Call Her Daddy - How Our Parents Fucked Us Up

Episode Date: January 29, 2023

It’s time to understand the impact our parents had on us. This episode breaks down a variety of parenting styles: the “checked out” parent, the helicopter parent, the substance abusing parent, and the parent who shows their love through gift buying … just to name a few. How can the way we were raised impact the way we react and respond in certain situations? How can we come to understand the types of relationships we seek out and the patterns we get stuck in? Clinical Psychologist Dr. Nicole LePera is here to help us answer these questions and start the work we need to do if we want to meet our authentic selves and break the habits we were raised to live by.

What is up, Daddy Gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper with Call Her Daddy. Dr. Nicole Lepero, welcome to Call Her Daddy. Thank you so much for having me, Alex. You are a clinical psychologist and you have a new book, How to Meet Yourself. So you talk about how getting to know yourself means a variety of things, including understanding why we react the way we do in certain situations, why we're drawn to certain situations, why we get stuck in certain patterns, and how all of these behaviors are rooted in our childhood and interactions we had with our parents. So from a psychologist perspective,

let's start with what does it mean to be self-aware? Yeah, I think this is a really, really great place to start. And to speak to your point, the self that many of us are enacting in the world, reacting to in the world from, again, is what I call in the book, at least, our habit self. It is all of our conditioned experiences wired literally into our brain and our nervous system. And it becomes

our way of being so much so that many of us well into later in life don't really know who we are. And I remember me having many moments in my 20s when I was coming to that realization that I actually don't know who I am. I don't even know how I want to spend my time, even though to speak to the point of self-awareness, I did have the idea that I knew myself. I was studying to be a clinical psychologist. I had been in and out of therapy on my own. But what I really came to realize is the self that I was most familiar with, that I imagine many of you listeners are most familiar with, is that conditioned self. All of the habits and patterns, again, that were an adaptation to my earliest environment that's stored in my subconscious mind become how I am in the world,

but not who I am in the world. So for me, self-awareness really means becoming conscious of first and foremost, the impact of those earlier patterns or habits so that we can then create the space for true self-awareness, dropping into the deeper, more authentic space of ourselves. I appreciate you explaining that so well, because I think that self-awareness sometimes is such a broad topic that people like run from it. They're like, I don't know what the hell it means. Am I self-aware? Do I know myself? But when you reference the habit self, can you get a little bit more into like, how does it relate to someone's childhood? I mean, everything that most of us do, whether or not you resonate with, you know, being a habitual being, like I will describe all of us humans, the reality of it

is we all have that autopilot. If we were just to wake up tomorrow morning, chances are we would go about our day in the same way we did this morning and probably many mornings beyond that. So in terms of who we are and what these habits are, I mean, they are everything from how we're physically caring or not caring for our bodies. They include our emotional habits or our very consistent ways that our mind, conditioned again from our childhood experiences have learned to make sense of the world. Again, we're very habitual. If you begin to turn your attention to the thoughts that are narrating your days, probably more often than not, you'll notice those same habitual patterns. Yeah, I think it's really great how you talk about in the book,

and we're going to get into it a lot of examples of like, the first, I think, step of also self-awareness is having some grace with yourself to knock it down on yourself. Because again, so much of who we are is based off of who raised us and how they raised us. And so a lot of the things that maybe you consider like, fuck, I'm fucked up for this. Like, it's not even your fault, right? And so let's talk through some parent-child dynamics that impact who we become as adults. So what is an emotionally immature parent? And what impact could that emotionally immature parent have on their children. I love and I want to acknowledge your very wise words in terms of embedding compassion as an integral part of our journey. As far as I see it, developing that space

to non-judgmentally just see ourselves for how things are, maybe for those of us who can even connect those back to our parents in those early environments. Again, all of these habits passed on intergenerationally to us, holding space to just see and witness without judgment in compassion that we can evolve to over time, I think is integral, foundational, and an always part of the healing journey. Because what happened for a lot of us in childhood, and to talk a bit about an emotionally mature parent, when we didn't have that safe, secure space to explore ourselves, to get to know ourselves, to be curious about our thoughts and our feelings, we feel unable, we adapt, we suppress the part of ourself that wasn't validated, that was maybe shamed in those early environments, or there was just no space for that. And we begin to then shame those aspects of ourself

moving on in life. The larger majority of us have had what I call an emotionally immature parent, unable to navigate their own emotions so that they're either exploding outward, behaving very inconsistently, often scaring us, or unable to connect. And this was very much the experience

I had with my mom. While she wasn't outwardly unpredictable or explosive in terms of her own emotional needs, she was so shut down to herself that despite well-intentioned, despite desire to show up lovingly for me, her own emotional immaturity, meaning her own inability to deal with the stresses of life, the stresses of emotions, kept her then shut down from me. So of course, there's a spectrum of many different things that can happen in childhood, though, to simplify it. If we have a parent who isn't safe in their own bodies, who isn't able to regulate their own emotions, being that secure base for us, modeling for us how to deal with stressful, upsetting emotions, then there will be a byproduct. There will be a way we've adapted to create and maintain whatever connection was

available. Do you mind sharing how you then, when you got into therapy and began your journey, what was the effect that your mother had on you? And like, what were the byproducts of her immaturity on how you behaved in the world? I mean, for as long as I can remember, I would have proclaimed that I've had all my needs met in childhood because I consistently did have my mother present who was very much the, you know, caretaker of the household of the children. I had two older siblings. I always had a roof over my head. I always had food on my table. So in those kind of foundational senses, which I know isn't the case for all of us, but I checked all of those boxes of having a

quote unquote happy childhood. And it took until I became really acutely aware of how I felt a deep hole is the best way to describe it. Even though I had achieved all of the things my heart had set out to achieve, I became the clinical psychologist. I had the successful practice. I was always more or less in and out of a romantic partnership. At that point, I was living with my partner. Yet, I think the saying that maybe listeners might have heard of is all alone in a crowded room. I mean, that really described how I had felt. And up until this point, I had pointed the finger outwardly. I had determined that it was where I was living. So I moved. I determined that it was a partner I picked. So I ended the relationship and picked a new partner, not

really seeing the true impact of that childhood experience. That even though I did have caregivers, my mom physically present, and those needs were met, like I was sharing earlier, emotionally, my mom was so shut down given her overwhelmingly stressful life experiences and not having had the resources, the model to her in childhood, she wasn't able to even regulate her own nervous system.

So while there was a being present emotionally, it's as if I was all alone and with consistently stressful experiences living in a city. Philadelphia here in the States is known as, you know, it's a crime-ridden city. There was always something happening outside my four walls, on the news that I had to worry about.

In my home, there was a lot of health-related issues, chronic illness. My mom or my sister, my two primary caregivers were often in and out of dealing with very severe health concerns. So there was a lack of emotional stability and support in dealing with very big emotions. So again, while externally, I did seemingly, right, one of the ways I channeled that is through achievement. That was how my mom showed up, celebrated me. She was most present when I was achieving athletically or academically. But because I had learned to suppress all of the other aspects of who I was in favor of this performance mood,

that that's why in my 20s, I felt so deeply alone. Because in reality, I was so deeply disconnected from my physical body, from my emotions that I just continued to squash in service of performance showing up for the world around me. It's really incredible to hear now your reflection on it. Because I think if we're all so lucky, if we can get to that point in our lives, right, through therapy and through self-reflection to recognize there's all some way that we're all messed up from our childhood. And it's really hard to, some people have a harder time locating it than others. Maybe some have a way more obvious abusive situation, but I do think

that it's really interesting to hear you connecting the if your parents were like this, then this could also be the effect on you. So I'm interested to know, like, what if someone grew up with a parent who was uninterested in parenting and like really checked out? How might this impact someone? Yeah, really, really great question. And I just want to acknowledge too, it's a two-part process of becoming aware, like many of us are like, oh, I know why I'm like this.

I see that connection and creating this space to change, to show up differently, to embody new habits because, and I'm intentionally separating those right here right now, because for a lot of us, and I would see this in my old traditional practice, we have so much awareness of why we are, how we are, where it even came from, yet the action of showing up differently, of creating change is incredibly uncomfortable. And for a lot of us, it feels very shameful when we're stuck knowing better, if you will, without the ability to integrate those new choices to actually create that change. So I just want to emphasize that here in a very compassionate way, imagining that maybe there are many listeners who are like, yeah, I know all of this.

I know exactly why I am the way I am. And yet I can't seem to actualize that into change. So to specifically talk about the parent who, you know, maybe for whatever reason, didn't, you know, necessarily consciously willingly want to take on the enormity of the task of parenting. And first I want to extend compassion for not only that parent, for the child of that parent, for coming to that awareness, for seeing that because in childhood, for coming to that awareness, for seeing that, because in childhood, we don't have the developmental ability.

While we might sense that our parent really wasn't invested or wasn't as present to us as maybe other people, we don't have the ability to pull back like we do in our adulthood and see all of the different factors that might've created this parent that lacked presence for whatever reason. In our childhood mind, the meaning-making brain that we all have, even at an early age, will try to find a reason. And the only reason that they will land on is

something to do with themselves, to gain a semblance of control. Because again, we don't have the developmental maturity to understand the nuance, the complexity of adult relationships. So usually whatever absence that that parent might offer or lacking presence, if they weren't physically able to be because they were working many jobs, if they were emotionally checked out, because again, it's a large task to raise another human, we will assume that it's something about us, that we are unworthy of having our needs met. So what that then can translate to over time is we continue to feel that deep-rooted unworthiness. We continue to suppress those parts of ourselves that that parent wasn't able to consciously and attentively tend to in childhood. And we'll keep, because we're so hyper-attuned,

if there is that one thing that we can do or limit doing that will hook that parent, whatever it might be, whether it's achieving or not causing problems, we will then adapt ourself into that being, always trying to maintain what little this parent has to offer. And again, always believing that we're the reason why that person is absent in our life. It's so sad to hear it because I think I agree with you. I think it's really hard when you're younger to even

understand why your parent would be doing that. So you're so right. It obviously is just, it has to be a reflection on me. I had to have done something. There must be something wrong with me. And I think to my listeners listening, something that I think I was thinking about while you were talking about that is there's so many times, unfortunately, that we get into a romantic relationship

and that person makes us feel unworthy of love and we feel like, oh, there's something wrong with us. And that's a romantic relationship. I can only imagine the damage it does when this is your parent that was there from the minute you were born and all of the formative years of your life, how instrumental that is into your developmental process

and your sense of self. Like a romantic relationship, I'm not negating the fact that it's so, so formative also of how we view ourselves. But like, just to show the difference between like, this is someone that literally taught you how to walk and talk. And if they were showing you essentially that they couldn't be there for you, of course, it's going to affect you. And so I agree with back to what you were saying of like, but that doesn't then mean you can't show up for yourself and you can't reestablish your self-worth in moving forward for yourself. Again, it's so much easier said than done, but I do, I again, want to have compassion for people of like, this is literally what you were taught.

And to piggyback on that, Alex, because that's a beautiful reminder is, and my suggestion with them be to create space, to explore, to get curious for however it is that you might feel. Given that's the case, so many of mom, though, based on in reaction to her inability to be emotionally present to me. It's something that I have suppressed and, you know, I'm only able to touch on in smaller moments because there is a lot of grief. There is a lot of anger. And when we are feeling that in reaction, especially to a core caregiver, a parent, you know, for instance, we're now at conflict, even within our adult selves. It's very hard, I've noticed for a lot of us as adults to say, this hurt me in childhood, very well-meaning parent. And I'm going to allow in the fact that it did hurt me and I'm angry at you and I'm grieving

what we didn't have. And at the same time, I can be compassionate to all of the fact that it did hurt me and I'm angry at you and I'm grieving what we didn't have. And at the same time, I can be compassionate to all of the circumstances that created this lived experience for both of us. I think sometimes we, and I know I've done this at least, I overstep with over-compassionate compassion for someone else. And these circumstances, all as a protection, of course, because it's safer for me to understand why you are the way you are than for me to really drop in and feel how I feel about what I didn't get, needs I didn't have met in childhood. For me, a connection that I didn't have with my mother. So I just wanted to pause there and piggyback on your beautiful awareness and insight because that even in and of itself is an action, letting in the even ability to begin to explore

how I might feel about what was or wasn't present to me in my own childhood. Yeah, as you're saying that, it makes me think about when we become adults, I feel like there's such shame in, you know, talking to a parent about basically how they affected us because it's like, oh, I should be over this. Like I'm an adult now. So like I should be able, and it's like, oh, I should be over this. Like I'm an adult now.

So like I should be able, and it's like, that's still the parent and child dynamic. They're still your parent and you're still the child in that relationship. And so I think there should always be room to have a conversation. Although obviously the parent may not be as willing and it may hurt them. But I do think if you're able to get to that place, it is very therapeutic if your parent is willing to take some accountability. And if they're not, then again, you can own it of like, I don't need them to acknowledge it.

I know in my reality, that's what happened to me. And so I'm gonna change this for myself moving forward. I am interested to know, as you were talking about your personal experience, how do you think that your relationship with your mom affected your romantic relationships? I mean, I believe as is the case for all of us that how we learn to relate first and foremost to ourselves as a being and to other people is conditioned from those early childhood

experiences. Now, of course, when we're talking about the impact on relationships, of course, that applies as well. How do I show up in terms of my emotional body? Can I even make sense of my emotions? For me, the answer is no. I was so checked out from an early age because that's how my nervous system took care of me with consistently overwhelming emotions and no attuned safe individual

to bring my nervous system back into safety. I did what many of us will do. I checked out. I became so disconnected that for very many years, outside people who had met me would call me aloof, have this idea that nothing bothers me. And what they were really describing was all of these years of that disconnection. So that's very much how I showed up then in my interpersonal, my romantic relationships, always finding myself in one, only ever bringing a performance side of myself, not my full self at all, feeling that hole that I described earlier. I'm deeply alone. No one really understands me or

gets me for many years, pointing the finger, trying to find that right person who just gets it and can understand me only to finally realize gradually over time, of course, resisted it in the beginning that, wait a minute, I'm not bringing myself into my relationships. Because if I'm being fully honest and compassionately honest, I don't know myself. And the aspects of myself that I'm starting to get in touch with, what I think about something, what I might feel about something, I'm so shameful and afraid of how you'll react, what you'll think of me if you'll continue to love me on the other side of seeing the wholeness of me that I continue to only to keep you at an arm's length, yet demand you come closer and to continue that cycle until I again began to show

up differently. Thank you for sharing that. I think a lot of people are going to be able to relate to that. What about the parent who shows their love through buying things? They don't make an effort to have an emotional connection with their child, but they are so quick to offer up a shopping spree as a way of quality time. What impact specifically might this have on a child? Again, we are receiving messages from things that are directly said to us, from things that are done to us, from how we're reinforced. So if, you know, for whatever reason, this parent was only able to connect again, not emotionally, but through this more transactional, right, gifting of whatever it is, the very attuned child will notice the patterns,

will start to see the aspects of how they get rewarded. When is it that this parent, right, shows up gifting me? Is this the only way that I'm able to spend time with my parent? Is in this very transactional receiving of whatever item it is or whatever experience that it is. And again, because as a child, we all need human connections, we will desperately seek to modify ourselves and to fit into that. Being ever present when this parent is available to gift us with their time or their present, their item, whatever it is. And or seeing the things that do get that validation, do get that reward and, you know, showing, expressing those parts of ourselves, squashing everything else so that I can have this crumb

of connection so that that is the way that I can be most present with this caregiver. Likely, we continue then to repeat that either with ourselves to soothe when we're feeling upset. If I go buy this thing, I can feel better temporarily. I'm distracted in the buying of it, right? Receiving something can give me that burst of dopamine just like I got with my parents. We might also then center and structure our relationships in that much more surface way, right?

I'm only loved when you're giving me things. I'm only loved when we're doing these things together. And when you're out of my attentional awareness, out of my presence, not don't have the resources to give me the things. Now I feel that disconnection on a deep rooted level. Yeah, which is so sad because and again, it's if the way that they were showed love is through a gift, then when you get into romantic relationships, you're not allowing yourself to feel the incredible beauty of the other incredible ways that are actually true and not almost tangible in a gift that you can feel love through a partner. And so you're limiting yourself to a love that is conditional and it's

not healthy. But again, it makes sense, the pattern of like, why would you think any differently? That's what your parent showed you love through. So naturally, when you're looking at your partner, you're gonna be like, they didn't give me a gift for this, or they didn't, you know, compliment me and hand me something after I did something. So I must not be good enough. I must not be as close to this person as I thought. So again, I think the whole thing is compassion today, because it is really like, this is not your fault, but it is on you to find a way to change the pattern for yourself because you deserve that. If someone grew up with an alcoholic parent, how might this impact them later in life? Yeah, I think, you know, we can insert whatever addictive behavior, you know behavior that it is. If we had a parent who did use whatever substance that it was to sue, that's usually kind of the way I like to describe

because that's what I truly believe these addictive behaviors are. They're our best attempt, lacking the resources and support in our own childhood, to try to regulate, to try to sue, to try to find comfort for usually something deeper, a deeper emotion that's below the surface. Of course, outwardly, what we see and experience, say with a parent like this then, are their behaviors. And oftentimes when there's an addictive behavior, there's a lack of consistent presence. The person is often out using substances. There's a lack of consistent emotional presence.

We can become so attuned to the external environment. We become a master of seeing and sensing any shifts in that parent, in their mood, what's going to lead us down that road of the addictive spiral, possibly destabilizing our home, maybe even causing outward explosions or harm to our home. And what we'll do, being a little little adaptive being is being so attentive to the external world can create a sense of safety because now I can begin to make choices to somewhat, to the best of my ability, control the world around me by noticing when a mood is shifting, by noticing when, you know, the parent came home with the substance or the alcohol smell on their breath. Now, if I have that anticipatory notice of this possible threatening action that could

happen later, now I can begin to modify. I can begin to tend to the environment. I can begin to tend to the parent or remove myself so that I could remain safe. And that's a lot of the times what I'm describing is that hypervigilance, that always being so attuned to waiting for the next shoe to drop, looking outward as an attempt, again, created in childhood as my best way to keep myself safe when I have had an unpredictable parent or an inconsistent parent.

I become so attuned to the parent, to shifts in the climate, so that I can keep myself safe, that I keep continuing that pattern into my relationships, into my environments, into adulthood. Yeah, I really appreciate you explaining that because unfortunately, I think there's probably so many people that are gonna be listening to this that unfortunately can very, very much so relate to that specific one.

And I have people in my life that have gone through this. And I really think it's unfortunate when you look at the effects of a parent that is abusing a substance, that it really does impact the child's personality, right? Someone who may not have been a wallflower or an angry person. Like I have multiple people in my life where I'm like, someone may be more timid and to themselves, or there's then the angry person that it's like constantly trying to go against. And it was ingrained in them from childhood

of there's like the one sibling that's going to be the one that's being way more vocal and going at the parent. And then there's the one that's going to be the peacemaker and like so terrified of just wanting to make everything good because

usually the environment is so rocky that if they can try to stabilize in any capacity, they feel like they're doing their job. And being on your toes at all time or your heels or whatever it is, like, I feel like that doesn't allow, again, this person to fully form who they would have been and their sense of self because they're constantly trying to like look left, look right, make sure everything's okay. And it's like, well, how are you doing? And no one usually asks that person that question. Yeah. So, so beautiful, Alex, because what you're actually describing and what we're mapping these external ways of being and behaviors, habits onto is our nervous system and how it naturally operates. And to speak to your point, those of us that fawn,

that's what we're talking about, always tending, the peacemaker, the helper, I do agree with you, is it gets validated, right? We don't cause worry, we don't cause stress, or maybe we're even celebrated because we're the easy child in our home, though that's still driven by that lack of safety, right? To fawn, to be hypervigilant means I don't feel safe tuning my attention to my body, to my needs, to my emotions, let alone to express them in the world. Similarly, even you describing the combative, right? That is a function of our nervous systems fight response to always engage head on fighting, screaming. If there's, you know, a perceived injustice in the home, the child who's, you know's standing up at the table and not going to put up with it and yelling and exploding outward with all of

their emotions, isn't that they're a difficult child. It's because that's how their nervous system is trying to fight whatever perceived threat. If it's not a perceived threat to my physical body, it might be to my emotional body. So you very beautifully are describing, and I'll just throw the third one in there for all of us avoiders or the flares of the fight, the flight response, the ones who just ignore things, distract away, always endlessly doing, keeping my attention in my looping thoughts or onto the next thing as a way to avoid the overdoers, overachievers can be a function of that flight of attention away from what's really going on beneath the surface.

So I love how beautiful this conversation is evolving to really highlight that all of these even ways of being, I'm imagining some listeners are like, well, I am just a people pleaser. That's who I am. That's an adapted part of you that's allowed you to keep yourself safe in those early environments.

Now you have the opportunity to create a little more space and safety. And the reason I'm having this nervous system conversation is to really highlight how it does involve the body, to speak to your point. To know what I want means first to feel safe looking, to reconnect with the body that's having the desire or the emotional self

that has a ping of interest to something. When I'm in survival mode, that's not a priority. A priority is just continuing to keep myself safe into each of these next moments. So I love how this conversation is unfolding where, right, we become aware of these habits. We create the opportunity or possibility that they aren't who we fully are. We begin to see them as a function of our best attempts at creating safety. And now we give ourselves the opportunity to embody, to actually do something different, to create the safety in my body so that I can find my way back to who I really am.

It's so, so good. you mentioned and i i love that topic i mean i don't love it guys but like i love that we're touching on it to help everyone um you mentioned kind of this labeling getting a little bit more deep into that what happens when parents start labeling their children? Let's say you were the easy child and your brother was the difficult child. And we always heard this narrative growing up. How might that affect us when we get older? I think any time we label a behavior, an action, a constellation of habits, the byproduct could possibly be for the person who's being labeled is they assume that as their identity. They make their label this very habitant. I hope by this point in the conversation, listeners are starting to see all the different ways that how we are really is a byproduct of our habits, we can make that easily who we are entirely.

And then the more consistently, especially if it's a label given to us by these early core relationships that again, we need, right? We can begin to then wear that label as who we are. And it can then for some of us feel limiting, right? Because there's a part of our brain that will always seek to achieve

the certainty of being right. So before we know it now, not only are we continuing to be that label, for me, that problem-free ideal child, but we're actually now, our brain is communicating with our environment so much so that it's going to confirm our beliefs. It's going to put a filter on whatever it is that is happening because we can't physiologically deal

with the amount of information in any one moment of being human. There's just way too much. So all of our minds will filter out what is personally important. And one thing it'll do, use this as our beliefs about ourself, our identity. So if I do begin to where, right, I'm perfect as an identity, I will begin to filter out my current experiences through that lens of seeing all of these moments where I'm being assessed for my perfection or not, obviously perceiving the areas

where I'm not living up to my potential as a threat, keeping me again locked in this cycle where I fear being any other way outside of my identity because it's not only so unfamiliar, I don't actually know how other people will react. And I will assume that they'll react the way my parents once did. I will put that filter of, you won't like this about me, right? So I'm only going to live into this identity, keeping me more locked in that cycle. Yeah, you use the word limiting and it's, I can imagine, let's say someone was on the other side labeled the difficult child, but that difficult child had, you know, a parent that was abusing a substance or was abusive or

was not present. And really, the difficult child was just trying to get attention or mitigate a situation. And, you know, there's so many reasons why a child would be difficult. But again, most of the time, it's because their nervous system is trying to combat something in front of them. And so it's I can imagine how hurtful for that child it is to be labeled the difficult child when really it's a cry for help mostly. But then them leaning into that label, it limits them to be the sweet child and have caring moments and to be shy at times. But like maybe that's not how they want to be. And usually it's not. It was a trigger of their environment around them. And so, yeah, it's

having grace with yourself to know like if there was a label of their environment around them. And so, yeah, it's having grace with yourself to know like if there was a label. I can also imagine if you were labeled the shy child, like, well, what if you wanted to like speak up at a birthday party or an event or something, but you were so limited and then you start to doubt yourself that you can at all divert from the path of that one label.

And so it really is damaging to your sense of self. This, I think, happens when we change, when we heal. Even going in a quote-unquote positive direction, often the byproduct for a lot of us is we shed identities. We shed ways of being that many people in our life have grown used to, have become expectant of. So as we shift and shed all of this and become a new, in whatever way it is, experiment with new ways of being in relation to another person, at minimum, they're surprised and they might not, they might be beyond that and not, you know, kind of in support of, because it is destabilizing for people around us. It really is, I personally think so important to find distance from your immediate family in life.

And I know sometimes, you know, people stay in their hometown and that's totally fine, but like finding ways to distance yourself from the people that initially essentially were so formative in who you are, it gives you space to allow yourself to reflect on what you like and what you don't like about what was basically placed on you from childhood. But sometimes when we're in the presence of people that see us one specific way and they pigeonhole us, it doesn't allow you to grow. And so I really do urge everyone, like whether you have the ability to move or to find a new friend group, or even just to find any space that is yours and has no connection to your immediate family. It really can allow you to see the world through a different lens because growing up, the only lens you saw through was your family, right?

Yeah, I think too, to speak to the point, this is why so many of us can have success when we go away on vacation at a retreat, right? We can experiment, explore and have more space to be different. And then chances are before very long after we've returned home into that embedded system, all of those beautiful habits that we intended to keep with us from that moment of vacation or that moment of retreat, before long, they go right back into that old way of being. And just something I want to speak here too. And one of the major seeds of inspiration for even the community of self-healers that I started to use that hashtag

once I created the Instagram account, Ballistic Psychologist. And now also for the membership that I offer is the virtual landscape of space to have conversations with other people. Because what we're both really talking about here, Alex, is how blinded we are to our own experience, how subjective we are to just how life is and it's how we know it to be. So any intentional moment, whether it's moving physically to a geographic location or just visiting, you know,

virtually with other people, other humans who've had different experiences, make sense of the world differently, can give us just a little more of that separate vantage point, a little bit more of a possibility to be more objective to how it is that we are so that then we can explore whether or not those things still align for who we want to become. And I just was thinking about social media. I think there's such positives and negatives that come with connecting with people online. But I would urge Daddy Gang listening, like if you find yourself constantly using the internet to escape and you're on TikTok

and you're watching these people's lives and you're feeling so fulfilled by engaging and watching people's lives rather than being present in your own, I do think it can make you one recognize that of like, hey, why am I so obsessed with watching everyone else's life? And I am not happy with my own,

but I do think it can be detrimental if you're not aware of that because it's just an escape, but you're just on loop. You're not even, you're never gonna become present in your life. You're just gonna keep using that as an escape. And so I think there's so many beautiful things that come with social media and connecting with other people but if you're not if you're just a viewer and you're

not engaging I think there's a big difference and just watch yourself because I have done it I have found myself really unhappy in my life I'm like watching people and be like I wish I was that person and their life looks so great and it's's like, well, hold on, your life isn't going to get great. And you're not going to be happy if you just keep watching this person. That's not your life. Find a way to find your own happiness. So just a little anecdote, because I know social media can be so detrimental. No, I really appreciate you offering that antidote, Alex, because I agree with you wholeheartedly. I think any choice we make to be a conscious participant in making that choice and consuming that content,

whatever it is, sets us up to be more empowered, which means hitting that pause, looking at whatever habit it is and exploring what is my intention when I go on to scroll, to get lost in what could be, what is my intention? How am I hoping this shifts what I'm experiencing or feeling in this moment? To speak to your point, a lot of what we're doing that can be seemingly, you know, validated from

the outside or positive for our growth. Oh, well, I'm just looking for people whose lives I want to become. Similarly, I see this a lot of times with activity, with working out. Well, I'm just pushing myself to the gym seven days a week, you know, for multiple hours a day. Isn't this what I need to be doing to be healthy? I think when we're not conscious and a participant in all of the different moments where that's not, you know, of benefit to me to do, or the fact that maybe the scrolling is a distraction, maybe the gym is a distraction, maybe I'm pushing myself past the limits of emotional bandwidth I have, a physical bandwidth I have, and maybe a better option would be being a conscious participant, giving myself the opportunity to show up

and make those decisions, which might look like if I do pick up my hat, you know, to do my habitual, whether it's the doom scroll that I know I can very habitually do to validate all of the stress and all of the negative perception of myself, all of those fears grounded in my own childhood, or the seemingly positive, you know, hurrah, distraction of all of these lives that I

want to achieve, it might just mean hitting pause and exploring what is the intention? How am I feeling in this moment? Am I seeking this thing to help me or make me feel better? And even if that is so, can I give myself the opportunity to choose another way to deal with how I'm feeling in this moment? Can I just reconnect and be with how I'm feeling as opposed to if it is that example of distracting myself away? Or can I be with the fact that my body is physically fatigued right now and can't just push past its limits to go to the gym? Can I allow myself to be in that discomfort of tiredness or whatever it might be, just to use the gym example. Such good advice.

What does it mean when the child has to start taking care of their parent from a young age and essentially play caregiver or therapist? And I think, you know, again, this is a big umbrella that a lot of us for different circumstances have fallen into, whether it's the absent parent where we were the only person physically able to begin to care for ourselves or our siblings, whether it was a lot of times I think about this too, especially with, you know, first and second generation immigrant parents here who might not be speaking the language and how often it is a child then that has to play translator, that has to engage in, you know, very mature conversations to quite literally help this parent navigate life in another country in a different language. And of course, all of the other means.

So emotionally, right? If we have a parent who's emotionally withdrawn or depressed, then that might mean that we are showing up in care of our parents, tending to their bedside, tending to their moods, helping them feel better. So I gave many different examples, but what essentially it is, is we are parentified when we are seen as an equal or a parent or made to fit into the role of being an equal or a parent to our own parents.

A lot of times too, this looks like the very well-intentioned idea that we're just being close by having a parent share maybe developmentally inappropriate aspects of relationships with the other caregiver or the father or the other parent or just aspects of their life. If they're dating, sharing details

as if this child, adolescent, teenager, whatever age it is, is a friend as opposed to a developmentally different stage of their life, where especially if it's hearing things about the other parent, in this idea of being a confidant, can be actually very inappropriate and very confusing for the child. So many different reasons, but it's when, again, that structure of power in the sense that the parent is the person who, you know, hypothetically is developmentally responsible, is developmentally mature, needs to care for the needs of this

developmentally immature being. And for the many different reasons that doesn't happen, we become parentified when we have to, again, either embody that role of caring for the self because my parents aren't able or available to, or even at times I become a peer or a parent, a caregiver to my parent. Yeah. I have a friend that went through this with a parent. And I remember like we were in our twenties and I turned to her and I was like, you need to pause and take care of yourself for a second. Since our childhood, I've watched you be taking care of every single person in your family and you are so selfless and you are brilliant.

And I know it was a survival tactic because you had no other option, but what do you want now for your life? And because it then carries into her job, she was doing other people's work for them and helping them out. And I'm like, hold on, wait a second, like care for yourself first. And I think that there's an inability at

a young age to be able to put yourself first, which really is so important. And by parentifying this child, the child then goes through life, just constantly trying to manage situations and never putting themselves first and never asking themselves like, what do I want? What do I want with my life? You almost are leading a life of constantly trying to take care of everyone else. And I think that can obviously be shown through people pleasing tendencies. But I was so proud of her because she eventually, I remember we had a moment in the past few years where she was like, I think I'm going to do this for myself. You're right. And so it's just like you can get into a loop again and having compassion with yourself of like, why would you know any differently?

But it must feel damn good once you do go away from the norm for yourself for a minute and let yourself breathe your own air and be like, what do I want? Yes. And to complicate things further, Alex, initially, at least, it doesn't actually feel so good because the byproduct of caring for someone else is how unfamiliar and vulnerable it feels to need care, to allow that need to be in the relationship, to, God forbid, express that need, let alone receive that. And this was, again, that very counterintuitive thing I discovered in myself. While that need, let alone receive that. And this was, again, that very counterintuitive thing I discovered in myself. While that hole, that ache, desperately wanted connection,

because it was so unfamiliar, I didn't have close, authentic, deep connections with my mom, with my caregivers, with anyone in my family. And I'm still learning how to build that now because at my core, as much as I desperately want this, again, this is where that bridge of logic, self-awareness, okay, I know this about myself. I need space to explore, you know, what it is that I want to, so that I can then begin to receive it. There's actually immediately discomfort in doing that. I don't feel comfortable acknowledging even to myself

before I even speak it into the world around me that I have needs. And I saw that same cycle in myself. It was so, and in moments still, it's deeply uncomfortable to acknowledge that I have a need. God forbid it's an emotional need, need support, need to be heard, need to be connected to. That's still very unfamiliar for me as a human in this body, in this system. So being open, which is why kind of we were beginning to talk about that in the beginning, compassion, this heart space is an action. To receive care, we have to feel safe and familiar with opening ourself up to allow someone else to support us. And again, as counterintuitive as it is for many of us, if we didn't have that experience

consistently in childhood, logically, we could tell ourselves, well, just figure out what you need and ask for it. The lived experience of doing that is going to feel so much more vulnerable and so much more uncomfortable. Right. Because like you said in the beginning, it's like you have to be intentional about deconstructing this habit that you've learned from since you basically came out of the womb. So it's like you now, of course it's gonna be uncomfortable because it's almost like you're starting back at age three and you're now gonna try to learn a new habit for yourself of, oh, asking for help is okay. Sharing my feelings is okay.

That is, yeah, you have a long way to go, but it is an exciting uphill journey because it's your journey and it's not someone else influencing how you receive love or ask for love, et cetera. We kind of were talking a lot about parents that were unable to give to the child and the effects, but I'm interested to know about the helicopter parent and how does it affect someone when they're raised with a sole focus on performance and achievement and you're so amazing and I love you and we're going to get you into the best

college and it's just like 24-7 fixation on the child. How does that affect the child? Yeah, I appreciate that we're touching in on this one because again, I think what often is born out of a very well-intentioned place to create opportunity, right, for this child in the future, maybe even to create safety or to undo some experiences that the parent had in their own childhood. So say, right, I didn't have availability or presence in my caregivers, I might overcompensate by affirming that I'm going to always be present to you, I'm going to always be tending to you, helicoptering around you, making

sure that you're always okay, generally, or like to speak to your point in specific areas, make sure that I set you up for opportunity in the future by giving you the best or by, you know, cultivating your talents, whatever it might be. The underlying message when there isn't a limit, a separation, right, between parent and caregiver, where the caregiver gives the child space to define their own limits, to figure out what's comfortable for them without being told what it is that they want or need or need to be eating or doing at any given moment, they're not going to have that ability to be curious and to define their own boundaries. So chances are what happens over time is their

self-trust erodes. They don't trust themselves making decisions and they continue to look at, seek, or even feel like they need someone else, whether it's their romantic partner in their adult years or a guru, or they need someone else directing them through life. Because when we don't have, again, limits or the space to define our own limits, to explore what our thoughts are, to explore that, you know what, I might be naturally gifted in this one area, though, what really interests me and lights me up is this other area of my life. If we only got validated for, you know, achievement in a particular way, again, very similarly, like we've been talking

about, we stop, we suppress all of this other aspect of ourselves. And we begin to then modify into what gained praise, what gained connection in those early childhoods. But so again, to simplify it, when we don't have boundaries, when we have someone helicoptering around us, always vigilant to our needs and trying to meet them before we even know we have them,

we're actually doing a disservice because we're not creating the space for the child to explore themselves and the many differences that they might experience in terms of their thoughts, how they feel, what works for them when they need, you know, to be regulated. It might not be exactly what the parent is anticipating and that's why we need to create the space in childhood, but we don't have it. Again, we continue to outsource. We look to the world around us for answers and deeply, we're just unsure of our own self. So, you know, as we are just talking all about the effects essentially of our parents and our childhood, what are some specific strategies you teach in order for someone to begin to repair their inner child?

I think the first thing is to gain awareness, you know, as we are just spent this entire conversation doing that we do have these habitate patterned ways of being, of tending to our emotions, of making sense of the world around us that were oftentimes, again, born out of our earliest childhood environments. And I say this specifically when we're talking about acknowledging the inner child within, because I know a lot of us, and if I'm being honest, there was a part of me that even rolled my eyes a little bit when I was an adult being met with this idea of I have this child-like spot in me or like part of my subconscious mind. I don't believe that. And in reality, and to speak to all the people too,

who are like, well, my childhood is in the past. It's decades beyond that. Leave the past in the past. I think that acknowledgement is an action step of that awareness of creating the ability to see all of those habits. And again, you don't necessarily need to go back. And I'm sharing this for the many people

that I'm now realizing are like me, that because I was so shut down, I was so dissociated, I was so overwhelmed with stress in childhood, that I actually have very limited memory of the ins and outs, the happenings. If you think about your childhood as a movie, I have very few scenes to revisit back to. So I like to share this here because sometimes I'll get asked the question of, you know, I've been hearing from a lot of people that they very universally, very few of us remember very much from our childhood experiences. And it's not as I once believed because something's wrong in my brain, though my brain has been impacted by the amount of cortisol that was

present. It actually shrinks the hippocampus, one of the many areas that, you know, translate to memory in our brain. So ultimately, we lack memory. Do we have to know what happened? No. Our inner child, all of those habits, the habitual ways of caring for my body, of tending to my emotions, of being explosive outward or, you know, removing myself, disconnecting like I once did are all living in us now. So that first step of awareness, acknowledgement, consciousness is an embodied step of action. Seeing in your present life, not needing to go back and know exactly what happened, who did what, seeing the byproduct of it now, because chances are your inner child is still

running, especially those reactive moments when you're feeling out of control with emotions and you're screaming and yelling or you're icing and shutting down and not talking to the people around you. That is a prime example of how embedded this inner child is our mind and body.

So the first action step is always becoming a conscious being, setting an alarm for your phone or a reminder that you do want to practice tuning in, maybe first beginning with what are the habits that just take you through your day? I assure listeners, if they set the intention for the next several weeks, they will see all of those behavioral habits that are coloring how you feel in your body. If you turn that attentional spotlight then too to your mind and begin to notice,

how is your mind making sense of your daily happenings? You'll see a lot of habitual narratives, habitual stories. And that's then the place to create that space to separate from, okay, that is how I've been, but that's not who I am. That is the daily practice of setting that foundation of consciousness, acknowledging that, again, a lot of how we're driven to react, to be in the world is a remnant of those early experiences or the inner child all productive to confront your parents and ask for, I guess, like an apology for things that we think they messed up on? how we feel our experience, our reality to anyone, whether it's a parent, a close loved one,

a romantic partner, whoever it might be, can be of great benefit as long as we're clear on what the intention of that communication is. If the intention is, I'm saying this because it's important to me that I voice how this was for me and the pain that I've experienced without any expectation. Of course, I might have a desire that you see it from my perspective or can see it from my perspective and offer me that apology and I feel better. If that's the only reason I'm going into this communication

is so that you see the way I want you to see things in this past experience and I want you to make me feel better, then a lot of us set ourselves up for disappointment. Because to have that acknowledgement from a parent, that means that the parent has to first probably, right, feel the initial reaction of how they might feel hearing someone that they loved. And, you know, we're very well intentioned and present to or, you know, parented in whatever narrative they've created. Tell them otherwise. It's going to challenge their story, their version of events, and then holding the space to say, okay, I can now embody life or empathetically

from your experience. I might know why I did what I did, but let me become you in this moment, little child, and let me see and emotionally hold space for how that might've been, not about me, from your lived experience of me. And then maybe I can extend into that apology or that statement of, or that action of, you know, that repair or reparation. And that's, again, a very, very tall order. So while some of us, you know, might decide, you know what, I will feel valid enough.

This is important for me to say it, even if I don't get that desired reaction, even if I get outright dismissal or I have someone who definitively tells me this isn't how it was, can I feel okay and grounded and affirmed in my reality even in those moments? And for the large majority of us who, you know what?

Yes, I can learn how to create and validate my reality separate from your agreement with us, then I think those conversations can be incredibly healing. Though again, if we're only going in to shift or change the way someone else perceives something or what they do with this new perception, then a lot of us are setting ourselves up for disappointment. That's great advice. To wrap things up, what is your best advice for someone who hasn't examined how their relationship with their parents affected them in adulthood? And they're sitting here listening to this like, oh God, okay, I'm going to try to start becoming self-aware, but like,

what do I, what is it, what am I about to discover? What am I going to do? How do I go about this? And how do I move forward? This is a lot. I think the best place to start is to just become present to themselves as a relational being, right? How do you, and again, I'm emphasizing this and this might sound simplistic to many of you though, our way of being in our, in our relationship is much like our autopilot. Well, what do you mean? That's just, I'm just in relationship how I am, right? So really beginning to just see, well, how is that that you are? How do you consistently feel about or experience your relationships? How do you feel a part of them? Or are you, recurring theme we've talked about, the people pleaser who's not a part of any of your relationships, as long as you're servicing them, that's the role that you play. And to speak to your point of it being a lot,

anytime we're looking at ourselves, anytime we're trying to do something new by becoming conscious to our relational selves in this way, there is the reality that it will be a lot. It's going to challenge that desire for the familiar that prefers the coast. And just what do you mean, look at myself in relationships? I know how I am. It's just how I am in relationships, right? We desire to stay the same. Our subconscious feels a sense of safety in the same. So when we notice that resistance to doing new things that we don't even then get started

or maybe we're a couple days into exploring our relationships and you know, this is boring, it's not helping, before we know it, we're back into that more autopiloted way of being. So I think anyone leaving this podcast, wherever you are on the journey, can just make that daily commitment to become more conscious of how they are in relationships, of how they consistently feel, of what they consistently think, of what they consistently do. And that might then create a little bit of space to drop in and determine

if you haven't yet even asked yourself or if you aren't always met with how you feel about it, how do you feel? Is it an alignment? Do you feel positive and light and airy and connected to this person or are you like the large majority of us and you feel dissatisfied, disconnected, resentful,

angry more often than not? And now you have a bit of space to begin to make those new choices dr nicole i can't thank you enough daddy gang i really encourage you to read nicole's book how to meet yourself i think that's also a great step to starting it's like sometimes reading and ingesting something within yourself and not having to do anything, but just ingest it and see how it makes you feel. And maybe what it brings up for you is a great step. I can't thank you enough for sharing your personal stories and also just like your wisdom on this topic

because I know it's gonna help so, so many people listening. And it is an exciting conversation because it is the beginning of the rest of your life and you taking control of it and having some peace within yourself. So thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me. I have chills hearing you say that and I do hope that all of you listening can leave this with that empowering sentiment which that while overwhelming this gift of consciousness is really a gift of conscious creation. And I am so inspired by that. So thank you all for listening.