The Sabrina Zohar Show - 61: Self healing, forgiveness, victimhood and how to hold yourself accountable with Dr Nicole Lepera!

Episode Date: February 23, 2024

On this weeks episode of The Sabrina Zohar Show,  Sabrina is joined by Dr. Nicole Lepera to talk about Self healing, forgiveness, victimhood and how to hold yourself accountable! Want to work with Sabrina? HERE! Stuck After the Podcast? Master Implementation in 8 Weeks with Sabrina's Foundation Course Join the Make It Make Sense: Getting Through a Breakup course HERE! Get Ad-free episodes and 2 Bonus episodes a month HERE! Dont forget to follow Sabrina and The Sabrina Zohar Show on instagram and Sabrina on Tik tok! Video now available on YOUTUBE!  Disclaimer: The Sabrina Zohar Show, formally known as Do The Work, is not affiliated with A.Z & associates LLC in any capacity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Do the Work podcast. My name is Sabrina Zohar and I am your host. Okay, I'm fan girling. I am fucking fan girling. We have Dr. Nicola Perra on. She, guys, she was a catalyst for my healing, like her book, How to Do the Work. I mean, even when I was coming up with a podcast name, I was like, I don't want to copy her. I just love her so much.

But I am just truly honored at this point to say that she is on the podcast. And today we're talking about self-healing, forgiveness, victimhood, and victim. demode and how to hold yourself accountable. And I'm just, I'm truly honored to just say the least to even just have you guys here. Like, thank you guys so fucking much for everything. Thank you for the support. Thank you for, please do not forget to rate the podcast. Wherever you listen, I just leave a five-star rating if you think it's worth it.

Leave a review. Share it with your friends. That is truly the only way I grow. And I'm just, please, it literally takes all of seconds on Spotify to do this if you're listening or Apple. Please, please, please. I beg up be. And guys, we have so many fun things coming up.

I've been trying to get the video stuff going. We're just having a little bit of snafu because welcome to doing everything yourself. It's so much fun. But I'm just excited to be here. Excited to have you guys. Thank you for everything. If you guys need anything, as always, link in show notes. The course is coming out any day now writing the book.

We have so many fun things coming. The bonus content is coming up. We've decided, like I said, it's $7 a month and it's going to have three bonus episodes and ask me anything. A Tech Guy and SAP episode. as well as an implementation series. And that's going to have tons of different specialists coming on to talk about different modalities and healing, red light, sleep, skin care, all of those things.

So everything is coming out. That starts March 17th. So I'm really honored. I hope you guys love it. I hope that we can continue this on. The Ask Me Anything is really fun because you guys get to go on and ask questions. And then I geotag where on the video we answer it. And so you guys can all be like, oh, I love this question.

Yes, KSab, can you answer this? And you know how I am. I love helping you guys. So thank you guys for everything. As always, if you need anything, link in show notes. Don't forget to please, please support our sponsors. My clothing line software. If you guys want anything, you get 20% off using the code do the work at wear software.com.

And yeah, we just have so many amazing things coming. And I'm just so grateful. So thank you guys for everything. So without further ado, let's get right on into it. Guys, if you're looking for a new podcast, I've got just the one. On the adversity advantage, Doug Bopest explores inspiring. stories of individuals who have conquered adversity and turned it into triumph. On top of hearing, their stories, listeners will receive insight from experts and neuroscience, mental health, and

wellness. Doug's goal is to share first-hand accounts of overcoming addiction, personal transformation, and making adversity work for you. What sets the adversity advantage apart? It's simple. They don't just share journeys. They provide actionable lessons for your life. Tune in wherever you get your podcast is start turning your trials into triumphs with the adversity advantage today. And guys, I was on the adversity advantage and Doug was on Do the Work. podcast so you can absolutely support both podcasts and have a new bingeworthy show to listen to. Okay, guys, I am so, so excited. Nicole, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to do the work podcast. Thank you for having me, Sabrina. I'm honored. Likewise, honestly, you have been such a

catalyst personally. Like, you have your book, how to do the work. And it's so funny when I was coming up with the podcast, I kept thinking and I was like, I hope I just think I'm copying her. I was like, it's just, it's so good. But you've been such a catalyst personally. for me of my growth, my healing, and I'm just so honored to have you as well. So for anybody who doesn't know who you are or anything about your journey, could you just tell us a little bit about yourself

and what you do? I actually love the title of your podcast. I got a very big kick out of it. And I just love what you speak to on this and within your work each and every week. And so, yeah, what I now do is informed by my journey, not only professionally, but quite personally. I'm a traditionally trained clinical psychologist and I had a private practice when I was living

back in Philadelphia now several years ago and several years into that practice. I really found myself feeling really frustrated and really disempowered along many of the clients that at the time I had been working with, some of them for several years at a time. And what I came to understand from a really low place of disempowerment and seeing myself continue to struggle in similar type of cycles, is not feeling fulfilled, even though I created and spent years to create this entire life around me to have a successful practice, to be in a relationship. And yet I felt so so disconnected. And so I really sought first the, I think ever learner in me, sought to understand why.

Why am I the helping professional tasked, you know, with my clients' self-care, you know, trying to help them to care for themselves, heal their suffering? And why am I struggling really right alongside of them in very similar ways? And what I came to find out, and it really informs, as the title of my first book and this podcast, is the necessity, really, for embodiment practices when we're trying to create change. Because what I came to realize in that really head on was the reality of how much our trauma, our dysregulation, the cycles that many of us are trying to break. It's my new book, the subtitle implies break cycles.

How much of that lives in our body? and all of the neurobiological wiring that we are, you know, kind of compelled to repeat, based on evolutionary reasons grounded in safety. So when I really understood scientifically the body and all of different roles the body plays, and then when I began to evolve my practice holistically to offer those embodiment tools, I was myself able to really see some transformation and finally able to give my clients what they were looking for in terms of an action a game plan for what to do next. And that's why I love what you do so much because you're not just, you know, like,

as somebody who has been in and out of therapy for like most of my adult life, like, I'm 33. So it's like, let's do some math here. I've seen it. It's the same type of day where it's like, okay, I go therapist after therapist. And it's like, you have these conversations. And it's like, all right, how do you feel? And how do you feel today?

And I'm like, I appreciate that you're even just asking me how I feel. But then it's like, you know, you kind of leave and you're just like, all right, so we spoke about this week. Now what? Like how do I implement? how do I actually do this? And that's what I love that you blend the world of, here's how your brain and psychology actually works. Like, here's how your body is functioning. But then here are things that you can do that maybe aren't the most traditional in the world.

But I can agree, like, for my healing journey, I was the poster child for anxious attachment, like narcissistic father, people pleasing mother. I normalized my entire childhood to the point where like, even I'd go to therapist and be like, oh, come on. Like, so what, my dad hit us? You know, or just like, you'd say something so common of like, you know, my dad had, three girlfriends growing up, like yours didn't. And then it took somebody to be like, no, you know, like that's not normal. But I personally really needed somebody else to be able to call me out and be like, hey, by the way, this isn't like any kind of normalcy. But I wanted to ask you because I know that especially the first book that you have really is like you're big on self-healing and

like how we can do that. And I wanted to know kind of first really when it comes to the self-healing. For a lot of people, I think, at least a lot of the messages I personally get, there's a lot of of a victim mentality going on of like it's just everything's happening to me and everybody else and they're the asshole and they're the ones doing things and fuck the avoidant and just such a villainous the poor avoidant such a villainization of it but i wanted to see like for people that are in this mode when it comes to self-healing like how can people like that keep themselves accountable when it just starts to feel like it gets really conflated and i want to go back and really honor that I think the space of having,

whether it's in a therapy experience or in a friendship group, someone to ask us how we're doing, to hear our narrative, to hear how we're doing or what it is that happened to us. I think that the benefit of that is quite large. I mean, we all need the safety and the security,

the space to be able to share what it is or that has happened or is happening to us and to get that sense of support and then to speak to your beautiful point, those are the moments where we do maybe have that vantage point outside of ourselves. Right. Because in childhood, I mean, we visit other people's houses and those are the moments where we see different family constellations.

We see different family environments. Until then, we imagined every house on the block more or less looked like ours. So those moments are really helpful. What is so much more powerful and why so many of us are stuck are all of the habits and patterns that were born out of those early environments and those early relationships that are now stored in our subconscious mind. And when our subconscious is operating, as it is for all of us, outside of our awareness, endlessly scanning our environments, putting filters or certain interpretations over actions or inactions in our current circumstances, our emotions are very much activated then from that point of subconscious filtering that's happening. And sharing that because when we don't realize

everything that's going beneath the scenes, right, something happens in our external environment, we have a shift in our physiology, our body registers what happens? Then we have that mental filter that we put in place, the way that we've made sense of or are making sense of what it is that happened. And then typically we have habitual reaction, the thing that we're now going to do based on what we're thinking and how we're feeling. Until we really turn the light of consciousness or look at everything that's beneath the iceberg, it is really understandable and natural. And I myself found myself in a victim mentality. Because it does feel like victims simply meaning reactive.

It does over time, when years have gone by where we can't seemingly see this chain of events, it does very logically feel like that thing happened and now I am compelled to feel and do this other thing. And the more we repeat those neurobiological habits, the more certain we become that the world outside of us is happening to us, that we don't have a point of choice to actually create change until, of course, and this is why I will always simplify any sort of change that any listeners want to make into those two steps. The first step being look at the current role, namely in our subconscious mind, that we are playing in recreating events that are happening to us.

So what is going on in my physiological body? What is my mind saying about it? What are those instinctual feelings and habits then that I'm going to enact or embody in that moment? Once I become conscious, now I can shift out of that victim or, again, reactive mentality because now I can start to show up as that conscious being that can make some new choices. So I just really wanted to spend some time and normalize because I know I found myself imagining believing, living the experience of the world is happening to me until I created that little bit of space to see things differently. 100%. I can relate the same. Like I for years just thought, No, no, no, it's because there's something wrong with me or like, it's all me.

And then, of course, like, we have external factors. Like, I had my family always reaffirming that of like, well, you're the common denominator. You're the single one. You're the one with the issues. And so then it furthered this divide. But I know at least personally on my journey, like everybody is on their own path. For me, where it got is like my mom, so my brother had a drug problem. So my mom comes from a very like traditional like AA and, you know, NA, like that.

And it worked for her. So for me, she was at your sink and thinking. You know, when you're sick and tired of being sink and tired, you're going to make a change. And she would repeat that to me. And it's funny because I think for so many years, you know, you intellectualize healing. I've read every book and I've read every podcast.

Why don't I feel better? And sometimes for me, like what really, like I'd love to know for you like what moved the needle. Really when you started to implement things was, like you said, putting a speed bump, putting literally instead of me always reacting and being like, I'm like my father and I scream and I yell and you're going to listen. stopping to literally just be like, whoa, okay, what's happening in my body right now? Just even a simple question of like, oh, oh, this is in my chest.

Like I remember my first therapist ever had me, and like to this day, it's a practice I fucking love, had me identify what, where are you feeling it? Okay, can you identify it? Is there a shape? Is there a color? And I'll never forget being like, it's a black spiky ball. And so then, you know, I was able as long as I was going on in my journey when it would happen, I'd be like, wait, the black spiky ball is back.

And so then I was able to go, oh, I'm not anxious. I have anxiety. And then I started to create different narrative. That was, and it took me, for anyone listening that wants to think, oh, I'm there now. That took me like seven, eight years. You know, like this is not like I woke up. But I'd love to hear from you on your especially personal journey or professional, whichever it resonates, what were those little shifts that you were able to make,

like real actionable tools for people that they can implement that you really found have been successful, you know, besides obviously like space or breath? I think very much like your own journey reconnecting with the body. Yeah. Not only for myself, I think it's foundationally important for all of us because the many of us, myself included, I mean, I went to school for many years and be a psychologist. I love learning, reading the next book, always learning about the new modality that I can integrate into my practice. And for a lot of us, that always thinking, always analyzing, always intellectualizing, always trying to write from the spaceship of my mind, understand and shift then the way my body feels. For a lot of us, that's a protection. That itself has become an adaptation, right? living in my mind. And I do believe that some of us have this idea that it's of benefit, right? Well, I'm analyzing myself. I'm trying to understand myself. I'm reading self-help books. So I'm trying to better myself in reality. And that all might be very much the intention. But the action of being in my mind, primarily, if not the entirety of the time, I'm missing a large amount of information

that my mind is actually considering all of those signals that my body is sending to my mind. So that beautiful moment of saying, well, let me just tune into what it is that I'm feeling. What are the sensations in my body? I love your black spiky ball kind of, you know, I'm picturing one now. And using kind of those sort of visceral type terms to even describe it. Because this is kind of the jump off point. Well, oh, now Nicole's saying to identify my feeling. So now I'm right back into analyzing and trying to determine if this is, is this grief?

Is this loss? Is this anger? Is it right? So now I'm still in my mind, right? If we can be with the world of sensations, of constriction, of temperature change, of shapes, of colors, of however it speaks to each of you individually, now we're in the world of our body. And the reason why I continue to emphasize how important that is is, as I mentioned, our mind is assessing all of those signals that our body is constantly sending to it.

And if we're not paying attention to it, our mind sure is. And that's the reason why a lot of us have struggled with racing thoughts, struggle with upsetting, you know, anxiety-based thoughts, worst-case scenario thinking. All of that is a reflection of the stress and upset and dysregulation housed in my body. And it took me because I was self-proclaimed. I like to joke and say I'm a hippie at heart. All I want is peace and love and a moment to just chill. And in reality, in those seemingly chill moments where there was nothing, you know,

objectively stressful at hand, I could not white knuckle myself to just relax, to just calm down. And I'm sure it's really frustrating because I'm sure many of you listening and might even heard, well, meaning loved ones offer you, just breathe, just relax, just right? And the reality of it was in those moments for me. me, my mind would race, not with pleasant, joyful thoughts. My mind would raise with stressful thoughts. Usually based on what I should be doing other than having a peaceful moment to relax. And maybe I should just get up and do that thing now. Or I'd recall an argument or an upset in my,

the relationship maybe that I was in. And until I realized that all of that thinking reflected, outside of my awareness, all of those sensations of stress that were housed within my body, now I had a new reframe. It wasn't that I couldn't relax because I'm not a peaceful person or I don't deserve or I'm not worthy of a peaceful moment. It's that my body is not relaxed in that moment. So stillness, so stopping, so quiet, these things that I know many of us avoid at all costs because those are the moments where that discomfort becomes present.

So then we go right back in to the protection of our thinking mind, scrolling online, picking up the self-help book that we're reading, or whatever it is that we're doing. So that moment of becoming reconnected with our body and much like you is not an overnight moment. I am still daily committed to in the morning starting my day, not with my email, not with what I have to think about, with how my body feels. And then building that as my foundation, day after day after day really is my commitment to continuing to reconnect with my body because it absolutely isn't like a light switch. Like we can't just say, oh, I'm not connected and reconnect.

We really have to teach ourselves because with a lot of us, a lot of us are going to become present too is all of the discomfort that we've been avoiding that's living in our bodies. 100%. And I love the way you even said that. Like I noticed I have a friend. She's a nervous system specialist. And like she's just,

that's like her fucking thing and she gets it. And there was one day we were talking. And like this is even the gratitude of like you said earlier of just having someone there to listen or to hear you. just like what an incredible, someone making space for you. Like, what a beautiful gift to really have with someone that you trust. And I remember like just sitting there and, you know, for years I thought, no, no, my anxiety is only in my relationships.

It's because like I have daddy issues, right? And it's like, no, my friendship's all manifested at. Like my career was always me taking everything personally and thinking it was all about me or my boss said this is because there's something wrong with me. And so when I started my whole career, like when all of this happened, I went from limiting beliefs of like who cares about me and no one's going to want to listen to me like my own narrative of growing up hearing my dad say just be happy stop with this bullshit can you just stop fucking stop being a little baby and I'm like I'm sick what do you mean stop being a baby like thanks for

discrediting me and so like when I started my business and everything started to take off and people felt really like they were seen and I'm like wow that's it's beautiful but that was really hard for me like I was struggling to be like whoa whoa wait you like and then of course you get the trolls and you're like this is so overwhelming. And I'll never forget sitting with Masha one day and telling her, you know, like, I'm just, I'm not busy enough for like complaining about something business wise that was arbitrary. That was no real goal, you know? And all of a sudden she looked at me and she was like, okay, do you know what's happening right now? And I was like, no, what I looked like was this with my eyes darting back and forth? And then when she said that, that was the first time I was like, what are you talking about? And I was like, so should I relax? And she's like, no, no, no, don't force yourself to relax. She was like, tens up, tens it. And I was like, ah. Oh, I feel better. And that was the first moment to share with everybody, to even say this was a year or a little over a year ago.

So it's like, oh, this wasn't. I'm not holier than now. I've been doing this for fucking ever. Where I realized, whoa, me getting into dysregulation was my eyes darting, looking for safety. Makes total sense. Then my shoulders went up. I got tense, my heart.

I'm sweating. Grabbed my phone. First thing I did was look on Insta to see my follower count. And she was like, and look what happened. You went right into, I'm not safe because I'm creating this whole thing. Grab something that can give me that safety. And just that whole experience, just so that I share this with others so that they can understand personally as well what they're going through was enough for me to be like, whoa, the impact that the body has on our healing is fucking insane. And if we actually stop to listen, then what did I hear?

Wasn't, I'm not busy enough. Okay, keep going. But where are the people? Keep going. Oh, my God. Am I a failure? Keep going. Oh, my God.

My dad was right. I can't fucking do this. look, that troll proved me right. So it went from, I don't have enough money and I don't have this. Yes, I did to, wait, what was that really happening? That was a core belief that I created this entire rigmarole and went off with that story. But for somebody like that doesn't have someone accountable, I would imagine if somebody's new on their journey, but this would be really fucking tough to be able to differentiate. Am I actually having an like an anxiety attack or is there genuinely a threat? Yeah, and I think that's the most common question I get when people discover, even the concept of conditioning, right?

All these different ways that we can feel compelled to react is usually then followed with, well, how do I know? Right. And again, there isn't a simple kind of like checklist. These markers mean this is coming from your conditioning. These markers mean it's coming from your, you know, more authentic, you know, objective, if you will, assessment. of the reality because it's all speaking in the same senses. And the thing about our nervous system is it always is on alert, always is scanning our environment to assess the safety of our environment, to make sure and assess our physical body and to determine whether or not there are any needs that are going unmet that we need to then, you know, in action, go create the opportunity and agency to meet the need for. So emotions and sensations and all of this kind of assessing that our body,

signals that I mentioned earlier that our body is sending to our mind are of incredible importance. And what you're beautifully describing and even this question is emblematic of, our mind is just assessing the sensations. It can't, it doesn't have a measure of if that objectively happened outside of here to warrant this degree of sensation. It's just utilizing the sensations. And that's, while our nervous system is always on alert, it can become, and through, we can begin to see, especially if in childhood we didn't have that safety and that security that we need it to teach our bodies how to safely overcome more and more stress, what will happen is we will not be able to shift out of that survival mode. Our eyes will

always be scanning. We will be waiting, as a lot of us feel, for the next shoe to drop. Yeah. Always on alert for the similar cue in our current environment, right? Because our subconscious mind is always using the past as a point of reference. And if and when anything currently happens that activates a similar sensation in our body as to something that happened in the past, we go like a time traveler right back to that past, being compelled to then react in the same way, which is why for a lot of us in those moments, we can feel quite shameful because some of our reactions are developmentally immature. sure, we're screaming and yelling and having a temper tantrum or we're, you know, giving someone the silent treatment and not speaking to them in this moment or we're distracting herself or leaving the room

or, you know, completely just removing ourselves from the conversation or whatever it might be. And when we again understand that it is real for us in this moment, that's why I'm kind of emphasizing this. A lot of us want to shame. Yeah. And say, okay, my conditioning happens. It happened back there. It's not helping and benefiting me right now. I just don't want it to be, I don't want it to impact me. anymore. Though according to my body, it is an impact, right? There is something that feels threatening. And what feels threatening for most of us as adults are our emotions. Because we didn't have that safe and secure caregiver to teach our bodies through co-regulation, through coming together in moments when we're disregulated and upset and having someone meet our needs until we can,

over meeting our needs and take over self-regulating or take over finding those supportive of friendship so that we can get the support that we need or the co-regulation that we need. And when that doesn't happen in childhood, we do continue to live with these adaptations or these survival modes. So healing, again, while I can't give the kind of bullet points of how to know when a sensation is coming from conditioning versus it's coming from authentic self, because the sensations are the same. Right. It really is like a peeling of an onion analogy where I become really present to what is happening in my body, really present to what is happening in my mind. When I notice those markers of stress, I spent a lot of time in this new book talking about

as you beautifully illustrate it, right, tension, my shoulders up to my ears, my jaw being clenched. I might notice it and shifts in my breathing and shifts in my heart rate, right? When I notice my body is stressed, then I can make some intentional choices, that space we both talked about earlier to help calm my body down because it is in those moments where we're overwhelmed or where we're stressed out where our conditioning will for sure take over at some point. So when we get clear and when we get grounded and when we do have that space then to make new choices, sometimes using new tools to learn how to intentionally regulate our body or release our emotions in a new way or finding new friendships maybe to be vulnerable and share these aspects of

ourselves, right? Then we can get a little clearer in terms of what's coming from that deeper place within or again, what is just that old habit that I feel compelled to do because I don't have anything else to do in its place. No, and I love the way you articulated that because it really is so beautifully put that like, and I think that's what I really want to normalize. It's like, first of all, no one's broken. There's something to fix. Like we got to, we got to omit that. It's like, we have some shit that we can heal through, right? Like if I have a massive gash on my arm and you come up and poke it. It's like, yeah, I'm probably going to be hurt versus if I started to heal through it and you poked it. I'd be like, no, I just get the fuck away from me.

But I really like, one thing that I actually was going to ask was you had mentioned a few behaviors. Would that be considered protest behavior? Like the shutting down or the lashing out, like I think a lot of people, some people had written in asking like, I think I exhibit that, like, where is that for my anxious attachment? And I was like, I wanted to ask you a little bit more and understand because I know that I used to exhibit protest behavior because that was just, you know, I didn't get what I wanted. So I'd be. like, fine, I'm just going to write okay back in a text or I'm going to react in a specific way. But I'd love to hear from your, like, clinically and so people can understand what protest behavior

is and how it kind of manifests in this like, that weird space of like you're feeling something, you're reacting, yada, yada. When I hear even just the name, right, protest, when you hear the name protest, it's right, we're up in arms. We're advocating for our point. We're, you know, defending our side of maybe in hypothetical conflict. or whatever it might be. And so protest and the language I talk about,

I kind of evolve things around our nervous system in particular because it is so foundational to how our body physiologically runs. And it turns out it's very foundational to how we emotionally feel and how we navigate our emotions and ultimately to how comfortable and free we feel to be our authentic self in our relationship. So protest behavior, I would kind of put that in the category of a nervous system response type behavior.

And universally when our nervous system, as I mentioned, is scanning outside of our awareness, ever always assessing the safety of our current circumstances, our relationships include it. We will go through universally a string of actions, all generated outside of our attention or awareness. We don't have to choose to do any of this. Our nervous system will enact it for us when it determines that there's something stressful present. And the first thing, and this is kind of where protest kind of can fit in nicely, the first

category, which traditionally is known as the fight or flight response. So just starting with fight. And I break down and I give other names for these categories. I call fight mode eruptor mode because it's a very easy way to think about it. When we're fighting, we're erupting outward with all of the mobilized energy that our body now has access to. Because when our nervous system physiologically determined there's a threat present, we need energy.

We need the blood racing through our veins. We need the tension in our muscles. so that we can fight or try to overcome the threat at hand. That's always going to be our first go-to in terms of defense. Oh, well, something's wrong. Let me see if I can overtake it or protest it or combat it or fight it. And again, thinking of mobilized energy behaviorally, that looks like domineering, controlling, screaming, yelling,

like I mentioned earlier, all of these ways that we behave trying to overpower the threaded hand. if we determine that that's too big, it's not working, we can't overpower it, we're not powerful enough to overpower it in the first place, our second mode of action using all that same mobilized energy, so that tension that we're feeling, the elevated heart rate, the elevated breathing pattern. And our next best scenario is we flee, right, we leave, we remove ourselves from the threaded hand. And that then behaviorally can look like we get distracted, we change the subject, We physically leave the room, like I mentioned earlier.

We put the TV on. We start scrolling. We remove ourselves from, right? If there's an uncomfortable conversation over here, I'm not looking at that. I'm not having a part in that. I'm watching the television over here. So in a way, I've fled using that mobilized energy. And so, again, when these things happen, and I explain this because a lot of us, we do feel

shameful when we say and do mean things, you know, around our loved ones, or we hurt people that we don't want to hurt. or we are distracted or we maybe hear complaints from other people that we're not present in the way that they want us to be. And when we're in survival mode, that is our sole focus, is physiologically on our own survival and on what we need to do. And the reason why I spent a lot of time talking about these behaviors, right, protest or fight whatever we want to call them or flight behaviors and there's shutdown behaviors too that we can talk about is because not only do a lot of us entertain the belief that we might be broken, you know, as a result of it,

a lot of our relationships really suffer. Because when we're in what I call survival mode, any version of the ways that we've habitually learned to deal with something that's too overwhelming or stressful or upsetting for us, we are physiologically unable to see the humanity, let alone care about the humanity in anyone else around us, even if it's our closest loved one. because they become, we reduce them, again, in physiological terms, to simply the threat at hand. Right. And that's why so many of us, we see these cycles of conflict or of disconnection in our relationships. We feel shameful.

We feel unfulfilled. Our partners feel unfulfilled in our relationship. We feel hurt. A lot of us carry a lot of wounding from these behaviors. So, of course, I'm not trying to okay or condone it when we have, though, the language to understand that how much my nervous system is playing a role in those. behaviors, then again, in that intentional space, I can start to use some new tools to calm myself down so that I can not only be more compassionate to myself, I can be more compassionate to other people.

And I love that I love that you brought that up because that's a big thing I'm really trying to advocate for. So my partner, like I have narcissistic father who's very avoidant to me, obviously. Like this may like you, it's just volatility and screaming and rage and God forbid. but you even say like, hey, you know, like we're having a family issue now with my siblings. And he was like, you know what? I'm going to get all three of you fucking idiots in a room. And then that way we could be done with it. And I looked at him straight in the eye and I was like, you know what you're not going to like

about these three fucking idiots in a room that we're all going to tell you you were the reason that were like this. And he just could not handle that. And so it's like, but as I've gotten older and the same with my partner. Like my partner is more of when I'm more anxious just by nature and like just upbringing. And like when we started dating, he studied psychology. Like he's not an idiot. He understands all of these things.

but like he's a fucking human. And for me, I used to be my least favorite saying, if he wanted to, he would. I used to be that girl that would be like, well, he just doesn't want me bad enough. And it's like, well, wait a minute. When I used to do that, I had no compassion for other people. I had no compassion for maybe this person's just dealing with a lot of stuff.

And it's just not a match, right? Like, do I have to create this entire narrative around what transpite? Even if I, they go off with another girl. It's like, maybe that other girl didn't trigger them. like I did. You know, like there's so many variables. But what I find is like that lack of compassion has been so monumental especially between the anxious avoidant crew. And I'm sure you see it on the interwebs. But I would love to maybe just like debunk a little on how we can have compassion for other people because I really genuinely believe by us showing compassion for them, we can have

compassion for ourselves. And I personally for me, like when it came to my father specifically, which obviously then created new roadmaps for new relationships there to come was like for me, I stood up to the big bully. Two years ago, I told my dad to fuck off. I was done with him calling me names. I was done with him putting me down and I was like, that's it. And I spent a year without talking to him and I got shit from every person I met. How could you do this to your father? You know, your father misses you. How not enough credit is given to the kids. I know you've spoken about this that removed themselves from situations like that. And, you know, I had to. So after that, I completely changed the way I dated because I I stood up to the one person I was scared of abandoning me the most.

Yeah, who's some guy on hinge? You know what I mean? Like, yeah, you're not going to fuck with me that bad. But I found that like when I see my father now, like I saw him for the first time and went right back into his shit, I was able to remove myself and say, okay, I don't need to create a narrative. I'm not saying you're a bad person, but you've learned some shitty behavior. Is it an explanation or an excuse?

I'm not going to excuse what you're doing, but I can understand where it came from. And that took me a long time and a lot of conflicting. truths being able to hold space for both thoughts because that was really difficult. But I'd love if we could just for a second discuss how like avoidance aren't bad people. And like if we could really understand how this manifests because I don't really talk about like a lot of people I feel like don't really talk about disorganized. But I would love to really talk about the three, you know, the three main anxious avoidant and disorganize.

Of course there's the other amalgamations. But how their like how their behavior can show up, but how we can show. compassion and like how are we able to at least introduce compassion when maybe we've never done that before with anybody in our lives, especially men that we've dated that you're like, that guy's the problem. I think you said it really beautifully. I mean, you said I can understand, even before I said, I can see, right, where something is coming from someone else.

I can understand and I don't have to necessarily. I don't have to use that understanding to determine how it is that I, respond or engage. And there's so much wisdom there because for so long, and I think some of it is just my own curiosity in the human condition and understanding people and that endless learning that I kind of referenced earlier, for so long I would, whether it was someone I was dating or, you know, patterns in my own family, I would acknowledge them. And I would immediately go to understanding, you know, from what I knew of, you know, whether it was family members and what had happened. to them being a lot of those are shared experience or friendships and romantic partners I have had

what I knew about their past. And I would, as I say, over understand or almost have too much compassion. Yes. Or I would overstep, suppress really how I felt about whatever it was that was happening or continues to happen in that relationship. And I had come to realize that I was doing not only a disservice to myself, but to the relationship, when I didn't allow that space to say, yes, I can understand and I still have every right to not only validate my reality, my emotions include it, to make the choices that I need to make based on my reality

and my emotions included. So to hold space, as you beautifully put it, to understand and to still make choices that are in alignment with what I need to create safety in the relationships as I need it. And I think when we, when compassion, when we're thinking about compassion and how to do kind of evolve into that space, you know, compassion is having an awareness of, you know, someone else. They're suffering, their experience, their wants their needs, their being.

We really just want to super generalize it. And when I think we have our own, when we go through our own healing journey, as I shared earlier with those two steps, we become really well aware of all of that's beneath the iceberg that's driving us into all of these habits and patterns that many of us have been repeating over our lifetime. When we see essentially what drives us and all of the different factors that have impacted, what drives us, these habits, if you will, then I think it's really natural that we can begin to extend some of that awareness or that compassion to other people, right? We can see them as individuals that are also impacted by all of the evolving factors that began even

from their own childhood and their past generations. And at the same time, right, we can hold space for how it is that we experience them in that relationship. Right. So can we expand and can there be room for all of it? And I think that's what's really important to keep in mind when we think about compassion in particular, not to allow compassion to be our explanation or our reasoning away of our own right to our feelings and maybe difficult choices that we have to make in our relationships. And also to give ourselves the opportunity to have that understanding about ourselves and about others. Because I think that's what can unify us, especially in difficult circumstances, difficult relationships where there has been a lot of pain and a lot of wounding.

and it doesn't, again, negate the pain and wounding. Can I feel the pain and wounding that as a result of what happened or didn't happen within this relationship and also compassionally understand why that dynamic was in place? Totally. And it's like what was a big game changer for me of like not taking things personally was like allowing myself to be a human. Like if I can allow other, that's that compassion. If I can allow you to make fuckups and like when my partner, I shared a story, I shared a video

on TikTok that actually shocked me by the response. Like sometimes, you know, we know that the internet could be a thing. But this, my partner, his sister passed away. She committed suicide two years ago, trigger warning to anybody. And obviously, I didn't get to meet her. It was really, my dog passed away at the same time. So like we both kind of missed each other. And so we've been trying to support each other going through grief, obviously a human versus

a dog, two different things, but doesn't matter. It's grief. And we were away. And he was just being cold. He was just shutting down. And he was his becoming, that avoidance was becoming obvious. And I started to notice, like we went away and I started to notice my people pleasing coming out of the, you know, I literally, I remember I was going to say, I was going to ask him

something. And I, in my head was, don't, don't upset him. Don't be too much. And I remember, like, it was my mother's voice. And I was like, whoa, where did that come from? And I started getting curious. And I took three days to process and understand. Am I upset because of something that happened? You know, I really wanted to differentiate, like, did he do something rude to me? Was he being, like, an asshole? Or is it just a projection? Something's coming up. And after a few days, I finally realized where he was just being short and it got worse and worse and I finally stopped him. And I said, baby, I need you to know I love you, but I also need you to know that your behavior is impacting me. I understand you're going through grief and I am fucking here to support you.

I just need you to communicate how I can support you. And I said, you've been shutting down on me. I was like, if you need space, it's okay. Go into the, I'll go into the other room. And I was like, but I just need you to share with me what's happening for you so I can at least show up. I said, because now I'm walking on eggshells and I feel like I'm back home with my father, not knowing what reaction I'm going to get. And I was like, we have such a beautiful relationship that this feels foreign and this feels

unsafe and this is not something that I want in the house. And he broke down crying. We had this beautiful hour conversation. Fine. Great trip. I was shook. When I posted that story to share about like how do I talk to somebody that maybe has more avoidance?

Like, let's have some, the amount of people that were like, I don't need to communicate that I need my partner to communicate. Like, this is way too much work. And I, I couldn't believe it. And I was like, wow, all I hope is that you'll have some compassion for yourself and for other people. Because it's like if we're expecting everybody to be perfect at all times, I'm going to assume make a deduction that maybe you grew up in that type of household where you only got the accolades if you did a great job. And if you didn't, there's something wrong with you. But it was so surprising to me, I think, to see that jarring.

And I was like, all I was trying to do was normalize. different people's experiences and what I still feel like we get is so much pushback on, well, the anxious person's outwards and the avoidance, the problem, because they go inward. And it was, it broke my heart. And I wasn't sure if there was anything in that story that stood out to you of an area of opportunity for growth for other people. But I wanted to share that with you and see what happened to you hearing it. Yeah. I mean, I just keep thinking, you know, whether it's the avoidant who goes inward, the anxious who explodes sometimes even dramatically outward or the disorganized, maybe we put that a little more in that category or what have you. All of those are

adaptations, in my opinion at least, born out of unmet needs, wounding, disconnection, sometimes even violation in childhood. And in that exchange even between an anxious or an avoidant, in a relationship between an anxious or avoided, the reality of it is, neither partner is fully getting their needs met. Because even though I think on the outside and for a while I was described, much like an avoidant would be, as cold as aloof, is not seeming that anything ever kind of like bothered me or upset me. Internally, of course, the experience I was having was quite different. I was having a lot of overwhelming emotions a lot of the time. I just got really savvy at keeping myself as distracted and distanced from them, either throwing myself into achievement,

the next thing I had to do to focus my attention away from the discomfort and try to get value and performance and all of the things that I was doing or it got to the point where I just had no resources left. I was so exhausted. I was completely shut down. I was on that final step of that nervous system living in what I call my spaceship. And so outwardly, I imagine I was a person in a relationship, right, even though I was proclaiming an absence of connection and how disgruntled I was and no one's able to emotionally connect with me, I imagine I was that frustrating person for a lot of people because I seemingly wasn't present. Though in reality, the experience for me was a lot of loneliness. It doesn't feel good even if on the outward we look

like we're okay and calm and cool and collected and we're quiet in our room or we're not bothering anyone. A lot of the time there's a lot of pain that we're trapped in. Yeah. Even if on the outside seemingly right? And the reality of it is for all of us as humans, we need relationships. So when we find ourselves in a relationship where we're not feeling safe and secure and fulfilled, whatever side of label you're on, chances are neither person or however many people are in the relationship are happy because a relationship is a dynamic system. So that just kind of just keeps popping into my head. And I just compassion throughout my whole work is just so predominant. While I do want us to create some,

for the way we feel, and this I think kind of applies to this question to some extent as well. You know, when we become aware of the needs that we didn't have met, I think why a lot of people so quickly react like you're seeing on this post that you're sharing Sabrina is because we haven't fully processed our own grief about our unmet need yet. Right. So it is easier, safer, whatever, to just blame and, and, project and externalize than to say, wow, right, I am feeling the deep pain of loneliness, right, that is being activated now by this new avoidant partner person that I'm interacting with in my life, but it's not just about them, right? Because chances are, it's about either the

physical abandonment, the emotional abandonment, or whatever it was that had happened in childhood where I didn't get what I wanted and what I needed. So while a lot of us, again, we just focus on who's causing it now and what they could be doing differently to stop it, I think as we make more and more space for the reality that it's not really on the surface, as you kind of were describing your own kind of diving down and questioning earlier. It's not really the thing that we think it's about. Then we can make space for, I think, the longer term journey of grieving, of mourning, of mourning, of being with our own pain, acknowledging that these needs had gone unmet,

maybe even mourning all of the ways that we thought we had to show up for decades, of time to try and get those needs met and all of the exhaustion and unmet needs that we've continued to cause ourselves as we tried to repeat habits that didn't actually meet that need and serve us in the first place. And then I believe we can have the compassion. We can create the space. We can become less reactive in those moments. But we still might have a moment of reaction when someone posts something that we don't agree with and that part of our mind, you know, retorts the thing or puts the blame somewhere else. But if we do this behind the scenes, I think that we can shift our dynamics within our relationships and have that compassion that we're both of us

acknowledging is important. When I love, thank you for sharing even your personal journey because like, it's funny, when I wasn't aware of what my needs were and I wasn't comfortable for years, are you kidding? Me? Ever tell somebody, hey, I need this. Are you fucking kidding me? I remember the days of 22-year-old Sabrina living in New York where a guy text me at three in the morning, come over.

I'm horny. And guess who walked in New York City? alone at 19 to go and do that because I didn't understand what my own needs were. I didn't know what boundaries were. Who taught me that? But one thing that was so fascinating, as you said, of like, when you're going through something and like how it might look to the external world is, oh, this person doesn't care and they're so aloof and they're so la. And for so long, when I wasn't aware of my own needs, I always automatically assumed that that's any avoidant until like I was sharing the story with my partner, the reason I knew something was up because

even though he was silent, I could see just even by the way he was manically looking around or acting. And I asked him and I was like, you're going through something. And he was like, my thoughts haven't stopped. And he was like, I don't know what's going on. Like, I've been in my own hell. And he was just in his pity party. And I was like, that's okay. And we talked and we processed. But I really wanted to exemplify that like once I understood my needs and was comfortable to express them, I then understood your needs are to go inwards. That's how you know with your shitty childhood that you had how to take care of yourself because you felt like you were in danger. And that was such a beautiful example. And like, I'm glad that you shared

your example as well because I really want to stop villainizing attachment styles. There's no good. There's no bad. Everybody is just on their own fucking journey. If someone's a narcissist or an asshole or blatantly treating you like shit, different story. But if someone's just being a human, sometimes we have to take it off of ourselves and be like, yeah, maybe someone just, and then, and also that resilience of feeling. That's kind of what I wanted to end with you of like, I think you've described so many things beautifully, but one thing I noticed was I asked questions on Insta and so many of them. I got probably 40 to 50 all saying the same thing of like, well, I'm on, you know, now that I've been doing this, like I meditate and I do all this,

but I still feel sad or I still feel lonely. And it's like that resilience to emotion. And it's like, you can't have it all good. You know, it can't always. be like if you all have good, well, then how are we going to know what bad feel? How are we going to know when to be excited if it's always good? But I'd love just to hear your thoughts on like growing resilience to be able to handle these really tough emotions that feel like sometimes you're going to fucking die. I appreciate ending with this because I kind of referenced a statement I made earlier was quite universal. And I do believe it to be true. I feel there are very few of us as adults who truly have emotional resilience

or the ability to be with and process and remain responsive to our emotions. And I think some of us have the belief, as I think is evidenced in these questions, like, why do I still feel things? So why do I still feel graviatized? I think some of us have that belief

that to heal, right, the goal is to eradicate, remove, right? Be this Buddha on the mountain where I don't feel anything. And it took me, again, even as a trained clinical psychologist, to truly understand what an emotion is. Because emotions and, you know, I think a lot of us use those terms interchangeably feeling an emotion, you know, and the distinction really being is just kind of like our, our cognitive descriptors of our emotions, which are physiological sensations, all of different ways we describe them, give language, give meaning, give all of these different. spectrum of our feelings. But when we really kind of hammer down into the core of where they begin, probably at this point in the conversation listeners might not be too surprised.

They begin in the body as physiology, as sensations. Even more so, they have evolutionary value. They send us messages. The core emotions contain information that is incredibly important for us. universally, we'll all feel angry when we're being actively violated, when our needs are being unmet, actively or have gone on met for a large amount of time. Anger is a sensory experience of action. We need to utilize the mobilized energy that comes along with anger now to defend myself, to be assertive, to put up that boundary, not to be violated anymore. That's all natural, human and protective for our evolution to make sure that I'm continuing to meet my needs met. I can use all that mobilized anger. Sadness, very common natural emotion that we will all

feel when we perceive the loss of something that's important to us. Right. So again, emphasizing all of this, emotions aren't to be avoided. What we need to do many of us because we didn't learn in childhood because we didn't have the attunement that we needed because we had caregivers who had trauma living in their own mind and body and who weren't regulated in their own nervous system. to be able to help us regulate ours so that then we could self-regulate and develop more and more tolerance for more and more stressful or upsetting emotions over time. That's what it means when we say widen our window. Just set ourselves up to deal with more and more stress, not to get rid of stress.

And this even ties back into this idea of reaction or victim mindset, right? The kind of tandem thought of that is if something out there caused me to feel, something in here, then I have to change it out there. Right. Right for it to stop, not saying, okay, something out there did cause a feeling in here and there's information about this feeling. Totally. And now that thing can continue. What I can do different is learn how to tolerate how I feel based on that thing happening or remove myself. This is where boundaries come into play. Again, another, I think, area where sometimes we confuse boundaries for ultimatums. Yes. Where we think a boundary is instructing or telling or demanding someone or giving consequences to

someone if they don't do what we tell them to do. No. A boundary is us saying you keep doing exactly as you going to do. I, however, am not going to. And just like you with your father, I'm not going to participate in this relationship. For some of us, I'm not going to participate in conversations about this topic. For others, I'm not going to be around this action. You keep doing, conversating, actioning. I'm going to do something different. And that's how we again begin. getting in the body foundationally, learning the different sensations that are registering in our body, not just giving them language and words and defining them in the exact appropriate emotion or feeling so that we can communicate them, being with them in the visceral sense, and then

expanding that window of tolerance in our body, where we can tolerate more and more of that upset and where we can keep ownership. Again, this is not condoning abusive behaviors. This is empowering ourselves to find our way to safety and or supportive relationship. to help us find our way to safety if and when we need it. And I think that's what true empowerment is, and that's what my hope for all of my work is offered to be, is to give us the tools to live in that empowered space, which for a lot of us means a lot of learning of how to deal with stressful and upsetting emotions. Which, and if I can even just to end this on that, it has worked because I've

been following you for probably like four or five years now, like three, four, something like that. And like, I remember just starting to see your stuff and being like, oh, okay, so this. this is how I set a boundary. Like, again, nobody ever taught me how to do that. But I, I used to be the girl that if I didn't get a text, I would take like a nap because I couldn't handle what would happen in my body. I would literally go or like, I would go on hinge or, you know, back in the day, fucking OK, QIPA and be like, oh, just go fuck someone else.

Like, I couldn't handle it. And then when I started to understand like, okay, well, so when this happens, like, wait, I'm okay. I'm just putting a little space and space and space. And it's like, I'm not kidding. Like what you say actually fucking works and does actually move the needle. And I'm beyond grateful to have found you so that I can then continue on to share your work, how it actually helps.

And then we evolve and keep going because, yeah, if you can go from someone like me who was so anxious, I literally couldn't even like function. And I would text someone hundreds of times in a day to having a beautiful, secure relationship and working through issues and being able to hold emotions and be the black sheep of the family that started to do that, it's possible for anybody. It's just that your journey is going to look a little different. But it doesn't mean that the tools won't still apply. Yes. And I'm so, so honored, Sabrina, to have played a role in your own journey. And I just am so grateful for what you are about. And I was having this conversation with someone just yesterday.

And I was saying, I'm so frustrating, I think sometimes with some people, because I forget where it was. I think it was in my membership, self-healer circle. Someone put up a post. We were talking about conditioning. It was a course we put out each and every month. And last month it was about just this conditioning. So members were given tools and resources to begin to understand what conditioning is and then to explore their own conditioning. So this very sweet member put up a post. We have very much a social media type feel in the membership where members can have their profile, write up post, react to things like the content. So this particular member, and I saw a theme in the responses and with a lot of members agreeing. And what the member said and acknowledged was how power

it was to have the information and the witnessing of how conditioned they are. Though, now what? Do I really just have to start showing up differently? It was a version of the question. And then it was member after member being like, yeah, I mean, this is this is kind of like where I'm at too. Gosh, I'm so conditioned and I'm feeling empowered because I see that all this isn't me. And now what?

Exactly. And again, going back to do the work, right? It is as simple and as difficult as building in those small new practices. Because again, harnessing our nervous system as well, while we can change and evolve, and I'm very much here as you are here to facilitate evolution and conversation and all of the good stuff and resources that will lead to that, our nervous system feels a sense of security in those habitual patterns. That's why we're also stuck.

So it is the smallness of moving the needle, right? I think so many of us have probably tried the life overhaul. model of especially, I mean, we just passed the first of the year, which I know is a time for intentions and starting tomorrow. My life's going to look completely different, starting in the morning, from top to bottom. And we can't sustain change when we move too quickly out of that comfort zone. Why? Because we don't have the ability to deal with the stress of it, right? All of these concepts now beautifully tying together. So to that member, to anyone listening, as frustrated as it may be, I will always be the bearer of this bad news.

It is about the simplicity of keeping yourself committed to small new actions every day, even when your mind is screaming not to do, even when you're rolling your eyes and you're not seeing a change as quick as you want to have it, even when you are becoming aware of how uncomfortable you feel you'd rather be doing and distracting yourself as you once were. Was life really that bad back then? And staying committed still because it really is about the work, making new choices. really harnessing the power that we do have to create change at any point in our life.

There is never a too late, as I know many of us worry or ask about. Change can happen at any time and it really is as simple as creating the conscious space, as we've been talking about throughout, to begin to pause to break those habits and then in that new space to make new choices,

which won't be easy because, again, they will challenge the subconscious that prefers those habitual patterns. 100%. If anybody wants easy, it's like, this ain't your podcast. This ain't your fucking war. It's like when people are like, I want to start a business. And that's, oh, it's hard. I'm like, go get a job. Like this ain't, this ain't going to be the space. And that's okay. That doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. But if it's, I get every, I want the quick fix. I'm like, I'm not here for that. I'm not here to tell you how to get someone to do something or

how to get a quick fix. What I am here to do is say, what's coming up for you? Because what can we control? This old noggin right here is all I got control over. So at the very least, I'm going to maximize and learn out to be resilient because then you learn how to set boundaries. You learn that it's okay if that doesn't work. You learn that people can come in and out of your life. Your entire fucking life can literally change by making one decision right now to do a different act. Even if that different act is, I scroll for one minute less. Great.

You did something that was, I don't care. We're going forward. But Nicole, thank you. I mean, truly, thank you so much. First of all of your work. Thank you for everything you put out there. And thank you for sitting with us and sharing your wisdom with the audience. I'm just, I'm truly grateful and honored to have had you.

And I have your books in the Amazon store so I'm going to have everything linked and I'll have all of your stuff linked in the show notes so that people can find you. I'm just, thank you again so much. Of course. Thank you again, Sabrina, for having me. Thank you all for listening. I am so inspired by spaces like this to have conversations in the communities like you have grown.

I am truly hopeful for the direction. I think that we are evolving into as humanity and I'm honored to be walking alongside of all of you. Likewise.