PSYCHOLOGISTS REVEAL The 5 Tricks To Reduce STRESS, ANXIETY & DEPRESSION | Lewis Howes

Loneliness occurs because we never let people truly know us, either because it doesn't feel safe or we don't truly know ourselves.

I would have punched someone who told me to exercise if I had the strength to punch someone. So I understand what it can be like to be in a physical state of depression or grief, where every cell in your motor system is saying, Distress.

Is insidious in our culture, and it causes not only psychological, but a whole.

Range of.

Is there a point in time where we can be too positive and it can hurt us because we don't deal with the things that have traumatized us?

Yeah, I think, I mean it's tricky because everyone's different, but I believe that when we're ignoring how we really feel and only focusing on how good we can make things and we're not actually acknowledging the bad, because people always say good feelings, bad feelings, they're all feelings and they're all okay. And so I think when we go, you know, when we ignore a complete chunk of our life and our experience in focus instead, it's great to focus on the good, but you still have to acknowledge the upsets, the things that don't turn out the way you planned. And that doesn't make it bad. It's just life, you know?

What does it mean we have to acknowledge?

It's about allowing yourself to feel it, whatever that is. Like, if I need to cry, I'm gonna let myself cry. If some days I just can't, get out of bed and do all the stuff I need to do. Maybe that's a sign that I need to take care of myself, right? I need to just allow myself to have the ups and downs at the same time. And this is why it's tricky for people is I don't want you to like ruminate or like, you know, just let yourself wallow. There's a time for acknowledgement, feeling, venting about it to people, you know, therapist, a friend, but then, then what? Okay? Then we take the steps to move forward.

How long should we ruminate vent, grieve over a situation that affects us. And does it matter the weight of the situation where it might be a death or someone close to you versus someone said something mean to me that triggered me from childhood struggles? Like how long do we, is there a rumination period that is healthy? Are we all different in how we grieve and heal and move forward? Is it the level of trauma that matters? Yeah, a lot of it has to.

Do with the level. So if it's someone just said something mean that really hurt my feelings, or let's say I had a really bad interview, I need to get a job, and it just went horribly. And so the whole day I'm feeling terrible. That's okay to give yourself that day, and maybe the beginning of the next day, and then we move on. What's next? What's another thing I can, can I send out my resume to someone else? Then we take action.

But then when it comes to like.

Death in the family, or breakup, Yes, there's like the top 10 most stressful things in your life, like moving, divorce, death in the family, just to name a few. I know moving sounds crazy, but if you've ever moved, you know how stressful it is.

Very stressful.

Those are things that are okay to give yourself like a month or two of adjustment time, knowing that there still needs to be action in there. Like, hey, if I'm having a tough time functioning in my life, I can't be there for my friends or my family. I can't do my job. things like that, then I should seek out professional help, like a therapist or psychiatrist or any of those things.

Why is moving top of the list of stresses, traumas? Is it because we've lived in this old identity and this home feeling and it's just like a newness or a new identity or what is it?

I think it's a lot of things. Some of it is newness. Also routine. We love routines. Our brains, our bodies love that. I mean, if any of you have ever tried to get up around the same time and you have like rituals in your day, super helpful for our mental health, physical health, all that good stuff. So moving disrupts everything, right? We have to find new places for everything, the whole scenario of where we're at and what it feels like, it's just everything is so different, not to mention, you know, having to package up all your stuff. It can be just overwhelming. I know.

It's traumatic in itself. Even though it can seem exciting, it can also be traumatic. Maybe that's why the first, my girlfriend moved Christmas Day, essentially like six months ago, right before corona and she moved from a different country in with me and it was kind of traumatic for both of us.

I was excited.

I think we were both excited but then it was like, oh, but this is a challenge for her. She doesn't know where to go to get, you know, her nails done or food or find friends and just the normalcy of it and it's a different culture. It's a different country. It's you're living with someone now.

Yeah.

And I had my routine but she didn't have hers so I had to constantly like you know, work together to make it work. So it's stressful for sure. I can, I can relate to that and I didn't have to move. I'm interested because my entire childhood, I had a sense of deep loneliness, deep insecurity, loneliness, worry, fear that no one was ever gonna like me and no one was ever gonna love me. And I'm assuming that it was a number of the instances I experienced in my life, the number of stories, the number of things I witnessed and experienced that built a story in my mind that no one's going to like me or love me. And I took it upon myself when I was a teenager. When I started to have friends when I was a teenager in high school, I started to still feel a sense of loneliness with people around me and people liking me. I still felt a deep sense of loneliness and the need to get people to like me. And I took it upon myself to overcome that challenge by spending a lot of deep alone time and falling in love with myself and falling in love with like who I am and writing letters to myself, taking myself out on dinner dates, alone movies all the time to the point where I said, you know what? I really enjoy my own company. I don't need to feel good around other people anymore. And it's a bonus. I love people still, but it's like, Me having kind of the vision to break this mold, it took me like creating challenges for myself, like experiencing deep pain of, you know, figuring out how to love myself. What are your thoughts on loneliness? Why do people feel lonely in general when they have lots of friends or they don't have friends? and what do you think is kind of the root of loneliness? Yeah, I love that.

First of all, that's like all the homework I give my patients all the time. Like dating yourself.

Really?

Yeah, like writing letters. I mean, if any of my viewers are listening to this, they know how often I talk about writing letters to yourself. Love letters, letters from your childhood self to your adult self.

I can really get into that. How to hug your childhood self now and heal.

Oh, my goodness. Let them feel heard and understood in a way they couldn't.

That's so much of this.

Oh, you just feel it, right? As an adult, you're like, oh, that was so hard. But I think loneliness happens for a lot of reasons. Loneliness occurs, I think, for some people, it's because we never let people truly know us, either because it doesn't feel safe or we don't truly know ourselves.

Oh, how do we get to know ourselves?

You have to be curious. I think so often we judge, I mean, I'll be honest, as a kid, There's so many awkward moments in my life or times when I wished, like I grew up in the country and so some of my friends had like wealth, some didn't, some parents were like business people. My dad was a boilermaker, so we were very like blue collar. I grew up on a Christmas tree farm and there were times I wanted for that. You know, how come I can't have that, every kid has that right? Or why doesn't my body look this way? Why am I so gangly and why is this look, you know, there's so many things that as a kid I was so uncomfortable. and I think being open to being curious about that, like, why am I uncomfortable? What is so wrong with me? So often we just accept something's wrong with me. And then we take that as a truth.

That's what I thought my whole life. I was like, something's wrong with me.

No one, you know.

Yeah. No one's gonna understand it. I'm wrong, I'm bad, you know.

Oh, totally. I'm stupid, all this stuff. We have those thoughts. There was something I read, I forget the study that supported this, but somewhere between 60,000 and 90,000 new thoughts every day. Or not new thoughts, but just thoughts. And 94% of them or something are the thoughts we've had. We've already had them.

Oh, we've already repeating the thoughts.

So, a lot of them are bad, I will be honest. I would estimate like 60% of them are negative.

Well, they're probably like fear based of like worry based of am I looking good or is this, you know, what.

Do they think about me, right?

Yeah.

And that's because our brain is wired to seek out threat, right? It keeps us safe, make sure we're okay, and good things aren't threatening. so of course we're gonna focus on like, hey, that person was whispering when I walked in the room. I think they're talking about me.

I don't think they like me. I mean, so how do we train our minds for positivity without it hurting us?

Part of it is just noticing our thoughts. So often we have them kind of building off of the loneliness, right? We have these thoughts that shame built and guilt built, like something's wrong with me. That's shame speaking out, saying something's intrinsically wrong. People aren't gonna like you. You're so stupid. All of those things, we have to notice if we're having those. If those are the thoughts that we're like taking up our, it's taking up our brain space and our time and we're having 90,000 of them in a day, like it's gonna feel- you-'re gonna feel lonely.

You're gonna feel, you're gonna be sick, you're gonna be sad, you're gonna be worried and stressed and anxious. So how do we then get to the root of the loneliness so that we're not feeling lonely anymore? I'm hearing you say we need to discover and pay attention to who we are.

We need to explore ourselves. We need to, you know, what else does that look like? Yeah, I think part of it is recognizing why. We said it could be because you don't know yourself or you're afraid to let people know you. So recognizing that, recognizing how honest we're being with ourselves and others, a lot of loneliness comes out of that. But when it comes, it really means.

We'Re not revealing who we are. We're hiding things. We're not opening up fully. We have secrets that we're unwilling to share because we feel like other people are going to shame us or not like us. Exactly.

I can't tell you how many times I hear from my patients or viewers that they don't feel comfortable telling their friends, close friends, that they're having a hard time. So like, oh, I don't want them to think I'm attention seeking. I don't want them to think, you know, and we're making those assumptions, right? Like anxiety comes out of either we think we're like reading the magic eight ball into the future or we're focused on the past and we can't just be present. And so a lot of People will say, I can't even tell them when I'm having a tough time, but we've put ourselves in our own jail with that. No one else put that there. We're saying, it's not okay.

Yeah, I feel like a lot of people want to help someone. If you say, I'm actually kind of struggling with this today, I feel like people want to be a solution, want to be a listening ear, want to be a helping hand if their friend is going through a challenge. I think when you, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think if you're always negative, like, oh, my life is over every day with your friends, that's a drag.

Yes.

And you don't want to be always in need of support, I'm assuming. Well, it's not even in need of support.

I think it's not taking sage advice. Like you're asking for assistance, but you're not accepting of any of it. So you're really not asking, you know what I mean? And I think that's when it becomes like I call like an emotional vampire or like a toxic relationship where you're just like, if you're the person trying to offer that help, it's just like they're taking and taking and you're giving and you're giving and they're not getting anywhere.

It's like being a mentor in business or life. I get a lot of people that ask me to pick my brain or to give the mentorship. And the worst thing that a mentor can have is someone who wastes their time, who doesn't take action. I'm like, okay, here's the game plan. If this is what you want, go do this for the next 60 days. And then when they don't do it, you're like, why did I waste my time? If I'm prescribing you something to try, whether it works or not, and you don't do it and you keep wanting more advice, it's a time suck.

Totally, and it doesn't benefit either of you, right? Because it's just lip service. It's not actually going to turn out to be anything.

So, say someone's feeling really lonely right now. Whether it's they've been lonely before corona or now it's like they feel even more lonely. Like what can they do? You know, three to four things they could do for the next 30 to 90 days to help them discover themselves, to help them become a little less lonely and fall in love with themselves a little more.

Yeah, there's a couple of things. First, kind of going back to what we were talking about originally is noticing your thoughts. Because I do believe if we are able to change our thoughts, we change our life. It's miraculous and it's very simple, but it's also very difficult. So if they notice those thoughts and track down your top five, okay? Because remember we're saying most of them are repeat thoughts. so those could be things like, I'm not good enough. They're not gonna like me. I'm a loser. I don't know. Trust me, we've all had those thoughts, no judgments. Write down your top five. And then I want you to work using bridge statements, I call them, into more positive, because no one's gonna believe, I mean, I'm sorry, but if I think stupid, I can't be like, I'm smart. I'm smart.

I'm not gonna believe it. Even in my head, I'm just like, that's a lie. That's a lie. There isn't proof to show, like, if for me, I thought I've been stupid my whole life because I was always in the bottom of my class with my grades.

So I was like, there's no evidence.

So it's a lie if I say I'm smart because I don't believe I'm confident enough to feel smart.

Yeah, because you're checking your facts, right? And you're like, based on what I.

Based on our horrible schooling system. Right, right. I was very street smart, but I didn't calculate that and I wasn't aware of that. Well, it's not measured, right? I know, right?

Okay, so bridge statements, what does that look like? It lives in possibility land. It's like, it's possible, like for your example, let's say, maybe I'm not as dumb as I think I am. It's possible that I could have other gifts and other ways that I'm intelligent. I'm open to that idea. So we're not saying I am or I'm not. We're just like, it's possible I'm not 100% correct on this. And then we just kind of live in that land and start moving a little bit more. Then the next step would kind of be something like, you know, I do think I have some street smarts, so it's possible. that I'm intelligent in that realm. Maybe. I'm gonna look into that.

Okay.

You're kind of building your evidence along with these bridge statements into the space of, you know, I'm super smart.

Gotcha. Okay. So that's the second step. What's after that? What's the next phase?

Then once we've done that, that kind of work, I think the letters to yourself, super helpful. I love that you did that.

Come on now, Katie, isn't this super woo-woo-y and Hey, if it's- Self-helpy, that's like, there's no science that backs this.

No, there is science that backs it. So, I mean, in as short and simple as a way I can explain it, you know, we always hear that old adage, like, you, can't teach an old dog new tricks, but you can. Every day our brain is learning. In our hippocampus, where memories are formed, it creates these new neurons every day, and those neurons get together with each other to create memories and learnings, right? So each and every day, whether we recognize it or not, we're learning new things. And instead of taking that opportunity to teach ourselves nasty things, like, I'm horrible, I'm stupid, let's take that opportunity to teach ourselves things that are helpful, supportive, you know? Maybe I can get to know myself, 'cause I've never taken the opportunity to actually learn about what makes me tick. I've just numbed out and zoomed through life.

So what do these letters look like? Is it once a day you're writing a letter? Is it once a week? week, month, and what is the letter saying?

I like to keep it pretty simple so that it's something we can do. Because I think too often in therapy, especially, and in the woo-woo land of psychology, that we can like self-help land, it can get too labor intensive and then we don't do it. So I like to keep it to a letter to yourself tomorrow. Because the only person I'm competing with is really myself like yesterday.

Ooh, yeah.

And so if we keep it to that, like, you know, dear self, you know, it could be like, today I hope for, or I'm grateful for this tomorrow, I hope to. I want you just to keep it in a, you know, 24-48 hour window of what you are grateful for, what you hope for, and what maybe didn't work out. Again, we don't want to negate the things that aren't good. We just want to acknowledge them like, hey, I tried this and I still felt bad. So, I'm not gonna do that one. Tomorrow I'm gonna try this. And so it just keeps us kind of moving forward and keeping it short and sweet, just those like I'm grateful for, I'm hopeful for, things that worked out or didn't work out, you're done. It's kind of like, that's why five-minute journals are so popular. Yeah, exactly. To keep with that. And I would encourage people to try to do this, if you can, every day, awesome. But at least every other day, just so you're checking in with yourself, to see how you're moving along, how you're doing. And I think that will give you The thing that's cool about journaling is we can go back then and be like, oh my God, me six months ago would never have thought that I could do this. Or, you know, we lose sight of our own growth and development because we're with ourselves all the time.

I know. So, I really like this idea of quick short letters to yourself tomorrow. I'm a big fan of meditation. I was just talking with my buddy Jay Shetty last night about meditation and how we talk about meditation so much in kind of our space, but he was like, 80% of the world, 90% of the world still doesn't know about meditation and isn't doing it. Even though we hear it and talk about it so much, we think like we're sick of talking about the same thing. But I'm a big fan of meditating because I feel like you can be aware of your thoughts and you can start, and I like to plan the day. I do it in the morning and I like to think about what do I want to create this day? What's the greatest version of myself today? But I really like the idea of self meditating over pen and paper for tomorrow as well by writing a letter to yourself because you're setting an intention as well. You're saying, this is what I want to start thinking about. When my brain starts saying, you,'re ugly and stupid and worthless, no, I'm going to switch it and here's what we're going to do. So, you're just preparing yourself for all the different challenges that may come. And, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think if we don't prepare ourselves or set ourselves up to win, then we're always going to be.

In reaction mode because we haven't trained our mind to win. Is that right? Yeah, 100%. It's like a confirmation bias. Like if I go looking, I'm always talking to my audience about this and my patients, like if I go looking for negativity, if I go looking for a reason to be upset, I'm gonna find it. And so we wanna make sure that we're looking for reasons to be excited, things that we can do better, reaching the goals or feeling productive that day, whatever that means for you. Productive might be I laid on the couch and did some self-care, watched some TV, talked to my friends, you know, that's still productive. But I think in a lot of ways we just, We go searching for bad things and then we're surprised that we find them.

Exactly. Is there a next step in this process of loneliness and getting to know yourself if you're doing the daily letters for tomorrow? What would you say are the next kind of steps?

Yeah, I think the next thing, and this is going to be the hardest for people, and they're probably like, ugh. But I want you to tiptoe into social land in an authentic way. So if we have friends that we already talk with, and we think, hey, they don't know me. You know, I'm still lonely even though, like I've heard from a lot of people, I can feel super lonely even though I'm in a crowded room with people that I know. I want you to be more authentic. I challenge you to pick one person that I'll give you like two weeks to do this. One person that you're going to be honest with about how you're doing or what's going on.

And that doesn't say, I'm fine. Everything's good.

Exactly.

Don't just repeat the same thing you always say, like, yeah, everything's great. When it's not, when you've got some underlying issue.

Totally. Instead, we need to say something to the effect of, yeah, it's been kind of hard. I've been going through a tough time. I mean, right now, especially with the coronavirus and our world feeling like it's turned upside down, I think it's even more acceptable to be like, yeah, it's been rough. These past few months have been pretty terrible. And they would understand. And we're just tiptoeing. We're not sharing a bunch. I don't want you to like, what I call like verbal diarrhea. We don't wanna share it. All at once.

We want to- All over someone's face. Yeah.

Exactly. And they're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. I wasn't ready for that. So we just want to start with little things. Like, hey, last week was kind of bad. But, you know, I'm trying again this week. How have you been? You know, we share a little bit, we reflect it.

So don't spend an hour just, you know, going down the deep end, but open up some. Yeah.

Letting them know that it's not all peachy keen all the time.

What does that do for you and other people when you open up a little bit?

First of all, it allows you to be your authentic self so that people can slowly get to know you. Not to mention at the same time you get to know yourself. And then that little bit of vulnerability leaves space for real relationships. And I think that that's why a lot of us are feeling lonely is because we don't really either know ourselves or allow other people to know us. It's hard, it's uncomfortable. And that's why I want you to pick one person, one person you have, if we check our facts and our, you know, I always talk about being a detective. Maybe it's because I love crime shows.

But you gotta pick the right person you trust.

Yes.

Because if you share the right information with the wrong person, it could backfire and they're not gonna be vulnerable with you and they're gonna shame you or something. And then you're like, I'm never gonna tell someone this stuff again. You talk about how we think about stress, can either save our lives or kill us. Can you tell us why our thought around stress is more important than the stress itself?

Yeah.

So I do try to avoid the language of like, if you think about stress the wrong way, it will kill you. In part because I actually came to regret that I had done a lot of teaching and speaking and writing about how stress itself can kill you. So because I'm a health psychologist, I was trained to view stress as the enemy. And if you look at the science, you can find evidence that stress increases your risk of everything people don't want from heart disease to depression, all of it. But almost 10 years ago, I came across this study that made me really rethink stress. And it was a study that tracked about 30,000 adults for almost a decade in the US. And at the beginning of the study, they asked people, first, how stressful is your life? And then also, do you believe that your stress is harmful? Do you believe that stress is bad for your health? And so they followed them to find out, is it true that stress kills? And what they found is that for the subset of people who had a very stressful life and most strongly believed that their stress was harmful, they had a 43% increased risk of dying from any cause over the next decade. But the people who had the most stressful lives and did not strongly believe that stress was bad for them, they were the most likely to be alive at the end of the decade. And this study caught my attention because first of all, it suggests that stress is not always the enemy. At least it's not always a risk factor in the way that we think about it. But then also it was making me think, how many of those deaths was I personally responsible for by going out there trying to convince people that stress was bad for their health and that the stress will kill your brain cells and eventually kill you. So that was kind of like a wake up moment for me to start to want to investigate, is it possible that how you think about stress can interact with stress to help you avoid some of the consequences we don't want? And maybe even something good about stress worth embracing so that your mindset could help you harness some of your personal strengths, help you harness the strength in your community to get some positive outcomes we maybe don't usually associate with stress. So I think I'm trying to shy away from the idea that stress isn't bad unless you believe it is, which is sometimes how my work gets summarized. That's not the case. I mean, like you said, I'm a scientist. So I understand data. Stress is a paradox. Stress is not something that we often get to choose. So it's not like even if you had a wish list and you could say, I want this much stress and this type of stress, it's not like we have that opportunity. So what I'm really interested in is this idea that we now call the stress mindset effect, that there are ways of thinking about stress that can make your body's response to stress healthier, that can change what happens in your brain in moments of stress that make you braver, more resilient, more willing to accept help from others, and that these mindsets basically change the trajectory of how stress affects you. That's the big idea that I hope to share with people. When do we know that we are.

Experiencing good stress versus bad stress? Yeah, no such thing as good stress.

Or bad stress, I wanna say. That is, again, another, I think, a big misconception around stress. Because, you know, people will say things like, oh, good stress. It's like the stress of getting a promotion or the stress of winning the lottery or the stress of doing something really exciting. that you're good at. You're like, that's good stress. Bad stress is all the stuff we don't want. It's the pain, it's the suffering, it's the loss, it's the uncertainty, it's what we actually mean when we say we're stressed, it's all of that. So I, you know, forget good stress, bad stress, 'cause it sets us up to think that if we're experiencing what all of us will instinctively say, didn't want this, like the bad stress, That's the real stress for most of us. And again, most of us don't get to choose how stressful our lives are, how stressful the world is. I mean, the time we're living in now is a perfect example of that. And if you label things good stress, bad stress, it can lead to things like believing, let's say you're trying to homeschool your kids right now, and it's enormously stressful, and you're feeling like a bad parent and a bad teacher, and you can't figure out how you're gonna get through today, let alone tomorrow. If you believe that's bad stress, you're going to believe, I'm not cut out to be a parent. There's something wrong with my kids. There's something wrong with my life. And I just like, let's, no. Here's the distinction that I like to make. Life can be difficult. So that, good or bad. But stress is what arises in you when something that you care about is at stake. So it's your thoughts, it's your emotions, it's your biology, it's the stress hormones, it's the adrenaline. It's your desire to reach out to others. It's sometimes a sense of outrage and anger. It's all the stuff that emerges to help you meet a moment that matters. And so what I like to focus on is in moments of stress, some of those instincts are going to be healthy and helpful, and others are not. So rather than like stress being good or bad, it's about learning more about your stress responses, the repertoire that's available to you, and how do you get good at stress? so that you can tell in a moment of stress, is this a moment that requires slowing down and going within? Or is this a moment that requires being vulnerable and asking for help? Is this a moment that requires ignoring everything else and rising to the challenge, 'cause it's an emergency and I need that adrenaline to let to do it? There's a lot of different ways to be good at stress, and that's the good that I like to focus on.

Yeah, I'm a big believer that our life is an interpretation. and the language we use dictates the way we think and feel. And the more we say, I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed, any word that we use after I am, we start to manifest more in the mind and the body and they connect and we create that. I'm sick, I'm not feeling well. The more we say these things, now we should be aware of these things and not just act like it's not there. But I think when we use language and almost eliminating the word stress or overwhelm and reframing it can be a as well. What is your thoughts on how we use words around our stress, anxiety, loneliness, depression? How should we be using words and language during that time?

There are a lot of examples that I can go into, but I want to start from an overview. This is where that improv idea of yes, and can be really helpful. Because, and I know you've talked with other guests about this too, sometimes there's a tendency to want to be so positive, that we ignore reality. And one of the things is, one of the reasons that I'm drawn to the research that I do and the topics that I talk about is because it is not in my nature to be positive.

So anytime- you-'re a negative person.

Pessimistic, anxious, overwhelmed, existential dread, terrified by life from birth.

The world is against you. Yeah.

Yeah, and not because necessarily life experiences that have shaped that worldview. I mean, I believe a lot in genetics also. So I think that's my temperament. So I'm drawn a lot to these ideas of choosing positive emotions, reframing things, because it's the antidote to my habits that can become destructive. So I think part of this is that's another way. You could introduce me to somebody who needs to seriously come to terms with the reality of suffering, and I'd push them in the opposite direction. and, oh, no, I never stress. Oh, everything happens for a reason. I want to be like, I would want to ground them in the opposite that is also true. So, but let's get back to the idea because there is some truth to positive language and mindsets. A really simple example, we know that the physiology of anxiety and excitement are really similar in your body and in your brain. And if you were to take someone who's feeling really anxious, measure their heart rate, look at the ratio of stress hormones that are coursing through their bloodstream, and you look at someone who's really excited, they're almost identical. One of my favorite studies was actually they had people jumping out of airplanes and some people were terrified and some people were like, this is what I live for. Physiology looked exactly the same, right? The only difference is the story that they were telling themselves about this experience, you know, whether they felt capable of it. And so there's research suggesting that in moments of anxiety, even if truly you're anxious, you're not excited in that moment, if you say to yourself, All right, well my heart is pounding. This means my heart is in it. My heart is giving me energy to meet this moment. And you could try saying to yourself, like, I'm here for this. Or whatever your version of, if saying I'm excited feels like too far, just I like to say my heart is in it, which is a step from anxiety towards excitement.

Yeah, it's not about lying to yourself or faking it till you make it. It's about saying, okay, my body is Getting ready for this. I can feel my body in this moment, so let's roll, you know?

And what we know is that as soon as people do that, it starts to subtly shift their physiology in a way that actually is a little bit healthier than like a fight or flight response.

Yeah.

More in their favor.

More in their favor.

Less against them.

Yeah.

It's yeah, you get more energy, less inflammation in your body. You're starting to move towards a stress state that really is just helping you have energy and courage and enjoy the moment. and it also increases positive emotions like confidence and enthusiasm. It makes you better able to connect with other people too. I mean, there are studies that do a similar kind of mindset reset for people who are about to enter a stressful conversation. And like, you know, one of my favorite studies, I found that people made more eye contact and they were more likely to mimic the other person's body language in this really natural way that helps build rapport just by reframing their anxiety as energy that they could harness, as a sign that they care. So that's one example. And that's a far cry from something like saying, this is good for me, therefore it is. There's something, these resets are pretty specific because they're grounded in biological reality. I'll give you one other example. One of the biological things that often happens when we're stressed is changes in our brain and in the hormones in our body that make us lonely. and you can start to feel really alone. And what most people don't recognize is that is your, just like when your heart is pounding, it's your body trying to give you energy to act. When you feel lonely, that's your brain and your body trying to get you to connect. It is making you hungry for support, for connection, for allies, for teamwork and cooperation. And so it produces like a hunger for social contact and community. and too often people feel that loneliness and what they think is, it's because I'm alone, it's because no one understands, it's because I'm the only one, and they mistake what the signal is and they tell themselves a story that actually makes them further withdraw. So that's another type of stress signal that when you understand what's happening in your biology, you can embrace it and say, this is a sign to reach out.

Wow. So when we feel lonely, we shouldn't continue being lonely. We should actually reach out and create connection. and not say, no one's going to understand my pain right now, so I'm going to stay in my bed for two weeks and watch Netflix alone and get more depressed. That's not the solution.

Yeah, often the, you know, it's interesting. I mean, this is sort of speaking more broadly as a psychologist, I often find that the beliefs that people tell themselves that are most painful are almost always, it's just telling you what you care about. When you're telling yourself a story about being alone and lonely, what you're actually revealing is people care about you and you need to reach out. You need your people, you need your community.

No one's really thought, I've never really thought about it that way and saying, if I feel lonely, it means people care about me. And I need to reach out because they want to get connected too.

Your body and brain, they aren't stupid. If nobody cared about you, you wouldn't actually experience a desire for community and contact. The brain is very interesting. It's funny with depression, often one of the most insidious things about it is depression will actually start to lie to you and it will start to tell you there's nothing you can do and there's nobody who cares and you actually have a very suppressed stress response. And I don't mean you're not suffering, but stress is a physiological thing and it often involves hormones and energy and brain activity that is trying to push you in the direction of meeting life. And when you're depressed, you actually stop feeling like there's anything that you can do to meet this moment or that there are other people who could help you and support you. And that's what's so insidious and ugly about depression is it's a lie. If you're not in that state, you can really start to read a lot of these signals that we experience as difficult emotions or annoying physiological symptoms of stress as actually pointing you to Mm-. and, and how you can respond and what you need in this moment.

What's the reason for depression for human beings? Why do we, why does it happen to so many people when it doesn't feel like there's a good purpose for it?

Yeah.

What is that reason?

There are a lot of theories about this. So I won't say that I, I know any of them to be better than other theories, but I do, I do subscribe to the idea that you wouldn't see something in humanity that has no purpose. so a lot of the things that we experience as not something we would choose for ourselves, things like grief, anxiety, depression, anger, they serve a function. So one of the thoughts is that depression in its sort of initial form is meant to help you conserve energy and withdraw from reactivity and and giving away of your energy and attention so that you can kind of pull back, slow down, pause, and process what's happening in your life. And that's, you know, psychologists sometimes call that like reactive depression. It's normal, it's typical when things in your life are difficult.

And, you feel completely overwhelmed, completely stressed. People don't understand you and you're just like, okay, I need to take a break to actually reflect on what's happening in my life.

Almost in the way that if you were, you know, if you were running an ultra marathon, you get tired and your body work and brain work very hard to convince you to slow down and take a break because it's in your best interest. Now, so that's one theory. Another theory, which I find very plausible, is that depression is the equivalent of what you see in animals called the defeat response. And this is if you are an animal in the wild, And you experience so much rejection from your community, your family, your group. So you've been ostracized. You have very little access to resources on your own. You can't find a way to survive on your own. You will see these changes happen in the brain and body that they're called the defeat response. But it's this biological cascade that basically convinces animals to crawl away and die, to give up on life. And so, like, if you stress out a rat enough by, say, putting them in a cage with a bunch of rats that bully that rat incessantly, and the rat can do nothing to escape, and you're not giving it resources, and it's got no purpose in life, you will see changes in that rat's brain and biology, but then if you throw the rat in a bucket of water, it doesn't even try to swim. It just gives up and drowns. So I think that a lot of what we experience as depression and why depression is an epidemic in so many cultures right now, so many societies, is that a lot of people are experiencing kind of the equivalent of being in a cage and being bullied and not being clear about what can I do to improve my circumstances? Who cares about me? How can I contribute to the world?

Yeah.

And I'm not saying it's necessarily true. I mean, you can feel that way even when something is possible, right? That's part of how like, and sometimes it actually is true. Like sometimes you really are in circumstances that can trigger a defeat response. I think that's another reason why depression might exist, in which case it's doing nothing for you. And that's, I mean, it's worth knowing that depression can make your brain turn on you, 'cause the depression is not thinking about your wellbeing.

No, that's crazy. What do you think are the three or four things that can help us get out of a depressed state of being, whether it's been for weeks, months, years, or moments? Yeah.

Well, here I will go to both the science and my direct experience. One of my big interests in life is helping people who find themselves in circumstances they would not have chosen for themselves. And grief is a big one.

Yeah.

Or trauma. So what the science says and what I have seen in people's lives and in my own life is if you're on a do-it-yourself path. So first of all, let me say, obviously you use whatever resources are available to you therapeutically and medically. Now that's not my role. So I don't write prescriptions. I don't do therapy. So I'm not out there in the world sharing that with people. But obviously everything from antidepressants to new treatments like deep brain stimulation and a magnetic stimulation of the brain. therapy, group therapy, one-on-one, all of that stuff. Obviously use that and I believe in the power of all of the evidence-based treatments. Okay, but I don't know how to do it, so I'm not out there sharing it. So if you're on a do-it-yourself supportive pathway, in addition to or instead of that other stuff, exercise, number one. And I know how that sounds to somebody who is depressed. I know because I've actually been in the state where it was so hard to move, I would have punched someone who told me to exercise if I had the strength to punch someone who told me to exercise. So I understand what it can be like to be in a physical state of depression or grief, where every cell in your motor system is saying, don't move, making it impossible to even get to put one foot in front of the other. That said, there is nothing else you can do that more dramatically and profoundly changes your brain chemistry immediately and in the long run. to relieve depression, whether we are talking about the brain chemistry that kicks in, the adrenaline and the dopamine that just gives you a little bit of energy, even if you're depressed, that tends to kick in immediately. To over time, as your brain learns how to benefit from exercise, you will start to get an exercise high that gives you high levels of endocannabinoids and dopamine and endorphins that just transform your outlook on like the day that you exercise. And then six weeks, eight weeks, months later, you see changes in the structure of the brain that can only be compared to what you see from the most cutting-edge neurological treatments for depression, things like deep brain stimulation. So yeah, the exercise actually changes your reward system, the structure and function of your reward system in ways that can help it recover from depression or addiction, which can absolutely wreak havoc and the brain's ability to experience joy and anticipate pleasure and stay motivated. Depression, grief, and addiction are all, it's like they all have a very similar effect on the brain's ability to experience positive motivation and take joy in everyday life. And exercise is, as far as I can tell, because I looked for it in the research, as far as I can tell, it's the only thing that you can choose to do that has that kind of impact on your brain in the long term.

Wow.

That's number one.

I could keep going, but you want.

To hear some of the others. That's number one. Give me a couple others.

Okay.

Number two, this is going to sound super cheesy, but I believe this is find a way to be of service to others. I mean, the research really supports this as well. But if you think about, we talked about depression as being possibly, for some people, it's like a defeat response where you've had experiences in life that have misled you into believing that you don't have value or that you aren't cared about or there's nothing you can do to make a difference in your life or in the world. And the fastest way to get contradictory evidence is to volunteer to help someone. There have been a couple times in my life when I was struggling where I re-engaged with not just like donating money when I can, but to show up to a place and help people First was when I was in graduate school and was working in a food kitchen and preparing food and serving food. And then later on, starting to work as an adoptions counselor for animal rescue organizations, where I would actually go and adopt out animals who otherwise might be homeless or even euthanized. When you do that, the thing that is so great about helping others or volunteering is people see you differently in that role. There already was in you that good. Whatever good is in you, often when you're in a situation of being able to help others, it just gets reflected back to you. And the same thing is true for me in teaching as well. I always say, My students like me so much more than my family members. There's something about a role where you're trying to help others, where they see you differently.

They appreciate you more.

It's such a gift if you have a voice in your head that says you have nothing to offer, Nobody cares about you. There's no good in the world because you get this sort of reciprocity where you tap into your desire to do good. You see the only one suffering. That's another great thing about helping others is it makes visible what might otherwise have been invisible. As you see how many other people are struggling with food scarcity, how many other people are struggling with addiction, whatever capacity you're able to volunteer or serve in, you start to realize you aren't alone. Even if that struggle is different than your own, you see the common humanity of it. And again, that people see the good in you. So I'm sure that sounds cheesy, but I'm gonna stand in the truth of that. And then the third thing- and there's.

Science that backs service.

Yeah.

And not only that, I mentioned this in my TED Talk, so of course you can always find studies showing that Stressful life circumstances are bad for your health. So if you lose your job, if you get divorced, if you experience trauma, could that increase your risk of physical health problems, diseases, new mental health challenges?

Yes.

But there are all these studies showing that if you are someone who regularly volunteers or you have a caregiving role that is not in and of itself a major source of stress. I mean, there are caregiving roles that are enormously stressful. But if you're able to give care in a way that is not that extreme, that those events don't take the same toll on your physical or mental health. There are studies showing that literally you can get fired or get divorced and you would expect it to cause all sorts of problems for your health and your mental health. And that trend or that effect disappears from the population of people who are regularly giving back to their communities or providing care to others. So there is lots of great research.

It's powerful.

And then the third thing I will say is, we and I were talking about this before we went live. Because one of the only things that can really help, again, beyond get on the right antidepressant medication, if that's for you. But one of the only things that you can choose in any given moment that is incredibly helpful for depression or grief or trauma is to have a relationship with an animal who depends on you and who you can have that success experience of providing the care that they need. And actually, in many of my books, I've written about research studies done with groups of people who are healed through their relationships of providing care to animals, including people who experience enormous childhood trauma and came to view themselves as essentially like broken or unlovable, rejected, and then to then go out and adopt or train an animal who was going to be euthanized because it was violent or it was rejected or it was abandoned. And that you, you know, in providing that care and you see the enormous beauty and wonder in that animal and they see it in you.

Wow.

That's your three tips.

You know, it's interesting. Would you have a fourth one?

So I can tell you what my own research has looked at in the past decade is meditation. You know, I'm somebody who found meditation initially as a tool for dealing with physical pain and anxiety.

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... The fact that I'm able to say here, that you are an artist, that I have that 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. And I 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, you know, moment for me to have evidence that I'm not living up to that expectation. So pulling back and, you know, 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. Yes, 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, because 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'd 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 gonna 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 we're 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 create change. Because likely they are again living in a state of physiological dysregulation.

Right.

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 depression.

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 coping tools or resources to deal with that stress. So our bodies are really simply very much stuck 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. receptive to the world around is feeling safe to express. The large majority of us aren't 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 the 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. So just that simple act of witnessing to me showed evidence of, wow, Nicole, your body is stressed out day in and day out, in the actual current moment, your body continues to send signals of stress. And 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 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 in 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 over activated nervous system, as I am, is to begin to harness intentional breathing, beginning to either direct my breath down into my belly if I 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 activated 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 change. 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 resource 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 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 down regulate 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 it's a breaking point? What is the root of panic attacks?

It becomes all of it over time because our nervous system works outside of our awareness. We have a function, it's called neuroception. Perception, 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. Our body, our eyes, everything is. And it's prime to look for threat. However, threat gets defined based on our past experiences. This is how we can't kind of extricate the two. So something that felt overwhelming back here.

Continues to color my world in my now moment.

Even if it's not really happening.

Outside of my awareness.

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 responses 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.

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 upregulated 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, shaping how our body looks and functions.

Yeah.

Well, what's that study where they put like love and anger on water bottles? Did you ever see that? I can't remember. The ice, yeah. Yeah, the ice and then it's either like dark crystals, like dead crystal, you know, or it's like These beautiful snowflakes, I can't remember what that study was, or that study.

Yes, where they did the frequency of different emotions and had then ice that would freeze, I guess, ultimately, and it would crystallize in different structural, and it's beautiful because what I see is that shows evidence of how impactful the things that we can't see are. And I think the collective is waking up to the reality that there are a lot of these things that we can't see. There are energies, there are inner knowings, there are messages of all sorts that, again, we're responding to outside of our awareness that are there even though we can't see them or the science isn't showing it in the graph that fits very comfortably into our human mind. Anytime we're in that expansive unknown, it's.

Very uncomfortable for us as humans. It's like we can't see our thoughts, but those thoughts will impact us. Right, will impact our structure of our brain, our body, how we feel when we think a certain thing as well in the environment. You mentioned people-pleasing overachiever kind of archetype, right? What are the different types of archetypes that human beings have? Is one people-pleaser overachiever? What are the main ones, I guess?

Yeah, so just an archetype. So we're having, everyone knows what we're talking about here. Again, it's very conditioned, patterned way of being. We don't, as humans, typically fall neatly. Some of us might see ourselves in only one archetype. Some of us might see evidence in different archetypes. We might see different sides of ourself.

In different types of relationships.

So multiple archetypes might apply. Again, they're not, you know, be all, end all categories, but they're general ways of being. Typically how we're relating to others in relationships or to the world at large. So I mentioned the overachiever because that's one of my predominant ones. Some others are the caretaker, the person who's always endlessly showing up to service others needs.

But never their own.

Never their own. The yes person who can't say no, who's always, again, in another model of service. There's a hero worshiper archetype, always Outsourcing, always looking for the person of the thing that has an answer as opposed to within life of the party, another archetype that's pretty common. The person who never allows any negative, if you will, even though I don't love those words, sadness. Some kind of vibration energy to be part of their experience. They're always happy. Everything's always great. Again, acknowledging that there's a range of human emotions. And if we're cutting off the negative, we're usually cutting off aspects of our lived experience. So they're general ways of being. Typically, maybe listeners can know the way they show up in relationships, if not, being a witness, seeing how are you showing up, what is your primary mode of relating to other people? This is based in the idea that typically our primary modes of relating are based on our earliest relationship. We get very repetitive. So I was, like I described, my overachievement didn't start in adulthood. I began to assume that role in my childhood relationships, the person who's always performing in one way or another or trying to keep the peace in one way or another.

That was me.

Keeping the peace was me, for sure. And so if we are aware of that first, kind of our main archetypes, is the next step Learning how to heal or is it learning how to reparent or what would be the next phase that we should in doing the work?

So the first, as I always acknowledge, for some of us just having that awareness. Yes, you're continuing to have my needs unmet in relationships because that's usually the byproduct of assuming roles or wearing these masks is my full self isn't being expressed or I'm chronically not acknowledging any of my needs. For some of us, acknowledging that role and typically where it came from, though that's not mandatory. You don't need to know the thing that hurt me. But for some of us, that can be relieving. That can offer an alternate version of narration as opposed to I'm broken, which is usually where we end up. Oh, I'm unfulfilled in my relationships because I'm unlovable, because something's wrong with me. So for some of us, just having that awareness, no, I'm the overachiever, I'm the caretaker because of things that have happened. as a result of my experiences. For some of us, that's healing in and of itself.

Is that, are these coping mechanisms then? Typically, these kind of master archetypes.

It's like we do this because we're- Our way of being becomes, I call it the onion. We, by the time we're in adulthood, we're living such a conditioned way, typically as a result of coping with something that was too overwhelming or too difficult at one time.

And the coping, is it all back to feeling seen, heard, and acknowledged? It's like we do these things so that someone sees us or acknowledges us.

In my opinion. And or to then, as a byproduct, avoid the pain that once was. If showing, so the life of the party, I'll use an example, if at one point when I showed sadness, you know, I didn't feel it didn't feel accepted given whatever has happened.

Right.

Right, then I, if I stop, if I modify, if I do not tell Mom, sad thing that happened, I don't have to feel that pain of that rejection. So I just say a little less of my sadness and a little less of my sadness over time. So it's a coping to avoid that hurt that was once unbearable.

It's to either be seen or to avoid pain. Is that it? So how should we, what archetype should we live in?

So once we become aware, right, if the relief can go so far for some of us, then we're still left with us and our conditioned ways of being. We're still left with that habit, that pull, like I shared throughout my book even, my overachiever is right there ready for that reaction in each and every moment. So cultivating new responses is ultimately the next step. Responses that we now get to choose as an adult. At one point, we weren't gifted with choice. We were in environments that we had no around. Now I can show up, I can make a new choice, so I can learn a new way of being. I can begin to show maybe all.

Aspects of myself, walking through the discomfort.

That will come along with change and the vulnerability that's part of the process now of showing a new part of myself, though over time that allows me to cultivate my full self-expression. So the work, as my book offers, is still part of awareness isn't going to create change because those habits are mapped down into our subconscious pathways that are at the ready. We've gotten really good at firing them up and our brain actually prefers that path. So showing up in our conscious mind, teaching ourselves that we always have that pathway that leads to all the consequences that they've always led to, and then this pathway could lead to something else that will probably be uncomfortable. 'cause it's new, it's uncharted territory, though it could help me march toward a future of my choosing.

How does someone learn to re-parent themselves if their parents are no longer here? How do they even go down that path, which might seem just a little weird? It's like, am I supposed to repair myself? That sounds weird. What is a non-weird way to approach that? And is that us connecting to our five-year-old self or whenever that situation occurs first started, that was painful and having a conversation and actually connecting to that child, is it a daily practice of connecting to something on the inside? What does that look like?

I appreciate the question and I will acknowledge too that I think anytime we hear this idea of child and we're an adult, I mean some of us into, you know, years into adulthood, it does feel uncomfortable. It does feel like, what do you mean, I'm out of childhood? I don't have that aspect of myself. I'm an adult now. I'm of the belief that our inner child is carried with us in many different ways. And we could start with maybe the least scary through our daily habits and patterns. Typically you're caring for your body, I imagine, unless you made an intentional shift at somewhere in your adult life the same way you were taught to. How our physical needs are identified and met in adulthood typically is a reflection of how they were once met in childhood, how attuned our caregivers were to their own physical needs, obviously then transferring that into our own attunement with our bodies, identifying what our individual needs are so that over time we can assume that responsibility of meeting them ourselves. I'm of the belief that all of us were raised by humans that are limited by the so I'll be the first to admit, I know that I was raised by two parent figures that didn't really have a full connection to their body and to its physical needs. So again, when they were parenting me or cultivating that awareness in me, it was from that much more limited consciousness state or that disconnection. So not surprising, I ended up being very disconnected from my own body's knees. Now this applies to our emotional world too. Chances are the habits and patterns the way we tend to our emotions in adulthood is a direct reflection of how we tended or how we were modeled or what coping tools were even available to us at one time in one place. So to do the work of reparenting, we could just see ourselves, witness ourselves in adulthood, see the areas where we are feeling like we show up for our needs. Do we acknowledge physical in our daily life, acknowledging that our body has them day in and day out. Or are we so disconnected that we don't even know what they are? Same thing emotionally. What is our emotional climate? How do we navigate emotions when we have them? And again, can we begin to create new habits? So that's what reparenting, the approachable version is. Can I create new habits and patterns in any of these areas, physical, emotional or spiritual, that better serve me. Again, acknowledging that we're limited by that which was taught to us or modeled for us, acknowledging the limitations of our caregivers.

If you can share what is Maslow's hierarchy of needs for you that a donor stand it fully, what does that process and framework look like, and then what is your Coffman sail belt? in order for us to learn what that is too.

So a lot of people might not have heard of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, but surely they've seen the meme on the internet with maybe toilet paper at the bottom of it's a pyramid, you know, with various levels of needs that one needs to fulfill in order to be able to focus your attention on self-actualization, which is becoming all that you're uniquely capable of becoming. So the needs for connection, the needs for self-esteem, the need for safety, and all these things that clearly if your mind's preoccupied if you're hungry, right? Like you're not focused on self-actualization, you know? So it's contextual as well throughout the course of our day, you know? If you feel very lonely, your mind is preoccupied with the deprivation of your loneliness, you know? If you don't feel like you're getting any respect, you know, your whole consciousness is directed towards respect me and you're kind of in part onto the world. You know, you want the world to kind of bend to your will in a way. Where is respect on that chain? In Maslow's original, it was the highest up before self-actualization. Respect. Esteem. Esteem.

He called it esteem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we want, we need, if we can't eat, the only thing we're thinking about is food.

Yes.

If we're sick, the only thing we're thinking about is getting healthy. If we have nowhere to sleep, the only thing we're thinking about shelter. And then once we have that foundation, it's the next level of loneliness, then.

Loneliness, social connection, and then esteem.

Then esteem, which is respect, credibility, I guess, or being respected within your community.

Respecting yourself and then getting respect from others. Yes, he had both of those forms of esteem he talked about.

Okay, and the next one is...

So the connection comes before belonging and connection, the need to belong. the need to make connections with others, and then esteem was higher in his original model. And then the top is-- Then you self-actualize. And it's-- what does self-actualization mean?

Maslow, here's some cheeky things, not cheeky.

Things, but things that reveals, grand reveals. First of all, Maslow never drew a pyramid. Oh. You know, people don't know that. It's in all the textbooks, and that's like management texts, all these management business Schools they learn it, there's no pyramid. Also, he didn't like the term self-actualization. I found in an unpublished essay, because I read all of his unpublished stuff, like just researching, I found in a footnote, he said, I hate that damn word self-actualization. Oh my God, I should send you a file. Take a picture of it, because it's.

Like, when I discovered that, I almost fell off my chair.

He actually never said the words. He did. He definitely He used the term self-actualization, but towards the end of his life, he started to think of it more. He preferred the term fully human.

Ooh, I like that.

Yeah, yeah. And that's how he started talking about it later in his life. He just didn't use the term as much.

What does fully human mean in your mind?

Sure. I'll tell you in his earliest years what he meant by self-actualization first. He thought of self-actualization as becoming your unique creative potential. What is the thing within you? What's the song within you, right? that's definitely how he viewed it in his early life. But becoming fully human as he started to think about this concept more broadly was how can you kind of bring your whole self to the table? You know, not just like your talent, you know, you can become self-actualized and not be very transcendent, not be very, you know, not give back to others, not kind of get outside yourself. And towards the end of his life, he started to distinguish between self actualizing non-transcenders and self-actualizing transcenders. Two different classes of self-actualizers. The self-actualizing non-transcenders, the person who goes to work, they clock in, they do their job, maybe their job isn't something that necessarily contributes much to society, but they're good, they go home.

It's not fulfilling to them personally.

It might even can even be a little bit fulfilling, but it's not something that's really getting outside of themselves, you know, and doesn't have be in line with what Maslow called the B values.

The B values.

The B values, the values of being itself. So these are values that you don't need to do them for any other reason. Truth, justice, beauty, meaningfulness. He has a long list of the B values. He calls them B values. Perfection. Excellence.

Excellence is one of his B values.

You strive for excellence, for excellence sake. You strive for beauty, for beauty's sake.

You strive for truth, for truth's sake. Not to get likes, not for followers.

Not for accomplishments, but just to be in that state. To be. You know, you want more meaning in.

Your life, not so that you get famous.

You want meaning.

Right?

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So self-actualization and then self-actualization plus. Transcendence.

Transcendence. And what's transcendence mean? Well, you know, I wish I had a really pithy, well actually I do have a pithy, I have a definition but it ain't pithy. I have a complicated definition because I just want to distinguish between, as I do in my book, between healthy transcendence and unhealthy transcendence. Okay, so you see a lot of these gurus who, it's like you're like, oh, you're really transcending, you're really, you know, it's built on a very faulty foundation, as Maslow put it. He called it pseudo-growth, Both built on a faulty foundation, and I call it pseudo-transcendence. It's transcendence built on, really you're trying to get your esteem needs, self-esteem needs met. You're really trying to get your well and you've fulfilled all this stuff to have connections with others. But healthy transcendence, this is a viewpoint of, I didn't even get to my sailboat model, so maybe we're going to.

We'Re skipping ahead, but yeah, it's the.

View of the sea bird. A bird that's looking above your life. You know what I love about you? I love that we just like jumped transcendence. We're like, f***, you know, all the other s***. Let's get there.

Let's just go right to transcendence. Well, this is what everyone wants, right? Everyone wants, well, you want safety, you want connection, you want to feel loved, you want to feel purpose, mission, but ultimately you want to feel like what's connected to the rest of humanity? Yeah, what's the greatest potential for my life? What's the meaning of my life? Why am I here? How can I serve my purpose?

Yeah.

And do it fully. That's right.

And so what is healthy transcendence?

Healthy transcendence is an emergent phenomenon, and I'll explain every part of this. Healthy transcendence is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the harmonious integration of one's whole self in the service of cultivating the good society. I can break that down.

For me, that's kind of like my definition of greatness. I always tell people that.

Isn't that interesting?

The way that I view greatness is is, it's discovering your unique talents and gifts that are inside of you and pursuing your dreams using those gifts and making an impact on the most people you can in the pursuit of those dreams. So it's figuring out who you are to pursue the things.

Yours is pithier.

And then helping as many people as you can along the way. Maybe helping as many people as 10 people. It's maybe hundred people. Maybe it's your whole community, it's your city or your country, maybe it is, but maybe it's just your family and that's fine too, but helping as many people along the way that you're capable of helping.

And yeah, I love that. And the key thing I try to point out there is also that it's important to have integration there of all the various sides of yourself. Because, you know, and I feel like you, I don't know, can we get personal about you for a second?

Yeah, of course.

I mean, I feel like you You've really, your whole growth process has really been a process of integration. You had certain sides of yourself you weren't proud of at certain points in your life, and you brought it into the rest of you. You started to have acceptance, right?

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it was very shameful for most of my childhood, most of my adulthood. I was shameful of things that had happened or things that I had done, happened to me or things that I created in the world. And I hid those shames. I didn't talk about them, which made me suffer. So when I started to talk about them and forgive myself and forgive others and heal, then it allowed me to go beyond that state of being that I was in. I was able to create and accomplish a lot, but I still wasn't feeling connected. I wasn't feeling like things mattered as much.

I was still suffering.

And so I was wondering, why am.

I... You felt a disconnection between self and world.

Absolutely. And I was like, why am I feeling this? Let me just do more and work harder and win more. But it wasn't supporting my overall growth.

Yeah, and see now you're very comfortable in your own body. It's obvious to me. You're very at ease with your being. Absolutely. Is a phrase LIT is.

So, transcendence, healthy transcendence, is essentially the definition of greatness. and we're all trying to get there essentially. Is that what I'm hearing you say? We should all be striving to get there, but it's going to take safety, connection, self-esteem first before we can really.

Get to those levels. So, I'll explain my new revised model. Yes, Kaufman's model. So, my revised hierarchy of needs, there's no longer a pyramid, you know, because Maslow never even drew a pyramid. We're a whole whole vehicle that needs to be integrated. That's why a sailboat works. You know, all the parts have to work together optimally in order for that sailboat to really move in its most.

Purposeful direction, you know? I'll put up a graphic or something.

Here as well for people so they can see it. Wow, that can zoom in or something?

We can do that, yeah. You've got mad technology here, you know?

So how is yours different than his? What is... Well, it keeps the spirit of what Maslow... See, remember there was no Maslow's appearance he never drew a pyramid. If you actually, people betrayed the spirit of his original theory. So I'm trying to like bring in the original spirit with my own flavor. So in his original theory, he distinguished between the being realm of human existence and the D, the deficiency realm, D versus B realm of human existence. When we're in the deficiency realm or we're deficiency motivated, so another way of saying is deficiency motivation versus growth motivation. When we're in the realm of deficiency motivation, we're motivated by what we are lacking. And like I said earlier, we basically are screaming for the things we're lacking in the world. Like if we're hungry, feed me, for a willingly, be my friend, which paradoxically makes people not want to be friends with you because you come across as needy. And that's really an interesting paradox. But if you're really needy, like woe and respect, you demand respect.

You need to respect me.

Demand it, you demand it. But the growth realm of human existence is a whole different realm. If you can get to the growth realm of being, you no longer want the world to conform to you. You actually start admiring the world on its own terms. You start to admire people on their own terms, and that's called be love, love for the being of others. that's what Mazel called it. So in the D realm you have the need for connection, but in the B realm you have B love, which is just love for the being of others, not for what they offer to you. Maybe someone doesn't even offer you connection, but you can still admire them, you can still love them, you can still be curious about them. So the B love is a whole different realm. So what I did with the sailboat is the boat itself itself is the D realm. If you have too many holes in the boat, the boat's going to sink. The water's going to come in and sink. If you're too deficient in the needs for safety, the need for connection, the need for self-esteem, and they all work together as a system is another point I want to make. It's a feedback loop. I call it the insecurity cycle. People who are deficient in any one of those three tend to start quickly becoming deficient in the other two. Right? So if safety is deficient, then your.

Self-Esteem and your connection is low. If your connection is low, then you don't have self-esteem, you don't have confidence.

And you don't feel safe. That's exactly right.

And if you have low self-esteem, then.

You feel disconnected and lack of safety as well. That's right. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And you feel like nobody respects me, nobody cares about me, you know? So it's a cycle. So that's the boat. But If the boat is safe and secure, you're still not going to go anywhere unless you open up the sail. So it's not enough to just be safe and secure. Some people are acting these days like the ultimate is just to be the lack of what they have, no longer lack what they have and then they're going to be happy. It's like, no, no, no, there needs to be something above zero. You can't just get from negative 50 to zero. You go to a psychologist and you're anxious, you have generalized anxiety disorder. A lot of people, are you just satisfied if you leave the psychologist no longer being anxious in the world? There's still nothing added to that. So once you can open the sail and move with a vulnerability against the inevitable winds and waves of the sea, you move in a purposeful direction with a spirit of exploration, be love and purpose. Despite knowing that the waves could come crashing down on on us at any time. And even though we're all in our own boat, we're moving the same sea together. So that wave can crash on many boats at the same time. So we need to be connected to the rest of humanity, and also still have that bravery and exploration drive to just go despite our fears. I was nervous today. I was nervous this morning. This is the first time I've put on a suit in a year. This is the farthest I've driven. In over a year.

Five miles.

Yeah.

Six miles. You know, it's like I was a little nerd. But the thing is you just, you have to move in life. You have to keep moving, you know? And that's the sailboat metaphor. You have to open that sail ultimately or else you're not going to grow. You have to get outside your comfort zone.

And when you open the sail, there's exploration, love and purpose.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So another way of putting that is whereas security is the base of security is safe safety, the base of growth is exploration.

Does that make sense?

So safety and exploration. Because you could have safety, connection, self-esteem, but if you don't have exploration, if you're not growing, then you feel stagnant, you feel disconnected, you probably feel less safe than also, right? Yeah, that's exactly right. Something's missing, I gotta shake something up in my life.

Yeah, and sometimes we might not even feel safe and still choose, say, fuck it, I'm gonna choose exploration. Sometimes we don't have to wait till we're fully safe in order to explore.

Why is that?

Why are some people, take two people, some people have the fear and they don't grow, and some people have the fear and they do, is that kind of the question? That's a great question.

Yeah, I like that.

You guys want to be close and just zoom in on the question. I wish I knew the precise answer. Some of it does come down to personality differences. Maslow did write that the self-actualizers he studied seemed to, as opposed to being frightened by the unknown, they were turned on.

I get excited because I don't know if there's ever been a bad moment when something didn't work out or I failed or I was humiliated. me earlier in my life when I didn't know how to use those emotions for good or didn't know how to transcend the feeling of embarrassment or loneliness or rejection. But as I look back at my life, and you talk about this in your book about the history of looking back, we should look back at the history of our life like a historian. I think you mentioned that. Yeah, yeah. And as we look back like a historian, like Okay, look at all these different moments and years and timelines and chapters and pages that we turned. And if I look back, I'm like every decision I made that had a risk that was scary turned out for the better.

Yeah.

Like even if it turned out for the worse, it eventually, it built some foundation of like, I can do this. I can go after what I want and I'm still gonna be alive. And my family's still there for me, my friends, you know, going to be okay. And I think a lot of people live in a state of deficiency realm or the state of fear that they don't want to go after what they could be or what they are that they're interested in doing because that risk is too big and they're too afraid of, I guess, feeling a lack of safety connection and self-esteem. If I risk and I fail, then I'm Gonna lose my house, no one's gonna be my friend, and I'm gonna have zero confidence in myself.

Yeah.

Which makes it very, then there's no.

Foundation to the sailboat. You got it. You nailed it. A lot of people who fear their self-esteem need is so important to them. What's really going on with them underneath it is they have a fear of shame. In terms of what?

Like if I fail, they'll fail, they'll.

Be shamed, you know, they'll be like revealed as not as smart as they thought they were or not as great, you know, as they thought they were. I mean, you've interviewed so many great, you know, great people. And do you find a common theme in terms of like, there are many moments in their life where they definitely weren't great.

Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely. And they were okay with that. Like it didn't put them in a downward spiral of depression where they were no longer able to pick themselves up again, right?

So how do we free frame life in a in a way so we can actually take on risks, take on growth, take on challenges, and it not hurt our self-esteem when we do fail. Because we're all going to be failing in order to grow. It's not going to be like, I'm going to win at everything and be perfect, and it's always going to be a New York Times bestseller, and everyone's got to praise every decision I make. So how do we build our self-esteem foundation so that no matter what happens in the results of our life, we're still confident and esteemed in who we are.

I think the best way to look at self-esteem and the healthiest form of self-esteem is as, again, I'm going to use the phrase emergent phenomenon. I'm a really big fan of that phrase. It's not something that you shoot for. The problem with people who show mental health issues is that they have made self-esteem itself the goal as opposed to the outgrowth of a natural outgrowth of pride healthy pride in something you built, some form of mastery, as well as your social relationships. Psychologists distinguish between hubristic pride and authentic pride. And I think the healthiest route to self-esteem, the kind of self-esteem that will really lead to growth, is authentic pride.

What's the difference?

Authentic pride versus? Hubristic pride is driven by the path of the need for dominance, the need for power. The self-esteem becomes the goal in itself.

Being confident, commanding respect is the goal.

It's the goal, yeah. It's having the accolades as much as possible so that it reflects on your ego.

Why do people live in that state? What do you call that?

The hubristic pride?

Hubristic pride. Why do people and what happens when we come from that place, if that is our goal.

You know, both evolutionary psychologists have studied this because both evolve. I mean, there's a reason why it exists in the human gene pool. You know, both paths evolved over the course of human history for different purposes. They both served its function. You know, dominance, you know, being able to be the, you know, the top person in your clan, you know, on the Savannah certainly had its meeting benefits, you know what I'm saying? Sure. But that wasn't the only pathway to meeting. See, the thing is, there was also people in the tribe who were the experts, the professors, who were getting laid just as much. The wise men. Yeah, exactly. And both pathways evolved and still exist in our gene pool. And there also are some genetic factors here. Some people are actually more predisposed to one path or the other, you know, some people, you know, but it doesn't mean we can't change or can't grow in our life and we can't kind of shift our pathway.

Yeah, okay. So the authentic pride, so what happens when we live from that state of hubristic, hubristic? Yeah, hubristic pride. Will we ever feel fulfilled? Even if we get command, the respect and get all the accolades and accomplishments and money and houses. If that is the goal, will we be fulfilled and happy inside?

No, it really is like a hedonic treadmill. Yeah, you keep running on this treadmill but you never get to the end of the treadmill.

Have psychologists studied people that have lived in that state of being who actually are happy?

I'm sure they exist. I'm not the kind of person who will say that there's never, never, or that one must live their life. In fact, I want to be clear about something in my book, is I'm very clear that self-actualization and the path self-actualization is one where you find the path that works best for you and your own unique constellation of traits, characteristics, life experiences. Only you can choose what path works for you and you should own it. I think there are a lot of people who have made their life work for for them who know that who they are at various points in their life. You know, these things change. The thought of, for some reason, Tucker Max is coming to my mind. There was a point in his life where he changed. He did. But I also, there was a point in his life where he owned being an asshole.

Yes.

And this is what I think is interesting is that I don't know why that example, I think that it's irrelevant actually. And then, you know, he put on his website at one point, he's like, I am Tucker Max and I am an asshole. And I don't know if he was filled in that moment of his life, but he found something that met his own unique constellation of traits. And I think it's interesting because I'm not a judge. I'm like the least judgmental person. You know, maybe not the absolute least because you've met a lot of cool people, but I'm very non-judgmental. So, for instance, I do personal coaching now, right? And I have like 17 clients. And for every single one of them, I just like, I be love. It's not my job to condemn someone. It's my job to sit back and listen to them and see what is at this moment in their life, what kind of life works for them. And maybe at this moment in life for some people, they have such an excess of anger and excess that they need to get out. And so I want to kind of help them cultivate it in a productive direction. direction.

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Miss out on these great videos every single day. I think we have like maybe five, six, maybe seven strong positive memories. Then we have five or six or seven like strong negative memories that we always kind of reflect back to. and think about. And obviously there's filler memories, but I was trying, I was like, I don't really remember much from ages 5 to 18 in between those 5 to 10 memories on each side.

The reason that you have those really high positives and maybe really low negatives was because of the emotionality attached. So the bigger the emotion, we tend to be able to retain those.

Those memories.

Those memories because our memory center, our emotional center, our limbic system, it's all interconnected. And a lot of the reasons why we encode and then can retrieve, essentially put the memory in and access it later, is because of the emotionality.

How strong it was.

How strong it was.

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

Right.

So, the scarcity.

It's interesting you say this because then there's another category and this is where I fall and I actually diagnose myself with a memory memory impairment for quite some years. Memory impairment based on the fact that I had no memories.

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

But I think, you think societally, so there that. So societal, so when I realized I had no memory, I had two theories, two working theories. Two working theories. One was that I had such a cataclysmic trauma, you know, that I can't remember and that washed all my memories. And I spent a lot of time thinking and oh gosh, you know, what could it have been? And I keep coming up with, I don't, and then the other diagnosis that I gave myself was a memory impairment. So anyway, flashing forward, I've now come.

To realize that I started to share.

When I got the Instagram platform, I started to talk a bit more openly about my lack of memories. I started to understand our nervous system and our stress responses a bit more. And I came to realize that more of us than you would realize are like this ex of yours and myself that we don't have memories. And it doesn't have to be, you know, biological thing wrong in our brains. And it doesn't have to be the big T is like the big T trauma that I think a lot of us talk about, the big cataclysmic event.

I feel like you'd remember the trauma.

Right.

But bigger.

But. Right.

Yeah.

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

Yes.

So you were being, you know, for example, you were like, where's my food? My half is gone.

Or you took three fourths and I.

Only have a fourth. And so that's definitely, like, reflecting a memory of experiences or an experience you had that you held on to and said, like, I'm not deserving of enough or there's never going to be enough or whatever the story you said to yourself. Right.

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

How old are you now?

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

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

Not being considered.

You weren't being seen or being thought about.

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

And that's why I hear the word.

Stuck probably more often than I hear any word spoken.

So how do people get unstuck?

First, I think consciousness. We have to become conscious to ourselves because we're in our autopilot 95% of the day if we're not conscious and that's gonna be the program. I mean, the computer analogy is I think the one that we all understand the most. That's gonna be the program that we're running day after day after day. So without consciousness, there is no change. And then becoming conscious to our patterns, we are incredibly habitual creatures us humans. whether it's our daily habits, you know, behavioral habits, whether or not it's our patterned thoughts that a lot of us have. We all tend to think the same content type thoughts. And then the way I say is they induce feelings, actual changes in our body's physiology and our neurotransmitters and our stress hormones. And then that becomes our normal and that becomes our stuck place. So without Consciousness, I don't think change happens.

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

I am always a Believer, and I explore this within myself a lot. How much is the past necessary? And I keep coming to the conclusion that it's necessary that becoming self-observational understanding, I think I think that developing through a mindfulness-based meditation practice is incredibly helpful because it actually helps us to fire up our brain in a new way that then allows for self-observation throughout the day. Because I don't think there's no magic cushion, there's no magic anything. It the way I see it, we can't do something once and then expect my day to look different magically because I've meditated in the morning. Yeah, there's some gains and some peace. I mean, a joke you made, oh.

I meditate in the morning so I.

Can, you know, calm my mind, yeah, we get a little residual, you know, carry out, carry away from sitting and meditating, but if I'm not watching myself throughout the day and if I don't train myself to watch myself throughout the day, to watch my patterns, to watch the thoughts that are causing those emotional reactions, especially to see when I'm triggered, just when I'm having a big feeling about a current event. And typically the feeling is really big because it's about the meaning assigned to the event, the similarity of this now event, based on my past experiences. And so there's always a reason why things are way bigger than, you know, they maybe ought to be logically in that moment. And then that's where we dive in and give ourselves some new either releasing the emotional valve, soothing our own emotional wounds in that moment, not looking outside of anyone or anything else to make us feel better. At least that's the way that I view it.

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

Yeah. The big proposal.

That's another shocker.

Yeah, yeah. I talk a lot about interdependence is the kind of term that I've been going back to a lot recently. Does that mean essentially being, you know, because we are social creatures as humans, we actually benefited quite greatly from having tribes, you know, as we were evolving in terms of safety and division of labor. So as I see it, we all, we need, quote unquote, Little N, we little N need relationships. But I think what interdependence means to me is being able to be a self-reliant and resilient, you know, human meeting all my physical, emotional needs separately and then having that shared space of relationship.

How does someone become interdependent if they've been so reliant on the needs of other people, especially, you know, under 18, the needs of parents for financial or housing, food. But if we're talking adults, how do you become interdependent? Well, and you have a lot of.

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

College debt.

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

A lot of us have.

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

Sure.

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

Yeah.

That's a good point.

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

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

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

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

For some of us.

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

Wow. I learned a lot in the last few years about setting boundaries. I used to really care about everyone's opinion about me, and want to try to win them over. How can I win this person over? Even though there's thousands of positive comments or whatever on something. and I was just like, I'm not gonna be able to change someone's mind necessarily. And me putting energy on one person to try to make them like me more is a waste of time. We've gotta, I think we've gotta continue to just reflect on like, okay, this person's not resonating with me. Is there something I can do to improve, to move forward? But if not, I'm not gonna put my energy on trying to save one person's opinion about me, right? So, yeah. I like this. So setting boundaries, define the boundary, creating like a calm communicational request with the boundary and then staying your word and following through on the boundary. Otherwise, I'll never be met.

Yeah.

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

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

35 years of your life.

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

We're not talking bad about you or whatever.

Oh, I know. I know that it's being viewed probably not me. I'm pretty positive and my partner is very aware of this herself that she's probably been villainized.

It's probably her who's taken me away from the family.

I mean, you know, whatever story that they are gonna create, they're gonna create.

It's tough though because, you know, unfortunately sometimes if family is only destructive towards.

You, you shouldn't have to stay there.

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

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

Spaceship where I would go away on.

I got, you, weren't present. I wasn't present. I would not have any idea having a conversation with me, you know, I.

Would be in that.

Looking through me. Yeah, so let's, yeah, so let's let.

Me tie this all together.

The reason I could not remember my childhood is because I dissociated. So I wasn't present enough to put it in. So there's nothing there to react.

Success.

So that's just to tie that all in.

I was physically present.

I was physical. But that was out of. Yeah. Because of the emotional overwhelm of the family, the anxiety and no one modeling or helping me to navigate those feelings as we do as children. I will always say this as children. I believe we come to this planet however you think we get here as adaptive, intuitive creatures.

Yeah, of course.

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

Yeah.

You arrive, you deal with it, laugh.

At the situation, you can maybe, I.

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

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

Yeah.

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

Yeah.

What's your thoughts?

I'm really happy you asked that. So one of the reasons I think, and this is this happened in my own life, so anxiety was all I knew. I went to multiple years of talk therapy myself.

Myself.

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

The result of this physiological imbalance.

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

Yeah, so we're doing talk therapy then having a gallon of ice cream and pizza afterwards. It's probably not gonna help us because.

We'Re gonna go up, down, up, down, up, down constantly. Yeah, so and I can assure you I have yet to find a program or a clinician and I now have a whole network of them that I'm connected to that have had any version of that. I mean, the nutrition, the gut, the body is not mentioned in any training program. So I think that's a huge limitation. I also know that another big, big problem for a lot of us, whether or not we have the big T of trauma or the little T of trauma, is a dysregulated nervous system.

Yeah.

So now there's science.

Yeah.

And now there's an incredible full amount of science. Even Dr. Stephen Porges is amazing. He does Polyvagal Theory. And so to put it really simple, unless we start to address that dysregulation in our nervous system that this part most of us have, that's going to limit treatment.

So the sympathetic, is that fight or flight?

Fight or flight. Most of us are spending most of our time chronically in fight or flight. 70% of our time. I mean, from this, I mean, I'm looking out with the vast city in the background, I mean, for some of us, the city.

Is enough.

My mind has now taken on a whole other capacity to induce stress. So a lot of us humans are living chronically stressed. You could be in peace, you could.

Be in nature, but your mind could be in traffic. Yes. Thinking in anxious. Yes.

And then you could, you could have induced it completely in a panic attack. And, I mean, I've seen it happen in my office, you know, content we're talking about before I know it, the person's having a complete visceral reaction.

Right.

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

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

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

Yeah.

You know, we all have these toxic patterns or no one's immune.

We all.

And.

And the signals of those are things like depression and. anxiety and those are simply telling you, hey, there's a pattern. That pattern is actually putting your body.

Under tremendous stress, even to the point.

Where your DNA is affected.

And I showed in my research that.