Saturn Returns with Caggie - Relationship Patterns, Trauma Bonds, and Setting Boundaries: Navigating the Nervous System with Dr. Nicole LePera

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Caggie is joined this week by a returning guest from Season 3: Dr. Nicole LePera, also known as The Holistic Psychologist. In this conversation, Dr Nicole LePera discusses her journey of self-discovery and the impact of her nervous system on her personal and professional life. She emphasises the importance of understanding the nervous system's role in relationships, highlighting how early childhood experiences shape adult behaviours and emotional connections. Drawing on her own experiences, Dr Nicole discusses emotional disconnection, trauma bonds, and the challenges of setting boundaries. She also recounts her relationship with her mother and the trauma of coming out, which influenced her ability to accept and express her true self. Through her work, Dr Nicole advocates for emotional awareness, community support, and the courage to live authentically. Some of the key topics from the episode include: 🪐The role of the nervous system in relationships  🪐 Early childhood and nervous system development  🪐 Dr. Nicole’s reflections on her own relationship patterns 🪐 Navigating emotional discomfort in relationships 🪐 The importance of setting boundaries 🪐 Understanding trauma bonds and dysfunctional relationships  🪐 Dr. Nicole’s own coming-out story  --- We're so excited to be partnering with WoodWick this season. Check out their timeless, elegant collection that's bursting with indulgence here. 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. You can follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram and subscribe to her Substack “You Are Not Alone" to stay updated on her personal journey. You can also find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Order the Saturn Returns Book here! This episode was made possible by our friends at East Healing. Visit easthealing.com today to explore their full range of acupressure products and start your journey to enhanced well-being. For a limited time, you can enjoy an exclusive discount with the code ‘SATURN15’ at checkout.

As we enter the festive season, there's something truly indulgent about creating moments of calm and warmth at home. For me, that's where my Woodwick candle comes in. The soft crackle of the wooden wick, reminiscent of wood burning fire, fills my space with a luxurious atmosphere and helps me pause, relax and embrace the season's magic. This winter, Woodwick's latest fragrances are perfect for transforming your home. Antiquarium offers a woody aroma with cinnamon bark, white cardamom and ginger, whilst Gilded Sands combines bergamot, fig and peppercorn for a warm, elegant scent. Lighting a Woodwick candle isn't just about fragrance. It's about creating a sensory experience

that elevates your environment. The cracking wick, stylish design and bold sense remind you to pause and enjoy a moment of indulgence. Explore the collection at woodwick.yankycandle.co.uk. That's woodwick.yankycandle.co.uk. And make every moment this winter one of tranquility and luxury. 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. Today I am so excited because I have a returning guest. For those that have followed the show

for a long time, you will remember back in season three, we were joined by the holistic psychologist, Nicole LaPera for the first time, and she is back. She's back and bigger than ever. I mean, she has just exploded over the last couple of years, and it's been such a joy to see her guiding so many people on their journey of healing and self-discovery. She opens up about her personal and professional evolution and her work is very much grounded

in her understanding of nervous system work and the impact that that has on our relationships. And in this conversation, Nicole shares her insights into how early childhood experiences shape adult behaviors and emotional connections. Reflecting on her own journey and emotional disconnection and trauma bonds, she bravely discusses the challenges of setting boundaries, navigating emotional discomfort, and even her experience of coming out and the relationship dynamics with her mother that shaped her sense of self. This episode is an invitation to explore emotional awareness,

the courage to live authentically, and the transformative power of community. So let's dive into this beautiful conversation between myself and Dr. Nicole Lepera. I hope you enjoy. I have long been a fan of Chinese medicine healing tools so I am delighted to share our partners for this season of Saturn Returns, the amazing East Healing. Formerly known as AcuSeeds, East Healing is the UK's leading

ear seed brand and a luxurious destination for holistic health enthusiasts, blending the ancient art of acupressure with modern elegance. You may have seen them receive investment from Stephen Bartlett on Dragonstone back in January. My mum gifted me an AcuSeeds ear seed kit for my birthday this year and I've been a fan ever since. These small beads are placed on the ear to stimulate pressure points, helping aid stress, anxiety, headaches, sleep and improve overall wellness. I love their luxury take on this ancient healing tool.

Their collection includes 24 karat gold Swarovski crystal, pearl and nickel-free options. Visit EastHealing.com today to explore the full range of acupressure products and start your journey to enhance wellbeing. For a limited time, you can enjoy an exclusive discount with the code SATIN15 at checkout. Nicole, welcome back. Thank you for having me, Gaggy. Honored to be here. We first connected during the pandemic. Time has flown.

How have you been since then? I've been great in a lot of ways. I've been really feeling inspired by the work that I'm doing and also trying to stay really connected to myself as I'm having ideas and creating things and obviously watching the world shift and change around me, making sure that I'm taking moments to be in my vessel, in my grounded state so that I can keep creating the things that I want to create. Because you have, I mean, you were already huge then and you've exploded so much more. How has your nervous system coped with that expansion? It is an ongoing journey. So much of what I now do from just even being public in any way outside of the number of eyes if you will that are on me, even just sharing, you know, my perspectives, my beliefs from

my individual standpoint is and continues to challenge my nervous system. Because I am that very kind of template, people pleaser who's always been for so long worrying about what other people think of me, what they think of my ideas, am I upsetting people, am I disappointing people. So anything that I've, you know, been seeing myself and challenging myself to do, which is to share my perspectives regardless of what people think of it, has been an expansion in my own ability and my nervous system's ability to tolerate stress. Of course, as the numbers increase, as the opportunities increase, as that people pleaser

conditioned voice in me, you know, tells me all the reasons why I should say yes to doing all of the things, regardless of how I feel inside. Again, that's another opportunity for me to stay grounded, stay connected to what I need in any given moment. So the opportunities really are endless in terms of the capacity that my nervous system has been challenged to create the resilience that I'm absolutely still developing. Because I think people from the outside would just look and go, well, that must be incredible. She must be having so much fun.

She's so successful. But I don't think people understand actually, you know, what might be going on internally and the constant boundaries that you're going to have to put in place to protect yourself. So with getting into that, because I know nervous system work is something you speak a lot about in this book, specifically in navigating relationships. Would you be able to share a little bit about this book and what it means to you and why you wrote it? Interestingly, you're hearing our segue from beginning a conversation about nervous system

into relationships. Well, it's huge. The foundational role that the nervous system plays in relationship for me was a new piece of groundbreaking information. Being trained as a clinical psychologist, we never really focused on, again, how foundational our nervous system is in terms of our not only way of relating to ourselves, but more so our way of relating to other people. And a pattern that I would consistently see in the work that I would do, no amount of insight

awareness in the state of couples, no amount of communication in sessions that we would have or I would be able to facilitate between two individuals would seem to translate into actions, into giving these individuals the tools now within their partnership to create the change and dynamics that they want. And similarly, as I felt when I was working with individual clients, I felt really disempowered.

I felt like I wasn't able to facilitate the work that the clients that were coming into me were looking to do. And similarly, in my personal relationships, I continued to struggle with cycles, with feeling disconnected, despite no matter what it was that... No matter what partner I was picking, no matter what it was that I was doing within my relationship. So as was the case in terms of when I was doing individual work, I really sought to

understand, well, why is it, why do so many of us struggle in relationship, no matter how much insight, no matter how much awareness that we have? And the reason for a lot of us, again, is grounded in our nervous system in adaptations that very naturally and from a very evolutionarily driven standpoint our body has made to navigate our earliest surroundings. And then we continue to repeat these patterns playing these specific roles in our relationships for a lot of us not having boundaries,

overstepping our own physical needs or the needs of our nervous system. And before we know it, we're repeating the same patterns that we created in our own childhood. So again, foundationally understanding the importance of the nervous system as it plays a role in our ability to not only relate to ourselves, but to our others in our life for me was not only groundbreaking in terms of knowledge, but in terms of actually embodying the practices to reconnect. Because I'm sure that the nervous system and the imprinting of our early childhood relationships with our parents is probably quite familiar to the audience. But how those two things

intertwine, would you be able to go into the science of what's actually happening on the nervous system? It'd be interesting from your perspective to actually hear the details. Other language maybe that listeners have heard spoken is, and I've referenced humans in general, our species, as being interpersonal creatures, wired to connect. Some people might have heard we need community. In actuality, we're scientifically talking about our nervous system. And when we're born, we are born not only in a state of dependency, meaning the human infant,

unlike other mammals, we can't survive on our own. We need some version of caretaking. And of course, we all have different versions of caretaking that was available to us. And more specifically, what is particularly dependent is our developing nervous system. So to put it really simply as children, when we become dysregulated, when we're hungry,

when we're thirsty, when our body is stressed, we can't soothe or comfort ourself on our own. And for some parents, this is contrary to parenting advice that has been given, because I know my parents were raised with a version of advice that never talked about emotions, the nervous system, the need for children to be comforted and soothed.

Though again, scientifically, our nervous system can't self soothe on its own. So then what happens? We are dependent on the care that's being given around us. We can't self-soothe on its own. So then what happens? We are dependent on the care that's being given around us. We can't calm ourselves down. So being very attuned and very adaptive, we do just that. We begin to adapt and modify ourselves based on the direct messaging that we're being given in our environments.

I mean, some of us are very told very clear directives on what to do, what not to do, what to say, what not to say, how to look, how not to look. And for others, it's much more indirect messaging. Though, because we are dependent on these relationships, we will change ourselves. Many of us will start to play roles in our relationship as opposed to just being ourselves.

So again, all of this goes back to childhood, not only in terms of what we learned, what we saw, but in terms of what our nervous system and how our nervous system adapted. Because when we don't have that safe and secure, that grounded caregiver, right, what will happen is our body will begin to adapt in certain ways. We'll learn how to deal with the emotions that we're not being helped to regulate through. And for a lot of us, those are the habits and patterns, whether it's showing up as a certain role in a relationship, becoming emotionally reactive and not having the stress resilience that you and I began to talk about a little bit in the beginning, whether it's shutting

down completely and being disconnected entirely from our emotions and therefore from other people. Though for the large majority of us as adults, we have carried that impact in the way that we now show up in relating to other people, because again, in childhood, we had to, and that has given us a sense of safety. And what are some of the things that you noticed about yourself personally?

Before I even noticed it was about myself, what I had done in relationship is I had assumed that the way I was feeling in my relationships, which consistently over time, since the moment I was in my first relationship when I was about 16 years old and I'm what one might call a serial monogamous, always in relationship to relationship, and somewhere down the old, and I'm what one might call a serial monogamous, always in relationship to relationship. And somewhere down the line, what I would complain about

or what I would feel in my relationships was not emotionally connected. That was the language. I didn't feel that sense of support, of attunement, that almost impalpable connection, emotional connection that many of us are looking for within relationship. And not knowing the role I was playing, what I would do, like many of us are looking for within relationship. And not knowing the role I was playing, what I would do, like many of us do, is I assumed

it was something that my partner either was or wasn't doing. Perhaps I even picked the wrong partner. So before long, inevitably when that relationship would end for whatever reason, I would then continue on searching, seeking, trying to find the person that I would not feel that way with. Only to find, and it took me several relationships into my, well into my 30s, before I began to even explore or get curious why that was so patterned, why it didn't matter who I picked or how they showed up, why it was that I continued to

feel that state of emotional disconnection. And when I started to then factor myself in, what I started to see was that it really didn't matter how this other person, whoever they were, were showing up. Because in terms of my relationship with myself, by that point in my life, I was so emotionally disconnected that I wasn't sharing or showing up as an emotional being within my relationships. And again, of course, for me, as is the case for most of us, that pattern began in my earliest relationship

with my mom in particular, who, of no fault of her own, in very well-intentioned ways, my mom broke a lot of the habits and patterns of her own childhood, though what she wasn't able to do was to be emotionally attuned to me in the way that I need it. She wasn't able to give me that safe, grounded sense of safety and security. So as a result, overwhelmed by my emotions because I didn't have that nervous system to help soothe or regulate through upsetting stressful emotions, I did kind of initiated by my nervous system, did what any nervous system will do, which is gradually over time, we'll begin that process of disconnection. So flash forward now

some three decades, I'm in my 30s, it's no surprise that I'm complaining about that same state of emotional disconnection that I experienced in those first relationships, not again because of what someone else was doing, because of how I adapted initially and then continued to keep myself safe, thinking that it was safer to be distanced from my emotions only to realize the byproduct of that was that emotional disconnection that I was feeling in my relationships. I think that's such a universal thing that people, once they take the responsibility and recognize that, hang on, the common thread here is me. You also mentioned in the book about you'd be seeking, you'd be in relationship and then you'd feel that emotional disconnection

and then you would seek a more perfect partner. Can we unpack that a little bit because I think that that's something that I definitely am guilty of and I think it ties into my own perfection tendencies of like, I have to be perfect. So then I'm always, I don't know, I feel like even when I'm in a happy relationship, I'm like, but what else? Two things I want to thank you for sharing, your kind of personal connection to this. And I think it's a very, very common one

where we're kind of seeking this ideal type. And I think it is so common for two reasons. One of the reasons is, again, it is grounded in a very early belief system. Whereas children, because we are in the state of dependent need, we do have a tendency to have the belief that one person, right, this caregiver being this ideal prototype can perfectly show up to meet our needs and complete attunement 100% of the time. Of course, that's not the case.

That's impossible. So any caregiver that's out there listening, the reality we now know verified by science is it's not actually 100% of the time. I think children need attunement somewhere around 30, 35% of the time, meaning having a caregiver who can sense and anticipate the need that they're having, meaning 75% of the time, 70% of the time, it's a mismatch. The caregiver doesn't just know.

But again, based in that early belief system, because we were wholly dependent, I think a lot of us carry this idea and continue to then seek because of course most of us, if any of us, didn't have that in childhood, right? Because of developmental knowledge. I mean, knowledge that's changed over the ages, like I just shared, there was a time where parenting emotions weren't talked about. Would it not also then be problematic if a parent was overly caring? There are both extremes. Because I think what happens for a lot of parents from a very well intentioned place, right, if they did come from a childhood of neglect of any sort,

they might commit. I'm going to make sure that my child does not have this experience. I'm going to become what can be known as a helicopter parent or I put our child in a bubble, right? Not give them any opportunity to have anything stressful, over meet their needs. It also comes from learning that many of us have had in childhood to not be perfect or to have disagreement and how to navigate disagreement, right? We don't have that belief. We have the belief, many of us, based on how conflict was managed in childhood, that either conflict is bad, the second you meet someone who disagrees or is different in any way, they're not the perfect partner, right, because there is someone who is going to meet this ideal, which is

actually, again, quite impossible, right, if everything is tended to and there's no stress or discomfort for the child to ever experience, then the unfortunate byproduct of that, while it came from a well-intentioned place, is then that child becomes unable to deal with stress and discomfort. This ideal perfect person, I think that many of us are looking for,

I think it's worth mentioning here, it doesn't just come from our family for a lot of us. It comes from culture. It comes from movies. From movies, from messages that are validating this idea. So of course, so many of us wake up as adults, feel disconnected, feel unfulfilled, have volatile cycles within our relationships. And we don't have the language and we feel shameful because we think it's reflecting of something wrong with us. And we don't understand, and this is a major reason why I focus an entire book on relationship, we don't understand how our earliest experiences are playing such a foundational role and how much our body is continuing to

keep us stuck in those roles so that change can only happen, again, not from the insight and awareness and communication, but it comes from that coupled with embodied action. And for a lot of us, that means learning and for the first time in adulthood, developing the ability to tolerate stress and emotional discomfort, developing the ability to navigate conflict, developing the ability to bring our emotions, this was a big one for me,

and express them safely within a relationship so that over time we can begin to create authentic and fulfilling relationships. And again, if anyone listening is not yet in that, it is not indicative or an evidence of your lack of worthiness. For most of us, it's evidence of how we once had to show up to sustain those life-giving connections.

And there's something else that came through in the book for me, because a huge part of it is about authenticity and being true to ourselves and heart-centered living. And there was a part where you said, we actually have to express our needs to our partner. And I don't know, there was something about it that really hit me because I think that myself and many others sort of don't say what they want or as very afraid to kind of rock

the boat, but then I might start harboring a resentment or kind of pulling away. I think what you're sharing is very common belief system, which is what I'm gonna define as, they should know. This person should just know, the right person will just know how to meet my need, how to support me. I think it's more the fear that if I say my truth, I'll be rejected.

So once we get beyond, right, if they should or shouldn't they just know, regardless of what it is, once I've spoken it, then I've now opened myself up for rejection, for abandonment, to have my need denied. And for the large majority of us who, if maybe we weren't physically abandoned, though in my journey, as I described, emotional abandonment is very common, then that risk is even higher because we've lived the experience of that sort of abandonment at some time in childhood.

And this goes back to this concept of how much we need relationships and are wired to need relationship. It has been studied, they've put electrodes on individuals' brains and they've researched the impact, the physiological impact of moments of rejection or abandonment. And that need is so great that when an individual, even if it's not in actuality happen, when we perceive we're being abandoned, the areas of our brain that will become activated or will light up in this brain being abandoned, the areas of our brain that will become activated or will light up in this brain scan are the same areas of our brain that become activated

or light up when we experience physical pain. So this abandonment wound that I'm talking about isn't just, oh, my feelings were hurt when I didn't have my emotions tended to in childhood. This is the visceral experience of that pain. And that memory of that doesn't go away just because childhood was decades ago. We carry that memory of that pain in two ways. We filter and almost seek to confirm because it's safer to be able to predict the next time someone's going to leave me to anticipate that. So we almost over anticipate moments of abandonment. I was just about to say, I've definitely got better, but I've been with my partner for almost three years and for at least two and a half years, it felt like I was always waiting

for the other shoe to drop. I was like, I'm gonna be abandoned, what's gonna happen? And it was exhausting because it was this, like you said, you can't really function. And I think that it's something that a lot of people experience. And what I wanted to ask you about, because I know you write about it in the book, in terms of actively seeking things that reinforce trauma bonds with people. Would you be able to share a little bit about what's going on there, why we do it and what it is? For so long, even in my field, we gave all the credit to the mind, right? Even in the States, this idea that the gold standard in therapy, most training programs, if you enter, you'll learn a model that's cognitive behavioral. Change your thoughts,

change the way you feel, change what you do. Now we know that what's contributing even to our thoughts a large majority of the time, so you, right, being hypervigilant, waiting for that other shoe to drop, is not coming just from our mind. It's coming from the residual energy and the dysregulation led by our body. And then this goes into explaining why some of us seemingly continue to find ourselves in those same dynamics with other people. Even if we've come to the awareness that this certain dynamic doesn't work for us, even if we have very supportive friends in our corner kind of saying, oh, this is another red flag. Why are you still pursuing this relationship? You can't help it.

We can't help it. And I really want to emphasize that. It's not a joke. We can't help it because wired into our body, I term them in the book, I come up with a concept called conditioned self, right? This way of being this role I'm playing. And I very specifically describe what a conditioned self is as being neuro mind, right? Mental pathways, mental narrative, mental stories, who I think I am or who I have to be connected with physiological, neurophysiological. Physiological meaning body, right? So in my body now are the habits and patterns, right? The moments of the nervous system dysregulation, all of the hormones that I've become familiar with. And according to my nervous system and my evolutionary biology, which is again, driving the large majority of our daily decisions because we have to physiologically

survive before we can worry about anything else in our human existence, we prefer the familiar, the predictable. Because according to our nervous system, even if it does have those red flags, those negative consequences, we've over time confirmed not only the predictability, we more or less know how we're going to handle them. So a lot of us will continue to pick dynamics that don't serve us because of that false sense of familiarity, because of the false sense of identity that it gives us. I can't tell you how many people well into their adulthood I've heard acknowledge feeling an amount of shame as they come to realize that they're not just the caretaker,

that they've identified as being, there's more to their being. Then as an adult, we feel shameful because it feels destabilizing to not fully know who we are. For me, it was based more on achievement. When I saw that I was compelled based in my childhood, my nervous system, trying to gain a sense of safety and security or connection through achieving, when I came to the awareness that it isn't just about achieving, that my

achievement didn't create fulfilling relationships, didn't create a fulfilling life for me, I dedicated a lot of time and money and years right into achieving. So I'll be the first to admit that I felt destabilized into my 30s when I came to question my role. Maybe I'm not just someone who achieves anymore, right? Maybe there's more to me and that can feel very destabilizing. Maybe there's more to me in relationships. As I begin to show up in an unfamiliar way, for some of us gaining support, opening ourself up, I should say first,

to receive support, if we're not familiar with receiving support, support feels uncomfortable because it's new and it's unfamiliar. Did you find that? I still find that. I still find to this day, again, that little girl not emotionally attuned by the caregivers around her, desperately needing that as we all did. Even now, as an

adult with individuals around me who are capable and able to emotionally attune to me, I either A, don't acknowledge that I need it, and then in my mind, wonder why no one's coming to tend to my need. Why don't they just know? Or when they are available to show up, there's such a discomfort and a vulnerability that I almost shame myself from allowing the support that I need in that moment. What does shaming yourself look like? Having this idea that I shouldn't have asked for the support. I'm a burden. A burden is a very common one that comes up. So anything, even in the moment of receiving support in my mind,

almost denying that which is being given to me. And I think all of this stuff, it's an inside job first, right? You know, you have to be able to tend to your internal world and give yourself the capacity to receive your own love and care and support before you can actually receive it from someone else. I'm smiling because how true that is, because I can tell you so many moments, even over the past couple weeks, where I overstepped my own needs.

Over the past couple months even, there've been a lot of moments where I didn't honor my state of depletion, where I just continued to push myself to keep commitments, to take on new commitments. And so in those moments, I wasn't actually and continue to not support myself, to put someone else's wants or needs before my own. So it really does begin with ourself first in my opinion. And then of course it extends outward

to how we show up in relationships. But if we can't, if we don't know what our needs are, where our boundaries are, where our limits are, if we're not able then to make decisions in service of that, regardless of who's doing what or who needs what around us, then of course we're not going to be able to receive that in relationship. Yeah, and just thinking about we have absolutely no education around how to do any of these things. We end up doing the opposite. And then society, unfortunately, does tend to encourage working more, achieving more,

and being all that, especially in the landscape that we're occupying at the moment where you have to be accessible and visible 24-7. And it's making me think a lot around, you know, boundaries is a massive thing, but I'm like, I'm not setting boundaries in myself. So what does that look like for you in terms of setting them when you kind of recognize that you are depleted? Recognizing. I really want to start off like emphasize that because society, I think there is so much messaging that we get around what the pleaded is when it happens, when it should happen what we do. So emphasizing, noticing when we're depleted,

regardless of what society is telling us is an incredibly important first step. Because if we just defer to society, we might overstep. And I think for me, I lived in that state of depletion for probably the entirety of my life before I really started to tune in and reconnect with myself to even have language that what I was feeling was depletion. I had imagined being in my 20s in New York, hearing similar narratives from my friends who were all working for the

weekend, fantasizing about vacations, fantasizing about running away. I thought this was just what life was, right? This is what an adult adult is if everyone is feeling this way, right? I wouldn't have said, well, I'm depleted, I'm exhausted. I need to make new choices because all I thought was, no, this is what one feels like. So again, I'm really intentionally emphasizing, noticing when, especially when it's going against what society is telling us

when we've hit that state of depletion. As the festive season unfolds, there's no better time to embrace rituals that ground and center you. For me, lighting a woodwick candle has become a cherished part of my daily routine. The soft crackle of the wooden wick, like a comforting fireside glow, helps me pause and reconnect with myself, creating a sense of indulgent calm. This winter, Woodwick's luxurious fragrances add even more depth to my rituals. Antiquarian, with its woody notes of cinnamon bark, white cardamom and ginger, evokes a sense of mystery and tranquility. Gilded sands blending bergamot, fig and peppercorn brings a

warm elegance to any moment, making them the perfect gift for you or a loved one. Whether you're starting your day with intention or winding down in the evening, lighting a woodwick candle elevates these rituals into something truly special. It's not just about the fragrance, it's about creating a sensory experience that anchors you in the present. Discover the perfect scent for your rituals this season at woodwick.yankycandle.co.uk. That's woodwick.yankycandle.co.uk. And make every moment this winter one of luxury for yourself and those around you. Back into the context of relationships for those that might be listening and going, am I in a trauma bond cycle? Am I

picking the wrong partner? Versus am I just not good at regulating myself in a healthy partnership? What would your advice be? My advice would be, regardless of the person, our ability to regulate our emotions will play a role in any relationship that we're in. So having emotional moments, right, is again part of being in a relationship. I think trauma bonds look very different. I like to speak of a much more expanded definition which really includes all of the different

types of dysfunctional patterns, I think really common ones, constantly feeling that state of numbness, of disconnection. Another version of a trauma bond patterning is finding yourself in intense emotional cycles. This is the person who is having knock is having knockdown blow up dramatic conflict followed by passionate sex. Another common, I think trauma bond patterning is being a person who's always seeking relationship, not even just romantic friendship,

different types of relationships with unavailable people. Another other side of that, we jump from relationship to relationship when things get too close or in another relationship entirely. But I wanna emphasize that first point because until we learn how to navigate our own emotions, we're going to bring our current relationship

with our emotions into our relationships. Meaning for me, that was suppression, disconnection from my emotions. So I equally felt emotionally disconnected in our relationships. Other listeners might have that more kind of volatile relationship with their emotions where they're riding their own emotional roller coaster. They don't have that kind of buffer between what happens, how I feel, and what I do. Emotions happen and they just kind of erupt outward. Right? And all of that has to do, again, less about what's causing the activation and more about what my body is carrying. And that dysregulation for a lot of us is living individually inside each of us based on our childhood, based on that lack of attunement, based on our inability to develop our own ability

to self-soothe because we didn't have someone helping us when our nervous system needed it. Having what I'm gonna call a dysfunctional relationship with our emotions, which I think the large majority of us, myself included as adults have, isn't a marker to say that we're picking the wrong person. Emotions are more often than not, if not always, a remnant of our emotional and relational past.

Yes, they're activated by the similarity of our current experience or the similarity of our current partner and their attributes to what once happened, but it's not you caused this, right? We are just as equally like we began the conversation, playing a creative role, if you will, in our emotional experiences by the way we're filtering, by the emotional energy that's stuck in our body. So again, I really want to be clear, dysfunctional relationships with our emotions aren't just

a function of the wrong person. For a lot of us, it's the dysfunctional relationship that we're carrying in ourselves. In terms of kind of going against society's pressures or expectations, I know in your own relationship dynamic, you spoke beautifully about it in the past and have done in the book about your relationship with Lolly and Jenna. Would you be able to share that story? Yeah, absolutely. And so much of the evolution of my relationship itself has really mapped on to really the entirety of my own healing journey from really getting in touch with my own emotional world to really creating space, again, as a people pleaser

who just always defer to what other people think or want it of me, creating space for me to even explore within my relationships what I wanted, what I desire. Lali and I have now been together for a decade. When Lali and I first met, I mean, we were the prototypical. She had all of her dysfunctional patterns the prototypical, she had all of her dysfunctional patterns from her childhood. I had all of mine. There was a lot of trauma bond cycles that we were kind of repeating into though separately and together. We both

were committed to, we had come into contact with all this information, started to heal holistically. Both of us looked at our relationship, dynamics and patterns. And really, for me, I was committed to having a me in relationship. I saw all of the ways I had watered myself down and I had committed to create the space for her to do the same. So several years into our relationship, we met Jenna, we met her through a professional engagement, if you will, we started to work together at the running our membership self-healer circle. Soon after it launched, we had a system crash and Lali and I very much needed help. And so Jenna joined our team.

The three of us began to operate the business, live and work together. We had relocated Lali and I, we were living in Philadelphia. We had relocated to California. So we started to spend some in-person time now with Jenna, building the business every day, getting to know her personally, really beginning to see all of the ways that she complemented not only myself in relationship, though Lali as well, personally and professionally. She brought a lot of strengths and a lot of complementary aspects of her being that made us a very functional, harmonious team for quite a bit of time. And then almost a year or so into our partnership, there started

to be conflict, inexplicable conflict, conflict over seemingly silly things. The wrong look, someone forgot someone's item at a grocery store, things like that, you know, fights about surface stuff to the extent that it was causing communication issues and they were starting to now be stress and tension in our working relationship. So much so that we began to address it, the three of us, by more or less just wondering, well, what is going on? Why are we struggling to communicate? And we are, why are we fighting about apples and, you know, stuff like that? I think many of us have lived the experience of fighting about something when the argument is really about something deeper. We did not yet know though what that deeper thing was, the three of us, until lo and behold, Jenna, who one of the things that I've been

so attracted to her was how heart centered, heartled she has been and has lived her life, almost the complete opposite of me. She sat both us down separately one particular morning to share that after some thinking and soul-searching, she had come to the realization that the part she was playing in this conflict was, she wasn't speaking a truth that was on her heart. And what she was coming to realize was that she was feeling an attraction to both Lali and myself and the relationship that was Lali and myself and wanted to and needed to voice it because she was realizing, I think is the case for a lot of us, when there is something deeper happening, it can easily become arguments about apples and

bananas. So she shared this piece of information mainly to live in alignment, to clear the air, and also to give language to what was happening so that we could now come together and determine if new boundaries needed to be in place or essentially what we were going to do about it. And so after Lali and I both took some time as individuals and together, the gift that

Jenna gave us was language for what was actually going on for all three of us. I had never entertained, I didn't even have any models of what, of course, I heard people living in poly relationships, multiple relationships, though I had never explored or experimented with any of that. So not having the language of possibility, I wasn't even able to entertain my attraction or interest until Jenna gave it language, because it was as if this subconscious part of me was like, oh, no, can't go there. All of this old messaging limited my even possibility of saying, hmm, I'm interested in this person, right? She's complimentary. This actually is making sense. And it seems like it's making

sense for all of us until, of course, that conversation happened and we were able to, the three of us now be truly honest and really walked forward into the unknown with curiosity because none of us have had explored this type of relationship. We didn't even have a name for it. We literally Googled it to come up with someone had termed a relationship like this a throuple before. So, okay, that feels good. I guess we're a throuple where there's three of us committed to building this relationship together. So anyway, long story short, for me and the reason why I include it and speak about it in the context of relationships, of course, is not to urge everyone to open up their relationships or to change the dynamic of their relationships. Though, I do believe there are so many moments that we have that

are similar to what Jenna and Lali and I experienced where we have the thing that's on our heart and maybe you're like me, you don't even let it come into your conscious awareness because of all of the things that you've been taught about it, or maybe you do. And then you allow the tape to play out and you convince yourself out of sharing it because of what will people think? Because will I be rejected? Because whatever the because is, and I share this because I do believe when we are not living in that alignment, that conflict is a natural byproduct. Arguments about apples

and lemons come up because we're not talking about what the real cause of the discomfort is. Well, firstly, thank you so much for sharing that. I think it's such a beautiful story and also incredibly brave of Jenna to do that. When you speak in the book about living that sort of heart centered, it made me feel quite emotional reading it because I realized I think I've sort of trained myself, like we all do, to be just so in my head. I'm denying myself quite a lot or not really leading from this place. What I would love to know if you're happy to share, what was the process

like of then speaking that to the world once you'd like figured out that dynamic between you guys? We had kept it just private, obviously within the three of us for, I wonder how it ended up being several months at least of time as we were exploring, as we were kind of like settling into the dynamics of our relationship. Of course, I told like a person or two that I was personally close to, shared with them, though it got to the point, you know, still working together, me still actively podcasting, her and I running the circle together where at least once a month we run what we

call community check-in. A lot of the content that comes up is not necessarily us teaching in that context, it's us sharing our own personal journeys. So what I was starting to experience, and I believe Jenna was as well, is I was being removed or I was removing myself from my alignment and flow because now I had this little sensor in my mind. So even little silly things, like how I wanted to use an example of a conflict maybe Jenna and I had that morning as a teaching moment or as an example of the context of what we were talking about in a check-in

and I would filter out, I can't say Jenna, so how do I present this? Do I not, right? And I was, now I'm not in that just flow of expression. And that is one of the biggest things I've learned, right? Because I spent a lot of time in that censoring mode, a lot of time worrying about, right? What will they think?

How will this land? Should I reword it this way? So now I was like, ooh, this is going in a direction. And to speak to the reality of I was starting now and I do get recognized quite often when I'm out publicly, right? Am I gonna feel comfortable being loving and physical and holding Jenna's hand and maybe holding Lolly's hand at the same time? Oh my gosh, I'm holding publicly, right? Am I gonna feel comfortable being loving and physical and, you know, holding Jenna's hand

and maybe holding Lolly's hand at the same time? Oh my gosh, I'm holding two people's hands, how weird, right? So now I'm playing all of this out in my head and I'm starting to feel inauthentic to myself. So the three of us came together after me feeling that like that for a bit of time and realizing that I didn't wanna continue like that into the foreseeable future, that there was gonna come a time where I wanted to be able to

be more fully honest. And then the three of us made the choice to come out more publicly, which we did so on the Instagram. And we went into it very prepared, not knowing what the reaction would be and anticipating that some people might feel not so positively or supportive of it, which was the case. I mean, I'll be honest and transparent to say I believe to this date that might have been aren't my Most unfollowed day and of course, it's not a matter of how many people follow unfollowed up But just significantly the most amount of people left on that particular day hearing that information Though more overwhelming was the support obviously since then since then, my family, it was almost like a second coming out. I then told my family again, this was, you know, because I did that

already in my early 20s, which was very traumatic for me coming out initially. So doing it again within my family, they were overwhelmingly supportive. They obviously knew Jenna as an individual outside of just the romantic relationship. So they welcomed it with open arms and continue to. And now it's just a part of my life that I would never consider, of course, hiding, though I know that what comes with it, even considering whether or not I was going to put it in this book, that was a whole like, how can I write a relationship book without putting it in there? That didn't feel authentic.

I though didn't want to write a relationship book where it was predominantly in there to the extent that it would turn people away from the content that could be helpful for them. No, I think you managed that beautifully. Thank you. I actually had someone from the community of Saturn Returns come up to me recently and she was like, I'm a big fan of the show and since I listen, I've come out as gay and I've like quit my job. I was like, that's amazing. So I would like, if you're happy to share a little bit about that,

what was that first experience of coming out to feel as traumatic as it was. Because when it happened in my early 20s, and I'll tell you just a little bit of the context in a second, I was so disconnected from my emotions that I didn't fully register. Like I'm able to say now it was traumatic, then I wouldn't have said, oh, this is traumatic. What's happening to me. And like I said, I don't even think now I fully allowed myself to grieve and feel angry about that which has happened to me.

The context of how it happened, I think I was a sophomore in high school, I mean in college, so I was around 19 or 20 years old and I'd started to develop a relationship with someone I played sports with. And over time, feelings developed and her and I developed into a physical relationship. This was my first physical relationship with a female. This was, hadn't even entertained it prior

to that. I was not that person who from a young age had an idea or instinct or would have entertained or used language around any kind of version of the spectrum of being gay until feelings, you know, I started to develop feelings for this particular person and then, you know, entered into a relationship and then was like, oh, okay, maybe it makes sense. Though interestingly, that first relationship, the feeling of felt disconnection was still there.

And it was actually my first boyfriend who labeled me, he described me as being emotionally unavailable. And so looking back when I discovered I had feelings for women, my first instinct was, well, of course I was emotionally unavailable to you because you're not a woman, only to again, realize jokes with me, that wasn't right. I felt disconnected from him.

I mean, I'm sure it played some of a role though. So sharing that to say, I started to have this active relationship and my mom and my family who were very adamant fans of the sport I played were at every game knew, knew the person, knew that she had a past relationship with a female, did not know that I was in an active relationship with her until several months in. And actually, it had embarrassingly come out at my sister's wedding. And long story short, there was a little bit of upset between her and I at the wedding because of, you know, I didn't want to dance with her. Something, because I was not out at the wedding, had caused enough of an argument between her and I that my mom now started to get aware of what was happening

to the point where she then finally had asked me after the wedding, I did what I was known to do at the time I lied. I said, no, absolutely not. How dare you say that about me and her? What do you just think, right? And I made this whole thing about how that she was wrong until flash forward, she actually

came up to school one day and had seen, I mean, I was just hanging out with a girlfriend like in my room. Nothing was physically happening at all. Though at that point, my mom had got the confirmation that it was indeed that we were together. At that point, I did stop lying. I did acknowledge it. And my mom didn't speak to me for, I honestly couldn't even tell you the amount of time that it was. It was well over a month, maybe a month and a half to two months. She

had threatened to stop paying for college. She had taken my phone away from me. It was just a lot of consequences, almost punishment feeling with her trying to create an environment where ultimately I would end the relationship. And I didn't because I was into the relationship, I was into the person and I wasn't going to allow my mom at that point. So we really kind of locked heads and didn't speak for however long that ended up being until as was typical in my family, silent treatment was something that did happen quite frequently, my sister, my brother, I'm sure both also experienced it. And the way I understand this now,

just mapping it onto concepts we've been talking about, my mom was not ill-intentioned. My mom for that period of time was so dysregulated herself from her own childhood trauma, from her own cultural conditioning, that she was quite literally unable to reconnect with me because she was so overwhelmed. And that's what I truly believe happens when a lot of us are in that silent treatment, right? It's that we are literally

shut down. And one of the things we can't communicate how it is that we're feeling. And I say this as someone who has since given the silent treatment, as painful as it has been for me to be on the receiving end of it, when overwhelmed, at least historically with my emotions, I would give my loved ones, just like my mom, that silent treatment. So similarly, when it ended, just to kind of wrap that story, it's just as if life goes back to normal, as if it never happened, nothing was talked about.

So much so that I ended up, I did break up with this particular relationship only a couple months after I returned to school. I proved my point, it was sent over. And then I got, as I shared, a new relationship quite quickly after with another female. And my mom welcomed that relationship with open arms and really hasn't had any issue with it since that, which I now know was quite traumatic experience of that disconnection for me. Well, thank you for sharing that because that must have been immensely painful at the time

because you're just being your authentic self and to be rejected by the person that we need the most, regardless of how we can kind of understand it today, doesn't stop the pain. It's still a very protective part of me that hasn't fully allowed myself feel the hurt, even the anger. I think I felt more the anger, that kind of indignant, like, you're not gonna tell me what to do. I was able to embody that.

But I kept on with the relationship and, you know, kind of allowed it to, quote unquote, not bother me at that time. But I think what's beneath that is, like, you're sharing really deep grief, deep hurt. And I think there is still, you know, parts of me that's... Really, generally speaking, I think that's a lot of what I'm still navigating, is the grief and the hurt. Even outside of this moment where my sexuality wasn't accepted, right, all of the aspects of me that my mom wasn't able to fully see and accept.

I'm still in the process because I do believe it is a journey. There is a light switch to just grieve and get over it. There is still for me a lot of sadness and a lot of hurt and a lot of grief from all of the parts of myself that I didn't feel fully seen. LESLEY And I'm sure a lot of it must have come up when you then told your family and everyone else about Jenna and Lolly. TAMARA My mom, who again would have been the person that I was concerned the most of around her reaction, she struggled with physical health issues and chronic pain for the entirety of my life. And by that point, she was in such a state of cognitive decline that actually

I had had a trip home planned where the three of us were going to go and I was anticipating in person sharing with my mom the reality of our relationship and my mom ended up passing before that trip happened and before I could really directly tell her and her state of cognitive decline prevented me from being able to share that with her, though I shared it with my dad and my sister, the family members that I'm closest to. And like I said, they were overwhelmingly supportive of it. So while the pain is there, it is in a lot of ways an open, right? Because I didn't get to have any experience, a similarly traumatizing one where she rejected me and I equally didn't get a chance to have

possibly a healing one where this time, you know, perhaps she might have reacted differently. And it is painful a bit to now know that Jenna therefore never got to physically meet my mom. So to imagine right a lifetime that I'm intending to spend with the two of them, it's a weird feeling for me to have my mom such a big part of my life and my work. I dedicated even this book to her because I truly believe that what I've now become so passionate and purposeful around was the pain and the trauma that I've had to heal because of the relationship with my mom. So now it's a weird thing to know that at least in her physical form, they now it's a weird thing to know, right?

That at least in her physical form, they wouldn't have had that, they haven't had that opportunity to know each other. I know that is sad. It's making me think because, you know, for those of us that still have our parents, we care so much what they think, regardless of what we say.

And we wanna be accepted for who we are and seen for who we are. For people that this sort of wrestling between wanting to share things that the other person might not like, whether it's with a family member or a boyfriend or a girlfriend, and then being reactive or giving the silent treatment, how can we navigate that without in turn shutting down ourselves? One of the most helpful ways to navigate it is through awareness. And what I mean when I say that is I go through in the book,

a lot of kind of relational or behavioral markers of different states of nervous system regulation or dysregulation. So I used the silent treatment as one example of our nervous system being shut down. Another example being when we're in what maybe listeners have heard termed fight, the fight response of the fight or flight response of our nervous system, behaviorally or interpersonal in relationships, a lot of times it looks like fighting, arguing,

being combative, screaming, yelling. And the reason why I give, kind of translate these states of our nervous system and behaviorally what they map onto is because in these moments, whether it's us shutting down or yelling, or whether it's someone that we love shutting down or yelling, to answer your question, when we have awareness of where the shutdown is coming from or where the eruption is coming from, meaning it's not the apples or oranges, what we did, right? It's about their dysregulation and their overwhelm in this moment. One of the most empowering shifts some of us can make is by depersonalizing their reaction. When they are not speaking to me in the silent treatment or when they are screaming and yelling, right? It's not actually about me right now. They might be saying it is, but this is about their

overwhelm and how their body has habitually learned to navigate it in this moment. The more dysregulated we are, the more actually impossible it is to remember this very grounded, forebrain powerful, like frontal lobe thought. All we can think about when we're dysregulated is how this person, how we're feeling. We get caught in the feeling. So so hard, though so impactful, if we can make that shift. Though that is not to say that we might not still need support. Want something in that moment, right? So in that moment, if this person is unable to give it to us, so how do we deal with it? Sharing things, right? Making sure, and this is why I'm so passionate now

about community, right? And making sure that we have support because this goes back to something we were talking about earlier, right? With this ideal perfect partner, on that expectation, a lot of us put that they be ever presently available for us, regardless of what's happening in their life. And that is not, even if we have a partner who's capable of attuning or not becoming dysregulated, they give us a silent treatment or, you know, become eruptive. When they are stressed, they're human. When their resources are depleted, they will be unavailable to us in some way. So, when we're sharing things with other people, right, again, making sure we depersonalize because they might have a reaction that's not our expectation in that moment.

And also making sure that we're cultivating relationships, whether it's with that person outside of that dysregulated moment or with other people where we can feel safe being seen in our full self-expression. I think that's so powerful. Well, Nicole, thank you so much. I really appreciate how honestly you shared your experience. I think it's going to be incredibly healing for people listening. Of course. And thank you, as always. Thank you for having me again.

Thank you for allowing me to share so much of my own experience. And thank you all for listening. I hope you enjoyed this. all for listening. I hope you enjoyed this beautiful conversation and I loved how Nicole shared so vulnerably about her experience and the courage that it took for her to show up authentically in her relationship and in her choices really. I think it was such a beautiful takeaway for anyone listening that when we have the courage

to be who we truly are, the right people will support us and that's ultimately what matters. Nicole's story really reminds me of the importance of self-awareness, how crucial it is to set boundaries and finding strength in our communities as we navigate our personal healing journeys. We cannot do this work alone.

So on that note, I wanted to say thank you all so much for your continued support for Saturn Returns and helping build this community. I have lots of things in store, and it's been such a joy to get to speak to these sorts of people but also to deepen my connections with you all, whether it's meeting you at an online event, an in-person event, a retreat. It's really what brings me so much joy, so thank you. If you'd like to dive deeper into Nicole's work you can find her on Instagram. I highly suggest following her.

She's at The Holistic Psychologist. And her book which we are discussing in this episode is How to Be the Love You Seek. So go and check that out. And thank you so much for listening. As always remember, you are not alone. Goodbye.