a response and how you show up?

I would 100% call that emotional maturity, emotional resilience, really simply the ability to deal with or or to cope with our emotions. And I want to speak to the point because a lot of us, I think on some level, believe that the goal is not to have emotions or to always be even keel or peaceful or not to let anything ever bother me. And the reality of it is emotions contain information. Especially the core emotions are very evolutionarily driven to indicate messages to us when we are feeling angry. It's usually because we're feeling violated or A need has gone unmet for too long. When we're feeling loss, it's because we have a perceived we're missing something in a given moment and we feel sad usually. So emotions have value. The reality though, because very few of us, like myself, grew up with an attuned caregiver who could understand, regulate their emotions, show up as that safe individual to help our nervous system regulate so then over time, we could gain awareness and understanding and over time the ability to cope with our own emotions. So few of us were modeled that experience. And so again, we'll adapt. We might even take on the way that we've observed our parents navigating our emotions. And again, the goal isn't to say, I'm an adult and I don't feel anything. I'm emotionally mature. It's actually to be able to drop in and to notice when our body is shifting and changing in terms of its sensations, indicating that we might be feeling something and then that feeling might have value. And then in that space where maturity comes in is not to just react from it as I know I still often do in moments, screaming, yelling, you know, not talking to you because I've become upset and fleeing emotionally feels the safest. Both things I learned from my dad and my mom respectively. And ultimately being mature is learning how to show up, acknowledge what I'm feeling and then learning a new way to cope with it, to share it, to look for support, to get it out of my body if it is a sensation.

Right, I think Susan David, when she was on, she said that emotions should be data, not the direction to head into, not a reaction of like, I feel angry, now that's the direction I'm gonna go into. It's more, okay, that's data, like you said. How can I breathe into it? What actions do I need to take in a more emotionally mature way? What happens when we always react? based on how we feel and we react with emotional immaturity. What do you think occurs in a human being's life in a relationship or just life in general?

I think even to expand on Susan Davis, right, we become the emotion. A lot of times that reaction, right, is the physiology, is the stress hormone shooting through my body, is the constriction in my muscles leaving me no option even but to react. from that place.

It's becoming meaning like I am angry as opposed to I'm experiencing the emotion of anger.

I'm observing my physical body becoming tense in the same way. I'm becoming constricted. I'm becoming hot. I feel the stress coming through my body. I feel the part of me, the body reaction of anger, but I'm not becoming it. And the impact when we become it, I mean, can be really great. Some of us turn that impact inward and we self-harm. Again, we self-betray. self-neglect and others we project it outward. We find the blame and we react and we cause harm, hurt to our loved ones.

To ourselves and others.

Ourselfs and others. That can be a really shameful place. I mean, when we're hurting, I believe at our core, at least humans are compassionate creatures. And I believe when we are causing that self or other harm, it is a very shameful place to be.

Why do so many people not believe they are lovable? Why do they not love themselves or believe they're lovable? And how does someone start to begin to believe that they are deserving of love from themselves and others?

I love this question. I was actually just talking last night. I was hanging out with Lisa Bilyeu and Jamie Kern, and we were exploring why do so many of us feel unworthy? What is going on here? I think the answer lies again in our childhood, in our earliest relationships, where as a human infant we are dependent on someone showing us some level of care to literally keep our, at least at minimum, physical body alive. And for the large majority of us who didn't have physically present parents or who maybe didn't have emotionally attuned or present parents, the more consistently no one showed up for us in service of our needs, with the developmental maturity or immaturity that we have at that age, we don't have the ability to pull back, to understand maybe our parents or our caregivers trauma or the fact that resources are low and mom or dad has to work five, six jobs all throughout the night and aren't able to be physically available or maybe mom or dad didn't have emotional attunement in their childhood so they can't necessarily have the skills to show up for you. Unfortunately, as children, all roads lead back to a very egocentric or me, I've played a role-oriented view. So in absence of a caregiver showing up, the only way that our very developmentally immature mind can make sense of it and a human brain is always seeking to make sense of experiences even in childhood, it will land on some version of I am the reason this person can't be available to me. So in other words, I am not worthy of this person because to speak to your point, at the core, I believe most of us humans and we conferred last night and came to the determination that it really doesn't matter what walk of life or even how much success you might have externally. I think so many of us have that core wound still and are carrying that with us.

Is that something you still have?

Oh, absolutely.

Really?

Absolutely. There and we were, I was musing about and thinking and I've landed on I'm not sure if there's, as is the utopian state of doneness that I think so many are looking for. I want to be done healing. I'm finished. I just want to kick back and it's over for me. I can relax. I think maybe the same conversation applies to self-worth, meaning I think that it might be more of a scale. There might be moments where we feel dropped into ourself what I believe is our inherent power and worth and ability to really create any choice that we would want to make in our life. And then there's all of the other moments, right, where deeper wounds are activated, all of this kind of unconscious conditioning that we're just talking about now, nervous system dysregulation that gets all wrapped up in it happen, and then we begin to feel less worthy in those moments.

Interesting. It's sometimes people feel like the more successful they are, the more they accomplish in their career or financially, they feel less and less worthy still. And it's like they're accomplishing and achieving and they should feel more fulfilled, but they still don't.

Why do you think that is? I mean, that perfectly described me several years ago when you and I were first meeting even and I was coming to the awareness that this schooling, right, getting a PhD, opening up this private practice. I mean, talk about years of accomplishment that I'd planned for as long as I can remember, checked all the boxes, opened up, hung my shingle, had a successful practice. had a partner, living in a city, had friends, looked around, wondered, why aren't I feeling fulfilled? Why aren't I feeling happy? Why aren't I feeling connected to this life around me? And for me, like many of us, our career becomes an extension of our attempt at feeling worthy. It's through the action of, and I talk a lot about being an overachiever or a perfectionist, this idea that I am only valued by doing. And for me, it actually extends not only into these accomplishments, the accolades, the things I'm generating in a more professional way. I see myself still trying to perform, as I kind of think of it, in my personal relationships.

Really.

To make sure that I am worthy of receiving up yet today.

Really.

Like, can I be the good partner that's showing up in service of whatever you might need? partner? Or can I be the, you know, a needy partner who's good on their own? I don't even need your support. I got it. I'll support you. And when I don't perform in those ways to be in need, to need to ask for support, to show the more vulnerable sides, and again, something I learned in childhood, squashing all of that with the fear that there would be an impact, that I would cause more worry, more stress to an already overwhelmed system, I showed less and less of that. I asked for less and less support. I was nothing bothers Nicole, never anything wrong, and came to realize how that was a performance, how it was a deep vulnerability, and now even asking for support. I had a lot of this come up actually around losing my mom last year now. It's been about a year in May. And having moments where I was feeling low, I was feeling like I wanted someone to sit in my grief with me, and what I would witness myself do, usually after the fact when I was angry, A, I would hope or I would have the idea that my partner should just know what I needed in any given moment. Without saying anything. And not only would I not say anything, Lois, I would actually do the complete opposite. I would push you away. I would be cold. I would be mean to you. I'd even maybe hide in my room and wondered why I'm being sanctioned alone, why no one's caring, why no one's supporting me.

Right. You don't care about me, yeah.

I'm not considered. It's one of my favorite go-to meanings. that I make when someone's not available to me. Not realizing, A, I never said anything. I never directly said, and no one can mind read. You need to speak your needs. And not only was I not speaking it, I was giving the complete indication that I wanted otherwise, that I wanted to be alone, that I wanted that distance. So I had a lot of those challenging moments.

Interesting.

To think about, to work through, and even at times to Continue to keep myself sanctioned alone and you know, kind of fulfilling or validating that older narrative and also trying to challenge myself and let in support.

I mean, you've been doing this work for a while now, but specifically in the last three years, your work has exploded online through social media, your private communities. This book was a massive hit. What has been the biggest lesson in the last, I guess, year and a half since the first book came out? that came up for you as you continue to rise in the accomplishment world? What came up for you in the wounded world, I guess, for you?

Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think when I, two things come up. One is one of the ways I've dealt with feeling overwhelmed and been able to maintain control, not only was getting validated achievement, but it was keeping myself distracted by all of the things that I had to do to obtain that achievement. As opposed to kind of the deeper thing, right? Just always like, oh, I have this thing to do and this next thing to do and checking all of the boxes along the way. And speaking of nervous system, that tendency to distract ourselves or keep ourselves endlessly busy can actually be a nervous system response of flight. I'm fleeing the deeper discomfort that's happening here by focusing on this endless action that I'm doing. So having the opportunity even to write a new book and go right into doing mood. Now, I do have a very long to-do list to complete this new project. That is always something that is top of mind. And that for me starts in the mornings even. I wake up and I could very easily pick up my cell phone, start to address emails. as opposed to keeping that time sacred and time for me to make sure that I'm balanced and I'm committed to my own physical and mental wellness before I then shift into those emails. So that for me is an ever-present challenge and of course it's amplified when I have new big projects that I'm also excited about. So it's how do I find that balance of making sure that I'm still taking care of myself, maybe exploring the deeper challenges that are coming up as I continue to externally achieve and everything that kind of comes along with how I feel about my achievements, how other people feel about the achievements that they're seeing you have. And that's emotional stuff under there. However, it's so easier to say, well, I'm busy.

Right.

And on to the next, and I have a deadline that I have to meet. So it's really keeping the space so that I can continue to be connected to the deeper stuff.

What is the thing that you feel like will support you the most? as you continue to evolve and grow as a human in your career, with the service you're doing in your work, in a relationship that you have, what is the thing that you feel like if you could continue to process, heal, let go of, elevate beyond will support you the most? What is that thing for you?

Keeping connected in space and time for me, as someone who grew up with very limited boundaries in my family. I actually spent a lot of time physically present, growing up in a city home, that there wasn't much space or rooms. There was always someone there. We tended to move in a system, as la peras, we like to think and believe the same things, eat the same food, make the same choices of how to spend our time. And I carry still remnants of that. So as much as I was just kind of describing emotionally part of my healing is letting people in to my emotional world, allowing them to join me, there is a very big part of my healing journey that also needs to create a separation and a confidence that I can and will meet my own needs, even in absence of that person being there. And I see this in moments from, oh, what are you doing, partner? Let me go spend time with you. Or, what do you want to eat? And kind of deferring and not being able to at times, even if they are present and available to me, coming to the reality that sometimes I need time away. I live and work with the two partners that I'm in partnership with, and that's a lot of people. And so for me, it's honoring time, space for just me. And that might sometimes mean I've found some solace in traveling to Sedona for long weekends. And this is something that I don't think I had my first day trip alone until my late 30s. I spent no time alone. I think, yes, I took my myself out. I remember the moment for the first meal alone when I was something like 25 years old and I sat down and I ate a meal alone. So for me, it's aloneness that continues to be really integral to my healing, knowing when I need time to rebalance and separate so that when I do come back, I'm more whole, I'm more connected, and I'm able to be a better partner.

So how do your partners understand then when you, you know, you need your own boundaries to have space away? but also you're just saying sometimes I might be, I don't know, passive aggressive or avoidance or whatever, you know, the silent treatment and then in my alone time in my room or space and feeling like they're not taking care of me or not supporting me or thinking of me. Yeah. It's kind of like how do you communicate then with a partner about, hey, I just need alone time versus I need you to come and check on me in my alone time.

Yeah. You first, and I mean, we need to get clear ourselves. And I'm still figuring my way out to when is this agitation something I need to be dealing with separate? Because that's how it usually manifests in me. I start to feel irritable, agitated, little things that I could usually, you know, kind of look past or that don't typically bother me. I will start to get passive aggressive, say, snarky remarks. And, okay, Nicole, you're getting agitated and figuring out the difference then between, okay, this is an agitation that would be best served by me, maybe even just taking a walk, not necessarily even traveling for a weekend.

Sure.

Taking some space to just be in my own energy different than in the moments where I want you to join me. Because for me, agitation is usually a sign that my nervous system is dysregulated, which is typically for me better served with finding some balance before I then engage or ask my partner to co-regulate. You have to be open to the support right before instead of like I am, come help me. when I have my arm out.

Yeah, there's so much things can be resolved if we just take 30-minute walk in nature before coming back to the conversation.

Yes.

You know, not talking before we respond, responding from a nervous system trigger. So much less pain, so I just taking a little bit of space in between the event and the response. That's interesting. I'm curious about you mentioned kind of boundaries there and creating boundaries. What happens when we abandon ourselves on the boundaries that we need personally for ourselves, when we're alone, and also what happens when we abandon ourselves with others all the time?

Yeah, when we abandon ourself, I think ultimately we don't first at least look or hold ourself responsible. I don't even think we're aware that we're abandoning ourselves. And I think what we more often do is we hold subconsciously this other person responsible. And then when our need isn't met, so we've abandoned ourselves and didn't allow our need to be met, instead of saying, oh, well, Nicole, you did it in this instance, share that you needed support. That was the moment where you did not open yourself up to then receive the support. Instead, we do exactly what I, like most of us did throughout my 20s, which was We blame the other person with this idea that if I just found the right partner or if you could just change the way you are a little bit and show up in this different way, then I wouldn't feel that way. Externalize the focus, the blame, and quickly that turns into resentment, which before long can be the ending of a relationship. We've held you responsible for so long. that that will bring up contempt.

When we put our feelings, the responsibility of our feelings on other people, like you made me feel this way, you did this to me, and now I feel this way, and you need to change that. What happens in a relationship when you put the responsibility on the other as opposed to yourself?

Not only do you set yourself up for resentment, I think at our core we are disempowering ourselves, taking that emotion, that energy of change and we're giving.

It to someone else.

To someone else.

They have power over us.

Now we're reliant on them modifying the way they're showing up and the reality of it is, I mean, even the way I was just describing a couple of minutes ago, emotions, and even what you shared a bit earlier, I feel sometimes things don't bother me and they bother other people. Other times things bother me and they don't bother other people. I think that's a really prime, simple example of how individual and subjective emotions are. There are physiological changes that happen in our body that are related to how we're making meaning, all the topics we've just been talking about. How we're making meaning of an event, how it's personally relevant to us. So in my instance, I'm not considered in this moment and now I'm going to feel as if that's true. And this is subjectively happening, this filter for each of us outside of our awareness. And what we're maybe, maybe tuning into, if we're connected to our body, is the emotional experience. And we might be tuning into the reaction that we're having from that place. But we're going to disempower ourself if we're hoping you change that I don't have to feel this way. I think that more empowered stance could be becoming conscious that I do consistently tend to feel this way. and maybe I can even pull back the onion a bit more and turn my spotlight of attention, like I say, to the stories, the actual narrative, the meaning I've assigned to that unanswered text or to the dishes not being done or, you know, the gesture that my partner didn't give me. Oh, it's because you didn't consider me. Now the more we see those narratives, I think the more then we can get clarity on how we are, maybe our past even is contributing, and then again give ourselves the space to become emotionally mature in terms of how to regulate as opposed to relying on the world around me changing so that I don't have that reaction anymore.

It's so hard to put our, you know, the emotional responsibility of how we feel on someone else. It's so challenging. We've got to be responsible for our own joy and happiness. Obviously, people might do something that you don't agree with and so you have to have a conscious conversation and say, Hey, this is a boundary and here's my needs. Can we do more of this? But relying on the other person to make you happy is going to be very challenging. Because if they don't make you happy consistently, then you're going to blame them, right? And you don't want them to change. Change who you are. Change this. I need more of this, more of this. And it's still never going to feel like enough, which is challenging. There's something I want to ask you about. I haven't seen you since I started doing this work. But I've had two different photos of my younger self on my phone since I was in January last year. So I haven't seen you since I guess I started doing a lot of healing work myself. And I've been talking about it on the show over the last year and a half. And I had a younger photo of myself when I was about five for maybe a year. And now I've got about a 9, 10, 11 year old version of myself. And it's been an amazing journey to go back and heal certain memories and wounds of the little boy inside of me that felt unseen or unheard or neglected or sexually abused and all these different things that did occur. And then the stories that I told myself about those things or other things that were not met based on what I wanted. It's been incredibly healing, the journey to do exercises, intimate work of reconnecting with that little boy inside of me. Right. And going back into the past, bringing it to the present, saying, I've got you. I'm an adult in the room now. I can take care of us. I've got your back. Thank you for getting us here. Thank you for overcoming all those challenges and pains and traumas and confusion of the world and relationships and parents and all that stuff. You did the best you could. Not blaming him, but you did the best you could. Thank you. Now I'm going to carry us into the next season of life. And I'm doing that for the version of my 10, 11, 12 year old self that had different challenges and adversities. I'm gonna kind of do this, you know, every five years of like, okay, what were the pains and the relationships wounds I had here until it's all kind of come back into where I am now to kind of mend those wounds. How important is it for us to do the inner child healing? And more people are talking about this in the last few years. And what happens if we neglect the little boy or girl or human inside of us? that still has those wounds.

I appreciate you. I was getting chills actually feeling my body when you were sharing that and I really appreciate you speaking so openly, readily and sharing your picture. This is one of those areas and those concepts where some of us even as adults might even feel a little silly when we hear inner child, what do you mean? I'm like decades beyond childhood. I'm past that ultimately though the reality of it is just like we were speaking about in terms of trauma and the memory that lives in our mind and our body, even if we are decades past, right, this childhood time, this little being that maybe some of us.

Are still stored in us. It is still stored in us. Yes.

And it is in those moments, right, where we are having that emotional reaction where we are feeling less than unworthy, not good enough, that that is very much alive and real. And that is part of the complexity of our human experience is even if it is not objectively present in real time, if our body is going through that physical to physiological reaction, it might as well be the stress that we're, you know, kind of feeling through our bodies is, is real, even if it's not happening in our current moment. So I think that's such a huge, important acknowledgment is that we are carrying the aftermath of those early events. And a lot of times we can see them in our emotional reactions or in our, our core beliefs as they show up for a lot of us. day to day even, and learning how to first just create a relationship with that space. Because even if those feelings aren't mapping onto the objective reality of what's happening here and now, doesn't make them any less real. So for a lot of us, when we are exploring our inner child, I think one of the first things that really comes to the surface is the hurt, the grief, the mourning even.

It's not fun to look at.

That we're carrying with us maybe for some of us, for relationships that never were, for needs that never had been met. And then for everything really in between and creating space to be a compassionate witness, not to, you know, kind of fall into the mindset of, oh, well, that's back then.

Right?

I don't have time to worry about that now. And really allowing yourself that moment of whatever the feeling is to be the case. And then, like you're very beautifully describing, Acknowledging that you do have another aspect of your consciousness now. You can access new choices and you can then in that space learn new tools of how to create safety for that inner child. And I believe for most of us, that's part of the journey, whether you want to call it inner child work or not. It's really just acknowledging these older reactions and really creating the space to embody the change. and I'm very intentional with saying embody the change because again, this is where we can't just have the idea, we can't read a book about a new tool.

Can't be analytical.

And never do anything, right? It really is the embodiment of safety, of a new way to cope with my sadness or my grief or my anger in a way that doesn't, or even just general new ways to care for my being that maybe I never learned in childhood that can translate into self-love over time.

When I started to do the healing journey, as my therapist says, it's a journey. It's not like, okay, I've arrived and it's done. It's not a destination. It's not a one-time event. It's like, okay, now I'm aware. Although when I started to do the processing of the inner child, it probably took about four and a half months of six-hour sessions on Saturdays and every week diving in for two or three hours with my therapist about this for many months because I was just like struggling in an intimate relationship that I was like, I need to find healing. I need to find peace. I need to create clarity, freedom. I didn't feel free, all these things, right? But it was really all about me. It was never about another person. It was about how I was feeling. But I realized there was a pattern of different people that I would be attracting in intimate relationships for my whole life. based on wounds and inner child traumas. And it wasn't until I started doing the healing work, there was a physical pain in my chest and in my throat that I would feel that eventually went away in one moment. Like I could feel this ball of pain in my chest after many, many months of having it coming and going, literally disintegrate in my chest and kind of like dissolve throughout my body. And I was like, okay, that was interesting. But it was many months of intensive emotional therapy, right? And I felt this and I go, wow, that's really interesting. And I remember finally connecting that I am a free human being, that I'm not trapped, that I'm not stuck, that I don't need to change who I am to love myself or to get love from someone else. All these things that I felt like I had to do based on a story and a wound of the past. And I remember I was like, wow, this is powerful. Now, I still had come like PTSD feeling in my nervous system when things would come up, but I was able to have the courage to respond differently. And the more consistent my courage of response from a place of, okay, I'm feeling this, but I'm not going to react the way I always have in my life, it created more confidence within myself. And then my nervous system began to heal as well. And so when those things come up, I don't really feel it as much. There might be a little bit, but it's not like this, you need to react and respond from a fight or flight. And it has been a beautiful year and a half journey of peace and healing. But I'm a true believer. It's because I continue to do it once I've realized it. I didn't say, okay, this pain is gone. I've got the answer. I'm done. I show up every two weeks. I do the work. You know, like you say, I'm doing the intensive work. and continuing the process of connecting the earliest memories to the next stage of memories and trying to bridge the gap to where I am now, the different psychological memories of the past, whether you want to call it the inner child or the memories, right? And I'm just such a firm believer of what you're teaching and how to do the work and again, recognizing your patterns to heal from the past and create yourself, right? And so I'm so grateful for this. I'm curious, what is an exercise in your book, How to Do the Work or the New workbook that people can start that maybe isn't that scary to get started. If they think, Louis, what are you talking about this? Healing the inner child stuff? What is this stuff? This is crazy. What is one exercise people can start with to just be aware on the inner child or the memories of the past that will help them regulate their nervous system?

Absolutely. Awareness. You'll always hear me say, sight begins with learning how to be that aware being or to live in that conscious state, being the observer of our thoughts, our emotional reactions, the way then we're reacting, I want to say responding there, reacting in the world around us. It's that observation step. But I want to go back to something really profound that you said by acknowledging your courage in choosing, because I want to highlight how any, even if very logically, so many of us have lived the aftermath of those old reactive ways of being, whether it's self or other harm, and we have all of this now. data points to say, okay, that doesn't work. So logically, this is how the new way I would like to respond in my being the next time this happens. And lo and behold, when that time comes, because that will be, I'm going to really simplify it, a new response. Right. I will embody something new. I will make a new choice in that moment. Inevitably, inevitably, that's going to challenge our subconscious mind that prefers. those familiar patterns. It's actually an adaptation because we get to predict and there's safety in that prediction. Even if the aftermath is consequential in whatever way it is, it's known. I verified it. Some of us for decades, we verified, yep, that's what happens next. And now if I'm on the brink of making a new choice in and of itself before I even make the choice, I might be faced with the resistance, that pull back, all of the reasons why I shouldn't make that new choice. If we do dare to embody or to do something new in that moment, that resistance might even drop into our body where we feel uncomfortable. We begin to feel that discomfort of that unfamiliar experience. Some of us, again, that could contribute to leading us right back into those old familiar habits and patterns. So once we become conscious, then it really is a challenge to our mind-body system to embody these new choices. They don't come easy. And funny enough, one of the things I was thinking about earlier when we were talking about something else was for me physically, I used to avoid not only emotional discomfort, but physical discomfort. Even though I played sports my entire life through college, when it came to stretching my muscles, and I was always very tight, tight from, you've guessed it, my nervous system and my stress response. And I remember I used to have these big trainers pushing on my hamstrings, trying to stretch me, and I'm crying. anytime my physical body felt uncomfortable. And once I stopped playing sports in college, any physical discomfort, I would avoid it. Oh, that means my body's not meant to move like that. Oh, I don't have the stamina to walk around for this many minutes, so I'm gonna not do it. Erroneously or, you know, in error, thinking that this discomfort was, you know, my intuition, my body telling me, oh, you've reached your limit, Nicole. And really, it was just that old pattern of. avoiding things that were uncomfortable. And one of the most foundational changes that I referenced to in how to do the work is how for me rebuilding that connection to my body, challenging my body to, and it wasn't anything extreme. I didn't enter the gym. I still didn't even enter the gym. It's about the small, consistent. For me it started with just daily stretching for 10 minutes a day, popping in a yoga video and stretching my body to that point of discomfort. And instead of abandoning yoga and I'm done with it for the day today, just allowing myself to breathe in that space. So whether or not it's your physical body, any new promise or new choice that we set the intention to make outside of that familiar comfort zone, acknowledging that it will challenge our subconscious, so keeping that promise small, and then there's the embodied practice, meeting that resistance. All the thoughts that are telling you to abandon ship, Maybe all that discomfort in your body is you're doing something new, responding in a new way, taking some belly breaths instead of yelling and screaming, and then expanding that stress resilience or that emotional resilience you were talking about earlier. Learning that you can tolerate a bit more of that discomfort than you thought.

That you could, and that's how you develop that confidence that you were speaking of. So interesting, you were talking about familiarity. I was thinking about in relationships where we'll see, I'll speak for myself, but I also see other people, that stay in relationships that are hurtful or harmful or not a part of their vision of a high conscious relationship, but they stay because it's familiar. And then when you sometimes meet someone who is very loving and kind and generous, it's not familiar. And you almost push that away because you're like, okay, that doesn't feel safe because it's unfamiliar. But really it's just different. and it's really probably what you need the most of is this kind of safer environment. But where, why are we so tied to repeating a pattern of familiarity, even if it's painful, as opposed to creating a loving environment in relationships that we know will support us thrive? Why do we do that?

I think one of the most counterintuitive, you know, spaces to muse or consider this question is why it is so difficult for many of us to be in stillness, right? To be in peace. We do, on some deep level, create and prefer the stress, those patterns, the negativity even of it. And again, a lot of this goes back to how embodied these topics are that we're speaking of. They're not just right thoughts in our mind. They're mapping onto physiological changes outside of our nervous system, in our hormones and cortisol. and how our body is adapting to the present nature of these continued habits and patterns. So, our body gets used to these certain ways of being and prefers that familiar because something even as logical as peace, which we should all desire, and I share my story all the time for so long, being a hippie at heart, all I've been endlessly searching for is the ability, and you said one word earlier too, to be free. and to be peaceful. Those for me are like, feel like what we could call core driving values. I want to be at peace. I want to have a safe, comfortable, peaceful, calm existence, and I want to have the freedom to do that. Yet what I would find time and time again is when there was the moment where there wasn't a stressful experience happening, or say I was home alone without anyone around me to energetically, you know, cause me any disturbance, it wasn't that logically, it was my body. I had so much trauma and stress in my nervous system and for a lot of us, safety doesn't, I mean quiet, stillness, stop doesn't feel safe if we've grown up in an environment where that wasn't present. So counterintuitively, here I am, the hippie, wondering where my safe space is and yet wherever you go, there you are, right? The junk buns in book. There I was all of the time, but what was there was this dysregulated nervous system. In those moments on my couch with no one present, my body was sending me, my brain, so many messages of stress, of cortisol, of my heart still beating out of my chest because my nervous system was dysregulated. I was in fight or flight in that moment. So my mind was left with no other option but to integrate that into this meaning of what's happening, and it would then find the stressful event. Oh, right. that assignment you didn't do. It was this deadline you have tomorrow. You know what? Actually, it was this fight that you had with your partner because she gave you a look that you didn't like and now you're stressed out about that because what did that mean? Not realizing that my body was contributing to that story because our mind always seeks alignment. Scanning down what's happening in my body, oh, it's stressed out. That must mean something stressful happened. Let me figure out what it is.

Wow. So does everything come back to the nervous system then? Like this our level, our ability to have peace, feel loved, feel safe, come back to how our nervous system is connected to our mind and our thoughts and our body?

Yes. If our nervous system isn't in the parasympathetic mode of safety of a particular branch of it called the ventral vagal, which allows us to be connected to the world around us, to our heart that I was talking about earlier, if we're not in that, and that, do you feel peaceful? Do you feel calm? Are you able to breathe deeply from your belly? Do your muscles feel available but not tense? Are you in that space? And the answer probably for most of us is, no. My heart's beating out of my chest. I'm sweating. I'm on edge waiting for the next stress to happen. Or I might be on the other end of that spectrum. I might be completely shut down. Energy, what energy? I can't get out of bed. muscles, I feel like I have no ability. I'm so fatigued in my muscles. I have no interest in life. A lot of us have called that for decades, depression, have located the genetic idea of this genetic component, which there is a genetic component, but a lot of us are in a nervous system state of shutdown. It's our nervous system that is causing those symptoms. To simply answer your question, our nervous system impacts everything from our ability to be in that peaceful, connected place to even kind of how we think about ourselves, to how we navigate our self showing up in our environments and really every choice that we make.

There's a, I don't know if it's a proverb or a quote out there that goes something like, it's better to be a warrior in a garden and then a gardener in a war. And as we were talking about this, I was thinking about how, you know, as you started to stretch yourself and allow yourself to experience some, I don't know, conscious pain, right? You then were able to bring on the stresses of life in a more peaceful way. It's like if we don't experience some conscious pain in our lives by, whether it be moving your body or working out or doing the healing work, pain is going to pile on top of us. And so I'm a big believer in doing the things, having discipline on a daily basis to push yourself a little bit and do the uncomfortable things, whether it's uncomfortable conversations, uncomfortable movement, so that you can take on the stresses of life and be peaceful when there is an attack, as opposed to reactive stress, but you have awareness. you're like the, you know, the silverback gorilla who can just kind of see the chaos of all the monkeys around them and not be reacting and then you just kind of move through the space and say, okay, let's stop this, you know, with some more calm because you have confidence in yourself, you've done the work, and you feel at peace in your body so that you don't have to feel pain when there's stress around you. And I think that's a, you know, something I've always believed in is kind of putting yourself through conscious pain. not hurting yourself, but helping yourself by expanding and stretching yourself. And I think a lot of people reject pain. They reject stretching, whether it be physical stretching or emotional stretching, and that causes more pain in the future when you do that.

And I think sometimes we do think that that's the goal is to get to a place where, like me, nothing bothers me. Where we don't register the emotional aspect of the life around us. And emotions were grounded, in my opinion, in evolution. They all, like I said, the core emotions at least have played a role in giving us that information that has helped us to survive. And I'm saying all that to say, they're probably not going to go anywhere, right? And we don't want them to.

Yes.

I think while so many of us, again, back to this elusive, done place, I think a lot of us have this idea that once I kind of come up with the protocol, right, with how to live, that I'm just going to do that on repeat for the next however many decades we're alive. And while that might be a nice intention to set, my question is always honoring the evolution of our human organism, of this body that's aging. I'm this age now. I don't actually know what it's going to feel like living in my body as it continues to change as I age. I don't know what experiences and relationships and change I will undergo. this protocol that I developed maybe in my 20s or 30s might not apply to me in my 50s, 60s, or 70s. So in my opinion, similar to the conversation we were having about externalizing blame, when we externalize our compass as well, even if it's this protocol that worked in my 20s, in my opinion, we're still relying on something outside of us. And in my opinion, this intuition, this guidance that we're looking for, is actually inside and you probably guessed it by now, it speaks through our body. It's about learning how to continue to be connected to my changing body as I age into the decades and to drop in as my body is now experiencing changing circumstances and relationships and then looking for guidance in those moments as opposed to this external, oh, well this worked last year, so I'm going to do that again. We will attempt that, but in the instance where that's not the thing that's going to align with us now, if we're only relying on that, we're going to keep recycling possibly some of us habits that won't continue to serve us as we grow and change.

Sure. I want to ask you about relationships for a moment because I think you have an interesting perspective about relationships with the relationships you're in, intimate relationships. And I'm curious how people can navigate, how they can set themselves up for success in intimate partnerships with what's happening in the world and just everything that's around them right now. So I want to unpack this for a minute. So the same principles apply to same sex relationships as I guess opposite sex relationships in terms of what we should be looking for, how we should be communicating roles, responsibilities, masculine feminine energy or is it different? I want to start there first.

Personally, I think, you know, humans relating to other humans dynamically, whether whatever gender you identify with, it comes to the same components at our core. I believe we are more similar than dissimilar, but that doesn't mean that even again throwing away gender designations, individuals are different. we actually thrive as a species when we allow like a puzzle, all of us to have differences, different ideas, different strengths, different weaknesses, right, different ways of being in navigating the world. So when we're talking about our most intimate, you know, personal romantic relationships, whether, regardless of the gender that you're attracted to or engaging in relationships with, I think the core components are the same. And at our core, we all desire to be in relationship, to be connected. It might not be romantic. I'm open to actually a future where we begin to explore different iterations of relationships that might work for us. But at our core, we all desire to be part of some interpersonal Dynamic.

Yeah.

Whether it's with one person, with the community of people, whatever it is, we need that. And in that then space of this. relationship, whatever it might look like, we all have the same desire to be honored for our individuality. So without even needing to gender it, I think if we make more and more space to create safety for every participant to begin to be who they really are, I think that's the goal ultimately.

Does that come down to total acceptance of your partner? Or what does that mean?

It depends on how we're defining acceptance, because I think this is a blurred line some of us go to, where we have the idea that acceptance means enabling, condoning, allowing behaviors. We can accept someone for how they are, or how they're choosing to be, or whatever it is, and make a choice that might be different then. Engaging, enabling, allowing.

I've got a philosophy. I would love your opinion to break this apart or tell me if you think it's a decent philosophy or there's, I'm sure I'll add to this philosophy, but I'm learning more and more through my healing journey, through my work, through experiencing a beautiful relationship that I have right now with Martha, my girlfriend, and us doing the healing work together. When I started, before I got into the relationship with Martha, I said, Listen, I've always wanted to start in a relationship with therapy, not because something's wrong or off, but because I want us both on the same page. Because I want to minimize future pain because we're not communicating or something.

And.

It was kind of a non-negotiable for me entering this new relationship. Because I was like, I either want to be single at peace and love myself, or this needs to happen to allow for the potential for it to work. in a beautiful way. And so thankfully she was all about it. She was like, yes, that sounds great. And it's incredible what we've been able to cultivate with this environment of shared commitment to healing growth, both individually and together. So I have this kind of like six part philosophy right now, and I'm sure it'll have more parts to it on Setting up the best foundation for a thriving, fulfilling, intimate relationship. The first thing is both individuals being committed to a healing journey. A growth mindset, but it means diving into the healing journey individually and together. So working on it together and individually. Not one partner only committed to growth and healing and the other partner is saying, well, I'm not going to look at these things and I'm just going to allow myself to react. But both parties being on a healing journey, that's number one. And committed to it throughout the entire relationship. Number two is, number two, three, and four is, having alignment on our values, our vision, and our lifestyle. Our values of what we really care about as individuals. And so I actually went to Sedona with Martha and we did a journaling practice separately. where we both wrote down our values before we got committed. And I wanted to make sure that, I didn't just say something and she.

Said it back or vice versa.

Yeah, I did too. Uh-huh. So we both wrote it down separately in different exercises, then we looked at the paper together and about 80% was all aligned, right? There was, and the things that we had differently were not out of alignment. It was just like, okay, cool, you care about that, that's fine. But our values were in alignment, right? As opposed to, you know, someone saying, well, I don't, I don't want to have kids and the other person wanting kids, whatever it might be. It's like we were in alignment on almost everything. So the values, the vision, what is the vision for our life in a relationship? Is it aligned? Do we have the same vision? Do we're going in the same place as opposed to different directions? And then our lifestyle. Are we in alignment on the types of things we enjoy doing? Because I think if one person loves to travel and the other person just wants to stay at home, there's just going to be a little bit more friction. I'm not saying it's not possible, I just think it's harder. So values, vision, and lifestyle. That's two, three, and four. Number five would be before you enter a committed relationship, accepting, learning about them in a conscious way through spiritual connection, not sexual chemistry. Because I think the sexual chemistry confuses us without getting clear on all these other things first, right? there's a false foundation without the clarity of the values, vision, and lifestyle. So once you see and explore the individual you're in front of saying, I choose you and accept you for how you've shown up with your behaviors and your words match your actions consistently. So having accepting the person and saying, okay, if this is who you are, I accept you, you don't need to change for me. 'Cause we're in alignment on these things, so I accept who you are. Now, if you fall off of a standard that we have on these shared values, then that's different, right? Something's gotta give there. So that's number five is accepting someone based on how they've shown up, not hoping that they'll change or investing in them for the potential of what they'll do in five to 10 years. Well, maybe they can step into this, right? And then the sixth thing I just think is so critical, and I know this is like a a popular book, which some people may agree with a lot, but I feel like it's so critical to how we were raised, is having alignment on love languages. I've been in relationships where the way I've given and expressed love is not the way someone needs to receive it. They don't feel loved that way through words of affirmation or touch. And it's just more friction to have to do something that personally you don't typically do? So if someone really wants you to give gifts all the time and you're like, I don't care about that. You have to constantly do something you're not good at, a weakness, and try to improve that to make someone feel loved. So being in alignment on love languages and both doing the tests to see are we in alignment? Is how I show up make you feel loved naturally and organically and vice versa? Or do you need me to become someone else for you to feel loved? those six phases, I feel like if you can find, again, there's no perfect relationship, I get it, but if you can find alignment on those six things and be on the healing journey of acceptance, we're both in this together, shared values, vision and lifestyle, choosing based on accepting who they are, not the potential of who they become or the idea of them, and then having alignment on love languages, I feel like you're setting yourself up for a good environment for the potential to thrive and create peace and fulfillment. What are your thoughts on that philosophy of my, you know, newfound experiences about love and intimacy?

Well, I'm smiling because I think there's so much profound in what you're sharing. And the first really profound aspect of everything you shared, and I'm going to simplify it, as I often do, is knowing yourself.

Yeah.

And I'm sharing this because I've heard from a very large percentage of people how more often than not the focus when you begin to meet someone, get to know them, go out on dates, whatever it is, however that looks for you, focusing more on, well, do they like me? Are they gonna call me back? How was it the date for them? Right? As opposed to, do I like them? How am I experiencing this person? Is this someone I have interest in getting to know more? So I think that's one really important, profound aspect of what you're sharing, which is, being at that or cultivating and continuing to increase your self-awareness, what you want. And so many of us, again, from childhood, there was safety, maybe even, and worrying so much about other people and fitting your way into or being liked by someone else. So if you do see those patterns in yourself, I would imagine that they were adaptations that, again, were aimed at keeping you safe. So then the goal would be to begin to turn that focus and as opposed to worrying about what they think of you. And if you're going to get that call back, begin to attune to how you feel in this person's presence. And another profound thing is communication. And this might seem so simplistic, but I used to do a lot of work with couples. When I was in Philadelphia, I worked at the Council for Relationship, it was called. And true to its name, most people that came through the doors for treatment and sat in my office were couples. And I mean, I, it's shocking to think of couples even on the brink of making a commitment like marriage who haven't actually had a direct conversation about, let alone values, if they even are knowing what their own values are around children, like actual decisions that might the couple might, you know, face together, never having directly explored with their partner what their interest is in terms of having children or not, what physical, geographical location might they want to look at, how might they want their life to look. You brought up travel, some of these things for so many, many more couples than I would have imagined. aren't actually spoken about. And maybe some of it is because these people as individuals might not know, right? Discovering yourself in that way, what are your values? Even if we are adults who maybe heard that word value and want to live a value-driven life, we might not actually know what we value and how we want our future. We might be relying on the relationships we saw in childhood or the limitations that we've created based on the adaptations, how we felt we had to amend ourselves. So those two things, while I simplified them, are a big part of that dating journey, getting really connected to you so that you can not only know if you're interested in someone, so you can have those conversations that you and Martha had, where you're able to show up with your side of the value sheet to even see if there is alignment there, and then communication, communication, communication. I'm having a thought too just quickly about the love languages. And without going into too much detail, I'm very interested. I have another surprise book project that will be coming down the line all about relationships called How to Be the Love youe Seek. And in that, I actually have a whole chapter devoted to questioning this old model of love languages. It's very similarly to the way you're questioning it. So, that's a thing to think about. And I feel very similarly with Is that just an extension of adapting, making someone change? I really explore where love comes from in and of itself. I mean, even the title, How to Be the Love youe Seek, really again, trying to put the focus kind of not only back on the self, but on authenticity and space for that authenticity in our relationships.

I think one of the, I hear this said by a lot of people, so I'm not sure who originally said this, but a lot of people say, you know, if you're trying to find a great partner, make a list of everything you want of that partner and then go become that. And then attract from the list that you want from someone else. Become those things, the partner you seek, be it like you said first. And you'll start to recognize, like in athletics, game recognizes game. It's like, oh yeah, I respect that. You start to attract each other from a healthy place as well. a whole place or a process of creating wholeness inside of yourself as opposed to trauma bonding or wounded, you know, connection or trying to fix or rescue or those type of dynamics. I think what you mentioned before, a lot of people try to become their best self. They try to put their best foot forward when they start meeting someone as opposed to putting their honest self forward. And We are afraid sometimes to be fully honest because it might push someone away. And I think that should excite us when we are honest with someone. Does it draw them into us and make them accept and love us more or excited about us more and discovering the relationship? Or does it push people away? I think people hide the truth in their honesty so much to be liked and be needed and to try to make it work that later that truth or that honesty comes out and it's years later, and it usually is like, well, that's not what I expected, or that's not how you showed up originally. So with Martha, when I first met her, I said, listen, I'm gonna tell you the truth about everything, but you're not gonna be able to handle it. Because I've never been in a relationship with a partner where they've handled the truth well. They've usually reacted or got emotional or angry or upset, they couldn't believe the honesty in my truth. And she said, please be truthful, because all the people I've been with, always hid that until later and then I always found out. So I don't care if it hurts me or if I don't like it, be truthful. I said, well, a lot of things I'm gonna say that you're gonna walk away from. And so you sure? She said, Yes. And thankfully, I've just been able to be honest about all my values, my vision, my beliefs, all these things and she's accepted it. So it allows me to continue to feel safe, you know what I mean? Because there's not this reaction to honesty. So I think that's really cool. But I think I lack the courage. I think a lot of people lack that courage of being fully honest about what they want, their values, their vision, who they are. And I think it suffers in the relationship later on, would you say?

100% commend you for the courage and the ability to.

It's a lot.

Action into that honesty. And again, at the core, kind of wrapping even altogether, we do fear if I show you fully who I am, if I show you my thoughts, my beliefs, my values, if I share with you aspects of my past and the choices or whatever it is, we have a fear that it will result in abandonment. Will you love me still? Will you remain safely connected to me still if you knew this? And so many of us for so long have had and lived experiences where that wasn't the case when we shared something in childhood, having the unavailability of our caregiver, having at worst an emotional reaction where we're feeling shamed or invalidated as a result of it before long, that is a message that this aspect of me wasn't safe here. I didn't actually remain connected to this caregiver. There was a break in our relationship. So the more often that happens, the more I've now validated that it actually wasn't safe. And I've never given myself the opportunity to, like, you've gifted yourself with of that moment of truth, of navigating how it lands for someone. And we've created, right, an expectation of what we imagine will happen. And that's not always accurate or true. And even if someone does have a reaction to a truth, because I'd be lying if I say some difficult Communications, you know, might Elicit a emotion, some version of a reaction from this other person, especially because they came into this relationship with their own story.

Absolutely.

Their own meanings, their own past and inner child that might be reacting to what they're hearing. The most important moment, in my opinion, is maybe not that moment of dysregulation or reaction, which might be human in our partners or loved ones. It's what happens next. Does that person come back? to repair, to discuss, to reconnect, because we can't help our humanity.

Sure.

Hearing something that's out of our expectation or that's difficult to navigate, or brings up something in our own past experience might elicit a reaction, though what then happens on the other side? Can you come back, reconnect, reestablish that connection? Because for so many of us, that's where the real healing is, right?

And some of us have disconnection, and.

Now we can find our way back together.

Yeah, I think taking responsibility for our reactions, right, or our emotions and saying, okay, I shouldn't have reacted in a hurtful way, you know, or screaming at you or something. It's like, okay, take responsibility for that and moving forward.

You're picking a piece though, too, of communication, right, of sharing those moments of, you know, I had this emotional reaction. If you do have the awareness of what contributed to it, like we do all carry as we we've been talking about the past and our journeys with us, embodied in ourselves and the more awareness we have, that's a gift to our partner.

Right. Right.

There's still many moments where I react from that inner child wounding or I'm dysregulated. Now, over time, my partners have accumulated enough of my story that they might be able to understand my reaction a bit more in real time. So even if it's unsavory and they prefer me not to be doing what I'm doing, And again, does it make any abuser overstepping our boundaries okay, though it could allow an understanding in those moments.

Sure, sure.

Instead of then reacting from the fact that I said something really mean, if I'm being perfectly honest with someone that I love, they might be able to keep themselves safely stabilized, pulling back and understanding that I didn't truly mean that there was a lot that was speaking in reaction and having come back enough time with my tail between my legs on the other side of it, right?

Responsibility.

We've developed now this pattern and this awareness and all of this happens again in communication. So the more we know again about ourselves and can share with our partners where some of these past reactions are coming from, while again it doesn't condone or okay anything that's abusive, it might make space for a more compassionate tending to of those moments, which still might mean taking space from each other until that party is, or me, become regulated again. but we can do so in a way that doesn't have to feel so personal.

Sure. And I think that's what you were talking about. The repair mode is so vital to a relationship. If someone reacts from that wound, let's say it comes out and then they don't repair that moment or that experience and they just dump it on someone and not say, Hey, listen, that was a reaction that was from this space. Thank you for not reacting and allowing me to have it. Here's my commitment moving forward. I'm processing, I'm growing. I think when we don't repair, that starts to hurt even more. Feel resentment, right? And one of the things that I was gonna say, it came back to me now is about, I had gotten to a place where I was just like, okay, I'd rather be fully honest and be alone than be, have to scurry around the truth or my truth and be with someone. And so I was like, I'm gonna be fully honest in this relationship about everything. and if you can't receive it, then it's probably a good thing that we're not together, because I don't want to have to put my false self forward to try to be an image that you like. I want to put my real, authentic self forward and be true to myself so I can fully accept who I am and where I'm going. No, I'm on. Knowing I'm on a journey and it's going to constantly progress. But I think a lot of us want to be in a relationship so badly that we won't. allow ourselves to love ourselves alone. We need to find someone. And I think I just finally got to a point where I was like, I'm happy to be alone for years if I need to be, if it's going to create peace and love inside of me as opposed to having to walk on eggshells with someone trying to accept me. So relationships are tricky. Relationships are tricky for a lot of people, I think. And we're all in our own journey. I was telling Martha, I was like, if I would have gotten married 10 years ago, I for sure would have been divorced. 'Cause I didn't have the tools. I didn't know myself enough. I didn't know how to regulate my emotions. I didn't know how to calm myself in times of stress. I just don't know. I commend people who last a decade in relationships, especially when they get married in their 20s or early 30s. It's like, I feel like I made a lot of mistakes in relationships without getting married, which allowed me to learn. I don't know. It's hard for a lot of people.

I find any choice we make, and especially in relationships, is, you know, feedback. Like you're saying, if those of us who have had, you know, unsuccessful relationship or relationships that we haven't stayed in, right, all of that is, is information for us to use to integrate and to move forward. And back to what you were talking about in terms of being alone, all this ties back to the nervous system, our ability to feel safe. Like I was sharing earlier in stillness, for me, that extended to aloneness. Like I shared, I spent very little time physically alone or alone with my own self, my own thoughts. And all of that is grounded not only in nervous system safety to be able to kind of be alone means I'm safe in my body when I'm alone. I'm not relying on someone else to meet my need. And now they're not here, so my needs are going unmet. Right. This means that I'm self-sufficiently like, okay enough in that moment in absence to someone in our nervous system, like ability and. theme throughout this whole conversation is grounded in our first early relationships. So very interestingly, the ability to be alone, if I'm really simplifying it, really is a function of our early and the safety and the security of those relationships. And the large majority of us who didn't have safe, secure, attuned caregivers, we do become adults who don't spend, can't spend, are afraid of time alone. We then seek relationship as validation, right? Because we have some idea that not only can I not be alone, scary to be alone. It means something about me. It means I'm unlovable, just like I imagined. So if I just keep myself in a string of relationships, doesn't matter who's necessarily on the other side of it, as long as I'm relating to someone, maybe even relying on them to meet my needs, how all this ties together, I feel good enough. Though in the reality, I don't, because chances are, again, I'm relying on someone else to meet my needs. I have this core wound. I'm adapting. I'm probably not being my true self because I'm just. Finding the next relationship to be a part of to validate this belief.

Yeah. Beautiful. Well, I want people to get the new workbook, How to Meet Yourself, the Workbook for Self-Discovery. I think it all comes back to understanding and having awareness of who we are, what we've been through, our challenges, our past, and seeing how can we heal the nervous system with that awareness. I know this workbook is going to transform a lot of lives just like How to Do the Work has done. for the last year and a half. So make sure you guys go to theholisticpsychologist.com, also follow you on Instagram. Your Instagram just continues to explode. It's so inspiring, the content you guys create, it's amazing. I'm always sharing it with Martha and we're like, Yes, this is so true. It's amazing. The Holistic Psychologist, if you type that in on Instagram or Facebook, you'll find it, it'll pop up. How else can we be of service to you? You've got your podcast, your YouTube channel.

What else can we do to serve.

You besides getting the workbook and the original how to do the workbook.

I think service to me, and I will always answer some version of the same, is doing the work, right? Is really kind of creating the change, whoever you are, wherever you are in your own world. And it can be even outside of purchasing. I'm very passionate of making sure that the large majority of the content I put out each and every day is for free. It's a resource, a tool, because you serve me by serving yourself, because ultimately you're serving the collective of which I'm a part of. So I'm getting chills even hearing myself say this, because I truly believe this is how the world changes, is as we begin to show up differently in our world. So it doesn't matter if whoever's world you are listening, if you're on the other side, literally, of the world, and you don't purchase anything that I offer, you know, just hearing some of these ideas, allowing these seeds to possibly be what grows into creating change in your own world is everything to me. It's why I do the work. And ultimately it's serving all of us that I believe we are all joined together in a collective.

That's amazing. Well, I want to acknowledge you, Nicole, for the constant growth you have had over the last couple of years. When you walked in, I was like, you just look different. You know your energy, you look healthy. Not that you weren't healthy before, but you look like you continue to evolve in this light is radiating from you. So I acknowledge you for consistently creating the work for us, but hopefully also doing the work for yourself and not just creating and doing, but also being, which sounds like you're doing more of being, that is. So I acknowledge you. I hope you feel seen and considered. I know those are something important for you and I hope you feel seen and considered by your community, your close friends, you know, by me, I hope you feel supported and elevated. And I'm so grateful for the way you show up in creating work for us to understand to help us heal and improve. So I really appreciate you. I acknowledge you. I want people to get the book, the workbook, check you out on social media. I've asked you this question before a couple of times, so I won't ask you here, but if you guys want to hear Nicole's three truths and definition of greatness, we'll link up the previous interview we did there. But is there one thing that you could say to yourself before you put your first post out online? If you could go back to that day before you did your first Instagram post on this type of content, maybe you were posting personal stuff, but this type of work, if you go back and see yourself, I don't know when that was, four, five, six years ago, if you could see yourself in front of you and say one thing that you're proud of to her and one thing that she needs to look out for, what would you say?

I love that. First, I want to send my appreciation.

Of course.

I'm so, so grateful for you, Lois, having literally three years ago when I just created that Instagram account, having that experience of you truly seeing what I was about, what my intention and my mission was, and so generously and graciously inviting me on really has meant everything and an honor. And what I do promise to my whole community is they are here to continue to witness my evolution as a human. And I don't doubt that you will continue to probably hear differences, tweaks, changes in my ideas and the way I'm showing up in the world. And that is, in my opinion, my service ultimately to the community. So speaking to that past self, some over three years ago now when I put up that first post, I would first share my pride that I still feel for overcoming what for me was a lot of fear and uncertainty of how it would be to not only present myself as a human behind the title of psychologist, which for decades of schooling I was taught was a fatal thing to do. And more and more over time, I was being affirmed that individuals want to hear it from individuals. I have a story, I have a journey. I'm healing myself.

Myself.

It's okay to, to share my own story. And having seen all the different ways I've watered down my truth in all of my relationships outside of even professionally, for me, I will cite that action of creating that post and this, even the Instagram account is an action for myself in my own healing. So I will commend that, that person and also share that they're safe. Because something I do know was the case back then is I did have a lot of fear. I did self censor. I did water down certain ideas in fear of how they would be received. And I've continued to watch myself over now the three years between that interim of continuing to gain more and more confidence of speaking what my thoughts are, what my ideas are, sharing my story more directly and understanding that there, there will be reactions of all different kinds from people and caring less about what the reactions might mean about me and really focusing on because all of this was gaining confidence. Learning how to speak truth allows me to feel freer, feel safer, inspires other people to speak truth around me. One of the most empowering things is being in the community, especially in the self-healer circle, and hearing from other people, sharing their own journeys and feeling less alone. It's beautiful. Ultimately, it's keep going, I guess, would be the morale. I like it.

Cry for that old self.

I love it.

Nicole, thanks so much. Appreciate you coming on.

Thank you so much, Lois, as always.

If you enjoyed that interview, then I know you'll love what we have coming up right now. How do we overcome that over people-pleasing perspective, that overachiever mentality, so that it doesn't consume us in a negative way? But we're still driven to serve at a high level.

Yeah, so acknowledging it, I think, is the most important aspect of the beginning stages of the journey. So the fact that I'm able to say here, That you are the filter, as I call it, that's painting everything that happens in my life. That's the first step of healing. Because I, like many of us, wasn't aware of that filter and it was coloring my experience, so I would take any moment and end up feeling badly and not understanding why. And until I began to view my internal world, I began to see the stories I was creating. so that moment in particular, whatever it might be, was yet another moment for me to have evidence that I'm not living up to that expectation. So pulling back and seeing that lens, oh, okay, here's that tendency to compare myself down again, that at least gives me the opportunity to create a new choice, which brings us to the next stage and why my book is called the Work. Because listeners and myself included, oh, many of us could resonate with this. I'm an overachiever. I have that part in my mind, yet now what? That part is still there coloring our experiences. So then it is the work of refocusing my attention, paying less focus, you know, 'cause that's our most powerful tool for many of us to begin, not spending time spinning down that framework, spinning down that story, ending up feeling so terrible about myself, pulling my attentional focus away and putting it elsewhere is the best thing we can do for ourselves. To begin, of course, the journey of unpacking and unlearning those deep beliefs.

Do you think a depressive state comes from an obsessive thought process? Is that what I'm hearing it comes from? Like the more you think and ruminate on, I'm not enough, I never have this, I suck, I'm not worthy, I'm not deserving, the more I ruminate on it for longer and longer is that what's going to put me in that state? of being?

It's one of the factors. It's not the only. And because I would come up against this idea of, and I think a lot of times in the field it's criticized, think a different thought. Okay, I can just reframe my, just to use it very generally, my negative thinking and begin to think more positive. And then if anyone is suffering from depression or those symptoms, I obviously can relieve those and feel better about myself. The issue with depression and anxiety and a lot of the things that were diagnosed with myself included, is that they're messengers of something deeper. So typically with depression, there might and likely is something physiological also at play. There could be some gut issues that are causing inflammation that is causing actual inflammation in the brain and causing those symptoms of depression. There might be some nervous system activation, getting stuck in our parasympathetic, in particular, nervous system. that results in that hypo energetic arousal when I have no energy, I have no interest. So typically it's thoughts and the physiology that then maps on to thinking those thoughts for a very long time. Though my point of my work, my point of working holistically is to acknowledge the whole story. Because I'm sure even a lot of listeners right now might have tried an affirmation, tried to think a positive thought and not actually been able to change because likely they are again living in a state of physiological dysregulation.

Right. So you might be able to change your thought but if you're having alcohol at the same time or if you're eating candy and processed foods all day and you're in a stressful environment physically, then it may not also shift your feelings or your emotions. It's kind of like you have to have a holistic approach to what is the root, what's causing me to feel this overwhelmed stress or the depression, right? Yeah.

And it's beautiful that you're using the word stress and very astute because stress is insidious in our culture and it causes not only psychological but a whole range of physical health symptoms and ultimately diagnosis. Stress is really problematic and unfortunately many of us as even adults are experiencing increasing amounts of stress and in my opinion having very limited get coping schools, tools or resources to deal with that stress. So our bodies are simplest, like really simply very much stuck in an overstressed, overwhelmed state that's again making change and transformation incredibly difficult.

What are the best coping strategies for humans to help us get out of stress and into more peaceful, calm states that you've seen?

The best ones?

The best coping strategies. Not like the bad ones, but what are the good ones?

Yeah, we have the access to the most powerful regulator of stress through our breath. We can learn two things. First, to be just present to or a witness around our body's just regular breathing patterns. As simple as this sounds, the way our body breathes, if we can cultivate a very full, deep breath, very calming breath, chances are our body in that moment is in that state of relaxation, is receptive to the world around, is feeling safe to express. The large majority of us aren't breathing in that very calm rhythmic way. Most of us have evolved to become chest-based, very shallow breathers. And the reason why I even just talk about our natural rhythm is because our mind is constantly scanning our body and its processes, breathing in particular. Because for our mind, that's a marker of how aroused we are, how stressed our body is. So what I noticed when I dropped into my body was that I always breathed very shallow from my chest and at times I would stop breathing. And that correlated with stress. The more stressed I am, the more I'm actually holding my breath throughout the day. Just that simple act of witnessing to me showed evidence of, wow, Nicole, your body is stressed out day in and day out, regardless of what's happening in the actual current moment, your body continues to send signals of stress. The reason why listeners who might struggle with anxiety or panic, as I once did, why this is problematic is because, like I said, our mind is scanning down and it's It's going to begin to then think stressful thoughts. It's going to scan the environment for what's wrong. And as we all know, we're very good at identifying what's wrong. Negative, yes. In that moment. And then before we know it, the reason why I offer this is now we're caught in a loop. Because now I'm thinking stressful thoughts, further activating my body. So dropping in, noticing our body's natural rhythms can give us some clues as to how activated we are. And then of course, the next action step we can take if you're living in an overactivated nervous system as I am, is to begin to harness intentional breathing, beginning to either direct my breath down into my belly if I am in that shallow, stressed out, activated state, or if you're, like I described earlier, having no energy, almost feel like you're not here energetically, we actually want to cultivate that chest base, the more Wim Hof shallow, activate it, tool of breath work to activate our system, to actually up our energy into our system. So we can use breath work in either direction to control our body's responses. And while this is great for the body and why I talk about it is it can build body balance back in as many of us need it. It's also so empowering now, right through an intention, through doing something differently, I can actually create and I speak as someone who did suffer from debilitating anxiety and panic attacks, and I know how overwhelming and out of control that can feel. So I mentioned that last piece of empowerment for all of those suffering with anxiety out there, because that can be the steps back to actually creating change and saying, Hey, wait, I can control my body and my body doesn't have to control me when it hits that peak of panic.

What is happening when someone is in a panic attack? Like what were the feelings like? How long did it last? And how does someone get out of a panic attack moment?

So panic, and again, I'm just simplifying it for understanding purposes, it's that ultimate state of nervous system activation when your body is literally geared up to fight, flight, or flight, which is usually what happens next. We go into that old coping tool or that old that we once used. It feels very different for each of us. Some of us actually think it can feel as I once did, like a heart attack. I describe an episode in my book where I had just gotten home. I was in a psychoanalytic training program and as part of my training, every Saturday I would sit in courses to learn how to be a practitioner of the work of psychoanalysis and one of my core courses was a group model where I was a participant in group psychoanalytic therapy. So anyone listening who's been in any therapy, a lot of feelings can come up. So it was a particularly emotional group I had had that morning. And I came home and I was with my partner at the time. And long story short, I started to have symptoms. I started to feel sweaty. I started to feel clammy. I almost turned gray looking. And my heart in particular started to beat problematically or of concern. It was pounding. It just felt weird. And I'm someone who had had panic attacks before. I know a panic attack can mimic a heart attack. Yet I was in my down puffy coat, curled up in a ball with my cell phone in my hands, just waiting to call 911 because I was convinced that this must be something that's physiologically wrong with me. So some of us, it can feel like a heart attack. some of us, it's just that elevation where my heart feels like it's through the roof. I might get that panicked feeling like I'm crawling out of my skin. And it's very, very scary. And what it is, again, it's an extreme state of that nervous system activation. So the best tool is to help our nervous system go back into that peaceful, calm, safe place. Now, this is where I want to acknowledge that those of us who are in the throes of a panic attack, and have never practiced intentional breathing or breath work probably aren't going to be successful. And this is of course what we want to do. We want to use the tool only when we need it. This is where we really want to learn how to cultivate that balance in our bodies outside of that 10 moment, outside of that acute where panic is crashing down around me. We want to consistently learn how to drop into our bodies, take a temperature check. How safe is my body? Am I in activation mode or am I calm? And when I'm not calm, learning how to balance my body then so that when, as I feel my panic obviously increasing over time, I can learn how to downregulate myself.

Is the panic attacks, what's the root of that? Is it someone not being aware of their body and breathing? Is it allowing stressful thoughts to come in? Is it all of it stacking up over time and then there's a breaking point. What is the root of panic attack?

It becomes all of it over time because our nervous system works outside of our awareness. We have a function, it's called neuroception. It's essentially where we're constantly scanning the environment, energies even included. We're not even aware of it.

We're not even aware of it.

We're not even aware of it. Our body, our eyes, everything is- It's primed to look for threat. However, threat gets defined based on our past experiences. This is how we can't kind of extricate the too. So something that felt overwhelming back here continues to color my world in my now moment. Even if it's not really happening inside of my awareness. Right? So that's really important to consider. That's the feeling that many of us get when we maybe walk into the room or up that alley and just something feels off. We're responding. Our nervous system is always responding to everything in the moment. However, it's doing so based on our past moments. So we could be throwing ourselves, unbeknownst to ourselves, into nervous system activation and some of us are living in it all day long.

Crazy. When we feel stressed, is it affecting the actual brain or is it affecting the mind? And how do we regulate the two of the thoughts, the ideas, the mind, the consciousness, I guess, the awareness or the brain, the physical brain itself. What is stress going up into the brain or is it actually attacking the mind kind of like outside of the brain?

It can affect both. It affects the brain structure in two ways. The first way is through actual inflammation. Stress, the cortisol that typically is associated with stress, activates our body, activates immune system response. where inflammation is the predominant response. Our brain is actually covered by a very thin film, a blood-brain barrier that's very penetrable. Things can get through. And one of the issues is when inflammation actually lands within our brain. So that can begin to cause structural changes in our brain, as can our mind. The way we think, the way we process our brain can actually change the brain pathways, the systems, areas that we're firing up more frequently than other areas with the most predominant one, so many of us are living from our emotional brain, our amygdala, our hippocampus, all of those deeper centers, as opposed to our prefrontal cortex. So this is why it gets complicated. And there are very many brain scans out there of depressed individuals, of anxious individuals, of individuals diagnosed with ADHD or ADD, of autistic, right? All of these diagnoses map onto the brain showing changes, though it's the chicken or the egg conversation, because those changes, my argument is, occur as a result of the human's functioning. I believe, as far back as in utero, I know that my system was impacted by my mom, by the hormones raging through her body, because I was sharing that body. I was sharing a blood source. I go as far to believe my mom's beliefs, her thoughts about herself, about me as a baby in her belly, about what my future would be, were impacting again my developing. So our environments, I believe, begin to shape us. So hypothetically, I could have came out as a baby infant showing, like I likely did, structural changes in my brain, possibly even an regulated nervous system, hard to differentiate whether genetically that's just what it was for me or again whether my earliest environment shaped. And I believe in the science of epigenetics that our environments are always shaping ourselves down to our physiology.

Our genetics. Our environment is shaping our DNA.

Shaping our DNA and then shaping our systems, shaping how our brain looks and functions.