Saturn Returns with Caggie - 3.1 Boundaries and personal responsibility with The Holistic Psychologist

Episode Date: April 5, 2021

What better way to kick off the season than with the holistic psychologist Dr Nicole LePera. Starting out with a small following with the intention to post content that she needed for her own spiritual healing journey, Dr Nicole has now amassed over 3.4 million followers and released a book called “How to Do the Work.” Nicole focuses on Ego, trauma, boundaries, the nervous system, epigenetics, conscious awareness, reparenting and more, and believes everybody has the capacity to hold themselves and heal themselves. Caggie and Nicole discuss how we can get back in our bodies, tap into our intuition, interdependence, connection vs attachment and how to know when we need to draw a boundary with people in our lives. --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. The first point of exploration could just be, how do you feel? How do you feel when this one person is in your text? How do you feel when you know you have plans with them coming up, whatever those plans might be? How do you feel during your time with this person? How do you feel after? Do you start to feel tense and constricted anytime this person is in your ether in any way? Or do you feel full, expansive, like your cup has been filled up once you've

interacted or exchanged with them? Our feelings, our energies can start to give us clues. In this first episode of the new season of Saturn Returns, I am delighted to be joined by the holistic psychologist, Dr. Nicole Lepera. Now, I first came across the holistic psychologist, I think through Lacey Phillips, and became obsessed with her work. She's completely blown up online and just released a book and she's always been one of my dream guests for the podcast. She has a very unique holistic approach to psychology and healing and Nicole focuses on ego, trauma, boundaries, the nervous system, epigenetics, conscious awareness, reparenting and more and believes everybody

has the capacity to hold themselves and heal themselves. In this episode we discuss how to tap into our intuition, what healthy independence looks like in a relationship, how to distinguish between connection versus attachment and how to know when we need to draw a boundary with people in our lives. But before we get into this episode let's check in with Nora, our astrological guide for this season. Inner limitations and boundaries in astrology are ruled by Saturn. When we're acting out of fear or because we want to keep the peace rather than honor our voice, it's our inner Saturn, our inner disciplinarian, the voice of early authority figures in our lives, shackling

us to past experiences that informed that fear. We'll often see this in a chart that has Saturn aspecting the moon or fourth house in some way, or even when the moon is in Capricorn or Aquarius. Our moon in our charts is our primal way of connecting to our intuition. It's our ability to lean into our natural feminine quality that all genders possess. It's our inner knowing. It allows us to see past our fears and anxiety that more likely than not were instilled into us by disciplinarian figures growing up. So when up until our Saturn return we've blocked ourselves from our subtle compass, from our intuition, we'll be giving lessons regarding this during our Saturn return and Saturn

transits and these lessons will almost force us to say oh I knew it I wish I had followed my intuition until eventually we do after the Saturn transits or after a Saturn return Nicole you're making me look bad not only are you glowing in some pristine studio which highlights the fact that I'm in a sort of porridge stained hoodie in the countryside oh you're not seeing my my coffee is all down the bottom of my shirt so thankfully you don't see any of that so it's all smoke and mirrors don't worry okay okay that good. That makes me feel a little bit better. Well, Nicole, thank you very much for joining me. I've been a fan of your work for a very long time. The Holistic Psychologist, if those who don't know, it's just become a complete sensation online. You have created a cult following. Can you tell the audience a little bit about where that began, where that journey begun for you? Absolutely, Kagi, and thank you for having me and having this chat with me this morning.

Ten years ago, my relationship with online was really non-existent. I was acting and operating as a clinical psychologist where I would see clients week after week, year after year. week after week, year after year. And what I started to realize, what I started to feel, I should say, is really disempowered because I'm someone on the human side of things who have struggled with anxiety, with panic, with OCD-like symptoms. And by that point in my life, somewhere in my 30s, early 30s, not only was I still struggling in many ways, really across the board in my life, I was beginning to realize that none of my clients were really creating sustainable and maintainable change. So diving into and beginning to understand why that was, I really met a lot of new research, a lot of new understanding, and I really began to

understand the limits of the old way of working, which really was kind of lopping off the brain, the mind. And I was the doctor of that and really tinkering with things from, you know, changing our thought patterns and learning how to create change in our life, just really honoring our mind. And I came to realize that that was just simply not enough, that we are a whole person. We have a physical body. I believe that there's a spiritual self or an essence that's dying to express into the world. And at that point, I really began to formulate this more holistic model, which brought me then to use online as my first platform. For me, it was an exercise in speaking my truth. Because what I'd come to become aware of, part of the reason why

I was still struggling so much was because of how I was filtering that truth for the entirety of my life. So that was my initial motivation in creating the account. And then of course, once I started sharing my ideas, my thoughts, my journey, it was really evident to me how universally resonating these concepts and this work was. How old were you when you had that moment where you were like, it kind of became so imbalanced that you had to start speaking your truth? It was, it wasn't like a moment. I think for me, my process was more of a gradual stage of realization. You know, for me, it was physical symptoms that I continued to struggle with that were, you know, making me feel physically unwell.

And I think a lot of us have that. And then we're sent into the silo house of doctors. I find that a lot of these models are more about symptom management or kind of pushing down symptoms, symptom repression, as opposed to understanding what's underlying those symptoms. And it was a lack of alignment for me, a lifetime of that lack of alignment and very real imbalances then that were in my physiology. I know I spent a lot of time disconnected from myself, lost in thought, or as I like

to say, lost somewhere else, where for me, it was sometimes even undefinable. I didn't really know where I was. I just really wasn't fully present in my body to whatever experience was unfolding around me. And I used to call that my spaceship. Our symptoms are messengers. There's a reason we're feeling in the way that we're feeling or our body is responding or reacting in the way that it is. There's wisdom in there. And if we can unpack that, we can give ourself what we need to be more regulated. And I also think a lot of us are conditioned to believe that we don't have within us what we need to be full, to have a fulfilling

life. So instead, and I've done this too, we develop a consistent habit of always looking outside of ourself, outsourcing for the answers, whether it's in someone else and what they think we should do or how we should heal, or whether, again, it's that external thing I'm ingesting to help me. I believe, again, that all of it is within. Many of us have to peel back the layers of the onion, have to teach our body how to become physically and physiologically balanced, though I do believe it is possible for each of us. Someone always says to me, a friend of mine, he always says, you hold the keys to your kingdom, no one else. And it's something that I struggle with, and I'm sure a lot of other people do, is this idea of taking

authority for yourself and also this concept of boundaries, which gets thrown around a lot. People love using it. But I wonder, and I'd love to talk to you a little bit about actually what they mean and how we romanticize the enmeshment of lack of boundaries or like energies between people and how you see that manifest in adult relationships

and how that can be problematic. In terms of personal responsibility, I think it challenges most of us at our core belief system. I think it's scary. As humans, we don't actually like to change. While we are incredibly adaptive and capable of incredible changes throughout our lifetime, our brains, our bodies are neuroplastic. They can create new firings and wirings, as we say. The process of creating change to our subconscious, which is where most of us are operating out of 95% of the day, change, the unfamiliar, is threatening. For some of us, even hearing these ideas can start to activate us. Stir something.

Can stir some things up. And I think that there's another interesting side of stepping into personal responsibility, which is a bit counterintuitive. A lot of times we feel like it's hard to acknowledge the part I'm playing in creating my reality around me because it's scary to consider that I have power. It's scary to change. It's scary to show up now possibly connected to our power source and expressing more authentically in the world. Anytime we do that, we're vulnerable. We could be met with, and we are often met with, the reactions of people around us. And those of us that are creating change when we're in systems already of relationships, meaning when we have relationships and now we're changing, those relationships change too. And that can be really destabilizing. So I think self-responsibility is a challenging belief

So I think self-responsibility is a challenging belief to embody for all of those reasons. And in terms of boundaries and how this plays in, when I think about boundaries, the first word that comes up a lot of times and actually was yelled at me when I started to use boundaries in my life was this concept of selfish. to use boundaries in my life was this concept of selfish. And I think a lot of times we do have this idea that showing up in service of someone else or merging, putting someone else's needs before our own and being that selfless, endlessly caring human is what we're all striving to be and to do. And I think sometimes it is idealized. Some of us were even given messages within our family or within our cultures or within our religious institutions of how we ought to be living like that because that's quote unquote what a good person does. Though again,

when you hear me speak of boundaries, putting limits is always in service of allowing me to be in alignment so that I can serve more fully someone else. That's a different type of in service, in my opinion, than that codependency, than putting someone else, the responsibility, here's that word again, on someone else for having my needs met. Because what I've lived, and I think a lot of us do, that outsource in that way, our tendency becomes I look at the people I've been in relationship with and I blame them for my continued lack of unmet needs, right?

Or for my continued lack of meeting my needs. I look at, well, you weren't unable to provide me this and you're not compassionate enough over here. And some of us actually go through relationships looking for that something else outside. We get really resentful. So the more we define limits and the more we show up as a full, whole individual, when we are in service of other people, we're doing so more authentically and from a space where we can even. Absolutely. And I think also it's, I don't know, I can't speak for everybody, of course, but for a lot of my like romantic life, the normal pattern was this kind of quite

codependent, enmeshed behavior. And the thing I think that happens with it is that, like you say, it's never enough, because what you're searching for externally, you can only really find in yourself. But I guess you have to have a degree of dependency on each other for the relationship to flourish. And that is how we're wired as human beings. How do you establish the line between the two? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I call it in my book, and I actually have the final chapter is all on the concept, I call this interdependence. How can I show up as a fully self-expressed authentic human that has needs and that's able to even express those needs? For some of us without limits, it is going to be a

process of exploration with where that line is. There's no universal, and I think this is one of the areas where we look for that. What is the formula? How will I know if my need is being met or isn't being met? Where do I need my limit? I think dropping into our bodies and learning how we feel can be the most helpful tool to navigate. What do I mean when I say that? This could be as simple as once you've heard our conversation today, right? You might want to go explore, see how and if you have boundaries in your relationships. The first point of exploration could just be, how do you feel? How do you feel when this one person is in your text? How do you feel when you know you have plans with them coming up, whatever those plans

might be? How do you feel during your time with this person? How do you feel after? Do you feel, here's really two simple categories. Do you start to feel tense and constricted anytime this person is in your ether in any way? Or do you feel full, expansive, like your cup has been filled up once you've, you know, this person you've interacted or exchanged with them?

Our feelings, our energies can start to give us clues. This is assuming, however – so let me just go back in time just for one quick step. This is assuming you're in your body and you're connected to your energy center, because a lot of us aren't. So some of us might be hearing me talk, especially if you're living life on a spaceship like I'd been, you might say, this is fine and good. I have no idea what you're talking about. My body doesn't constrict or expand. I don't know any of this. So the foundational piece of work that you'll always hear me speak of endlessly is learning how to be consciously embodied. For some of us,

learning how to create the safety in our bodies to be here, to be able to reconnect with that inner guidance. Once we do, then like I said, we can just begin to explore how we feel. It could be as simple as that. And if you find yourself consistently answering, constricted, depleted, not great, tense, stressed, anytime this person is around or the idea of them comes up, that might be an area where you might want to put a boundary. What are your sort of tools or tips for becoming more consciously in your body? Yes. So this for me, living on that spaceship was the large majority of the beginning of my healing journey. For me, you know, I had to first become aware of how conscious or unconscious I was. I think a great

little trick or tool or test assessment, if you will, is setting an alarm for random times throughout the day. And every time that alarm goes off, I want you to first note where your attention was. Where were you? Were you fully immersed in whatever it is that you were doing at that moment in time when that alarm went off? Or, as many of us are often, were you somewhere else? Were you rehashing the argument you had with your partner that morning? Were you worrying about the meeting you have tomorrow? And really the list is endless, all of the other places that we might be outside of being here. And then if you are, like many of us are, noticing that we're not being present, the reason why we want to acknowledge our lack of presence in that moment, anytime we're lost in thought, we're somewhere else, chances are we're operating from that

subconscious. So we're allowing all of those conditioned habits and patterns to be those reactions that we're seeing ourself experience throughout our day. So we want to learn in that moment, consistently teach ourselves how to be grounded, how to be present in our bodies. I talk about grabbing a hook or finding a preferred hook for our attention. So noting that in that moment, my attention wasn't fully here to come back into my body. We have two hooks that are always available to each of us. The first one is being our breath. So in that moment when I notice I'm somewhere else, I could turn my full attention to the natural act of breathing that my body is already doing in that moment. And if I hook my attention on the act of my breath,

now I'm in my body. Our next hooks can be our senses. What are we seeing? What are we hearing? What are we touching? What are we tasting? Some of us, you know, have a bit more success using that as a hook, something that's physically, sensorially present in our moment. Same thing. If I can put my attention fully on the experience of the food that maybe I was eating when my

alarm went off, or if I can smell, right, the aromatherapy that I might have in my office when that alarm went off, same thing. Now I'm back consciously in my body. I love that. That's great. Okay, to go back slightly to the relationship piece, you said a lot about how, you know, how does it feel whether we are feeling expansive calm so I have learned what um the indicators are for me to help navigate things you know through my life through the physical senses but what's quite interesting in relationships and I think people get in you know a confused state is being able to differentiate between a connection and an attachment yes so I definitely know how all-consuming an attachment can be which you feel like is the long lost connection of your entire being and that you

would you know separated on some other planet and you've reunited in this one and you've only known them for five minutes but you're destined to spend your life together and it's a good thing kagi because now you're whole again exactly exactly that whole thing of like this person completes me it's like we were saying at the beginning kind of meshment of of energy and it's a it's a real kind of visceral thing but as i've got a bit older and a little bit wiser hopefully i'm realizing that it's not always such a healthy thing. And actually, like you say, the feelings around it, I get a very prickly feeling on the back of my neck. I feel very constricted. I won't be sleeping properly. I feel anxious. I'm not present. I'm not able to expand with that person or in my life versus what a connection actually, like a healthy connection looks like where

everything kind of drops and you feel calm and like your soul is just like, good. But we heavily romanticize the former when actually it's just an unhealthy attachment. So I'd love to explore that a little bit and where that comes from and what's being triggered. that a little bit and where that comes from and what's being triggered. Yeah, I love this. And this is such an important distinction to begin to make. Our dynamics, the way we show up in relationship is so greatly impacted by our first experiences in relationships, typically with our caregivers, whatever the iteration of the family unit that we were born into. And for some of us, it's one person. Those primary people are typically going to be the models for our relation.

And why is that? As humans, when we're born, when we're infants, we are completely dependent. We need another caregiver, which is why you'll hear humans referenced as not only interpersonal creatures, though you might have heard something referred to as we're wired to connect. That's what we mean because those relationships in our infancy are integral, are necessary to sustain life. Again, we have needs in all three of those areas, physical, emotional, and spiritual. What happens because we're so adaptive in childhood and because our primary needs are the physical needs, we begin to modify aspects of ourself. We begin to fit into the relationships around us. And for some of us, what that means is hiding parts of emotional self, not fully expressing aspects of spiritual self. We essentially begin to wear masks.

We essentially begin to play roles in our relationships. And then that translates very quickly outside of our core relational experiences to our peers. We're in school before we know it. And then we continue to operate in those same modeled ways. So why am I describing that? Most of the time, what we're looking for then in adulthood is the familiar feelings that we had in our childhood, is how we learned to define

love and relationship and connection, however it was then, which sometimes did have highs of stress and lows and all of these very chaotic feelings. And so for me, having a childhood that was filled with stressors of all kind that felt very overwhelming, my relationships very similarly, always something is one of my family mantras. There was always a stress in relationship. And because we were enmeshed when one person felt stressed, the whole system felt stressed. So what I learned and what I witnessed myself doing, I was looking for that same pattern because that's how I most felt connected to others around stress. So luckily, when we first start relationships, we have a lot of chemicals. We have oxytocin. We have

things that are taking us on those highs and those lows. And for a lot of us, it feels good. It feels familiar. And then you'll start to hear the questioning seeping in, maybe even the leaving of relationships when we're in that honeymoon period, when things calm down. You might even hear yourself say, I'm bored. One of my favorite statements as a child, my middle name, my family teases me, might as well have been, Nicole, I'm bored, LaPara. Because in the absence of stress, I was bored. And then when I was bored, I would make sure I stressed myself out. And then I was back into my familiar. And I'm just using that as a silly example, though we do that in relationships. So

chances are what we're seeking, right, in our adult relationships is probably that similar familiar attachment as opposed to true authentic connection. And for many of us, even now, me, you know, evolving my current relationship with my partner Lolly from a very trauma bonded, as I call it, which is just familiar. As in it originated in a sort of trauma bond. As it originated, absolutely. And her and I have been working individually and as a unit to heal. And now still there's moments where it feels weird. It feels like, oh, this is actually what a calm, self-expressed relationship feels like because my subconscious is still, you know, remembering the

remnants of, and I still have moments where to feel connected, I'll notice what I attempt to do is manufacture something I'm stressed about to my partner because I'm used to connecting over stress. I did it this morning. I woke up and I dove down something that bothered me online. And to connect, I was like waiting for Lolly to meet me next, to sit down next to me in my pit of stress. And when she didn't do that, I felt like she wasn't being supportive of me, not realizing

that what I was doing in that moment was looking for that familiar connection, was looking essentially for my mom to sit down next to me, debilitated in stress, because that's how I felt closest to her. I now learned that there's other ways I can feel close, that there's actually a benefit that Lolly doesn't jump into my stress pit with me in that moment. It's actually okay. And she can still hold space and be supportive of my stress, even when she's not feeling it. And for the codependents out there, that's hard. It's hard to develop separation around feeling where I could be having a feeling that she's not in any given moment. And for us, Amesh, we love to share feelings.

Yeah. And also, you know, for you to be able to explain that as one thing, but like the average person to notice, to have the self-awareness over those behavioral patterns, because, you know, I have my own ones that are coming to my awareness but you know they are sneaky they're sneaky my thing is that I I shut down if I feel triggered or threatened if my safety feels threatened in some way if something happens that's probably caused a past experience to you know come into my mind and then my ego and my head start going, this is what's going to happen. This happened last time. And that was a similar thing. And

you're getting this physical feeling. And therefore, it's your intuition telling you to move away from the situation. And here's a really like, complex thing, because I think I'm guilty of saying that something's my intuition when it's actually my sabotage. And to being able to differentiate between the two is a hard thing because it's having to have that awareness over those patterns of behavior and calling them out as they're happening, which our ego does not want us to fucking do. do yeah so I mean I'm trying to learn that when that happens and when I feel the walls going up or the you know shutters coming down or whatever to just take a breath and to be able to communicate my vulnerability in that moment or if that's too much to step away for a bit and then come back and be like this is what was happening for me but every time I do it, I burst into tears. And that's not great. I don't like doing that

because it almost gets hijacked by the emotions, you know? Yeah. Well, thank you for sharing that, Kagi. I love that you brought up the breath in that moment, take a deep breath. And so thinking about the distinction between intuition and all of the other feelings that are operating outside of our awareness is incredibly important because our nervous system is constantly scanning our environment for threats actively 24 hours a day. And so what gets confusing for those of us that are living in a dysregulated body is our body is actually reacting in those moments. We're getting those tingles.

We're getting that constriction. Our body is reacting to something in our environment. The question, though, is, is what I'm feeling a symptom of my overactive nervous system, or is it that deeper intuitive voice? And we have to live the journey of balancing our bodies, of learning how it feels to be in a regulated baseline in our parasympathetic nervous system to know whether it is my nervous system in activation or whether it's my intuition. For most of us, it's our nervous system. So until we can teach ourself how to be in that parasympathetic state, how to be calm,

how to maybe use our breath to downregulate us, our intuition speaks not when we're in a moment of activation. Our intuition speaks when we're in a moment of quiet, when we're in a moment of balance, typically. So it's not a reactive thing. Chances are when it's really quick like that, it's probably our nervous system, that zero to 10 feeling that I know I get too. It happens very quick. Words you typically hear around intuition is that deeper, that ping, that like kind of

guttural feeling that's usually heard in quiet, heard when my body is balanced. So again, we have to build that foundation. If anyone listening, you know, does have those symptoms of an overactive nervous system, always on edge, heart rate always up, waiting for the next shoe to drop at all times, constrict it. You touched your neck. My posture actually reflected that constriction. I'm working to this day to straighten my shoulders because my whole body began to actually constrict forward. So teaching myself how to release and relax and to be in that parasympathetic state was a big foundational piece so that then I could learn what my intuitive voice sounded like. So are you saying that through these sort of habits of changing your physicality,

you can address the emotional trauma? Yes. We need to help our body along. We need to teach it how to de-escalate once it does become activated. And so being embodied, doing the work of consciousness that we talked about, reactivate it. And so being embodied, doing the work of consciousness that we talked about, tuning in to my breath or my senses, the present moment for many of us is a safer place to be. A lot of us are just reactivating our stress reaction because of what we're thinking about, not what's actually maybe in front of us in that moment. And then on top of that, we can actually begin to practice some intentional type of breathing to help our body to down regularly.

And then over time, we can begin to learn the distinction. I love how you've even offered you memorizing and learning and becoming, as I say, intimate with yourself. You are starting to see, oh, I get that prickle on my neck. And if we could even learn what happens right before that prickle, right? Now we can learn to monitor what we were talking about earlier, our symptoms, our messengers that our body is sending to us. We can learn to pull back and gain the wisdom that they're trying to teach us in that moment. Well, it's an invitation for healing, isn't it?

Yes. And also it's an invitation for intimacy because every time that situation happens, you have those choices. Are you going to go back into that old system, that old way of being, repeating the same patterns, or are you going to create a new pathway? And I think, you know, to kind of echo everything we've been discussing, that can be tremendously hard. And at that moment where a lot of us want to put it down, distract ourself away, we gradually empower ourself that we can begin to feel things that at one time felt too overwhelming, felt too unsafe. Possibly now we have supportive people in our life where we could,

you know, gain support. Maybe we're not even sharing with them what we're feeling, just allowing them to hold space for us as we're feeling it, as we then become gradually more and more comfortable with sharing that outward. But like I said, I think that that first step of being intimate with ourself is a process in and of itself, because we have all of the voices that tell us all of the reasons why we're not worthy to show this aspect to the world. So it's the daily practices, really. Yes, it is the daily. Yeah, which I think for myself and probably a lot of people listening, everyone's always wanting like the quick fix. Yes, it's very understandable that many of us do want that quick fix. And this is,

again, the breakdown that I would see in my past work with clients between knowing better and actually creating maintainable, sustainable change. And in that middle that I think a lot of us are stuck in where we have maybe heaps of self-awareness and of insight, and we see all these habits and patterns in real time as we're continuously unable to break them, for a lot of us, that might as well be hell living in there. I've been there. And I just thought, am I insane? Because only an insane person would be aware of this and continue to do it. This is where we have to bridge the gap into daily action. In the moment, you're in that subconscious brain,

allowing those habits and patterns. So for many of us, it's just that foundation of being conscious in that moment to allow for a new choice that then, let me extend this, will be uncomfortable and will give you all the reasons not to make that new choice because you don't feel like yourself or you're concerned about how the person on the other side of this conversation will be receiving you. And before you know it, you're right back in those familiar habits and patterns. And that's, again, that bridge. That's that disconnect. That's what I keep. I kept kind of feeling so

disempowered around because I was living it too. I had all of the awareness, and yet I, you know, still after the fact, was like, damn, Nicole, you did that again. You said that again. You text it when you didn't really want to. Why are you unable? And it's, again, learning how daily, that's how habits change. We have to consistently create a new action that becomes a habit so that I can begin to lay down some of those new neural pathways, just like I had done unbeknownst to myself for the entirety of my life thus far. Would you say that it's, because I can only speak from my personal experience, but when you start making those changes, not only do they feel uncomfortable for you,

but they unsettle the energies of the people around you and your relationships with them. So I felt like, you know, during my Saturn return, there was a kind of slightly self inflicted exile that I experienced because I cut away so much from my life that was no longer serving me that was kind of bringing me down. Did you ever experience something similar where it was like a feeling of isolation and some sort of rock bottom that tied into your spiritual awakening? Yes. At that time, part of my healing in terms of my relationships did mean I was showing up differently, did mean I was putting up new boundaries, and did translate into new relational

patterns, some of which felt different and were still in my life, others of which I removed from my life. I made choices, very difficult ones, to go no contact with my family as a part of my healing journey. We have since reconnected and are in the process of rebuilding a new dynamic that works for all of us. In that journey, I was not only lonely, I was mournful. I felt a lot of loss, not only of old aspects of myself, but of these very real relationships that I was either shifting out of or was shifting into a new experience, knowing that there were aspects of it all that were dying in those moments.

And it's a very bittersweet kind of feeling because you know that you're going into the person you're supposed to be and coming home to your true self, but you're having to let go and mourn certain things and experiences and aspects of your life that have brought you comfort once upon a time. Yeah, absolutely. I've noticed a thing. Again, I'm only going to account for my own personal experience, but through traditional forms of therapy, how it's not encouraged, but people often ruminate on villainizing, for lack of a better word, the parent. It's like, they did this and that's why I'm the way I am and these experiences. did this and that's why and the way I am and these experiences.

As we become aware, a lot of us see the habits and patterns in those that raised us, right? Being modeled to us and being transferred to us. So as we become aware of essentially the role that our families or our caregivers played in the creation of our self that we're currently functioning in, it can bring up a lot. It can bring up anger, upset, sadness, mourning. It could just trigger, activate a lot of feelings in us, which are all natural. So to that, my suggestion is to honor it, to acknowledge it, to allow yourself to mourn, to be angry, to have those feelings. Then within that space, I think it's really helpful to acknowledge how your parents are limited humans too, limited by what they were modeled in their own upbringing. And that's something I go back to a lot, you know, and I

talk about it in terms of depersonalizing. Because I think a lot of us can take things very personally, depersonalizing. Because I think a lot of us can take things very personally, right? My parents didn't love me, so they didn't do this thing for me. When in reality, a lot of us had very well-intentioned parents that maybe believed that they were doing what was, quote unquote, best, or maybe they were doing what they were, quote unquote, only capable of in that moment. Again, impact it by the experiences they were born from and that they have lived. And I think that can be really helpful. So expanding in that space, allowing your feelings to be your feelings. They are valid and real because you're having them. Some of us might want to go back and have conversations with family. When if I go back and I want to have a

talk with my family about what I'm now realizing, if we can set an intention for ourself in having that conversation to be something along the lines of, because I want to speak my truth, that's a really great intention to set. A lot of us would go into a conversation like that with our intention being to hear something particular from my parents or to change their way of being in the world. And while that might be a really great welcomed byproduct of these amazing, honest conversations that some of us might have the gift to receive, not all of us will. We have to remember that these have been humans that are living likely from their subconscious, very much limited by their own frame of reference and their way of being. And even hearing this might activate their own inner child in that moment, shutting them down and making them not

receptive, to say the least, to hearing what you have to say. So if I come out of a conversation and I did not get that, maybe I got argument, maybe I got denial, who knows what I might have gotten. If I can retain the value that I've spoken my truth, I think that can be a really helpful aspect to just keep in mind. Because I do think a lot of us go back, and we do this all the time, whether it's with our parents or friends or partners, you know, a lot of us are looking for something in particular. And when we don't get that, we feel some kind of way about the person who didn't give us or offer us that. Well, essentially, it's learning that the victory is in the process, not the outcome. I love that. That's beautiful. Absolutely. And what an empowering process for some of us who

have never spoken an authentic truth to ourselves, let alone someone as close to us as our caregivers. I could go ahead and say, what a victory in that process. And I think when you switch your mindset to that, everything shifts because so much of our overthinking, our procrastination, like all this stuff is because we're trying to control the outcome so much. Whereas if it's actually from, okay, if I speak my truth, then that is the victory. It doesn't matter what the outcome is, you've already won. And I think that that's a really empowering place to be. Yeah, absolutely. I was actually just talking to my mom last night. And she had acknowledged, you know, gratitude that we're back reunited and, you know, together and rebuilding our relationship. And, you know, I expressed

gratitude right back to her for, you know, holding the space for me to be a part, to then be able to give us all the opportunity to create these new relationships. And I also expressed the gratitude that my family is aware that I share aspects of my journey, all kinds of ways on Instagram and conversations like this. And now in my new book, and I express gratitude to them for allowing, you know, for them to continue to hold space as I speak my truth, acknowledging the what I believe is the intrinsic value that it offers other people and other families. And so that was really a great experience to be able to communicate that and to have my mom hear that last night. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us because I have to say you have been

one of my top guests to have on this show. So it's been amazing to speak to you from so many pearls of wisdom and your book is How to Do the Work. It is How to Do the Work. And thank you so much for having me. I'm truly honored. Thank you, Nicole. Thank you so much. I absolutely loved this conversation with Nicole, and it was such a pleasure to talk to her. I was particularly fascinated by how we can tap into our bodies and our nervous system to indicate where we need to set a boundary in our lives. Boundaries are something that people talk about all the time.

So I found that a really interesting take on how to know when we need to set a boundary in our lives. Boundaries are something that people talk about all the time so I found that a really interesting take on how how to know when we need to apply one and perhaps when one is being overstepped. I also found it very interesting how she said that she had a pattern of being addicted to sort of worrying about things and I definitely am someone that feels there's a pattern in me that perhaps is used to chaos or perhaps was in my 20s and I'm having to shift through that now and just that she's so open to the the fact that everyone has the capacity to kind of heal themselves and I think that that's a really liberating thing that's so Saturnian so appropriate for this first episode of the season because boundaries and personal responsibility

are huge themes during your Saturn Returns so I hope you guys learned something from it and enjoyed our conversation. Nicole's book How to Do the Work is out now and you can follow her on Instagram at the.holistic.psychologist. You can follow me at Kagi's World and you can follow me at kaggy's world and you can follow the podcast at saturn returns podcast saturn returns is a feast collector production the producer is hannah varrell and the executive producer is kate taylor thank you so much for listening and joining us for this third season i have a lot in store for you please do continue to share this podcast with anyone that you think might find it useful and if you could leave us a review on Apple, that helps us find more like-minded people. Until next time, thank you so much for listening. And remember, you are not alone. Goodbye.