The One You Feed - How to Meet Yourself with Dr. Nicole LePera

Episode Date: December 9, 2022

Dr. Nicole LePera is an author and clinical psychologist in private practice.  She was trained in clinical psychology at Cornell University, The New School for Social Research, and the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis. She i the author of the #1 New York Times Bestselling Book, How To Do The Work. In this episode, Eric and Nicole discuss her latest book How to Meet Yourself:  The Workbook for Self-Discovery But wait, there’s more! The episode is not quite over!! We continue the conversation and you can access this exclusive content right in your podcast player feed. Head over to our Patreon page and pledge to donate just $10 a month. It’s that simple and we’ll give you good stuff as a thank you! Dr. Nicole LePera and I Discuss How to Meet Yourself and… Her book, How to Meet Yourself:  The Workbook for Self-Discovery Her personal and professional journey of getting and helping others get “unstuck” Understanding the power of our unconscious mind and our habitual nature How logic will not override the comfort and familiarity of our habits The critical step of setting an intention for a small manageable change How we can move from self betrayal to self trust by starting small and being consistent The importance of taking responsibility for yourself rather than blaming outside circumstances The shared human experience of shame of not being good enough that we often carry Becoming conscious of our habits and patterns How we need to tune into the body to find our intuition to find clarity Discovering our values and knowing what’s important to us The integral part of safety in beginning your journey Breathwork as a foundational practice to get to safety Grounding in the present moment is about paying attention and honoring our reactions The different ways of grounding ourselves such as being in nature, moving our body, or listening to music The “Daily Consciousness Check-In” as a foundational practice to activate conscious awareness Self witnessing is learning how to live in the active state of awareness Cycles of emotional addiction is the repetitive emotional experiences we often have Links: Dr. Nicole’s Webiste: The Holistic Psychologist Instagram Facebook YouTube By purchasing products and/or services from our sponsors, you are helping to support The One You Feed and we greatly appreciate it. Thank you! If you enjoyed this conversation with Dr. Nicole LePera, please check out these other episodes: How to Create Emotional Agility with Susan David Hilary Jacobs Hendel: How to Process EmotionsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Habits begin the moment we wake up. What are the first things that we typically do? You'll see a consistency of how you approach your day. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter.

It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode, you may have heard on our gratitude episode that came out around Thanksgiving. It's Dr. Nicole LaPera, an author and clinical psychologist in private practice. Nicole was trained in clinical psychology at Cornell University and the School for Social Research and also studied at the Philadelphia School of Psychoanalysis. She's the author of two books, How to Do the Work, and her most recent,

discussed here with Eric, How to Meet Yourself, the workbook for self-discovery. Hey everyone, this is Jenny. One of my absolute favorite things is when we hear from listeners of the show. And something we hear quite often is that one of the biggest obstacles to feeding the good wolf is remembering because life is busy and we get caught up in routines and we're all on autopilot so much of the time. So to help with that, we've started sending a couple of text messages after each episode is released to listeners who sign up for them. And it's something we're offering for free. A listener wrote us and said, the messages caused me to pause, even if just for a moment, and help me

to remember important bits of wisdom, bringing them to the forefront of my mind. Remembering is the hardest part and the text messages are super helpful. So if you'd like to hear from us a few times a week via text, go to oneufeed.net slash text and sign up for free. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly

love you? We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Nicole. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Eric. I am really excited to have you on. We're going to be discussing your book, which is called How to Meet Yourself, the workbook for self-discovery. But before we get into that, we'll start like we always do with a parable.

There's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at their grandparent and says, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Absolutely. I think for me, that parable really illustrates what I believe is our core state of being, which is in kindness and compassion. And those two wolves, I think when we're not living, reacting, being from that space,

like you're saying greed and all of those others, I think more traditionally negative things that we associate with. In my opinion, that really is emblematic we're carrying from our past experiences, how much we're living, feeding, if you will, that negative wolf, that ultimately we can make a different choice at any time. And I talk about all of those different choices, all of the ways that we're stuck in our past, and of course, all of the ways we can empower ourself to change the future direction of our lives in my work. Yeah, I love that. I think that's a great place to jump off from. Maybe we could start for just a couple minutes talking about what sort of led you to really diving deeply into this work, to creating the community that you had, to teaching other people about this stuff.

What was it that brought you to this work? Yeah, I think that's a really, really great place to start. And what brought me to this work was, you know, several years into obtaining my clinical, my PhD in clinical psychology, opening the private practice that as long as I can remember, in my mid-20s, late-20s and going about my life, living in Philadelphia, the city of my hometown that I was choosing to live in with a partner and came to realize how stuck I was feeling and came to hear that word in particular reflected in, at this point, clients that I had been seeing since I opened my practice, some for many years of increasing insight, awareness, even sometimes action plans. I really try to work in a very action-oriented way, giving clients tools, choices, new actions

to leave each session to really create the change, relieve the symptoms, change the way that they're functioning in their relationships or in their day-to-day life. And I kept coming up against that word of stuck. No matter how much insight and awareness, client after client would come in and begin to feel alongside of me increasingly disempowered. So my journey, Eric, really began when I first got curious, seeing that same pattern in myself, checking all of the boxes that I thought were

going to lead to this life of fulfillment. And yet I didn't feel connected to my life at all. lead to this life of fulfillment. And yet I didn't feel connected to my life at all. I didn't feel connected to my partner. And ultimately, in that journey of curiosity, I was met with a whole new world of science of our brain, our mind, and the connection between our mind and our body that I couldn't look away from. And really embarking on my own journey of changing my life really in a transformational way and really inspired me to begin to speak the more whole comprehensive story to the clients that I was working with, and then ultimately into my first book, How to Do the Work. And so let's go back to you practicing clinical psychology then. Clearly, you were doing a lot of

good things. You were giving clients a lot of useful stuff. What shifted in your approach or what did you have to add to the approach in order for it to, I think you just used the word to become more whole. Yes, it was more of an add to the approach. And one of the first things was adding a layer of understanding. And the understanding was really around the power of our subconscious mind or really the space in our brain that houses all of the habits. And so some listeners may be very aware of the habits, good or bad, that take them through their day. And others might not really be sure of what I mean when I say habit, but really habits begin the moment we wake up. What are the first things that we typically do? You'll see a consistency of

how you approach your day. And we can even drop in a little more to begin to explore what our mental habits are. Our mental world, our thoughts specifically are very habitate. We don't tend to narrate our story in a different way. We tend to rehash the same stories, meanings assigned to all of our events day in and day out. And ultimately then our reactions, how we cope, how we navigate life in our relationships are all very habitual. And understanding again, that our subconscious actually prefers those habits because it feels a sense of familiarity or of certainty. It now over time has learned exactly what to anticipate happens next because it always happens next. So now just mapping this conversation onto my client work in session with other humans,

when we're having these very beautiful insight-oriented conversations, we're typically in a different part of our brain entirely. We're in the gifted part of our brain called the prefrontal cortex, where we can think logically, we're calmer, we can have a grounded approach and imagine future outcomes that are different than the outcomes we've been living. However, in time, what happens once that client left my room, left the treatment room, those habits took over. And ultimately, when we are not conscious to how we're showing up, we're going to continue to recycle the same ways that we once showed up because no amount of logic will override the comfort in that familiarity. To simplify it, we can have a litany of reasons why these new choices are going to

serve us, but in that moment in time, it will just register as that possible threat because we don't know yet what comes next. And ultimately, that I think was the first major shift is explaining to the many shameful at this point, humans I was working with who couldn't understand why they were so stuck, who began just like myself to assign all of these meetings, well, it must be my personality, something I can't change. It must be my genetics, right? These things are just inborn and I can't be any other way. And ultimately, one of the main things that I hope my new workbook highlights is how all of these habits that make up who we are and how we're acting aren't necessarily

who we are at our core. Yeah, I love that. That ties so closely into some of the work I do in a program I call Spiritual Habits. The word spiritual, you could almost use as psychological. It just depends how you define this stuff, right? But it really is recognizing, as you're saying, that there are habits of mind that are healthier than other habits. And we just are on autopilot so much of the time. And so how do we change that? One of the things you talk about in the book is this idea that this change happens little bit by lots of little repeat changes, then you're right.

The habits just reinforce themselves because the brain loves to take shortcuts. And that's what habits are to a certain degree, right? It's just a shortcut that the brain is like, well, I don't have to think about that anymore. I can devote my energy to thinking about something else. And that's the essence of autopilot that you talk about. 100%. And to speak to your point, it really is the consistency. The habit is created when we repeat a daily action over and over again, more often than not, until that becomes more or less what we do,

what we think, how we are in that moment. And I think very understandably, and to get there, of course, we have to repeat that consistently enough. And I think really understandably for a lot of us, when we're in the depths of our suffering or when we're feeling inspired to change, we can't tolerate life as it is, as we know it. It's really natural to want to white knuckle it and change our life from top to bottom,

starting tomorrow, start to eat different, start to sleep different, manage my stress differently, relate to others in a completely whole new way. Really understandably, because our idea is if we change really quickly and transform ourselves overnight, then we could get to the place of limiting our suffering or relieving our suffering quicker. However, we have to understand, like I was sharing it, our subconscious mind, and because it's the repetition of these habits, the more new we do, the more overwhelmed we're going to become. It's going to be really frightening to imagine the outcomes of my life looking completely different from top to bottom starting tomorrow. And that resistance that'll happen, whether it's the

thoughts in my mind convincing me out of the endless to-do list, all of the reasons why this isn't working and not to be bothered doing this yet again today because nothing's changing, or for some of us, it drops into our body. We begin to have a new experience. Maybe for some of us, it's even being connected to a body and all the sensations that are living in that body. We feel different than we usually feel, or we feel uncomfortable. We feel distress. We feel the feelings that have been present all along. All of the reason why, if we're listening to our minds, if we're listening to our body and that discomfort, so many of us revert right back to that familiar pattern. So I'll speak often when I talk about consistency, about a practice that I call setting an intention for a small

daily promise. Whatever that outcome is, break it down into the most manageable bite size, even to the point where you almost want to roll your eyes because what change will happen and practice making that choice as consistently as possible. That'll do two things. The first thing it'll do is it'll limit the overwhelm. You're already going to feel overwhelmed doing something new. So that resistance, I suggest to expect it to be there. It doesn't necessarily mean you're going in the wrong direction. I think a lot of us misassign that to be our intuition guiding us back into these old habits that are just us. So once we have language, oh, this is my resistance. It's keeping me safe. It wants me to go back into that familiar. I can stay calm and continue to

make this choice even when it's uncomfortable. First, that's the first thing it does. Second thing it does, it allows us to begin to show alignment between the intention I'm setting for how I want to show up differently and the actual action of showing up differently. Because the large majority of us, especially if we've been unconscious to our autopilot for a lifetime, have lived what I call in habits of self-betrayal, where we have many different intentions or our actions don't align with our best interests, our wants, our needs, or sometimes even the very direct intention we set for ourself. So the more we show that alignment, I'm making a small promise. I'm keeping it. I'm not criticizing myself for how small it is. I'm rebuilding that. In my opinion, what that translates to is self-trust, is self-confidence, and is empowerment.

Yeah. There are so many things you said in there that I could piggyback off of. In the coaching work I do with people, we take a very similar approach. I talk about it and, you know, listeners won't be able to see this, but I got my hand sort of straight up and down. I talk about when we do what we say we're going to do for ourselves, there's an interior alignment that feels good. And when we don't, when we make promises to ourselves, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. And we don't, we feel out of alignment. And over time, we increasingly, I loved what you said about self-trust. We don't trust ourselves. You know, people will say to me, I'm just the kind of person who can't finish anything. I start lots of things or, and it

really is that realization that like, well, okay, we have a tendency in that direction, but we can unwind that, but we may have to unwind it little bit by little bit. And the other thing that you talked about that brought to mind for me was, you know, when I was 24, I was a homeless heroin addict and I did change my life kind of overnight, everything, but I did it by going into like a treatment center where everything was different and all that change was supported. So there are ways in which we can make big change in our life, particularly in a crisis. But my experience is it almost always has to happen in a different environment because our current environment, the people, the routines, the physical location, it has such a sense of dragging things back to what's expected

in that environment. And again, I mean more than just place, but, you know, our total environment is so important. Yes, I couldn't agree more. And a lot of times, you know, whether we see this in those contexts of leaving for a kind of structured treatment experience or going on vacation, having a weekend retreat. So many of us, I think, find that we can restructure life almost completely and be this new person in this new context. And then before long, at least once we get home, we're right back in those familiar patterns because we have to realize that we are an interconnected being. Really simply what that means is we are always in connection with other humans around us and the natural environment around us. So when

we're going back into a system that has set expectations, repetitive behaviors, right? That if some of us been repeated for a lifetime, depending on how often or how consistently we've been in one particular environments, location, relationships, et cetera, right now we're fitting into almost like a puzzle. We can think of it and And my piece, right, fits in right there. And it becomes really hard to step out of that framework or those set of expectations. And I just want to piggyback on something you were saying earlier, because I think sometimes another byproduct of living in our habit self, repeating things, engaging in these habits of self-betrayal, becoming, right, the self-professed person who just can't change or finish anything. A second thing we do, and I've lived this experience myself, is we don't look at

or we don't assign any responsibility to us who's unable to finish something. We point the finger at the person who, if only they didn't show up this way, I wouldn't, or the environment or something outside of me, right, that's making me, leaving me no choice but, and this is again, language I think that really illustrates the lived experience. When we're not conscious, when we're in autopilot, when all of those habits and patterns are firing at the ready, we actually very understandably don't have those choices and we can feel very out of control, very reactive, very disempowered, and it becomes very easy, right, to point the finger outside of us as opposed to saying, yes, circumstances are happening, relationships, other individuals are around me, and they're choosing to show up in the way that

they are choosing to show up. And I am still responsible for how I'm responding to that environment or my participation in it at all. Yeah. And I don't know who said this, but what you're pointing to is that in those moments, we tend to either go into blame or shame, right? We are blaming others or we're feeling shameful about our inability to change. Neither of which is a very helpful place to be, right? We don't change out of shame, right? It's not an empowering place to change from. So I think to your point, it's more sort of recognizing these habits and patterns. And it is so hard when so much of it is subconscious. I recently had a conversation with Gabor Mate and he talks very eloquently about how all of us are faced with a balance between

attachment and authenticity. In early days in our lives, attachment always wins. We sacrifice our authenticity. But the other thing that he said often in that book that's really been on my mind a lot is about how much of that process becomes completely below the level of consciousness. It's not like I know I'm like, oh boy, that doesn't feel uncomfortable. I'm going to push it down. It's not even there to notice, at least without much greater powers of discernment than we may start the journey with. I want to speak to this, and this is so powerful, Eric, and this concept of shame. I love how you kind of distinguish shame, right? Internal, blame, external, just focusing on shame. I think something quite universal unites us all as humanity, regardless of where you are on your experience or where you are in the globe living your experiences, because the reality of it is we're all humans raised by other humans. And the generations that came before us, in my opinion, were ill-equipped, didn't have the actual objective resources and or the awareness that even emotions and kind of a lot of the

conversations that are now coming to light are a need in childhood. So what I see that quite universally unifies us all is actually a core experience of that shame. And it really kind of is incorporating Gabor's beautiful idea around authenticity and attachment. Because when we didn't have the safe space to just truly be who we are, however that was in childhood, as very few of us did. When we didn't have the attuned caregiver like I did not have, a human who can help me tend to my emotions, understand them, bring myself, find the tools that allow me to bring myself back into safety. My mom was too distracted and consumed and dysregulated in her own trauma. So when we lack that safety, we will all adapt. And the first thing that'll

happen is because of the emotional immaturity, the developmental immaturity of our brain, we can't have the vantage point of an adult. We don't understand all of the mature factors that contribute. Like I was able to even just now acknowledge my mom was traumatized based on her pain. We don't have that capacity in childhood, in our very egocentric view, as we call it in the field, all roads lead back to it must have been something wrong with me. So at our core, I find it. So many of us have that core root of belief and shame of not being worthy, of not being lovable exactly as we are. And to speak to your point about it being so underneath the awareness, probably for three decades of my life, I fought tooth and nail. I don't shame.

I don't feel shameful. I'm fine. This is who I am, how I am. I'm celebrated in these aspects of my life. I'm very comfortable with myself. Little did I know that until I began to unpack and pull back those layers of the onion, what I came to realize, my shame was so pushed down, this feeling of unworthiness, that my entire way of being as the overachiever, blazing the path to get the PhD, to do all of

these things, was actually my protection that was very validated by the outside world, protecting me from even feeling that shame. So it really took until recently to be able to say, you know what? I don't feel good enough as I am. It's very difficult for me to feel comfortable not performing a role or a service or teaching or doing or performing in any way for something external. Because again, at my core, we can become so unconscious ourselves. And for some of us, we're living in a way that feels very valid or that we're validating or we're attempting to valid this internal sense of worthiness. Yet that feeling of disconnection I was describing that began my journey of lack

of fulfillment, all of that was really related to how unworthy I felt, how I was literally exhausting my mind and body trying to perform to the point where before I began my journey, I was fainting. I was so depleted in my resources. My nervous system was so shut down from actioning, right? Because at my core, that was my only way of proving this worthiness. So again, I think it's a really beautiful, powerful point you're making, which is for some of us, it's so below the surface. We can't even let ourselves emotionally touch how it felt, right? To be that little child that didn't feel worthy of that love and connection from the most important person in our life. So let me ask you a question about what you just

said there, because I think it's really interesting. I have to tie a couple things together real quick in order to do it. But you talk about an authentic self, right? There is a part of us that is less conditioned by all of our experience, and it has certain traits to it. And then you also talked about this pushing yourself to get success through the outside world. I look at you and I know you're very successful in what you're doing. So that doesn't happen by not putting effort in. So how do you determine for yourself when the pushing of yourself is coming from maybe your authentic self that likes to share and wants to help and actually likes the feeling of creating and making versus I'm being driven by a sense of unworthiness under the surface, because this is really subtle territory.

Yes. And I love this. And I think about this often. So I'm going to answer the more process, foundational approach, and then that more acute kind of in the journey of getting that clarity. So for me, that meant becoming really conscious of these different habits and patterns. Mainly for me, I was able to see all of the different ways I showed up in performance. I was able to understand that coming from a lack of safety. I didn't feel safe enough just being who I was. So the safety I was able to attain was showing up in this particular way. That indicated to me that I needed to do some of the somatic or body work. My nervous system was completely dysregulated. So spending, I'm really fast forwarding the journey, right? Spending the amount of time to drop into my body to create safety and even being in my

body where my emotions live, to be able to distinct and calm my stress reaction down so I can start to make space for things outside of stress, like sadness, like anger, like happiness, all of the other feelings that had no space when I was so dysregulated. And then over time, the more connected I am to my body, the more I can, in those moments, ask myself, right? What is my intention?

Whatever choice I'm gonna make, so it might be the choice of presenting something or putting out a piece of content. What is my intention? Now that I have clarity, I can differentiate. I can hear when my body is responding. The part of my body that I'm most interested in connecting to, where I believe our authentic self, our essence, our soul, our spirit, whatever name it is for you, I believe it speaks through our heart. Our heart is the most powerful organ, even more powerful than our brain

in terms of its electromagnetic reach, which simply means it's receiving signals from our environment at a greater distance than even our brain can, and it's sending signals out. So how I'm feeling is reflected. Of course, all of this is outside of our visual awareness in our environment. And in my opinion, when we're talking about finding our intuition, many of us are looking up to our minds to narrate the right thing to do. When in reality, and this is again why I always emphasize the body, our intuition is going to speak in a different language. A lot of times it's nonverbal.

It's in sensations, feelings of lightness, right? Or freedom, ease in my heart when I'm walking in a direction that feels good to me. Feelings of constriction, doom, right? Clenching in my heart, maybe when I'm going in a direction that's not. Thoughts are light bulbs, ideas, musings, images. And again, I'm giving different examples of how it could speak because it speaks different to all of us. So for me, the journey of gaining the clarity meant building in those moments, not only of safety in my body, but of quiet, of learning how to understand my internal signals, my wants, my needs, and again, my intention.

So now mapping that onto those acute moments, whenever I'm faced with a choice, I have the opportunity to check in and say, okay, Nicole, why is it? What is your hope for doing this? Is my hope on, oh, so people can celebrate me and tell me how smart I am and tell me that they changed their life because of what I said, or is my intention that this isn't a really important message for me? I don't actually know what people will say or do, and they could outright misunderstand it even. And I am confident that I am saying or speaking this truth because it's important for me to do. And that is the moment of first, we need the space, the connection with our body, and then we can actually the choice to do something for an external reason. In my opinion, as long as you've done so consciously, you can also give yourself the opportunity not to do that thing. I love that. Every part of that, but especially the part there at the end, because without tagging that end thing on, it becomes, let me tap into how I'm feeling.

Do I want to do or not do this thing? And if I feel like I don't want to do it, I don't do it, right? And we don't want that. And this is where I think the work you talk about on values comes in about knowing what's important to us. Because at times, you know, in order to accomplish something that's important to us, there are going to be moments in there where internally, there's just a, you know, sense of dread, like I had to do taxes last week, right? And that's part of what I got to do for this business. And, you know, if I checked in with my internal self, it would have said, no, don't do it, right? It's actually, it was saying that very clearly. And I had to go,

well, okay, you know, this needs to get done for these different reasons. But I love that idea of it becomes conscious, right? It becomes a conscious choice. We can make all kinds of choices for all kinds of reasons, but the ones that are, you know, the best place to be operating out of is the choice that is a conscious choice. I am choosing to do this because X, because it feels right, because it supports something I value. And just to add in too, maybe because I want to show up in my relationship in this way. I think relationships is another area where we can find a point of negotiation, right? We don't have to be fully in service of another person like I had lived the majority of my life. And we also don't

have to be fully selfishly in service, right? I think the best relationships are where there's an equal energetic exchange in some moments where maybe you are choosing, right, to watch the movie that your partner or your loved one or your friend wants to watch, knowing, right, you know, that maybe somewhere down the line that switches and you, partners, loved ones, friends, supports make choices, right? So again, I do want to make space for that gray area of negotiation. But again, to speak to your point, that only becomes possible when we're conscious to what our intentions are, what our wants are, what our needs are, and even more so when we feel comfortable sharing that with another people, bringing those into that relational space. © transcript Emily Beynon I'm Jason Alexander.

And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you.

And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park.

Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really.

No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We've been talking about a bunch of subjects that are in the book. I mean, everything we've talked about is covered and you have lots of exercises. But I did want to turn for a second to something you were just saying there, which is about sort of creating this safety. And you talk about before we start this journey, and you've got

different sections about meeting different parts of ourselves, you say we've got to sort of build our own internal support system. So talk to me about some of the ways that we can build that internal support system or that safety that you were just referring to that allows us to connect with what's actually real. needs, all of that is really foundational. And again, this goes back to the reality that very few of us felt safe in our bodies, in our relationships, in our environments, in our life experience itself. You'll see I also present what I'm calling an authentic needs pyramid, where kind of I honor our basic physical needs being movement, rest, nutrients for our body, oxygen, of course, for our lungs, our emotional needs being emotionally safe, supported, connected, interconnected with other people. And then that allows us, once those base needs are met, then we can begin to feel safe enough

to tap into my passion, my creativity, my playfulness, that higher, the things that most of us are seeking when we think authentic self. None of that is possible without that foundation of safety. And very few of us feel safe in our physical bodies given our past experiences. So building that foundation at the beginning of the journey, our resources, toolkits that we will want to go back to as we begin to peel back those onions. And with oxygen being one of our daily needs that is happening for us, our body is always breathing. I often like to suggest breathwork and I give a many different types of simple, easy back pocket breathwork practices because, again, consistency is key here of different ways we can use our breath or our intentional breathing to help our nervous system regularly. And really simply, I'll simplify breath work.

If we're feeling anxious, if we're always waiting for the next shoe to drop, our heart's racing out of our chest, our breath might even feel quickened, right? I might even feel tenseness in my muscles. I'm in other words, I'm in fight or flight. I'm waiting to fight or flee the threat at hand. My body is mobilized, ready to go.

It's too much activity. I'm simplifying all this. We can learn how to do calming, deep belly breaths to bring our body back into safety. If I'm on the other end of that spectrum and I'm feeling listless, my muscles almost seemingly aren't present. I have no energy to even get out of bed or start my day. I might even be calling myself depressed. Then I can do a more activating, chest-based. I actually utilized the Wim Hof method when I was so shut down,

my nervous system was in that state. Remember how I described myself? I have no fulfillment, nothing. I feel nothing about this whole life around me. I don't even feel connected to my partner. That was because I was so shut down. So for me, foundationally, I made a daily commitment to, it was Wim Hof.

I would pop him in YouTube and I would do a vigorous type of breathing, again, to simplify when my energy is low. I would pop him in YouTube and I would do a vigorous type of breathing, again, to simplify when my energy is low. I can actually mobilize it, activate it to, again, bring me back into that safety. So our breath can be foundationally and in the workbook I overview back pocket breath work exercises that we can pop in and we ought to begin to pop in. I suggest we do so throughout our day consistently because this is one of those areas, especially breath work.

Oh, breath work, I can calm myself down, great. Next time I argue with my partner and I'm getting ready to scream or yell or slam a door, I'll do that. Back to this full circle conversation. When I'm in that moment, I'm in my habit self. My emotional brain is all lit up. That logical part of my brain

that even remembers this conversation is completely shut down And i'm so dysregulated i've lost complete control and I catch myself after the reaction right feeling shameful So yeah, unfortunately the bearer of the bad news is it's about practicing this breath work Consistently enough so that in that moment I can be regulated enough to be conscious To remember that I need to calm myself down. Yeah, there's a few things in there I think are worth noting. The last one being very important, I have found that for years with breath work, I would hear about it and I would try it. I'd be like, okay, I'm really angry, take five deep breaths. And I'm like, well, I didn't really

do very much, right? But what I found was that, like you said, I had to kind of practice it and get some degree of familiarity with it and know how to do it. Then I was able to use it. I love the fact that you brought up, there are different types of breath work. It's not just deep breaths to calm down. We had Wim Hof on the show. And it's funny, because if you've seen his videos, you know, he is a very enthusiastic man. So the interview is basically Wim Hof yelling the whole time. And then as you can tell, I'm a whole lot more sedate. So it's this very funny conversation of everybody loves the good wolf, you know, like he's great. He is something else. I mean, I would love to have that kind of enthusiasm. He is a great guy, but, but that idea that there are different types of

breath work and knowing which one we need at what times and practicing it, I found to be really useful. I just want to piggyback on that and a little giggle. So very early on when I first met Wim Hof and saw this very outward personality display, as I often felt when I met a similar type of person, I was turned off. That kind of person, again, that mismatch for me from being so shut down from not, and this is often, when we react negatively, critically of someone else, sometimes there's little information there for us. And what I've came to realize, that person rubbed me the wrong way for so many years because they were embodying a space that I couldn't, right? That enthusiasm, I was so shut down. I was so flat. I didn't even have

the awareness that I had enthusiasm in me, passion, to then relate to another person. So very early on when I first saw him and his work, I avoided it. I had to tolerate him when I began to engage in it because again, that mismatch for me turned critical as it does for a lot of us. And I didn't want to be near that because from my flat state of shutdown, that was too much for me. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I do think what you're saying is that looking at what is causing such a strong reaction is very helpful. Why am I reacting so strongly to this? Why am I thinking that is so bad or wrong? Now, again, this isn't to say that we don't have values and morals and there aren't things that happen ethically that we go, that's

wrong. But when we're reacting to somebody's personality, right, that's often a sign there's something going on inside us, like you said. So we covered breath. What are some other ways of getting to safety in the body? I talk about grounding in the moment. So a way we can ground a lot of times, and even speaking to this beautiful direction our conversation is going, when we're having a big reaction, I do want to stress or suggest us not to invalidate that reaction. A lot of us, I think when we hear this, oh, it's overreaction, it's disproportionate. We might even hear that from other people in our life. They're so dramatic, calm down. We have to make space for the realness of that reaction, right? Because it is coming from some time and some place and the bigness of it really is the bigness

of those feelings. Now, again, we might be misinterpreting, misperceiving, imagining something that's present and not there, which is very similar to that very early past hurtful experience, but not to minimize the feelings that are present because I do think a lot of us, and even we might tell ourselves, well, I'm an adult now. That was decades ago, right? Get over it. And honoring

the reality of the bigness of those emotions really is an important part of our journey. However, and this kind of maps onto them, grounding in the present moment, it's a remnant of our past, right? There was a similarity to something that we're experiencing now to this past moment. However, we have to remind ourselves that we're not what was probably that child that once was, that teenager that was under-supported and overwhelmed. We have to bring our consciousness back into the adult, the circumstances, the body, the choices that we now have available to us now. And one of the ways we can do that is by making the most powerful choice we can make, which is where we put our attention, right? So while we might be in our minds rehashing, narrating the scene at hand,

right? We might be overwhelmed by the emotions in our body. If we can put our attention into the physical body objectively present in this moment in time by maybe if we're sitting, if we're standing, if we're laying, turning our full attention to the points of contact, right? Feeling maybe my heels upon the earth, feeling my body weight. If I'm laying, feel my entire body being supported by the bed, the floor, the structure beneath me, right? Turning that spotlight of attention, as I call it, from our thoughts or from the body that's overwhelming us to the objective body, ground it in a safe present moment. That's what's called grounding. We can do this, even amplify the

benefits of this by doing it in nature. When we do it on the actual natural earth, should we have access to that depending on where we live? Now, not only are we present in the current moment, we're able to connect our nervous system, which likely is dysregulated in that moment with the rhythmic pattern of the earth, with the earth's electromagnetic frequency that actually is really calming for our human nervous system. And I noticed this very early on having a racing mind my entire life, always being anxious and on the verge of an anxiety attack, where I found some semblance of peace. And that was this thing I've always been searching for my whole life. Peace and freedom was in nature. I found that when I was in nature, my thoughts were a little less loud or they were there, but it was easier for me to look at the beauty around me and turn my attention to where I was instead of what I was

thinking about. So if we're able to do earthing, grounding, whatever we want to call it, what that just means is paying attention to this, my physical structure, plan it firmly in this time and space. And if I can do so in nature, then that's another really powerful way to send those calming signals of safety to my mind and my body. Yeah, I love that. I have people do in the spiritual habits program, grounding in your senses and the idea. I mean, I did not invent this exercise, right? But like, what are five things I can see right now? What are five things I can hear? What are five things that I can feel? What I find helpful about that structure for me is that it gives my brain just enough to do that it has a chance of sticking around. Because a lot

of times for me, if it's like, all right, feel the feelings in your feet as you stand on the ground. I do that for about a second. I'm like, not a whole lot there. And bam, I'm right back in my brain. But looking for five things makes enough of a game of it that it's sort of my brain, you know, engages and it can be really helpful. And I agree, nature. I don't think I realized it until I was, I don't know, 35 years old, maybe that it was that important to me. But I have these moments like sometimes in nature where even if I'm having the thoughts, like you said, I love that idea. They're not as loud. The other thing I sometimes think is like, I'll always be able to come to places like this, that whatever else is happening, you know, my thoughts, I look around and I'm like, but nature

is here. It's free. Like if I'm worried about money, like, but nature is free. And look, I love being here. It's soothing to me in so many different ways. I appreciate you bringing up your experience because I lived a very similar one in terms of any moment of stopping to turn my attention to my heels, to sit in traditional meditation, right, in silence, felt so uncomfortable. There came my resistance. All the thoughts for me, it was all the to-do list, things I should be doing, self-criticisms, and or discomfort in my body that I was actively avoiding by not paying attention. So very similar to you, and I think probably a lot of listeners, giving our attention something somewhat to do while we're paying attention to our very conscious experience. So for me, it was, I also, one of the byproducts of living in that very stressed out body, a lot of us come to find is tension. Our muscles are tight, maybe in particular spaces.

For me, it's my mid to upper back, my neck, my posture even began to hunch and constrict forward from years of that constriction of my fight or flight nervous system response. So for me, understanding the importance of the body and of moving and stretching and releasing and resting my body, I began a conscious practice while I was doing gentle movement, gentle stretching, taking a gentle walk around the block. Because when my body was in some version of action, even if it was just stretching to touch my toes, that gave me again, that focal point. Because oh, my muscles are shifting, changing. It gave me something else to more fully pay attention to that felt more

approachable. So I'm really happy that we offered that suggestion because I imagine a lot of listeners will fall into a camp like you and I, and I definitely suggest even not maybe even something physical, washing the dishes, taking a shower. We can turn any moment into a moment to be conscious. And some of us might find value in having a something else, whether it's nature, the water, right? My muscles stretching, like you're saying, naming things in our environment, a little something to do with our attention. Yep. I'm a big meditation practitioner and I mean, I get so much out of it, but I feel like I spent 20 years, I won't say wasted, but a lot of years of being kind of on again, off again with it. And I think a big part of the problem, there were a variety of things I was trying to do too much, but one of them was that the only thing in those days that you really read in books was about breath meditation. And I was too amped up. And so all of a sudden, one day somebody said, just go outside and listen to the sounds, meditate on the sounds. And so quickly, I was like, oh, this works. There was just enough going on. You know, because the breath, let's be honest,

it's kind of boring, particularly when your discernment, your internal sensitivity is not very attuned. And so for me, sounds were, there was enough going on and that helped me learn to settle enough that now breath practices, all different kinds of things work. And I think that's what you're getting to with movement too. You know, there are lots of ways to try and ground ourselves to bring our attention, to focus our attention beyond simply sitting there and watching your breath. And if that is choosing to be something that isn't working for you, despite repeated attempts, there are alternatives. There are other ways to get a lot of that benefit. Yeah. And to speak to your point, just kind of scientifically,

physiologically, what's happening in that moment is our body is still active in fight or flight. So asking it to stop, right? Our mind races, our body is agitated, right? Our body isn't like you're saying that alignment, it isn't mapped onto a calm, peaceful moment like we're supposed to be having in meditation. Our body is actually sending signals to our mind, and our mind is going to try to interpret those signals in terms of alignment, that there's something very stressful happening at hand, that I can't and shouldn't be ultimately just sitting here. And something else I just want to add too, because I think this applies all of us that have health-based anxiety, where we're already monitoring our bodies, our breath, our heart rate, right? Turning that focus and being told to listen to your heart, listen to your breathing, right? It's just turning up the amplitude on, well, oh my gosh, was my heart out of rhythm right now? Am I having a heart attack, right? So for health anxiety in particular, that internal focus is actually we're too

internally focused. So again, something else that came to mind while you were talking that I know is personally really helpful and continues to be a part of my journey is music. Putting in a headphone and for me just having and listening, not thinking thoughts and missing the song, right? Tuning into the music, the melodies and how I'm feeling while I'm listening to that song was able to, again, give me that grounded presence. But I think it's important to understand why a lot of us can't sit still, can't stop. Silence feels, you know, overwhelming. It's not because something's wrong with us, especially if you've heard me just talk about needing to have those moments of silence to reconnect with our heart and, you know, using that distinction for

a lot of us stopping silence. What? No, thank you. And again, all of that is because our body doesn't feel safe. It's actually a nervous system state of regulation that allows us to be safely still and still connected to the world around us. So again, really emphasizing everyone who's listening, who's like, I can't sit still. I'm so relating to this idea of my thoughts are racing. I'm so uncomfortable in my body. That might be an indicator of really the importance of building in the consistency of that body practice, that regulation, so that you can stop, sit, find that safety. Right. I mean, I think I had an intuitive sense.

The fact that it was so hard for me to sit still and do that pointed to it was important. Right? Like something's not right here. I love what you said about music. Sometimes I'll start people on a meditation practice who are just struggling and just, it does not working or they don't like it. Or I just say, pick a piece of instrumental music, pick one instrument and just follow it through the song, follow one. And when your mind starts to wander, which of course it will do a hundred times, just go, well, what's that violin doing? And it's just another way of training the exact same muscles,

but you're training them in a way that may feel a whole lot easier, safer, better. And I love what you're saying about changing our nervous system state takes a while. It's not as simple as being like, well, back to what we've talked about a lot is like, you have to do these things again and again, you're not going to sit down and go like, all right, well, now I'm going to follow my breath

and my nervous system, which has been dysregulated for 40 years is suddenly going to just get in line. Absolutely. And then what I think most of us come to the awareness of and what my hope for those who choose to purchase the workbook, especially on that first section in terms of our physical habits, I was very intentional. Everything that I talked about, movement, rest, oxygen, or breath, nutrients, all of that is actually necessary for our health of our nervous system. So back to these moments in time, right? Where I might lose access to my logical brain. I don't remember this breath work or whatever it is, this new thing I want to do. For a lot of us, it's because we don't have, we're not feeding our nervous system the nutrients it needs. We're not resting and getting the amount of sleep. I know most humans really struggle

in terms of sleeping. It's those daily habits that help us have the regulation more consistently so that in those moments we can do something different. And I think a lot of us will come to find that the daily habits of how we're caring for our body, we're not in attunement with what our body actually needs. Or for a million different reasons, we're not acting in attunement with what our body actually needs. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor.

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Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Oh, yeah. Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really, No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're describing some of these core things that our body needs, which very often end up being good habits that we want to develop, but they can be very difficult to develop for people.

I know I need better sleep, but I'm not sleeping well. I know I need more movement, but I'm not moving. guilty again or shameful, is your advice really then just sort of like, okay, don't give up, just shrink what you're trying to do down to what is manageable for where you are and sort of, in essence, start where you are? Yeah, I think, you know, starting in acceptance of that which we are, where things are right now is a suggestion that I offer for any aspect of our journey, especially as where we are, right, shifts and changes over time, and especially just something like sleep. There's so many complicated different factors that impact how we're sleeping that include our sleep routines, our sleep hours, the sunlight that we're getting or not getting first thing in the morning,

whether or not our body is even in that rest and digest or that parasympathetic state as a name implies or offers when our body is peaceful, calm, safe, then all of those systems of digestion, this is oftentimes why we have digestive issues. I lived probably almost three decades of my life with such severe constipation. Again, a function of that constriction, my digestion, just like my body shut down my digestion stopped we could see the other end of the spectrum where we have ibs like symptoms yeah same thing with rest if my body's not in that parasympathetic state if i'm in fight or flight laying in bed i'm not going to be my body's not signaled that it's time to rest so that means all of the work that we're talking about in terms of regulating our nervous system before that moment of getting into bed, hopefully after we've gotten morning sunlight

and we're going to bed at an early enough hour that'll give us enough time to fall asleep, right? So complicated. So to speak to your point of small incremental changes, even something like changing our sleep habits, in my opinion, oftentimes doesn't happen overnight. We don't decide we need more sleep, get into bed, fall into a deep sleep, wake up well, rest it tomorrow, miraculously, right? I just gave a litany of things that probably ought to need to happen to even prime something like sleep. Again, movement also can become very complicated. Movement is one of those areas that having been an athlete up until college, when I stopped and walked off that, hung my cleats from that softball field, I, outside of living in a city, which I did have

to commute to and from work because I didn't have a car, walking, I wasn't in the gym. I avoided physical discomfort, just like I avoided emotional discomfort. When I went to stretch, when I went to pick up something heavy, if my muscles screamed out, as they will do if you don't use them over time, I stopped doing that. So again, I think sometimes it sounds like such easy things, you know, sleep better move, but it's really understanding all of the different moving parts that have kept us stuck, unable to do those things for so long. And then yes, making those smaller incremental changes that probably aren't going to immediately allow us to sleep. One movement is probably not going to immediately allow us to sleep. One movement is probably not going to immediately release all the tension we've been carrying for years of our life

and our body, though it'll be the beginning of a habit, which over time will. Right, right. It's that phrase I love. It's a Tanzanian proverb is little by little, a little becomes a lot. And whether that's for the positive or negative, right, we're speaking to it, that's how things accumulate. So little and often is really, you know, very good advice. Let's turn to a core practice that you have. You talk about consciousness being the foundation of transformation. You say that consciousness is awareness of our internal and external experience, but you've got a foundational practice called the daily consciousness check-in. And you really suggest that this is something people do for a while to really get the hang of it and to really get what they can out of

it. So describe what that is. Absolutely. Consciousness check-in is setting the intention for beginning with at least one time during our waking day to spend that moment. First, checking in, and I often like to shout out the technology that most of us walk around with. I'm holding up a phone for those who can't see. Setting an alarm for some time during our waking day when typically we're going to be hard at our habits, right? Working, doing whatever it is that we do at that particular time, and chances are by the time our phone dings, and I hear this often, foundational course for anyone who enrolls in my membership, the Self Healer Circle is awaken consciousness. And the first thing I'll hear is, oh my gosh, my alarm went off and I was shocked. I forgot I even set it and I was too busy to do it.

Yeah. And I'll do it later, right? That's that resistance in action. Though setting an alarm, setting a post-it, what that is just doing is bringing to our conscious awareness this intention of doing something new because otherwise, chances are, we're just going to be marrying along unconsciously doing the thing we always do at that moment in that context at that time. So when that alarm goes off, we can do two things. The first thing is first just notice, oh, my alarm went off. Where was my attention? Was I really fully immersed in what I'm doing, whether it's a conversation with someone else,

the work I'm doing alone, interacting with my children on my walk, or was my attention somewhere else? Rehashing the argument I had this morning, worrying about the project due tomorrow, or maybe you're like me. I don't know where I was. I'm just somewhere else on my spaceship. I'm not here. I'm just so disconnected. I'm not aware. When we come to the awareness that you're probably like

the large majority of us, you're not fully immersed, present, conscious to what's happening. Now you can, you said something very beautiful a couple minutes ago, Eric, which is now I can practice firing up an actual mental new space in my mind, right? I can activate my conscious awareness. And the more consistently I do that, and once I realize my attention's not in my thinking mind, I'm not consciously present, right? I can use the hook of the sensations happening around me, like you suggest, right? What can I see, do? I can use the hook of my breath, turn that spotlight to, oh, how's my body, my breath? Let me just pay attention to the next five breaths, right? I can turn attention like we're talking about grounding. I can bring myself into awareness. And the more consistently I practice that,

like the gym, and I'm picking up those weights, I'm actually firing the hardware in my brain differently. And the more I strengthen now that connection, that neural network, the more likely it becomes that I have that neural network, the more likely it becomes that I have access to that in the future. So to speak to your point, I suggest that we do this until the consciousness check-in, expanding the check-in from one time a day to two times a day. The hope is that we can access that state of consciousness anytime we choose, that we can drop in and determine where our attention is and pull it back fully immersed in the present moment

at any time. So for many of us, that means weeks, months of practicing this consistently so that you have access to it. To be clear, do not set an expectation, or I definitely suggest you don't set an expectation that you're always conscious all the time, right? Consciousness is a state where we can shift in and shift out of it. It's the ability to know how conscious we are and to bring ourself back to conscious that we're building toward. Because I do think some of us set up this unreal expectation that I'm fully conscious to every single thing that's happening for me every second of every day, and that's just not going to be fully possible.

Right, right. Yeah, I don't think any of us are getting all the way there. And I love that idea in the spiritual habits program. That's one of the core challenges we're trying to solve is we have these things that we know and believe to be important, but we just don't ever remember them because we're so busy and we're so on autopilot. So how do we actually interrupt that? You know, there's alarms, you know, we found a program we use, I think it's called randomly remind me and it will go off randomly. Right. So you don't know when it's coming. It's just going to go off. And it's a great way of doing that. And, you know, there are times that those things will go off where you

legitimately probably can't pause, right? Like I'm in the middle of a PowerPoint presentation to 20 people in my company. I probably just need to ignore the alarm and carry on. But there are a lot more times than we think where we have a minute, 30 seconds to reflect. And I love that basic idea of just what, what is in my consciousness right now? Where is my attention? Because we start to learn some really foundational patterns. I mean, I know for me, if it's not immersed in what I'm doing, it is 98% of the time planning something or figuring something in the future out. That's just where it goes. I don't tend to reflect backwards very much, but there are other people who will find I'm backwards all the time. So for me, that then

gave me the sense of like what to kind of look for and what I wanted to correct for, which is like every once in a while, Eric, I mean, sure, planning, right, from something. We're so habitual, picking up the phone, right, immediately upon a call or a text, or we have the idea that we need to respond or react to something immediately. And to speak to your point, you know, especially as we're beginning this work, as we're creating safety to even tune into what it is and what I want, pausing in real time and almost immediately choosing a new response, we might not have the clarity, the access, the knowing of what it is even that we need to do in those moments. So really utilizing space and time, right? Communicating to the person who needs you or, you know, seemingly needs something from you in that moment that you're not available until you

have a moment. And for some of us, it might be a minute, two minutes, maybe it's a day or two to really figure out and attune to where you are on. Now, of course, this doesn't apply to immediate, right? But more often than not, we're just so habitual that we're mid phone call. And if we would have just hit pause, told that person that we know we're taking our own time and we'll get back to them before we even negotiate or navigate or hear what is the issue at hand to decide how available we are. And again, I'm speaking from someone very externally oriented, always scanning, worrying about those around me. I never had that space. So boundaries, limits, creating space beyond just a pause in a given moment with the expectation that I know exactly what it is next that I want or need was unrealistic. For me, I actually had to create some real space between myself, my relationships, limiting certain interactions, directly asking for time and space to figure

myself out before I had that clarity to know what it is I needed to change next. Yeah, I think that's really good. It makes me think about, and I just did this earlier this morning with my partner. She was like, I want to share something with you. And I was like, right now is not the best moment. Now you can't do that all the time. But what I tend to do when I'm not being conscious is I half listen and half do what I was actually doing at the moment and then become irritated because my attention is split. So I have found it way better to either say, yes, hang on, stop what I'm doing, turn my attention, or say, right now is not a good time. And we've done it enough between us where we

actually mostly ask each other, is now an okay time? Because we both know that, you know, our tendency is outward focus. So, you know, if you ask me something, I will give you all my attention. It doesn't matter whether I really should or not in that moment. I love that example. Yeah, I'm totally relating. I was giggling a little bit, Eric, because I find myself faced with that, you know, those choices often. And for me, it's not even sometimes a serious, I need to talk to you, or do you have space, or I need to share something emotional from my partner. Sometimes it's excitement.

Someone, you know, a partner to learn something new and they want to share this new exciting thing with me. And I do feel again, because of my conditioning, that deep rooted guilt, this idea or expectation that I should be always present, whether it's something joyful, exciting, curious, or something serious. And the reality of it is like you're speaking, we're in different spaces. We have different wants and needs and my inability or my choice

not to be fully present in that moment might seem selfish, though ultimately that's best for the entire relationship because I may now choose to show up at a time where I can give my partner full presence. That's how we develop connection. That's all we really want is to be seen, the attempt of someone to understand

what we're sharing in that moment. And when we're showing up with attention different places, or maybe even secretly resentful that you wanna share something with me now, can't you see I'm busy? Yes. That bleeds out into the relationship. So sometimes a pause can be of best interest.

Now we can both show up fully present to each other at a time that works for both parties. Yeah, I think that's so true because that's what happens with me. I become resentful. Maybe resentful is the wrong word. I become irritated. Yes. Just last night on a walk, she was like, hey, I was listening to this podcast and they were talking about this thing that you and I were talking about, you know, do you want to listen to it? And I just said, not right now. Like now again, we said earlier, there are times we make a decision to not do exactly what we want for the relationship.

And there, you know, so I don't mean to make it sound like every time my partner comes to me, I'm like, no. I'm saying that anytime I do say no, I count it as a significant victory given where I come from, right? Yes. Given my tendency to just be like, oh, you want me to listen to it? Okay, I'll listen to it. But I'll listen to it and I'll be irritated that you've asked me to listen to it instead of simply saying no. So it's just that sort of transparency. So

let's move on to another practice that you talk about, which is self-witnessing. What is self-witnessing? Self-witnessing is an extension of consciousness. I think oftentimes, even the way we were describing consciousness was kind of a moment, right? In this acute moment, I'm paying attention to what's happening. to that conscious state of awareness, to be present to our internal and our external world. Our mind is always scanning down our body, assessing the sensations, how it's experiencing. Our mind is always scanning our external environment, our nervous system included. Our heart is, how is this environment doing? All of that is contributing together to affect how I am being. So when we can become a participant in view of all of those different

things I described, the thoughts that are coloring or interpreting my experiences, the emotions that are sensations in my body, the reaction that I feel myself compelled to say or do in this moment, now I can begin to affect real change, to create transformation. Because what we're really looking to do is to change, again, those consistent choices we're making, not just in one moment of time, throughout our day, where our habits are living, in particular, like we've been discussing, in our relationships, where all of these interpersonal patterns are activated and old ways of protecting ourselves. So simply, self-witnessing is learning how to live in that active state of awareness. So I can readily, at this point in my journey,

I can acknowledge what my common themes are. All of the meanings I like to assign to events in my particular world, my relationships are usually some version and all this connects back to me not being worthy as a child of how I'm not considered, of how my needs aren't being considered unless I'm considering or performing for someone else.

I have clarity on that now because I've witnessed my internal world. I paid attention to the general thoughts narrating my day and especially to the thoughts that were coloring those highly emotional moments that we were talking about. And the clarity I got was A, how repetitive my stories were generally in life and how there was a particular theme in those moments of upset. Now I can understand why I want to scream and yell and become downright angry when I'm not feeling considered in that moment, when I'm feeling my need isn't being met or I'm being violated in a particular moment based on someone else's actions. So when I become a witness, a self-witness,

interestingly enough, this all kind of ties full circle into being responsible and an active participant and resentment faced outward at someone else, now we can understand how, yeah, someone might have activated, said, done, been a certain way, but really, right, the whole of my emotional experience existed within me. I interpret it in a certain way.

Whether or not it was reality or not, my hormones and emotions are streaming through my body in a certain way, usually based on, again, past interpretations of a similar situation. And my body feels compelled to react, right, in that same way. Now, yes, person was involved. This person was involved. However, I maintain the responsibility to interpret it in a different way, to respond in a different way. Right now I can locate the control again back in myself. And all of that happens when we really do witness how much we are already participating, sometimes outside of our awareness. What you just said there outside our awareness, I've heard some people say that, you know, so much of this healing journey is simply just bringing into awareness what is just outside of awareness. It's influencing us, it's affecting us, it's completely active, but it's below the line of consciousness and being able to bring it up. Well, I think that's why you say consciousness is so key to transformation. Yes. Again, it gives us space to incorporate because like you're saying, all of that's

happening. All of that's being metabolized into the interpretation, the reaction, right? So it's bringing it up so that we can now begin to act, be, regulate ourself in an aligned state. So we're nearing the end of our time, but I want to talk about cycles of emotional addiction. What is the cycle of emotional addiction? Emotional addiction is typically the repetitive. Most of us can identify emotional experience or climate that we tend to embody. So for me, as I've been describing, it was very much anxiety. For some others, it might be sadness, right? I've come to identify as a sad, as a depressed human. Maybe for others, it's angry, right? The consistent emotions that we revisit aren't intrinsically who we are. In my opinion, again, back to the wolf story that we

began with, I believe we all at our core are compassionate, caring, connected, loving humans and individuals. I believe that is a core aspect of us as humans ultimately. Though again, a lot of us aren't necessarily showing up in connection to that space. We're living all of these different habits again that have served us at a time, at a place that isn't in connection with what we truly, truly want, need. So when we are recycling, when we do find ourselves always visiting a certain emotions or completely shut down to other emotions, the human experience is complex. We have the ability to experience, to process, to be with all different types of emotions. And when we typically are stuck in one, again, it's usually a reflection of our early environment, of the habits and patterns, of the thoughts that we've

repeated, causing the same emotional reactions in our body. And then what happens over time, we become, as I call it, literally neurophysiologically addicted. We only begin to feel or we only feel like ourselves when we're in that emotional state. So the way I noticed this in myself is, again, my body was so primed in stress. It was so used to cortisol running through my bloodstream. It was so locked in fight or flight that even being the self-professed hippie looking for peace, not only was my body not able to calm down in that moment, it actually was so familiar with that experience of being up, on edge, agitated, almost alive with cortisol, that it began to interpret any

experience of being peaceful, calm, not having racing thoughts as being not like myself, as being that resistance to the unfamiliar. And again, this will apply if it's sadness, if it's anger, what we can begin to do is self-witness, become aware of what are the emotions we typically live in or revisit more often than not. And then again, dropping in, how are we interpreting our events? Is there information below? Is there some need that's not being met in that moment that's continuing to revisit this? And also, again, expanding an awareness that no one is a sad human intrinsically. No one, in my opinion, is an angry human intrinsically. You might have lived the embodiment of life, might feel like that is all you've become. Though, again, chances are that's a remnant of that past experience, still living in your mind and body. And ultimately, this whole conversation, all of my work is aimed at creating consciousness

and change in the moment, actually rewiring ourself neurophysiologically as our brain and body can do at any age in life so that we can give ourself a new normal. That is a beautiful place to wrap up. Thank you so much, Nicole. This has been so fun. I have 75 more questions that we're not going to have time for today. So maybe we will do this another time. But thank you so much for coming on.

And the book is called How to Meet Yourself, the Workbook for Self-Discovery. And it really is a workbook where people can take lots of exercises and we'll have links to where people can get it in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you so much, Eric, for your time, for your presence, for having these conversations with myself and other people. I truly, truly appreciate it. And yeah, the workbook is called How to Meet Yourself. I'm hoping that it is a living roadmap for people acknowledging that, you know, our journeys are going to look different. They're going to have different timelines. And my hope is that people live with this roadmap and take it along with their journey as we're all seeking to return home to who we truly are. Wonderful. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast.

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